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    Texas attorney general seeks to remove 13 absent Democrats from office

    The Republican attorney general of Texas on Friday asked the state supreme court to vacate the seats of 13 Democratic legislators who have left for blue states, hours after their absence once again delayed a vote on a redrawn congressional map sought by Donald Trump.Republican leaders in Texas had set a Friday deadline for Democrats to return to the state capitol in Austin or face punishment, including arrest and possible removal from office. Dozens of Democrats left the state over the weekend to prevent a Republican redistricting effort, requested by the president, to redraw the Texas maps mid-cycle to secure a Republican House majority in the 2026 midterms.“These cowards deliberately sabotaged the constitutional process and violated the oath they swore to uphold,” the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, a far-right ally of the president, said in a statement that hinted he could target more lawmakers in future litigation. Paxton’s lawsuit is the latest escalation in a fast-evolving standoff between blue and red state leaders.It comes after the Texas house speaker, Dustin Burrows, moved to enforce arrest warrants in other states and as Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, warned in an interview with NBC News that he was prepared to “arrest Democrats who may be in Texas, may be elsewhere”.During the short house session on Friday, Burrows said state authorities were working to make civil arrest warrants against the Democrats enforceable outside Texas. He also announced that the legislature was withholding the Democrats’ direct deposit payments, requiring absent members to pick them up in person at the capitol in Austin.“Each one of you knows that eventually you will come back,” Burrows said, addressing the absent Democrats from the chamber floor. “But with each passing day, the political cost of your absence is rising, and it will be paid in full.”Also on Friday, Paxton announced that he was suing the Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke for “unlawful fundraising activity” on behalf of the quorum-breaking state lawmakers. On X, O’Rourke said that his political group, Powered by People, had responded by suing Paxton in state court.Democrats have remained defiant, saying they would remain out of state for “as long as it takes” to stop Trump’s redistricting effort. But Abbott has said that they would have to stay away for years to be successful. The current special legislative session, called by the Texas governor, lasts until 19 August, but Abbott has vowed to call “special session after special session after special session”.“But I’ll tell you this also, Democrats act like they’re not going to come back as long as this is an issue,” Abbott said in the NBC News interview. “That means they’re not going to come back until like 2027 or 2028, because I’m going to call special session after special session after special session with the same agenda items on there.”In a separate interview, he said he might push for more than five seats.“What I’m thinking now is that if they don’t start showing up, I may start expanding,” he said. “We may make it six or seven or eight new seats we’re going to be adding on the Republican side.”Tensions have escalated dramatically since the Democrats left Texas and sought refuge in Democratic states. The Republican-led state house has approved civil arrest warrants for the absent lawmakers, and Abbott took the extraordinary step of filing a lawsuit with the state supreme court that seeks to remove Gene Wu, the house Democratic leader, from office.The court has asked Wu to respond by Friday to Abbott’s emergency petition to remove him from his Houston-area seat.On Thursday John Cornyn, the Texas senator, said the FBI had agreed to assist in locating the Democrats, but the FBI declined to comment and it is unclear what authority federal law enforcement would have, as they are not charged with federal crimes.“For those who have fled to Illinois or California, be reminded that the FBI’s assistance has reportedly been enlisted and their powers are not confined to a single state’s boundaries,” Burrows said on Friday.One Democratic member of the Texas state house, Claudia Ordaz, said in a statement that state troopers had showed up at a relative’s home looking for her, even though she had stated publicly that she was dealing with a “personal health matter”. In the statement Ordaz said she was sharing from a hospital waiting room, the lawmaker denounced the officers’ visit as an “deliberate abuse of power and an intimidation tactic” while also criticizing those she said had “falsely accused” her of being present in the chamber to help Republicans make a quorum.Earlier on Friday, the St Charles police department confirmed that the Illinois hotel where some of the quorum-breaking Democrats are believed to be staying had experienced a second bomb threat. It comes days after an initial bomb threat at the Q Center Hotel, in suburban Chicago.Several Texas Democrats were in Sacramento on Friday to meet with the California governor, Gavin Newsom, who has threatened to respond in kind with a new congressional map that would offset the seats Republicans stand to gain in Texas if the president’s push is successful. More

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    Trump administration demands $1bn from UCLA to restore federal funding

    The Trump administration is seeking a $1bn settlement from the University of California, Los Angeles, a White House official said on Friday.The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the request and spoke on condition of anonymity.The Trump administration has suspended $584m in federal research funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and other agencies, the university’s chancellor, Julio Frenk, said in a message to UCLA staff and students this week.Last week, the justice department notified the university that an investigation by the department’s civil right division had “concluded that UCLA’s response to the protest encampment on its campus in the spring of 2024 was deliberately indifferent to a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students” in violation of federal anti-discrimination law.“This disgusting breach of civil rights against students will not stand: DOJ will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system”, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said in a statement.UCLA is the first public university whose federal grants have been targeted by the administration over allegations of civil rights violations related to antisemitism and affirmative action. The Trump administration has frozen or paused federal funding over similar allegations against private colleges.The new University of California president, James B Milliken, who oversees a university system of 10 campuses, six academic health centers and three affiliated national laboratories, confirmed on Friday that the university had received notice from the justice department and was reviewing it.“Earlier this week, we offered to engage in good faith dialogue with the Department to protect the University and its critical research mission,” Milliken said. “As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources and a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians.“Americans across this great nation rely on the vital work of UCLA and the UC system for technologies and medical therapies that save lives, grow the US economy, and protect our national security,” he added.UCLA recently reached a $6m settlement with three Jewish students and a Jewish professor who sued the university, arguing it violated their civil rights by allowing pro-Palestinian protesters in 2024 to block their access to classes and other areas on campus.The university has said it is committed to campus safety and inclusivity and will continue to implement recommendations. More

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    Several people arrested at anti-Ice protest outside NYC immigration court

    Several protesters outside New York City’s 26 Federal Plaza government building were arrested on Friday for disorderly conduct, with demonstrators accusing the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency of operating a covert detention facility there, according to several reports.Protesters marched to the largest federal immigration courthouse in Manhattan on Friday morning and chanted outside the building. Demonstrators demanded access to the site, which was denied, and they later held a sit-in outside the courthouse, according to ABC7.Within a few minutes the New York City police department moved in to arrest some of the protesters for disorderly conduct, according to reports, as activists could be seen blocking the street.“No fear, no hate, no Ice in our state!” chanted demonstrators during their march to the site, where Ice agents routinely detain immigrants after immigration court proceedings, in a move that goes against previously normal practice.Demonstrators allege detainees are being held in overcrowded conditions without many basic amenities or legal access at 26 Federal Plaza’s 10th floor, where the agency denies it detains people, and are demanding unrestricted access for elected officials, journalists and faith leaders. Friday’s protest was one of several in the city this week.Last month, footage from inside 26 Federal Plaza shared by the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) showed two dozen men in bare rooms, some lying on the floor with emergency blankets and with few basic provisions.“Just to be a presence, we’re here to say that the American people are opposed to these kinds of policies. And for Ice agents, maybe that will lead some of them to reconsider their career choice,” Jeffrey Courter, the chair of the Justice Ministries Committee of the Presbytery of New York City, told ABC7.Authorities insist the facility is only a processing center.Lawmakers have been denied access to the site. In June, Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller, was arrested while escorting an immigrant from a hearing.Several groups, including the grassroots protest movement known as 50501 and NYIC, as well as faith-based groups, were present at the protest.Courthouse detentions have become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, which aims to arrest 3,000 people daily. Reports from cities including Phoenix, Los Angeles, Chicago and El Paso, Texas, describe routine court appearances devolving into tense encounters. A newly filed class-action lawsuit seeks to ban the practice of making Ice arrests at immigration courthouses. More

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    US court tosses judge’s contempt order over Trump’s El Salvador deportations

    An appeals court on Friday tossed out a judge’s finding of contempt against the Trump administration in a case over the notorious deportations of Venezuelans from the US to an El Salvador prison without due process.The decision from a divided three-judge panel based in the nation’s capital vacates a finding from US district judge James Boasberg.Boasberg found in April there was probable cause to hold Donald Trump’s administration in criminal contempt of court for willfully disregarding his 15 March order barring the deportations to El Salvador of more than 250 Venezuelans from immigration detention in the US to a brutal prison in the Central American country, under an agreement with the Salvadorian leadership, without the chance to challenge their removals. The Trump administration appealed.On Friday, Washington DC circuit judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both of whom were nominated by Trump in his first term in the White House, concurred with the unsigned majority opinion. Judge Cornelia Pillard, who was appointed by Barack Obama when he was president, dissented.View image in fullscreenBoasberg had accused Trump administration officials of rushing deportees out of the country under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act before they could challenge their removal in court and then willfully disregarding his order that planes already in the air should return to the US.The Republican administration has denied violating his order.“The district court’s order raises troubling questions about judicial control over core executive functions like the conduct of foreign policy and the prosecution of criminal offenses,” circuit judge Katsas wrote in an opinion.The Trump administration claimed that all the Venezuelans it removed to El Salvador outside the normal constitutional process were violent gang members, which many of the deportees denied and critics said, regardless of any of the individuals’ criminal guilt or innocence, did not justify denying them due process in the US.The episode has been one of the most high-profile of the second Trump administration’s aggressive anti-immigration agenda, in addition to widespread raids and arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers in communities across the country.“The district court’s order attempts to control the Executive Branch’s conduct of foreign affairs, an area in which a court’s power is at its lowest ebb,” Rao wrote.Pillard dissented. “The majority does an exemplary judge a grave disservice by overstepping its bounds to upend his effort to vindicate the judicial authority that is our shared trust,” she wrote.The 250 migrants have since been released back to their home country in a prisoner swap with the US after months at the mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot).The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, celebrated the appeals court ruling, calling it a “MAJOR victory defending President Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act” in a social media post and vowing to “continue fighting and WINNING in court”.Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represented the migrants, said there was “zero ambiguity” in Boasberg’s order about the planes.“We strongly disagree with today’s decision regarding contempt and are considering all options going forward,” he said.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

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    The more James Gunn’s Superman is a hit, the more the right will want its own Dean Cain of steel

    It’s almost impossible to divide superheroes along political lines. Captain America might seem like a patriotic, commie-bashing lunatic, as he was in the 1950s comics during the McCarthy era, until you remember that he has also spent much of his fictional career telling corrupt government agencies to shove it. And, in the Marvel Comic Universe, at least, he went on the run rather than sign up for an authoritarian superhero registry. Superman was once the square-jawed poster boy for US exceptionalism, cheerfully posing on propaganda comic covers urging readers to buy war bonds, but he’s also been written as a Kansas farm boy so suspicious of concentrated power that in one storyline he renounced his citizenship to avoid being used as a pawn of US foreign policy.Bar a few outliers – Iron Man cheerleading the military-industrial complex in his earliest comics springs to mind – trying to pin a superhero to one side of the political spectrum is like trying to staple fog: most of DC and Marvel’s big beasts will drift wherever the story, or the writer’s mortgage payments, takes them. Which is why it’s been so bizarre watching the right’s disgust as a vaguely woke man of steel drives all before him at the summer box office.James Gunn’s Superman passed the half-billion-dollar mark globally this week, which hardly means we’re looking at a film to mirror the success of the early comic book movie era – Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice somehow made $874m, for chrissakes – but does at least indicate that audiences quite like this new, down-to-earth, kindly and human take on Kal-El. Gunn is now producing next Wonder Woman.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile, on the dystopian side of the news cycle, Dean Cain has declared himself primed and ready to join Donald Trump’s Ice agency. Cain (Kal-El in 90s TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman) only recently declared his horror at how “woke” the new David Corenswet Supes has turned out to be. Are these two things connected? Is Cain trying to make the point that a real “superman” would be standing at America’s borders, demanding paperwork from asylum seekers and Frisbeeing their lunch into the nearest bin, rather than attempting to stop evil invaders from terrorising a rival nation (as Corenswet does in Superman)?It’s almost as if, in the absence of the kind of superhero movies Cain would like to see muscle their way into multiplexes, the actor sees it as his patriotic duty to bring hard-border fiction into reality. If the 74 million who voted for Trump don’t want these woke Marvel and DC superhero movies, and would really rather see films in which caped crusaders defend gated communities against suspiciously accented delivery drivers, isn’t Hollywood missing a trick? Isn’t there – somewhere – a gap in the market, or perhaps an alternative reality – Earth 45? Earth-Fox News? – where filmgoers queue around the block to watch Captain Constitution and the Stand Your Ground Squad, and the Hollywood trades wax lyrical about a new blockbuster era of paranoia and punitive zoning laws?The right has tried this already, of course. Cain was also pretty upset about Disney’s recent “woke” Snow White remake, perhaps because the princess didn’t spend the runtime pining for a man or whistling while she ironed. And so was conservative media outfit the Daily Wire, which at the height of the backlash against Rachel Zegler’s casting made a trailer for a then-forthcoming rival film titled Snow White and the Evil Queen.Plot details were thin on the ground, but presumably involved the heroine abandoning woodland animals for a concealed-carry permit and learning the value of hard work by running her own small business into the ground without government subsidies. We’ll never really know because the film appears to have been quietly cancelled, leaving a potential audience of millions bereft of the chance to see what happens when you trade magic mirrors for voter ID checkpoints.View image in fullscreenPerhaps the lesson here is that it’s just really difficult to make dreamy-eyed fantasy flicks that double as Breitbart comment threads. And it’s not just superhero movies that would creak under the strain. Imagine Star Wars if rebellions were built not on hope but on stricter border controls and mandatory midichlorian checks. Would The Lord of the Rings have really been quite the same if all those ’orrible orcs and trolls had been replaced on the battlefield by desperate migrants trying to reach the Shire, being enthusiastically biffed by an over-xcited Aragorn and Gimli counting down the number of “illegals” they just tonked?Sooner or later, someone’s going to make a superhero film or TV series that gives the Maga crowd everything: a caped crusader who fights windfarms, sues the Daily Planet for libel and pays for everything in gold bullion or crypto. (The Boys got close at times: Homelander is basically what happens when you cross Captain America with a Trump rally and a gallon of unpasteurised milk, but he was hardly a hero – and perhaps that’s the point.)Until then, the culture warriors will have to settle for grumbling about woke elves and lady Thor while the rest of us watch Superman save the world from the nastiest supervillains in the universe without checking anyone’s passport. More

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    Stephen Colbert on JD Vance’s water level raising: ‘Insane spoiled baby emperor move’

    Late-night hosts took aim at JD Vance over his unusual birthday demand and Donald Trump over his disastrous tariffs.Stephen ColbertOn The Late Show, Stephen Colbert called it “a significant day for our economy” with Trump’s controversial tariffs finally kicking in. He said it’s a day to “set your clocks back to more expensive” with import taxes now the highest they’ve been since the Great Depression.Colbert said it’s “never a great sign to be compared to the worst thing ever”.Tariffs on certain countries are lower if negotiations have been successful or “if the president’s mad at you they can be much higher”.This week saw Apple announce $100bn worth of additional investment in the US, but there is a smaller pool of American workers with the skills necessary to make an iPhone. “I believe America’s children can do anything!” Colbert joked.The company’s CEO, Tim Cook, was filmed this week in the Oval Office giving Trump a gift which was partly made of 24-carat gold. Colbert called it “lavish corporate bottom-smooching”.In the same press opportunity, Trump again slammed Colbert for having “no talent” but did concede that he has better ratings than Kimmel or Fallon, whom he said also had no talent. “We’re all equally untalented,” Colbert said, before adding: “Thank you for watching, sir.”Colbert said that while we are “plunging headfirst into techno-feudalism”, the Secret Service is busy raising the water level of an Ohio river for Vance’s family boat trip to celebrate his birthday. He called it an “insane spoiled baby emperor move”.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers said that Trump “clearly has no interest in doing the job of president” and doesn’t “know or care what his own administration is doing on a daily basis”.He is too busy renovating the White House with plans revealed this week for a new $200m ballroom decked out in gold. Trump has said it’s important as there hasn’t been a president like him who has been good at ballrooms before.Meyers commented that it’s “never been a problem that our presidents weren’t good at ballrooms”.To show how little Trump knows about the day-to-day, he played a clip just after the US illegally bombed Iran in which he was told by a reporter that the intelligence community said it had no evidence that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon, which the president called false.This week when he was asked about Robert F Kennedy Jr’s decision to cancel $500m in contracts for vaccine development, he also appeared confused. “For a guy who watches cable news all day, you sure seem caught off-guard by the news,” Meyers said.There are also plans to put a nuclear reactor on the moon, a decision bragged about on Fox News with claims that “Trump doesn’t play by the rules”. Meyers admitted that this is true as at Nasa, rule No 1 is “don’t blow up the moon”.Ignoring the inflation that’s ballooning thanks in part to Trump’s tariffs, the administration is instead having to deal with the fallout of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Trump “flew into a rage again” after being asked about it this week.It’s still proving to be “explosive for Trump and his Maga base” and so this week a dinner was planned on Epstein strategy involving high-ranking loyalists. Nothing like a “secretive cabal” of powerful people to settle the conspiracy theorists, Meyers noted.It was reportedly planned by Vance, whom Trump threw under the bus when he was asked about it this week. “No matter how much you try to appease Trump or suck up to him, he’s eventually going to betray you,” he said. More

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    What could the Cotswolds possibly offer JD Vance? I suggest a swim in one of its rivers | Marina Hyde

    I don’t have access to the employment contract, but find myself increasingly intrigued by a question: how many days annual leave does a vice-president of the United States get? In the past five months alone, JD Vance has been on a skiing holiday, then a family trip to Disneyland, then a kayaking jaunt in Ohio – and now, he’s about to pitch up for an extended summer stay in the Cotswolds. More on all those in a bit. But let’s face it: if Vance were a politician in this country, he’d have been fitted with an unflattering holiday-related nickname months ago, and no one would take him remotely seriously.Still, time for another well-earned rest for Vacay Vance/the right honourable member for the Sun Lounger. And something of a break in tradition with recent times, in which he has preferred to holiday in national parks where the Trump administration has cut half the jobs, perhaps reasoning that if his security can successfully upend the infrastructure to assist his recreation during his stay, then those jobs were never really essential anyway. Only last weekend, the VP and family were holidaying near Caesar Creek Lake in Ohio, where his Secret Service team had the army corps of engineers change the outflow of a lake. Depending on who you believe, this was either to “support safe navigation” of his huge, heavy-boated security detail, or to create “ideal kayaking conditions” for Vance, who was certainly pictured in a canoe over the period. Listen, sometimes JD just wants a lazy river, other times he wants rushing rapids. It’s called public service: look it up.Anyway, he’s just about to kick off a holiday in some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years – namely, Britain. Thanks for being in us, sir! As a point of order, though, over here we wouldn’t dream of allowing a politician to reroute one of our rivers. Instead, we allow the water companies to reroute sewage into them. Feel free to take a kayak out as often as possible during your stay. In fact, we insist on it.As for why Vance has picked the Cotswolds, it’s possibly a smart move to holiday somewhere filled with so many of the absolute worst people in the country. In the modern-era Cotswolds, JD is unlikely to even be the ghastliest person in the village. And he has, unfortunately, been the target of heckling and protest on recent trips. March found him skiing en famille at Sugarbush ski resort in Vermont, forced to run a gauntlet of placard-wielding objectors before reportedly opting to move location. Again: should have gone to Courchevel, where he wouldn’t even make the top 100 of the Most Hideous People on the Chairlift at Any Given Moment poll.View image in fullscreenThen last month it was Disneyland, against the backdrop of widespread Ice raids on undocumented immigrants across California, where his presence drew a sarcastic welcome from its governor, Gavin Newsom. “Hope you enjoy your family time, @JDVance,” this ran. “The families you’re tearing apart certainly won’t.” Vance responded by posting: “Had a great time, thanks.” A review not wholly borne out from fellow park users’ video footage, which showed the boos and protests continuing even as he trotted towards the Autopia ride and lunched furtively at the Pirates of the Caribbean restaurant.But look, the Vance family’s Cotswolds accommodation promises to be far more agreeable, and is not even made of fibreglass. In fact, according to the Daily Mail, it’s an 18th-century manor house in six sprawling acres of grounds that include a tennis court. Whether they also contain a swimming pool is unclear – as is whether Vance swims in a T-shirt when he’s alone with his family, like he famously does at hotels. Either way, the property has reportedly been crawling with Secret Service agents all week. Amenity-wise, it’s supposedly extremely close to Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat empire, setting up a potentially compelling episode for the next season of Clarkson’s Farm, should Vance care to call in on a temporary neighbour who recently described him as a “bearded God-botherer” and “twat” with “no clue about history”.The Vances won’t be tied to that one property, we learn, with a visit to hang out with David Lammy and his family at the foreign secretary’s country residence, Chevening, also planned for this coming weekend. Lammy has made so much of the two men’s shared Christian bond that you’d imagine he might squire the whole gang along to church on Sunday morning. Parts of the local St Botolph’s church date back to the 11th century – not quite as old as the Sleeping Beauty Castle in Anaheim, to be sure, but certainly able to hold its own with the Autopia ride. Also on the agenda, finally, is a trip to London, which Vance recently described as “not English any more”. Well, nor is the US, but that doesn’t seem to put him off.For the lucky British people, meanwhile, the Vance holiday serves as a mere amuse bouche to the main meal – the unprecedented second state visit next month of Donald Trump, who will make landfall on 17 September for a run of dates that conveniently occurs during parliamentary recess, thus avoiding the controversial spectacle of the president addressing the house. But if Trump’s last state visit was anything to go by, it’ll be three days of remorseless rolling news wank about the “pageantry”, intense grandstanding by embarrassing politicians keen to suck up to him/define themselves against him, and 958 talking heads droning cluelessly on about how both sides have “got what they want out of it”. We’ll be positively begging to go back to these low-key days of the Vance vacance, so let’s enjoy them while we can.

    Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist More

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    Friday briefing: What will US funding cuts on mRNA vaccines mean for the health of the world?

    Good morning. You may have heard a saying along the lines that “when the US sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold”. So when the US health department announced plans to cut half a billion dollars in vaccine research funding on Wednesday, the world took notice.The US is the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, but this position has become more precarious with the appointment of Robert F Kennedy Jr, a longtime vaccine sceptic, as US health secretary.This week, Kennedy has announced plans to terminate 22 federal contracts for mRNA-based vaccines, casting doubt on the safety of a technology widely credited with helping end the Covid-19 pandemic and saving millions of lives.In total the affected projects are worth nearly $500m (£376m), according to the health agency. As for Kennedy, he said: “We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted.”The only problem? The scientific community in the US and around the world has overwhelmingly condemned the decision. To understand why, for today’s newsletter I spoke to Michael Head, a global health researcher at the University of Southampton. That’s after the headlines.Five big stories

    Israel-Gaza war | Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said his security cabinet had approved a plan to take over Gaza City after the prime minister earlier said Israel planned to take full control of the Palestinian territory. The decision early on Friday marks another escalation of Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Follow developments live

    Ukraine | Volodymyr Zelenskyy said ahead of an expected meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that Europe must participate in the peace process between Ukraine and Russia. As the Kremlin refused a three-way meeting with Zelenskyy and Trump, the Ukrainian president said: “Ukraine is not afraid of meetings and expects the same brave approach from the Russian side.”

    Economy | The chancellor and prime minister will begin to foreshadow tax rises and reforms from September to prepare the country for a difficult budget that could be held in November, the Guardian has been told. A rise in gambling levies – advocated by Gordon Brown – is thought to be near-guaranteed as part of the package of tax rises.

    UK news | Amnesty International has warned the Met police against arresting participants protesting this Saturday in London in support of Palestine Action.

    Labour | The UK homelessness minister, Rushanara Ali, resigned after it emerged she evicted tenants from her east London property before increasing the rent by almost £700 a month.
    In depth: ‘The mRNA vaccines saved about 20 million lives’View image in fullscreenThe first thing to understand is that mRNA vaccines work differently from traditional ones. The latter generally introduce a weakened or inactivated part of a virus to train the immune system to recognise and fight it in the future; whereas mRNA vaccines use a molecule that tells our cells how to make a viral protein, which triggers the body’s immune responses.This technology is a scientific gamechanger, to the extent the researchers behind it won the Nobel prize in 2023. But since rising to prominence during the Covid pandemic, mRNA vaccines have been dogged by misinformation (this analysis by my colleague Nicola Davis is well worth a read.)Michael Head tells me that mRNA technology offers a very effective and adaptable approach to developing vaccines. “It’s often described as plug-and-play because you can adapt constituents of the vaccine with, for example, the latest Covid variant.”For something like a flu vaccine, researchers need to incubate the virus and grow it, which takes weeks, Head explains. “That’s fine to an extent when it comes to producing an annual vaccine like we do for seasonal influenza, but the advantage to mRNA technology is that it can be updated so quickly that it allows us to produce new vaccines or update existing vaccines quicker, which can hopefully then reduce the threat of whatever infectious disease is present.”This is crucial during a pandemic such as Covid. “The mRNA vaccines saved about 20 million lives globally in the first year of their rollout,” Head says.Why is Kennedy doing this?Kennedy once described mRNA Covid vaccines as “the deadliest vaccine ever made”. On Wednesday, he justified the health agency’s decision to terminate research by claiming that data shows mRNA vaccines “fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like Covid and flu”.Kennedy offered no scientific evidence to support this – and Head said Kennedy has been spreading vaccine misinformation for years. “He has on at least one or two occasions compared vaccines to being like the Holocaust, a common anti-vaccine trope.”He has also recently falsely claimed vaccines such as the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jab contain “aborted foetus debris”; ordered a sweeping new study on the long-debunked link between vaccines and autism; and dismissed a panel of government vaccine experts, replacing them with his own appointees – who then voted to ban a longstanding vaccine preservative that has been a frequent target of the anti-vaccine movement despite its strong safety record.Kennedy claims he is shutting down research on mRNA vaccines and instead shifting funding to “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate”, and that mRNA vaccines “encourage new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics”.It’s just not true, though. Head says variants actually tend to emerge in the absence of vaccinations, and in people with long-term infections – often those who are immunocompromised and can’t get over the virus quickly. That gives the virus more chances to multiply and mutate.“Vaccines reduce the risk of transmission and infection,” Head says, which means fewer opportunities for the virus to mutate. “So vaccines will have a protective effect against new variants emerging, rather than as Kennedy suggests.”What impact will this have?The question of the next pandemic is not if, but when. History shows pandemics happen, Head says, pointing to the 1918 flu pandemic, swine flu, Sars, and of course Covid.Head says this is especially true in our era of globalisation and human encroachment into new environments. “If you create enough opportunities, a new virus will enter human beings. There might be a scenario where it runs out of control like we saw with Covid. Or, it might be a bit more like Sars, where we were able to get it under control within a couple of months.“But again, globalisation and the mixing of people and animals makes things more challenging. And so a pandemic will happen at some point. We just don’t know when.”Technologies like mRNA vaccines, then, are vital. Head added that the potential applications go far beyond infectious disease.“There’s quite promising research on skin cancer and the potential for this technology to be applied across different areas of health,” Head says. That is another reason Kennedy’s decision is so damaging, he adds.One of Head’s research areas focuses on how funding decisions impact science such as cancer research. “It’s very early days, but we are starting to see a slightly alarming picture. It’ll be very hard for the rest of the world to fill the cancer research gaps that the US is likely to leave.”Is this a worrying time for the scientific community?There is no way to sugarcoat it; this is a particularly alarming moment for scientists. The World Health Organization coined the term “infodemic” during the pandemic to describe the overwhelming amount of misinformation that spreads during a public health crisis, Head says. Even before Covid, in 2019 the WHO listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 global health threats.“I have huge concerns that if a pandemic happened again tomorrow, whether populations in the UK, US, and around the world would trust public health decision making that would be vital to mitigate the impacts of any new pandemic. So the role of misinformation is significant and it can be very severe,” Head warned.“It does not help that some of the most powerful people, like US president Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr, are making poor quality comments on vaccination because that does have an impact on population level decision making.”Some of Head’s research has looked into vaccine uptake in Ghana during the pandemic. The study found that political views played a big role in whether someone agreed to receive a Covid vaccine.“​​The government was saying, go and get vaccinated, please, but there was a fair amount of anti-government sentiment at the time. And hesitancy was greater if you voted for the opposition and therefore trusted the government messaging less. So there are lessons to be learned on who delivers the messaging to get your vaccine, and how to address that lack of trust in governance,” Head said.For now, the world holds its breath … and hopes no one sneezes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhat else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

    Patrick Barkham’s piece about the recent hopeful surge of some wildlife is both a joyous celebration of animals’ resilience and a call for us to give them a helping hand. Lucinda Everett, newsletters

    I love this ranking of Daniel Day-Lewis films, and to learn that the triple Oscar winner has retired from acting, and returned twice. Aamna

    We asked our readers to share the strangest things they’ve found in a new home, and they didn’t disappoint. Forgotten placenta, anyone? Lucinda

    This story by my colleague Mark Townsend is extraordinary: it pieces together, using intelligence reports and witness testimony, how the RSF paramilitary began a massacre described as “genocidal” in Zamzam refugee camp. Aamna

    Daniel Boffey examines how David Lammy is wooing JD Vance, from inviting the US vice-president to pray with him, to shedding tears over his memoir. Lucinda
    SportView image in fullscreenTennis | Ahead of the Cincinnati Open, Emma Raducanu told Tumaini Carayol in an exclusive interview that she believes her new coaching partnership with Francisco Roig can help to take her game to the next level.Football | Liverpool have agreed a fee of £46.3m plus add-ons with Al-Hilal for Darwin Núñez. The Uruguay international is expected to complete a move to the Saudi Pro League once personal terms have been finalised.Cricket | The leader of the Tech Titans consortium that has bought 49% of London Spirit believes the Hundred will become a multibillion-dollar competition to rival the Indian Premier League.The front pagesView image in fullscreenThe Guardian print edition reports “Netanyahu defies warnings over taking military control of all Gaza”. “Minister resigns over rental ‘hypocrisy” – that’s the Telegraph while the i paper expands on that: “UK’s minister for homelessness quits after she’s caught ejecting tenants and hiking rent”. “Minister for hypocrisy is forced to quit” the Mail delights. “Single-sex spaces ‘off limits to trans women’” says the Times. “Weight loss pill ‘on NHS’” and “Pill for weight loss on NHS” – the Mirror and Express both says it’s a possibility. Deep breath needed before reading the FT’s headline aloud: “BoE lowers rates but tight vote forces investors to rein in bets on more cuts”. “He’s our brave little miracle” reports the Metro, about a lifesaving “world-first operation” on a little boy.Something for the weekendOur critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right nowView image in fullscreenMusicAmaarae: Black Star | ★★★★☆Weaving elements of house, trance and EDM into Afrobeats rhythms and spiky rap cadences, the Ghanaian-American singer’s slick take on a club record is deliriously in love with wealth, celebrity and all the power it affords. But there is a difference between Amaarae and the other stars fixated on such topics: for her, glamour is a side quest and love is the motive. Shaad D’SouzaTVLucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt? | ★★★★★
    Neonatal nurse Lucy Letby became, in tabloid parlance, “Britain’s worst child serial killer” when she was convicted in 2023 of seven murders and seven attempted murders of infants in her care. This brilliantly cogent documentary, which forces sentiment aside and unpacks the science and statistics around the most contested pieces of evidence, covers more ground more meticulously in an hour than any documentary I’ve seen in recent years, and perhaps ever. Lucy ManganFilmThe Kingdom | ★★★★☆
    Lesia, a moody 15-year-old, is sent to her mob boss father’s luxurious and fortified family compound , and she is thrilled when she quickly becomes lieutenant. There are fierce and overwhelmingly authentic performances from first-time actors in Julien Colonna’s intensely atmospheric, absorbing and exciting drama. Peter BradshawGamesTime Flies | ★★★★☆
    This perception-warping bug puzzler reimagines the inevitably short lifespan of a housefly as an absurd tragedy – by providing the soon-to-perish pest with a bucket list. Over the course of roughly a minute, players buzz around minimalist 2D environments trying to make those last wishes come true. By blending this thinky thesis with playful mechanics, it supplies a lighthearted canvas for players to engage with existentialism for an hour or two. Sarah ThwaitesToday in FocusView image in fullscreenInside China’s fast-fashion factories as a US trade war loomsThe Guardian’s senior China correspondent, Amy Hawkins, visits factories threatened by US tariffs in Guangzhou, south China, as the deadline for a US-China trade agreement approaches with no deal yet in sight.Cartoon of the day | Martin RowsonView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenLynx – shy wild cats no bigger than a Labrador – became extinct in Britain 1,300 years ago thanks to hunting and habitat loss. But a paper published in the Journal of Environmental Management says the animals could thrive in Northumberland’s Kielder Forest area. The paper found that releasing 20 lynx over several years would eventually create a healthy population of about 50 animals, bringing benefits like helping to curb the overpopulation of deer in woodlands. According to the researchers, Kielder Forest is the only area of England and Wales with enough woodland for lynx to thrive. But thankfully locals are keen on the plan, with 72% of people in the project area supporting reintroduction.Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

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