Author: The Guardian

There was a time, not so long ago, that Donald Trump did not seem to be very familiar with the Bible.When he first ran for the nomination of the very Christian Republican party, Trump was unable to name a single Bible verse. Early in his 2016 presidential campaign he referred to the eucharist as a “little cracker”. In a subsequent church visit, as he attempted to prove his religious credentials, he put cash in a plate that was meant to hold the communion.How times have changed.“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite…

Tom Brady was lampooned by comedians, former teammates and his longtime coach on his Netflix comedy show Sunday night.”It’s like a football game. You play according to the game plan and then you see how the strategy goes and you adjust on the fly,” Brady said before the three-hour game. “That’s what the locker room has been like to me over the years. So I’m not used to people not making fun of me.An impressive cast of comedians, former teammates and rivals took to the stage. Host Kevin Hart said before the event that no topic was off limits, and…

The House is expected to vote this week on a motion to remove Republican Mike Johnson as speaker, but the effort, spearheaded by hard-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, faces virtually no chance of success.Greene announced on Wednesday that she would move forward with forcing a vote on Johnson’s removal this week, following through on a threat she first issued in late March. Greene has consistently attacked Johnson for advancing bills that have attracted widespread bipartisan support, such as the government spending proposal approved in March and the foreign aid package signed into law last month.As she called for Johnson’s removal,…

SecondFood has been a focus of the culture wars for more than 50 years. I’m reminded of the second-wave feminists who took off their bras in the 1970s, then the ongoing judgment-laden debate over breastfeeding, and more recently the more alarming hostility surrounding transgender health care. Recent celebrations of female sexuality have seen the likes of #freethenip, hot girl summer, wider discussions around sexual pleasure, and the body positivity movement, which have all used breasts as a key theme.But for all the girls feeling free on Instagram, it’s much less common to see them free on the streets. We keep…

I’d been feeding the stray cat for months before she brought them to our door: a gang of feral and frail-looking kittens. I’d never had a pet before, and, like many people who do not grow up with animals, I perhaps lacked a certain emotional dimension. The arrival of this bunch of spitters and shakers cracked me wide open, and right when I needed it.It was 2016, and I was living as a property guardian in a disused care home in east London. I was 23, and I was broke, ambitious and ill. Back then I could be found having…

SecondOxing has changed. HBO and Showtime are gone. Once-dominant boxers like Roy Jones, Bernard Hopkins, Andre Ward and the Klitschko brothers have left the arena. Major fighting is engrossing Saudi Arabia.Through it all in recent years, there has been one constant – Canelo Alvarez.Canelo had a great fight on Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, earning a unanimous decision victory over Jaime Munguia. For those who are into boxing straight up, this win cemented his status as the iconic boxer of this era.In 2005, Canelo turned professional at the age of 15. , Danny Jacobs, Sergey Kovalev, Billy…

When I was a little girl, I cried a lot. I used to wish ferociously that I was not such a crybaby. I remember the shame so well. Sitting on my bed on a Sunday evening, hot-cheeked and furious with my tears, holding on to the thought that when I was a grownup, I would never cry. I would be a strong, confident and capable woman, and I would never again feel like a sobbing little girl who doesn’t want to go to school tomorrow and just wants to stay with her mum. I hated that part of myself and…

phosphorusPerhaps only a sports giant can truly appreciate the excellence of another sports giant. Exactly 70 years ago today, Sir Roger Bannister became the first man to run a mile in under four minutes, a goal that existed purely in the realm of fantasy until a stormy 1954 race at Oxford One day, he turned that possibility on its head. How good is it? Well, when I asked Sebastian Coe last week to put this into a broader context, he responded: “On every metric, I think it’s arguably as good as any sporting achievement in the last 100 years.” The…

On a hot day last week, the pavements outside Columbia University were heaving. About 200 protesters were gathered, making a noise that was bigger than their numbers, raising pro-Palestine chants and signs. It was a disparate crowd, diverse across ethnicities and generations. “I’ve lived in this neighbourhood all my life,” said one of them when I asked him why he was there. One smiling elderly lady walked through the crowd offering small bottles of water. A helicopter circled overhead. The police who encircled the crowd were jittery, yelling at passersby to keep moving, and raising the temperature of what was…

IIf the date of Oti Berger’s death is unknown, its place and cause are known. In April 1944, Berger (who was half-deaf, Jewish, and a communist) was arrested in his hometown of Zmayvac in German-occupied Yugoslavia. On May 29, she was sent to Auschwitz. After that there was nothing.Of the eight Bauhaus students who died at Auschwitz—half of those murdered in other concentration camps and ghettos—Berger was the most famous. Together with Anni Albers and Gunta Stölzl, she revolutionized weaving, transforming it from craft to art.She came to Dessau – an iteration of what most of us think of as…