US news | The Guardian

Like many American cities, Portland has been struggling to combat rising unaffordability and homelessness

When Donald Trump said he was sending the national guard to Portland, Oregon, to protect immigration officers, local residents immediately responded with characteristic sarcasm. Mocking the president’s portrayal of a city in decline, social media was awash with videos of children in parks, busy farmers’ markets and September’s falling leaves overlaid with satirical text: “war ravaged”.

When the US secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, visited the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) building where protesters had been gathering for weeks, she found a small crowd of demonstrators wearing inflatable animal costumes, not a city overrun by antifascist militants. The reality on the ground did not deter Trump from painting the city as unlivable.

US consumers say price rises caused by president’s tariffs contradicts his promise to make life more affordable

As a mother of two, Paige Harris has noticed a change in the way she shops for her family.

“Items that I have bought regularly have gone up in price steadily,” she said. “From hair dye to baby formula, our grocery list has gotten smaller while our budget has had to increase. Meats like steak are a no-go for our household.”

State’s Republican-led public service commission to decide on power expansion and prices, as Democrats vie for voice

Georgia is facing the largest demand for electricity in its history, driven by nation-leading datacenter construction.

The Georgia Power company has made an unprecedented bid to the agency that oversees the utility for about 10 additional gigawatts of energy in the coming years – enough to power 8.3m homes, at an estimated cost of nearly $16bn, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center.

She’s been a true Maga believer in the past, but the Georgia representative has lately shown a streak of independence

For years she was one of Donald Trump’s most loyal foot soldiers. Marjorie Taylor Greene trafficked in racist statements, indicated support for executing Democrats and even floated conspiracy theories about Jewish space lasers. Beneath a red “Make America great again” cap she became an instantly recognisable face of the Maga movement.

Yet in recent months the Georgia congresswoman has surprised friend and foe alike. On issues ranging from healthcare to Gaza to the Jeffrey Epstein files, she has broken ranks with Republicans and won unlikely fans among Democrats. The streak of independence has stirred speculation about her motives – and future ambitions.

Started after the 2024 election, the Unnamed and Unbound: Black Voters Matter Podcast works to dispel propaganda from the administration and build community

In a recent episode of Unnamed and Unbound: Black Voters Matter Podcast, the co-host Cliff Albright spoke with his guests about the power of resilience and community building during a time of uncertainty. Resilience takes different forms, he said, such as mutual aid drives or Washington DC protests featuring go-go music during the national guard’s continued deployment in the capital. “As food is becoming more expensive, and as food programs are being cut, whether it’s Snap or Meals on Wheels, you’ve got a lot of organizations and Black communities that are looking at: ‘How do we feed ourselves?’” Albright, the co-founder and executive director of the voting rights and community empowerment organization Black Voters Matter, said. “The best of our resistance has always included some form of taking care of ourselves.”

After the presidential election in November, the Black Voters Matter team got to work. In late January, Albright, his co-founder LaTosha Brown, and the group’s legal director and chief of staff April England-Albright launched the podcast about voting rights and organizing to help keep Black communities informed. Their goal is also to dispel misinformation by engaging people who may be vulnerable to the Trump administration’s propaganda, Albright said, and need some “persuasion in terms of how to interpret what’s going on around us”. For England-Albright, she’d like for activists to build coalitions that learn from the shortcomings of past movements. Ultimately, Brown hopes that listeners feel a sense of belonging in the podcast and that they are encouraged to build community.

A Guardian investigation finds the US soda and snack-food industries, threatened by RFK Jr’s movement to change Americans’ eating habits, have turned to a group of well-connected strategists, shadowy pollsters and ‘anti-woke’ influencers

Major US soft-drink and snack-food corporations are waging a coordinated campaign that aims to pit Donald Trump’s Maga faithful against Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again movement, a Guardian investigation in partnership with environmental watchdog Fieldnotes has found. Their goal is to stymie the Maha-led effort to curb Americans’ consumption of soda and ultra-processed foods.

To carry out the plan, the companies have turned to a partially formalized network of for-hire pollsters, strategists and political financiers with deep ties to the national Republican party – several of whom have taken steps that obscure their connection to the effort and to one another. In the process, the industry has also been aided less directly by a loose coalition of free-market ideologues who have previously worked to advance Trump’s deregulatory agenda.

US government is seeking proof that acetaminophen leads to autism while not providing ‘services and support so we can be included in the community’

The Trump administration is seeking to “make the proof” that acetaminophen (or paracetamol) leads to autism, Robert F Kennedy said earlier this month during a televised cabinet meeting.

But autistic researchers and advocates say they are significantly less interested in the “causes” of autism – which decades of research have shown to have a strong connection to genetics – than in support services and research on issues that would improve their quality of life.

Unions are battling in court to halt firings and ensure workers retain their collective bargaining rights

As Donald Trump continues his drive to cull the federal workforce and consolidate his power, labor unions have emerged as some of his staunchest opponents.

Unions are battling the administration in federal courtrooms nationwide, after filing dozens of lawsuits to try to halt attempts to shed hundreds of thousands of government employees, strip collective bargaining rights from over a million workers, and gut some federal agencies.

Connor Weston, 27, reportedly declared himself a ‘non-offending pedophile’ and threatened to kill himself

An Ohio man is facing criminal charges after he allegedly stormed a stage at a Wikipedia conference in New York City with a gun – as well as a sign declaring himself a “non-offending pedophile” – and threatened to kill himself.

Connor Weston, 27, was reportedly tackled by organizers of WikiConference North America 2025, thwarting tragedy, before police said officers booked him on counts of criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment.

Crowds of Americans, many in costumes, aligned behind message that US is sliding into authoritarianism

• What to know about the anti-Trump protests attracting millions

• No Kings protests: in pictures

Americans across all 50 states marched in protests against the Trump administration on Saturday, aligning behind a message that the country is sliding into authoritarianism and there should be no kings in the US.

Millions of people turned out for the No Kings protests, the second iteration of a coalition that marched in June in one of the largest days of protest in US history.

State senator Samuel Douglass, 26, and wife, Brianna, both made comments in Young Republicans Telegram group

A Vermont state lawmaker has resigned over racist and antisemitic chat messages that circulated within the Young Republican political group, another substantial consequence in a scandal that on Friday saw the New York state Young Republicans’ charter revoked.

State senator Samuel Douglass, the only elected official known to have taken part in the leaked group chat exposed by Politico, resigned Friday over his participation.

Trump commuted Santos’s seven-year sentence for fraud and identity theft after he had served less than three months

Disgraced former US House member George Santos was released from prison in New Jersey late on Friday, hours after the Republican’s seven-year, three-month prison sentence for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft was commuted by Donald Trump.

An X statement attributed to Santos’s lawyer, Joseph Murray, called Trump “the greatest president in US history”.

Customs and Border Protection implemented rule this week, sending Americans with ‘X’ marker into panic

US Customs and Border Protection implemented a rule this week that will require airlines to disregard “X” sex markers on passports and input an “M” or “F” marker instead, sending those people with an “X” marker into panic.

“X” markers became available to US passport holders in 2022, in an effort to allow people with gender identities other than male and female to obtain more accurate travel documents.

District courts are speaking truth to power over troop deployments. If only the supreme court would do the same

At a time when Donald Trump has declared war on the truth, it was heartening to see two federal district court judges have the courage to call out Trump’s rationales for sending troops to Portland and Chicago as blatantly untrue – one of the judges said that rationale was “untethered to the facts”.

And at a time when the United States supreme court has been so craven and deferential toward Trump, it was gratifying to see that these lower court judges had the guts to do what the high court’s six conservative justices have been utterly unwilling to do: speak truth to Trump’s power.

Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues

By holding back federal tax revenues, Democratic governors can turn a one-sided assault into a constitutional showdown

Against Illinois governor JB Pritzker’s objections, Donald Trump’s Pentagon has ordered hundreds of national guard troops to join his regime’s assault on Chicago communities. Trump subsequently called for Brandon Johnson, Chicago’s mayor, and Pritzker to be jailed for not supporting his agenda. These are simply the latest steps in Trump’s plan not to govern as the president of all Americans but to rule as the dictatorial head of a punitive factional state. Federal funding to Democratic cities is being slashed through executive maneuvers; the justice department is conducting politically targeted investigations and arrests; and the military is being deployed to intimidate fellow citizens. Los Angeles, Portland, my home town of Chicago and other cities have been cast as enemies to be subdued, not communities to be served.

This weaponization of federal power represents a sharp break with constitutional tradition. It’s not merely ideological hostility; it is economic coercion and the exercise of violence in service of a president’s whim. The Trump regime is selectively starving Democratic jurisdictions of federal funds, even as their residents continue to pay billions in federal taxes, with blue states accounting for over 60% of the federal government’s revenue. We are being compelled to subsidize our own political subjugation.

Eric Reinhart is a political anthropologist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst

This isn’t the first time Cory Mills has faced allegations of misconduct – but the House speaker wants to talk about ‘serious’ things

Meet Cory Mills, a Republican congressman representing Florida. He is rabidly anti-abortion, incredibly anti-immigration, and obsequiously pro-Trump. Earlier this year, perhaps in a desperate bid to get Dear Leader to notice him, he introduced a bill, dubbed the “DON-ument Act”, which would make the wall on the US-Mexico border a national monument.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

The indictment of critics including John Bolton rings alarm bells as the US president expands his power and seeks to use the justice system to exact revenge

“He who saves his country does not violate any law,” Donald Trump posted after beginning his second term – emboldened, perhaps, by the supreme court’s bombshell ruling on presidential immunity last year, which many say gave the office-holder the powers of a monarch.

Millions of Americans are expected to push back against the president’s growing power at No Kings protests across the US on Saturday. The demonstrations come as former intelligence and national security officials warn that the country is sliding towards “competitive authoritarianism”, in which elections and courts survive but are systematically manipulated by the executive.

His ruthless use of the national guard to menace cities and political enemies is unprecedented. He is preparing for battle against the ‘enemy within’

Donald Trump had better hope the members of the Nobel committee are not paying attention to what’s happening inside the United States. If they did take a look, they’d notice a jarring pattern. While the US president likes to play the peacemaker abroad, at home he is Trump, bringer of war.

It’s easy for the first fact to conceal, or divert our attention away from, the second. This week was a case in point. It began with Trump travelling to Israel, where he was hailed as a latter-day Cyrus, a mighty ruler whose name would be spoken of for millennia to come, the man who had brokered what he himself boasts is an “everlasting” peace.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Do 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.

The president is upset with his photo on the magazine’s cover. I, too, have a bone to pick with my scalp

Why are we so obsessed with hair? Just a bunch of fibers sprouting out of your skin, yet we make a massive fuss over it. Those with it, flaunt it. News anchors, fashion models, that damned Jeremy Allen White. Boy, does he love to show off. His hair should be nominated for an Emmy, just on thickness alone. What did he do to deserve that floppy mess on top of his head? I thought this country was a meritocracy? Nope. He’s obviously benefited from a family history of thick locks.

Call me greedy if you must, but I don’t just want some hair – the sad remnants of a life in decline – I want a lot of hair. I want so much hair that I have to employ a live-in barber to trim me up twice a day just to keep it all from consuming my entire face. I want people in the streets screaming at the top of their lungs. “Look at that hair! The guy under it isn’t so bad, either!”

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

The withdrawal of Israeli troops and the establishment of an international stabilisation force are key in securing long-term peace, but the plan is dangerously vague on these issues

Two years of death and destruction in Gaza ended once Israel and Hamas signed off on Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan. A ceasefire is in place. Humanitarian trucks have begun to roll in. Hostages and prisoners are being exchanged. Israel has begun a first-phase pullback from the territories it controls, and under Trump’s plan its troops will eventually be deployed in a buffer zone along Gaza’s land border.

Given these developments – all part of the opening phase – dismissing the momentous changes in Gaza is to deny reality. There have already been disputes over the return of the bodies of Israeli hostages, but there are unresolved longer-term problems that could derail the ceasefire and imperil the rest of the Trump plan.

Rajan Menon is a professor emeritus of international relations at the City College of New York and a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies

Do 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.

Trump allies would love an excuse to step up their crackdown. Nonviolence, both disciplined and open-hearted, must define the day

“They have a ‘Hate America’ rally that’s scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall,” the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said on Fox News on Friday. “It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and, you know, the antifa people. They’re all coming out.”

The Republican Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer said the party’s “terrorist wing” was holding the “Hate America” rally. “Democrats want to keep the government shut down to show all those people that are going to come here and express their hatred towards this country that they’re fighting President Trump,” said the House majority leader, Steve Scalise. The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, embellished the story on Fox, referring to the demonstrations’ “paid protesters” and adding: “It begs the question who’s funding it.”

Only a handful of North American athletes have spoken out against Israel’s assault on Gaza, a silence shaped by fear, sponsorship and the policing of speech

“I will not just shut up and dribble… I get to sit up here and talk about what’s really important.” So proclaimed LeBron James in 2018 when confronted with the question of whether athletes have the right to speak about the political and social justice questions of their time.

Yet since 7 October 2023, elite athletes in North America have had startlingly little to say about what most human rights groups in the world, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and the United Nations have characterized as Israel’s genocide in Gaza (a situation currently in flux due to a mutually agreed upon ceasefire and prisoner exchange).

Nathan Kalman-Lamb is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick. Derek Silva is Professor of Sociology and Criminology at King’s University College at Western University. They are co-authors of The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game and co-hosts, with Johanna Mellis, of The End of Sport podcast.

• Updates from 9.30am EST/2.30pm BST London game

• Get in touch: email Graham with your thoughts

Jaguars 0-14 Rams 12:38, 2nd quarter

Jacksonville smartly are turning to the run and get to midfield with Travis Etienne churning away. LA respond and stop then to set up a 4th and 1. The Jags go for it and Parker Washington scampers for three yards on nifty little end around play.

Second member of Sarina Wiegman’s England setup joins Bay Collective to sail ‘into waters there are no roadmaps for’

On Wednesday, Bay Collective announced the recruitment of England’s general manager under Sarina Wiegman, Anja van Ginhoven, as their director of global women’s football operations. The new multi-club ownership body, with San Francisco’s Bay FC the first club in its portfolio, has previous in recruiting from the Football Association.

The appointment this year of Kay Cossington, the influential former FA technical director, as the chief executive was a signal of intent from Bay Collective. Cossington knows women’s football inside out and now she has assembled a leadership team with a deep understanding of women’s football history and laden with experience.

• Two-way star powers LA sweep of Brewers in NLCS

• Dodgers chase first repeat title since 2000 Yankees

• Ohtani hits three HRs, fans 10 in Game 4 clincher

Shohei Ohtani has propelled the Los Angeles Dodgers back to the World Series with a two-way performance for the ages.

Ohtani hit three mammoth homers and struck out 10 while pitching into the seventh inning, and the Dodgers swept the Milwaukee Brewers out of the NL Championship Series with a 5-1 victory in Game 4 on Friday night.

• Suárez hits go-ahead grand slam in five-run eighth

• Mariners move within one win of first World Series

• Seattle take 3-2 lead as ALCS heads back to Toronto

Eugenio Suárez’s second home run of the game, an eighth-inning grand slam, broke a tie as the Seattle Mariners defeated the Toronto Blue Jays 6-2 Friday to regain control of the American League Championship Series.

Cal Raleigh sparked the rally with a leadoff homer in the eighth as the Mariners took a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series.

No one was hurt in the incident when a wing from one plane struck the tail of another United aircraft

A United Airlines plane heading for its gate clipped the tail of another United aircraft at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, authorities said.

No one was hurt in Friday’s incident, and the 113 passengers on flight 2652 from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, were able to leave the plane normally after a delay, United officials said in a statement.

First Brands and Tricolor failures raise concerns for wider financial sector, including traditional banks

The collapse of two US firms, First Brands and Tricolor, has shone a light on private credit and its growing influence in the global economy.

The failures have led to ballooning losses at traditional banks, and, coupled with worries about the health of US regional banks, have raised concerns about weak lending standards and potential threats from an opaque corner of the so-called shadow banking sector.

Signs of credit stress send markets in Europe and Asia down, while investors turn to safe haven assets

European stock markets fell on Friday and gold hit a record high after two US regional banks said they had been exposed to millions of dollars of bad loans and alleged fraud.

Signs of credit stress rattled markets across Europe and Asia. In London the FTSE 100 fell 0.9%, Germany’s Dax fell 1.8%, Italy’s FTSE Mib fell 1.5%, the Ibex in Spain was off 0.3% and France’s Cac 40 dropped 0.2%.

Worries over private credit, tax and spend, skittish bond markets and tariff chaos dominate meeting in Washington

“The security blanket is covering us, but maybe we have a foot out in the cold.” That was the typically colourful warning from the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, this week to its gathering of finance ministers in Washington.

At its spring meetings in April, the IMF said the erratic trade policies emanating from the White House, half a mile away from its glass and steel HQ, amounted to a “major negative shock” for the global economy.

Crowds amassed across the US in planned No Kings protests on Saturday, opposing what participants view as Donald Trump's increasingly autocratic tendencies and anti-democratic actions as president. The turnout, which built on the first No Kings protests in June, reflected frustration over administration moves including criminal prosecutions of the president's political enemies, nationwide immigration raids and the dispatch of federal troops into US cities.

• No Kings protest live updates

• Millions expected across all 50 US states to march in No Kings protests against Trump

• No Kings: what to know about the anti-Trump protests attracting millions

From New York to San Francisco, millions of Americans hit the streets to voice their anger over Trump’s policies

• What to know about the anti-Trump protests attracting millions

The Afghanistan war veteran was hospitalized after the incident and is now seeking $150,000 in damages