US government, which owes legal services firm $65m, stopped paying in December, as contract runs out Friday
Current and former prosecutors are denouncing the Trump administration for fast-tracking the deportation of immigrant children, as a key contract for legal services is set to expire on Friday.
A series of federal laws has for decades shielded child immigrants from removal, either to protect their safety or to allow them to testify against abusers or human traffickers.
Officers in murder trial testify of arriving at Massachusetts home after anguished 911 call from Patrick Clancy
The two police officers focused first on Lindsay Clancy drifting in and out of consciousness in the snow after jumping from her Massachusetts home’s second-floor window in January 2023. Within minutes, they were racing into the basement after her then husband screamed that all three of their children were dead.
“I can’t wake them up – I can’t get them up!” Patrick Clancy frantically told the officers who, along with firefighters and paramedics, gave jurors first-hand accounts on Thursday of the aftermath.
Mayor announces resignation of Shon Barnes after city officials faced criticism over response to Sunday shooting
Seattle’s police chief has resigned amid criticism of the city’s response to a fatal shootout at a food festival last weekend, Katie Wilson, the mayor, said on Thursday.
The announcement followed hours of speculation about whether Shon Barnes would step down, as some of his supporters said he had rebuffed Wilson’s request that he resign.
Former lieutenant governor says path to Democratic nomination no longer viable as democratic socialist rival surges ahead
Mandela Barnes, the former lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, dropped out of the Democratic primary for governor on Thursday, upending the high-stakes contest less than two weeks before the 11 August election.
Barnes announced the decision in a video posted on social media, saying he no longer saw a viable path to the nomination, as democratic socialist Francesca Hong surged ahead with a commanding lead.
Republican senators sought written limits on settlement, but president held firm despite risk to attorney general pick
Donald Trump’s refusal to officially end a hugely controversial agreement giving him broad tax immunity and creating a $1.8bn slush fund underscored how the US president’s own self-interest takes precedence above all else in his government.
For weeks, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, has said that the slush fund portion of the agreement was dead. And for a few brief hours on Wednesday, it seemed that the president might agree to a relatively modest request from two Republican senators to put in writing that there were certain limits on an extraordinary tax immunity deal. After all, it seemed like a small price to pay in exchange for getting Blanche, a staunch Trump loyalist who previously served as his personal lawyer, confirmed permanently as the US attorney general.
The US Senate on Thursday rejected a largely symbolic effort to limit Donald Trump’s authority to wage war in Iran, amid rising regional tensions after the US conducted a “heavy wave” of retaliatory airstrikes.
The war powers resolution failed in a 49-50 vote, marking the second time in two weeks the chamber has taken up legislation aimed at forcing Trump to end hostilities.
Farm workers in the US are reeling from the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, including increased raids and deportations, according to a new survey conducted by the United Farm Workers Foundation released on Thursday.
The survey features responses from 2,250 farm workers, many of whom are undocumented, about their experiences with immigration enforcement that has intensified under the second Trump administration.
A former White House counsel and former general counsel of Goldman Sachs, who has faced scrutiny over her past ties to Jeffrey Epstein, told a House committee this month that some of the allegations made by one of his most prominent accusers “lacked inherent credibility”, according to newlyreleased transcripts.
Kathryn Ruemmler’s name appeared thousands of times in records related to Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, that were released earlier this year by the US Department of Justice under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
The Ohio representative Max Miller is facing growing pressure to resign over a series of domestic abuse allegations made by his ex-wife and former girlfriend.
The Republicancongressman, 37, who represents Ohio’s seventh congressional district, has denied accusations made by his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, and former girlfriend Stephanie Grisham, as he campaigns for re-election.
On Monday, the 145-year-old non-profit said that as the United States’ largest single provider of blood products, it now has less than one-day national supply of type O positive blood – the most commonly transfused blood.
Donald Trump said on Thursday he may “temporarily” pull the nomination of Todd Blanche to serve as attorney general, but would keep him in the role in an acting capacity until two Republican senators objecting to his confirmation leave office next year – an extraordinary escalation of an intra-party fight over an agreement to create a $1.8bn slush fund and give the president tax immunity.
Two Republican senators – John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina – have refused to back Blanche’s nomination until they receive written confirmation from the justice department that it is not moving forward with a widely criticized agreement creating a $1.8bn fund to compensate people claiming they were targets of political weaponization and granting the president, his family and business entities broad immunity from past tax investigations.
First US pope says mission is to be pastor of a universal church but expresses ‘great love’ for his home country and its core principles
Pope Leo, the first US pontiff, has expressed “great love” for his home country and its core principles of freedom, opportunity and welcoming immigrants, but qualified that he just “happens to be American”.
In an interview with the US broadcaster NBC on the sidelines of a prayer event in Castel Gandolfo, the papal retreat near Rome, Leo, who has condemned the immigration policies of Donald Trump’s administration, spoke about his own family history in describing his relationship with the US.
We’d like to hear from Black Americans who are using artificial intelligence for health or spiritual guidance
Artificial intelligence is growing in influence in the healthcare space, and more people are seeking guidance from AI tools, including AI-generated social media influencers. Black people in the US, who have been long subject to racism in the healthcare system, are among some of those who are leaning on AI for health-related matters and information.
We would like to hear from Black respondents about their experiences with Black AI-generated health and spiritual influencers.
Eric Washington was known for knocking on doors, connecting residents with services and believing Compton could change
Anyone who knew Eric Washington knew that he had two great loves in his life: his mother and the Los Angeles Rams football team.
Washington was shot and killed on 4 July alongside Meah Bordenave-Jenkins, a 19-year-old aspiring nurse, while at a block party in Compton, California. With his death, the Los Angeles region lost a homegrown community organizer who worked in the city and county’s most underserved neighborhoods.
The Trump administration is facing growing demands to explain why wounded US soldiers went more than a week without adequate hospital care after a March drone strike in Kuwait, just days into the US-Israel war on Iran.
In a letter to the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, congressional Democrats urged the Pentagon to answer their questions – which include why the Pentagon’s public casualty count for the war with Iran briefly changed – by 12 August.
Trump’s overall approval rating slumps to 34%, according to new CNN poll, as midterms testing Republican power loom
Three-quarters of Americans believe Donald Trump is not paying enough attention to the country’s most important problems, and two-thirds think he places himself above the needs of the US, according to a new poll.
The CNN survey, conducted by the market research company SSRS, comes less than 100 days before November’s midterm elections in which the president’s Republican party is widely expected to lose control of one or both chambers of Congress.
“He ran into that water despite those conditions that are deadly,” Sumit Rai told the Associated Press on Wednesday. “You have 10ft waves; you have riptides and currents coming in.
A century ago, compounding pharmacies helped people get bespoke drugs. Now these less-regulated businesses are fueling the peptide boom
Robert F Kennedy Jr is sitting stiffly in Joe Rogan’s podcast studio, inside the influencer’s enormous Texas mansion. Atypically for Rogan’s guests, Kennedy still cloaks himself in the trappings of authority; in a blue suit and pink novelty tie featuring kayakers paddling upstream, he is a stark contrast from Rogan, who sports a biceps-hugging T-shirt depicting a cowboy and an outline of Texas, from the “regenerative wellness” brand Ways2Well.
This was in February, when Kennedy, amid his nationwide Take Back Your Health tour, was pushing his new red-meat-heavy food pyramid on to Americans. For an hour and a half, the two chatted casually about everything from soda pop to medical scams that supposedly fund Boko Haram.
State department ‘takes full responsibility’ for erroneous, widely shared chart displayed at Aids conference in Brazil
A US government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a state department presentation at a global conference in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attenders who took screenshots and posted them online.
Reuters viewed a video of the presentation given at the Aids 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro, which shows the errant map displayed halfway during a presentation about the state department’s new health agreements.
A New Jersey man who rammed his car into a Brooklyn, New York, synagogue earlier this year has been sentenced to time served plus seven days.
Dan Sohail, 36, of Carteret, New Jersey, was sentenced on Wednesday by US district judge Eric Vitaliano in federal court in Brooklyn, according to court records. Sohail had pleaded guilty in May to damaging religious property and has already spent about six months in custody.
Democrat Kaohly Her, Minnesota’s city’s first female mayor, allegedly sent inappropriate messages to employees
The first female mayor of St Paul, Kaohly Her, is reportedly under investigation for sexual harassment following a complaint filed by the Minnesota city’s police chief.
City leaders have contracted an outside law firm to conduct an independent inquiry into the allegations that Her, a Democrat who was elected in November, sent inappropriate messages to employees, including several members of the police department, the New York Times and NBC News said.
Consumer spending remained resilient even as policymakers kept interest rates on hold
The US economy expanded at a sluggish 1.5% pace from April through June as rising imports weighed on growth. But consumer spending rose. And the Federal Reserve’s favored measure of inflation grew more slowly last month despite remaining above the central bank’s 2% target.
The commerce department reported on Thursday that growth in US gross domestic product (GDP) – the nation’s output of goods and services – decelerated from 2.1% in the first three months of 2026 and came in below economists’ expectations.
Gianni Infantino’s plan for a Fifa subsidiary is odious – but it’s hard to feel surprised
Just when you thought global soccer couldn’t get more odiously capitalistic, Gianni Infantino said: “Hold my beer” (as long as that beer you’re holding is a Michelob Ultra, one of the official sponsors of the 2026 World Cup).
The World Cup, one of the largest and most prestigious sporting competitions on the planet, is for sale. Infantino, the president of the soccer governing body Fifa, is the architect of a plan to sell up to 20% of a new subsidiary that would administer tournaments such as the World Cup and Club World Cup. The subsidiary, which would oversee Fifa’s commercial activities, would be called “Fifa Forward Enterprises”. If I see the word “forward” in a corporate initiative, I assume it’s either a diversity program that’ll get dropped after a couple years, a training video on how to exit a building during an emergency evacuation, or a blatant cash grab. Take a guess which one I think this is.
Spoilt food smelling like ‘dead body’ plagues residents after weeklong fire, yet company asks permission to rebuild
One month after a huge fire ravaged a Los Angeles warehouse and doomed neighbors to a persistent, thick stench of rotting food, the facility’s owners have filed applications to rebuild.
That request to restore the warehouse – which residents called a “ticking bomb” after a similar fire at the building in 2024 – was publicly criticized by the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, in a post on social media earlier this week.
Roadside safety advocates say some automated license plate readers may not meet highway safety standards
Flock Safety cameras have been pilloried for facilitating the AI-powered surveillance of private citizens and for targeting immigrants for years. But now safety advocates are also claiming that their physical location can pose potential roadside hazards.
At the bottom of a tree-lined hill on a narrow, two lane rural road in Greene county, Ohio, stands a black metal rod with a camera and solar panel attached at the top.
The Trump administration’s plans to stymie and defund bike lane plans in the US, on the unusual basis that they are DEI tools, will hurt efforts to improve roadway safety, non-motorized transportation advocates say.
The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, posted on X this month that he had redirected $1.73bn allocated for “Biden-era DEI pet projects” to “America’s actual backbone: ROADS, BRIDGES, AND SHIPPING PORTS”.
I’ve spent a decade reporting on immigration enforcement. The word ‘camp’ best captures the political function of these facilities
We don’t have concentration camps today in the United States, but we have something close. More than 65,000 people are currently confined in demeaning, often dangerous, sometimes torturous and increasingly deadly conditions not because they have committed a crime, but because they have committed the civil infraction of being on the wrong side of a border. They are ripped from their homes, their families, their jobs and are shipped hundreds of miles away where they languish in squalid, freezing cold and punishing conditions with limited and sometimes no access to lawyers, loved ones, nutritious food, sunlight or medical care. At least 52 people have died in ICE custody since the second Trump administration came into office. Tens of thousands have been held in solitary confinement.
Oversight mechanisms of these facilities have been gutted, members of Congress have been turned away, and ICE has stopped reporting basic and legally mandated data about who is inside and what happens to them. The rapid expansion of the detention system, the inherent inhumanity of policing human mobility, and lack of oversight is partly why a woman in Arizona, who has been detained for 16 months without proper medical care to treat her leukemia, has reportedly lost more than 70lb and is regularly vomiting blood. It’s why people in a now shuttered camp in Florida were allegedly subjected to a two-by-two-foot outdoor punishment cage. The stories that leak out of these camps should terrify not only the migrants directly targeted, but should alarm the conscience of us all.
Federal Reserve votes to hold its key interest rate steady, sending stocks tumbling. Plus: the origins of Coca-Cola may have been found
Good morning. US government borrowing costs have hit their highest level since 2007 after the Federal Reserve voted to hold its key interest rate steady, feeding fears it may not move fast enough to tame a rise in inflation. Kevin Warsh, the central bank’s chair, said the Fed would “not waver” in its commitment to tackling rising prices.
The decision to leave rates on hold has spooked investors, who are worried about the US economy’s ability to absorb a rise inflation, caused by Donald Trump’s war in Iran. US inflation cooled to an annual rate of 3.5% in June after Washington and Tehran agreed a brief ceasefire – but this has since ended. US stocks fell sharply on Wednesday, with the blue chip S&P 500 index closing down 1.5%. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 2.2% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 1.7%.
Gas prices are up almost a dollar a gallon since the day Donald Trump took office; mortgage rates just hit their highest level in nearly a year, and over the weekend a prominent economist said the Iran war is costing the average US household more than $1,200.
Americans are struggling through a deepening affordability crisis caused largely by Trump’s ill-fated war against Iran. They are in need of a boost, something to lift the spirits. Perhaps the president could give a speech, letting the people know that we are all in this together.
Tensions in the national party are trickling down to US college campuses, where a newer student group is rapidly outflanking longstanding moderate rivals
When the Utah county clerk’s office announced last month that it was hiring Kai Schwemmer – an undergraduate at Brigham Young University and a rightwing influencer – to help reach younger voters, an uproar ensued.
An energetic and fast-talking 23-year-old, Schwemmer is a rising star of campus organizing at the College Republicans of America (CRA). He is also a prolific livestreamer with a record of provocation – which returned to haunt him when more than 80 prominent women in Utah signed a letter protesting against his hiring.
Republicans senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul voted in favor of the motion to prevent Trump from continuing hostilities against Iran. This blog is now closed.
The US economy expanded at a sluggish 1.5% pace from April through June as rising imports weighed on growth. But consumer spending rose. And the Federal Reserve’s favored measure of inflation grew more slowly last month despite remaining above the central bank’s 2% target.
The commerce department reported today that growth in US gross domestic product (GDP) – the nation’s output of goods and services – decelerated from 2.1% in the first three months of 2026 and came in below economists’ expectations.
Black voters in south motivated to turn out by Republican push to redraw maps after supreme court ruling
A new analysis of Black voters in the south indicates that Republican attempts to dilute their political power is driving them to the polls in larger numbers and shifting their counties further left.
After the supreme court effectively gutted section 2 of the Voting Rights Act protections in late April, Republican legislatures across the south rapidly pushed to disenfranchise Black voters by redrawing congressional maps. Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama all immediately worked to pass new maps, while the Mississippi governor has said that he wants legislators to redraw maps before the upcoming midterm elections.
To understand the experience of life, don’t look to the mind. Look to the body
In a 1982 article, the American feminist scholar Elizabeth Spelman coined the term “somatophobia” to describe the strange human delusion that we are minds rather than bodies.
Forty years later, artificial intelligence is everywhere, offering the most powerful illusion yet that intelligence can exist without flesh. Two-thirds of people surveyed in a recent study believe that tools like ChatGPT possess some consciousness and feeling. We are living in the age of somatophobia. Now is the moment to resist it.
US government borrowing costs have hit their highest level since 2007 after the Federal Reserve voted to hold its key interest rate steady, feeding fears that the central bank may not move fast enough to tame a rise in inflation.
The yield – or interest rate – on the 30-year US Treasury bond rose 14 basis points to nearly 5.24%, a 19-year high, after the Fed announced its decision to hold its main rate at between 3.5% and 3.75% for the fifth meeting in a row.
Live, rolling coverage of business, economics and financial markets as three members of monetary policy committee vote to raise rates
That German GDP reading has indeed contributed to the wider eurozone hitting expectations – and then some.
The eurozone economy grew by 0.4% in the second quarter of 2026, according to the preliminary reading from Eurostat – defying the gloom caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Losing funds should force leaders to confront their own challenges, they said, while many voiced concerns over increasing foreign influence
A quarter of young Africans believe aid cuts by the US could have a positive impact, saying that losing foreign money will force leaders to confront and solve their own challenges, according to a new survey.
In Ghana and Nigeria, almost half (41% and 40% respectively) of young people aged 18 to 24 were optimistic, with Liberia not far behind (37%). A further one in 10 (11%) young people were uncertain about the impact, according to the African Youth Survey, which interviewed almost 5,000 people across 16 of the continent’s 54 recognised countries.
US former top health official, who was subpoenaed to appear at a Senate hearing into Covid-19, says Markson’s reporting about virus’s origin ‘does not make any sense’
Dr Anthony Fauci, the US’s chief medical adviser at the start of the pandemic, has described a book by News Corp investigative journalist Sharri Markson backing the “lab leak” theory of Covid-19’s origins as a “bunch of nonsense” in his newly released diaries.
This week, Fauci, 85, was subpoenaed by the Republican senator Rand Paul to appear at a Senate hearing into Covid-19 and his handling of the pandemic.
Police link shooting to gang violence but have not said who might have fired bullets that killed bystanders on Sunday
Bullets that fatally struck two bystanders during a shootout at a Seattle food festival last weekend do not appear to have come from the gun that a 15-year-old arrested at the scene was firing, police said in court documents filed on Wednesday.
The teen sprayed an untraceable “ghost gun” into a crowd, authorities say. Preliminary ballistics testing did not match the bullets recovered from the deceased bystanders to that weapon.
Longtime Epstein associate serving 20-year sentence for sex-trafficking crimes has exhausted series of appeals
The US Senate on Wednesday unanimously passed a resolution declaring its opposition to any presidential pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes.
Introduced by Senator Jacky Rosen, a Democrat of Nevada, the resolution states that Maxwell “should not be granted a Presidential pardon or any form of clemency for her crimes with Jeffrey Epstein relating to the sexual exploitation and abuse of minors”.
Republican John Cornyn says he will not back nomination without written confirmation $1.8bn slush fund is dead
Todd Blanche’s hopes of becoming US attorney general seemed to be in jeopardy on Wednesday after the Department of Justice did not provide written assurances to a key Republican senator that a $1.8bn slush fund was dead.
The US Senate judiciary committee postponed a vote scheduled for Thursday on whether to advance Blanche’s nomination.
Six years on from Covid crisis, Republicans still politicizing science – and Fauci remains a political punching bag
A US Senate committee hearing featuring Dr Anthony Fauci revealed at least one certainty: six years after the pandemic, politicizing science remains a vital political tactic.
The high-profile hearing was pitched by its Republican chair, Rand Paul of Kentucky, as an investigation into the origins of the Covid pandemic. It quickly became a forum for recrimination of a once-leading US government scientist by Republican senators.
Report on Interlochen Center for the Arts details sexual allegations against 47 faculty and staff members since 1950s
Two people who attended a prestigious Michigan fine arts school reported conduct of a sexual nature by Jeffrey Epstein, a major donor, according to an investigation that also uncovered dozens of allegations spanning decades against nearly 50 other people.
Interlochen Center for the Arts operates a summer camp and performing arts school that draws students from around the world. It hired a law firm in 2024 to investigate reports of sexual abuse by faculty and staff. Subsequently, it expanded the work to include information about Epstein, the 66-year-old financier who killed himself in jail in 2019.
The Kansas City Chiefs held their first full-squad workout of training camp Wednesday without offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, who remained with his family after the shooting of his wife – allegedly by their son – at their Virginia home last weekend.
Chiefs coach Andy Reid said after the workout that Mia Bieniemy had been released from the intensive care unit, where she was being treated for multiple gunshot wounds. But there was no timetable for when Eric Bieniemy would be back with the team.
Rates remain unchanged for fifth time since December as tenuous Iran peace deal pushes energy prices up again
The US Federal Reserve held interest rates steady on Wednesday in a divided vote, indicating growing pressure on the central bank to address heightened inflation.
The Fed’s federal open market committee voted 9-3 to maintain rates, with three dissenting members indicating a preference to raise the rate by a quarter-percentage point. It was the first time in a decade that three board members shared dissent over a policy decision.
Planned overhaul forms part of president’s broader pattern of directing changes in Washington after arch and ballroom
Donald Trump announced on Wednesday a $22bn plan to rebuild Washington’s Dulles international airport on Wednesday after the US president personally weighed in on the design of the capital’s main international gateway.
“In the end, you can end up with – I think – maybe the best airport, and one of the biggest airports, anywhere in the world, and it’s going to be a great thing for Washington DC,” the president said during an announcement at the Oval Office on Wednesday.
Fifa’s president hopes to sell stakes in the planet’s most watched sporting event. In the wider interests of football, he must be resisted
Like a sporting Dr Pangloss, Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, would like to persuade football followers that they are living in the best of all possible worlds. Maddeningly for him, many disagree. On Monday, Mr Infantino published a 15-page Instagram rant in which he bemoaned the “hate and false rumours” in circulation during the recent men’s World Cup. White House interference over a crucial refereeing decision, prohibitive ticket prices, unnecessary but lucrative hydration breaks; it was all, as his best friend in politics, Donald Trump, would say, “fake news”.
But where the president of world football’s governing body sees haters, others see lovers of the game rightly concerned over where he is taking it. On Tuesday, Fifa confirmed that it hopes to sell stakes in the World Cup and other tournaments to private investors who may include Joshua Kushner, the brother of Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared. The investors would buy into a new $20bn company, Fifa Forward Enterprise, which would sell all of Fifa’s commercial rights, including ticketing, and take charge of “operational delivery” of World Cups.
Lawyers for Massachusetts mother say she was in throes of postpartum psychosis amid January 2023 tragedy
More than three years after a Massachusetts mother strangled her three young children, her former husband described returning home to the aftermath and a jury listened on Wednesday to his frantic 911 call, as her lawyers seek to prove she was in the grip of post-pregnancy psychosis.
Lindsay Clancy, 35, admits she killed her children in January 2023 while her then husband was on an errand away from their home in the Boston suburb of Duxbury. Her attorney says she was driven by postpartum mental illness and a jury cannot find she intentionally murdered the children.
James Comey’s lawyers say Secret Service illegally tracked him to develop case around his ‘8647’ seashell post
Lawyers for former FBI director James Comey alleged on Tuesday that US Secret Service agents illegally surveilled Comey, Donald Trump requested regular updates into the investigation, and law enforcement turned to ChatGPT and a known mafia killer as they scrambled to find justification for criminally charging Comey for posting a picture of seashells that spelled out “8647”.
The claims were laid out in a motion to dismiss a criminal case the US Department of Justice filed against Comey in April, in which it said the post by Comey – whom Trump fired in his first term – was a threat on the US president’s life.
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