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      Did National Weather Service cuts lead to the Texas flood disaster? We don’t know | Rebecca Solnit

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      Why exactly so many people drowned in the terrible Independence Day floods that swept through Texas’s Hill Country will probably have multiple explanations that take a while to obtain. But it’s 2025, and people want answers immediately, and lots of people seized on stories blaming the National Weather Service (NWS).There were two opposing reasons to blame this vital government service. For local and state authorities, blaming a branch of the federal government was a way of avoiding culpability themselves. And for a whole lot of people who deplore the Trump/Doge cuts to federal services, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, the idea that the NWS failed served to underscore how destructive those cuts are.Many of them found confirmation in a New York Times story that ran with the sub-headline: “Some experts say staff shortages might have complicated forecasters’ ability to coordinate responses with local emergency management officials.” Might have is not did. Complicated is not failed. It’s a speculative piece easily mistaken for a report, and its opening sentence is: “Crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall inundated parts of Central Texas on Friday morning, prompting some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose.”A casual reader could come away thinking that staffing shortages had had consequences. But if you give the airily innuendo-packed sentence more attention, you might want to ask who exactly the anonymous experts were and whether there’s an answer to their questions. Did it actually make it harder, and did they actually manage to do this thing even though it was harder, or not? Did they coordinate with local emergency managers?The piece continues: “The staffing shortages suggested a separate problem, those former officials said,” and “suggested” sounds like we’re getting an interpretation of what these anonymous sources think might have happened or been likely to happen, rather than what actually did. Suggestions are not facts. Likelihoods are not actualities. Eventually we get to a named source: “A spokeswoman for the National Weather Service, Erica Grow Cei, did not answer questions from The New York Times about the Texas vacancies, including how long those positions had been open and whether those vacancies had contributed to the damage caused by the flooding.”In other words, there’s no answer to the suggestions and questions and intimations. Nevertheless, a lot of readers gathered the impression that this was not speculation aired by unnamed experts but confirmation that the NWS had failed. One prominent public figure with three quarters of a million BlueSky followers shared the New York Times piece with this note: “The United States government is no longer able to protect us from real hazards, such as flash floods, because it’s shifting funds to fake hazards, such as a non-existent immigrant crime wave.”If you read down a couple of dozen paragraphs in this New York Times piece, you get to the former NWS director of Congressional Affairs saying “that the local Weather Service offices appeared to have sent out the correct warnings. He said the challenge was getting people to receive those warnings, and then take action.” Nevertheless, the idea the NWS failed became so widespread that Wired magazine published a report specifically to counter it: “Some local and state officials have said that insufficient forecasts from the National Weather Service caught the region off guard. That claim has been amplified by pundits across social media, who say that cuts to the NWS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, its parent organization, inevitably led to the failure in Texas.”They link to the pundit with almost a million followers, who had posted on Twitter: “Now TX officials are blaming a faulty forecast by NWS for the deadly impact of a storm.” Those officials are, but why would we believe them? Wired continues: “But meteorologists who spoke to Wired say that the NWS accurately predicted the risk of flooding in Texas and could not have foreseen the extreme severity of the storm.” With that, we’re onto another piece of the picture: the difference between accurately predicting a risk and knowing exactly how severe it will be.Climate change, which some reports mentioned and others did not, is both a contributing factor for specific weather disasters and a reason why the future will not necessarily look like the past. For both fires and floods, the old rules about how fast they’ll move and how big they’ll get have expired. Hotter air holds more moisture, and that can and does lead to more torrential downpours and worse flooding. On the other hand, as local newspaper the Kerrville Daily Times reported, Kerr county has a history of extremely heavy rainfall leading to rapid river rise and devastating floods.The Washington Post had a better assessment of what went right and what went wrong: “But even as weather forecasts began to hint at the potential for heavy rain on Thursday, the response exposed a disconnect: few, including local authorities, prepared for anything but their normal Fourth of July. When the precipitation intensified in the early morning hours Friday, many people failed to receive or respond to flood warnings at riverside campsites and cabins that were known to be in the floodplain.” The county, in this report, did not send its first cell-phone alert until Sunday, while “most cellphone alerts were coming from the National Weather Service’s Austin/San Antonio station. But some alerts about life-threatening flooding didn’t come until the predawn hours, and to areas where cellular reception may have been spotty.”It seems like the National Weather Service did its duty despite the cuts, but more are coming. Fossil Free Memo reports: “Just days before the flood, Texas Senator Ted Cruz helped pass the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, a sweeping fossil fuel giveaway that also slashed $200 million from Noaa’s weather forecasting and public alert programs. The money was meant to improve early warnings for exactly the kind of fast-moving, deadly flooding that just hit his own state. The cuts weren’t in the House version. Cruz added them in the Senate, behind closed doors, as chair of the committee that oversees Noaa.” The impact of cuts to vital services is going to degrade everyday life and add to the dangers we face, and as far as politicians like Ted Cruz are concerned, that’s the plan. It will be important to connect cause and effect, when there is a connection.The desire to have an explanation, and the desire for that explanation to be tidy and aligned with one’s politics, easily becomes a willingness to accept what fits. But knowing we don’t know, knowing the answers are not yet in, or there are multiple causes, being careful even with the sources that tell us what we want to hear: all this equipment to survive the information onslaughts of this moment. We all need to be careful about how we get information and reach conclusions – both the practical information about climate catastrophes and weather disasters and the journalism that reports on it. Both the weather and the news require vigilance.

      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Deadly floods could be new normal as Trump guts federal agencies, experts warn

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      The deadly Texas floods could signal a new norm in the US, as Donald Trump and his allies dismantle crucial federal agencies that help states prepare and respond to extreme weather and other hazards, experts warn.More than 100 are dead and dozens more remain missing after flash floods in the parched area known as Texas Hill Country swept away entire holiday camps and homes on Friday night – in what appears to have been another unremarkable storm that stalled before dumping huge quantities of rain over a short period of time, a phenomena that has becoming increasingly common as the planet warms.It remains unclear why the early warning system failed to result in the timely evacuation of Camp Mystic, where 700 girls were camped on a known flood plain on the Guadalupe River, but there is mounting concern that the chaos and cuts instigated by Trump and his billionaire donor Elon Musk at the National Weather Service (NWS) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) may have contributed to the death toll.“This is the exact kind of storm that meteorologists, climate scientists, emergency management experts have been talking about and warning about for decades at this point, and there’s absolutely no reason that this won’t happen in other parts of the country. This is what happens when you let climate change run unabated and break apart the emergency management system – without investing in that system at the local and state level,” said Samantha Montano, professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy.“It takes a lot of money, expertise and time to eliminate risk and make sure that agencies are prepared to respond when a flood situation like in Texas happens. And if you eliminate those preparedness efforts, if you fire the people who do that work, then the response will not be effective.”Fema was created in 1979 by Jimmy Carter – precisely because states were struggling to cope with major disasters – and works closely with state and local government agencies to provide resources, coordination, technical expertise, leadership and communication with the public when they cannot cope alone.Upon returning to the White House, Trump immediately began threatening to disband Fema, belittling the agency amid its ongoing efforts to help communities devastated by the Los Angeles wildfires and Hurricane Helene, the category 4 storm that left at least 230 people dead in southern Appalachia.The threats were followed by a pledge to dismantle Fema at the end of the 2025 hurricane season, without offering any clear plan about what would come next. The cuts are part of the administration’s unsubstantiated claims that the states and private enterprises are capable and best positioned to provide most federal services including weather forecasting, scientific research and emergency management.Reports suggest that more than a third of Fema’s permanent full-time workforce has been fired or accepted buyouts, including some of its most experienced and knowledgeable leaders who coordinate disaster responses – which can involve multiple federal agencies for months or years.Emergency management and the weather service work hand in hand. At the NWS, more than 600 people have already been laid off or taken early retirement, leading to offices across storm and flood-prone areas of the US to be short of meteorologists and round-the-clock staffing cover. The agency has also had to scale back routine weather monitoring.Two senior meteorologists at the San Antonio NWS office, which is responsible for forecasting in the Hill Country region, were among the casualties of Musk’s buyouts and layoffs. This included the warning coordination meteorologist, who is usually responsible for liaising with local emergency managers to help translate NWS forecasts into likely impacts that inform local actions such as warnings and evacuation orders.But Trump said it was unlikely the staff cuts to the NWS will be reversed, even in the wake of the Texas floods. “I would think not,” the president said on Sunday about a possible reversal. “This was a thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it. Nobody saw it. Very talented people are there, they didn’t see it.”Accuweather, the popular commercial weather forecasting services, relies on the NWS for much of its foundational meteorological data and forecasts. Fema often steps in to cover emergency accommodation and reconstruction costs for Americans without adequate insurance and/or the means to rebuild.Reports suggest NWS weather balloons, which assess storm risk by measuring wind speed, humidity, temperature and other conditions that satellites may not detect, have been canceled in recent weeks from Nebraska to Florida due to staff shortages. At the busiest time for storm predictions, deadly heatwaves and wildfires, weather service staffing is down by more than 10% and, for the first time in almost half a century, some forecasting offices no longer have 24/7 cover.In May, the NWS office in eastern Kentucky scrambled to cover the overnight forecast as severe storms moved through the region, triggering multiple tornadoes that eventually killed 28 people.Despite such threats, the Republican budget bill signed by Trump last week cuts $150m in funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) to help improve future weather forecasts and also shrinks the amount of money to the National Science Foundation, the premier federal agency supporting basic science and engineering research, by 56% next year.The 2026 budget makes significant cuts to Noaa including terminating the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which in essence could be the end of the efforts to improve warnings for events like the Texas floods, warned Alan Gerard, former head of the Warning Research and Development Division of the Noaa National Severe Storms Laboratory, speaking on DemocracyNow! on Monday.NSF funded research has played a pivotal role in developing early warning systems for all sorts of hazards, but more work is urgently needed to improve local accuracy and community acceptability amid the growing threats due to global heating. There is no other funding source capable of filling this gap.“The Hill Country is a desert area with big rivers which have had historic major floods and that are prone to flash flooding – but like most of rural America do not have gauge systems. Without gauges, the warnings don’t come early enough, and with flash floods every 15 minutes can save lives. This is something we can do better,” said Ryan Thigpen, a flood scientist trying to improve early warning systems in Appalachia .Texas senator Ted Cruz has called for “a better system of warnings to get kids out of harm’s way” in the wake of the disaster, even though he inserted language into the “big beautiful” bill to slash Noaa’s weather forecasting upgrades. Local officials, too, have sought to distract attention away from Trump’s cuts – and their support for his plans – but the lack of leadership at Fema is impossible to ignore especially as Trump plans to visit the area with the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem, on Friday.David Richardson, the acting administrator of Fema, has not traveled to Texas. Richardson, a former US marine with no emergency management experience prior to his appointment in May, is most notable for his warning to agency staff to not oppose Trump’s plan for Fema or “I will run right over you.”“A lot of key people at Fema who worked there for years, decades in many cases, and hold the expertise that is needed to be able to actually move the resources of the agency, are gone. Fema is so depleted, it’s unclear if they are even capable of launching a huge response right now,” said Montano, author of Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis.“It’s not the same level as during [hurricane] Helene but there’s already a lot of inaccurate information out there, and Fema is no longer a trusted voice – we haven’t heard from the administrator, only secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem, which is very unusual. We’re almost at the point where we can say no one’s home at Fema… there is no trusted voice,” Montano added. The turmoil at the federal agencies tasked with predicting and responding to disaster comes as the threat from extreme weather grows due to the human-caused climate crisis. The Texas floods occurred in a warmer, more moisture-laden atmosphere than in the past, with one analysis finding that climate change has made conditions 7% wetter and 1.5C hotter than they would’ve been otherwise.“We have added a lot of carbon to the atmosphere, and that extra carbon traps energy in the climate system,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University. “Because of this extra energy, every weather event we see now carries some influence from climate change. The only question is how big that influence is.”Meanwhile on Monday the White House described the deadly Texas floods as “an act of God”. More

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      Tuesday briefing: Is a ceasefire in Gaza on the table as Netanyahu and Trump meet in Washington?

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      Good morning. The war in Gaza – which began with the horror of the Hamas slaughter and kidnapping of innocent Israelis on 7 October 2023, and has brought unimaginable death and destruction to the civilian population of Gaza almost every day since – has entered its 21st month.So far every attempt to end the conflict has failed. But the the fraying patience of the US president, Donald Trump, who has promised to deliver peace to Gaza, has seen Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu dispatch a team of negotiators to Qatar for indirect talks with Hamas, with the Israeli leader expected to come under pressure on this week’s trip to Washington DC to agree to a ceasefire.Yet despite Trump’s desire to end the war, and Israel and Hamas making positive noises about the prospect of a ceasefire, the two sides are still far apart on a number of crucial negotiating points.Last night, just hours before Netanyahu told Trump at a White House dinner that he had nominated him for the Nobel peace prize, Israel laid out a plan that would force all Palestinians in Gaza into a camp on the ruins of Rafah, in a scheme that legal experts described as “a blueprint for crimes against humanity”.For today’s newsletter, I talked to the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison about the prospects for peace, and what is at stake for everyone involved. First, the headlines.Five big stories

      Immigration | Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are expected to announce plans for French police to do more to block small boats crossing the Channel at a summit in London this week, but a wider deal on returning asylum seekers is still up in the air.

      Iran | The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said in an interview released on Monday that Israel, which last month fought a 12-day war with Iran, had attempted to assassinate him by bombarding an area in which he was holding a meeting.

      Poverty | Children in England are living in “almost Dickensian levels of poverty” where deprivation has become normalised, the children’s commissioner has said, as she insisted the two-child benefit limit must be scrapped.

      Environment | Millions of tonnes of treated sewage sludge is spread on farmland across the UK every year despite containing forever chemicals, microplastics and toxic waste. An investigation by the Guardian and Watershed has identified England’s sludge-spreading hotspots and shown where the practice could be damaging rivers.

      US news | The Texas senator Ted Cruz ensured the Republican spending bill slashed funding for weather forecasting, only to then go on vacation to Greece while his state was hit by deadly flooding – a disaster that critics say was worsened by cuts to meteorology.
      In depth: What a new ceasefire might look like – and the risks if it failsView image in fullscreenA few hours before Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump met yesterday, the latest rounds of indirect ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas in Doha ended without a breakthrough. Despite this, Trump insisted at a dinner with Netanyahu last night that negotiations were “going along very well”.If a new ceasefire is agreed and does come into effect, it will be the third during a war that has claimed the lives of at least 57,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians.The first ceasefire – in November 2023 – lasted just 10 days. The second, in February and March this year, collapsed after Israel reneged on its promise to move to a second phase that could have seen a definitive end to the conflict.In the months since, a new Israeli offensive has claimed the lives of thousands more Palestinians. Extreme hunger is everywhere after an 11-week siege and ongoing tight blockade, with only minimal food and aid allowed in.What are the terms of this new proposed ceasefire?The details of this new deal include the staggered release of 10 living hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas, and the return of the bodies of 18 more, in exchange for a number of Palestinians held in Israeli jails. There would also be more aid entering the area and a phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from some parts of the Gaza Strip.Like the previous ceasefires, it will last for 60 days, with Trump and regional allies guaranteeing Hamas that Israel will engage in “meaningful” talks to bring about a permanent end to the war.The deal would leave 22 hostages, 10 of them believed to be alive, still held in Gaza.How strong is Netanyahu’s position with Trump?Emma Graham-Harrison said that, on paper, Donald Trump has most of the leverage, which he is using to push a reluctant Netanyahu to the negotiating table.Two weeks ago, the world watched as Trump publicly eviscerated Israel for breaking a tentative ceasefire with Iran. He had already forced the Israeli prime minister to turn around fighter jets on their way to Iran – a display of raw power over Israel’s leader that Emma said is “unprecedented”.Since Trump’s F-word outburst, the two allies have once again appeared in lockstep, with the US going on to launch a bombing run in support of Israel against Iran’s nuclear programme, handing Netanyahu a huge political boost.Trump has also backed Netanyahu on a number of other key political issues, calling for corruption charges facing the Israeli prime minister to be dropped and continuing to back his policy for distributing food to Palestinians in Gaza through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), despite hundreds of Palestinians being shot and killed while trying to reach the distribution points.“Netanyahu has made sure that he appears to be taking Trump’s demands for an end to the war seriously; for example sending a team of negotiators to the ceasefire talks in Doha,” said Emma.At last night’s dinner, Trump was upbeat about the prospect of a ceasefire. When the US president was asked about Israel’s reported plans to force all Palestinians in Gaza into a new “humanitarian city” built on the ruins of Rafah, Trump directed Netanyahu to answer the question. In response Netanyahu said he was working with the US on finding countries that will “give Palestinians a better future”.Does Netanyahu really want to end the war?While Netanyahu is aware he needs to appease Trump’s desire to present himself as a peacemaker by announcing a ceasefire, Emma said that Netanyahu’s critics say he has multiple, compelling reasons not to want a lasting end to the war.He is still very much beholden to far-right parties within his coalition government who are vehemently opposed to a ceasefire. National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich have both threatened to leave the government if Netanyahu ends the war.“There are very powerful voices in the Israeli government who are openly on a messianic mission to ethnically cleanse Gaza ,” said Emma.There is also the separate issue of that corruption trial which, even with Trump’s support, he may not be able to avoid if he loses political office.A third reason Netanyahu might want to keep the war going, Emma said, is that it allows him to delay any official examination of how the 7 October attacks happened on his watch. She thinks one possible option is that Netanyahu could attempt a “political fudge”, accepting a ceasefire and appearing to agree to Trump’s plan that it should lead to a permanent end to the war, while telling allies at home that Israel can return to fighting once the 10 hostages are home.What about Hamas?The hostages held by Hamas are the group’s only significant leverage in the talks, said Emma.Militarily, Hamas has been crippled by Israel’s relentless assault and obliteration of its senior leadership, (although Emma pointed out that Hamas is far from eliminated as a fighting force.“Agreeing to give up more hostages in a situation that doesn’t seem to be concretely leading to a permanent end to the war is arguably not that attractive an option for them,” says Emma. “I think their key aim now will be to end the war in a way that preserves some kind of power and influence in Gaza and trying to making sure that some elements of their organisation are still functioning.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhat if the talks fail?The Israeli offensive has reduced most of Gaza to ruins since 2023, displaced almost the entire 2.3 million population, destroyed its healthcare system and killed more than 57,000 people, burying thousands of others under the rubble.The total siege imposed for 11 weeks after the collapse of the last ceasefire has only partly been lifted to allow a small amount of food aid and medical supplies into the territory. Aid workers are saying that fuel stocks are close to running out, which would lead to the “complete collapse” of humanitarian operations, the health system and communications.Amid all the discussions about the ceasefire, the voices of Palestinian people themselves have seldom been heard, so I want to end this newsletter with Lama, a 12-year Palestinian girl who was interviewed by our Gaza correspondent Malak A Tantesh about what is really at stake if peace is not achieved.“I was so happy during the last ceasefire. We felt a bit safe. When the war returned, I cried a lot because it meant going back to the suffering of tents, the summer heat and repeated displacement,” Lama said.When asked about what she was afraid of if the ceasefire talks failed, she told Malak that she was scared of being “torn apart, killed, paralysed or losing a limb”.What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

      If you weren’t tuned in to Australia’s extraordinary “mushroom murders” trial, in which Erin Patterson was found guilty on Monday of deliberately poisoning three relatives, Nino Bucci has a startling breakdown of every twist and turn in the unbelievable tale. Charlie Lindlar, acting deputy editor, newsletters

      Hugh Muir looks back on Ken Livingstone’s speech of defiance and unity that followed the 7/7 London terrorist attacks through the prism of our increasingly divisive politics 20 years on. Annie

      One often hears that we can’t raise taxes on the super-rich or they’ll leave the UK and take their money with them … but is it really true? Lauren Almeida digs into the data in this fascinating piece. Charlie

      Amid the tsunami of Oasis coverage, I loved this piece by Lauren Cochrane on how the band’s fans are having a fashion moment and dusting off their bucket hats and parkas for the reunion tour. Annie

      A compelling piece in the Atlantic (£) from a former New York precinct police chief, Brandon del Pozo, who argues that as ICE agents “rack up arrests on the road to 1 million deportations”, the ghoulish practice of dressing in masks and refusing to identify themselves must end. Charlie
      SportView image in fullscreenTennis | Jannik Sinner was fortunate to advance to the Wimbledon quarter-finals as Grigor Dimitrov was forced to retire through injury when leading by two sets. Novak Djokovic lost the first set in 30 minutes before recovering to beat Alex de Minaur 1-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 and advance. Iga Świątek had a 6-4, 6-1 win over Clara Tauson to set up a quarter-final against 19th-seeded Liudmila Samsonova. The 18-year-old Mirra Andreeva beat Emma Navarro 6-2, 6-3 while Belinda Bencic reached her first Wimbledon quarter-final.Cycling | Tim Merlier took stage three of the Tour de France in Dunkirk after the peloton’s top sprinter and points leader Jasper Philipsen crashed out of the race 60km from the finish.Cricket | Jofra Archer is poised to make his long-awaited comeback in the third Test against India this week, with Brendon McCullum, the England head coach, calling for Lord’s to deliver a pitch that has pace, bounce and sideways movement.The front pagesView image in fullscreenThe Guardian is reporting this morning that “Bosses face ban on non-disclosure deals that silence victims of abuse”. The i paper has “50,000 children will be lifted out of poverty due to rebellion on welfare reforms”. “Trump grants three-week reprieve on return of ‘reciprocal’ trade tariffs” – that’s the Financial Times while the Express takes aim at “‘Hypocrisy’ of Labour’s homes plan”. The Telegraph heralds the French president’s state visit with “No borders between us, King to tell Macron”. “Hand back our £771 million, Mr Macron” says the Daily Mail, tacking “s’il vous plait” on the end in mock courtesy. (A Tory says we’ve paid that money to France without it stopping the boats.) The Times sound more realistic with “PM set to press Macron for ‘one in, one out’ deal”. “Victims’ fury as Epstein probe shut down” – by the “Trump team”, says the Mirror. Top story in the Metro today is “Mushroom murderer targeted me four times”.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenTrump’s big beautiful betrayalEd Pilkington explains the president’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and what it will mean for millions of poorer Americans who voted for him last November.Cartoon of the day | Ben JenningsView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenSometimes it’s the simple things that make all of the difference. Nikki Allen (above) was conditioned to say yes to requests – from a colleague at work, from the PTA, from a friend. But she discovered one night, after distractions kept her from responding to a request for help right away, that urgent queries were not always pressing. “It was the start of a new habit: to stop saying yes on the spot. To pause and think about whether I really want to first,” writes Allen for The one change that worked. “Now, since that night a few years ago, whenever someone asks me to do something … I tell them: ‘Let me check and get back to you.’” It’s a subtle change that has given her more time, energy and autonomy to focus on the things each day that matter much more than other people’s approval.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.

      Quick crossword

      Cryptic crossword

      Wordiply More

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      Trump news at a glance: tariff threats draw muted reaction from Asian allies amid hopes deals can be reached

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      Donald Trump’s new tariff rates of as much as 40% for 14 countries have drawn muted responses from the hardest hit Asian countries who are hoping to renegotiate them before they come into effect next month.Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Kazakhstan and Tunisia were handed the lowest tariff rate of 25% while Laos and Myanmar – both facing high rates of poverty – were hit with the highest at 40%.Trump posted copies of his tariff letters to each of the countries on his social media site and press secretary Karoline Leavitt said more letters would be sent later this week.Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba said some progress had been made on avoiding higher tariffs of up to 35% that Trump had suggested recently, while South Korea’s industry ministry said it planned to intensify US trade talks by 1 August to “reach a mutually beneficial result”.South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said the 30% US tariff rate was unjustified given that 77% of US goods entered South Africa with no tariffs.Here is more on the tariffs and other key US politics news of the day:Trump delays tariff hikes but sets new rates for some countries The US president revealed plans to step up his trade wars on Monday but delayed tariff hikes on goods from key economies until next month, amid widespread confusion over his controversial economic strategy.Trump announced countries including Japan, South Korea and South Africa would face tariffs of up to 40% as part of a fresh wave of levies to kick in on 1 August. No increases will take place on Wednesday, however, after he extended a previous pause.Read the full storyNetanyahu nominates Trump for Nobel prize at meeting set to focus on GazaBenjamin Netanyahu told Donald Trump that he would nominate him for the Nobel peace prize on Monday, as the two leaders met for the first time since the US launched strikes on Iran’s nuclear program as part of a short-lived war between Israel and Iran.Trump was expected to press Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza amid an outcry over the humanitarian cost of an offensive that has led to nearly 60,000 deaths.Read the full storyPregnant doctor denied Covid vaccine sues Trump administrationA pregnant physician who was denied a Covid-19 vaccine is suing the Trump administration alongside a group of leading doctors’ associations, charging that the administration sought to “desensitize the public to anti-vaccine and anti-science rhetoric”, according to their attorney.Read the full storyDeportation protections for people from Honduras and Nicaragua endThe Trump administration has ended temporary protections for people from Honduras and Nicaragua in the latest phase of its effort to expel undocumented people from the US.The Department of Homeland Security announced it would end temporary protected status for an estimated 72,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans in moves that will come into effect in about 60 days. Citizens of the two Central American nations were accorded the status after Hurricane Mitch in 1998, which left 10,000 dead after it ripped through the region.Read the full storyPlanned Parenthood sues over funding cuts in Trump billPlanned Parenthood sued the Trump administration on Monday over a provision in Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill that would strip funding from health centers operated by the reproductive healthcare and abortion provider.In a complaint filed in Boston federal court, Planned Parenthood said the provision was unconstitutional and its clear purpose was to prevent its nearly 600 health centers from receiving Medicaid reimbursements.Read the full storyJeffrey Epstein died by suicide, review confirmsA review of files held by the US government on the financier Jeffrey Epstein has said there is no secret client list to be released, and confirmed his August 2019 death by suicide while in federal custody, both of which contradict conspiracy theories.Read the full storyAnalysis: cruelty is the point at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’After the cruelty, the mockery. As the first detainees were being hauled into Donald Trump’s controversial migrant jail in the inhospitable wetlands of the Florida Everglades last week, his supporters were indulging in some parallel retail therapy.“Surrounded by swamps & pythons, it’s a one-way ticket to regret,” the Florida Republican party’s official X account crowed, hawking its new range of Alligator Alcatraz-themed shirts and hats. “Grab our merch to support tough-on-crime borders! Limited supply – get yours before the gators do!”Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Mexican prosecutors accuse boxer Julio César Chávez Jr of being a henchman for the Sinaloa drugs cartel and say he used his skills to pummel rival gang members “like a punchbag” before his recent arrest in the US.

      Donald Trump has issued his strongest defence to date of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, claiming the far-right leader is the victim of a “witch-hunt” in his home country.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 6 July 2025. More

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      Trump’s big beautiful betrayal – podcast

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      On 4 July – as Americans celebrated their country’s independence – Donald Trump signed into law his sweeping tax and spending bill.Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, as he and fellow Republicans call it, is a sprawling piece of legislation covering everything from tax cuts to border walls to repealing environmental protections, the Guardian US’s chief reporter, Ed Pilkington, explains.But for a president who normally rules by executive order, the act perhaps tells us better than anything so far what he wants to achieve in office. ‘It enshrines what Trump wants to do in his second term,’ says Pilkington.Most controversially, it includes enormous tax breaks for the country’s super-wealthy, while making swingeing cuts to social welfare programmes used by its poor. More than 10 million US citizens are expected to lose access to Medicaid – despite Trump’s continued insistence since coming into office that he would not touch the service.So, asks Michael Safi, why is Trump doing it? And will it cost him the support of the millions of poorer Americans, who came out to vote for him last year? More

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      Pregnant doctor denied Covid-19 vaccine sues Trump administration

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      A pregnant physician who was denied a Covid-19 vaccine is suing the Trump administration alongside a group of leading doctors associations, charging that the administration sought to “desensitize the public to anti-vaccine and anti-science rhetoric”, according to their attorney.The lawsuit specifically takes aim at health secretary Robert F Kennedy’s unilateral decision to recommend against Covid-19 vaccines for pregnant women and healthy children.Kennedy’s announcement circumvented expert scientific review panels and flouted studies showing pregnant women are at heightened risk from the virus, and made it more difficult for some to get the vaccine.“This administration is an existential threat to vaccination in America, and those in charge are only just getting started,” said Richard H Hughes IV, partner at Epstein Becker Green and lead counsel for the plaintiffs in a statement.The American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians and American Public Health Association are among a list of leading physicians associations named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.“If left unchecked, secretary Kennedy will accomplish his goal of ridding the United States of vaccines, which would unleash a wave of preventable harm on our nation’s children,” said Hughes. “The professional associations for pediatricians, internal medicine physicians, infectious disease physicians, high-risk pregnancy physicians, and public health professionals will not stand idly by as our system of prevention is dismantled. This ends now.”In late May, Kennedy announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would no longer recommend Covid-19 vaccines for healthy children or pregnant women. The announcement, made on social media, contradicted a raft of evidence showing pregnant women and infants are at especially high-risk from the disease, including from the administration’s own scientific leaders.In June, Kennedy went further by firing all 17 sitting members of a key vaccine advisory panel to the CDC. The advisory panel is a key link in the vaccine distribution pipeline, helping to develop recommendations insurers use when determining which vaccines to cover.That panel met for the first time in late June. Members announced they would review both the childhood vaccine schedule and any vaccines that had not been formally reviewed in seven years. They also recommended against a long-vilified vaccine preservative, in spite of a lack of evidence of harm.The news comes amid the largest annual measles case count in 33 years, and amid reports of more parents seeking early vaccination for their children, fearing vaccines will go into shortage or no longer be covered by insurance. More

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      US posts highest annual measles case tally in 33 years amid Texas outbreak

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      The annual tally of measles cases in the US is the highest in 33 years, as an ongoing outbreak in west Texas continues to drive cases.The latest figures mean Americans will have to look back to 1992 to find a worse year with the vaccine preventable disease. The official tally very likely undercounts the scope of the outbreak, experts told the Guardian.“When you talk to people on the ground, you get the sense that this outbreak has been severely underestimated,” said Dr Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Confirmed cases appear to be the “tip of a much bigger iceberg”, he said.Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000. However, as the pandemic disrupted routine childhood visits to the doctors and anti-vaccine organizations saw their coffers swell during the pandemic, measles vaccination rates have fallen below a critical threshold to prevent outbreaks in some communities.As of 4 July, Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Outbreak Response Innovation counted 1,277 measles cases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports 1,267 cases, but has not updated its data since 2 July.“The number of new cases has slowed down, but I don’t think there’s any reason to suggest this will be our last,” said Dr Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert and dean for the national school of tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.He later added: “It’s a very dark epidemic that never had to happen.”The latest national tally will eclipse 2019, when unvaccinated members of New York City’s isolated orthodox Jewish community drove a large outbreak, and the nation ended the year with 1,274 confirmed measles cases.Americans will need to look back to 1992 to find a higher annual measles tally. In 1992, the CDC confirmed 2,126 cases, with the largest outbreaks in Kentucky and Texas. Texas has confirmed 753 cases in 2025, according to the state health department, opening up the possibility that Texas could exceed the 1992 annual total as well.The enormous outbreak comes as Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who once ran an influential anti-vaccine group, has injected upheaval into US vaccine policy and spread misinformation about treatments for the disease.Measles is a viral disease characterized by a top-down rash, high fever, runny nose and red, watery eyes. The virus is one of the most infectious diseases known to medicine. There is no cure for measles. The best way to prevent measles is by getting vaccinated with the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR), which is 97% effective with two doses.Although most people recover, as many as one in five infected children require hospitalization; one in 20 get pneumonia and one in 1,000 can develop encephalitis, which can lead to lifelong disability, according to the CDC. The disease can also weaken the host’s immune system and lead to more future infections. In rare cases, measles can cause an incurable degenerative brain disorder. The US has already seen three deaths from measles this year, both in otherwise healthy children.Before a measles vaccine was licensed in 1963, an estimated 3-4 million Americans were sickened each year, 48,000 were hospitalized and an estimated 400-500 died, according to the CDC. From 1994 to 2023 in the US alone, the CDC estimates the measles vaccine saved 85,000 lives and prevented 104m illnesses.Although the vaccine has been wildly successful, it has also been the target of sustained misinformation by people who have a financial stake in reduced vaccine uptake.In 1998, a British doctor hypothesized a link between the MMR and increasing autism rates. The doctor, Andrew Wakefield, was later found to have committed fraud, failed to report conflicts of interest and lost his license. The article was retracted.Reams of science has since examined and re-examined the evidence, and found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Still, the debunked connection has found an afterlife as a talking point for anti-vaccine groups who have attracted a vocal minority of parents. The overwhelming majority of Americans still vaccinate children against measles.Now, alongside longtime anti-vaccine talking points about autism and “medical freedom”, Hotez said a new threat was the, “very pernicious health and wellness and influencer movement that’s got a big profit motive”.Outbreaks appear to be “occurring in the same [parts] of the US that had some of the lowest Covid vaccination rates”, said Hotez, introducing the possibility that anti-vaccine sentiment is “spilling over to childhood immunizations”.In June, Kennedy unilaterally fired all 17 expert members of a CDC advisory panel on vaccines and stacked the committee with seven ideological allies. The advisory committee is a key link in the vaccine distribution pipeline.Among those allies now serving on the committee are medical professionals with fringe beliefs and known anti-vaccines advocates. In June, the group met for the first time, and said it would form a new committee to re-evaluate the childhood vaccine schedule.“We’ve not only eliminated measles, we’ve eliminated the memory of measles,” said Offit. “People don’t remember how sick this virus can make you – or how dead it can make you.” More

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      Is the New York Times trying to wreck Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral bid? | Margaret Sullivan

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      A recent New York Times news story immediately drew fire from readers – and for very good reason.Headlined “Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application,” the article centered on Zohran Mamdani, the candidate for New York City mayor who drew national attention recently with his stunning win in the Democratic primary election.Its gist was that as a high school senior in New York City, Mamdani – who was born in Uganda and is of Indian descent – checked a couple of different boxes about race when applying for admission to Columbia University.So what, you might ask. Why is this even a story, you might also ask.Excellent questions.Whatever its news value, or lack thereof, the story certainly got the attention of one of Mamdani’s rivals – current New York City mayor Eric Adams, who will run in the general election as an independent candidate.Adams, who is Black, called it “deeply offensive” that Mamdani would try to “exploit” an African American identity even though he is not Black.And on Fox News, talkshow hosts used the Times story to trash Mamdani. Charlie Hurt, for one, called the mayoral candidate a racist on Fox & Friends and claimed that Mamdani despises America “and everything that we stand for”.The rightwing cable network was having a field day with Mamdani, a Muslim and social democrat, even before the Times story. President Trump has called him a communist and suggested he should be deported. Other rightwing outlets picked up the story, too, presenting it as a DEI scandal – that Mamdani lied about his race in order to take advantage of the affirmative action admission policy at Columbia. (Making the story even more absurd is the fact that Mamdani didn’t get in.)In print, the would-be scandal got some help from headline writers: “Mamdani Faces Scrutiny Over College Application.”Mamdani has explained that he was trying to communicate his complicated background. His father is Indian Ugandan and his mother is Indian American; Mamdani himself was born in Uganda and lived briefly in South Africa before moving to New York City as a child.“Most college applications don’t have a box for Indian-Ugandans so I checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background,” he told the Times.The Times’s decision to pursue and publish the story was, at the very least, unwise.For one thing, it came to the Times due to a widespread hack into Columbia’s databases, transmitted to the paper through an intermediary who was given anonymity by the paper. That source turns out to be Jordan Lasker, who – as the Guardian has reported – is a well-known and much criticized “eugenicist”, AKA white supremacist.Traditional journalism ethics suggests that when news organizations base a story on hacked or stolen information, there should be an extra high bar of newsworthiness to justify publication. Much of Big Journalism, for example, turned their noses up at insider documents offered to them about JD Vance during last year’s presidential campaign, in part because the source was Iranian hackers; in some cases, they wrote about the hack but not the documents.The Mamdani story, however, fell far short of the newsworthiness bar.A ranking Times editor, Patrick Healy, responded to criticism of the story in a thread on X, justifying it as part of the paper’s mission “to help readers better know and understand top candidates for major offices”.Soledad O’Brien, the prominent media entrepreneur and journalist, called that explanation “a joke”. The publication of the Mamdani story is “an absolute embarrassment” for the Times, charged O’Brien, who herself is of mixed-race ancestry and identifies as Black.Plenty of others agreed, seeing Healy’s explanation not as admirable transparency but as damage control.The incident raises a larger issue: the Times’s apparent opposition to Mamdani’s candidacy.On the opinion side of the paper, there’s little question about that. Even though the Times no longer makes endorsements for mayor, they published an editorial urging voters to avoid ranking Mamdani at all on their ballots because he was so unqualified. (New York City uses ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to list several candidates in order of preference.)Remarkably, the Times stopped short of giving the same “don’t rank him” advice about disgraced governor Andrew Cuomo, who resigned his office in 2021 and then ran for mayor against Mamdani in the primary.The opinion side of the Times is entitled to its opinion, however misguided. But straight news articles, by contrast, aren’t supposed to go to bat for or against candidates. They’re supposed to be neutral and non-partisan, not cheering on one candidate or kneecapping another.In practice, of course, that’s often not the case.With this made-up scandal, combined with the pre-election editorial, the Times looks like it’s on a crusade against Mamdani.And no lofty explanation about the mission can disguise it.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More