US Politics

The city is responding with ‘strategized resistance’ as masked men roam the streets carrying out immigration raids at traffic stops, supermarkets and courthousesAny Lucia López Belloza will not be home for Christmas. The 19-year-old freshman was on a business scholarship at Babson College near Boston, when she decided to take a surprise flight home to Austin, Texas, to spend Thanksgiving with her parents and sisters.Just before she boarded her flight at Logan airport on 20 November, she was arrested by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and within 48 hours was deported back to Honduras, a country she left aged seven seeking asylum, with chains on her waist, ankles and wrists. Continue reading… More

From the Super Bowl to UFC cards to the US Open to the Ryder Cup, the US president has turned sport into his own personal stage. There’s more to comeConsidering he’s the self-declared hardest working president to ever hold the office, Donald Trump has spent a remarkable amount of the past year on down time. In 2025, he loomed over sports like no American politician before him, his visits to stadiums and arenas and golf courses and race tracks so frequent they began to feel like part of the job. But if Trump’s presence on the sporting scene has seemed hard to escape, gird yourselves for 2026, when the American presidency no longer merely intersects with sport but threatens to subsume it. The World Cup is on the way, the Olympics are right behind it, a UFC card is coming to the White House lawn (not a joke) and the commander-in-chief’s well-documented fondness for jumbotrons is becoming less of a habit than a dependency.Trump’s grand tour sportif began less than three weeks after his second inauguration, when he become the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl. One week later he was at the Daytona 500, where Air Force One buzzed the speedway on arrival before his armored limousine, “The Beast”, paced the field for a couple of ceremonial laps. Continue reading… More

The surprisingly strong growth ‘reflected increases in consumer spending, exports and government spending’, according to officials. Key US politics stories from Tuesday 23 DecemberThe US economy surged over the summer, the commerce department announced on Tuesday, with gross domestic product (GDP) – a broad measure of the value of goods and services – rising at an annualized rate of 4.3% over the third quarter, far higher than expected and its fastest rate in two years.The report comes as polls show Americans have soured on Donald Trump’s handling of the economy and his tariffs. The supreme court is currently weighing legal challenges to those levies. Continue reading… More

In a 6-3 decision, the high court sided with a lower court ruling that blocked deployment of troops to the Illinois cityThe US supreme court refused on Tuesday to let Donald Trump send national guard troops to the Chicago area, in an important reining-in of the US president’s efforts to expand the use of the military for domestic purposes in historic moves against a growing number of Democratic-led jurisdictions.The nation’s highest court denied the US justice department’s request to lift a judge’s order in October that has blocked the deployment of hundreds of national guard personnel in a legal challenge brought by Illinois state officials and local leaders, who had opposed any federalization of those troops to offer backup to immigration enforcement. Continue reading… More

Files also include details about Epstein’s relationship with Larry Summers and apparently fake letter to Larry NassarA newly released batch of the so-called Epstein files on Tuesday includes many references to Donald Trump, including a claim by a senior US attorney that the US president was on a flight in the 1990s with the now-deceased convicted child sex offender and a 20-year-old woman.There is no indication of whether the woman was a victim of any crime, and being included in the files does not indicate any criminal wrongdoing. Continue reading… More

This live blog is now closed. For the latest news on the Epstein files, read our full report:Newly released Epstein files include references to Donald TrumpIn another released email exchange from November 2001, Ghislaine Maxwell appears to be organizing an instructor for Epstein who “has to be female youngish and attractive otherwise he will lose interest rapidly”.Maxwell emails someone called “Gibby”, saying: “JE is looking for an exercise instructor to work out with. He is looking for someone who can tone, flex and stretch.” “I am counting on you,” she adds.He likes, well you know what he likes. Continue reading… More

A Drag Queen Christmas, featuring artists from RuPaul’s Drag Race, will stop in Pensacola despite the state attorney general’s efforts to stop itA drag queen Christmas tour has become an annual holiday tradition in Florida – and in recent years, so has the ensuing backlash.Now in its 11th year, A Drag Queen Christmas, featuring performers from RuPaul’s Drag Race, will stop in the Florida Panhandle city of Pensacola on Tuesday night, despite state officials’ best efforts to cancel the show for what they claim is an “anti-Christian” performance at a city-owned theater. Continue reading… More

The very same immigrants welcomed to the US after risking their lives to fight the Taliban now fear detention or worseAli was 25 and a pilot for the Afghan air force, just like his father before him; he arrived at the special mission wing 777 airbase in Kabul around 11am one day in August 2021.The moment he stepped through the gates, he sensed something was wrong. Continue reading… More