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
The Guardian · CaliforniaTenants can be evicted for not paying utilities even if they have paid rent – tenants and their allies are fighting back
This story was supported and co-published by the journalism non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project
In 2024, Constance Soule got a surprise from her landlord: a “notice of termination” that gave her 10 days to move out of her apartment.
Soule, a disabled Alzheimer’s patient with a housing voucher, had paid her rent at a Larkspur, California, complex managed by Greystar, the country’s largest apartment manager. But she was about to be evicted from her home across from the Golden Gate Bridge solely over utility charges, court documents show.
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Tracie McMillan · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 7:00 AM
The Guardian · CaliforniaAvenal has been rocked by the council’s refusal to accept the results of a recall election – and the repercussions extend far beyond the Central valley
From the outside, the city of Avenal appears to embody every bit of its motto – an “oasis in the sun”. Approaching the community, passing through the dusty yellow hillsides of the Central valley, Avenal emerges with a sudden burst of green on the horizon.
Its small-town feel and quiet tree-lined streets offer respite from the bustling Interstate 5 about five miles away. But trouble is brewing here that has brought this lonesome city national attention.
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Dani Anguiano in Avenal · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 6:00 AM
The Guardian · US newsBy now we know that charity, generosity and compassion are virtues that the US president doesn’t seem to have even in trace amounts
Many years ago, in the crowded corridor of a Manhattan hotel, I was surprised to find myself standing face-to-face with Imelda Marcos, then the first lady of the Philippines. At that time, she was said to possess 3,000 pairs of shoes.
I desperately longed to ask the wife of the dictatorial president Ferdinand Marcos why anyone could need all those shoes. And more importantly, why would someone spend so much of her country’s wealth on stiletto heels when so many citizens were so desperately poor? But natural reticence, good manners or simply fear prevailed, and I walked away.
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Francine Prose · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 4:00 AM
The Guardian · US newsAmericans are backing progressives not because they want socialism, but because they want candidates who will fight for the working class
Most discussions about the Democratic party in this election cycle focus on the remarkable rise of progressive Democrats, such as the Florida state representative Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist who scored an upset win in the Democratic US Senate primary on Tuesday.
But an equally big story is the remarkable decline of corporate Democrats.
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Robert Reich · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 3:00 AM
The Guardian · US newsOn one side, you face the domination of the Islamic Republic; on the other, the imperialist forces that republic claims to stand against
August marks the anniversary of the 1988 mass executions in Iran, a horror that echoes in the country’s current surge in death sentences. It also marks the 19 August anniversary of the UK- and US-orchestrated coup against the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Amid the current, indiscriminate waves of US-Israeli military assaults against Iran, this letter of solidarity denounces the repression of the Iranian people and their political prisoners by forces both at home and abroad.
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Open letter · Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 2:00 AM
The Guardian · CaliforniaThis blog is now closed.
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Those unfamiliar with Alaska politics are likely raising an eyebrow at some repeated names.
No, we’re not talking about Dan S Sullivan and Dan J Sullivan, two Republicans with the same name running for US Senate – an issue that went to the state supreme court earlier this summer. We’re talking about the Begiches. Nick Begich III, a Republican, is currently leading the race to represent Alaska in the US House of Representatives for a second term while Tom Begich, a Democrat, is advancing to the general election for governor in November.
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Robert Mackey, Lucy Campbell, Victoria Bekiempis, George Chidi and Vivian Ho · Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 6:55 PM
The Guardian · CaliforniaOfficers reportedly believed invitees were trying to make unauthorized entry on to Vandenberg base in California
Five news reporters and two members of the military who were invited to an event at the Vandenberg space force base in California were briefly detained at gunpoint by security officers who thought they were gatecrashers, according to local news reports.
The incident happened on Monday ahead of an invitation-only groundbreaking for a new training facility for missile operators at the federal airfield near Santa Barbara, California. Reporters from Noozhawk and KEYT were among those detained, and both outlets published articles detailing the detainment.
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Associated Press · Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 5:41 PM
The Guardian · CaliforniaZvezdelina Stankova says she used AI to ‘help edit’ an article about some of her students being ‘five to eight years’ behind
A math professor at the University of California, Berkeley, criticizing a “severe” math deficiency among students in an op-ed for the San Francisco Standard, admitted to using artificial intelligence to help edit the piece.
The Standard published a 2,000-word piece by Zvezdelina Stankova last week, in which the professor said some of her math students were “five to eight years” behind and lacked a “middle school” education on fractions and basic algebra. Stankova said the UC system’s test-blind admissions were to blame, suggesting that students who weren’t sufficiently prepared for the rigor of Berkeley’s mathematics program were admitted because a longstanding benchmark like the SAT had disappeared.
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Sophie Sullivan · Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 5:35 PM
The Guardian · CaliforniaRegulations that would block sale of older tires praised by environmental groups amid rightwing backlash
California has become the first state in the nation to mandate that replacement tires be energy efficient, a major auto industry regulation set to block the sale of older tires and make vehicles on the road greener.
State regulators have said the new rules will reduce emissions and drivers’ fuel costs. But the rules – which come as the Trump administration fights to block other California restrictions to promote greener cars – have already sparked a rightwing backlash, with one conservative news outlet calling the policies a “massive overreach”.
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Sam Levin in Los Angeles · Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 4:48 PM
