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    US election 2024 primaries: follow live results

    View image in fullscreenFive states – Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio – are holding their presidential nominating contests on Tuesday, with Florida holding only a Republican primary. Donald Trump and Joe Biden expect to sail to victory in their respective parties, growing their delegate counts in a march toward this summer’s conventions, where they will officially secure their parties’ nomination.Here are the live results from the five presidential primaries.Republican delegatesDemocratic delegatesRepublican resultsDemocratic resultsWho’s runningView image in fullscreenDonald TrumpThe former US president’s campaign to retake the White House and once again grab his party’s nomination got off to a slow start that was widely mocked. But after decisive wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, his campaign has steadily moved into a position of dominance.Trump declined to attend any of the Republican debates, has used his court appearances and many legal woes as a rallying cry to mobilize his base, and has run a surprisingly well-organized campaign. His extremist rhetoric, especially around his plans for a second term and the targeting of his political enemies, has sparked widespread fears over the threat to American democracy that his candidacy represents.His political style during the campaign has not shifted from his previous runs in 2016 and 2020 and, if anything, has become more extreme. Many see this as a result of his political and legal fates becoming entwined, with a return to the Oval Office being seen as Trump’s best chance of nixing his legal problems.View image in fullscreenJoe BidenBiden is the likely Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election. He announced his campaign for re-election on 25 April 2023, exactly four years after he announced his previous, successful presidential campaign. While approval for the president remains low, hovering just above 40%, political experts say he is the most likely candidate to defeat Trump. Biden has served in politics for more than five decades and is running on a platform that includes abortion rights, gun reform and healthcare. At 81, he is the oldest president in US history.View image in fullscreenMarianne WilliamsonFailed 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson dropped out of the race last month before then resurrecting her long-shot campaign after the Michigan primary. Williamson, an author of self-help books, launched her bid with campaign promises to address climate change and student loan debt. She previously worked as “spiritual leader” of a Michigan Unity church.View image in fullscreenJason PalmerJason Palmer is a Democratic candidate who was only on the ballot in American Samoa and some other US territories. He won the primary in America Samoa after donating $500,000 to his own campaign. Palmer is a Baltimore resident who has worked for various businesses and non-profits, often on issues involving technology and education. More

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    Marianne Williamson ‘un-suspends’ campaign after Michigan primary

    The self-help author Marianne Williamson “un-suspended” her quixotic, all-but-certainly doomed campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, saying she did so because Joe Biden could not defeat Donald Trump, who she called a “fascist” and a “juggernaut of dark, dark vision”.“I am un-suspending my campaign for the presidency of the United States,” Williamson said, in a social media video the morning after a Michigan primary in which despite having suspended her campaign she finished third, way behind Biden and “uncommitted” but slightly ahead of the Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips, another rank outsider.“I had suspended it because I was losing the horse race,” Williamson said, though she is still clearly losing the horse race. “But something so much more important than the horse race is at stake here. And we must respond.“Right now we have a fascist standing at the door. Everybody’s all upset about it. Well, we should be upset about it. But we’re not going to defeat the fascist by, well, by what? What is President Biden offering? He says, ‘Let’s finish the job.’ Well, I hope you realise we’re talking about millions of voters [who] can’t even survive unless they work two or three jobs.”Williamson, who also ran in 2020, had suspended her campaign on 7 February, after failing to make an impact in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.“I hope future candidates will take what works for them, drinking from the well of information we prepared,” she said. “My team and I brought to the table some great ideas, and I will take pleasure when I see them live on in campaigns and candidates yet to be created.”She changed her mind after Michigan. Citing economic difficulties faced by many Americans including medical debt and an insufficient minimum wage, she also quoted a bygone Republican president Abraham Lincoln.“We the people basically don’t own this country right now. Abraham Lincoln said that people who died in the civil war for the union had died so that a government of the people, by the people and for the people would not perish from the earth. It’s perishing now on our watch.”Promising to end “government of the corporations by the corporations”, and to achieve an “economic U-turn”, Williamson said America needed a response to Trump’s “dark vision” better than that offered by Biden.“We need to say to the American people, ‘We see your pain.’ And we need to say to Donald Trump, ‘We see your BS.’ Let’s do this. Thanks so much. Spread the word.”The campaign now moves on to 5 March, Super Tuesday, when 16 states and one territory will vote. The territory, American Samoa, may offer Williamson hope, given that in 2020 it was the sole prize claimed by Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor whose campaign also went nowhere fast.Still, in national polling averages, Williamson lags about 70 points behind Biden. More

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    Biden wins South Carolina Democratic primary for presidential nomination

    President Joe Biden has again won the South Carolina presidential primary, his first formal primary win of the election season.Amid low voter turnout, the Associated Press projected that Biden also won all 55 of the state’s Democratic delegates. Another seven delegates are pledged by party leaders and elected officials, such as South Carolina’s lone Democratic congressman, Jim Clyburn. Neither Dean Phillips, the congressman from Minnesota, nor author Marianne Williamson received at least 15% of the statewide vote or 15% of the vote in any congressional district, the threshold necessary to win delegates.The president sent out a statement shortly after the results were called in his favor, specifically highlighting Black voters, who comprise 26% of state residents and a significant portion of the Democratic voting base in South Carolina.“As I said four years ago, this campaign is for everyone who has been knocked down, counted out and left behind. That is still true today. With more than 14m new jobs and a record 24 straight months – two years – of the unemployment rate under 4%, including a record low unemployment rate for Black Americans, we are leaving no one behind,” he said.“In 2020, it was the voters of South Carolina who proved the pundits wrong, breathed new life into our campaign, and set us on the path to winning the Presidency.“Now in 2024, the people of South Carolina have spoken again and I have no doubt that you have set us on the path to winning the Presidency again – and making Donald Trump a loser – again.Biden continued: “When I was elected president, I said the days of the backbone of the Democratic party being at the back of the line were over. That was a promise made and a promise kept. Now, you are first in the nation.”The Democratic National Committee changed the national election calendar last year to designate South Carolina as the first official contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, taking the privilege away from the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Biden did not participate in the New Hampshire primary, which state Democratic officials held over the objections of the national committee.Marvin Pendarvis, a Democratic state representative from North Charleston, said the primary was important, regardless of turnout.“Everyone probably wondered why was it so important that we got turnout, even when we knew that Joe Biden was going to win South Carolina. It’s because we are first in the nation. It’s because we want to maintain that status going into 2028. And it is big for our party to be able to showcase why South Carolina was chosen to be first: because we are representative of the Democratic party, not only in our diversity of values, but also how we look and how we come together as Democrats.“We’re the ones that spearheaded Joe Biden to get into office in 2020,” Pendarvis added. “We’ll do it again in 2024.”South Carolina’s primaries are open, allowing any registered voter to participate, though voters much choose only one primary – Democratic or Republican – to vote in. Of South Carolina’s 3.3 million registered voters, about 13% participated in the 2016 Democratic primary, which was won overwhelmingly by Hillary Clinton, while 16% voted in the 2020 primary that separated Biden from the pack.South Carolina’s Republicans go to the polls on 24 February, when former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley faces former president Donald Trump.Biden’s statement ended on a warning about the upcoming contest: “The stakes in this election could not be higher. There are extreme and dangerous voices at work in the country – led by Donald Trump – who are determined to divide our nation and take us backward. We cannot let that happen. We’ve come a long way these past four years – with America now having the strongest economy in the world and among the lowest inflation of any major economy. Let’s keep pushing forward. Let’s finish what we started – together.” More

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    South Carolina Democratic primary 2024: track live results

    The South Carolina Democratic primary took place on 3 February, and was chosen by the Democratic National Committee as the first election contest in the 2024 election year. Joe Biden is the clear frontrunner in the primary and hopes to recapture the enthusiasm that launched his campaign in 2020.The polls closed at 7pm.Who’s runningJoe BidenBiden is the likely Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election. He announced his campaign for re-election on 25 April 2023, exactly four years after he announced his previous, successful presidential campaign. While approval for the president remains low, hovering just above 40%, political experts say he is the most likely candidate to defeat Donald Trump, who is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. Biden has served in politics for over five decades and is running on a platform that includes abortion rights, gun reform and healthcare. At 81, he is the oldest president in US history.Dean PhillipsDean Phillips, a three-term Democratic congressman from Minnesota, is challenging Biden, saying the next generation should have the opportunity to lead the country. Phillips is the heir to a distilling company and once co-owned a gelato company. He entered public office spurred by fighting back against Trump.Marianne WilliamsonFailed 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, who also unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the US House of Representatives in 2014, became the first Democratic candidate to announce she was running for president as a challenge to Biden. Williamson, an author of self-help books, launched her long-shot bid with campaign promises to address climate change and student loan debt. She previously worked as “spiritual leader” of a Michigan Unity church. More

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    Trump v Biden increasingly likely but Haley undaunted: key takeaways from New Hampshire primary

    The New Hampshire primary, even with its history of unpredictability and freethinking independents, produced a familiar result on Tuesday: Donald Trump v Joe Biden.After months of heavy campaigning in the state, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley came in second place in the Republican primary. Securing a double-digit win over Haley, Trump nabbed his second decisive victory after the Iowa caucuses a week before.In the Democratic primary, Joe Biden’s name wasn’t on the ballot after the Democratic National Committee decided to have their first primary in South Carolina in early February. But New Hampshire decided to go ahead with the Democratic primary anyway, and Biden handily won through write-in votes, although the DNC has said that no delegates will be awarded based on the results.The dynamics of the New Hampshire primary, which marked the second voting event of the 2024 election season, also held some insights for the high-stakes general election in November. Here are five things you need to know.1. The independent vote couldn’t topple Trump, but it should still make him nervousNew Hampshire is known for its independent voting bloc – which comprises 40% of the electorate. This group has helped numerous presidential candidates rise to the top in past elections, or at least remain competitive. Haley was hoping Republican-leaning independent voters would respond to her tempered messaging, in which she pitched herself as a younger, fresher face and antidote to both Trump and Biden.Although independent voters were not able to lift Haley to victory, their support for her could create a problem down the road for Trump. According to an NBC News exit poll, Haley won 73% of Republican primary voters who described themselves as moderate. If Trump wants to defeat Biden in November, he will need to sway some of those moderate Republicans, and Haley’s strong performance with that voting bloc indicates the former president has much more work to do to win their support.2. Haley remains undaunted after two bruising lossesDespite her third-place finish in Iowa and her double-digit loss in New Hampshire, Haley still insists that she will continue on in the Republican primary. As she addressed supporters in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, Haley expressed optimism about her home state of South Carolina, which will hold its Republican primary on 24 February.“New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation,” Haley said. “This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go, and the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina.”But polls show Haley trailing far behind Trump in South Carolina, so it remains unclear how the state might shake the fundamental dynamics of the race.3. Biden avoided embarrassment with some help from his campaign and surrogatesBecause of the strange circumstances of the Democratic primary, Biden’s name was not on the ballot, though the names of long-shot candidates Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson were. There was some concern that Biden’s decision not to run in New Hampshire could provide an opening for a candidate like Phillips, who tried to present himself as more electable than the sitting president.But in the end, Biden cruised to an easy victory thanks to the help of a write-in campaign led by his most loyal supporters and promoted by surrogates like Congressman Ro Khanna of California, who traveled to New Hampshire over the weekend.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion4. Republicans and Democrats appear ready to turn their attention to the general electionNew Hampshire provided further evidence that the 2024 general election in November will indeed be a rematch between Biden and Trump, and members of both parties indicated on Tuesday that they are ready to move past the primary.“While we work toward November 2024, one thing is increasingly clear today,” Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, said on Tuesday. “Donald Trump is headed straight into a general election matchup where he’ll face the only person to have ever beaten him at the ballot box: Joe Biden.”With more and more Republican lawmakers lining up to endorse Trump, the former president’s allies called on Haley to withdraw from the race to allow the party to focus on defeating Biden in November.Taylor Budowich, CEO of the pro-Trump Super PAC Make America Great Again Inc, said on Tuesday: “It’s time for unity, it’s time to take the fight to the Democrats, and for Nikki Haley: it’s time to drop out.”5. Trump’s election lie was not as popular in New Hampshire as it was in IowaDuring the Iowa caucuses, a clear majority of Republican voters said they believe that Trump won the 2020 election, despite all evidence supporting a fair Biden win. In New Hampshire, early exit polling and interviews showed that there was more of an even split among Republicans in that state who believe the false claims about widespread election fraud in the 2020 election and those who do not.As Haley voter Patricia Hemenway told the Guardian on Tuesday: “I will have to say the January 6 thing was absolutely revolting to me.”Nevertheless, Trump leaned into the big lie in his victory speech on Tuesday. “We won in 2016. And if you really remember, if you want to play it straight, we also won in 2020, by more,” he said. “And we did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016.” More

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    Democratic long-shot candidates to debate in New Hampshire – without Biden

    The lonely political vigil of long-shot Democratic presidential candidates Marianne Williamson and Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips will be transformed on to the debate stage early next month in New Hampshire – without Joe Biden, who is neither on the state ballot nor agreeable to any debate interaction with competitors.The debate between self-help author Williamson and Phillips is set to be held at the New England College on 8 January, and moderated by Josh McElveen, former political director of radio station WMUR, two weeks before the state holds its primary.Biden elected to skip the New Hampshire primary after a spat between state election officials and the Democratic National Committee, after the DNC opted to move South Carolina to the top of the primary calendar. New Hampshire, which has held its primary first for more than a century, pushed ahead anyway.Like the Republican candidates who have been debating without their frontrunning candidate, Donald Trump, the mission is something of a death watch, lest either the Democrat or the Republican frontrunner fail to make it to next year’s presidential vote, and as a symbolic marker of the widespread dissatisfaction with both candidates.Williamson is polling at 12% and Philips at 4%, according to a Quinnipiac University poll published last month. Another puts Phillips at 17% and Williamson at 6%.Williamson said in a statement to the Hill that her expectations of the debate were that “it will be substantive and my definition of success is that I blow it out of the park”.Last week, Phillips quoted a poll that found 60% of New Hampshire voters didn’t want Biden to stand. “His approvals are cratering to historic lows,” he posted on X. “The DNC is ignoring reality, deluding Democrats, suppressing competition, and handing 2024 to the GOP.”Both participants will have 90 seconds for opening and closing statements and one minute for answers, the Hill reported. If a candidate invokes the other, they will be given 30 seconds to respond. More

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    Marianne Williamson: ‘You don’t even know what misogyny is until you’ve been a woman running for president’

    A penthouse-gym in north-west Washington DC served as a campaign stage for the long-shot Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson last week. Athleisure-clad political consultants came and went, as if typecast from a political TV drama. The Washington monument poked between buildings in the distance.Williamson is far from an average political candidate, even in the modern era of American politics where it often feels much of what was once unthinkable has become a scary new normal. She is not a politician, but instead an author and wellness guru, whose quixotic first tilt at the White House four years ago was far from successful but saw her grace the Democratic debates and score a viral hit with her message to Donald Trump that she would “harness love” to defeat him.This time around, Williamson is running a tougher, more grounded campaign – treading the turf as a political outsider appalled at how America’s political elites have ignored the needs of its ordinary people.The chances that Williamson will become Democratic nominee for president next year are very slim. But there’s no doubt that her message has the power to resonate, particularly among the young and with women, and with those who feel America’s current travails cut deep and are being ignored.“I’ve had a 40-year-career working with people whose lives are in trouble. When I started that was the exception, not the rule. The work I did then was an adequate response to the suffering I saw in front of me, but now there seems to be a ubiquitous wave of people’s lives falling apart.”Williamson is also increasingly clear on some of the traditional barriers she faces. Williamson, 70, is just the second woman – the first being Republican Nikki Haley – to have thrown her name into the 2024 presidential nomination contest ring. Both have received a seemingly reflexive push-back from their respective parties and some quarters of the media.Sexist? Quite possibly.“An obelisk is much more than a phallus,” Williamson said at her event, observing the monument beyond. And then more directly: “You don’t even know what misogyny is until you’ve been a woman running for president.”But Williamson was less interested in symbols of power than her political agenda. She’s never held public office, though she ran unsuccessfully for California’s 33rd congressional district in 2014, and for the Democratic party nomination in 2019, endorsing Bernie Sanders after dropping out the following year.Among her platform positions is an increase in the minimum wage, reparations for racial injustice, a more muscular response to climate change, comprehensive educational reforms and the creation of a US Department of Peace. She talks of “soulless hyper-capitalism” which she sees as the fundamental affliction of an America run by a government “of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations”.Now she’s doggedly upgrading her old messaging about personal growth and universal love, attempting to dig a channel from new age enlightenment to political power, and to turn around what she sees as an economic, environmental and social crisis engulfing America.“I’m socio-economically well-travelled,” she said. “And my experience has had to do with the endurance and transformation of chaos. I’m interested in the principles of truth, and the realization that America is out of control. America is in chaos.”The liberal, Jewish ex-lounge singer from Texas arrived in Los Angeles in the 1980s and began to gather the stars – Madonna, Michael, Liz and Warren – and Hollywood power brokers of the era around self-healing psychotherapy and applied her energy to the Aids crisis.She set up in New York, giving a talk once a month on a Course of Miracles. Her career took off via Oprah Winfrey, and she became known as the TV star’s “spiritual adviser”. A book publishing empire followed. Almost all her titles applied “love” to whatever the title subject at hand.After her first run for the party nomination in 2020 she moved to Washington, which she describes as a walled city, not a bubble. She’d recently gotten out to visit East Palestine, Ohio, after the toxic train derailment turned the sleepy burgh into a byword for chemical disaster at the hands of a big corporation.“The economically oppressed in this country are being oppressed by the same forces, whether on the left or the right. The real divide is not left and right, that’s a veil of illusion, it’s between those who are suffering and those who don’t seem to have a clue. It’s about millions of people living with chronic economic insecurity,” she said.There’s little sign that those actually arranging Democrat political power have much time for Williamson, and they have fenced her out. But she is not put off, touring the country and doing campaign stops.“Why would I capitulate? I’m a 70-year-old woman. I’m not part of that system. I’m not coming from that place of do what they tell you and you might get on that committee or get to run in 2028,” she said.“There’s such a fear of Donald Trump, they assume the best way to go is with Joe Biden. I disagree. You have to be in complete denial to think that status quo, transactional politics are going to be enough to defeat the energy that he [Trump] represents.“People are blinded by their fear of him,” Williamson continued. “They think if they attack him enough people will change their minds. But this a man who said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and supporters wouldn’t care, and I think that’s probably true.“You’ll beat him by offering the American people a better deal, and agenda for genuine economic reform, an economic U-turn.”Integral to that, she said, would be a 21st-century economic bill of rights – universal healthcare, free tuition, free childcare, paid family leave, guaranteed housing, a livable wage and sick pay.Last week, Williamson also announced plans for a Department of Children and Youth, arguing that children, because they have no economic agency and no vote, are “systematically neglected”.“Public policy in America sets children up to fail. Our children are the biggest collateral damage from hyper-capitalism. So I would place a tremendous focus on children, and create a massive transformation of resources. I want every school to be a center of learning, culture and arts.”Students go to school in fear of gun violence, a situation she says that will exacerbate mental health issues in the future. The current debate, she says, doesn’t begin to address the issue. “It’s a sophomoric question, is it cultural or is it guns? It’s both. It’s gun safety laws and the glamorization of violence that people make money off.“Our food policies are violent, our climate policies are violent, our justice policies are violent, our economic policies are violent. The violence perpetrated against women on TV blows my mind – and the emotional violence on social media. We’ve sexualized violence, and we will have a violent society until we chose to become non-violent.”But her message of love and equity could be marred by other reports of the author behind the scenes. Shortly after she announced her run, Politico ran an article claiming she had episodes of “foaming, spitting, uncontrollable rage” during her 2020 White House run. Williamson later called the accusations a “hit piece”.“I raised my voice in the office. They said I threw a phone but I’ve never thrown a phone at anyone. If people feel I’ve been disrespectful to them, of course, I’m very sorry,” she says.Some also detect a political hand. Williamson has claimed the Democratic National Committee is “rigging” the party’s primaries in favor of Biden by ruling out a debate – “candidate suppression if a form of voter suppression,” she says – and the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, responded to questions about Williamson’s candidacy with jokes about auras and crystal balls.“Of course they call me an unserious candidate because they don’t want to be called to the carpet for being so unserious about the things that matter most,” she hit back.“Of course they would see me and those like me as dangerous, because from the perch they’re on I am dangerous.”Politicians love to talk, but none possibly as much as Oprah-trained spiritual gurus turned politicians. And Williamson is now on a tear. Over the past month, 38 videos have gleaned 4m views and more than 600,000 “likes” on Gen-Z popular TikTok.But this may be where Williamson likes to be – firing salvoes, getting her voice out there, offering the damned salvation, slipping on occasion into what sounds like life-coaching.And after the traumatic four-year experiment of allowing a political outsider from the far right to enter the walled city of US politics without knowledge of or care to learn how the levers of political power operate, resistance to another outsider on a political quest is unquestionably elevated.“I can see that it would be an extremely difficult job, and I can’t imagine that it would be fun every day,” Williamson says of the prospect of the presidency.“I would simply try to be as good a person as I can be. I’m not claiming to be what I’m not. I’m running for president, not sainthood. I am a decent woman who has, I feel, some insights about this country and some insights about what is happening that could be of value.” More

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    Quirky, kooky, a joke … but why is Marianne Williamson so popular with the young?

    Marianne Williamson is taking over TikTokMarianne Williamson, the self-help author who is making her second bid for the presidency, has a history of saying things that can be characterized as either “deranged” or “quirky” depending on how charitable you’re feeling. Some of her greatest hits include: Tweeting that the “power of the mind” might have changed the course of Hurricane Dorian and stopped it from hitting the US in 2019. (She later deleted the tweet.) Publishing a book in 1992 called A Return to Love where she said that “cancer and Aids and other physical illnesses are physical manifestations of a psychic scream … sickness is an illusion and does not actually exist.” (She’s since said that she’s pro-medicine and pro-science.) Saying that she would “harness love” to defeat Donald Trump during her closing statement at the Democratic presidential debate in 2019. We all know how that one worked out.Unsurprisingly, Williamson’s presidential campaign isn’t being taken remotely seriously by the media or the White House. The Biden administration has laughed off any idea that she’s a proper contender – when the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, was asked about Williamson’s political aspirations in March she joked about not having “a crystal ball”.It’s certainly easy to make fun of Williamson but, while she’s said a lot of questionable things, it’s wrong to dismiss the author as a joke. When she’s not talking about the “power of the mind” Williamson has a lot to say about institutional inequality, the need for universal healthcare, the problems with capitalism, the importance of cancelling student debt, and the complacency of the Democratic establishment. And guess what? An awful lot of young people are listening. Williamson’s very left-leaning videos draw millions of views on TikTok and her speeches often go viral.“If engagement on TikTok is any indication, a Democratic presidential primary held today among people under 50 would result in a landslide for the bestselling author now making her second bid for the nomination,” the Intercept recently noted. And it’s not just TikTok where Williamson is popular: the Intercept further notes that “a recent poll found Williamson hovering above 20% with voters under 30”. Which is a lot better than she was doing in 2020 and is pretty impressive when you consider what a political outsider she is.Then again, of course, it’s the very fact that Williamson is a political outsider that makes her so popular among young people. Williamson has an energy and urgency that is severely lacking in the Democratic party. And she’s not shy about calling the Democrats out for their complacency.Even without a crystal ball, I think we all know that Williamson has zero chance of being in the White House – and I’m certainly not advocating that she should be. But wouldn’t it be nice if the White House adopted some of her energy and a few of her ideas about structural reform? Williamson’s popularity on TikTok isn’t some insignificant online phenomenon – it’s a sign of how disillusioned young people feel with the current system. Establishment Democrats have long preached incrementalism as the only way to move forwards but, when it comes to things like women’s rights, we only seem to be moving backwards. Marianne Williamson isn’t the answer to America’s woes but her TikTok popularity should have the Democrats asking a lot of questions.Half of women have dense breast tissue that doesn’t show up on mammograms“Dense breast tissue is simply tissue that is thicker and glandular, hasn’t turned into fat over time, and it puts women at an automatic four times higher risk of cancer,” Elizabeth L Silver writes. If you have dense breast tissue then a mammogram alone will have a hard time detecting cancer – you need additional screenings such as an ultrasound or MRI. “Yet the decision to supplement a mammogram with this additional screening is, shockingly, one of the largest controversies in women’s health,” Silver explains. “[T]he question has essentially been left to the patient, who knows little about it.”Trump lawyer asks E Jean Carroll why she didn’t scream for help during assault“Women who come forward, one of the reasons they don’t come forward is because they’re always asked, ‘why didn’t you scream?’” Carroll retorted. “He raped me whether I screamed or not.” As Amanda Marcotte writes, Trump’s entire defense in the E Jean Carroll rape trial seems to rest on shameless misogyny.Ghosted is not romantic – it’s a walking red flagChris Evans and Ana de Armas star in a new action-romance called Ghosted with some dire reviews and misogynistic tropes. “What’s sold as a love story, based on following your heart, presents us instead an entitled man who won’t take no for an answer,” Jess Bacon writes in the Guardian. “Sadly, this is nothing new.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNude landlord no excuse for holding back rent, rules German courtA Frankfurt court found “the usability of the rented property was not impaired by the plaintiff sunning himself naked in the courtyard”.At the CEO level, women finally outnumber men named JohnHowever, there are 60 James/Robert/John CEOs compared with 41 women, according to Bloomberg.Thai conservatives vow to legalise sex toys in bid to shake up electionIt is currently illegal to sell sex toys in Thailand although that obviously doesn’t stop it happening. Now the country’s Democratic party wants to change that, arguing that they’re missing out on lots of taxes. They also came up with some social benefits for legalization: “Sex toys are useful because they could lead to a decrease in prostitution as well as divorce due to a mismatch of sexual libido, and sex-related crimes.” Not sure that vibrators are going to stop sex-related crime, but it’s certainly a creative argument.Voluptuous mermaid statue causes outrage in southern Italy“It looks like a mermaid with two silicone breasts and, above all, a huge arse never seen before on a mermaid,” one critic complained. “At least not any I know.”The week in parrotarchyVideo phone calls are for the birds. Or, to be more specific: the parrots. A new study has found that parrots that are allowed to make video calls to other birds seem to become less lonely. Now we just need to get them on Twitter. More