Good morning.
JD Vance sought to downplay the revelation that leaders of a group called the Young Republicans exchanged hundreds of racist and sexist text messages – including one in which rape was called “epic”, and another in which someone wrote “I love Hitler” – as youthful indiscretions.
Vance suggested that the participants in the leaked chats were much younger than they in fact were. Some of the participants were barely younger than the 41-year-old vice-president.
“The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys,” Vance said. “They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke – telling a very offensive, stupid joke – is cause to ruin their lives.”
How old are the people who exchanged the messages? Mother Jones reports that public records indicate that eight of the 11 Republican operatives who took part in the offensive chat appear to range in age from 24 to 35.
Hamas says all reachable hostage bodies recovered as Israel threatens to resume Gaza fighting
Israel has threatened to resume fighting in Gaza after Hamas announced it could not return any more bodies of Israeli hostages without specialist recovery equipment to retrieve the remains from the ruins of the devastated territory.
The threat from Israel Katz, the defence minister, came after Hamas handed over the remains of two more hostages late last night, bringing the total returned to nine, along with a tenth body that Israel said was not that of a hostage.
What has the US said about the return of the dead hostages? Though well short of the 28 dead hostages expected by Israel, senior US advisers later said they believed Hamas was committed to finding and returning the others.
San Francisco opposes ‘authoritarian crackdown’ as Trump threatens to send troops
Donald Trump suggested that San Francisco could be the next city he targets with federal troops, threatening a deployment that local and state officials have said would be unnecessary and unwelcome.
Speaking at the White House to the FBI director, Kash Patel, the president said: “I’m going to be strongly recommending, at the request of government officials … that you start looking at San Francisco … one of our great cities 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and now it’s a mess … Every American deserves to live in a community where they’re not afraid of being mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted or shot.”
What have San Francisco leaders said? San Francisco and California leaders have said they oppose Trump’s intervention and have worked to convey that there was no crisis of crime and violence that required outside help or a militarized response. The state senator Scott Wiener said on Wednesday that the city “neither needs nor wants Trump’s personal army on our streets”.
In other news …
The US supreme court heard oral arguments yesterday in Callais v Louisiana, a high-stakes voting rights case in which the court’s conservative majority appears poised to gut one of the most powerful provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
South Korea has issued its most serious travel warning for parts of Cambodia, issuing a “code black” ban that orders citizens to leave areas in which the government has identified increasing employment scams and detention cases targeting its nationals.
Britney Spears has responded to her former husband Kevin Federline’s claims in his forthcoming memoir about their marriage, calling his depiction of her “extremely hurtful and exhausting”.
Stat of the day: Nestlé to cut 16,000 jobs as new chief targets sales growth
Nestlé said it planned to cut 16,000 jobs over the next two years as the owner of KitKat and Nescafé attempted to reduce costs and increase sales. The Swiss-headquartered multinational said the cuts would include 12,000 white-collar professionals and 4,000 in its manufacturing and supply chain, nearly 6% of its global workforce.
‘Prince Andrew believed having sex with me was his birthright’ – Virginia Giuffre on her abuse by Epstein, Maxwell and the British king’s brother
In an extract from her posthumous memoir, Virginia Roberts Giuffre recalls the day an “apex predator” recruited her from Mar-a-Lago, aged just 16; how she was trafficked to a succession of wealthy and powerful men, and how everyone knew what was going on.
Don’t miss this: D’Angelo was far more than the shirtless sex symbol he was painted as
D’Angelo’s death from pancreatic cancer has left a void in modern soul. Too often remembered for one shirtless video, he was in fact a revolutionary artist whose music – spanning Brown Sugar, Voodoo and Black Messiah – reshaped R&B for a generation.
Climate check: Judge dismisses suit by young climate activists against Trump’s pro-fossil fuel policies
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by young climate activists that aimed to halt Donald Trump’s pro-fossil fuel executive orders. The dismissal by the US district judge Dana Christensen yesterday came after 22 plaintiffs, aged between seven and 25 and from five states, sought to block three of the president’s executive orders, including one declaring a “national energy emergency”.
Last Thing: Elliott Gould remembers Diane Keaton – ‘We snuck into a bush and she said: “This is called making out’’’
“She was beautiful, she was sexy, and she was nice!” Elliott Gould tells Andrew Pulver. “What more can you ask for? She became a legitimate superstar class American artist, yet she stayed exactly the same person regardless of her fame.”
Keaton died of pneumonia, the Oscar-winning actor’s family have revealed, as they thanked people for the “extraordinary” response to her death last week.
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