US Politics

Other outlets have asked their writers to compromise, but the Guardian has never – and would never – ask me to pull a punchFunded by readers, the Guardian’s fierce independence is guaranteed. Please help us reach our year-end fundraising goal in these final crucial hoursIt might be most generous to characterize the behavior of major US media organizations since 2024 as negotiating between competing incentives.On the one hand, billionaires have consolidated their ownership over major news outlets and platforms. The Murdochs are squabbling over Fox. Jeff Bezos has remade the Washington Post in his own image. The pharmaceutical magnate Patrick Soon-Shiong places a thumb on the scale at the Los Angeles Times, and the Trump-aligned Ellison family has taken over Paramount and CBS, and spent the final weeks of this year making hostile takeover bids for CNN owner Warner Bros. The influence of these billionaire personalities has often reshaped their organizations’ newsrooms and editorial boards, directing investigations and particularly opinion sections towards ownership’s pet projects and preferred policies. Continue reading… More

Filipinos make up a large percentage of the healthcare workforce, which includes undocumented peopleIn the Philippines, she spent three years providing end-of-life care for a family’s grandmother. When the grandmother died, family members told the healthcare worker to arrange her own way to the United States, where they operated home healthcare facilities.In California, they promised, she would have a place to stay and a stable job. They would look after her just as she had cared for their grandmother. Continue reading… More

Trump ratcheted up his questionable claims about the environment and how to deal, if at all, with the threats to itIn the past decade at the forefront of US politics, Donald Trump has unleashed a barrage of unusual, misleading or dubious assertions about the climate crisis, which he most famously called a “hoax”.This year has seen Trump ratchet up his often questionable claims about the environment and how to deal, if at all, with the threats to it. In a year littered with lies and wild declarations, these are the five that stood out as the most startling. Continue reading… More

I’d like to believe that the horrific darkness of this past year is a necessary prelude to a brighter and saner futureAbout a year ago, at the start of the Trump 2.0 regime, a woman was about to pass me on the sidewalk and then stopped, turned toward me and almost shouted: “It’s a fucking nightmare!”It has been a “fucking nightmare”. Continue reading… More

The president has increased the amount of invective he’s spewed against women and people of color Continue reading… More

In today’s newsletter: As Trump’s business and diplomacy fuse, critics warn that his approach risks trading stability – and US democracy – for leverageGood morning. There are two Donald Trumps: the candidate, and the president.Donald Trump the candidate spent much of his campaign presenting himself as a champion of peace, arguing that his opponents had delivered a world of “death and destruction”. He vowed to restore order, promising to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine on his very first day in office. Continue reading… More

Donald Trump says ‘one or two tough’ issues could lead to negotiations breaking down – key US politics stories from 28 December at a glancePresident Donald Trump says Ukraine and Russia are “closer than ever before” to a peace deal, but he acknowledged negotiations could still break down and leave the war dragging on for years.After a two-hour meeting in Florida with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump conceded “one or two tough” issues – over territory and how the war might end – still needed to be resolved, an indication of progress made but no breakthrough. Continue reading… More

Kash Patel claims $250m scheme that stole Covid aid is ‘tip of iceberg’ and alleges state’s Somalia population is to blameThe FBI has deployed additional personnel and investigative resources to Minnesota to “dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programs”, director Kash Patel said on social media on Sunday.The FBI director said the agency had already dismantled a $250m fraud scheme that stole federal food aid meant for vulnerable children during the Covid pandemic in a case that led to 78 indictments and 57 convictions. Continue reading… More