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

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.”

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.

• 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.

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.

• 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.

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.

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.

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

• Meet the judges | 2024 list | 2023 list | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018

• Subscribe to Moving the Goalposts, our free newsletter

For a limited time only, buy a fine art print featuring a standout selection of Tom Gauld’s cultural cartoons from 2025. This exclusive, two-week drop is your opportunity to own a collectible piece straight from the Guardian’s celebrated Book section. Available until 17 December

• Buy your prints here

Tom Gauld was born in 1976 and studied at Edinburgh College of Art and the Royal College of Art. He draws weekly cartoons for the Guardian and New Scientist magazine. He has created a number of comic books and a picture book for children. He lives in London with his family.

The Vampire’s Bookshelves

Pep Guardiola said that it had been “impossible” for him to enjoy Manchester City’s 5-4 victory against Fulham that moved them to within two points of the Premier League leaders Arsenal, given how close his team came to throwing away a four‑goal lead.

City were 5-1 in front at Craven Cottage after 54 minutes and seemingly cruising to an easy win. But then came an extraordinary fightback from Fulham.

• Updates from the event in Sydney

• Any thoughts? Email Angus

Much has been said in the preliminaries so far but diddly squt has been decided. Instead former Wallaby flanker Phil Waugh, who tasted defeat in the 2003 World Cup final, and who is now the CEO of Rugby Australia and says tonight lifts the curtain on “a very exciting time for Australian rugby. It’d be great to see the team go deep in the tournament and we have plenty of reasons to be excited.”

Here are some highlights of that 2003 decider (or lowlights if you’re an Aussie).

Fertilising arable land with human waste leaves array of toxins that could re-enter food chain, study finds

More than 520 chemicals have been found in English soils, including pharmaceutical products and toxins that were banned decades ago, because of the practice of spreading human waste to fertilise arable land.

Research by scientists at the University of Leeds, published as a preprint in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, found a worrying array of chemicals in English soils. Close to half (46.4%) of the pharmaceutical substances detected had not been reported in previous global monitoring campaigns.

Gloria Swanson is extraordinary as faded film-star Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s cameo-packed self-referential masterpiece about tinseltown ghosts and delusions

Billy Wilder’s film starring Gloria Swanson as a reclusive former silent movie star, and William Holden as a young wannabe writer who becomes her kept man, more than ever looks not merely like tinseltown satire or LA noir, but a ghost story. It’s the ultimate film about how the screenwriter is always the loser and the chump. You can tell that Norma Desmond (Swanson) is washed up because she has actually written a screenplay – which is, however, more than Joe (Holden) ever achieves in the course of this film.

Sunset Boulevard’s own script, co-written by Wilder with Charles Brackett and DM Marshman Jr, is of course superb. And after 75 years, we can appreciate the movie’s sober judgment about the dangers of cinephilia and Hollywood ancestor worship. The street name itself, with its dying fall, is an occult omen of the eerie and macabre things that happen here. David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive had the same chill. The street name is about the final ending, and this is one of the very few films of any sort with a really satisfying ending: the way in which the delusional old celebrity, her eyes pinwheeling, is finally induced to come placidly down the stairs to surrender to the authorities. She grimaces and gurns directly into the lens at the very last, rather like Anthony Perkins in Psycho – a film that incidentally was very much influenced by this one.

Exclusive: Brazil’s environment minister talks about climate inaction and the course we have to plot to save ourselves and the planet

Soon after I returned home to Altamira from Cop30, I found myself talking about dinosaurs, meteors and “ambassadors of harm” with Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva.

No one in government knows the rainforest better than Marina, as she is best known in Brazil, who was born and raised in the Amazon. No one is more aware of the sacrifices that environmental and land defenders have made than this associate of the murdered activist Chico Mendes. And no one worked harder to raise ambition at Cop30, the first climate summit in the Amazon, than her. So what, I asked, had it achieved?

It contains enough steel to go round the world twice – and even has a fake breeze to flutter the stars-and-stripes flag in its lobby. If this colossus is just the first of a new breed of bulky supertalls, is Britain next?

Among the slender needles and elegant spires of the Manhattan skyline, a mountainous lump has reared into view. It galumphs its way up above the others, climbing in bulky steps with the look of several towers strapped together, forming a dark, looming mass. From some angles it forms the silhouette of a hulking bar chart. From others, it glowers like a coffin, ready to swallow the dainty Chrysler building that trembles in its shadow. It is New York’s final boss, a brawny, bronzed behemoth that now lords it over the city with a brutish swagger.

Fittingly, this is the new global headquarters of JP Morgan, the world’s biggest bank. The firm enjoys a market capitalisation of $855bn (£645bn), more than Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup’s combined, and it looks as if it might have swallowed all three inside its tinted glass envelope. Last year, for the first time, it made more than $1bn a week in profits. Chairman and chief executive Jamie Dimon likes to boast of its “fortress balance sheet”, and he now has an actual fortress to go with it – built at a cost, he revealed at the opening, of around $4bn. He has certainly made his mark. It would be hard to design a more menacing building if you tried.

This year’s outstanding tracks – from post-punk rap to indie-disco and operatic pop – as voted for by 30 Guardian music writers

***

20

• Steve Smith hints bowler may be late call-up in Brisbane

• Josh Inglis favoured to replace injured Usman Khawaja

The challenge for England could be set to increase amid a growing belief that Pat Cummins will be given the green light to return for Australia this week in the second Ashes Test at the Gabba.

Cummins, 32, was absent from the series opener in Perth as he underwent the final stages of rehabilitation from a lower back stress injury that was first detected back in July. Steve Smith stepped up to captain as the hosts secured a 1-0 lead with an eight-wicket victory inside two days.

Plus: the shambles that was 1950 World Cup qualifying, and plenty more brawling teammates

• Mail us with your questions and answers

“Has any player been shown a second yellow card while being substituted for not leaving the pitch correctly?” wonders Ken Foster.

They have indeed, Ken. Let Robin Horton take you back to a bitter January in 1980, when Stoke City were the visitors to Burnley in the FA Cup third round. “Stoke’s Denis Smith, already on a yellow card, limped towards the touchline with an injured ankle, only to linger on the touchline as substitute Paul Johnson was not properly warmed up,” Robin recalls. “Referee Kevin McNally therefore sent Smith off for time-wasting. McNally was not in Stoke’s good books; Burnley won the tie via a penalty, and Stoke’s Ray Evans also got his marching orders, for what manager Alan Durban described as ‘heavy sarcasm’.” That’s as good a reason for a dismissal as we can remember.

• Arsenal represent Europe in four-game tournament

• Matches to be played in London from 28 January

Fifa has been unable to sell TV rights to its first global women’s club competition, the Champions Cup, which is taking place in London from 28 January. The Champions League holders, Arsenal, will represent Europe in the competition that features the winners of the continental championships.

The situation has echoes of Fifa’s struggle to sell TV rights to the men’s Club World Cup this year, bought by the global streaming platform Dazn, which sold a $1bn stake to the Saudi Arabian vehicle SURJ Sports Investment.

Tarantino has called Dano a ‘weak, weak uninteresting guy’, ‘the giant flaw’ in There Will Be Blood – and the main reason it is not his favourite film of the 21st century

How does the saying go? Opinions are like arseholes? Arseholes like opinions? Anyway: Quentin Tarantino went on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast this week to announce his 20 favourite films of the 21st century – a list that starts with Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down at No 1 and finishes on Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story at 20, by way of a few surprises (Toy Story 3 in second spot, Midnight in Paris at 10).

But the wildest of wild takes was revealed in his No 5 pick, There Will Be Blood, when Tarantino declared Paul Dano was the film’s “giant flaw”.

President Lee praised South Koreans for overcoming ‘an unprecedented democratic crisis in world history’ but some fears its society is becoming increasingly polarised

South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung has marked the anniversary of an attempt to impose martial law by declaring that those behind the bid to topple its democracy must face justice, while adding that the fight to secure the country remains unfinished.

“Investigations and trials of those who participated are still ongoing,” Lee said in a televised address. He pledged that “righteous unity” would be possible only once accountability was delivered.

Pillion, which explores a relationship between leather dom Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) and submissive Colin (Harry Melling), has just opened in UK cinemas. But how realistic is its portrayal of a group little seen in mainstream cinema?

Dr Lori Beth Bisbey, 62, Edinburgh

In her portraits from an overcrowded Venezuelan detention centre, Ana María Arévalo Gosen captures the frustration of women desperate for news from their lawyers and families

This photograph was taken inside the Poli-Valencia detention centre, where I began to understand what imprisonment means for women in Venezuela. The room had once been an investigation office, converted into a cell after authorities decided to move the women out of the main area, where they had been held alongside male detainees.

When I returned a year later, the space had been transformed. The women had made it their own, covering the walls with names, phrases and small drawings of hearts, even taping up a poster of the Colombian singer Maluma. What had once been a sterile office now held traces of their presence, their effort to hold on to a sense of identity in a place meant to erase it.