The administration is heightening its anti-immigrant crackdown – and punishing people from a country the US helped destroy
After two national guard members were ambushed in Washington DC last week, killing one and leaving the other in critical condition, Donald Trump went on a hate-filled social media rant and vowed to “permanently pause migration from all Third World countries.”
Trump’s late night Thanksgiving posts devolved into a fury, evidently because the suspected gunman is an Afghan national. He had worked with the US government, including the CIA, and was evacuated to the US in 2021 after the American military withdrew from Afghanistan.
Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University
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© Photograph: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP
© Photograph: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP
© Photograph: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP
A viral essay has caused outrage in the US with its argument that the poverty line for a family of four is now $136,500. But is this so wrong?
Have you heard that a family of four in the US is now considered poor if their household income is under $136,500 (£103,300) a year? Don’t @ me about the maths – I’m just the messenger. The person behind this calculation is Michael Green, who is chief strategist and portfolio manager for Simplify Asset Management. I think this means that he makes large sums of money by fiddling with even larger sums of money. When not doing that, Green writes a newsletter and recently published a viral piece on Substack arguing that the poverty line, calculated as $31,200 by the Department of Health and Human Services, is a “broken benchmark”. These days a family with a low six-figure income is officially “the new poor”, he reasoned.
Green’s essay has sparked numerous rebuttals, with people arguing that he had turned the poverty measure into a middle-class measure. “It’s completely disconnected from reality,” the economist Kevin Corinth said, for example, noting that the $136,500 figure was higher than the US median household income of $83,730. “It’s laughable to put a poverty line far above the median income in the United States.”
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© Photograph: Posed by models; Shaw Photography Co./Getty Images
© Photograph: Posed by models; Shaw Photography Co./Getty Images
© Photograph: Posed by models; Shaw Photography Co./Getty Images
Project on ‘very poorly understood’ terrain poses immense geological hazard, endangering fragile ecosystems
When an earthquake in 2002 struck in a remote pocket of Alaska, the shock was the strongest ever recorded in the interior of the state. But, miraculously, an oil pipeline that crossed directly over the fault line was unscathed.
Engineers behind the design of the 800 mile system were prepared. Knowing the high likelihood of seismic activity along the route, which bisected the Denali fault, they constructed sections where the pipeline rested on rail girders, allowing it to sway and shear without snapping.
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© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
Champions South Africa face Italy, Georgia and Romania
Ireland and Scotland in pool with Uruguay and Portugal
The host nation Australia will face their traditional rivals New Zealand at the men’s Rugby World Cup in 2027 after the draw was made in Sydney on Wednesday.
The Wallabies, hosting a second men’s tournament, were guaranteed to face a top-ranked nation in Pool A due to a current world ranking of seventh, and the renewal of their fierce rivalry with the All Blacks is perhaps the most appetising possible outcome from the draw.
The potential for a “Bledisloe Cup” opening match to kick off the global showpiece, on 1 October 2027 in Perth, will be a hugely attractive prospect for fans. Chile, playing at a second Rugby World Cup after their debut in France in 2023, and debutants Hong Kong are also in Pool A.
England, who won the men’s tournament in Australia 22 years ago, have been pitted against their Six Nations rivals Wales, with Tonga and Zimbabwe the other sides in Pool F. Wales famously defeated England at their home tournament a decade ago before a second loss, to Australia, consigned the hosts to an early exit.
© Photograph: Mark Kolbe/World Rugby/Getty Images
© Photograph: Mark Kolbe/World Rugby/Getty Images
© Photograph: Mark Kolbe/World Rugby/Getty Images
Exclusive: CEO says decision taken with ‘utmost regret and sadness’ after supreme court ruling on definition of a woman
The Women’s Institute will no longer accept transgender women as members from April following the UK supreme court ruling on the legal definition of a woman, the Guardian can reveal.
Melissa Green, the chief executive of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, said the organisation had taken the decision with the “utmost regret and sadness”, adding it had “no choice” but to exclude trans women from its membership.
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© Photograph: Imageplotter/Alamy
© Photograph: Imageplotter/Alamy
© Photograph: Imageplotter/Alamy
12-time All-Star posts at 3am that he’s been released
Clippers executive Frank says team will seek a trade
LA have lost five straight and sit near bottom of West
Chris Paul says the Los Angeles Clippers are sending him home from their road trip, putting a shocking twist on what is expected to be the veteran point guard’s final NBA season.
“Just Found Out I’m Being Sent Home,” Paul posted on social media at around 3am Wednesday morning, adding a peace emoji.
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© Photograph: Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
© Photograph: Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
© Photograph: Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
Two major figures from the last 15 years of global soccer have largely met in big-game contexts. They’ll do so again in MLS Cup on Saturday
This was the matchup Thomas Müller wanted.
“My history with [Messi] forces me to hope for a final against Miami,” the former Bayern Munich and Germany star told Calen Carr in a recent interview previewing the MLS playoffs ahead for his new side, the Vancouver Whitecaps.
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© Composite: Guardian Picture Desk
© Composite: Guardian Picture Desk
© Composite: Guardian Picture Desk
PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox; Eyes Out/Blumhouse Games
Psychedelic visuals and a promising premise are let down by tired game design in this first-person horror with an appearance from the synthpop pioneer
Video games have delivered a feast of singular and wondrous sights in 2025: ecological fantasias teeming with magical beasts; stunning, historically obsessive recreations of feudal Japan. But here is an end-of-year curio: psychological horror game Sleep Awake serves us synth-rock pioneer Gary Numan stepping into what is perhaps the schlockiest role of his life – a gigantic floating head named Hypnos.
This late-stage cameo is not quite indicative of the game as a whole; the handful of hours prior to Numan’s arrival are more mournful than madcap. Mostly, you explore the dilapidated, tumbledown streets of what is thought to be the last city on Earth. This setting is a magnificent work of imagination. You see it through the eyes of a young woman named Katja, who moves along rooftops, gazing out upon a barren, lifeless hinterland, into labyrinthine streets whose darkness and arcane logic recall the stirring subterranean etchings of Italian artist Piranesi.
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© Photograph: Blumhouse Games
© Photograph: Blumhouse Games
© Photograph: Blumhouse Games
Chloe Kelly, Barbra Banda and Klara Bühl have made it between places 40 and 11 as we continue our countdown to the year’s best players
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© Illustration: Guardian Design
© Illustration: Guardian Design
© Illustration: Guardian Design
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