The Guardian · US newsDepartment of Justice plan raises questions over its ability to recruit so many people – and what they would do
Former officials and voting rights experts have expressed skepticism over a pledge by the Trump administration to dispatch 1,000 monitors across the country to scrutinize November’s US midterm elections.
While the Department of Justice (DoJ) has expressed hope that the operation will be the largest in its history, its plan raised questions over its ability to recruit so many people – and what they would do.
Continue reading...
Rachel Leingang in Minneapolis and Sam Levine in New York City · Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 3:00 AM
The Guardian · US newsI understand the pressure on AI companies to rush forward. But employees are right to be concerned
Last month, more than a thousand employees at frontier AI companies signed a letter asking the US government to find a way to “pace” AI development, citing the risk of the technology spiraling out of human control as it begins to build itself.
They were right to be concerned: just days earlier, two AI models that OpenAI was testing internally escaped the test environment, then autonomously hacked the company Hugging Face and at least three other online services. A few days after that, Anthropic announced that some of their models had also broken out and hacked other companies during testing.
Continue reading...
Miles Brundage · Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 3:00 AM
The Guardian · US newsWith plentiful jobs and community support, one Mexico City neighbourhood has become a haven for those who have lived much of their lives in the US
With its wide avenues lined with tall palm trees, its quaint cafes and old-school cantinas, as well as the mix of English and Spanish spoken on the street, the Tabacalera neighborhood in downtown Mexico City has a certain US feel – so much so that it is has become known as Little LA.
The nickname is about more than appearances, however. In recent years, this corner of the metropolis has become a haven for many Mexicans deported from the US, particularly those who spent years or decades living across the border and for whom Mexico feels like a foreign country. In Little LA, they have found a more familiar place to belong.
Continue reading...
Oscar Lopez in Mexico City · Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 3:00 AM
The Guardian · US newsBoxing’s most mercurial star is putting an old friendship aside as he moves up to 147lb to challenge Rolly Romero for the welterweight title he won against Ryan Garcia
For more than a decade, Teófimo López’s friendship with Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero endured through amateur tournaments, Las Vegas sparring sessions and the mismatched peaks and troughs of two volatile careers. That friendship ended, López says, the moment they signed to fight one another.
On Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena along the Vegas Strip, the 29-year-old López will challenge for Romero’s World Boxing Association welterweight title. The former lightweight and junior-welterweight champion is moving up to 147lb in pursuit of a belt in a third division. For Romero, himself a three-weight belt-holder after stacking titles at 135lb and 140lb, a victory would add another marquee name to a résumé transformed by last year’s upset of Ryan Garcia. The fight will be broadcast globally on Dazn pay-per-view and will see the champion go off as a roughly 2-1 underdog.
Continue reading...
Bryan Armen Graham · Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 2:00 AM
The Guardian · US newsBob Iger and Josh Kushner’s $12.5bn bid to buy the Lakers shows that NBA teams are no longer family dynasties, but quick flips for private equity sharks
For years, the NBA was built on the alliance of patient money and marketing pizzazz, and no team captured that curious mixture better than the Los Angeles Lakers. Through Showtime in the 1980s and the dominance of the Shaq-Kobe years, the Lakers became the benchmark for a league and a sport intent on global conquest: charismatic, ambitious, and flashy, a sporting-cultural amalgam in which athleticism and celebrity held equal rank. Through careful front office recruitment, savvy coaching, and the harnessing of Hollywood’s star power, the Lakers evolved from a team into a “brand,” establishing a template that virtually every other outfit in the NBA has felt compelled to mimic in the years since. But the razzle-dazzle on the court – the Laker Girls, Magic flinging no-look passes, Shaq smashing the glass, Jack Nicholson smiling his Joker smile in the front row, all eyebrows and mischief – depended on a far more staid and stable arrangement off it. Real estate investor Jerry Buss bought the Lakers for $16m in 1979, and remained the majority owner until his death in 2013, when his children assumed control of the franchise.
When Jerry Buss died, the Lakers were valued at $1bn. Now, the team looks set to be sold to former Disney CEO Bob Iger and venture capitalist Josh Kushner, the brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared, for $12.5bn. The sale is still under negotiation and will need to be approved by the NBA’s board of governors; the Buss siblings are also now bickering over whether to join the stampede and sell their minority 17.8% stake in the franchise to Iger and Kushner, which has added a subplot of Shakespearean family intrigue to proceedings. But in the likely event it goes through, the sale would make the Lakers the most valuable franchise in basketball. It would also signal an acceleration in private equity’s scramble to get its claws into the world of sport.
Continue reading...
Aaron Timms · Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 2:00 AM
The Guardian · CaliforniaAs the couple plans their return to the UK, Montecito’s whirlwind stint on the global stage may be coming to an end
The bucolic coastal California town of Montecito was thrust into the limelight six years ago as the backdrop for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s second act following an acrimonious split from Buckingham Palace.
But as the couple plans their return to the United Kingdom, Montecito’s whirlwind stint on the global stage may be coming to an end.
Continue reading...
Uwa Ede-Osifo in Montecito, California · Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 12:00 AM
The Guardian · US newsDespite previously comparing him to a ‘mobster’, Trump’s former personal lawyer showers him with praise. This blog is now closed.
Trump administration faces questions over top aide Natalie Harp’s security clearance
Sign up for the US Breaking News email
An FBI team seized electronic devices from former US representative Eric Swalwell at the San Francisco airport on Saturday, then raided his home in Washington, DC, the next day, CNN reported Thursday.
The raid is part of a federal investigation into the sexual assault allegations which ultimately drove the Bay Area Democrat to resign from office in April, sources familiar with the investigation told CNN. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department subsequently opened criminal investigations on Swalwell.
Continue reading...
Robert Mackey (now); Lucy Campbell, George Chidi and Vivian Ho (earlier) · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 6:51 PM
The Guardian · US newsFawning, deferential, oleaginous – this was the Untruth and Reconciliation Commission as Trump called in to 77 WABC
“Our next guest is a ‘racist’, a ‘conman’ and a ‘cheat’ – someone who behaves more like a ‘mobster’ than a president. Please welcome Donald J Trump!”
That is how Michael Cohen could have introduced Trump on his New York radio show on Thursday. After all, Cohen used such terms to describe the US president in his testimony to Congress in 2019. But now Trump’s former personal lawyer and self-described fixer had different words: “boss” and “sir”. Just like old times.
Continue reading...
David Smith in Washington · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 6:11 PM
The Guardian · CaliforniaState senator beats rival Melissa Hernandez and will replace US congressman who quit amid sexual misconduct claims
Progressive Aisha Wahab has been elected to Congress in a special election following a bitter intra-party battle over the seat formerly held by Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April after facing sexual misconduct allegations. Swalwell has denied the allegations.
Wahab, a state senator, was widely considered the frontrunner in the district in California’s East Bay and had the backing of the state Democratic party as well as Our Revolution, labor unions, local officials and the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta.
Continue reading...
Dani Anguiano · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 5:24 PM
The Guardian · CaliforniaState sought to stop system off coast of Santa Barbara from resuming operations after Trump ordered its reopening
An oil pipeline can continue to operate off the California coast after a judge gave it the green light this week, despite the opposition of state regulators and environmental groups.
The system off the coast of Santa Barbara resumed operations earlier this year for the first time in more than a decade after Donald Trump ordered Sable Offshore Corporation to reopen it, citing US energy needs during the war in Iran.
Continue reading...
Dani Anguiano · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 5:13 PM
The Guardian · US newsPresident’s one-time ‘attack dog’ became his fierce critic – but now Cohen says he has forgiven his former boss
Donald Trump has given a radio interview to none other than Michael Cohen, his former longtime personal fixer turned fierce critic, after an apparent reconciliation set the stage for their first public conversation in eight years.
Cohen once had such a tight relationship with the US president that he described himself back in the day as his “attack dog with a law license”, but later became the star witness in Trump’s 2024 criminal trial over his hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in an effort to interfere with the 2016 election.
Continue reading...
Lucy Campbell · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 4:28 PM
The Guardian · US newsChristine Hunsicker, former CEO of CaaStle, gave investors falsified documents that overstated profit and cash reserves
A fashion tech founder was sentenced to five years in federal prison for her involvement in a $300m “fraud scheme” spanning from 2019 to 2025, the Manhattan US attorney’s office announced on Thursday. Christine Hunsicker, 49, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release.
Hunsicker, the founder and ex-CEO of CaaStle Inc, had pleaded guilty this March to one count of securities fraud in relation to a scheme that “defrauded hundreds of investors”, authorities said. Her attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Continue reading...
Victoria Bekiempis · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 3:27 PM
