Leif Ames

After two titles won as the lowest seed in the playoffs, the New Jersey club sought consistency in 2026. It’s arrived, but what’s next?

By the time Gotham FC had won their second NWSL Championship in three seasons, Yael Averbuch West had already determined what was going to change.

Some of that is the nature of her job; The general manager of a perennial contender can’t rest on laurels. Before every postseason, Gotham finalize tough looming personnel decisions, assessing the roster and staff alike with clear eyes.

Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Thursday that he says will prevent future administrations from changing his design of the Oval Office and Cabinet Room, spaces he declared to be national monuments that should be preserved. Since returning to office, the US president has transformed the Oval Office with gold accents and statuettes, portraits of famous Americans pulled from storage and a copy of the Declaration of Independence that hangs on the wall.

The redesign has drawn criticism, including from the former president Barack Obama, who recently joked that 'he’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere.'

• Trump signs proclamation to try to prevent changes to gold-covered Oval Office

Jonathan Freedland hosts a live panel to look at what happens next – for Donald Trump, the Republicans who might want to succeed him, and for Democrats looking ahead to 2028. He is joined by the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, David Smith; Tara Setmayer, a co-founder and CEO of the Seneca project; the Guardian’s global editor, Devika Bhat; Adam Smith, a professor of US politics and political history at the University of Oxford; and the clinical psychologist, author and political commentator Mary Trump

In a Guardian article in 2010, the Oxford Rhodes scholar said UK democracy had the ‘upper hand’ over the US

• US politics live – latest updates

In the tense final hours before his dramatic election as senator for Michigan in this week’s midterms, Abdul El-Sayed had a heated encounter with a British TV journalist that rapidly went viral.

As James Matthews, of Sky News, tried to ask him a question, El-Sayed bit back. “Why would I care to have a conversation with you?” he demanded of Matthews, placing both hands on the reporter’s shoulders in a gesture of emphasis.

The Warriors’ freshman has spent his first weeks in the NBA antagonizing superstars, speaking his mind and emerging as one of the league’s most compelling personalities

If a screen-addled pickup basketball player teleported into the body of a high-level athlete, they might resemble Yaxel Lendeborg. The most commonly cited fact about Lendeborg is that he used to spend 12 to 14 hours a day gaming, and didn’t debut on his high school basketball team until he was an upperclassman. Professional athletes often have origin stories that resemble the superhero more than the mortal, but Lendeborg really was just like us at one point. Lendeborg has also said that prior to entering the NBA, he didn’t really watch it, either. The Puerto Rican forward racked up more than enough accolades in college to qualify for the NBA, but still. Any of you reading this could smoke the man who may be this season’s rookie of the year in trivia about his profession.

The 24-year-old Lendeborg is a forward on the Golden State Warriors, a team caught between the ancient, gleaming remnants of the most fearsome dynasty of the 2010s and its future. The balance didn’t work out last season, as the Warriors produced flashes of old greatness to win one play-in game before flaming out in the next. Such results are a frustrating waste of Stephen Curry’s wonderful form even at 38 years old. Lendeborg is the best hope in a while to help maximize it. But even more importantly, Lendeborg is the character of the season so far. He’s spent its first two weeks antagonizing superstars, firing off unselfconscious takes in the press and vacuuming up the spotlight from his blander peers. What a joy to bear witness to an athlete who probably didn’t even hear the words “media training” until college.

In a Guardian article in 2010, the Oxford Rhodes scholar said UK democracy had the ‘upper hand’ over the US

• US politics live – latest updates

In the tense final hours before his dramatic election as senator for Michigan in this week’s midterms, Abdul El-Sayed had a heated encounter with a British TV journalist that rapidly went viral.

As James Matthews, of Sky News, tried to ask him a question, El-Sayed bit back. “Why would I care to have a conversation with you?” he demanded of Matthews, placing both hands on the reporter’s shoulders in a gesture of emphasis.

US judge issues 14-day block on construction on DC monument after it was approved by planning commission

A federal judge in the early hours of Friday blocked any construction work from beginning on Donald Trump’s towering triumphal arch for 14 days, a major setback for one of the president’s most prominent projects in his vision to remake the nation’s capital.

The temporary restraining order was issued by US district judge Tanya Chutkan in a Washington DC court that has regularly proved to be a thorn in the US president’s side, such as in previous cases involving election subversion and the January 6 insurrection by Trump supporters.

After years of outrage or numbness being the main options for dealing with politics, Tuesday’s results were permission to be optimistic

• This was originally published in the Stakes 2026, a newsletter about the midterm elections. Sign up to get it in your inbox

We shed some tears this midterm cycle.

US politics always makes people emotional, but I heard from friends and colleagues many times this year that speeches, campaigns and underdog success stories moved people in unexpected ways, whether it was this ad of Michigan senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed doing bedtime, a photo of newly elected Texas Democrats James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa at a Whataburger, or Georgia’s Keisha Lance Bottoms becoming the first Black female governor in the entire country.

While there’s no evidence linking AI to mass layoffs, the tech has already ‘changed worker psychology’

When artificial intelligence researcher Mrinank Sharma quit his job at Anthropic earlier this year, the news rippled across the internet. In his resignation letter, posted on X and viewed 15.3m times, Sharma warned of a world “in peril” from the technology he had helped build.

“It is clear to me the time has come to move on,” he wrote. His next move: a poetry degree.