98 m. ago Voting for Brexit, stopping the small boats – none of it will ever appease those who wage war on immigration | Nesrine Malik

The facts and the numbers are irrelevant: Donald Trump and Nigel Farage just find new excuses and increase the toxicityA few weeks after the Brexit referendum, a leave-voting friend of mine told me what the biggest benefit would be. “We will never hear about immigration again,” he said. If you give the people the control over the border they want, the logic went, then Brexit will finally dissolve immigration as an issue that politicians can exploit, and the country can crack on with all the other important stuff that needs doing. And, well, let’s just say that this prediction did not pan out on such a colossal level that no follow-up conversation has been necessary.Because that’s just not how the whole immigration thing works. The goalposts always move. Nothing clarifies that more than Nigel Farage getting everything he has said he ever wanted, the country heaving itself out of the EU and ending free movement, only for another boil to fester around the issue of immigration – and gue...

Events

13 h. ago Putin persists, Trump dithers – and a just peace for Ukraine still seems a long way off | Olga Chyzh

The US president could embrace the role of peacemaker, or become the patsy who restored Russia’s imperial standingThe past few weeks have seen a flurry of activity billed as progress in the Russia-Ukraine peace process. Yet for Ukrainians, the reality remains unchanged: airstrikes still thunder across their cities, homes still burn, lives are still lost. Against this grim backdrop, the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, has seemed more than content to bask in the literal red-carpet treatment afforded by the president of the United States.Donald Trump, who has anointed himself mediator of this war, has nearly exhausted the lexicon of contradiction. Some days he proclaims that he alone can end this war. Then he insists that peace talks should be left to the two parties. At times he boasts that Putin “respects” him; at others, he castigates Putin for “going absolutely crazy”. This month, Trump vacillated between putting US troops on the table and ruling it out. Now he is reportedly consid...

Politics

15 h. ago Nicola Jennings on the striking down of Trump’s tariffs by a federal court – cartoon

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Events

46 h. ago 'Donald Trump is dead' rumours explained as Vance comment and bruise go viral

'Trump is dead' has been trending across social media and the wider internet - while the US President is almost certainly fine, where have these rumours come from?

Politics

57 h. ago What REALLY happened to the Minneapolis shooter's 'missing' mom: Neighbors and cops reveal her reaction to attack as she lawyers up

Mary Grace Westman, 67, raced to leave the beach city of Naples on Wednesday, before FBI agents were filmed arriving at her condo hoping to speak with her, Daily Mail can reveal.

Events

58 h. ago Revealed: Mom of Minneapolis shooter made panicked dash for airport hours before FBI raided her condo

Mary Grace Westman, 67, raced to leave the beach city of Naples on Wednesday, before FBI agents were filmed arriving at her condo hoping to speak with her, Daily Mail can reveal.

Events

62 h. ago The Guardian view on Trump and the Fed: independence is no substitute for accountability | Editorial

The US president’s move against Lisa Cook shows his despotic bent, but the Fed was never democracy’s guardian. It’s time to rethink who really controls moneyDonald Trump’s attempt to sack the Federal Reserve governor, Lisa Cook, is the familiar authoritarian trick of bending institutions to serve the leader’s immediate ends. The widespread condemnation is deserved. This is not some daring experiment in popular control of monetary policy. Yet what should follow censure is reflection. For the furore over Ms Cook has revealed a peculiar reflex: to defend the Fed’s independence as though it were synonymous with democracy itself.But is independence of the Fed, or central banks generally, really that? Eric Levitz at Vox thinks so, or at least that it is close enough. He argues that Congress sets the Fed’s objectives; independence applies only to the means. Without independence, politicians would be free to game rates for votes – as Richard Nixon did in 1972, leaning on the ...

Politics

62 h. ago Step back and take it in: the US is entering full authoritarian mode | Jonathan Freedland

Trump’s dictator-like behaviour is so brazen, so blatant, that paradoxically, we discount it. But now it’s time to call it what it isIf this were happening somewhere else – in Latin America, say – how might it be reported? Having secured his grip on the capital, the president is now set to send troops to several rebel-held cities, claiming he is wanted there to restore order. The move follows raids on the homes of leading dissidents and comes as armed men seen as loyal to the president, many of them masked, continue to pluck people off the streets Except this is happening in the United States of America and so we don’t quite talk about it that way. That’s not the only reason. It’s also because Donald Trump’s march towards authoritarianism is so steady, taking another step or two every day, that it’s easy to become inured to it: you can’t be in a state of shock permanently. And, besides, sober-minded people are wary of sounding hyperbolic or hysterical: their instinct is to play down...

Culture

63 h. ago Donald Trump could stop Gaza’s famine. Instead he’s following Biden’s lead | Mohamad Bazzi

A hunger-monitoring group has confirmed what we already knew about Palestinians’ suffering. The US has the power to end itA global hunger-monitoring group declared last week that Gaza’s largest city and its surrounding area were suffering from an “entirely man-made” famine, mostly caused by Israel’s deliberate starvation strategy and continued siege of the territory. This news won’t surprise anyone who has paid even scant attention to the images and videos of emaciated children and desperate parents that have been coming out of Gaza for months.But the first confirmation of famine by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which includes the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization and other aid agencies, is an important institutional marker. Years from now, it will serve as a reminder of how Israel used starvation as a weapon of war while western powers did nothing. And it will be a source of shame for all those who will inevitably claim that they didn’t ...

Politics

67 h. ago Boycott the banquet, send a tweet. But ending the horror in Gaza still relies on the worst people in the world | Marina Hyde

This humanitarian catastrophe is barely of passing interest to Donald Trump. The curse of our times is how little we can do about itDay 222 of Donald Trump’s presidency, and Russia’s war in Ukraine – which he promised to end on day one – shows no sign of having got the memo. This was not a single-use Trump promise; he made it at least 53 times. Yet the US president has failed to keep it, either literally or in his favourite manner: figuratively. Can you figuratively end a war? Not even, apparently.What his most recent round of failure means, however, is that Trump is pivoting back to another war, the grotesquely horrifying and unlawful humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza. Not the way he’d phrase it, possibly. This week he swerved commenting on either Israel’s invasion of Gaza City or the mounting declarations that famine and starvation are clearly under way in the territory, and instead announced: “I think within the next two, three weeks, you’re going to have a pretty good, ...

Events

4 d. ago Trump chooses not to end the Gaza slaughter. That’s why I’ll boycott the state dinner when he meets King Charles | Ed Davey

To refuse an invitation like this goes against all my instincts, but I want to send as strong a message as I canEd Davey is leader of the Liberal DemocratsLib Dem leader to boycott king’s Trump banquet in protest over GazaA mother holding a baby boy so thin from starvation you can see his skeleton. The lifeless bodies of children killed while queueing for water. Emaciated hostages, still held captive by Hamas almost two years after those appalling terror attacks.These images and countless more have horrified us all in recent months. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza must stop. The famine must end. The hostages must be returned home.Ed Davey is leader of the Liberal Democrats Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago America survived a coup attempt. Can it endure dictatorial creep? | Lawrence Douglas

Trump’s threat to deploy troops to Chicago is the latest example of a slow manipulation of the line between legal and illegalJanuary 6 demonstrated that longstanding democracies can readily resist a disorganized effort at a coup. They are less equipped to withstand the normalization of exceptional measures: the use of federal agents to quell domestic protest, the staging of police raids on the homes of leaders’ political opponents, the pretextual invocations of emergency powers. Each of these steps may seem temporary and targeted; they may even enjoy a thin patina of legality. But over time, a democratic order turns into what Ernst Fraenkel, a German-Jewish lawyer whose book The Dual State stands as one of the first and most perceptive examinations of Hitler’s regime, called a “prerogative state” – a government in which the executive “is released from all legal restraints and depends solely on the discretion of the persons wielding political power”.So let us be clear: Trump’s comman...

Events

4 d. ago Denmark summons US charge d’affaires over alleged attempts to interfere with Greenland’s status – Europe live

Danish foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen says any attempt to interfere in kingdom’s internal affairs is unacceptableWe are getting big news just in from Denmark, which has summoned the US charge d’affaires in the country over alleged attempts to interfere with the status of Greenland, a long-term point of interest for the new US administration of Donald Trump.In a comment to public broadcaster DR, foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said that “any attempt to interfere in the Kingdom’s internal affairs will obviously be unacceptable.” Continue reading...

Society

5 d. ago Donald Trump claims UK in for 'bad awakening' thanks to Starmer's energy policy

Trump's comments come despite the UK's reliance on fossil fuels being one of the factors driving up energy costs, with wind power being significantly cheaper than nuclear, gas or coal

Politics

5 d. ago After a summer of submission to Trump, Europe knows it must defend Ukraine – and itself – alone | Paul Taylor

Can a European-led coalition really provide credible security guarantees? Past examples are not encouragingAfter an unusual August of geopolitical summitry, the reality is sinking in that Europe is on its own in defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and hence its own security against Russian aggression and cannot count on much support from the United States.The sense of strategic loneliness in an increasingly brutal global power contest follows a summer of submission in which the EU accepted a manifestly unbalanced trade deal imposed by Donald Trump and pledged improbably large investments in the US while European Nato members promised to boost their defence spending to an aspirational 5% of gross domestic product – all to appease Trump in hopes of keeping the US engaged in European security.Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre Continue reading...

Politics

5 d. ago Trump makes 'creepy' comment about Attorney General Pam Bondi in Cabinet meeting

'Look at Pam, I would never say she was beautiful because that would be the end of my political career,' US President Donald Trump said of his Attorney General Pam Bondi

Politics

5 d. ago ‘Collapsing in confusion and haste’: John Bolton slams Trump in first comments since FBI raid

The former national security adviser criticized the president’s recent meetings with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine

Politics

5 d. ago Gavin Newsom is taking the fight to Trump – but for whom is he fighting? | Arwa Mahdawi

The California governor is one of the few Democrats who seems ready to play the president at his own game. But he also has to show voters that he has empathy and a vision for their futureEvery time you think US politics could not possibly get any stupider, it does. Today’s instalment of “we live in hell, where politicians are passing around the last remaining brain cell” comes via New York and the latest shenanigans of the city’s mayor, Eric Adams. Desperate to distract voters from a steady stream of scandals, the latest of which involves a former aide giving a reporter a crisp packet filled with cash after an Adams mayoral campaign event, he is trying hard to flex his social media muscles.This weekend, Adams joined Andrew Cuomo, the former governor who is running as an independent in November’s election, and others in mocking Zohran Mamdani, the charismatic Democratic candidate and frontrunner, for his weightlifting efforts at a community event. Adams posted a side-by-side video on...

Politics

5 d. ago The case against Kilmar Ábrego García is a study in sadistic absurdity | Moira Donegan

In its allegations against the Maryland man, the Trump administration is claiming authority over reality itselfIn a way, you could think of the brief stint that Kilmar Ábrego García spent in a Tennessee jail after his return from a Salvadorian prison camp in June as a kind of protective custody. Ábrego, a Maryland resident who had never been charged with any crime either in the US or in his native El Salvador, became a symbol of the Trump administration’s ambitiously sadistic anti-immigration efforts when he was kidnapped by I agents in March and sent without due process to Cecot, a massive prison in El Salvador from which few detainees are ever released, as a result of what representatives for the Trump immigration authorities called an administrative error. Ábrego became a symbol for the several hundred men who had been deprived of their liberty and deported to the distant foreign prison without due process and in defiance of both American and international law.It was only after e...

Politics

5 d. ago Meghan Markle's blunt reaction to Donald Trump question after bitter war of words

Meghan Markle has declined to comment on President Donald Trump’s rampage on America after being asked about him in a new interview after a years-long war of words between the US leader and the Sussexes

Politics