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If Donald Trump returns to the White House for a second term as president, the impact will be felt in many aspects of American life and also across the world. On almost every issue of domestic US policy – from immigration to the environment to gun laws to LGBTQ+ rights – Trump has tacked far to the right of the American mainstream. On a host of other issues, including freedom of the press and the court system, he has threatened to break new ground in taking on what he sees as “enemies within”. He represents a real threat to freedom of the press and could weaponize the courts to go after those politicians, and others, who have opposed him. The country could be on the brink of a profound change. Crucially, the stakes could not be any higher. Swipe to see what issues are at stake under a Trump presidency, and follow the link in bio to read the full stories.

As the editor of Guardian US, Betsy Reed has a message to all of our readers at this pivotal political moment. The Guardian is not owned by a billionaire or shareholders. We’re owned by the Scott Trust and supported by readers – readers like you. If you appreciate our work and want to help protect the truly free press, please go to support.theguardian.com or click the link in our bio.

Ali Aljamal came to the US from the Gaza Strip in September 2023 as a 15-year-old exchange student through the Yes program, a competitive scholarship run by the state department.⁠ ⁠ A month later, war broke out and he watched Gaza get razed to the ground: “It’s like you and your childhood best friend argued one day before he died.”⁠ ⁠ The state department did not offer to help the 13 Yes students from Gaza stay in the US after the war began. So Ali decided to seek asylum.⁠ ⁠ He went to the immigration office in Sacramento for an appointment. He filled out paperwork that asked for his country of birth: Palestine – Gaza, he wrote; country of citizenship: Palestine. But the clerk handed his paper back and said, in Aljamal’s recounting: “We don’t put Palestine – Gaza. Just put Jordan instead.”⁠ ⁠ Though credibility is critical for asylum claims, Ali followed the instructions, crossed out Palestine and wrote in a country that he only once briefly passed through on his way to the US.⁠ ⁠ Ali’s story is emblematic of the Kafkaesque system that Palestinians seeking urgent protection in the US must navigate, if they can even make it out of Gaza.⁠ ⁠ The US took in more refugees this year than any other year since 1995, but it has hardly resettled anyone from Gaza since the start of the war.⁠ ⁠ The US does not recognize Palestine and is politically disinclined to recognize persecution by the state of Israel in refugee and asylum claims.⁠ ⁠ And the problem is about to get worse. Donald Trump has vowed to bar refugees from Gaza and immediately reinstate and expand his Muslim travel ban.

To some, he’s an anticapitalist arch villain. To others, he is a Marxist folk hero exacting revenge against the unchecked avarice of American medical insurance companies.⁠ ⁠ Just over a week ago no one knew who Luigi Mangione was. After he was revealed as the alleged assassin of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, on 4 December, he quickly became one of the most polarizing figures in American pop culture.⁠ ⁠ The widespread approval of Thompson’s assassination, which has shocked many pundits on the left and right, has only one real precedent in modern American history: when Navy Seals killed the 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden in 2011, writes Guardian contributor Ben Makuch after speaking to researchers and analysts.⁠ ⁠ Ed Ongweso Jr, a senior researcher at Security in Context, said, “You’re seeing celebration of him across the political spectrum because most people understand how much death and suffering and misery our healthcare system causes. They’ve seen a loved one humiliated by it, they’ve been humiliated by it.”⁠ ⁠ Unlike in most of the developed world, the US healthcare system is provided entirely by private companies and there is no universal, single-payer system for non-seniors.⁠ ⁠ Follow the link in bio to read more.

The EPA’s air quality monitors are disproportionately positioned in whiter neighborhoods in the US, new research has found.⁠ ⁠ The disparity leaves communities of color less protected from dangerous pollutants like particulate matter, ozone, nitrous dioxide and lead, among others.⁠ ⁠ Policy and actions the EPA takes to reduce pollution are developed from the monitors’ readings, and communities of color are broadly more likely to be near major polluters.⁠ ⁠ The study consistently found a lower average of monitors for particulate matter, ozone, nitrous dioxide and lead across all non-white groups. The chemicals are linked to a range of health effects like asthma, chest pain, cardiovascular disease, neurotoxicity in developing children, and cancer.⁠ ⁠ Researchers found that the highest disparity in monitors for sulfur dioxide in Native American and Pacific Islander groups. Sulfur dioxide is a common emission during natural gas and petroleum extraction, oil refining and metal processing. It can cause difficulty breathing and exacerbate other respiratory issues.⁠ ⁠ The findings raise questions about whether the agency has enough monitors installed, is properly placing them, and whether conclusions about the safety of the air in some areas are sound.⁠ ⁠ Follow the link in bio for the full story.

In September 1956, Cpl Eldridge Jones found himself atop a sunbaked roof at an old army camp about an hour outside San Francisco, shoveling radioactive dirt.⁠ ⁠ The previous year, Jones was one of thousands of US troops directly exposed to radiation during aboveground nuclear weapons tests in the Nevada desert.⁠ ⁠ Now he was being exposed again, this time to lab-made “simulated nuclear fallout”, material that emitted some of the same ionizing radiation as the atomic bomb.⁠ ⁠ The exercise at Camp Stoneman, near Pittsburg, California, was one of many in a years-long program conducted by a key military research facility, headquartered at a navy shipyard in a predominantly Black working-class neighborhood in San Francisco.⁠ ⁠ The Guardian has collaborated with the San Francisco Public Press on a series of investigations that reveal how lab scientists knowingly exposed at least 1,073 workers to potentially harmful radiation between 1946 and 1963. It is based on thousands of pages of government and academic records, as well as interviews with affected servicemen.⁠ ⁠ The analysis shows how the lab conducted at least 24 experiments that exposed humans to radiation, far more than past official reviews acknowledged. Safety reports also note dozens of accidents in which staff received doses in excess of federal health limits in effect at the time.⁠ ⁠ Follow the link in bio to read the full story.

TikTok’s annual carbon footprint is probably larger than that of Greece, according to a new analysis of the social media platform’s environmental impact.⁠ ⁠ Estimates from Greenly, a carbon accounting consultancy, place TikTok’s 2023 emissions in the US, UK and France at about 7.6m metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).⁠ ⁠ Given that the US, UK and France make up just under 15% of TikTok’s global user base, the platform’s overall carbon footprint is likely around 50m metric tonnes of CO2e. And including other smaller sources of TikTok’s emissions, such as office spaces and commuting, this is likely an underestimation.⁠ ⁠ For context, Greece’s annual carbon emissions for 2023 were 51.67m metric tonnes of CO2e.⁠ ⁠ TikTok emissions are higher than those associated with Twitter/X and Instagram in the same region. The reason behind this lies in the unique addictiveness of TikTok’s platform. The average person on their phone spends almost five minutes more scrolling TikTok.⁠ ⁠ The small differences add up. Due to the sheer amount of content on the platform, as well as longer average scroll times, TikTok users have the highest yearly emissions.⁠ ⁠ Follow the link in bio to read more.

Robbie Parker’s six-year-old daughter Emilie was killed at Sandy Hook elementary school on 14 December 2012. Parker was the first parent to voice his grief in public after the massacre – a decision that led to a decade-long struggle against the rightwing provocateur Alex Jones, who propagated the lie that he was a “crisis actor” and the entire shooting was a hoax to justify gun restrictions. In 2022, Jones lost a series of defamation cases in Connecticut and Texas and was ordered to pay nearly $1.5bn in damages to the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims. In that sense, Parker is a double survivor. Now, Parker has written a book, A Father’s Fight, in an effort to “express what I see as a void in the world because she’s not there any more”. In an interview with the Guardian, Parker remembers Emilie as an extrovert who was speaking before she grew teeth and recounts his journey with grief in the many years since her death. “Grief teaches you so much more than dealing with the loss of your loved one,” he reflects. “There’s this mutual level of respect between what it’s offered me and what I’ve learned from it. Opening yourself up to the entire process of grieving would be advice I wish I would have known.” Swipe to read more and follow the link in bio to see Parker’s full story. Photos on the first and last slide by Celeste Noche

“Luigi Mangione is more representative of the average American than many elites would care to admit,” writes Guardian US columnist Peter Rothpletz. “Mangione’s Twitter/X account is a kaleidoscopic fever dream with no clear ideological rudder,” he writes. But, he adds, “Mangione’s digital media diet is arguably quite coherent – and in line with what most non-elites consume. … “Unlike the political violence of old, committed by dyed-in-the-wool radicals, the assassination of Brian Thompson was carried out by a young man with no movement encouraging his extremism.” Follow the link in bio to read the full op-ed.

A Florida woman has been arrested and charged after allegedly using the same language associated with the suspect in the murder of a top health insurance executive while on a phone call with her healthcare firm.⁠ ⁠ Briana Boston, 42, had just had a medical claim denied and was talking on a phone call with a representative from Blue Cross Blue Shield. The Lakeland resident then allegedly said: “Delay, deny, depose. You people are next.”⁠ ⁠ The language is the same as that found written on ammunition discovered at the scene of the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson. The killing was carried out by a masked gunman, which also triggered a national outpouring on social media by Americans outraged at their treatment by their for-profit healthcare firms.⁠ ⁠ The words have been closely associated with the title of a 2010 book written by the legal scholar and insurance expert Jay Feinman, a professor emeritus at Rutgers Law School in New Jersey, called Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.⁠ ⁠ According to the arrest affidavit obtained by ABC news when Lakeland police confronted Boston, she apologized and said that she “used those words because it’s what is in the news right now”.⁠ ⁠ Boston told police she did not own any guns and is not a threat. But she did say that healthcare companies “deserve karma” and were “evil” according to the document reported by ABC.⁠ ⁠ Boston was charged with threats to conduct a mass shooting or act of terrorism.

While people may be living longer, they are living a greater number of years burdened by disease, a new study from the American Medical Association shows.⁠ ⁠ This week, the study revealed that Americans live with diseases for an average of 12.4 years, an increase from 10.9 years in 2000. Women in the US spent on average 2.6 more years sick than men.⁠ ⁠ Globally, the so-called healthspan-lifespan gap (which repesents the number of years in your life you spend sick) has widened, extending to 9.6 years from 8.5 years in 2000.⁠ ⁠ Following the US in the largest healthspan-lifespan gaps were Australia at 12.1 years, New Zealand at 11.8 years and the UK and Northern Ireland at 11.3.⁠ ⁠ The study added that in line with global trends, the gap in the US coincided with a disproportionate growth in life expectancy v health-adjusted life expectancy. In the US, life expectancy increased from 79.2 to 80.7 years in women, and from 74.1 to 76.3 years in men, the study revealed.⁠ ⁠ Follow the link in bio to read more.

The EPA has banned perc and TCE, toxic chemicals that are widely used in everyday products but strongly linked to cancer and other serious health problems.⁠ ⁠ The move comes after the first Donald Trump administration killed the process to limit the chemicals’ uses, but the bans make it difficult for the second Trump administration to undo the rules.⁠ ⁠ The chemicals are commonly used in dry cleaning, carpet cleaning, hoof polishes, brake cleaners, adhesives, pepper spray and lubricants.⁠ ⁠ “After decades of workers and communities across the country sounding the alarm about the devastating health effects they’ve experienced, we are glad to see that EPA has finally banned these dangerous chemicals,” said Liz Hitchcock, director of federal policy for the Toxic-Free Future advocacy group.⁠ ⁠ TCE, or trichloroethylene, is linked to male reproductive damage, liver disease, kidney disease, neurological damage and Parkinson’s disease. It has particularly been a problem for those living near air force bases or civilian airports because it is widely employed as an industrial degreaser.⁠ ⁠ Follow the link in bio for the full story.