Employees condemn ‘unprecedented and scary’ effort to push out those who had worked on diversity programs
Jeremy Wood thought he was safe from the shuttering of federal government diversity initiatives that he expected to start as soon as Donald Trump was sworn in.
A Raleigh, North Carolina-based career civil servant in the US agriculture department, Wood had been among those tasked with implementing policies ordered by Joe Biden to curtail discrimination on the basis of race, sexual orientation and gender identity in the federal government.
In a stark warning for Sir Keir Starmer, a mega-poll has revealed that the insurgent right-wing party is set to take more seats from Labour than the Conservatives
I saw them killed by sniper fire and drones. Why doesn’t Labour condemn it? Why do arms keep flowing in Israel’s direction?
I had never imagined, when working as a professor of transplant surgery at a large teaching hospital in London, that one day I would find myself operating on an eight-year-old child who was bleeding to death, only to be told by the scrub nurse that there were no more gauze swabs available. But I found myself in that situation last August while operating at Nasser hospital in Gaza as a volunteer with Medical Aid for Palestinians (Map). Reduced to scooping out the blood with my hands, I felt an overwhelming wave of nausea – I was anxious that the child would not survive. Luckily she did, although many others did not.
Having retired from the NHS, I decided to go to Gaza because it had become clear that there was a desperate need for surgical help, and I had the skills to contribute. Life as a transplant surgeon in London had been tough but hugely rewarding, and as a senior member of the transplant community I had enjoyed a certain status. This was going to be a different experience – but nothing prepared me for what I found when I arrived.
Nizam Mamode is a humanitarian surgeon and retired professor of transplant surgery. He was a volunteer surgeon in an emergency medical team in Gaza, which was organised by Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) in August/September 2024
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If Donald Trump targets the UK, it could retaliate in the form of tariffs targeted at symbolically important US products such as whiskey, blue jeans and motorbikes – hitting brands like Jack Daniel’s, Levi’s and Harley-Davidson
Goods from China are to face an extra 10% levy from Tuesday alongside additional 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports into US
After Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Volkswagen, Germany’s largest carmaker, said that tariffs would have a “harmful economic impact” on American consumers, as well as the international automotive industry.
German automakers say the tariffs will cause inflation for consumers.
President’s ‘culture war’ crusade targets DEI and LGBTQ+ rights in bid to spread rightwing agenda, experts say
Donald Trump didn’t need to wait for the black box flight recorder. He knew what caused the mid-air collision of a passenger plane and army helicopter that killed 67 people. Or he thought he did.
“They actually came out with a directive – ‘too white’,” the US president told reporters on Thursday, seeking to blame former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden for including Black and Latino people in the federal workforce. “We want the people that are competent.”
But it’s important to not limit our sense of what resistance looks like
All those lists and instructions and editorials on how to resist authoritarianism and stand up for human rights, the rule of law and climate are good, and I both wholly support them and want to veer off from their recommendations here. Yes, everyone with any capacity to do so should join things, call politicians, support the groups and campaigns protecting the above. But it’s important to not limit our sense of what resistance looks like to these versions of doing something. In addition to these formal, structured ways of defending what you believe in, there are ways of doing so woven into everyday life and our conversations and communications.
Each of us needs to stand on principle, loudly, whenever, wherever we can. Used strategically, our voices can do a lot to preserve anti-authoritarian worldviews about facts, science, history, rights, justice and inclusion. In this moment, it matters to just be a person who, wherever the opportunity arises, affirms that the climate crisis is real and climate solutions benefit us all, immigrants are vital to our economy and their rights matter, trans people harm no one by their existence but face terrible harm, diversity strengthens enterprises and communities and our country, women’s rights and equality should be non-negotiable.
Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility
The party could be investigated by regulator the Electoral Commission over a donation to the Labour-linked Fabian Society as a ‘potential regulatory concern’
According to a new poll, half of our 13- to 27-year-olds can’t see the point of all those time-wasting elections and parliaments. Why do they not know that authoritarianism is worse?
The phrase “shocking findings” is hugely overused in the media, which is strange because it’s so clumsy. The word endings nearly rhyme, but not quite, and there’s something infantile about the word “finding” for something you’ve found. Is your lunch your eatings? Did you do any pooings this morning? Always go for a weeing before leaving the house – or building.
Most “shocking findings” don’t turn out to be that shocking. The phrase gets deployed to dupe you into reading on and then it’s just some study that’s come out with something predictably depressing. Not this time. Last week, there were some genuinely shocking findings. I’d go so far as simply to call them shockings. Never mind that they were found – that’s not their key characteristic at all. They’re shockings, infuriatings and frankly frightenings.
A bill introduced in the Washington state legislature would force drivers with a history of speeding to have a speed-limiting device put on their cars.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left for the U.S. on Sunday to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump, looking to strengthen ties with Washington.
Rachel Reeves is all for growth; her party and the country needs it. But still we hear nothing about the most obvious solution…
In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote a satirical book,It Can’t Happen Here, about a lying demagogue, Buzz Windrip, who rises to power and transforms the American scene for the worse within months.
There were fears of parallels with the plot of the book when Trump first became president. This time, the fears are far more serious, as Trump’s barrage of executive orders challenges the constitutional checks and balances designed by the founding fathers to inhibit the autocratic desires of a future wrong’un becoming president.
The chancellor’s apparent volte-face in backing a third runway has left many in her party disillusioned and led them to label it as an act of desperation
In 2020, Rachel Reeves, the MP for Leeds West and Pudsey, was clear why she opposed expansion of nearby Leeds Bradford airport. It would, she said, “significantly increase air and noise pollution”, so on environmental grounds, it should not happen.
By the autumn of 2021, as shadow chancellor, Reeves was the senior Labour figure chosen to lead her party’s hugely ambitious plans for a green industrial revolution.
The NSW transport minister, Jo Haylen, has apologised after using her ministerial driver to chauffeur her and some friends to and from a three-hour private lunch on the Australia Day weekend – at a cost of $750.
“I made the wrong decision,” Haylen said on Sunday when apologising and confirming she would repay the money for the 13-hour, 446km trip to the Hunter Valley.
A book on the rise to power of Sir Keir Starmer has revealed more on the prime minister’s relationship with Angela Rayner after the party's loss in 2021 Hartlepool by-election
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