Taylor Rehmet’s win adds to Democrats’ record of overperforming in special elections so far this cycle
Democrat Taylor Rehmet won a special election for the Texas state senate on Saturday, flipping a reliably Republican district that Donald Trump won by 17 points when he clinched a second presidency in 2024.
Rehmet, a labor union leader and veteran, easily defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss, a conservative activist, in the Fort Worth-area district. With almost all votes counted, Rehmet had a comfortable lead of more than 14 percentage points.
ICE’s killing of Renee Good has revealed how the state will only defend those who uphold a white racial order. A 1915 film points to the origins of this social pact
In the hours after the 7 January fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mother of three, gut-wrenching footage of her killing was released, discrediting initial claims from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the Department of Justice that she was shot in self-defense. As a response to the public outcry, the Trump administration and a chorus of conservative public figures unleashed a litany of dehumanizing and defamatory remarks about Good, a beloved wife, neighbor and dental assistant, in ways that were unduly callous.
The Fox News host Jesse Watters derided Good’s queer identity, and mocked her as a “self-proclaimed poet from Colorado with pronouns in her bio”. The homeland security secretary Kristi Noem vilified Good as a domestic terrorist who “weaponized” her vehicle in an attempt to run over officers – a patently false comment. Laura Loomer, a personal adviser to the president, posted to social media, “She deserved it … I’m shocked her lesbian girlfriend wasn’t shot with her.” JD Vance lobbed the biting accusation that the victim was “a deranged leftist”, before adding that “it’s a tragedy of her own making”. Donald Trump justified the shooting, telling reporters that “at a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement”. And on 17 January, the justice department announced a criminal investigation into claims tying her grieving widow, Becca Good, to unnamed “activist groups” (six federal prosecutors resigned in objection to the investigation).
Move is dramatic departure for advisory group under Kirk Milhoan, who says he doesn’t like the term ‘established science’
All vaccine recommendations are being reconsidered by the US’s vaccines committee, according to its top adviser, who in recent interviews slammed vaccination requirements for attending school and said vaccines should be taken on the advice of an individual’s doctor.
The stance from Kirk Milhoan, chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), represents a dramatic departure for the group tasked with making US vaccine recommendations for decades, signaling an increasingly hostile approach from the Trump administration to routine vaccines.
Country is already suffering acute fuel shortage; experts say complete cutoff will be ‘catastrophic’ to its infrastructure
It’s just gone midday on Linea, one of the main roads through Havana’s Vedado neighbourhood, and Javier Peña and Ysil Ribas have been waiting since 6am outside a petrol station. They’re passing the time fixing a leak on Ribas’s 1955 gold and white Mercury.
A tanker has pulled up on the forecourt in front of them, and so the queue behind is growing fast. Although this station only takes US dollars, at a cost far out of reach of most Cubans, Peña says it’s their only choice. “There is no gas in the national pesos,” he says, shrugging.
In Trump’s first term, activists focused on lobbying and voting. Now tactics are shifting to nonviolent civil disobedience
On 24 January, Alex Pretti was killed by federal agents while he was helping another civilian in Minneapolis who had been knocked to the ground – just weeks after an ICE agent killed Renee Good. In response to this second killing of a Minnesotan, demonstrations spread across the United States to protest the Trump administration and its ultra-violent immigration enforcement tactics.
Minneapolis has been in a state of sustained protest. Its general strike on 23 January mobilized tens of thousands of Minnesotans to participate in an economic blackout and march in the streets. Solidarity protests, strikes and marches also took place across the country, including the Free America Walkout, which involved more than 900 local actions across all 50 states on the anniversary of Donald Trump’s second inauguration.
Networks created after police killed George Floyd were reactivated to challenge Trump’s mass deportation policy
Cory never expected he’d spend hours each day driving around after immigration agents, videotaping their moves. The south Minneapolis resident is “not the type of person to do this”, he said.
The dangers of what he’s doing, even after the killings of two observers, largely stay out of his mind when he’s watching Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents – even when he’s gotten hit with pepper spray. In quieter moments, it occurs to him that agents likely know where he lives. Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old whom agents killed while he was filming them, “100% could have been me”, Cory said.
App endured a major outage and user backlash over perceived censorship. Now it’s facing an inquiry by the California governor and an ascendant competitor
A little more than one week ago, TikTok stepped on to US shores as a naturalized citizen. Ever since, the video app has been fighting for its life.
TikTok’s calamitous emigration began on 22 January when its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, finalized a deal to sell the app to a group of US investors, among them the business software giant Oracle. The app’s time under Chinese ownership had been marked by a meteoric ascent to more than a billion users, which left incumbents such as Instagram looking like the next Myspace. But TikTok’s short new life in the US has been less than auspicious.
Tranche of government-held files filled with ‘ham-fisted redactions’ and expose survivors’ identities, say attorneys
Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation have reacted to the voluminous – and possibly last – tranche of government-held investigative documents with calls for further accountability for the scheme’s alleged clients.
“It is without question that a significant piece of Epstein and [his convicted associate Ghislaine] Maxwell’s vast sex trafficking operation was to provide young women and girls to other wealthy and powerful individuals,” said Sigrid McCawley, a partner with Boies Schiller Flexner, a firm representing survivors of the scheme.
About 20 countries including G7 states in talks on rare earths including calls for US to guarantee minimum price
Ministers from the US, EU, UK, Japan, Australia and New Zealand will meet in Washington this week to discuss a strategic alliance over critical minerals.
The summit is being seen as a step to repair transatlantic ties fractured by a year of conflict with Donald Trump and pave the way for other alliances to help countries de-risk from China, including one centred on steel.
In the final part of this series, we look at how infighting has ripped the left apart online while the right has flourished – and how some progressives are turning the tide
Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London
There is politics before the internet, and politics after the internet. Liberals are floundering, the right are flourishing, and what of the left? Well, it’s in a dire state. This is despite the fact that the key political problems of the last decade – rising inequality and a cost of living crisis – are problems leftists claim they can solve. The trouble is, reactionaries and rightwingers steal their thunder online, quickly spreading messaging that blames scapegoats for structural problems. One reason for this is that platforms originally built to connect us with friends and followers now funnel us content designed to provoke emotional engagement.
Back when Twitter was still the “town square” and Facebook a humble “social network”, progressives had an advantage: from the Arab spring to Occupy Wall Street, voices excluded from mainstream media and politics could leverage online social networks and turn them into real-life ones, which at their most potent became street-level protests that toppled regimes and held capitalism to account. It seemed as though the scattered masses would become a networked collective empowered to rise up against the powerful.
Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London
Late singer said kids loved his personality and wanted to touch and hug him, and ‘sometimes it got me into trouble’
As Michael Jackson saw it, children would become enamored with his personality as well as want to touch and hug him – and “sometimes it [got] me into trouble,” the late US pop superstar says in previously unheard audio recordings contained in a new documentary.
The UK’s Wonderhood Studios included the recordings of Jackson voicing those thoughts for a new four-episode documentary series beginning on Wednesday that explores his acquittal on child sexual abuse charges after a 14-week criminal trial near Los Angeles in 2005.
The Doomsday Clock is ticking ever more loudly as arms-control mechanisms fail and leaders become more reckless. The time to be alarmed is now
Keir Starmer’s tentative pivot to the Dragon Throne has played well in Beijing, though not in Trumpland. That’s partly because, like other needy western leaders, Britain’s prime minister did not dwell on awkward subjects such as human rights abuses, the Jimmy Lai travesty, spying and Taiwan. But in talks with President Xi Jinping, one vital issue was avoided altogether and should not have been: China’s dangerous, unexplained, secretive and rapid buildup of nuclear weapons.
More than the climate crisis, global hunger, Kaiser Trump’s Prussian militarism and the ever prevalent threat of pandemic disease, the uncontrolled proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is the most immediate, existential threat to humanity. Last week, the Doomsday Clock advanced to 85 seconds to midnight – closer to Armageddon than ever before. “Nuclear and other global risks are escalating fast and in unprecedented ways,” warned the clock-watchers, via the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Brandon Johnson gives police ‘clear procedure’ to follow if they witness or get reports of agents involved in illegal activity
Chicago’s mayor Brandon Johnson has ordered Chicago police to investigate and document alleged illegal activity by federal immigration (ICE) agents in the city, a move that will escalate tensions over jurisdiction between local and federal authorities.
The executive order, titled ICE on Notice, gives Chicago police “clear procedure” to follow if they witness or receive reports of ICE agents involved in illegal activity and refer evidence of potential violations to city prosecutors.
Same judge previously ordered pair not removed from US, after preschooler detained with father on 20 January
A US judge has ordered the release of a five-year-old boy and his father from a Texas detention center by Tuesday after they were taken into custody by immigration agents in Minneapolis earlier this month.
Liam Conejo Ramos, an Ecuadorian boy, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis on 20 January after returning from school with his father. Images of the Minnesota preschooler wearing a bunny hat and a plaid coat went viral online, sparking outrage across the country after claims that the child, who was on the driveway of his home during the arrest, was used as bait to try to arrest his mother inside the house.
Alfredo Mancillas was reportedly slumped in vehicle and ‘covered in vomit’ when state troopers found him in St Paul
A US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employee was recently arrested amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota after state troopers reportedly found him “covered in vomit” and unconscious in a car.
Alfredo Mancillas Jr, 31, faces charges of drunken driving after his arrest early Tuesday morning, jail records show.
Less than two weeks before convicted abuser was found dead, lawyers met with Manhattan federal prosecutors
Less than two weeks before Jeffrey Epstein’s death in jail, his lawyers and Manhattan federal prosecutors met and discussed his potential cooperation, several documents within a cache of newly released investigative files state.
“On July 29, 2019, FBI and [prosecutors] met with Epstein’s attorneys, who, in very general terms, discussed the possibility of a resolution of the case, and the possibility of the defendant’s cooperation,” an FBI document titled “Epstein Investigation Summary & Timeline” stated.
US president says Iran ‘negotiating’ as US naval battle group approaches, and says regional allies cannot be told plan
Donald Trump has said Iran is “talking to” the US and hinted at a deal to avoid the use of military strikes.
“[Iran is] talking to us, and we’ll see if we can do something, otherwise we’ll see what happens … We have a big fleet heading out there,” he told Fox News. “They are negotiating.”
Louisiana governor says the shooting in Clinton is ‘absolutely horrific and unacceptable’
Five people, including a six-year-old child, have been wounded in a shooting during a parade in Louisiana, sending people in the crowd fleeing for cover, authorities say.
The shooting occurred shortly after the midday start of the Mardi Gras in the Country parade in Clinton, East Feliciana sheriff Jeff Travis told reporters.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of his royal titles last year, features heavily in the latest tranche of the Epstein files
Keir Starmer has said Andrew Mounbatten-Windsor should testify before the US Congress about his links to the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Journalists asked the prime minister, who is in Japan for a meeting with its PM, Sanae Takaichi, if the former prince should apologise to the disgraced financier’s victims and give evidence about what he knew of his crimes.
Federal immigration operation has resulted in government agents killing two people, sparking weeks of protests
A federal judge has denied a request by Minnesota’s state government to end the federal immigration operation in Minneapolis that has resulted in government agents killing two people, sparking weeks of protests.
The state, along with the cities of Minneapolis and St Paul, had lodged a lawsuit after the death of Renee Good, who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent this month, demanding an end to the Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge in the city.
US president reportedly eyes plot near Memorial Bridge for a large-scale structure named the Independence Arch
Donald Trump reportedly wants the arch he is planning to build in Washington DC to dwarf the Lincoln Memorial.
The US president envision the planned arch to be a height of 250ft, or significantly taller than the 100ft-tall Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. It would also be significantly taller than Paris’s 164ft-tall Arc de Triomphe – but less than half the height than the Gateway Arch in St Louis, Missouri, the world’s tallest arch.
Federal prosecutors had identified 6 million files that were ‘potentially responsive’ to the law, but only released 3.5. Why?
The justice department released a trove of 3.5m files related to the dead financier and pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche declaring that the release would likely be the last major declassification of files relating to Epstein. Federal prosecutors had identified 6 million files that were “potentially responsive” to the law, meaning that there are millions of files that have still not been released.
The release marked a belated and partial compliance with a bill passed by Congress late last year, which had mandated that all government documents pertaining to Epstein and the various law enforcement investigations into his sexual abuse of girls be made public by 19 December 2025.
Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries for environmentalists – and the release of Juan Orlando Hernández has reinforced its ‘crisis of impunity’, say critics
When Donald Trump announced that he would pardon the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, only the second world leader to be convicted of drug trafficking, Anna*, an environmental defender, was shocked.
The Save Act – which would do the opposite of its title – could have a huge impact on the midterm elections
If you are anything like me, then you are currently pickling in your own cortisol. As the US grows increasingly violent, increasingly cruel, every day brings a legion of new horrors. So I’m very sorry to say that I’m here to ruin your weekend by giving you yet another thing to worry about. That thing is called the Save Act and, if the Trump administration gets its way, it could have an oversized impact on the November midterms, particularly when it comes to minorities and married women being able to vote.
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