Evelyn Reynolds

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Thursday briefing: W​ill the Epstein ​files ​threaten ​Peter Mandelson’s ​legacy​?

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In today’s newsletter: A police investigation, newly released documents and long‑standing questions about​ accountability have converged to place one of Labour’s most enduring figures under unprecedented scrutinyGood morning. Older readers may remember Peter Mandelson as a man in a sharp suit drifting through New Labour’s 1990s heyday like a Bond villain with a Filofax. An architect of Labour’s modernisation and a lightning rod for right-wing press ire, he has been in the orbit of power for more than three decades.That run has now come to a shuddering halt after the release of the so-called Epstein files by the US Department of Justice, which detail the extent of Mandelson’s contact with the late billionaire financier and convicted child sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein. While the Met police investigate Mandelson on suspicion of misconduct in public office, the disclosures from the files have also raised urgent questions about judgment, access and accountability at the highest levels of public life.UK politics | Labour MPs have warned that Keir Starmer’s days as prime minister are numbered after a day of fury over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.Gaza | Israeli forces have bulldozed part of a Gaza cemetery containing the war graves of dozens of British, Australian and other allied soldiers killed in the first and second world wars.Crime | An 18-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a student in his 20s was stabbed in Leicester city centre and later died in hospital, Leicestershire police have said.Media | Washington Post editor in chief Matt Murray on Wednesday morning announced internally a “broad strategic reset” that will result in “significant” layoffs across the company.Immigration | Donald Trump’s border tsar said about 700 federal agents would leave Minnesota, a large drop in agents on the ground but still leaving about 2,000 agents there, far above typical levels for the state. Continue reading… More

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    Thursday briefing: W​ill the Epstein ​files ​threaten ​Peter Mandelson’s ​legacy​?

    In today’s newsletter: A police investigation, newly released documents and long‑standing questions about​ accountability have converged to place one of Labour’s most enduring figures under unprecedented scrutinyGood morning. Older readers may remember Peter Mandelson as a man in a sharp suit drifting through New Labour’s 1990s heyday like a Bond villain with a Filofax. An architect of Labour’s modernisation and a lightning rod for right-wing press ire, he has been in the orbit of power for more than three decades.That run has now come to a shuddering halt after the release of the so-called Epstein files by the US Department of Justice, which detail the extent of Mandelson’s contact with the late billionaire financier and convicted child sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein. While the Met police investigate Mandelson on suspicion of misconduct in public office, the disclosures from the files have also raised urgent questions about judgment, access and accountability at the highest levels of public life.UK politics | Labour MPs have warned that Keir Starmer’s days as prime minister are numbered after a day of fury over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.Gaza | Israeli forces have bulldozed part of a Gaza cemetery containing the war graves of dozens of British, Australian and other allied soldiers killed in the first and second world wars.Crime | An 18-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a student in his 20s was stabbed in Leicester city centre and later died in hospital, Leicestershire police have said.Media | Washington Post editor in chief Matt Murray on Wednesday morning announced internally a “broad strategic reset” that will result in “significant” layoffs across the company.Immigration | Donald Trump’s border tsar said about 700 federal agents would leave Minnesota, a large drop in agents on the ground but still leaving about 2,000 agents there, far above typical levels for the state. Continue reading… More

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    Tulsi Gabbard reportedly oversaw probe of Puerto Rico voting machines last year – as it happened

    This live blog is now closed.Trump news at a glance: president hints at ‘softer touch’ on immigration as federal drawdown planned in MinnesotaTom Homan, the president’s so-called “border czar” is set to speak to reporters in Minneapolis shortly.A reminder that Homan took over the immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota from senior border official Gregory Bovino, just days after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti and the mounting backlash in the Twin Cities. Continue reading… More

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    Nancy Pelosi warns press freedom is ‘under siege’ after arrest of journalist

    Ex-House speaker says at dinner ‘facts are challenged, truth is distorted and press is treated as enemy’ by those in powerThe Democratic former speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said on Wednesday that press freedom is “under siege” in the United States after the Trump administration arrested a prominent journalist and searched the home of another.The warning from Pelosi comes on the same day that the Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon billionaire who has recently sought to curry favor with Donald Trump, conducted mass layoffs of its reporters and editors worldwide. Continue reading… More

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    Trump news at a glance: president hints at ‘softer touch’ on immigration as federal drawdown planned in Minnesota

    Trump told NBC News the decision to pull 700 officers from state came from him, but that administration is ‘waiting for [Minnesota] to release prisoners’ – key US politics stories from 4 February 2026 at a glanceTom Homan, the White House border czar, said about 700 federal agents would leave Minnesota, a large drop in agents on the ground but still leaving about 2,000 agents there, far above typical levels for the state.Homan said the reduction came as county jails were negotiating over increased coordination with federal officials, though it’s not clear which counties have agreed to coordinate with immigration enforcement officials. Continue reading… More

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    California can use a new congressional map in November, supreme court rules

    Approved by voters, the new map gives Democrats as many as five seats, neutralizing five GOP seats added by TexasCalifornia can use a new congressional map that was approved by voters in November, the supreme court has ruled, handing Democrats a major victory in their effort to neutralize Donald Trump’s push to protect Republicans’ fragile House majority in this year’s midterm elections.In December, the court said Texas could use its redrawn congressional map in 2026, designed to carve out as many as five Republican-friendly congressional districts, rejecting a lower-court ruling that found it had been racially gerrymandered. Continue reading… More

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    The Guardian view on Epstein, power and accountability: full transparency is the least survivors deserve | Editorial

    As the wheels of justice begin to turn in Britain, a spotlight should also shine on the financier’s wealthy enablers in the US“The more Epstein documents get released, the more we see how he had so many powerful friends, and that’s ultimately what helped him,” commented the US lawyer Lisa Bloom in an interview with the Guardian this week. As Ms Bloom, who represents 11 of Jeffrey Epstein’s dogged and brave victims, drily notes: “That’s not the way the justice system is supposed to work.”From the outset, the Epstein affair has offered a textbook example of the ability of the influential and well-connected to avoid scrutiny and intimidate those who would exert it. A ruthless pursuit of transparency, both institutional and personal, is the only way to combat such tactics and hold power to account. In the extraordinary days following the release of further Epstein files last week, the wheels of justice in Britain are belatedly beginning to turn on that basis.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. Continue reading… More

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    What is happening in Fulton county is a warning to America | Jamil Smith

    The FBI raid in Georgia is not an aberration. It fits a broader playbook, with troubling historic precedentsWhat in the hell were FBI agents doing in an election facility in Fulton county, Georgia, last week? They surely weren’t investigating a crime. Nor were they serving the public.Justifying Donald Trump’s “big lie” about winning the 2020 election may seem like his own lost cause – but like his Confederate forebears, he is weaponizing it, damage be damned. Not even his subsequent election victory has quieted Trump’s appetite for more power, earned or otherwise.Jamil Smith is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading… More

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    ‘The right has won the family’: my relentless search for lefty mommy bloggers

    The most popular mom content tends to be rightwing tradwife propaganda or not political at all – pushing progressive creators out of the algorithmFor someone who doesn’t have a marble island in their kitchen I spend a disproportionate amount of time staring at marble kitchen islands, slack-jawed, brain turned half off. That’s because I consume a lot of videos from mommy bloggers, mom influencers and the like. In kitchen “closing shift” videos, they wipe down their islands and reset by lighting luxury candles, the glow accentuating their respectable cosmetic procedures. Other times I watch them waltz through their morning routines: getting kids out the door, sweating it out in boutique fitness classes, showing off Amazon hauls, or explaining their children’s matching holiday photoshoot outfits.For better or worse, this is how I have chosen to spend my one wild and precious life: consuming blissfully low-stakes motherhood content on my phone. It is domestically competent ASMR that also satiates my desire to peek into everyone’s bathroom cabinets. I nod in unsolicited approval as a TikTok mom I follow shares her green juice order. Fascinating. I should drink something like that. Another posts timestamps of her baby’s night-time sleep schedule. I, who lives between walls that have never heard the wail of an infant, ingurgitate the entire video. Continue reading… More