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NAACP, ACLU and Democratic politicians decry 6-3 supreme court decision as ‘a profound betrayal of the civil rights movement’

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• US supreme court ‘demolishes’ key Voting Rights Act provision that prevented racial discrimination

The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to hold interest rates steady on Wednesday after a key policy meeting, likely the last chaired by central bank chief Jerome Powell, a frequent target of president Donald Trump’s ire.

Policymakers will weigh the risks of surging energy prices and snarled supply chains due to the US-Israel war on Iran, with analysts widely expecting a third pause in a row as the effects of the conflict ripple through the world’s largest economy.

Decision gives mapmakers in Republican states power to crack districts into pieces and dilute votes into oblivion

The Voting Rights Act was a political peace compact written in John Lewis’s blood.

The Callais v Landry decision by the US supreme court, which set aside much of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, whitewashed that blood from history, along with that of thousands of other Americans who fought segregationist white supremacists at lunch counters and bus stations and courthouses for political equality.

Republicans hold a 217-212 majority in the House, but they could lock in more seats if reapportionments go their way

Republicans and Democrats have been engaged in a political tug of war in legislatures, courts and the ballot box to narrow the battlefield of 2026 before a single vote is cast.

Normally, redistricting only occurs after the US census counts residents in each state every 10 years. A demand from Donald Trump to lock in more Republican-leaning districts in Congress, together with a changing legal landscape around partisan gerrymandering, set off a chain of mid-decade reapportionments.

Zohran Mamdani said he would not meet UK monarch privately, noting Indian diamond claimed by crown in 1849

In a way, it must be tough being king. One day, you’re lauded by the US president, applauded by Congress and served spring-herbed ravioli and parmesan emulsion on a golden plate.

The next, you’re essentially snubbed by the mayor of New York City, who makes it clear that a) he does not want to meet you, and b) you should return a diamond that your ancestors took from a 10-year-old Indian boy.

Justices rule in landmark decision Louisiana must redraw congressional map, largely killing major civil rights law

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The US supreme court has ruled that Louisiana will have to redraw its congressional map, in a landmark decision that effectively guts a major section of the Voting Rights Act.

In a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the court rendered ineffective section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting.

Nine justices were hearing Trump administration that it has authority to strip immigrants’ temporary protected status

The US supreme court heard oral arguments on Wednesday over whether the Trump administration can strip the temporary protected status (TPS) of hundreds of thousands of immigrant Haitians and Syrians, under a program that has shielded them from deportation owing to safety concerns in their countries of origin.

During the arguments, justices in the conservative-leaning majority appeared sympathetic to the Trump administration’s attempts to strip humanitarian protections for the Syrians and Haitians in this case.

Indictment claims ex-FBI director’s social media post last year of shells arranged into ‘86 47’ was threat against Trump

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James Comey made a brief appearance in court on Wednesday after the justice department indicted him over a social media post in a renewed bid to prosecute one of Donald Trump’s longtime political adversaries.

The former FBI director was indicted in North Carolina on Tuesday over a photograph he posted last year of seashells arranged in the numbers “86 47” – a message the justice department says amounts to a threat against Trump, the 47th US president.

Terri Sewell and Shomari Figures are at risk of losing their seats in Alabama’s Black congressional districts after ruling

The lawmakers who represent Alabama’s two Black congressional districts, who are now at risk of losing their seats after the supreme court effectively decimated the Voting Rights Act, said the decision sends the US “backwards”.

The 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v Callais on Wednesday weakens a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republicans to eliminate majority-minority congressional districts across the south, and representatives Terri Sewell and Shomari Figures stand in the crosshairs.

Attorneys, citing new evidence including photographs, also filed a motion to detain Cole Tomas Allen until his trial

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Federal prosecutors provided in a filing on Wednesday the most detailed account to date of Cole Tomas Allen’s alleged weeks-long plan to kill Donald Trump, who had joined more than 2,500 members of the Washington press corps for their annual White House correspondents’ dinner.

The motion, aimed at keeping Allen detained and filed by the US attorney for DC, Jeanine Pirro, includes two selfies of the alleged shooter standing in front of a mirror in his hotel room in a black suit, a slight smirk crossing his face. He is kitted out with two firearms and multiple knives tucked into his belt. Prosecutors allege they are the same weapons that were confiscated from Allen after the attack.

The astronauts joined president in Oval Office for a press conference, and it wasn’t long before he praised himself

Donald Trump hosted the crew of the historic Artemis II lunar flyby mission at the White House on Wednesday.

The four astronauts – commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen – joined the president in the Oval Office for a celebratory meeting and press conference.

Chair planned to exit after inquiry into building renovations but will now oversee ‘remaining steps in the process’

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The US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, will remain on the central bank’s rate-setting board after his term as chair ends in May, a contentious move that signals continued uncertainty at the Fed.

Powell made the announcement after the Fed board on Wednesday left interest rates unchanged for the third time this year, despite Donald Trump’s continued demands for rate cuts.

As defense secretary testifies before House, Trump posts AI-generated image of himself with weapon and caption: ‘NO MORE MR. NICE GUY’

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Pete Hegseth denied that the US-Israel war on Iran, which the Pentagon estimates has cost the US at least $25bn, is “a quagmire” and claimed critics of the operation posed a greater threat to the US than Iran itself.

Hegseth came under pressure to set out Washington’s strategy for the conflict as he appeared before the House armed services committee on Wednesday for a marathon hearing alongside Gen Dan Caine, chair of the joint chiefs of staff. The US defense secretary asked lawmakers to approve $1.5tn military spending – and then described some of those lawmakers as “the biggest challenge” to the war effort.

Blockade threat in vital strait and Trump’s stance lift crude, pushing pump prices to highest level since 2022

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Average US gas prices have hit a new high at $4.23 a gallon, their highest since 2022 and a record since the start of the war with Iran, according to the motor club AAA.

The price of Brent crude, the benchmark that influences the price of gasoline in the US, now stands at $114.60 a barrel, up nearly 25% from the recent low since mid-April. US gas prices a year ago averaged $3.16 a gallon.

The world must accelerate the shift to renewables, regardless of the economic effects of Abu Dhabi’s decision

Opec appears to be the latest casualty of the Iran war. On Tuesday, the United Arab Emirates announced that it was leaving the oil cartel after 60 years. The loss of a critical member is a blow to the group and its de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, in the midst of the biggest supply crisis in history.

This is a geopolitical decision, not merely an economic one. The UAE has built itself into an increasingly interventionist and unilaterally minded power, not only challenging Riyadh’s dominance but undermining its more cautious approach to regional affairs. The rift has become increasingly public and bitter – with Saudi Arabia bombing what it called a UAE-linked arms shipment in Yemen in December. Abu Dhabi, as the main target of Iranian strikes among the Gulf countries, is also enraged by what it sees as a feeble regional response to the current conflict, and has been privately pushing for counterattacks.

A few days of joviality will hardly change American foreign policy or guarantee Trump’s ever-erratic affections for long

American soccer will have truly progressed when cases like the Dortmund teenager’s are common enough to be unremarkable

There’s something about a 16-year-old making his debut among fully grown senior professionals that makes him look like a fawn. A scrawny, wobbly baby deer, the function of his arms and legs not yet figured out, jogging on to the pitch in a kit and shin guards that always seem a few sizes too big, like a boy wearing his dad’s suit.

So, too, appeared Mathis Albert when coming on in the 89th minute of Borussia Dortmund’s 4-0 romp over Freiburg on Sunday, which secured the team a place in next year’s Champions League.

On Friday, the presidential personnel office sent termination notices to members of the National Science Board. This will undermine our public health efforts

In June 1981, I was a young pulmonary fellow at one of the three Los Angeles hospitals where the first five cases of an unusual pneumonia in previously healthy young men were being identified. I read about them, as my colleagues did, in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) – the small, dense bulletin the Centers for Disease Control had been publishing every week since 1952.

None of us yet knew what we were seeing. What MMWR gave us was a signal early enough to act on, and a system trustworthy enough that we did. What became Aids would, over the next decade, reshape every assumption I held about clinical medicine. I have spent the 40 years since then practicing critical care at UCLA, and the federal scientific architecture that produced that signal in 1981 has been the bedrock of my work.

The Lakers star can dominate a game, but still be judged for what his physique supposedly reveals about him

In Louis Theroux’s Netflix documentary Inside the Manosphere, he interviews podcasters, streamers and influencers from across the Red Pill ecosystem. But the most profound moments are when he speaks with their followers. Regular, everyday American men who struggle to make a living, find love, get laid and start a family.

One of them is a Latino man in his 20s living in Miami. He explains that Andrew Tate’s message helped pull him out of homelessness. What stuck with him wasn’t Tate’s aggressive bravado or rampant misogyny, but a simple idea: as a man, you start with no inherent value – you have to build it. On its face, it sounds like basic self-help. Beneath it is something harsher: a belief among those in the manosphere that worth is conditional, something that must be earned through performance, discipline and visible results. Under their logic, a “successful” man has a harem of women, luxury cars and a body bulging with muscles.

Trump is volatile, capricious and unreasonable – but he belongs to the old world of analogue power. What comes next will be harder to manage

Donald Trump is not impressed by soft power. He respects hard men with military muscle. But he can be moved by pageantry, which is the purpose of King Charles’s visit to Washington this week. Trump is flattered to rub shoulders with majesty. The good vibes are then supposed to radiate warmth through a political relationship that has been chilled by the war in Iran.

It might work, but not for long. Trump’s irritation with Keir Starmer and other European leaders for what he calls cowardice in the Middle East is aggravated daily by evidence that the war is a strategic calamity.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

The talkshow host has found himself targeted by the president once again but his jokes fail to have the influence or tastelessness that the right like to claim

In an episode of the classic sitcom Arrested Development, dutiful son Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) corrects his wily but not always culture-savvy mother Lucille (Jessica Walter) that she has not actually been confronted and embarrassed by Michael Moore: “That was a Michael Moore impersonator for a bit on Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Lucille, as always, is undeterred: “I don’t know who that is and I don’t care to find out.” It’s a hilariously haughty response, withering in its blithe lack of interest. It also accidentally attains a kind of dignity through ignorance that Donald Trump – who is, like Lucille Bluth, wealthy, elderly and frequently cruel – could only dream of stumbling into.

Or maybe that’s actually our dream. Just imagine a world where Trump and his family (both blood and Maga) don’t know or care what’s going on with Jimmy Kimmel. Alas, we live in a world where Kimmel is directly and repeatedly lambasted by the White House for making a joke that seemed in poorer taste after an assassination attempt on Trump. This is despite the joke itself being written and delivered well before the event in question – the talkshow monologue version of pre-crime, if you can conceive of something that embarrassing.

Hallucinogens have come a long way from the 60s counterculture to Trump’s White House – propelled by veterans’ lobbying and Silicon Valley capital

• Kojo Koram’s new book, The Next Fix: Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs, is out on 4 June

On 13 May 1966, a US Senate subcommittee questioned a former Harvard clinical psychologist, considered by many to be “the most dangerous man in America”, on the risks of psychedelics. Leading the inquisition of Dr Timothy Leary was Senator Ted Kennedy, of America’s unofficial first family. Amid a series of questions that reflected the moral panic about psychedelics then gripping the US establishment, Kennedy asked: “This is a dangerous drug – is that right?” To which Leary replied: “No, sir. LSD is not a dangerous drug.” Kennedy remained unconvinced. To the committee of politicians listening to Leary, psychedelics were behind the hippy movement, anti-war protests and the general breakdown of society.

Earlier this month, almost exactly 60 years after this tense inquiry, Ted Kennedy’s nephew Robert F Kennedy Jr stood behind Donald Trump as he signed a new presidential executive order to accelerate mainstream access to medical treatment based on psychedelic drugs. A particular focus is ibogaine, a psychoactive compound derived from a West African shrub, which scientists suggest can be effective for treating chronic mental-health problems. Kennedy Jr has been the champion of psychedelics within the Maga coalition, alongside figures such as the podcaster Joe Rogan, who stood beside him in the Oval Office on 18 April. Rogan described to the press how he had encouraged the president to sign the executive order over text message.

Kojo Koram is a professor of law and political economy at Loughborough University. His new book, The Next Fix: Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs, is out on 4 June

He has said he is ‘tormented’ by his previous support for Donald Trump – and some suggest the former Fox News host is positioning himself for the GOP nomination

A few years ago, Tucker Carlson was sleeping peacefully alongside his wife and four dogs when, all of a sudden, he was “physically mauled” by a demon. This supernatural attack left bloody claw marks on his side, the former Fox News star claimed in a documentary about spirituality. Shaken by this unusual ordeal, Carlson called an evangelical friend who told him: “Yeah, that happens – people are attacked in their bed by demons.” The whole thing, he said, was a “transformative experience”.

Fast forward to the present day and poor old Carlson seems to be plagued by demons again, although this time they’re more metaphorical than metaphysical. The far-right personality, who started his own media company after parting ways with Fox in 2023, has said that he is “tormented” by his previous support for Donald Trump. In a recent episode of his podcast, Carlson spoke to his brother, Buckley, a former Trump speechwriter, about their shared disappointment with the president and said he was “sorry for misleading people”. This was a moment, Carlson said, “to wrestle with our own consciences”.

• French driver struck animal while driving at 230 mph

• Peta says Grosjean failed to show compassion for death

French racing driver Romain Grosjean has angered animal rights group Peta for “flippant” comments after hitting a bird while testing for next month’s Indianapolis 500.

The driver, who survived a fireball crash during the 2020 Formula One Bahrain GP, described the bird strike at around 230 mph in graphic terms this week.

Fans in Buffalo, only a few miles from Ontario, filled the silence when a microphone cut out at the start of a match

The Electric City. Nickel City. Queen City. City of No Illusions.

Buffalo, New York, has accrued many nicknames over the years but, in an age of growing tensions between two traditional allies, one among them has taken on extra resonance: the City of Good Neighbors.

• San Antonio seal 4-1 series win over Portland

• Knicks one game from progressing after win over Hawks

Victor Wembanyama had 17 points, 14 rebounds and six blocks as the San Antonio Spurs eliminated the Portland Trail Blazers and won a playoff series for the first time since 2017.

De’Aaron Fox had 21 points, Julian Champagnie added 19 and Dylan Harper scored 17 for the Spurs, who led by as many as 28 in their 114-95 victory, which secured a 4-1 series win.

• Teams should now be exempt from US federal taxes

• Many will still have to pay US state and city tax

Fifa is poised to secure a last-minute tax exemption for all 48 World Cup qualifiers after intensive negotiations with the US treasury.

After months of lobbying Fifa has secured a significant breakthrough that should result in the national associations being exempt from federal taxes, although many will still have to pay state and city tax on their World Cup earnings.

Companies are now seeking refunds on tariffs after supreme court ruled Trump’s emergency levies were illegal

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General Motors is expecting a $500m tariff refund after the US supreme court struck down some of Donald Trump’s most sweeping levies.

That has boosted the Detroit automaker’s outlook for 2026. On Tuesday, GM said it was now looking to rake in $13.5bn-$15.5bn in earnings before interest and taxes this year – up from previous forecasts of $13bn-$15bn.

Oil prices surged as talks on reopening of strait of Hormuz remain gridlocked, sending prices $1 higher than last year

US gas prices rose to their highest level in four years on Thursday, reaching an average $4.18 a gallon at the pump as US-Israeli peace talks with Iran remain at a standstill.

The last time average US gas prices breached $4.15 a gallon was in April 2022, when oil prices soared shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. Average gas prices are now $1 higher than just a year ago, when they were closer to $3.15 a gallon.

US president has accused organisation of ‘ripping off the rest of the world’ by inflating oil prices

The United Arab Emirates has quit the Opec oil cartel after 60 years of membership, in a heavy blow to the group and its de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, as global energy markets contend with the biggest supply crisis in history.

The shock loss of the UAE, Opec’s third-largest oil producer, is expected to weaken the group, which for decades has worked together to use its collective oil production to influence global oil market prices.

The firms said last week that they will be reducing parental leave and other benefits for employees starting next year

Recent moves by US companies Deloitte and Zoom to reduce how much paid parental leave they offer employees could signal a larger reduction in benefits in corporate America, according to labor market experts.

American workers are already seen as having less benefits and labor protections than many of their counterparts across the world, especially in Europe.

The New York City mayor said in a press conference on Wednesday that, if introduced to King Charles III, he would suggest he 'return' the Koh-i-noor diamond. The diamond, considered one of the most famous in the world, has been part of the crown jewels since 1849 after the annexation of Punjab by the British. India claims the diamond was stolen and has repeatedly demanded its return

It was a historic day for King Charles, the first British monarch to address a joint session of Congress in 35 years, before enjoying a lavish dinner at the White House.

There were jokes, subtle digs and the supposedly apolitical monarch even appealed to Donald Trump on Nato and Ukraine – but how did the US president react?

Helen Pidd speaks to the Guardian columnist and host of Politics Weekly America, Jonathan Freedland

The British monarch addressed US Congress on Tuesday as part of his four-day visit to the US marking the 250th anniversary of the country's independence. He called on the UK and the US to 'build' on the countries' 'indispensable partnership' in a time of uncertainty, adding that the era was 'in many ways more volatile and more dangerous' than the time his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, addressed Congress in 1991

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