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Far too many academics are repeating propaganda about a free speech crisis'. It's time for a shared strategyHarvard is refusing the plainly illegal demands by the Trump administration. That sends an important signal: resistance is possible.But universities must realize that the government is adopting a divide-and-rule tactic: they should collaborate on a shared litigation strategy, take a common approach in getting the public on their side, and do everything possible to have Congress push back against Trump treating money allocated by the legislature as if it were a private slush fund to be used for political blackmail. Some faculty have already begun to unite. In principle, not just progressives, but self-respecting conservatives - if any remain - should be responsive to such a three-pronged strategy. Continue reading...

The 28-year-old is aiming to become the first American man to win the race since 2014. He says learning to take pressure off himself has helped his careerEvery now and then, Conner Mantz allows his mind to drift back to the same stretch of last November's New York City Marathon.Around 16 miles in, coming off the Queensborough Bridge into Manhattan, the lead pack accelerated. Mantz, starting to feel uncomfortable, let the other runners go. Continue reading...

Thomas Graham, a journalist based in Mexico City, explains how the leftwing governing party, Morena, has promoted social justice but diluted principle with pragmatismIf you were to summarise the 2024 election year, you might say: grim for incumbents, good for the far right. Yet Mexico bucked both trends. Its governing party, Morena, not only retained the presidency but - along with its partners in the Sigamos Haciendo Historia coalition - gained a two-thirds supermajority in the chamber of deputies, the lower house, while the far right failed to even run a candidate. That a self-described leftwing party could have such success by fixing on Mexico's chasmic inequality has drawn attention from hopeful progressives worldwide. But Morena's programme has some not-so-progressive elements too. It is not necessarily one others could - or would want to - copy in its entirety.Morena first notched a historic result in 2018, when Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, an old face of the left who ran for president twice before founding the party, won a record 55% of the vote during the general elections. Mexico's constitution limits presidents to a single term. But this time, Claudia Sheinbaum, a close ally of Lopez Obrador's, won 60% of the vote. Her victory was reminiscent of the heyday of Latin America's pink tide", when leftist leaders like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales were reelected for a second term with more votes than their initial victories. Continue reading...

From Kings v Oilers to Leafs v Bruins, the league's divisional structure has turned once-thrilling postseason clashes into stale reruns. Is it time for a change?It's the stupidest thing ever." This was Washington Capitals' forward Daniel Winnik's review in 2017 of the NHL's still (somewhat) new playoff format. Three seasons earlier, along with realigning its divisions, the NHL had abandoned it's previous, simple playoff arrangement. For 20 years, the top eight teams from each conference qualified for the playoffs, with the first-placed team playing the eighth-placed team, the second-placed team played the seventh, and so on. I don't know why it's not one to eight," Winnik said. I don't know why we got away from that." A lot of people are still asking the same question.On Sunday, as the NHL locked in its first Western conference playoff matchup, confirming that the Dallas Stars will face the Colorado Avalanche, some fans took to online forums to both celebrate and lament. Anybody else hate the divisional format? I truly think both of these teams are legit contenders," one user posted to the r/hockey subreddit under a link announcing the matchup. Pretty sure literally everyone does," another responded. Indeed, it seems unfair that one of the top teams in the West will be eliminated so soon into the postseason. Worse, is that, thanks in part to the playoff format, fans have seen this matchup coming for ages - a predictability that is supposed to build anticipation, but has instead become annoying. Continue reading...

Newton-Wellesley hospital president says all six tumors benign as rigorous ongoing investigation' conductedThe number of staff members who have developed brain tumors while working on the same floor of a Boston-area hospital has increased to at least six, according to the facility's leadership.A recent statement attributed to the president of Mass General Brigham's Newton-Wellesley hospital, Ellen Moloney, said the newly reported tumor was benign, as were five previously documented ones. The statement maintained that investigators had not turned up any evidence of environmental risks at the hospital, though their work remained ongoing. Continue reading...

Chris Van Hollen posts photo on X but does not provide update on status of man wrongly deported from USThe Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen met in El Salvador with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who was sent there by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation.Van Hollen posted a photo of the meeting on X, saying he also called Abrego Garcia's wife to pass along his message of love". Continue reading...

This blog is now closed. You can read our latest story hereDonald Trump's administration will ask a US federal appeals court on Thursday to pause a judge's ruling lifting access restrictions the White House imposed on the Associated Press (AP) for referring to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage.The Trump administration has argued that the lower-court ruling, which mandates AP journalists be granted access to press events in the White House, infringes on the president's ability to decide whom to admit to sensitive spaces. The White House has asked to put the ruling on hold while it appeals. Continue reading...

The IRS is reportedly planning to revoke Harvard's tax exemption, a move that would cost the university millions - key US politics stories from Thursday 17 April at a glanceThe Trump administration has taken aim at Harvard, with President Trump calling for the university's tax-exempt status to be revoked, despite the likely illegality of that threat.The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly planning to enact the president's demand, a move that would cost Harvard millions of dollars each year. Continue reading...

Suspect, charged with four federal counts, faces separate state charges over death of Brian Thompson in ManhattanLuigi Mangione was indicted on Thursday on a federal murder charge in the killing of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel last year, a necessary step for prosecutors to seek the death penalty.The indictment returned by a grand jury in Manhattan federal court also charges Mangione with two counts of stalking and a firearms count. Continue reading...

Police took in suspect Phoenix Ikner, 20, a Florida State University student and son of a sheriff's deputyTwo people were killed in a mass shooting at the Florida State University (FSU) campus in Tallahassee on Thursday, and six others were injured, police said.The 20-year-old suspect is believed to be a student and the son of a sheriff's deputy who had access to one of her weapons, a handgun, which was found at the scene, Sheriff Walt McNeil said at a news conference. Continue reading...

US president and first lady received invitation in February from King Charles for unprecedented repeat tripDonald Trump has said he is expecting to travel to the UK in September for his second state visit.King Charles is preparing to host the US president and first lady as the UK government tries to bolster transatlantic ties after Trump imposed a series of tariffs on trading partners. Continue reading...

The president and Italy's prime minister spoke a common language - but for a discordant moment over UkraineShe had been welcomed to the White House with open arms as few other foreign visitors had been since Donald Trump's return, and Giorgia Meloni wanted to assure her host that - at least when it came to their political worldview - they spoke a common language.Italy's prime minister, whose Brothers of Italy party has roots in neo-fascism, was keen to stress that she shared many things with the man who had just hailed her as a friend" who everybody loves ... and respects". Continue reading...

Toddler had wandered from his home in to mountain lion territory when Buford, out on his nightly patrol, found himA two-year-old boy who spent a night alone in the Arizona wilderness was led to safety by a rancher's dog and was recovering safely at home with his family on Thursday.The toddler, identified as Boden Allen, disappeared from his home in Seligman, Arizona, at around 5pm local time on Monday, about 100 miles south of the Grand Canyon national park, prompting a large search operation. He was wearing just a blue tank top and pajama pants at the time, the Yavapai county sheriff's office said in a missing person notice. Continue reading...

Allegations of criminality have always been deployed to justify state violence but even imperfect' victims deserve basic rights

President, whose tariffs has caused turmoil, said Jerome Powell is always too late and wrong' with rate policyDonald Trump early on Thursday condemned the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, for not lowering US interest rates, and expressed a wish for him to be gone from his role.The US president lambasted Powell as always too late and wrong" in a post on his Truth Social platform. Trump noted that the European Central Bank (ECB) was poised on Thursday to lower interest rates again, without mentioning that the body has been responding to the chaos caused by Trump's initiatives on tariffs. Continue reading...

Footage captured the moment US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents used a hammer to smash a car window to detain a man in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Juan Francisco Mendez, 29, was stopped when he was on the way to a dental appointment. The incident, recorded by his wife, Marilu Domingo Ortiz, shows Ice agents using a long-handled hammer to smash the car window Continue reading...

Lawyer says officials were looking for someone else while taking Juan Francisco Mendez in Massachusetts on MondayA Massachusetts family is demanding answers from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), complaining its agents smashed a car window with a large hammer and detained a man whom they say had applied for asylum.A lawyer for the family also claims agents were not looking for the man in the car, Juan Francisco Mendez, when they grabbed him on Monday in New Bedford while he was driving to a dental appointment. He is now believed to have been taken into Ice detention. Continue reading...

Company behind Truth Social accuses London-based hedge fund Qube of alleged suspicious trading activity'Donald Trump's fledgling media firm has urged market regulators to investigate suspicious activity" after a London-based hedge fund disclosed a vast bet against its stock.Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of the US president's Truth Social platform, raised questions over trading by Qube Research & Technologies. Continue reading...

Abolishing tariffs would be welcome, but not at the price of reducing high regulatory standards or a reset with the European UnionLooked at objectively, a bilateral trade agreement between Britain and the United States is of relatively small economic significance to this country. Back in 2020, Boris Johnson's government estimated that a US deal could increase UK GDP in the long run by around 0.07%" - a figure that is not exactly transformative. The view touted by some Brexiters that a US trade deal would fire up the entire British economy was always a fantasy, the product of deregulatory yearning for which there was little public support, even among leave voters. Any urge of that kind is clearly even moredelusional now, in the wake of DonaldTrump'stariff wars.Hopefully, the right's across-the-board deregulatory horror is now a thing of the past. But global trade has new traumas too. Mr Trump's protectionism and bullying of US rivals are resetting the terms. There are nevertheless specific reasons why it is in Britain's interest to pursue freer trade talks with the US. Chief among these is the threat posed by current tariffs, especially on cars and pharmaceuticals, as well as the prospect that a 10% tariff will be reimposed on all UK exports to the US after the current pause ends in July. Continue reading...

SpaceX-led group is pitching the Pentagon on a 'subscription model' for missile defenseElon Musk's SpaceX and two partners have emerged as frontrunners to win a crucial part of President Donald Trump's Golden Dome" missile defense shield, six people familiar with the matter said.Musk's rocket and satellite company is partnering with software maker Palantir and drone builder Anduril on a bid to build key parts of Golden Dome, the sources said, which has drawn significant interest from the technology sector's burgeoning base of defense startups. Continue reading...

The president's penchant for the gaudy has been mocked but the menace beneath was clear when he met El Salvador's leaderThe Oval Office meeting of Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele on Monday was a grotesque spectacle. Both men, elected to lead nominally democratic countries, have described themselves as dictators, and they exuded that sense of smug impunity. While reporters sought answers on the fate of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three who was wrongly deported to El Salvador's notorious Cecot mega-prison, Trump and Bukele disclaimed responsibility, joked about further deportations, and engaged in casual slander of Abrego Garcia, who is not, and has never been alleged to be, a terrorist.And then there was the gold. So much gold. Continue reading...

Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk was seized in Massachusetts by plainclothes agents and spirited to Louisiana detention centerA Turkish PhD student and former Fulbright scholar detained after co-authoring a campus newspaper op-ed about Gaza has been denied bond by an immigration judge, as her legal team continues to urgently petition a federal court in Vermont for her release.Rumeysa Ozturk, who had been studying at Tufts University, was seized by plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents on 25 March near her home in Massachusetts and shuttled through three states before landing in a Louisiana detention facility - all without being charged with any crime. Continue reading...

Elected leaders from across Europe should join us on the streets. It is critical to democracy - in Hungary, and the EU as a wholeHungary's parliament has given Viktor Orban the tools to do what he has long threatened: ban Pride, silence dissent and strip political critics of their citizenship. A constitutional amendment passed on 14 April allows the government to label LGBTQ+ gatherings a threat to children and to revoke the citizenship of dual nationals deemed a risk to national sovereignty".This is a purge disguised as law - another step in Orban's dismantling of democracy, where the constitution is degraded to a propaganda instrument. He calls it a spring clean-up" to root out bugs", targeting LGBTQ+ people, journalists, critics, civil society and now, dual nationals. As one myself, I could be among the targets.Katalin Cseh is a member of the Hungarian national assembly for the Momentum Movement and a former MEPDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Democrats press Trump administration to follow supreme court order to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia

Probably illegal move against US's richest university is latest in Trump's attack on independence of higher education

Jennifer Vasquez Sura criticizes DHS's attempt to smear her wrongly deported husband over 2021 civil protective order

Live, rolling coverage of business, economics and financial markets as ECB reduces main interest rate from 2.5% to 2.25%, the seventh cut in a year

Arteta's side delivered a performance for the ages to knock out Real Madrid, while PSG held firm at Villa Park and Inter outlasted Bayern to set up a semi-final of contrastsArsenal Continue reading...

Actions by state department to terminate students' legal status place them at risk of deportation and detention

The son of Coach Prime has the production, pedigree and poise to lead a franchise. But he challenges the prototype of what an NFL quarterback is supposed to look and act likeNFL scouting is broken, and Shedeur Sanders is the proof. Everything about him screams future star quarterback, and yet teams would sooner assume the worst.Make no mistake: there is no prospect in this year's draft who is better equipped to turn around a struggling franchise than the 23-year-old Texan, a savior to not one but two college fanbases. The last four years saw him restore the proud football tradition at Jackson State and put Colorado back on the college football map. Sanders did this despite skeptics casting doubt on his ability to make the jump up from competing against small historically Black schools to playing against major college powers in the Pac 12 and Big 12 conferences. Last year he led a 9-4 turnaround at Colorado, the school's first winning season in seven years, while snapping a four-year drought of postseason bowl appearances. Continue reading...

The supreme court judgment is contradictory and confused. And there seems no prospect of the Labour government sorting this out

Too often, healthcare ignores our pain and fails to value our lives. But communities are banding together to meet our needsMaternal deaths have recently dropped in the US - that is, unless you're Black.Black women continue to face the highest rates of maternal mortality in our country. To be Black, pregnant and hopeful in the US is to hold on to life with a fierce and unyielding grip against devastating odds.Venice Haynes is a social and behavioral scientist with more than 17 years of public health experience. She is the senior director of research and community engagement for United States of Care Continue reading...

Dayton will host the alliance's parliamentary assembly 30 years after the Bosnian peace accords were signed thereWhen hundreds of Nato delegates and thousands of ancillaries, protesters and security forces descend on Dayton, Ohio, next month, the visitors will see a town that's clawed its way back from the brink.White flight in the late 20th century and the 2008 Great Recession saw thousands of jobs and residents leave. More recently, the pandemic forced many downtown businesses to allow staffers to work from home, erasing a key daytime customer base for cafes and restaurants. Continue reading...

The killings of paramedics and rescuers last month led to international outcry. Plus, police use stun guns on two people at Marjorie Taylor Greene event

These are just the US executioners we know. But they are a chilling indication of the executioners we don't knowBeing an executioner is not the sort of job that gets posted in a local wanted ad. Kids don't dream about being an executioner when they grow up, and people don't go to school for it. So how does one become a death row executioner in the US, and who are the people doing it?This was the question I couldn't help but ask when I began a book project on lethal injection back in 2018. I'm a death penalty researcher, and I was trying to figure out why states are so breathtakingly bad at a procedure that we use on cats and dogs every day. Part of the riddle was who is performing these executions. Continue reading...

Why are a quarter of a million people set to descend on Green Bay? I went to Wisconsin to find out ...I've just got back from a road trip in Wisconsin. The upper Midwest is not an obvious destination for a spring break, certainly not in early April. As my plane circled above Milwaukee, the brown and leafless landscape warned me I'd travelled back in time to midwinter.It was too cold to brave the beaches - the Lake Michigan shore was covered in snow and ice - but the bars at least were convivial. This is often the case in Wisconsin, the state with the highest alcohol consumption per capita. Many of my fellow drinkers were keen to point out that they were responsible for nearly all the brandy sold in the US (as a collective, not individually). Continue reading...

The administration dared China, Harvard and the supreme court to blink. They haven'tIt was bound to happen.Encouraged by the ease with which many big US institutions caved in to their demands, the Trump regime - that is, the small cadre of bottom-feeding fanatics around Donald Trump (JD Vance, Elon Musk, Russell Vought, Stephen Miller and RFK Jr) along with the child king himself - have overreached.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...

Born in boxing's golden age and still swinging today, the BWAA has spent a century preserving the stories, sounds and spirits of the sportWhen the Boxing Writers Association of American holds its annual awards dinner in New York on 30 April, it will mark the organization's 100th dinner and the start of its 100th year of existence.The Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York (as the BWAA was originally known) was founded by Damon Runyan, Paul Gallico, Ed Sullivan, Nat Fleischer, Edward J Neil and Wilbur Wood with the stated mission of improving conditions at boxing events for New York writers and their visiting colleagues. Continue reading...

My book about disabled women grew in relevance as I wrote it, exposing the heartlessness of proposed harsh benefit cutsWhen I began to write a book four years ago about life for disabled women in Britain, I didn't bank on it being particularly topical. Stuck in bed with chronic fatigue and pain in my early 30s, I wanted to write something that would connect with other women navigating pillboxes and heat pads alongside careers and relationships. And so I decided to interview more than 70 women and non-binary people with physical and mental health conditions - from famous actors to legal experts, musicians to psychologists. The result was a vast and varied catalogue of disabled life: from stories about workplace microaggressions and good and bad dates on the apps, to finding freedom (and judgment) using mobility aids.What I didn't anticipate was that as the months went on, and my word count went up, the disabled cohort I was writing about would grow to include more and more women - many of them even younger than me. Continue reading...

Not only are TV-watching, book-reading, show-going, music-listening travellers declining to visit the US, we have started to cease to imagine itThis week, fresh data revealed the United States has seen its biggest drop in Australian tourists since Covid. It's hardly surprising. Innocent people are being snatched by authorities from American streets. Citizens of foreign countries are being stopped, shackled and detained. The EU is now sending its emissaries with burner phones, lest personal social media posts critical of President Trump be discovered by border agents and ... who knows what happens next? Forcible relocation to a Salvadorian supermax prison, seemingly without chance of release, is suddenly not out of the question.It all seems like something from Hollywood dystopia; the V series, maybe. Or Escape from New York. It's pretty much the plot line of the first season of Andor - which I strongly recommend that everyone watch before the Trump regime clocks what that show is advising and it vanishes faster than a copy of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl from an American high school library. Continue reading...

I'm not saying Britain should refuse every sort of free trade agreement with the US, but there may be options that better suit Labour's purposeIt's a deal. The words sound good. Most human beings are primed to think of a deal as desirable in itself. It isn't hard to see why. Agreement is generally better than disagreement. In most aspects of life, shaking hands under shared rules makes sense. So it takes a bit of effort to think more objectively. But it is important to do that now, especially in the case of the proposed UK trade deal with the United States.Even before Donald Trump became president again, and long before the US started its current tariff wars, there were already plenty of reasons for caution about what a free trade deal with the US might look like. In the wake of Brexit, these concerns centred on whether a deal could be struck - and sold at home - on bilateral trade issues such as pharmaceuticals, food products and digital regulation, on all of which very different standards and assumptions have long applied on the two sides of the Atlantic.Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Grant Shapps also compares calling Sumy strike a mistake' to statements by IRA terror group when it killed civiliansPronouncing himself disgusted" by Donald Trump's favorable attitude to Russia and Vladimir Putin, the former UK defence minister Grant Shapps said the US president calling a Russian missile strike that killed dozens in Ukraine last weekend a mistake" was an example of weasel language we used to hear ... from the IRA" terrorist group.All anybody needs Putin to do is get the hell out of a democratic neighboring country," Shapps told the One Decision podcast, regarding attempts to end the war in Ukraine that has raged since Russia invaded in February 2022. Continue reading...

This blog has now closed. You can read our latest story hereUS attorney general Pam Bondi on Wednesday unveiled legal action against Maine, in an escalation of Donald Trump's conflict with the state for refusing to ban transgender athletes from participating in women's and girls' sports.Reuters reports that the lawsuit comes five days after the administration tried to cut off all of Maine's federal funding for public schools and its school lunch program over the issue, following a 21 February meeting of Trump and a group of US governors where he clashed with Maine's Democratic governor, Janet Mills.Nothing in Title IX or its implementing regulations prohibits schools from allowing transgender girls and women to participate on girls' and women's sports teams. Your letters to date do not cite a single case that so holds.It was a compelling meeting. And toward the end, we actually came up with - I'm going to say finally,' but I don't mean it in the way that we were waiting, I mean it in the way that it took a while for us to get to this place - what Putin's request is to get, to have a permanent peace here. Continue reading...

Democrat Chris Van Hollen says El Salvador refused his request to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia; judge finds probable cause to hold Trump officials in contempt - key US politics stories from Wednesday 16 April at a glanceA Democratic senator who says El Salvador's government refused to allow him to visit his constituent wrongly deported to the country has condemned an unjust situation". Chris Van Hollen said its vice-president told him it would not be possible for him to speak with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in person or on the phoneThe senator's visit came as Democrats have seized on the deportation and the Trump administration's refusal to take any steps to return him, in apparent defiance of the supreme court, to argue that the president is plunging the US into a constitutional crisis. Continue reading...

A small Michigan community banded together to help a beloved local bookstore move its stock to a new storefrontResidents of all ages in a small Michigan community formed a human chain and helped a local bookshop move each of its 9,100 books - one by one - to a new storefront about a block away.The book brigade" of about 300 people stood in two lines running along a sidewalk in downtown Chelsea on Sunday, passing each title from Serendipity Books' former location directly to the correct shelves in the new building, down the block and around the corner on Main Street. Continue reading...