US president was concerned over app’s Chinese ownership, but has softened after believing it won him 2024 election
The White House launched an official TikTok account on Tuesday, as Donald Trump continues to permit the Chinese-owned platform to operate in the US despite a law requiring its sale.
“America we are BACK! What’s up TikTok?” read a caption on the account’s first post, a 27-second clip, on the popular video-sharing app.
Continue reading...US president handed Ukrainian leader symbolic keys to the White House in return during meeting in Washington
Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave Donald Trump a golf club during his visit to Washington this week that had belonged to a serviceman fighting Russia’s invasion, Kyiv said on Tuesday.
Trump, an avid golfer who owns several courses, accepted the gift and presented Zelenskyy with symbolic keys to the White House in return, the Ukrainian leader’s office said.
Continue reading...DoJ agrees to provide Congress documents from the Epstein sex trafficking investigation, says House lawmaker on Monday
Today will be an arguably quieter day for the president – his only agenda item today is a bill signing at 1pm ET. This won’t be open to the press, but we’ll let you know if that changes.
Otherwise, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will hold a press briefing, also at 1pm ET today.
Continue reading...Jon Luke Evans had been employed by local police after federal database confirmed his eligibility to work
A Maine police officer arrested by immigration authorities has agreed to voluntarily leave the country, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) said on Monday.
Ice arrested the Old Orchard Beach police department reserve officer Jon Luke Evans, of Jamaica, on 25 July, as part of the agency’s effort to step up immigration enforcement. Officials with the town and police department have said federal authorities previously told them Evans was legally authorized to work in the US.
Continue reading...Borrowers say higher repayments under changed Save plan means placing life on hold and creating further anxiety
When Faith, a 33-year-old in Burlington, North Carolina, went back to get her master’s degree in higher education administration in 2020-21, she hoped it would accelerate her career growth and maybe even help her get on the housing ladder.
Now, Faith has federal student loan debts of $38,113, and a repayment schedule that is much more demanding than she realized so she feels like the program stalled her progress.
Continue reading...Donald Jamesbrown Henry and Shawn Popp got into a fight over ‘Trump going bankrupt’ when the latter was attacked
A Florida man who fatally stabbed a friend during an argument in 2022 over Donald Trump’s businesses having gone bankrupt, is facing possibly spending the rest of his life in prison after being convicted of murder.
Donald Jamesbrown Henry, 38, awaits a sentencing hearing tentatively scheduled for October after jurors found him guilty on Friday of second-degree murder in the killing of Shawn Popp, whose death came to be regarded by some as an example of the havoc that politics can wreak on interpersonal relationships in the US.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: The Ukrainian president and fellow continental leaders descended on the White House to squeeze support from the US – did they get it?
Good morning. Last night, Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the White House flanked by a dream team of hastily assembled European heavyweights. Their aim: to coax Donald Trump out of pro-Russian positions he adopted after his Alaska meeting with Vladimir Putin last Friday.
The meeting was a sign of both panic and resolve from Europe. The fact Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and more cleared their diaries at such short notice to fly to Washington is an indication of how alarmed they are by Trump’s desire to move straight to a peace deal without a ceasefire – and his insistence that Zelenskyy give up Ukrainian territory.
Tax | Rachel Reeves is considering replacing stamp duty with a new property tax that would apply to the sale of homes worth more than £500,000, the Guardian has been told.
UK news | Exposure to pornography has increased since the introduction of UK rules to protect the public online, with children as young as six seeing it by accident, research by the children’s commissioner for England has found.
Conservatives | Leaked WhatsApp messages show Conservative MPs are worried that their party’s “piss-poor” messaging over asylum-seeker hotels is making the party look silly. It follows the release of an advert by Conservative campaign headquarters last week, making claims that have since been challenged as exaggerations, such as that asylum seekers receive free driving lessons and free PlayStation consoles.
Bolivia | Bolivia’s presidential election will go to a runoff, with two rightwing candidates seemingly the top runners. It’s an unprecedented scenario after nearly two decades of leftist rule by the Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas).
Environment | Relentless heat and disastrous wildfires continue to ravage southern Europe, with one-quarter of weather stations in Spain recording 40C temperatures and above, the latest in a series of disasters exacerbated by climate breakdown amid a continental rollback of green policies.
Continue reading...Homeland security department claims agent shot in ‘self-defense’ after driver refused to roll window down
A federal agent fired at a moving vehicle in southern California after the driver refused to roll down his window during an immigration stop and sped off, the Department of Homeland Security said.
A DHS statement said the driver struck two US Customs and Border Protection agents as he drove away on Saturday, prompting one agent to fire his weapon “in self-defense”. No one was hit by the bullets.
Continue reading...New trial for Mylene Vialard after Minnesota judges find ‘pervasive’ prosecutorial misconduct in Line 3 protest case
The controversial felony conviction of a peaceful climate activist has been overturned by an appeals court due to “pervasive” prosecutorial misconduct.
Mylene Vialard, 56, was found guilty of felony obstruction in 2023 for her role in trying to halt construction of a fossil-fuel pipeline through Indigenous territory in Minnesota, in a trial beset by irregularities.
Continue reading...President reverses ceasefire position but says US will give Ukraine security help and expresses hope for trilateral talks
Donald Trump has ruled out a ceasefire in Ukraine as Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his European allies visited the White House to push for US-backed security guarantees as part of any long-term peace deal.
The US president, who only last week warned Russia of “very severe consequences” if Vladimir Putin failed to agree to a halt the fighting, made clear on Monday he had reversed his position.
Continue reading...Presidents, PMs and heads of Nato and European Commission accompany Ukraine’s leader at White House
European leaders gathered in Washington on Monday for Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, in a show of support for the Ukrainian president. Their presence came amid expectations that Trump would try to bully Zelenskyy into accepting a pro-Russia “peace plan” that would include Kyiv handing territory to Moscow. The Europeans have been described as Zelenskyy’s “bodyguards”, with memories fresh of the mauling he received in February during his last Oval Office visit. So, who are they?
Continue reading...Jasveen Sangha, fifth and last defendant charged in Friends star’s overdose to strike plea agreement with prosecutors
A woman known as the “ketamine queen”, charged with selling Matthew Perry the drug that killed him, agreed to plead guilty on Monday.
Jasveen Sangha becomes the fifth and final defendant charged in the overdose death of the Friends star to strike a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. Having initially pleaded not guilty, her change of plea means she’ll avoid a trial that had been planned for August.
Continue reading...The Guardian examined two private-equity backed companies that have been accused of failing to protect inmates from risk of harm, and even preventable death
Early one morning this spring, staff at a Santa Barbara county jail heard screams coming from one of the cells. A 57-year-old inmate was moaning and hyperventilating. She said her “guts are all twisted up”.
Rather than sending her to the ER, medical staff chalked her pain up to opioid withdrawal, since they had taken a prescription opioid away upon her arrival days before, a grand jury investigation later found. They placed the inmate – referred to as CF in the grand jury’s report – on mental health observation and gave her Tylenol. Even as the cell floor became covered in vomit, staff ignored her requests to go to the hospital. The documentation that should have been filled out to explain why her request was not honored was never completed.
Continue reading...Ukrainian president says latest strikes have killed at least 10 people and intended to ‘humiliate diplomatic efforts’
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of trying to humiliate Ukraine and Europe by “deliberately killing civilians” before talks with Donald Trump in the White House to be attended by Ukraine’s president and a group of European leaders.
Zelenskyy described the latest strikes by Moscow on four Ukrainian cities as “demonstrative and cynical”. At least seven people were killed in a drone attack on Kharkiv, including a small girl, while three were killed in another bombing in Zaporizhzhia, he said.
Continue reading...Eating out drops by up to 31% amid federal takeover of policing that Democrats call ‘stunt’ to distract from Epstein
The number of people eating at restaurants in Washington DC has plummeted since Donald Trump deployed federal troops to the city, according to data, as the president’s purported crackdown on crime continues.
Research by Open Table found that restaurant attendance was down every day last week compared with 2024, with the number of diners dipping by 31% on Wednesday, two days after Trump ordered the national guard to patrol Washington.
Continue reading...Most of more than 147,000 customers affected reconnected by Monday as category 4 storm not forecast to make landfall
Hurricane Erin’s outer bands pelted the US territory of Puerto Rico with heavy rains and tropical-storm winds during the day on Sunday, knocking out power to tens of thousands of customers, according to officials.
At one point, more than 147,000 utility customers were without power in Puerto Rico, according to Luma Energy, a private company that oversees the transmission and distribution of power on the island. By 5.30am on Monday, 96.3% of customers had electric service, with most who were affected by outages being concentrated in the Caguas, Mayagüez and San Juan regions, Luma said on X.
Guardian staff contributed reporting
Continue reading...Exclusive: Public comments show that a crackdown on signs ‘disparaging’ Americans is not popular
As part of his administration’s war on “woke”, Donald Trump has asked the American public to report anything “negative” about Americans in US national parks. But the public has largely refused to support a world view without inconvenient historical facts, comments submitted from national parks and seen by the Guardian show.
Notices have been erected at every National Park Service (NPS) site, which spans 433 national parks, monuments and battlefields, following an order from May entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”, issued by Trump’s department of the interior (DOI). The president had demanded a crackdown on any material that “inappropriately disparages Americans”.
Continue reading...MCR Hotels to lead new equity investors in members’ club chain after four years on New York stock exchange
The members’ club chain Soho House has agreed a $2.7bn (£2bn) deal to take it private after a tricky four years listed on the New York stock exchange.
New York-based MCR Hotels will lead new equity investors in the chain of clubs as part of a deal that will involve it ditching its stock market listing.
Continue reading...US secretary of state says talks between Putin and Trump had ‘made progress’ but ‘big areas of disagreement’ remain
In a combative series of interviews on Sunday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that “both sides are going to have to make concessions” for there to be a peaceful resolution to the war that erupted when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
“You can’t have a peace agreement unless both sides make concessions – that’s a fact,” the Trump administration’s top diplomat said Sunday on ABC’s This Week. “That’s true in virtually any negotiation. If not, it’s just called surrender. And neither side is going to surrender. So both sides are going to have to make concessions.”
Continue reading...First Atlantic hurricane of 2025 diminishes but tropical storm warnings issued for Turks and Caicos
Hurricane Erin was downgraded to a category 3 hurricane early Sunday as its outer bands continued to lash the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico with heavy rains and tropical-storm force winds.
While Erin’s maximum winds diminished, the storm’s overall size grew and forecasters issued tropical storm warnings for the Turks and Caicos Islands and a watch for the south-east Bahamas.
Continue reading...