We’re supposed to be used to this by now, but getting used to it is dangerous. Her colleagues should have spoken up

Catherine Lucey, who covers the White House for Bloomberg News, was doing what reporters are supposed to do: asking germane questions.

Her query to Donald Trump a few days ago during a “gaggle” aboard Air Force One was reasonable as it had to do with the release of the Epstein files, certainly a subject of great public interest. Why had Trump been stonewalling, she asked, “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files”.

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

Exclusive: Senior officials indicated favorability toward Paramount Skydance acquiring Warner Bros Discovery

Senior White House officials have discussed internally their preference for Paramount Skydance to acquire Warner Bros Discovery in recent weeks, and one official has discussed potential programming changes at CNN with Larry Ellison, the largest shareholder of Paramount.

The discussions, according to people familiar with the matter, come as Paramount portrays itself as the best bid for Warner Bros Discovery, after the company announced last month it was open to offers, because it would have an easier time getting through regulatory review.

With a platform focused on cost of living, Aftyn Behn wants to turn the US House seat blue for the first time since 1983

Republicans have controlled Tennessee’s seventh congressional district for four decades. The party finished about 21 points ahead of the Democrats when the seat was last contested, alongside Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election last November.

Twelve months on, that lead has narrowed dramatically, according to opinion polls – and a challenger is attempting to build a “coalition of the pissed off” to overturn it altogether.

After Republicans were trounced in this month’s votes, the administration has launched a slapdash, ill-conceived campaign

When running for president last year, Donald Trump wooed and wowed voters by vowing to reduce prices “starting on day one”. But once he was inaugurated, he seemed to pay precious little attention to prices and affordability.

All that changed, however, when inflation-weary voters thrashed Trump and the GOP on election day this month – within days, the Trump administration launched a slapdash effort to focus on affordability. Unfortunately, the campaign is a hot mess: a pile of absurdity, contradictions, magical thinking, scapegoating and good ol’ Trumpian dishonesty, with Trump repeatedly blaring that “prices are down”.

Motown star denies allegations, in addition to four existing sets of allegations against him

Two more former employees of the soul music star Smokey Robinson, both male and female, have alleged he sexually assaulted them, which he denies.

Robinson is already facing similar allegations from four other former employees, who filed a joint lawsuit in May. This week, lawyers for the accusers filed a motion to have two further accusers added to the lawsuit, both anonymously.

Study finds rising seas could flood facilities handling waste, sewage, and oil and gas – and coastal states most at risk

More than 5,500 toxic sites nationwide could face coastal flooding by 2100 due to rising sea levels, according to new research.

The study, published on Thursday in Nature Communications and led by scientists at the University of California, warns that if heat-trapping pollution continues unabated, rising seas will flood a wide range of hazardous facilities including those handling sewage, toxic waste, oil and gas, as well as other industrial pollutants.

Fallout from increased emissions linked to president’s ‘America First’ policies expected to most affect those in poor, hot countries

This article is co-published with ProPublica, a non-profit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.

New advances in environmental science are providing a detailed understanding of the human cost of the Trump administration’s approach to climate.

President has previously criticised the New York City mayor-elect, labelling him a ‘communist’ and threatening to deport him

Donald Trump has confirmed a long-awaited meeting with New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will happen in Washington this week, setting up an in-person clash between the political opposites who for months have antagonised each other.

The sit-down, which Trump said on social media would take place on Friday in the Oval Office, could possibly represent a detente of sorts between the Republican president and Democratic rising star.

True to his irreverent style, author of The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) thanks his psychiatrist, his gastrointestinal doctors and his drug dealers

Rabih Alameddine has won the National book award for fiction for The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), a darkly comic saga spanning six decades in the life of a Lebanese family.

The novel, which traverses a sprawling history of Lebanon including its civil war and economic collapse, is told through the eyes of its titular protagonist: a gay 63-year-old philosophy teacher confronting his past and his relationship with his mother and his homeland.

Brown University researchers run joint-and-drink study to find alcohol consumption falls after smoking cannabis

It turns out that going “California sober” may actually help you stay away from alcohol, according to new research published in the the American Journal of Psychiatry.

A team of Brown University researchers conducted a study in which participants were given marijuana joints to smoke and then sent out to a controlled “bar lab”, in which they then were given the choice to have up to eight mini alcoholic beverages. The experiment was conducted three separate times: once with 7.2% THC cannabis, once with 3.1% THC cannabis and once with 0.03% THC cannabis, which was considered a placebo.

President’s claim that Mohammed bin Salman had nothing to do with 2018 killing contradicts US intelligence

Donald Trump on Tuesday said that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, had nothing to do with the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, whose assassination in 2018 left the Saudi leader an international pariah.

But Trump’s own intelligence services, as well as a 2019 UN investigation, have painted a very different picture. The assassination took place inside a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where a 15-person team led by a close associate of Prince Mohammed was said to have drugged, murdered and dismembered Khashoggi in order to hide evidence of the crime.

The clip of the US president on Air Force One last Friday has taken off without much help from the media itself

It’s one outrage in days full of outrageous material.

“Quiet, piggy,” Donald Trump told a female reporter in a press gaggle, pointing his finger at her angrily.

Saad Almadi’s family thanks Trump and state department as announcement comes after meeting with crown prince

Saudi Arabia has agreed to allow US citizen Saad Almadi to return home to Florida, five months ahead of the scheduled lifting of travel restrictions and a day after Saudi crown prince and prime minister Mohammed bin Salman met Donald Trump at the White House.

Almadi, 75, was sentenced to 19 years of incarceration in the kingdom in 2021 after he wrote 14 tweets critical of the Riyadh government. Two years later, the charges were reduced to so-called “cyber crimes” and he was sentenced to a 30-year ban on leaving Saudi Arabia.

Autocrats like Prince Mohammed are eager to benefit from Trump’s brazen effort to use the presidency to enrich himself and his family

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, visited the US this week for the first time in seven years – and Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for his favorite Arab autocrat. On Tuesday, Trump hosted the prince for lunch and talks at the White House, followed by a black-tie dinner that included members of Congress, business leaders and top administration officials. The next day, Trump and the prince appeared together at a US-Saudi investment summit at the Kennedy Center.

It’s all part of a rehabilitation tour for Prince Mohammed, years after US intelligence agencies concluded that he had ordered the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident. In October 2018, Khashoggi was ambushed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a 15-member hit team, who dismembered his body with a bone saw. For a time, the killing turned Prince Mohammed into an international pariah. But Trump never wavered in his support of the Saudi leader, and during his first term protected the prince from US sanctions and pressure from Congress.

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University

David Maltinsky, a 16-year veteran, says in lawsuit agency retaliated against him for engaging in protected speech

A longtime FBI employee has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was fired for displaying a Pride flag at his desk, naming the FBI director, Kash Patel, the justice department and the attorney general, Pam Bondi, as defendants.

According to David Maltinsky, an intelligence specialist who had served with the bureau for 16 years, his wrongful termination earlier this year was “unconstitutional and politically motivated”.