Trump and his top advisers have previously hinted at their willingness to work with acting president Delcy Rodríguez
A year after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, a global survey suggests much of the world believes his nation-first, “Make America Great Again” approach is instead helping to make China great again.
It may well be safer, easier and cheaper for US companies to procure whatever oil the US economy needs at home
There are a few reasons that Donald Trump – now self-anointed acting President of Venezuela, as well as the United States – might be so excited about appropriating Venezuela’s oil.
Trump may be counting on some boost from cheap oil to the US economy: he is obsessed with the price of gas. As the midterm elections approach, he has become concerned about unemployment. Deeply imprinted memories of scarcity during the oil crises of the 1970s may prime his belief that cheap oil cures it all.
Just more than a year after the new luxury behemoth was formed, it announced it had filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy
Every year, the stores down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue dress up their windows at Christmastime. Tourists from all over the world come to gawk at all the glitter, lace, ruffles and bows.
Saks’s Fifth Avenue location, so iconic that it’s embedded in the brand’s name, is usually dressed top to bottom during the holidays. In 2023, the store partnered with Christian Dior to display a giant zodiac calendar. As part of the light show, fireworks were released from the top of the store to the oohs and aahs of spectators.
The EU must be more robust in order to stem the tide of international disorder, or it risks falling to authoritarian imperialism
Donald Trump is threatening to take over Greenland, the territory of a Nato ally, possibly by military force, as Vladimir Putin is trying to take over Ukraine. Even if he doesn’t actually do it, this is a new era: a post-western world of illiberal international disorder.
The task now for liberal democracies in general, and Europe in particular, is twofold: to see this world as it is and to work out what the hell we’re going to do about it.
Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist
Exclusive: US is less feared by its traditional adversaries, while its allies feel ever more distant, results show
A year after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, a global survey suggests much of the world believes his nation-first, “Make America Great Again” approach is instead helping to make China great again.
Donald Trump has at least temporarily pulled back from threats to strike Iran, saying he has been assured the killing of protesters has been halted and no executions are being planned.
Speaking to reporters in the White House on Wednesday night, the US president said: “We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping – it’s stopped – it’s stopping. And there’s no plan for executions, or an execution, or execution – so I’ve been told that on good authority.” He offered no details and said the US had yet to verify the claims.
As I write my last regular column for the Guardian, my thoughts turn to the lessons and hope we can take from history
From Greenland’s icy mountains, from India’s coral strand, as the old hymn has it, we seem to inhabit a world that is more seriously troubled in more places than many can ever remember. In the UK, national morale feels all but shot. Politics commands little faith. Ditto the media. The idea that, as a country, we still have enough in common to carry us through – the idea embedded in Britain’s once potent Churchillian myth – feels increasingly threadbare.
Welcome, in short, to the Britain of the mid-1980s. That Britain often felt like a broken nation in a broken world, very much as Britain often does in the mid-2020s. The breakages were of course very different. And on one important level, misery is the river of the world. But, for those who can still recall them, the 1980s moods of crisis and uncertainty have things in common with those of today.
Whether it’s the financial crash, the climate emergency or the breakdown of the international order, historian Adam Tooze has become the go-to guide to the radical new world we’ve entered
In late January 2025, 10 days after Donald Trump was sworn in for a second time as president of the United States, an economic conference in Brussels brought together several officials from the recently deposed Biden administration for a discussion about the global economy. In Washington, Trump and his wrecking crew were already busy razing every last brick of Joe Biden’s legacy, but in Brussels, the Democratic exiles put on a brave face. They summoned the comforting ghosts of white papers past, intoning old spells like “worker-centered trade policy” and “middle-out bottom-up economics”. They touted their late-term achievements. They even quoted poetry: “We did not go gently into that good night,” Katherine Tai, who served as Biden’s US trade representative, said from the stage. Tai proudly told the audience that before leaving office she and her team had worked hard to complete “a set of supply-chain-resiliency papers, a set of model negotiating texts, and a shipbuilding investigation”.
It was not until 70 minutes into the conversation that a discordant note was sounded, when Adam Tooze joined the panel remotely. Born in London, raised in West Germany, and living now in New York, where he teaches at Columbia, Tooze was for many years a successful but largely unknown academic. A decade ago he was recognised, when he was recognised at all, as an economic historian of Europe. Since 2018, however, when he published Crashed, his “contemporary history” of the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, Tooze has become, in the words of Jonathan Derbyshire, his editor at the Financial Times, “a sort of platonic ideal of the universal intellectual”.
The US I grew up in was built on the rule of law. Now my Indian-born dad is scared ICE will take him from his American care home
As an American of mixed Danish and Indian heritage, who is also a citizen of France and, therefore, of the EU, Donald Trump’s contempt for the rule of law fills me with dread. “I don’t need international law,” he boasted on 7 January in an interview with the New York Times. For Louis XIV, it was “L’état, c’est moi”. For Trump, it’s the “Donroe doctrine”, or “the western hemisphere is mine for whatever profit I and my elite group of loyal courtiers can wring from it”.
At the same time, Trump’s honesty about his intention to use the astonishing military power he wields for unfettered plunder is at least refreshing. No more American pieties to democracy and human rights. The world hasn’t seen this kind of unabashed dedication to amassing wealth since the British East India Company. All hail the new king emperor! Or else.
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Mayor urged calm as protesters gathered on the scene, as city continues to reel in aftermath of Renee Nicole Good’s killing
A federal officer has shot a man in the leg during an enforcement operation in north Minneapolis, sparking protests in a city still on edge after the killing of Renee Nicole Good by a federal agent last week.
The shooting occurred about 7pm local time, according to witnesses. Several hundred protesters gathered at the scene on Wednesday night facing off with agents who blocked off the area and used smoke and other crowd control weapons.
Four astronauts emerge from capsule after Pacific landing, including crew member in ‘stable’ condition
Four astronauts from the International Space Station have returned to Earth a month earlier than planned after one developed a “serious” medical condition onboard the orbiting outpost.
Nasa confirmed the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying the US astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, the Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Oleg Platonov, a Russian cosmonaut, splashed down off the coast of San Diego at 12.41am local time (8.41am UK time).
Image with question ‘Which way, Greenland man?’ is a ‘key concept in neo-Nazi and white supremacist subculture’
The Trump administration has been called out, yet again, for using explicitly white supremacist verbiage in its increasingly aggressive social media strategy.
The White House posted a cartoon to X on Wednesday of two Greenlandic mush teams with three huskies each, pointing towards the choice of the white pillars and the South Lawn or a tempestuous scene by the Great Wall of China and Red Square in Russia.
NGOs estimate that there are still close to 1,000 political prisoners in Venezuela despite claims by new leaders
Venezuela’s acting president has claimed that the regime’s release of political prisoners sent a “very clear message” that the country was “opening up to a new political moment”, days after the seizure and rendition of the dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Delcy Rodríguez also vowed to continue the releases and accused NGOs that have described the process as slow and opaque of “lying to the world and trying to sell falsehoods about Venezuela”.
The state department cites welfare use as it pauses visa processing for Brazil, Iran, Russia, Somalia and others
The Donald Trump administration has indefinitely suspended immigrant visa processing for people from 75 countries, marking one of its most expansive efforts yet to restrict legal pathways to the United States.
The freeze, which takes effect on 21 January, targets applicants officials deem likely to become a “public charge” – who they describe as people who may rely on government benefits for basic needs.
Talks fail to solve ‘fundamental disagreement’ over Arctic island controlled by Copenhagen
Donald Trump reiterated on Wednesday that the US needs Greenland and that Denmark cannot be relied upon to protect the island, even as he said that “something will work out” with respect to the future governance of the Danish overseas territory.
The remarks, which came after a high-stakes meeting between US, Danish and Greenlandic officials, indicate that fundamental differences remain between how Washington, Copenhagen and Nuuk see the political future of the island.
AI tool made by Elon Musk’s xAI makes it easy to harass women with deepfake images, says state’s top attorney
California authorities have announced an investigation into the output of Elon Musk’s Grok.
The state’s top attorney said Grok, an AI tool and image generator made by Musk’s company xAI, appears to be making it easy to harass women and girls with deepfake images on X and elsewhere online.
Musk attempts to recast AI tool’s misuse. Plus, tech billionaires plot against a proposed California tax on their fortunes
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor for the Guardian. Today, we discuss Elon Musk’s rosy depiction of Grok’s image generation controversy; the seven-figure panic among Silicon Valley billionaires over a proposed wealth tax in California, though with one notable exception; and how AI and robotics have revitalized the Consumer Electronics Showcase.
Under a tax proposal that could be put to voters this November, any California resident worth more than $1bn would have to pay a one-off, 5% tax on their assets to help cover education, food assistance and healthcare programs in the state.
Several Silicon Valley figures have already threatened to leave California and take their business elsewhere. But Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, whose net worth is nearly $159bn, told Bloomberg Television this week that he is “perfectly fine with it”.
Funding to end immediately for up to 2,800 grantees of US agency that serves thousands seeking help and in recovery
The Trump administration on Tuesday evening unexpectedly canceled up to $1.9bn in funding for substance use and mental health care, which providers say will immediately affect thousands of patients.
“It feels like Armageddon for everyone who’s on the frontlines of the addiction and mental health space,” said Ryan Hampton, founder of Mobilize Recovery, a national advocacy organization for people in and seeking recovery.
Republicans in the Senate defeat Venezuelan war powers resolution that would have prevented president from taking further military action without giving Congress notice
Donald Trump repeated his threat to withhold federal funding to sanctuary cities on Truth Social today.
“ALL THEY DO IS BREED CRIME AND VIOLENCE! If States want them, they will have to pay for them!,” the president wrote in a post.
A line has been crossed, and it’s vital to understand that. A system that sends paramilitaries on to the streets will observe no limits
A few years ago, towards the end of the second Obama administration, a friend and her wife flew back to New York from a holiday in Mexico, landing for a connecting flight in South Carolina. At immigration, the officer looked from one to the other, asked their relation to one another and on receiving the reply, made a noise of disgust – “ugh”. On the pretext that American citizens can’t go through the same lane as a spouse on a green card (not true), he sent them to the back of the line, causing them to miss their connection. But that’s not the point of the story.
My friend is a white Australian who is generally conflict-averse; her wife is a Japanese-American who can stop traffic with a single, hard stare, and who teaches in the South Bronx, where many of her students have been harassed by law enforcement since the day they were born. As trouble got under way, my friend kicked off like a good’un, swearing and muttering sarcastically in the Australian style, while her wife shot her desperate, angry looks. Shut up. Shut Up. SHUT UP.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
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The House oversight committee will move to hold Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress, its Republican chair James Comer said on Wednesday, after the former first lady joined her husband Bill Clinton in refusing to comply with a subpoena for testimony regarding the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The announcement came a day after the Clintons said they would not honor subpoenas from the investigative panel to discuss Epstein, a former friend of the ex-president, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
UK government claims vindication after Keir Starmer criticised earlier decision to keep functionality as ‘horrific’
The UK government has claimed “vindication” after Elon Musk’s X announced it had stopped its AI-powered Grok feature from editing pictures of real people to show them in revealing clothes such as bikinis, including for premium subscribers.
After a fortnight of public outcry at the tool embedded into X being used to create sexualised images of women and children, the company said it would “geoblock” the ability of users “to generate images of real people in bikinis, underwear, and similar attire via the Grok account and in Grok in X”, in countries where it was illegal.
Sam Levinson’s hit HBO drama series returns in April with Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi returning
The first trailer for the third season of Euphoria promises more sex, drugs and violence, teasing a troubled life after high school for the show’s characters.
Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Hunter Schafer and Jacob Elordi are among those returning for episodes four years in the making. The new season will take place five years after the characters were last seen.
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