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.
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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.
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Dani Anguiano · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 5:13 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.
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Victoria Bekiempis · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 3:27 PM
The Guardian · CaliforniaExclusive: Rahil Prakash tells the Guardian: ‘I wanted to see if fake polls could penetrate the ecosystem that easily’
A 21-year-old recent college graduate was behind an anonymous website that put out widely shared fake election polling in Wisconsin, Nevada and California, the Guardian can reveal.
The website, Median Strategies, abruptly shut down and withdrew its polling earlier this week following questions from a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. In an unsigned statement, it described a “short-term social experiment” to examine how fake polling “could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification”.
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Sophie Sullivan, Anna Betts and Sam Levine · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 2:33 PM
The Guardian · US newsWith one semi-final in her last seven tournaments, the coming months will define the next stage of her career
Towards the end of a messy first set tie-break late on Wednesday, Aryna Sabalenka wildly sprayed another painfully nervous backhand before slamming her racket to the ground. As the racket connected with the acrylic floor, its vibration dampener detached from the strings and rolled off in the direction of the broadcast camera pit by the side of the court.
With the diminutive 20-year‑old Czech player Sara Bejlek leading Sabalenka 6-5 in the tie-break, this slapstick sequence forced play to pause while the Belarusian and a couple of volunteers comically searched for the missing vibration damper underneath the cameras until she gave up and retrieved a new one. A few minutes later, Sabalenka trailed by a set.
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Tumaini Carayol in Cincinnati · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 2:11 PM
The Guardian · US newsFormer ethics tsar calls report that executive assistant to president worked for a year without clearance ‘shocking’
US politics live – latest updates
The White House faced fresh questions on Thursday over whether Donald Trump’s closest aide, Natalie Harp, had access to US government secrets without security clearance.
Harp, who is executive assistant to the US president, worked at the White House for a year without the routine clearance, the MS Now network reported on Thursday. She refused to file the relevant forms for unknown reasons, according to two unnamed sources cited by MS Now.
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Joseph Gedeon and David Smith in Washington · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 1:25 PM
The Guardian · US newsAgreement is among largest third-country deportations driven by Trump administration’s immigration crackdown
Twenty deportees from the United States arrived in Liberia on Thursday, as part of a new agreement that will see the west African country receive as many as 1,200 people under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
The group arrived at the Roberts international airport outside the capital, Monrovia. The Liberia-US agreement is one of the largest third-country deportation arrangements pursued by the administration since Trump returned to office last year.
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Joseph Gedeon in Washington and agencies · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 12:57 PM
The Guardian · US newsTotal prize pool for tournament will be $108m
Players guaranteed $140,000 for making first round
The world’s leading tennis players have welcomed the US Open’s announcement of a 20% increase in prize money and agreed not to continue their protests at this year’s tournament as a result.
The build up to both the French Open and Wimbledon was overshadowed earlier this year by a media boycott as the players continue to demand a greater share of tournament revenues, but after the US Tennis Association announced a record prize pot of $108m there will be no such disruption at Flushing Meadow.
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Matt Hughes · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 12:23 PM
The Guardian · CaliforniaFederal agents also ‘seized electronic devices’ from former Democratic representative at San Francisco airport
Authorities are said to have searched the Washington DC home of disgraced former California Democratic representative Eric Swalwell on Sunday amid an ongoing law enforcement investigation into sexual assault allegations.
CNN reported that federal agents on Saturday also “seized electronic devices” from Swalwell at the San Francisco airport, citing unnamed sources familiar with the investigation. Multiple other outlets have confirmed the federal search; the Daily Mail was the first to report this law enforcement activity.
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Victoria Bekiempis · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 11:10 AM
The Guardian · US newsThe president’s empty advice that children should receive separate jabs against measles, mumps and rubella will only lead to less take-up by parents
Nobody wants to hurt a child. The howl of pain, the tears, the look of betrayed shock all make it very hard to deliver a cherished small person to the needle-wielding nurse. But that’s part of being a responsible parent. It becomes a lot tougher if mum or dad is being fed mixed and erroneous messages about the benefits and harms of vaccination.
Parents have to make a lot of decisions about what’s right for their child, from the school they should go to and the food they should eat to the hours they should spend on the phone or watching TV. In the US, Donald Trump wants them to add another: do they choose to give their children separate jabs against measles, mumps and rubella, involving six visits to the clinic, or should they opt for the combined MMR vaccine, which does the job in two? For decades, the vast majority of families have been taking the advice of doctors, accepting their assurance that the MMR vaccine is safe and very effective. But what are they to think when a US president announces that the triple jab could be “quite lethal” and signs an executive order advising states to offer separate vaccines?
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Editorial · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 10:46 AM
The Guardian · US newsAs yields are dragged higher in the UK, Europe and Japan, the impact for consumers and businesses will be far-reaching
‘Starve the beast’? The $40tn cost of Republicans’ false promises to cut spending
Government borrowing costs around the world have surged to the highest levels in decades amid growing fears over US bond market turmoil.
Anxiety about Donald Trump’s handling of the US economy, and concern that the US president’s war with Iran is driving up inflation, are causing a sell-off in the US bond market.
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Richard Partington Senior economics correspondent · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 9:14 AM
The Guardian · US newsThe enormous US debt under Trump will hobble the next Democratic administration – just as the GOP planned
Why is the Trump administration causing turmoil in the bond markets?
You could pin the US’s staggering $40tn in government debt to Donald Trump’s Keystone Cops-style governance. Tariffs he sold as a new source of revenue were struck down by the supreme court, forcing the government to return tens of billions of dollars to importers. Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), ostensibly created to stop wasteful government spending, decimated federal programs and probably killed millions of children, but did nothing to close the budget deficit. The burst of inflation following Trump’s misguided adventure in Iran sharply raised the cost of serving the government’s obligations.
Yet as the federal debt hits an all-time high, up from about $35tn when Trump took office less than two years ago, it is worth noting that the US’s gargantuan indebtedness is in fact the product of a longstanding Republican strategy that took shape well before Trump could even dream about gold-plating the White House. It was called “starve the beast”.
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Eduardo Porter · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 8:21 AM
