The charismatic sports news host has become an unlikely force in a party that needs critical friends and fresh ideas

The View, one of the US’s most popular daytime television programmes, was a vital campaign stop last year for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. This week, it played host to a cable sports channel personality who might be nurturing political ambitions of his own.

Stephen A Smith was asked by co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin what he makes of hypothetical polls that show him among the leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.

The silence from former occupants of the Oval Office has been deafening as the incumbent cuts a destructive path

The stadium announcer called on the crowd to give a warm welcome to “a very special guest”. A cheer went up as basketball fans realised that Barack Obama was in their midst. The former US president rose to his feet, smiled and waved before watching the Los Angeles Clippers take on the Detroit Pistons on Wednesday night.

It was a jarringly normal scene at a profoundly abnormal time. The previous evening, Donald Trump had delivered the longest-ever presidential address to Congress, a dark, divisive tirade strewn with lies and insults – he called Joe Biden the “worst president in American history” and the senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas”.

The esteemed documentarian looks back at the shocking murders with a new lens, questioning how much anyone really knows about why it happened

“I’m quite convinced that, no matter what I say, I’m not going to be able to convince you to kill for me,” film-maker Errol Morris says drily. “And, alas, I have to say that I don’t have the desire to kill anybody or to convince you to kill on my behalf. It just isn’t there. Call it a weakness of will or weakness of character.”

This is not a sentiment that an interviewer is used to hearing from an interviewee. But it makes more sense in context. Morris, who has previously worked as a private detective, is discussing his new documentary, streaming on Netflix from Friday, which challenges official accounts of the most infamous killing spree of the 1960s.

Republicans are relying on ‘nameless’ donors who want to push a rightwing agenda and gain long-term hegemony

Billionaires are increasingly bankrolling Republican candidates in state legislative races across the US to push a rightwing agenda and gain long-term hegemony.

The concerted effort shows that Donald Trump ally Elon Musk, currently throwing his weight behind a candidate for Wisconsin’s state supreme court, is far from alone in seeking to build influence at the grassroots.

In a long and menacing – but also boring – speech to Congress, Trump mocked his opponents. Across the aisle the resistance was stirring

Well, at least he didn’t give a Nazi salute, declare war on Canada or pull the plug on Nato. You never know these days. But this was the night that Donald Trump finally turned the once reverential occasion of a speech to Congress into just another sordid campaign rally.

Deigning to address the branch of government he has so comprehensively sidelined in his first six weeks in office, Trump went off script and went long (a record 100 minutes). He lied, he weaved, demonised immigrants, he sold his economy as the greatest ever, he played the victim, he praised Elon Musk, he lambasted Joe Biden, he repeated himself and he lied some more.