US news | The Guardian

More than a dozen accused of civil rights violations related to racist mayhem in trial that has driven judge to exasperationTwo blocks from the oak and boxwood trees slowly turning amber in the downtown Charlottesville park that saw one the most violent political confrontations of the Trump era is the tightly-secured federal courtroom where the origins of the racist mayhem that struck over that mid-August weekend in 2017 are now being forensically examined.Close to four years after the event, a sprawling civil lawsuit alleging a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence against nine residents of Charlottesville during the white-supremacist Unite the Right march and rally is drawing together some of the most notorious figures of America’s alt-right movement. Continue reading...

Hugs and handshakes have survived the pandemic. Not so much shared lipsticks and formal business attireThe coronavirus pandemic has proved an experiment in educated guesses. Experts in nearly every field, from public health and real estate to economics and labor, have offered predictions about how the virus would affect the world, well-meaning prophecies that were all but assured to transpire.The first, in April 2020 came from Dr Anthony Fauci, the United States’ leading infectious disease expert, when he forecast the end of handshakes: “I don’t think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you.” Physical greetings were only the beginning. As the pandemic wore on, experts predicted the end of hugs, offices, cities, office wear, in-store cosmetic samples, co-working, ball pits, blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. While some conjectures have come to pass – Covid-19 would be a years-long battle and not a two-weeks-to-flatten-the-curve speed bump in the annals of human history – but others (see: the downfall of handshakes) have shown otherwise. Continue reading...

Despite Friday’s win in Congress, little is going right. But with the ex-president around, anything is possibleIf there is one truism of modern American politics, it’s that good fortune is a fleeting thing. Almost a year to the day after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, his Democratic party was dealt a body blow on election day 2021.In Virginia, former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe lost to Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, as the Republicans won every statewide race and took control of the state’s house of delegates. In New Jersey, incumbent governor, Phil Murphy, barely held on in a state that went for Biden by 16 points. Meanwhile, the powerful Democratic president of New Jersey’s state senate was defeated by a Republican truck driver who spent a mere several thousand dollars on his campaign.Michael Cohen’s most recent book, co-authored with Micah Zenko, is Clear and Present Safety Continue reading...

The socialite as innocent martyr? Try telling that to one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victimsIn the long run-up to Ghislaine Maxwell’s now imminent trial on charges of procuring teenage girls for her late friend, Jeffrey Epstein, her lawyer has repeatedly objected to the accused’s living conditions.Last week, Bobbi C Sternheim returned, again, to similarities between the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and conditions invented by Thomas Harris for his imaginary psychopath. “The surveillance,” she wrote, in another bid for bail, “rivals scenes of Dr Hannibal Lecter’s incarceration as portrayed in the movie, Silence of the Lambs, despite the absence of the cage and the plastic face guard.” Continue reading...

Results in Virginia and New Jersey do not make Republican dog-whistle politics the future. The left must do more to helpAfter Tuesday’s Democratic loss in the Virginia gubernatorial election and near-loss in New Jersey, I’m hearing a narrative about Democrats’ failure with white working-class voters that is fundamentally wrong.In Thursday’s New York Times, David Leonhardt pointed out that the non-college voters who are abandoning the Democratic party “tend to be more religious, more outwardly patriotic and more culturally conservative than college graduates”. He then quotes a fellow Times columnist, the pollster Nate Cohn, who says “college graduates have instilled increasingly liberal cultural norms while gaining the power to nudge the Democratic party to the left. Partly as a result, large portions of the party’s traditional working-class base have defected to the Republicans”. Continue reading...

Appeals court grants emergency stay of requirement for firms with over 100 employees to require Covid vaccinations by 4 JanuaryA federal appeals court on Saturday temporarily halted the Biden administration’s vaccine requirement for businesses with 100 or more workers.The fifth US circuit court of appeals granted an emergency stay of the requirement by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) that such workers be vaccinated by 4 January or face mask requirements and weekly tests. Continue reading...

The president will sign $1tn package into law after House ended months-long standoff by approving bipartisan deal

Joe Biden on Saturday hailed Congress’s passage of his $1tn infrastructure package as a ‘monumental step forward for the nation’ after fractious fellow Democrats resolved a months-long standoff in their ranks to finally seal the deal. His reference to infrastructure week was a jab at his predecessor, Donald Trump, whose White House declared several times that ‘infrastructure week’ had arrived, only for nothing to happen

Nearly 5,000 unlucky souls in California are expected to cram into a building where most rooms have no natural lightSometimes, an idea seems so transparently and hyperbolically awful that you wonder if there is some secret brilliance to it. Such is the one for Munger Hall, the plan to build a dormitory at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where 94% of the 4,500 students will live in rooms without windows. Glowing screens that mimic sunlight are promised instead.Some contrarian minds have tried to justify it, not least Charlie Munger, the 97-year-old billionaire who is the building’s donor and designer. He has compared the rooms to the berths inside cruise ships, a view that seems to ignore the difference between a short holiday, where your windowless cabin might be compensated for by the tropical paradises you visit, and an academic year. Continue reading...

Curbs on vaccinated visitors from 33 countries to go on Monday – for many separated loved ones it’s not a moment too soonOn 8 November, the US will ease restrictions that effectively halted tourism and non-essential travel from 33 countries, including the UK, most of Europe and China. The restrictions have separated families and loved ones, with thousands missing out on birthdays, holidays – and in the case of the British tennis star Emma Raducanu’s parents – a US Open final.Now all visitors with a WHO-approved vaccination (which includes AstraZeneca) will be allowed to visit the US. Visitors with passports from any country where fewer than 10% of the country’s population has been vaccinated will also be allowed. Continue reading...

Comments by Republican believed to hold presidential ambitions questioning Biden’s mental health could also apply to TrumpThe former Trump cabinet member Nikki Haley was accused of ageism, as well as a startling lack of awareness about senior figures in her own party, after questioning Joe Biden’s mental health and suggesting there should be “some sort of cognitive test” for office holders “above a certain age”.Haley made the remarks in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network – a conservative outlet founded by and often featuring the televangelist Pat Robertson, who turned 91 last March. Continue reading...

People like Hawley who want to keep men trapped in the 1950s, adhering to rigid gender stereotypes, are what’s making them fundamentally unhappyListen up, lads! The porn has got to stop. Ditto the video games. You’ve got to grab yourself a wife, get yourself a good old-fashioned manufacturing job, and reclaim what it means to be a red-blooded American male.Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for pre-order Continue reading...

At least eight people died and numerous others were injured in what officials on Saturday described as a surge of the crowd at the Astroworld music festival in Houston while rapper Travis Scott was performing. Officials declared a 'mass casualty incident' just after 9pm on Friday during the festival where an estimated 50,000 people were in attendance, the Houston fire chief, Samuel Peña, told reporters at a news conference

Fighting climate change is a huge opportunity for Brazil to catalyze the country’s sustainable economic development while also protecting the planetScience is clear: climate change is unequivocal, and a result of human activity. The planet is already 1.1C warmer than pre-industrial levels and on a route to reach 2.5C or more this century, which could be catastrophic. The poorest and the most vulnerable populations will suffer more and earlier.Climate change will bring droughts, floods, extreme temperatures and hurricanes that may become more intense and frequent overtime and impact billions of people. The rise of sea levels, lack of water and food, and regions becoming unfeasible to live may generate massive migrations in a planet already closing frontiers.Luís Fernando Guedes Pinto is the knowledge director of SOS Mata Atlântica Continue reading...

America’s overriding primary objective on the Korean peninsula is to avoid unnecessary war. It’s going about it the wrong wayAmid calls for increasing dialogue with Pyongyang from both Washington and Seoul, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un continues ratcheting up the pressure with missile tests. Diplomatic opportunities to deescalate the situation on the peninsula should be pursued. Yet regardless of whether talks produce a breakthrough or not, the situation relative to US national security will remain the same: America is safe and North Korea is deterred.Last Sunday, US envoy to North Korea, Sung Kim, called on Pyongyang to stop “provocations and other destabilizing activities,” and “engage in dialogue.” On Monday, South Korean President Moon Jae In said he would redouble his efforts to establish a “new order for peace and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula … through dialogue and diplomacy.” Up to this point, the North Korean leadership has been cool to the overtures. It’s not hard to figure out why.Daniel L Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America. Follow him @DanielLDavis1 Continue reading...

The election swept in a number of women and politicians of color at the state and local level. Yet pundits want to pretend this was an electoral catastrophePretty much anything that happens to the Democrats is a sign that they’re weak and losing and should be worried, according to the storylines into which mainstream media tends to stuff news. Pretty much nothing, including losing, seems to signify that the Republicans are losers. In so habitually and apparently unconsciously fitting a wide array of new and varied facts into familiar old frameworks, the media shape the political landscape at least as much as they report on it.It’s in the language. The New York Times editorial board thunders that “Democrats deny political reality at their own peril” and then insists that this election in which a moderate lost is a sign that the party needs to get more moderate. Bloomberg News found a way to make a victory sound like defeat: “Phil Murphy clung on to win a second term as New Jersey’s governor, surviving by a narrow margin.” It was about the same margin by which a Republican won the Virginia governorship, but the language around that was apocalyptic (though Virginia usually elects a governor who’s in the other party than the president, and New Jersey – which not long ago gave Republican Chris Christie two terms – re-elected its first Democratic governor in decades on Tuesday).Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses Continue reading...

Congress must help usher in a new energy age - a clean energy age with the same level of support that fossil fuels companies have received for over a centuryOver a century ago, our families were central in unlocking fossil fuels. Government embraced this technological advancement and invested in the infrastructure and production needed for its growth. Our personal histories compel us to publicly acknowledge what we have known for many years: the extraction and burning of fossil fuels is killing life on our planet.Fossil fuels killed 8.7 million people globally in 2018 – disproportionately impacting Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities. Human lives aren’t the only ones being lost. More than 1 billion sea creatures along the Canadian coast were cooked to death during this summer’s record-breaking heatwave in the Pacific Northwest.Aileen Getty is the founder of the Aileen Getty Foundation and the co-founder of the Climate Emergency FundRebecca Rockefeller Lambert is the co-founder of the Equation Campaign and serves on the boards of the Rockefeller Family Fund and the David Rockefeller Fund Continue reading...

On average, incarcerated people are released owing $13,607 in court fines and fees, not including bail debt. Entire communities suffer as a resultOn October 6, my collaborators and I mailed letters to over 20,000 people living in Mississippi and Florida. Each letter opened with the following:Jubilant Greetings! We are writing to you with good news: We just got rid of some of your private probation debt!… You no longer owe the balance of this particular debt. It is gone, a gift with no strings attached.Across the country, courts have outsourced probation to private companies who charge fees for their “services.” With very little oversight, these companies often act like abusive debt collectors while those unable to pay run the risk of imprisonment. This system discriminates against low-income communities and communities of color and imposes the greatest financial burden on those who are the least able to afford to pay. No one should go to jail because they are unable to pay a private probation fee.Astra Taylor is the author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, and an organizer with the Debt Collective Continue reading...

Fresno rents began to spike dramatically during the pandemic and have continued to rise, a crisis hitting low-income residents hardestThe mold in Martha Leon’s home has been there as long as she has. It grows in thick mottled patterns up the wall and around the windows, clinging to baseboards, the curtains, furniture and clothing.But Leon and her family have struggled to leave their house in Fresno, California, even though she and her two children have developed asthma. There’s simply nowhere else they can afford. Continue reading...

The Green Bay star once vied for the status of the NFL’s most well-liked player. After Friday’s bizarre interview about his vaccine status, it’s safe to assume those days are behind himTo think, Aaron Rodgers could be hosting Jeopardy! right now. Yes, the Green Bay Packers quarterback was at one point one of the leading candidates to host the iconic quiz show. He got rave reviews during his tenure as a guest host, even, becoming a sort of pop-intellectual figure in American life. Well, after Rodgers’ public-relations disaster of an interview on the Pat McAfee Show on Friday, they can consider themselves fortunate that they dodged at least one bullet on their star-crossed quest to replace the late Alex Trebek.Rodgers – who is currently unavailable to play with his team after testing positive for Covid-19 – went on the SiriusXM program after reports emerged revealing he was, at best, fudging the truth when he previously claimed he was “immunized” rather than fully vaccinated . The good news was that this time around, he was more direct. The bad news, was that he was probably way too honest for his own good. Continue reading...

Civil rights activists report a ‘cozy’ relationship between Kenosha law enforcement and rightwing vigilantesAs a wind swept leaves past the steps of the Kenosha county courthouse last week, the streets were sparsely trafficked as another day of proceedings came to a close in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot three people last year, wounding one and killing two.The muted scene around the courthouse stood in stark contrast to the chaotic scene that played out in the Wisconsin city on the night of 26 August 2020. And it belied the enormity of what is at stake for Rittenhouse, his victims, and their family members, and for America as a whole, as it faces yet another legal reckoning over racism, rightwing politics and policing. Continue reading...

The presidential candidate’s right-hand woman was looking forward to the last push in the 2016 campaign, and her son starting school. Then her husband, Anthony Weiner, broke the news …• Read an interview with Huma Abedin hereIf there was a single night I truly believed Hillary Clinton would become president, it was 28 July 2016, when she took to the floor in her white Ralph Lauren suit to formally accept the nomination. As a blizzard of confetti and a hundred thousand red, white and blue balloons descended from the cavernous ceiling, the song Stronger Together, written and recorded for that evening, echoed through the hall, competing with the deafening sounds of fifty thousand supporters clapping and cheering for the woman in white on stage. Once HRC accepted the nomination, she began tossing giant blue balloons emblazoned with white stars out to the audience; to Tim Kaine, her running mate; to Chelsea, who had spoken so eloquently to introduce her mother; to her husband, who had given his own moving tribute to her on the second night of the convention and now looked exuberant as he waded through the waist-high drift of balloons that rained down.Afterwards, our delegation of about 20 Clinton/Kaine family members, campaign staff and officials made its way through the balloons to the small backstage hold area, and Tim Kaine surprised me by leading the rest of our group in an impromptu singing of Happy Birthday. It was my 41st birthday. This new decade was turning out to be pretty extraordinary. Or so it seemed. Continue reading...

Álvarez will become the first undisputed super-middleweight champion if he defeats his American opponent on SaturdayThere were times in the last century when boxing was the dominant and most popular sport in America. During those lost decades, in the 1920s and 1930s, only eight boxers at a time could call themselves world champions. There were eight weight divisions, compared with 17 today, and each was ruled by one world champion known across the sporting globe. Such select purity made boxing compelling and easy to follow.This year the venerable British trade publication, Boxing News, made a principled stand against today’s contrasting plethora of world champions. Their editor, Matt Christie, wrote: “It’s impossible to think of another sport in which there are so many ‘world champions’ who have achieved this status without proving themselves to be the best in the world. By my calculations, 74 of the 81 active ‘world champions’ have not won a contest that could have resulted in them being universally declared the best in their division.” Continue reading...

The senator’s support for the filibuster has soured feelings among former supporters in the stateAllie Young believed in Kyrsten Sinema. Her vote helped elect the seemingly progressive Democrat from Arizona to the Senate in 2018. But she wonders what happened to Sinema when she got to Washington.Young, a voting rights activist and citizen of the Diné, or Navajo Nation, is appalled by Sinema’s refusal to reform or abolish the filibuster. Continue reading...

Poll worker told governor-elect’s 17-year-old son he was not eligible to cast ballot in father’s contest with Terry McAuliffe

Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governor’s race by playing dirty over CRT – and the Democrats had no answerNo film director could have choreographed it better. At the very moment Joe Biden emerged from his helicopter into a cold, dark night on the White House south lawn, a new adversary was delivering his victory speech before a hot-blooded crowd in northern Virginia.The cable news split screen took place just after 1am on Wednesday. The president, a Democrat, was returning from G20 and Cop26 summits in Europe. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, was celebrating a stunning victory in the race for governor of Virginia. The message from voters was emphatic. Continue reading...

Intense lobbying helped break an impasse between progressives and moderatesHouse Democrats have passed a $1tn bill to rebuild the nation’s ageing infrastructure after months of delay, delivering Joe Biden a long-awaited legislative victory that he boasted would put the US “on a path to win the economic competition for the 21st century”.Applause filled the chamber as a bipartisan group of lawmakers gave final passage to the measure late on Friday night, sending it to Biden’s desk. The vote was 228 to 206, with 13 Republicans supporting the bill and six leftwing Democrats opposing it. Continue reading...

The minimum hourly rate will rise to $17.64 by July 2023 after unanimous vote by California city’s councilWest Hollywood will provide the highest minimum wage in the US after the city council voted to raise pay in the city to $17.64 an hour.The wage hike will start taking affect in January for some workers and will gradually increase every six months until July 2023, eventually surpassing California’s minimum wage, which is set to reach $15 by 2022 for workplaces with more than 25 employees. California has the highest minimum wage of any state. Continue reading...

Lawyers played video showing Travis McMichael opening fire three times on Arbery, who was unarmed, as trial gets underwayProsecutors on Friday said the three white men accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia last year placed the 25-year-old Black man under a sustained “attack” and made a series of “assumptions and driveway decisions” that led to shooting him dead.During highly charged opening statements in the closely watched trial, now infamous cellphone video of the shooting was played to the court. Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, broke down in tears. Continue reading...

Joe Biden called on 'every House member' to support the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the $1.75tn reconciliation package, as some centrist Democrats raise concerns about the latter. The president argued that the reconciliation package would provide American families with 'just a little more breathing room' by lowering their healthcare and childcare costs

Service for former secretary of state at National Cathedral attended by Biden, Bush and Obama, but not TrumpColin Powell, who rose from a humble background to serve as America’s secretary of state, was honored at Washington’s National Cathedral on Friday, following his death last month at the age of 84.The funeral service was attended by the current president and first lady and former presidents, first ladies and secretaries of state, in an atmosphere akin to a state funeral. Continue reading...

Plaintiffs charge they were subject to physical abuse and forced to stand for hours listening to children’s song played at high volumeFormer officers at the Oklahoma City jail are being accused of torturing at least four former detainees with methods that ranged from physical attacks to being forced to listen repeatedly to loud music, according to a federal lawsuit.In a civil rights suit, reported by the Washington Post, that was filed in federal court this week, four people formerly incarcerated at the Oklahoma City jail said that they were subject to “torture tactics” that included verbal and physical assault as well as standing for hours at a time while being forced to listen to the children’s song Baby Shark. Continue reading...

The prime minister has faced multiple investigations. You can see why the obliteration of the standards commissioner might seem appealingAn edifying week in the government of Britain, a country run by the third prize in a competition to build Winston Churchill out of marshmallows. Yup, this man is our sorry lot: this pool-float Targaryen, this gurning English Krankie cousin, this former child star still squeezing himself into his little suit for coins. The sole bright spot for Boris Johnson is that furious Tory MPs are currently only comparing him to the nursery rhyme Duke of York. Still, give it time.On, then, to the unforced blunderrhoea of the Owen Paterson affair and its fallout. The sheer full-spectrum shitshow of it makes sense when you understand two things: the Carl von Clownewitzes behind the government’s shameful “strategy” for sweeping aside a vital democratic check on corruption; and the fact that for Johnson, none of it was to do with Owen Paterson. The departing MP for North Shropshire was simply useful for the prime minister’s personal goals – until he wasn’t.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Analyst Igor Danchenko is accused of lying to the FBI. Plus, how telling a New Jersey cop you have Covid could get you 10 years in prison

Just as important as the long-term target is the current push for renewables, as well as more climate finance from the rich worldAmazement, elation, worry, disappointment, derision – the announcement by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, that the country would reach net zero carbon emissions by 2070 has provoked all kinds of reaction across the spectrum.India is the world’s fourth largest greenhouse gas polluter after China, the US and the EU. It has far lower emissions per head than the other three and already has a highly ambitious solar programme. At the same time, it depends on coal for two-thirds of its energy generation, and is projected to increase its emissions in the next couple of decades as millions move out of poverty and increase their electricity use. Continue reading...

In the last few years, hurricanes and flooding have devastated parts of the American south. Smoke-billowing wildfires have torn through millions of acres of the west coast. In the south-west, people are suffering through record droughts. Sections of the US are becoming increasingly inhospitable. Adam Gabbatt investigates how these dramatic shifts in the climate are forcing Americans to relocate at alarming rates

The football super-agent Kia Joorabchian has built a big string on the Flat and has high hopes of victory at Del MarThe football super-agent Kia Joorabchian has built a three-figure string on the Flat in the last couple of seasons and will have hopes of seeing his purple colours record their biggest success to date on Friday, when his runners on day one of the 2021 Breeders’ Cup meeting at Del Mar include Go Bears Go and Hello You in the Juvenile Turf Sprint and Juvenile Fillies’ Turf respectively.Joorabchian’s list of clients includes Philippe Coutinho, whose €142m transfer fee to join Barcelona from Liverpool in January 2018 was the second-highest in history at the time, and his Amo Racing Club operation has been investing heavily in bloodstock ever since. His three-year-old colt Mojo Star finished second behind Adayar in the Derby at Epsom in June when still a maiden, while both Go Bears Go and Hello You have registered Group Two wins this season, in the Railway Stakes and Rockfel Stakes respectively. Continue reading...