Governor Greg Abbott appears to be filling out a ‘bingo card’ of rightwing policy desires, even though those proposals are not popular with TexansFrom restricting voter access and politicizing the US-Mexico border to targeting transgender student athletes and further rolling back abortion rights, Texas’s current legislative agenda set by its governor, Greg Abbott, reads almost like a conservative bingo card.Related: Death toll from Texas February cold spell rises by 59 to reach 210 Continue reading...

As a person of colour, I’ve suffered online abuse, but ending anonymity and mandatory ID verification each raise problemsAs a person of colour who has spent much of their life online, I’ve dealt with my fair share of racist abuse. From anonymous accounts on niche forums about anime hurling unprintable slurs, to more easily identifiable people – with their real names and locations published – on Facebook and Twitter sending me death threats. As a result, I imagine that my tolerance for racial abuse on the internet is higher than average. I’ve even gone as far as meeting people who have sent me torrents of online abuse to try to understand what motivated them.

I was up for nothing but lockdown walks and a spot of yoga until I sat on the Peloton saddle. Now, beat me if you dare …I have never been interested in exercising until I’m out of breath. What’s wrong with yin yoga, which is basically hugging a bag? Or walking to the park and sitting down and then walking to the ice-cream van and sitting down again? That all counts on my Fitbit.However, during the worst excesses of lockdown the police kept shouting at us gentle strollers to “Keep moving!”, which made a wander up Primrose Hill in north London more like an enjoyable trip through season two of The Handmaid’s Tale – so I caved and ordered a Peloton bike. My husband predicted the most exercise I’d get would be assembling it. He was so wrong. Two nice masked men came and put it together. Hah! Continue reading...

Teenager’s mother shot Troy George Skinner as he allegedly tried to break into their Virginia home; he has pleaded not guilty to chargesA New Zealand man who was shot while allegedly trying to kidnap a 14-year-old Virginia girl he met online has reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors in the US.Troy George Skinner, 28, of Auckland, New Zealand, was scheduled to face trial next month after pleading not guilty to two counts of attempted kidnapping and nine counts related to the production of child pornography. But electronic court records show that the jury selection process was terminated last week and a plea agreement hearing in the case has been scheduled for 29 July. Continue reading...

Drought and deadly heatwaves fuel flames that threaten Native American tribal lands struggling to save water

Champlain Towers South, valued at $100m, to be put up for sale immediately, while emergency calls released to the publicA Florida judge has approved the sale of the oceanfront property where a collapsed Florida condominium once stood, with proceeds intended to benefit victims – as emergency calls released to the public show the disbelief, panic and confusion that unfolded the night of the deadly disaster.Related: Norwegian cruise company sues Florida over ban on Covid vaccine passports Continue reading...

President joins Senate Democrats for lunch a day after Schumer announces agreement on spending proposalJoe Biden made the short but significant journey from the White House to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a key meeting to bolster Senate Democrats’ $3.5tn “human infrastructure” plan.The president put in an appearance at the Senate Democratic caucus’s weekly policy lunch, one day after the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, announced an agreement on the spending proposal. Continue reading...

Exotic was sentenced in January 2020 to 22 years after being convicted of trying to hire two different men to kill Carole BaskinA federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Tiger King’s Joe Exotic should get a shorter prison sentence for his role in a murder-for-hire plot and violating federal wildlife laws.Joe Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, and was the star of a docuseries that became a big hit during the height of the coronavirus pandemic last year, was sentenced in January 2020 to 22 years in federal prison after being convicted of trying to hire two different men to kill animal sanctuary owner Carole Baskin. Continue reading...

North Carolina is among 37 states that have introduced some form of ‘Save Women’s Sports’ legislation aimed at trans youthMaddie Jenifer stood glued to her mother’s side behind the podium, staring at a panel of preened and suited strangers staring right back at her. Maddie was the first transgender child some of them had ever seen, let alone spoken to. Still, the North Carolina’s House judiciary committee was introducing legislation that would have banned Maddie from playing sports for her high school that fall.North Carolina is among 37 states that have introduced some form of ‘Save Women’s Sports’ legislation that would ban transgender girls and women from playing on school sports teams that don’t reflect their sex at birth. North Carolina’s version targeted transgender girls from kindergarten through high school, though some states have expanded their bills to also include college sports, bucking NCAA transgender protections that have been in place since 2010. Continue reading...

Republicans’ big lie makes it all but impossible for our republic to heal itself without new laws to defend democracyAt the risk of giving away a speechwriting secret, one time-tested way to organize a presidential address – or any piece of persuasive writing – is with something called “Monroe’s Motivated Sequence”. It’s a five-part structure: explain the context; define the problem; lay out the solution; put forward a vision of the future; issue a call to action.By this measure, on Tuesday President Biden delivered two-fifths of a major address on democracy reform. He connected the wave of Republican anti-voting laws to the 6 January attack on the Capitol and the insidious legacy of segregation and Jim Crow. He rightly referred to Republicans’ authoritarian efforts as “the most dangerous threat to voting and the integrity of fair and free elections in our history”. Continue reading...

Culper Precision said on Instagram of the kits: ‘We wanted the second amendment to simply be too painful to tread on’A Utah company has stopped selling a kit that encases Glock handguns in Lego blocks, amid uproar and after the Danish toymaker demanded it cease and desist.Marketing the “Block19” as a “a childhood dream come to life”, Culper Precision introduced it on Instagram, saying: “We wanted the second amendment to simply be too painful to tread on, so there was only one logical solution.” Continue reading...

Black musicians don’t lack talent, but our careers are in the hands of people who package it through a white gazeI remember the first time my music was played on the radio. I’d made it into the top 10 of the BBC Music Sound poll – which predicts who might be successful – and it was common for a national radio station to play the music of each artist. So there I was, huddled on the sofa with my family.But the excitement was short-lived. Immediately after the radio presenter played my song, she took a phone-in call from a guy who said, on air, that I was ugly and stupid. Their discussion then led to a lazy comparison with another black artist, and the presenter concluded the call by going close to the mic and whispering quite smugly that she thought Janelle Monáe was much better than VV Brown. Continue reading...

Republican governor is hoping to ride Trump’s coattails to the White House and generate cash to fund 2022 re-election campaignFor $12, you can buy a red beverage cooler imprinted with the words: “How the hell am I going to be able to drink a beer with a mask on?”Related: Delta variant gains ground in US as outbreaks highlight vaccine divide Continue reading...

Major step in party’s push to pour resources into climate change, healthcare and family service programs sought by presidentSenate Democrats said late on Tuesday they had reached a budget agreement that envisions spending an enormous $3.5tn over the coming decade, paving the way for their drive to pour federal resources into climate change, healthcare and family service programs sought by Joe Biden.It is a major step in the party’s push to meet the president’s goal of bolstering an economy ravaged by the coronavirus and setting it on course for growth. It includes a Medicare expansion of vision, hearing and dental benefits for older Americans, a goal of progressives. Continue reading...

Quartet allegedly explored ways to take Masih Alinejad away in speedboat in scheme like ‘far-fetched movie plot’, FBI saysFour members of an alleged Iranian spy network have been charged with plotting the kidnap of an Iranian-American journalist and activist based in New York.According to the indictment, the spy network was exploring ways to spirit the journalist from her home in Brooklyn and take her by speedboat out to sea, and then to Venezuela, which maintains friendly ties with Tehran. Continue reading...

State officials add to deadly cost of failure of state power grid, which caused a political scandalTexas officials have added 59 deaths to the toll wrought by a February cold spell and the ensuing collapse of the state electric power grid.Related: Why the cold weather caused huge Texas blackouts – a visual explainer Continue reading...

Groups in the lawsuit, including doctors, health clinic staff and clergy members, say SB8 violates Texans’ constitutional rightsIn a highly anticipated move, Texas abortion providers filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday against the state’s draconian six-week abortion ban, Senate Bill 8 that would empower private citizens to enforce the law.“The Texas legislature’s well-documented hostility to the rights of pregnant people has gone to a new extreme,” reads the lawsuit, filed by groups including Whole Woman’s Health and Planned Parenthood, along with abortion support fund groups, doctors, health clinic staff, and clergy members. “Senate Bill 8 flagrantly violates the constitutional rights of Texans seeking abortion and upends the rule of law in service of an anti-abortion agenda.” Continue reading...

In interview James Talarico challenges Fox News host Pete Hegseth to say Trump lost the 2020 presidential electionIn an interview on Tuesday night, a Texas Democrat who fled the state for Washington DC in an attempt to stop a restrictive voting rights law challenged a Fox News host to say Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.Related: ‘Have you no shame?’: Biden decries Republican attacks on voting rights Continue reading...

President decries racist voting laws but notably omits any mention of filibuster in Philadelphia speechGood morning,Joe Biden made an impassioned stand on voting rights in his speech from Philadelphia on Tuesday, asking Republicans who are pushing for restrictive laws: “Have you no shame?” Continue reading...

The president has tried to reset from the chaotic cruelty of the Trump era but the challenges in his inbox are dauntingSix months in, it looks like Joe Biden has a good chance of getting America back to where it was before the pandemic. Covid-19 is in retreat. So far, almost half of the adult population has been fully vaccinated. The economy is roaring back – still 7m jobs short of where it was in January 2020 but on track to return to the starting gate by the end of the year. Biden’s “American Rescue Plan” is a major success. Continue reading...

Infection rates in Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi are among the highest in the US – and their vaccination rates are among the lowestA cluster of midwestern and southern states have emerged as a new center of Covid-19 outbreaks, as the highly transmissible Delta variant sweeps across poorly vaccinated populations in the US.The news marks a potentially serious setback for the Biden administration’s attempts to curb and control the pandemic as the Delta variant – which has wreaked havoc in the UK and elsewhere – is starting to spread more widely in America. Continue reading...

Cuban special forces have begun a widespread crackdown on anti-government protests. The historic demonstrations were sparked over food shortages, high prices and other grievances against the government. Meanwhile, rallies have been held in several US cities, with hundreds of people waving Cuban flags and calling for change on the Communist-run island

Satellite imagery from NOAA shows various clusters of fire in the state of Oregon. The Bootleg fire, which has been burning since 6 July, is the largest active blaze in the nation, covering an area larger than the size of New York City. The growing Bootleg fire continued to devour forest in south-central Oregon, after forcing hundreds of residents in the Klamath Falls area to evacuate

Joe Biden gave a speech in Philadelphia in support of voting rights legislation that has been stalling in Congress due to Republican opposition. Many Republican-controlled states have passed laws that either restrict voting or change election rules following baseless accusations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election

Thousands have been forced to evacuate from Alaska to Wyoming amid soaring temperatures and a droughtMore than 60 wildfires were burning across at least 10 states in the parched American west on Tuesday, with the largest, in Oregon, consuming an area nearly twice the size of Portland.The fires have torched homes and forced thousands to evacuate from Alaska to Wyoming, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Arizona, Idaho and Montana accounted for more than half of the large active fires. Continue reading...

Workers were not hospitalized themselves but incident comes amid rising case numbers in NevadaAn outbreak of Covid-19 among vaccinated staffers at a Las Vegas hospital has highlighted the risks posed by the Delta variant in the US, as Nevada struggles with rising Covid cases and stagnating vaccination rates.Eleven workers at the Sunrise hospital and medical center, only one of whom was unvaccinated, tested positive for coronavirus after attending a party in early June, hospital officials confirmed to the Guardian.

President condemns Trump’s ‘big lie’ about a stolen election but fails to mention filibuster in 20-minute Philadelphia speechJoe Biden has made an impassioned attack on racist voting laws sweeping America, warning that “the 21st-century Jim Crow assault is real” and demanding of Republicans: “Have you no shame?”Related: Biden defends voting rights – but no word on ending the filibuster Continue reading...

The president gave an impassioned defense of the right to vote, but while the 60-vote Senate rule is in place, reform looks a pipe dream

New health department rules reportedly apply to inoculations against all diseasesThe Tennessee department of health will reportedly halt all vaccine outreach to teenagers amid a conservative backlash against Covid-19 vaccines for adolescents.The department’s new guidance, announced in reports and emails reported by the Tennessean, will apply to vaccinations for all diseases – not just Covid-19. If the department issues any information about vaccination, staff will reportedly be required to strip the agency logo from documents. Continue reading...

Miami-Dade mayor says 14 people remain unaccounted for, including 10 bodies recovered but not yet identifiedAs exhausted crews neared the end of their search for victims of the condominium tower collapse in Surfside, Florida, the death toll reached 95. A handful of people were still unaccounted for.Related: Biden condemns Trump’s claim of voter fraud: ‘The big lie is just that, a big lie’ – live Continue reading...

The Utah division of wildlife resources has released video footage showing planes dropping small fish from the air into the lakes below.The fish – which are usually between 1 and 3 inches (2.5cm-7.5cm) long and include rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, brook trout, tiger trout, splake and Arctic grayling – are specifically raised for fishing. They are dropped into fishless lakes that do not have any natural reproduction, and they are often sterile.Utah’s DWR says this allows the state to control their numbers and does not affect any native fish populations.This method of stocking, in which the small fish can survive the high fall because of their size, has been used since the 1950s

Swimming in capital and with dividend restrictions gone, banks have plenty to give shareholdersLet the dividend bonanza in the banking sector begin? The Bank of England on Tuesday removed its Covid “guardrails” on distributions to shareholders, and boards now have a decision to make. Do they shower their investors with cash, in effect making up for nine dividend-free months in 2020 and the token payments that were made thereafter? Or do they conclude that the final bill for Covid-related defaults isn’t yet clear and, in any case, a display of dividend excess at this point would look terrible?There’s little doubt the banks could afford to let rip, up to a point. The Bank’s Prudential Regulation Authority was correct to impose a dividend ban at the outbreak of the pandemic – as Sam Woods, its boss, said, it couldn’t allow £7bn of capital to leave the system when the economic outlook was so unclear – but it is also true that loans have not soured at anything like the rate originally feared. Continue reading...

Despite a poor record, the American says he loves links golf and thinks he can win his second majorIt must be exhausting being Bryson DeChambeau. In the course of a 15-minute visit to the Open Championship’s media centre, golf’s self-styled mad scientist was taken on the kind of whirlwind tour of topics that leaves onlookers wondering where to begin.In no particular order DeChambeau was asked to address: poor performances in this major, his supposed unwillingness to shout fore, his ongoing spat with Brooks Koepka, emulating Tiger Woods on the Open scene, the Ryder Cup, a recent charity match in Montana and relations with a new caddie. In conclusion, he was asked whether recurring criticism hurts his feelings. Continue reading...

Investment banking arms of two Wall Street firms benefit from global glut of mergers and acquisitionsGoldman Sachs and JP Morgan have reported bumper profits for the second quarter as their investment banking divisions continued to ride the global boom in mergers and takeover deals.The two US banks have been capitalising on the surge in merger and acquisitions activity, which broke records for the second straight quarter in the three months to June, according to Refinitiv data, and helped make up for a slowdown in trading since the start of the year. Continue reading...

As key states started to slip away from Trump, Rudy Giuliani repeatedly urged former president to lie, according to new book

Fines are treated as a business cost, the Environment Agency is toothless – the whole thing stinksWhat’s remarkable is not that a water company knowingly and deliberately poured billions of litres of raw sewage into the sea to cut its costs. What’s remarkable is that the Environment Agency investigated and prosecuted it. Every day, water companies pour tonnes of unprocessed filth into England’s rivers and seas, and the government does nothing.Even in the wake of the sentence last week, under which Southern Water was fined £90m, the company’s own maps show a continued flow of raw filth into coastal waters. Same shit, different day. The only occasions on which water companies are allowed by law to release raw sewage are when “exceptional rainfall” overwhelms their treatment works. But the crap keeps coming, rain or no rain. Continue reading...

State will be first in US to ensure students learn about Asian Americans’ contributions to the nation’s culture and historyWith the backdrop of anti-Asian violence increasing nationally during the coronavirus pandemic, Illinois has become the first state to require Asian American history be taught as part of the public school curriculum.Governor JB Pritzker signed the Teaching Equitable Asian American History (Teaach) Act into law on Friday last week, which requires elementary and high schools to teach a unit of Asian American history beginning next year. Continue reading...

Dozens of legislators arrived in Washington in a fight for voting rights. Here’s what you need to knowA group of Texas Democratic lawmakers have fled their state in a desperate attempt to stop the Republican-run legislature from passing laws they say will suppress the vote of people of color. Continue reading...

The emotional maturity of the Euro 2020 players is in stark contrast to that of the prime minister and governmentThese days English people expect more from our football team than our government. Which is a funny old switcheroo, when you think about it. My apologies to the other home nations for making the “we” of this particular article the English – but All This is very much an English problem, and there’s no point kidding ourselves about that.England Expects That Every Footballer Will Do His Duty. For the players, faultless competence is that duty, and – if it is not delivered – public apologies and contrition are in order from those who failed. And very promptly indeed. It’s not like we kick it down the road to a public inquiry that reports in two tournaments’ time. Since Sunday night, despite many being deluged by racist abuse, we have seen England stars break cover to apologise for their mistakes, for letting fans down, for not being quite enough in the moment. Continue reading...

Book by Miami Herald journalist details extraordinary efforts by special prosecutor who hounded Bill Clinton to aid sex traffickerKen Starr, the lawyer who hounded Bill Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewinsky, waged a “scorched-earth” legal campaign to persuade federal prosecutors to drop a sex-trafficking case against the billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein relating to the abuse of multiple underaged girls, according to a new book.In Perversion of Justice the Miami Herald reporter Julie K Brown writes about Starr’s role in securing the secret 2008 sweetheart deal that granted Epstein effective immunity from federal prosecution. The author, who is credited with blowing open the cover-up, calls Starr a “fixer” who “used his political connections in the White House to get the Justice Department to review Epstein’s case”. Continue reading...

• Lawmakers flew to Washington DC to deny legislature a quorum• Greg Abbott says he will call special sessions indefinitelyTexas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has vowed to arrest Democrat lawmakers who have fled the state in an attempt to stop an overhaul of election laws that they say damages the right to vote, especially for communities of color.Private planes carrying more than 50 Democrats left Austin for Washington DC on Monday, skipping town just days before the Texas house of representatives was expected to give early approval to sweeping new voting restrictions in a special legislative session. Continue reading...

For a month we have felt what collective action can make possible, what it really feels like to be ‘we’ not ‘me’England, we need to talk about football. I know we’ve been talking about it, almost every minute of every day for the past exhilarating month. But the truth is that we need football to talk about England.The fact is, nothing else in this country allows us to talk about ourselves like the England national football team and our collective experience of its struggles. Our “years of hurt” – 55 and counting – are not wounds of battle but pains of birth. For all these years, this stateless nation, England, has been hidden inside the broken carapace of imperial Britain. Continue reading...