US politics

“The notion that ‘I will go forward and issue a declaration and see if we can get away with it’ is not a principle of governance that adheres to the overarching commitment to a democratic republic that requires the rule of law to be regarded and respected and honored as a sacred,” he said.

“Those who drafted the first amendment believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech,” US district court judge Paul Friedman wrote in his opinion. “That principle has preserved the nation’s security for almost 250 years. It must not be abandoned now.”

A coalition of 24 states, alongside a dozen cities and counties, has sued the Trump administration over its decision to revoke the bedrock scientific determination underpinning virtually all US climate regulations.

“The courts have said, ‘We agree, this is first amendment protected speech,” said Radhika Sainath, an attorney with Palestine Legal, which filed briefs in many of the cases. That, she continued, has resulted in “wins for Palestinian rights because they are starting to create a body of law”.

But Barker also worried about his ability to act ethically if he stayed on the job. When he learned members of his office were preparing a conspiracy indictment against Mavalwalla and eight others, he decided to resign. “I didn’t feel in this case that a conspiracy charge that would carry a six-year term of incarceration was true to who I was or wanted to be as a federal prosecutor,” he told the Guardian.

As he awaits trial, Mavalwalla said he will continue to speak out. “Every single person here, except for the people who are indigenous to the Americas, is an immigrant or comes from immigrants,” he said.

So, perhaps the spread of pessimism has been a deliberated project, but if it has been, you can’t weather it on your own. “One of the beautiful, profound things I’ve seen over and over,” Solnit says, “is those moments of uprisings, anti-war protests, No Kings demonstrations, Occupy Wall Street bring a sense of power and belonging that is transformative. The solidarity, the sense of purpose and interconnectedness, is so meaningful.” In her book A Paradise Built in Hell (2009), Solnit describes the intensity of communities forged by natural disasters – the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, a savage explosion in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1917, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina. She sees the same unbreakable bonds being forged in activism: the friendships, the energy, the self-awareness and the ambition created by political action stay with you for the rest of your life; they often define your life.

The bill’s official introduction comes as calls to halt AI datacenter expansion have gone from the margins to the mainstream. Since August 2025, towns and counties across the country – including in Missouri, Indiana, Georgia and North Carolina – have passed temporary bans on datacenter buildout. At least 11 states are now considering similar policies, according to Good Jobs First, a watchdog group tracking economic development.

More than 160 environmental and public health organizations on Tuesday called for Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, to resign or be fired.

James Talarico, the Texas Democratic state representative and Presbyterian seminarian, has said he forgives Pete Hegseth’s pastor for praying for his death. On Tuesday, Texas’s popular Democratic nominee for a US Senate seat pushed back against comments from Brooks Potteiger, the defense secretary’s closest spiritual adviser, who said: “We want him crucified with Christ.” Talarico said on X: “Jesus loves. Christian Nationalism kills. You may pray for my death, Pastor, but I still love you. I love you more than you could ever hate me.”