The Guardian

I drove 2,000 miles with a French friend across my home country – and saw the endless nowhere land that is the crucible of Trumpism

In 1941 Dorothy Thompson, an American journalist who reported from Germany in the lead-up to the second world war, wrote an essay for Harper’s about the personality types most likely to be attracted to Nazism, headlined “Who Goes Nazi?” “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t – whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi,” Thompson wrote.

Talia Lavin, a US writer, recently gave Thompson’s idea an update on Substack with an essay of her own: “Who Goes Maga?”

Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe correspondent

The potential layoffs listed in documents reviewed by Democrats are part of the White House'’s broader push to shrink the federal government

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to eliminate its scientific research office and could fire more than 1,000 scientists and other employees who help provide the scientific foundation for rules safeguarding human health and ecosystems from environmental pollutants.

As many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists – 75% of the research programme’s staff – could be laid off, according to documents reviewed by Democratic staff on the house committee on science, space and technology.

Commission launched in 2022 says lagoon project, not full barrage, should be backed by UK and Welsh governments

Urgent action is needed to harness the UK’s potential for tidal range energy in the Severn estuary but smaller lagoon models should be pursued over a larger dam-like barrage, a panel of experts has said.

The Severn Estuary Commission said that harnessing the energy of the tides in the estuary could deliver predictable, renewable electricity that would work independent of weather conditions.

Floods, heatwaves and supercharged hurricanes occurred in hottest climate human society has ever experienced

The devastating impacts of the climate crisis reached new heights in 2024, with scores of unprecedented heatwaves, floods and storms across the globe, according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.

The WMO’s report on 2024, the hottest year on record, sets out a trail of destruction from extreme weather that took lives, demolished buildings and ravaged vital crops. More than 800,000 people were displaced and made homeless, the highest yearly number since records began in 2008.

Chris Weston and Alastair Cochran targeted by group who accuse them of causing a public nuisance

Environmental campaigners have attempted citizen’s arrests of the chief executive and chief financial officer of Thames Water on suspicion of causing a causing a public nuisance.

The campaigners accuse Chris Weston and Alastair Cochran of five to seven counts of the offence, which is regularly used against protesters, including illegal discharge of sewage, mismanagement of customer funds and operating unsafe infrastructure.

BYD unveils platform with charging power of 1,000 kW, which would be twice as fast as Tesla’s supercharging

• Can BYD’s batteries really charge in five minutes?

The Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD has unveiled a new charging system that it said could make it possible for EVs to charge as quickly as it takes to refill with petrol.

BYD’s Hong Kong-listed shares gained 4.1% on Tuesday to hit a record high of 408.80 Hong Kong dollars, as investors bet that the company could strengthen its already commanding position as one of the world’s biggest electric carmakers.

New study finds dolphins, including critically endangered Burrunan, have among the world’s highest levels of chemicals banned decades ago

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It has been half a century since governments around the world, faced with overwhelming evidence, started banning early generations of what we now call forever chemicals. Industrial chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and the notorious pesticide DDT had been widely used – DDT is credited with saving millions of lives from insect-borne disease, while PCBs were vital in electrical safety – before it was understood that they were serious environmental toxins.

“The problem with these legacy contaminants,” environmental scientist Chantel Foord says, “is that they’re amazing in our products because they don’t break down, but they’re equally devastating in our environment because they don’t break down.”

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Deal will restrict fishing near colonies on Robben Island and Bird Island for 10 years, after long debate between industry and conservationists

Efforts to stop the critically endangered African penguin from going extinct took a step forward on Tuesday after South African conservationists and fishing industry groups reached a legal settlement on no-fishing zones around six of the penguins’ major breeding colonies.

Sardine and anchovy fishing will not be allowed for 12 miles (20km) around the penguin colony off Cape Town on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, and Bird Island, across the bay from Gqeberha, also known as Port Elizabeth. There will be more limited closures around four other colonies, according to a court order formalising the agreement.

Flying lobsters, cuttlefish ink and stargazy pie … Jon Tonks got on his kayak to spend 18 months photographing the incredible fishing communities around England’s south-west coast

Ana Toni also criticises the UK’s plans to slash overseas aid to fund defence spending

Countries looking to boost their national security through rearmament or increased defence spending must also bolster their climate efforts or face more wars in the future, one of the leaders of the next UN climate summit has warned.

Some countries could decide to include climate spending in their defence budgets, suggested Ana Toni, Brazil’s chief executive of the Cop30 summit.

Hunter Wildlife Rescue started receiving numerous reports of sick and dead birds on Monday, centred on the suburbs Hamilton and Carrington

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New South Wales authorities are investigating the possible poisoning and mass deaths of more than 150 little corellas in Newcastle.

Kate Randolph, the acting president of Hunter Wildlife Rescue, described the incident as “extremely confronting” and said volunteers and local vets were doing everything they could to rescue surviving, severely sick birds.

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Break in cross-party consensus on issue to be announced on Tuesday

Kemi Badenoch is dropping her party’s commitment to reaching net zero by 2050, as she launches the Conservatives’ widest policy review in a generation.

The Tory leader will give a speech on Tuesday in which she will argue that hitting Britain’s legally binding climate target is “impossible”, abandoning one of the most significant policies enacted by her recent predecessor Theresa May.

Revealed: Edelman worked for Brazilian trade group accused of pushing for environmental rollbacks in Amazon

Edelman, the world’s largest public relations agency, is in talks to work with the Cop30 team organising the UN climate summit in the Amazon later this year despite its prior connections to a major trade group accused of lobbying to roll back measures to protect the area from deforestation, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal.

The summit is set to take place in November in the city of Belém on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, which has been ravaged by deforestation linked to Brazil’s powerful agriculture industry. For the first time, the talks will be “at the epicenter of the climate crisis”, the summit’s president wrote last week. “As the Cop comes to the Amazon, forests will naturally be a central topic,” he added.

Village joins continental network alongside nearby Knepp estate, as birds previously extinct in Britain flourish

The Saxons knew the West Sussex village of Storrington as Estorchestone, the “abode of the storks”.

But the graceful white birds disappeared from its skies more than 600 years ago, when they became extinct in Britain.

The toxic smog that settles over the Mongolian capital every winter has been a suffocating problem for well over a decade that successive governments have failed to dispel. In the depths of winter, the city’s daily average of PM 2.5 small particulate that can enter the lungs and bloodstream, can be 27 times higher than the level considered safe by the World Health Organization. Respiratory illness cases have risen steadily, with pneumonia the second leading cause of death for children under five

At least 34 people killed as storms sweep midwest and southern states, while rain causes chaos in Melbourne race

At least 34 people have died across six states in the US in the past week as a powerful storm system swept through the midwest and south, affecting Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Mississippi. The storms brought a devastating combination of dust storms, tornadoes, wildfires, flash flooding and large hailstones, and left behind a trail of wrecked vehicles, severely damaged buildings and widespread power outages. More than 60 million Americans have been affected by the severe weather.

Since Friday, 68 tornadoes have been observed, an unusually high number for this time of year, as tornado season doesn’t typically begin until May. Wind gusts reached up to 70mph. These intense storms were fuelled by a clash of warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, which mixed with colder air from Canada and the Rocky Mountains. This temperature contrast combined with strong wind shear strengthened the rotating vortex of the thunderstorms. The flat terrain of Tornado Alley also assisted the storms, allowing them to develop and move rapidly across the region.

New evidence of particles damaging crops strengthens the case for an international plastics treaty

New and concerning findings from environmental scientists about the impact of microplastics on crops and marine algae add to a growing body of evidence about the disruption caused to living systems by plastic pollution. The results, from a team led by Prof Huan Zhong at Nanjing University, China, are not definitive and require corroboration. But analysis showing that plastics could limit photosynthesis (the conversion of sunlight into chemical energy) must be taken seriously. If the researchers are correct, and staple crops are being reduced by about 12%, there are huge implications for global agriculture and food supplies. This could inject new urgency into efforts to tackle plastic pollution.

There is no single route by which microplastic particles inhibit plants from growing. The overall effect is attributed to a combination of blocked sunlight and nutrients, and damage to soil and cells. This can lead to reduced levels of chlorophyll – the pigment enabling photosynthesis. When the researchers modelled the crop losses caused by an effect of this size, they found Asia was hardest hit, potentially contributing to food insecurity and worsening hunger.

Gulls are known for being ravenous – check out a selection of things they like

Co-leader says deprioritisation of net zero is ‘extremely dangerous’ as he rejects ‘nimby-in-chief’ characterisation

Labour’s push for economic growth at the expense of climate and nature is “extremely dangerous”, the co-leader of the Green party has said.

Adrian Ramsay, the MP for Waveney Valley between Norfolk and Suffolk, was one of the five Green MPs elected to parliament last July in their best ever result. He said and his colleagues knew they would be holding Labour to account, but did not expect to be as disappointed as they have been.

Birdwatchers’ thrill of seeing birds up close that usually spend their lives at sea is tempered by sadness and pity at the extent of injuries

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Most people in Brisbane were battening down the hatches ahead of the arrival of Tropical Cyclone Alfred. For a few, though, it was one of the most exciting natural events of their lives.

Over the course of the weekend and into Monday, throngs of birdwatchers lined the shores of Bramble Bay in the bayside suburbs of Shorncliffe, Sandgate and Redcliffe, telescopes and cameras at the ready.

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