President’s directive stalls for a second time about a week before the first postal ballots are due to be sent out

A federal judge on Thursday halted – at least for the moment – attempts to implement Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting.

The president’s directive stalled for a second time about a week before the first mail ballots are due to be sent out for the rapidly approaching midterm elections. In the US district court, Judge Indira Talwani placed a 14-day hold on the government implementing the order in a case that could be headed back to the supreme court, which on Monday overturned an earlier ruling of hers that had blocked Trump’s order from taking effect.

Decision allows manufacturers to begin shipping doses, but confusion remains about insurance coverage

The US Food and Drug Administration approved updated Covid-19 vaccines on Thursday, allowing manufacturers to begin shipping doses to pharmacies and doctors’ offices across the country.

The FDA approved Moderna, Novavax-Sanofi and Pfizer-BioNTech’s updated Covid vaccines, the companies ⁠said on Thursday, ⁠after ​an advisory panel recommended that the shots should target ⁠the dominant XFG variant.

Three employees of Stars and Stripes, a government-funded news service, allege they were fired after reporting on USS Abraham Lincoln

Three journalists who were fired by the Pentagon from a US government-funded news outlet sued the Department of Defense in federal court on Thursday, arguing their dismissals were illegal and violated their first amendment rights to free speech.

The three journalists were all employees of Stars and Stripes, which their court filing calls “the U.S. military’s independent news source since the Civil War with a long history of editorial independence, free from news management or censorship by military command”.

Newly obtained records indicate health secretary lied about Samoa trip during Senate confirmation hearings last year

A senior Democratic senator is calling for a criminal investigation into the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, following reporting by the Guardian that indicated he lied during Senate confirmation hearings last year.

Ron Wyden of Oregon said: “RFK’s platform is built on lies and grifts that leave a trail of dead children in their wake. There are consequences for lying to Congress.”

• Dos Santos and Russell smash hurdles world records

• Werro comes within 0.42sec of 800m world record

• Bednarek and Wanyonyi clock world-leading times

Masai Russell and Alison Dos Santos each set a world record while Mondo Duplantis won a historic pole vault on a frenetic Thursday night in Zurich.

The Letzigrund Stadium had a raucous sell-out 25,000 crowd and the still, balmy weather conditions helped the athletes no end.

• MLS club mired in five-match winless run

• González to replace interim coach Guillermo Hoyos

Inter Miami have hired former Argentina international Cristian “Kily” González as the club’s new head coach, according to two sources familiar with negotiations. César Luis Merlo was first to report the news.

The hiring will spell the end of interim manager Guillermo Hoyos’ time in charge of the South Florida club. In fact, he may have already coached his last game; MLS announced on Thursday that Hoyos had been suspended for one game for the club’s “repeated violations” of the late kickoff policy. (Inter Miami have become known throughout the league for delaying their return from half-time.)

Grand jury declined to indict anyone but said there was a ‘sophisticated scheme’ to use funds for political activity

A Florida grand jury has found that the administration of the governor, Ron DeSantis, “misappropriated” $10m in taxpayer money from a Medicaid settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity with ties to DeSantis’s wife, before the money was reportedly “funneled” into “two political action committees”.

In the grand jury report, which remains sealed but was obtained and published by CBS News Miami on Wednesday, the grand jurors wrote that “we conclude that these funds were misappropriated as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities” but said that they found “insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally”.

• Golf giant ends partnership with YouTube group

• Retailers have pulled Good Good products from shelves

• Garrett Clark says controversial skit was in ‘poor taste’

Callaway has ended its relationship with Good Good Golf amid mounting fallout from an advert that many believe made light of violence against women.

The golf equipment manufacturer announced the decision on Thursday, cutting ties with one of the world’s most popular YouTube sports channels effective immediately. Callaway also said it would donate $1m to organizations working to prevent violence against women and support survivors of domestic violence.

Congressman Jamie Raskin asks president’s son to detail firm’s recent success after he joined 1789 Capital as partner

Democrats on a powerful US congressional committee have launched an investigation into a venture capital firm which has thrived since recruiting Donald Trump’s son.

Donald Trump Jr joined 1789 Capital as a partner just days after his father won a second term in office in November 2024. Congressman Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the US House of Representatives judiciary committee, has asked the president’s son to detail the firm’s recent success.

Representative Mike Collins has been dogged by associations to white nationalism and antisemitism

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The US senator for Georgia Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, has slammed a “disgraceful and disqualifying” report that a former staffer for his Trump-backed Republican challenger Mike Collins shared images online of a swastika and depicting himself in Ku Klux Klan robes.

It is the latest instance of someone in Collins’s orbit facing scrutiny over racist or white nationalist conduct. Ossoff called the report “stunning” and said it “should shock the conscience of every Georgian”.

The US president signed order on Thursday amid growing trade war with Canada after the US enacted tariffs against its northern neighbor

Mark Carney rejects attempt to rename lake as did several US governors, with Tony Evers mocking the move

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Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday directing the federal government to rename Lake Ontario, making it Lake America, amid his escalating trade war with Canada.

The order directs federal agencies to adopt the name-change on US maps, documents and databases. But Trump has no authority to rename Canada’s portion of the lake, nor to compel Canada, international legal bodies, international mapmakers, or the rest of the world to adopt a new name.

Jes Staley made comments to US lawmakers investigating his links to the convicted sex offender

The former Barclays boss Jes Staley has denied having sex with a woman dressed as Snow White, after being questioned about an infamous email exchange about Disney princesses with Jeffrey Epstein.

The comments were detailed in newly released transcripts from a closed-door interview last month with US lawmakers as part of their investigation into Epstein, who died in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex-trafficking charges.

Exclusive: Experts and former officials say accounts are running dry, and funding a war with no clear endgame is the main challenge

Donald Trump’s war on Iran has driven the US military into a severe financial crisis, with the US navy forced to transfer money from its payroll and other sources to cover the costs of combat, according to documents seen by the Guardian, and interviews with navy officials, contractors and defense analysts.

The US-Israeli operation, which has depleted US munitions stockpiles and prompted retaliatory Iranian strikes that have wrecked strategic bases across the Middle East, is piling pressure on budgets across the military.

The state concludes: ‘This wasn’t a woman suffering from a lack of care’ or ‘a lack of resources’

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The jury in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial has moved into deliberations as jurors decide whether the 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse is criminally responsible for fatally strangling her three children in January 2023.

Over the past five weeks, the trial, which has been called “America’s saddest murder trial” , has renewed nationwide attention on postpartum mental healthcare. Clancy’s defense maintains that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis – a condition estimated to affect around two women per 1,000 births – and therefore should not be held criminally responsible for her actions.

One wonders when, if ever, a US broadcast can win the same plaudits presenting the English league with a more American voice

There they were again, signaling with their unchanging faces and voices and their unchanging studio backdrop that another Premier League season had begun. On Friday afternoon, and again on Saturday and Sunday morning, Rebecca Lowe welcomed American viewers to what is somehow already the 14th season of the world’s most popular sporting circuit to air on NBC.

She was flanked, as ever, by her merry band of pundits, her gang of fellow British expats. The Robbies and the other ones. Also, Tim Howard as the token American, albeit one who spent 13 seasons of his goalkeeping career in the Premier League, deemed sufficiently English by osmosis to join the crew.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is the author of The Long Game: U.S. Men’s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts, which is out now. He teaches at Marist University.

Move from USPS comes amid Trump administration’s efforts to restrict mail-in voting in November’s midterms

The US Postal Service (USPS) said on ​Thursday ‌that ‌new ‌requirements for mail-in ‌voting are ​now ⁠in effect as Donald Trump seeks to crack down on the practice. The move is expected to trigger a new round of legal challenges.

The Trump administration has sought to impose new rules requiring state election leaders to submit their voter rolls for inspection as part of a broader bid to increase federal government oversight over voting and elections.

Judge ruled Jeanine John Taele, discovered with firearm days before Trump visit, was unfit to face felony charge

A judge in California has suspended criminal proceedings against a man found with a loaded gun near Donald Trump’s golf course in Los Angeles, and instead ordered him to undergo a mental health evaluation.

Jeanine John Taele, 38, of Downey, California, was arrested for weapons violations days before the president spoke at a 5 August Republican fundraiser at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Thai navy says ‘routine’ visit’ will allow personnel to rest and recuperate amid reports of poor conditions onboard

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier is set to make a temporary stop in Thailand next week as it heads back to the United States, Thai navy officials said, after spending more than 250 consecutive days at sea supporting US operations against Iran amid recent reports of poor living conditions and low morale onboard the vessel.

The Lincoln left the Middle East several days ago after being relieved by the USS George Washington, and is now heading home to San Diego. A Thai navy official told Reuters this week that the carrier was expected to make a brief port visit in Thailand next week for the crew to rest and recuperate before continuing their journey home.

Burnham has nothing to hide as he prepares to meet president he once called poisonous. It may actually win him more respect

It makes a pleasant change. Not so long ago, Keir Starmer was falling over himself in his efforts to keep things sweet with Donald Trump. Offering the US president a second state visit within minutes of meeting him. Everyone knows you should never put out on the first date: it only makes the other person think you’re a pushover. Sure enough, The Donald banked the marching bands and the Windsor silver service, made polite conversation for three days and then went back to trash-talking him.

Yet still, Starmer just sat there and took it. As if one word of criticism would be too much. Wittering on about the “special relationship” as if Trump gave a moment’s thought to the UK before he did anything. The rest of us wouldn’t have put money on the US president even being able to locate Britain on a map. It was only latterly, when The Donald chose to bomb Iran, that the penny finally dropped for Keir. And even then he looked pained by the apparent betrayal, as he resisted the calls of Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage to join in the war.

American talks life on the professional circuit and those making sacrifices for a pay cheque, often compromising physical and mental welfare

For Mackenzie McDonald the players’ push for greater prize money and welfare contributions from the grand slam tournaments could result in the difference between putting food on the table and making a decent living.

After 10 years on the ATP Tour the 31-year-old American is not pleading poverty, but knows that life on the professional circuit can be a hand-to-mouth existence, with players’ physical and mental welfare often compromised due to their desperation to get back on court.

Judge rules Christian Castro, accused of shooting man and lying about it, cannot be held pending extradition request

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer charged with shooting a man and lying about it during the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis was released from a Texas jail on Thursday, after a judge refused to order his return to Minnesota.

Christian Castro was released at the break of dawn from a detention center in Brownsville. He motioned his hand toward a few camera operators and a reporter crowding around him and quickly got into an SUV that drove off.

Adam Kalkstein compared administration’s order to ‘trying to teach the law’ without mentioning ‘the constitution’

The only climate scientist teaching at West Point, the US army’s military academy, was fired after he resisted an order to stop teaching about the human causes of the climate emergency, a lawsuit claims.

Dr Adam Kalkstein, a civilian professor of geography at the New York institution, was terminated after the spring semester this year, six months after a testy meeting with Brig Gen Shane Reeves, then dean of West Point’s academic board, the court filing said.

Letters obtained by Guardian and AP contradict testimony that 2019 visit to Samoa had ‘nothing to do with vaccines’

Newly obtained documents indicate that the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, lied during two congressional hearings last year, when he told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation that a 2019 visit to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines”.

Letters obtained by the Guardian and the Associated Press contradict that testimony. In one he wrote to the Samoan prime minister before the trip, Kennedy explicitly said he wanted to study the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine in the Pacific island nation. In it, he used the words “vaccine” or “vaccination” eight times.

It’s about ‘kitchen-table populism’: focusing on Americans’ day-to-day economic struggles

This year’s Democratic primaries look and sound a lot more populist than usual. Brian Poindexter, a union iron worker running on a “workers first” message, won a House primary outside Cleveland. Sherrod Brown is mounting a Senate comeback in Ohio on the same “rigged system” message that has allowed him to outshine other Democrats in Ohio. Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger who built his career fighting corporate landowners, is the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine. And Josh Turek, a self-described “prairie populist”, is on the Senate ballot in Iowa.

In fact, according to research we’ve conducted through the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP), more than 70% of 2026 Democratic candidates now rely on populist rhetoric in their campaigns, laying the blame for our broken system on rich elites of one kind or another.

Plane was headed for airport in Seldovia from Anchorage, and was submerged in water after the crash

A small plane carrying four people crashed into shallow waters next to a remote coastal town in Alaska on Wednesday, killing everyone onboard, according to officials.

The Piper PA-24 was headed for the airport in the small town of Seldovia after taking off from Anchorage, according to a statement from the Alaska department of public safety. Seldovia’s airport is about 136 miles (219km) south-west of Anchorage.

Safety features including usage limits and night-time blocks to be set by default. Plus changes to famous French cheeses

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Good morning. Meta has agreed to significant changes to its Instagram and Facebook apps in a settlement that ended a landmark lawsuit. The agreement curtails a major trial in California and will require the social media company to pay up to $18bn. Meta agreed to establish safeguards for teenage users, including daily usage limits and blocks on night-time use nationwide in the US.

California and 28 other US states sued the $1.36tn (£1tn) company over allegations that Meta deliberately designed addictive products that hooked young people, leading to mental health issues, including anxiety, depression and suicide. As part of the settlement, the company denies wrongdoing.

What will be changing in the apps? The biggest alteration is that Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, is now required to make many of its safety limitations the default setting for accounts created by teenagers, a pivot from its previous opt-in approach to child safety. Nick Robins-Early and Johana Bhuiyan explain more in this piece: six key takeaways from the end of the Meta trial.

Will other companies be affected? Meta is putting the agreement forward as a precedent for other social media companies to follow. The company’s chief legal officer, CJ Mahoney, said: “Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution. We therefore call on our industry peers … to implement this new framework.” Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap face thousands more similar US lawsuits brought by families, individuals, school districts and other attorneys general.

Are campaigners satisfied with the result? Arturo Béjar, an ex-Facebook employee and whistleblower, said the outcome “is not an all-clear to say the product is safe. The limitations that are in the agreement are the equivalent of saying: ‘Well, you can smoke as many cigarettes as you can in two hours a day’. It doesn’t make the cigarettes any safer.”

How did it happen? As this visual guide explains, at 8.37am on Wednesday an enormous section ⁠of a glacier in the Himalayas sheared free and crashed on to the valley floor in Nepal’s Langtang national park, about 60km north of the capital, Kathmandu, near the mountainous Nepal-Tibet border.

Analysis by Institute for Policy Studies found that between 2019 and 2025, CEO compensation increased 41.4%

The average CEO of the US’s 100 largest, lowest-paying corporations earned 614 times more than their average worker last year, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

IPS’s latest executive excess report analyzed compensation at the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay. Between 2019 and 2025, CEO compensation increased 41.4%, unadjusted for inflation, twice as much as the median worker pay increased at these firms during the same period, at 20.7%.

As the US president struggles to end his Iran war, and approval ratings hit new lows, he leans on a familiar gambit

Donald Trump knows the power of an image – of himself, with everyone from Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un to Kim Kardashian. How about George Washington?

As the US president struggles to end his war with Iran, and with his approval ratings hitting the lowest levels of his second term, he has in recent weeks posted a series of AI-generated images of himself alongside key historical American figures.

Ryan Mackenzie, running for re-election, is accused of ‘fabricating’ a career in the real estate industry

The Republican congressman Ryan Mackenzie has been accused of embellishing his résumé with private sector experience in real estate sales amid an acrimonious showdown over his Pennsylvania seat.

Mackenzie, who has previously been accused of lying about his age on Tinder, “was a real estate salesperson licensed in PA”, according to his LinkedIn profile, and biographies have consistently listed it has his former profession.

The senator’s remarks reflect a turning point in Democrats’ attacks on the president. What should we make of them?

Apparently, he likes to say her name with a French accent. “Na-tah-lee!” the president cries out, in that affected tone of faux-formality that one might use with a person they love but do not quite respect, and she comes running, her thin legs teetering on her heels.

Natalie Harp, Trump’s 35-year-old “executive assistant”, was an odd recurring character in the latest blockbuster Trump administration book, Regime Change, by the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. In the book, Harp features like a silent sentinel, ever present but eerily quiet as Trump rants and raves. It’s not exactly clear what the scope of her responsibilities is; though, as Jamelle Bouie points out, the fact that she evidently helps run the president’s social media accounts, which can sway markets and influence his foreign counterparts, makes her one of the most powerful people in the federal government.

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On Wednesday, Trump officially signed a proclamation on Wednesday that suspends higher tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef imports for 90 days. This comes after backlash to the proposal – designed to lower grocery costs for Americans in the run-up to the November midterms.

Several Republicans – in states with sizable cattle farming industries – have criticized the policy, saying it is a short term solution that will stymie ranchers’ ability to rebuild their herds.

Four leading livestock and agricultural organizations also wrote a letter to the president on Wednesday urging him to reverse course.

“Flooding the market with discounted foreign beef is not the way to rebuild the American cattle herd, strengthen food security, or lower grocery bills in a lasting way,” the groups wrote.

Donald Trump will begin his day in Washington, before traveling to Houston, Texas where he’ll headline a Republican National Commitee (RNC) fundraiser, and help boost Ken Paxton — the state’s attorney general and Republican nominee for Senate.

A reminder that Paxton beat long serving Senator John Cornyn in the GOP primary earlier this year after receiving Trump’s endorsement. Paxton is set to face Democratic state lawmaker James Talarico in November.

The race was at its peak when American riders were regularly challenging for titles. Its return could help prompt a revival

After a decade-long absence, the beloved Philadelphia International Cycling Classic is set to return this weekend, with some of the world’s best bike-racing teams taking to the famous circuit around the city’s leafy Art Museum, Manayunk, and Roxborough areas on Sunday.

The race is one of just a handful of events on American soil sanctioned by UCI, cycling’s international governing body, and will feature squads such as EF Education EasyPost, Lidl-Trek, Lotto-Intermarché, and Jayco AlUla in the men’s race, and powerhouses CANYON//SRAM zondacrypto and Human Powered Health in the women’s event. It is classified as a 1.1 race, meaning it’s two levels below the top-flight WorldTour, whose races include the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

The Philadelphia Cycling Classic will be livestreamed on Channel 6 ABC, with the women’s race kicking off at 8.30am Eastern. The men will follow at 12.30pm. Of course, you could always trek to Philly and become part of the party yourself. I highly recommend snagging a spot somewhere along The Wall.

Tim Curry was a versatile performer on stage and screen who made his name as the flamboyant Dr Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Curry’s best-known roles often required a considerable physical transformation, to the extent that he was unrecognisable in some of them. As Frank-N-Furter, Rocky Horror’s eccentric scientist, he was daubed in garish makeup and dressed in stockings and suspenders. In Ridley Scott's fantasy Legend, he sported giant horns and scarlet skin as the Lord of Darkness, and, in 1990, Curry was transformed with full-face clown makeup to play Pennywise in the TV miniseries It, based on Stephen King's novel

• Tim Curry, star of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Stephen King’s It, dies aged 80

• Czech pair beat Bencic and Cobolli in deciding tiebreak

• Revamped event draws strong crowds at Arthur Ashe

• Singles stars dominate after doubles specialists exit

To many who came to the US Open grounds this week, the showpiece of the mixed doubles championship came Tuesday afternoon, with the returns of Serena Williams (after four years away from tennis) and Carlos Alcaraz (after four months out with a wrist injury).

To the players who remained in the field after Williams and Alcaraz exited in the quarter-finals, the real highlight was Wednesday night’s final at Arthur Ashe Stadium, with its $1m in prize money on the line. Karolína Muchová and Jakub Menšík made the most of the spotlight, beating Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli 6-3, 1-6 (10-6) for the title.