Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.
Pelosi: declaration should be met with ‘unease and dismay’
Donald Trump has indicated he will sign the $333bn spending package that was rushed through Congress this week to avoid a government shutdown, but vowed he would also declare a national emergency to circumvent Congress and fund his coveted border wall, which is not included in the deal. The House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said she was considering a legal challenge to the declaration, which she warned would set a dangerous precedent that should be met with “unease and dismay”.
Big deal. Even some Republicans expressed discomfort with the president’s plan to declare a national emergency on Friday. Tom McCarthy examines the political implications.
May suffers fresh defeat on Brexit
The British prime minister, Theresa May, has suffered another blow to her fragile Brexit plans as the UK inches ever closer to its 29 March deadline to leave the EU. This time, it was her own Conservative party’s hardline Brexiters who tipped the parliamentary balance against May by abstaining on a motion that might have ruled out a drastic, “no-deal” Brexit, which was thus defeated by 45 votes. The move left more moderate Tory MPs furious, effectively ending a truce between the party’s leave and remain factions.
Irish backstop. May had asked parliament for permission to continue negotiating with the EU to seek alternatives to the controversial “Irish backstop”. Jessica Elgot explains what exactly MPs were voting on.
Snap analysis. Meanwhile, Andrew Sparrow explains why this may turn out to be a particularly significant moment in the Brexit saga.
The man who ran Amazon out of New York
Amazon has cancelled plans to build a waterfront headquarters in Queens, New York, blaming the overwhelming backlash against the project from local politicians and activists. The Democratic state senator, Michael Gianaris, one of the leading political voices opposing the plan, told the Guardian that New York was uniquely placed to stand up to the tech giant, “because Amazon is not bigger than New York. We have the ability to set the tone for the nation.”
Sweet Virginia. Amazon chose New York and Arlington, Virginia, as the sites of its new HQs after a national competition. It intends to proceed with the site in Arlington, where it has faced little resistance.
Guaidó denies opposition movement is losing momentum
The Venezuelan opposition leader seeking to oust President Nicolás Maduro has insisted the country’s “cruel dictatorship” is doomed, despite suggestions that his movement for change has lost momentum. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian’s Tom Phillips in Caracas, Juan Guaidó said he hoped Maduro would be gone in a “very short period of time”, adding: “The fall of the Berlin Wall took a day … I believe we are on the verge of something similar.”
Authoritarian allies. Guaidó called the international support for his cause “unprecedented”, despite reservations about the authoritarian tendencies of apparent allies such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. “The fact that they support us doesn’t mean that we approve of everything they do,” he said.
Crib sheet
A New York city council member has introduced the country’s first proposed legislation to protect fast-food workers by prohibiting restaurants from firing employees for anything other than “just cause”.
Antisemitism is on the rise across Europe, say experts, after France reported an annual rise of 74% in offences against Jews and Germany said it had experienced a 60% surge in the number of violent antisemitic attacks.
Colorado trail runner Travis Kauffman has described how he killed a mountain lion that attacked him on a remote trail, by beating its head with a rock and jamming a “foot on its neck” until it succumbed.
The fashion director of Vogue’s Brazil edition, Donata Meirelles, has resigned over photos from her 50th birthday party showing Meirelles, who is white, flanked by four black women dressed in white, while seated in a chair that critics compared to a colonial-era slave master’s cadeira de sinhá.
Must-reads
The glorious life of Chaka Khan
Chaka Khan was a Black Panther at 14, a recording artist at 17 and an addict most of her adult life, her last spell in rehab brought on by the death in 2016 of her friend, Prince. But at 65, the Queen of Funk tells Alexis Petridis, she’s a teetotal vegan with a new album, and she’s “still looking forward to shit”.
How the US hid its empire from itself
The US likes to consider itself a republic, but when it acquired the bulk of its overseas territories at the turn of the 20th century – Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam – Theodore Roosevelt and others were content to call them “colonies”. Why deny America is an empire, asks Daniel Immerwahr.
Phoney authors on why they lied
The American novelist AJ Finn, real name Dan Mallory, was recently exposed as a serial liar by the New Yorker. Leo Benedictus examines the history of such literary frauds and asks some of the writers why they allowed a fiction to mask the truth.
Greta Thunberg hails worldwide school climate strikes
Greta Thunberg is the 16-year-old whose solo climate change protest at the Swedish parliament last year has become a global movement. She tells Jonathan Watts that this week’s walkouts by schoolchildren in the UK mark “the beginning of great changes”.
Opinion
In a new book, two economists find that “helicopter parenting” probably improves children’s career prospects. But how should we define our children’s future “success”, asks Emma Brockes.
I recently went on a tour of a progressive private school in Manhattan, in which prospective parents thrilled at the freedoms afforded the kids while discreetly checking to make sure everyone still got into the Ivy League.
Sport
The owner of a Colorado sporting goods store, who refused to sell Nike products after the company featured Colin Kaepernick in an advertising campaign last year, has announced he is going out of business.
Manchester United have not beaten Chelsea in the FA Cup since Ole Gunnar Solskjær was in the team two decades ago. Now the Norwegian is their coach, can United best the Blues again? That’s one of 10 things to watch out for in the FA Cup fifth round this weekend.
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