Mayor says progressive peers who swept primaries speak to Americans ‘coast to coast’ as moderates have reservations

Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, said on Sunday that he and a slew of democratic socialist allies who prevailed in recent primary elections are carrying a “national message” to struggling working Americans hungry for a new kind of politics “coast to coast”.

Mamdani made that triumphant clarion call on ABC News’s This Week just five days after he had seen his endorsed candidates win Democratic nominations in three races for New York congressional seats, as well as for five state legislature positions in Albany. He made no effort to disguise his delight that his clean sweep marks a dramatic shift in Democratic politics – not just in New York City, which he has led since January, but also across the US.

He said that collectively they were carrying a “New Deal understanding” of Democratic politics to Congress and on to the “national stage”. It spoke, he said, to Americans feeling exhaustion at struggling to make ends meet “every single day”.

The National Design Studio, staffed by DOGE veterans, installed visitor-tracking software on vital federal websites

An opaque White House office staffed largely by veterans of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (DOGE) has quietly rebuilt some of the federal government’s most sensitive websites – for passport applications, voter registration, prescription-drug pricing and children’s savings – in ways critics say appear to violate federal law.

A Guardian investigation has found the office has apparently been developing or redeveloping sensitive federal websites, including those connecting Americans with prescription drugs, children’s savings accounts, passports and voter registration. The investigation corroborates and advances earlier reporting by the Drey Dossier, a YouTube investigative outlet.

The NDS built and now operates four public federal websites: ndstudio.gov, trumprx.gov, realfood.gov and trumpaccounts.gov. All four ran commercial visitor-tracking software, configured to evade the privacy tools many web users install, and none carry the public filings federal privacy law requires under laws including the Privacy Act of 1974 and the E-Government Act of 2002.

Even before the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Trump has broad power to deport hundreds of thousands of migrants living legally in the U.S. under temporary protected status, David Bier feared the U.S. was slipping toward a demographic cliff.

"We're destined to be there, in short order, there's no question," Bier said. "We're already seeing a situation where most counties in the United States had more deaths than births."

An expert on population and immigration at the libertarian Cato Institute, Bier believes the U.S. is beginning to look more like China, Italy and South Korea. Those nations face rapid aging and population decline.

U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Louisiana on Saturday, giving Donald Trump a win after he backed her to replace GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy.

Letlow, who was endorsed by Trump, defeated state Treasurer John Fleming in the two-candidate runoff after they finished ahead of Cassidy in the GOP primary May 16.

Letlow pledged her loyalty to Trump in a race where Cassidy, who voted to convict the president on impeachment charges in 2021, spent a year working to keep Trump from going after him. She has promised to work in lockstep with Trump to advance his agenda.

Search for survivors continues with nearly 70,000 people reported unaccounted for by their family members

The ⁠death toll ⁠in ⁠the twin ​earthquakes that struck ⁠Venezuela earlier ⁠this ​week ‌has ‌risen to ‌1,430, according to one of the country’s top politicians, Jorge Rodríguez.

Another 3,200 ​people were injured ⁠and 3,100 ​left homeless ​by the ​disaster, ​the National Assembly president added, speaking ​on ​state television.

Rescuers are still searching for survivors after the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes struck within a minute of each other on Wednesday evening, flattening buildings in the north of the country. At least 68,900 people have been reported unaccounted for by their families.

Mayors such as New York’s Zohran Mamdani show leftwing ideology can go hand-in-hand with effective governance

A trio of Democratic socialist victories in mayoral contests in three of the largest cities in the US has unleashed a new wave of hope on the left of the party. Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson took office in New York and Seattle, respectively, this year. Janeese Lewis George is set to follow in Washington DC.

As momentum around leftwing candidates appears to build, focus will turn to Los Angeles over the coming months, where another member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) will attempt to continue this winning streak.

The common criticism of democratic socialism is that its proponents put their ideological interests before matters of effective governance. But after a string of high-profile wins, supporters are hopeful that Mamdani and others will prove the two can go hand-in-hand.

About 3 million fewer people in the United States had Affordable Care Act health insurance plans in February compared with the same time last year, according to new federal data.

In the report released Friday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suggested the 13% drop in enrollment from 22.1 million people in 2025 to 19.2 million this year could be attributed to a federal crackdown on fraudulent or “phantom” enrollment. But health analysts said it was more likely related to the Jan. 1 expiration of federal subsidies, which caused a surge in plan costs that resulted in many people being unable to pay their premiums.

“We know that real people lost their health insurance coverage,” said Cynthia Cox, a vice president and director of the ACA program at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF, citing survey findings on people who had left their plans. “This coverage loss happened at the same time millions of people faced double or even triple digit increases in their premium payments.”

Strikes come after retaliatory attacks on Friday following a drone strike on cargo ship in strait of Hormuz

The US military has launched further strikes on multiple targets in Iran, the US Central Command (Centcom) confirmed, a day after it had struck Iran in retaliation for a drone attack on a cargo ship in the strait of Hormuz.

Centcom said its strikes on Saturday were in “direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping”. The US strikes targeted “Iranian military surveillance infrastructure, communication systems, air defense sites, drone storage facilities, and minelayer capabilities”, Centcom said in a statement.

The flare-up in tensions comes as Washington and Tehran have been negotiating a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to end an unpopular war that has sent global oil prices skyrocketing and resulted in thousands of civilian deaths.

Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry earlier this week supported a resolution that would repeal the 17th Amendment and strip American voters of their right to elect U.S. Senators.

The joint resolution, introduced by Texas Congressman Keith Self, aims to “restore the Founders’ original vision for the United States” and return the selection of senators to state legislatures.

“Our Founding Fathers designed the Senate to protect state sovereignty and act as a check on federal overreach. If senators are supposed to represent their states, then the states should choose them. Repealing the 17th Amendment will restore that constitutional balance and make the Senate more accountable to the people of Texas and every other state in the union,” Self said.

A fast-moving wildfire in Utah raced across the landscape overnight, fed by heat and dry wind and forcing more communities to evacuate, officials said Saturday.

Air tankers and helicopters were grounded Friday as winds picked up on the Cottonwood Fire, the largest blaze currently burning in the U.S. Gusts were clocked at 45 miles per hour (72 kph) and humidity levels were in the single digits, leaving crews with few options for slowing the flames, especially as they raced through the treetops.

The U.S. Forest Service said in a statement on Facebook that weather conditions are expected to slightly improve, but not by much.

Germany ⁠and Italy endured sweltering conditions on Saturday as a heatwave linked to dozens of deaths in western Europe spread eastwards, after temperatures broke records above 40C (104F).

Denmark registered its highest temperature on record on Saturday, according to the Danish meteorological institute. “With 36.6C north of Odense, we have the warmest day ever since measurements began in 1874,” it said in a post on X.

Slovakia confirmed that Friday night was its warmest on record, with temperatures not dropping below 26.3C.

Britain, France, Switzerland and Germany have experienced record heat in June, and the weather system could set more records as it moves towards Poland.

An unprecedented legal filing claims that regulating Elon Musk’s xAI could kill us.

The federal government intervened Monday in a Clean Air Act lawsuit in which people in Memphis, Tennessee, and Southaven, Mississippi, are suing Elon Musk’s xAI over the health risks posed by the company’s unpermitted gas turbines.

The Department of Justice didn’t intervene on behalf of the people breathing dirty air, though: instead, it submitted an unprecedented motion backing xAI.

The suit, filed by NAACP lawyers, contends that xAI should owe over $100,000 a day in civil penalties for violating the Clean Air Act. DOJ is pushing for the suit to be thrown out—not on the facts of the case, but because, the agency claims, Americans need Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot for our continued safety.