A presidential move untethered from reality

I’m Betsy Reed, and I lead the US edition of the Guardian. Our US newsroom, which now consists of more than 100 journalists with offices in New York, DC, and LA, reports on America from a global perspective for readers all over the world. Here’s what we covered this week in Trump’s America.

On Monday morning, President Trump declared at a White House press conference that Washington DC had been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals” – a typical flourish untethered from reality – and announced he would seize control of the city’s police force. By Tuesday night, national guard troops were patrolling the otherwise quiet streets of the US capital. As columnist Moustafa Bayoumi put it, the president’s takeover was straight out of a fascist playbook.

As we’ve learned over the past seven-plus months, Trump’s transformation of politics into theater creates dramatic scenes that are sometimes banal or absurd, but all too often turn brutal and even deadly.

Students, professors, journalists, military officers, scientists, doctors, federal workers and lawyers have all found themselves in the administration’s crosshairs – but those most directly and viciously targeted have been immigrants.

After our recent exclusive report found that people with no criminal convictions are being targeted for arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), on Wednesday the Guardian reported that a New Zealand woman with a US visa has been in Ice detention with her six-year-old son for the past three weeks. Also this week, we published the final installment of our three-part series revealing how Trump has turned to private prisons with records of inmate abuse to jail immigrants. Amid this climate of fear, as these private prison firms reap “extraordinary” revenues, our reporters are documenting how immigrants’ lives have shrunk and dimmed.

Taking stock of this administration’s recent actions – the masked agents bundling people into vans, the uniformed soldiers on the streets, the nine- and 10-figure settlements extracted from universities and media companies – columnist Moira Donegan pinpointed the throughline: an obsession with the spectacle and flex of power.

Democrats, gradually emerging from a stunned post-election stupor, have started to flex some power of their own. On Monday, Texas Democrats temporarily blocked a Republican push to redraw the state’s congressional lines by relocating to blue states such as Illinois and New York. California governor Gavin Newsom and other Democratic state leaders, for their part, have threatened to draw retaliatory maps should Texas Republicans get theirs through.

Meanwhile, the president continues to golf and we revealed that the vice-president, JD Vance, took a canoe trip on an Ohio lake whose water level had been raised by the army corps of engineers to allow him to enjoy his summer holiday.

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After the killing of four Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza in a single Israeli attack, we republished the final words of Anas al-Sharif, in which he appealed for those left behind to look after his family and his country. Malak A Tantesh reported from Sharif’s funeral and the scene of the attack in Gaza City, alongside Lorenzo Tondo in Jerusalem. In a powerful column for our opinion section, Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, didn’t mince her words, saying Israel is wiping out Gaza’s journalists – and no longer even hiding it. “The laws of war are clear: journalists are civilians. To target them deliberately in war is to commit a war crime.”

Manisha Ganguly investigated how Palestinians in Gaza face indiscriminate fire at the controversial US- and Israeli-backed food distribution sites that have been the scene of hundreds of killings, while Malak in Gaza City and William Christou in Beirut looked at how some of the strip’s sickest children are waiting in limbo to be evacuated.

Ahead of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s summit in Alaska, Andrew Roth looked at how putting the US president in a room with his Russian counterpart doesn’t always end well. Shaun Walker wrote about the human cost of potential “land swaps” in Ukraine, while Pjotr Sauer looked back at how Tsar Alexander II sold Alaska to the US in the 18th century, in what at the time was seen by both sides as a bad deal.

The proscription of the British protest group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization has led to weeks of protest in the UK and hundreds of arrests, including of many people aged over 60. This week Ben Quinn profiled Tim Crosland, the former UK government lawyer at the centre of support for the pro-Palestine protest movement. Ben also revealed that 3,000 riot officers had been readied ahead of last weekend’s protests. Columnist Andy Beckett attended the London Palestine Action demonstration last weekend, and found a microcosm of the anger swelling across Britain.

Also in the UK, Anna Isaac revealed the Treasury is examining ways to raise more money from inheritance tax (IHT) amid growing pressure on the country’s finances. The agenda-setting scoop reported a lifetime cap could be introduced to limit the amount of money or value of assets an individual can donate as part of their IHT planning.

In response to Gabrielle Canon’s reporting on how the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal firefighter service have left the US woefully underprepared for wildfire season, Democratic congressman Robert Garcia sent a letter to the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, demanding answers.

Our Science Weekly podcast tackled the unprecedented heatwaves in Europe with a look at how to stay cool when the temperatures rise. Meanwhile, Helena Horton, Fiona Harvey and Michael Goodier revealed that people in the UK with low incomes and those from ethnic minorities are most likely to be at risk from dangerously hot homes. And Guardian Australia’s Graham Readfearn reported on scientific research that showed about 5% of common Australian wild birds could have undergone a “sex reversal” where their genetic sex does not match their reproductive organs.

Tennis writer Tumaini Carayol interviewed US star Frances Tiafoe, a trailblazer who uses his platform to promote female athletes (and is a favourite of Michelle Obama as a result). Our beloved soccer podcast, Football Weekly, is now available in video form, beginning with this two-part special preview of the returning Premier League season hosted, as ever, by Max Rushden and Barry Glendenning.

Adria R Walker had a deep dive tracing the rich history of Black family reunions – a centuries-long tradition in the US, born out of formerly enslaved people looking for long-lost family members. Today, these festivities offer a chance for hundreds of thousands of families to connect, while teaching and internalizing their family ancestry.

Simon Hattenstone’s interview with Sharon Stone was a breathtaking story of fame, family and abuse – including her relationship with Harvey Weinstein.

The Edinburgh fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world, and our coverage was comprehensive, ranging from a revelatory piece by Rachael Healy about the US comics taking huge risks to make jokes about Donald Trump to an article by Libby Brooks celebrating the many older performers including Miriam Margolyes and Andy Linden. Oh, and we chose our top 10 jokes.

Our readers’ interview with author Stephen King touched on the inspiration behind his characters, his fear for US politics and why his job at a mill gave him such a wealth of material for his later books. Elsewhere, Vincenzo Latronico wrote about how anglophone literature lost its universal appeal and novelist Peter Carey revisited Ned Kelly, Australia’s most famous bushranger, 25 years on from his Booker prize-winning novel, True History of the Kelly Gang.