35 h. ago Peter Thiel’s Palantir poses a grave threat to Americans | Robert Reich

Working with the Trump administration, the data company could be used to target the president’s opponentsDraw a circle around all the assets in the US now devoted to artificial intelligence.Draw a second circle around all the assets devoted to the US military.The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...

Events

5 d. ago Manzanar teaches about Japanese American incarceration in the US. That’s in jeopardy under Trump

As visitors to the national historic site are urged to inform on anything ‘negative’, advocates warn of the same playbook that led to concentration campsAt the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, more than 200 miles (320km) outside Los Angeles, in what feels like the middle of nowhere, is Manzanar national historic site. It marks the place where more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during the second world war, crowded into barracks, surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers with searchlights, and patrolled by military police.Since then, Manzanar, which now has a museum and reconstructed barracks that visitors can walk through, has been transformed into a popular pilgrimage destination for Japanese Americans to remember and teach others about this history. (Manzanar was one of 10 concentration camps where the US government forcibly relocated and held more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent during the second world war.) Continue reading...

Politics

7 d. ago Pope Leo XIV offers an uplifting message urging seminarians to be joyful and honest

Pope Leo XIV is kicking off a weeklong celebration of Catholic clergy for the Holy Year

Politics

9 d. ago ‘You don’t brag about wiping out 60‑70,000 people’: the men who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

This summer will mark 80 years since the attacks stunned the world. Today, every one of the crew members who carried out the bombings is dead. Here, one of the last writers to interview them reopens his files‘It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining on the buildings. Everything down there was bright – very, very bright. You could see the city from 50 miles away, the rivers bisecting it, the aiming point. It was clear as a bell. It was perfect. The perfect mission.”I’m sitting in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco opposite the navigator of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. The year is 2004, and Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, aged 83, has agreed to be interviewed for a book I’m writing for the 60th anniversary of that fateful mission. Van Kirk informs me, with the trace of a smile, that this will probably be the last interview in his life. Continue reading...

Events

9 d. ago Denied, detained, deported: the faces of Trump’s immigration crackdown

The administration has torn up the rulebook as it seeks to implement a hardline agenda to expel people from the USDonald Trump retook the White House vowing to stage “the largest deportation operation in American history”. As previewed, the administration set about further militarizing the US-Mexico border and targeting people requesting asylum and refugees while conducting raids and deportations in undocumented communities, detaining and deporting immigrants and spreading fear.Critics are outraged, if not surprised. But few expected the new legal chapter that unfolded next: a multipronged crackdown on certain people seen as opponents of the US president’s ideological agenda. This extraordinary assault has come in the context of wider attacks on higher education, the courts and the constitution. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Pope Leo XIV flags AI impact on kids' intellectual and spiritual development

Pope Leo XIV is warning that artificial intelligence could negatively impact the intellectual, neurological and spiritual development of young people

Politics

1 week ago ‘Black history is American history’: Biden commemorates Juneteenth in Texas as Trump claims there are ‘too many’ holidays in the U.S.

Biden criticized those who say ‘Juneteenth doesn't deserve to be a federal holiday’

Politics

1 week ago Think you know 'Jaws'? Test your knowledge with this trivia ahead of the movie's 50th anniversary

Friday marks the 50th anniversary of “Jaws.”

Politics

1 week ago New Hampshire's Juneteenth celebration culminates with dance event

Though the Trump administration has been removing content on African American history from federal websites, Juneteenth remains a federal holiday, commemorating June 19, 1865

Culture

2 w. ago ‘We live in a second Red Scare’: what can we learn from a chilling book about Florida’s past?

A harrowing new book looks back at a dark period of US history as the Johns committee targeted Black and queer Americans, drawing parallels to what’s happening nowWith his second book, Robert W Fieseler casts new light on a dark episode: the years in the 1950s and 60s when the Florida legislative investigation committee, commonly known as the Johns committee, persecuted Black and queer Americans in the name of anti-communist red scare politics.“The state of Florida has a very poisonous political system,” Fieseler said, promoting a book published as Ron DeSantis sits in the governor’s mansion, whose virulently anti-LGBTQ+ policies had fueled, if briefly, his presidential ambitions. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Gathering stormclouds can’t wipe smile from Trump’s face as long

In scenes that could have been set in Moscow, families queued to sit in helicopters, while tanks and robot dogs paraded Constition AvenueIt may have been billed as a military parade to celebrate the American military’s history, but it said even more about the country’s present and future under Donald Trump.Soldiers, tanks and even robot dogs paraded along Constitution Ave. on Saturday, as paratroopers swooped in from overhead and military aircraft buzzed past the Washington Monument for the first major military parade held in the US capital since the victory after the first Gulf War of 1991. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago I was Charles Manson's henchman and butchered pregnant Sharon Tate after his three

Charles 'Tex' Watson grew up in small-town Texas, seemingly destined to be an all-American success story. Then, a visit to California in 1967 changed his life - and American criminal history.

Politics

3 w. ago Art for Everybody review – the dark side of Thomas Kinkade, ‘painter of light’

The extraordinarily popular painter of kitsch American scenes struggled with addiction and depression, as this documentary with access to his previously unseen works showsYou won’t find the works of Thomas Kinkade lining the walls of the Museum of Modern Art, yet the painter, who died in 2012, is one of the best-selling artists in history and his paintings hang in tens of millions of American households. Kinkade’s typical subjects – rustic landscapes, sleepy cottages, quaint gazebos – bask in an idyllic calm, a luminous callback to a fabled simpler past. Turning to his unpublished archive, Miranda Yousef’s engrossing documentary portrait unveils the dark shadows that lurked within the self-titled “painter of light”.Through interviews with family members, close collaborators and critics, as well as Kinkade’s own words, the film traces his meteoric success in the 1980s and 90s. Shunned by the art world, he marketed his works through home-shopping television channels and a network of f...

Politics

3 w. ago Diner dates and bathhouse chili: the colorful, defiant history of the American gay restaurant

In his new book, Erik Piepenburg dishes on the US eateries that have served as LGBTQ+ havens and are still thrivingErik Piepenburg’s voice breaks when he speaks of the Napalese Lounge and Grille in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The restaurant known as “Naps” to locals is where a group of transgender people regularly come together to chat over beer-battered shrimp, deep-fried green beans and cheese curds. Many travel long distances to do so.“An amazing woman called Martha oversees it,” says Piepenburg, 54. “She told me the stories of people who drive there but can’t get out of the car, and of one young trans woman whose mom stayed outside so her kid could enjoy themselves. It’s not political, everyone was having fun just being able to be themselves. Naps shows how important gay restaurants are – and they are not new. Walt Whitman enjoyed eating in his era’s version of a gay restaurant. We’ve been finding one another for a very long time.” Continue reading...

Society

3 w. ago Diner dates and bathhouse chili: the colorful, defiant history of America’s gay restaurants

In his new book, Erik Piepenburg dishes on the US eateries that have served as LGBTQ+ havens and are still thrivingErik Piepenburg’s voice breaks when he speaks of the Napalese Lounge and Grille in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The restaurant known as “Naps” to locals is where a group of transgender people regularly come together to chat over beer-battered shrimp, deep-fried green beans and cheese curds. Many travel long distances to do so.“An amazing woman called Martha oversees it,” says Piepenburg, 54. “She told me the stories of people who drive there but can’t get out of the car, and of one young trans woman whose mom stayed outside so her kid could enjoy themselves. It’s not political, everyone was having fun just being able to be themselves. Naps shows how important gay restaurants are – and they are not new. Walt Whitman enjoyed eating in his era’s version of a gay restaurant. We’ve been finding one another for a very long time.” Continue reading...

Society

3 w. ago A bromance for the ages: The timeline of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s tumultuous relationship

Though the tech billionaire quickly rose to the (self-titled) position of ‘first buddy,’ the relationship between two of the world’s most powerful men has not always been roses, writes Mike Bedigan

Politics

3 w. ago Trump’s crusade against all immigrants – even legal ones – is unprecedented | Daniel Mendiola

The administration has touted its efforts against illegal immigration. But what sets his actions apart is his crusade against those in the US legallyThe Donald Trump administration has billed itself as taking unprecedented steps to crack down on illegal immigration. While the total number of deportations has yet to surge, it may happen soon. The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, supports suspending habeas corpus to speed up deportations, and the border czar, Tom Homan, has suggested blatantly ignoring court orders. Private companies are also lining up to cash in on mass deportations.Nonetheless, Trump’s approach so far to immigration deemed illegal has not differed much from what Barack Obama and Joe Biden did. So why does everything feel different?Daniel Mendiola is a professor of Latin American history and migration studies at Vassar College. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Trump has launched an unprecedented crusade against legal immigrants | Daniel Mendiola

The administration has touted its efforts against illegal immigration. But what sets his actions apart is his crusade against those in the US legallyThe Donald Trump administration has billed itself as taking unprecedented steps to crack down on illegal immigration. While the total number of deportations has yet to surge, it may happen soon. The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, supports suspending habeas corpus to speed up deportations, and the border czar, Tom Homan, has suggested blatantly ignoring court orders. Private companies are also lining up to cash in on mass deportations.Nonetheless, Trump’s approach so far to immigration deemed illegal has not differed much from what Barack Obama and Joe Biden did. So why does everything feel different?Daniel Mendiola is a professor of Latin American history and migration studies at Vassar College. Continue reading...

Events

4 w. ago How a new planetarium show helped scientists unlock a cosmic secret

Scientists say a new planetarium show about the Milky Way has helped them unlock one of the solar system’s many secrets

Science

4 w. ago Trump’s tax bill helps the rich, hurts the poor and adds trillions to the deficit | Katrina vanden Heuvel

The ‘big, beautiful bill’ has reaffirmed that a pledged golden age is really just a windfall for the uber-wealthyThe blush is off the rose, or, rather, the orange. The erstwhile “First Buddy” and born-again fiscal hawk Elon Musk recently said he was “disappointed” by Donald Trump’s spendthrift budget currently under debate in the US Senate. Squeaking through the House of Representatives thanks to the capitulation of several Republican deficit hardliners, this “big, beautiful bill” certainly increases the federal debt bigly – by nearly $4tn over the next decade.Equally disappointed are those who have been busy burnishing Trump’s populist veneer. Steve Bannon had repeatedly promised higher taxes for millionaires, but he has confessed he’s “very upset”. That’s because the bill would cut taxes by over $600bn for the top 1% of wage-earners, also known as millionaires. It amounts to the largest upward transfer of wealth in American history. Continue reading...

Politics