The Republican project isn’t to win in November. It’s to make November cease to matter

US voting rights
The Republican project isn’t to win in November. It’s to make November cease to matter
Jamil Smith
Tue 19 May 2026 16.00 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 17.50 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/19/republican-party-erase-black-representation-november-election

E arly this month, a single pen stroke effectively ended representative Steve Cohen’s career in Congress. The man who has represented Memphis for 19 years will turn 77 later this month, but he wasn’t planning on retiring. He hadn’t lost any primary. The reason was that his district had been erased around him.

A new electoral map , passed by the Republican-led state legislature and signed by Bill Lee, the governor, divides the ninth district three ways. “Last week Tennessee Republicans silenced the Black vote here in Memphis to make Republican victories likely,” Cohen said in his statement. That’s succinct and accurate.

The new map folds a significant portion of Cohen’s Black constituents into Williamson county, which sits south of Nashville and was, until recently, the subject of a different fight.

To this day, the Williamson county seal depicts a Confederate battle flag draped over a cannon. It was adopted in 1968, at the height of the civil rights movement. A Tennessee court ruled in 2024 that the county could remove it. The state legislature responded the following year by passing a new law specifically designed to keep the flag on the seal. The vote was 70-24 in the House and 27-6 in the Senate, with no Democrats voting in favor. Lee, who is from Williamson county, signed it.

The same statehouse that just folded Memphis Black voters into Williamson county is the one that legislated to preserve the Confederate flag of the county absorbing them. The cartography doesn’t require translation. Tennessee is being precise, and they aren’t alone.

This is the aftermath of the supreme court’s disastrous 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v Callais , decided less than a month ago, which gravely weakened the Voting Rights Act’s protections for Black representation. Ever since, Republicans have resembled eager children on Christmas morning, tearing our electoral maps to shreds. Louisiana is set to eliminate one of its two Black-majority districts. The court let Alabama erase one of its two Black-majority districts before this fall’s primaries.

In Mississippi, the Republican state senator who chairs the Medicaid committee said this week that it was time to “ erase Bennie Thompson’s district ”.

Thompson is 78 years old. He is the only Black member of Mississippi’s congressional delegation in Washington, from a state where 38% of the population is Black . He is also the man who chaired the House investigation into January 6. Yet Tate Reeves, the governor, who proclaims April Confederate Heritage Month every year, recently vowed that Thompson’s “ reign of terror ” will be over soon.

Who, precisely, is terrified here? And of what, or whom?

Yvette Clarke, the chair of the Congressional Black caucus, told NBC News recently that 19 of the caucus’s 62 members were at risk through the 2028 cycle . The US has gone from 13 Black members of Congress in 1971 to 62 today; almost a third of them are in jeopardy. As Hakeem Jeffries is poised to become the first Black speaker of the House, the ground is collapsing beneath Black officeholders across the south.

Representation without architecture is brittle. The presence of a Black speaker matters; but it cannot, by itself, prevent the unbuilding of the conditions that made the speakership reachable. What the Voting Rights Act produced – not just officeholders but the constituency-mapping that allowed Black political coalitions to cohere – is precisely what Republicans are now undoing.

They have a roadmap. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson’s administration resegregated the federal civil service that Reconstruction had pried open. They did it by executive action and administrative memo. Department by department, lunchroom by lunchroom. Wilson never issued a proclamation that named the project. The most consequential racial reordering of the early 20th century happened via paperwork .

Between 1900 and 1903, Black voting in Alabama fell from 180,000 to fewer than 3,000 . The 1901 state constitution gave county registrars administrative discretion. White men could vote without anyone vouching for them. Black men required the recommendation of a white voter. After George Henry White left office in 1901, no Black American was elected to Congress until 1928 .

That collapse was a procedure. The architects did not call it apartheid. They called it “states’ rights”. They called it reform.

Plessy v Ferguson, which upheld segregation, outlasted, by 58 years, the presidents who appointed the justices who decided it. The Jim Crow settlement, built between 1877 and 1896, held for nearly nine decades. These are lifetimes. The architects of that settlement were not building for a midterm. Theirs was a generational project, and they succeeded.

The price of disobedience is rising. Last week, the speaker of the Tennessee house of representatives, Cameron Sexton, sent a letter to the Democratic leader, Karen Camper, stripping members of the house Democratic caucus of their committee assignments . The alleged offenses, in his own listing : interlocking arms in the well of the House. Blocking aisles. Distributing earplugs to a colleague. A speaker of a state legislature stripped legislators of their committee assignments, in part, for the distribution of earplugs. Other red states will surely recognize the template; some will use it themselves.

Yet while Tennessee was carving up Memphis, Democratic party stalwarts – including Pete Buttigieg, Elissa Slotkin and Barack Obama – were in Toronto at the Global Progress Action Summit, gathering to learn affordability messaging from Mark Carney. How do we fight the authoritarian right? The president of the Center for American Progress asked from the stage. The answer offered was to message better on groceries, move slightly to the right on immigration, build housing faster.

There is nothing wrong with affordability politics – but it will not save us, or our electoral maps, from a Republican party that would rather decimate representation than persuade voters. There is more at stake here than our grocery bills. America has its own version of the structure other countries call apartheid. Ours is older. Ours is Jim Crow. Republicans are adapting it for a new age. By the time the next census is conducted, it will be conducted under these rules. By the time a Democratic president takes office, the federal courts adjudicating that president’s executive orders will have been shaped by a decade of Republican appointments.

It is tempting to believe that November can return the country to a sort of racial status quo that existed before Trump’s political ascendancy. Frankly, even that America was never what it claimed to be. But rather than bringing the nation closer to becoming a free republic worthy of the name, Republicans are dragging it backward, again.

Saying so is not despair. It is where the fight begins. You cannot resist what you refuse to name, and you cannot outlast what you have decided is temporary.

Jamil Smith is a Guardian US columnist

‘I never back down’: Arthur Fils on family, fights and France’s grand slam obsession

French Open
‘I never back down’: Arthur Fils on family, fights and France’s grand slam obsession
Tumaini Carayol
Tue 19 May 2026 09.00 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 11.58 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/may/19/arthur-fils-french-open-2026-roland-garros-injury-tennis-interview

T owards the end of a miserable summer last year, Arthur Fils received a message from a friend imploring him to listen to a song. Fils was soon confronted with the sound of his own name. “My friend sent me the song saying: ‘Look, they are talking about you.’ I listened and I was like ‘Oh yeah’,” he says, theatrically mimicking his excitement. “ That’s cool.”

There was a depressing irony to the lyric. The popular French rapper La Rvfleuze repeatedly referenced Fils in the chorus of Serrure #5 , likening the noise Fils generates through his performances on the court to the rapper’s impact in his own arena: “Arthur Fils, j’fais du grah sur le court,” he rapped. In reality, Fils’s career was worryingly soundtracked by complete silence.

At 21 years old, Fils is one of the most talented players of his generation. Armed with a forehand off the charts with its heaviness, he complements his supreme athleticism with a well-rounded game. He is one of the few around with even vaguely realistic ambitions of one day consistently challenging Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, but for eight months, between his withdrawal at the French Open last May and his return in February, he was sidelined with a stress fracture in his back.

The mere mention of Fils to anyone involved with French tennis at times last year elicited several deep, sorrowful sighs and there were legitimate doubts whether he would return at full strength. The only person who was not particularly concerned about Fils’s future was the man himself. He could feel the stress radiating from his coaches, though. “Now they are very chill as well because they see I can play some good tennis and I’m still here,” he says.

It takes just a short amount of time around Fils to understand he is about as extroverted as is humanly possible. On the court, his charisma is eternal. It manifests in the immense self-confidence and his passionate, theatrical fist-pumps and celebrations. He is just as exuberant outside his workplace. Fils has been nothing but extremely kind, curious and familiar in our many meetings, whether eagerly answering questions or chatting casually about discovering his favourite barber in Brixton, south London where some of his family live.

While Fils’s competitiveness is the driving force behind his success, it can also be his great undoing. When he was younger, his temper was out of control: “Every match I was losing my mind,” he says. “I was going crazy; breaking the racket, screaming, hitting the ball out. Everything. But just because I was losing. I hate losing and so I was getting very mad.”

Maturity has provided Fils with greater self-control, but he also leans on the people around him to help him keep his head. During his tight opening match last month in Madrid, Fils’s constant ranting prompted his fitness trainer, Lapo Becherini, to tell him to “shut the fuck up”. When Fils argued back, Becherini repeated the command. Fils won the match.

His excited retelling of this interaction numerous times post-match was hilarious, but in a sport where players often surround themselves with yes men, it also reflects well on his relationship with his team. “When something is going wrong on the court, they talk to me straight and that helps me,” he says.


“It’s not like something is wrong, but they’re going to tell me; ‘No, no, no, everything is good, keep going like this, the same way.’ That’s not going to help me. If I have people that I can trust, they’re going tell me sometimes bad things, they’re going to be tough on me. But if I’m mature enough to take it, then it helps me.”

In his short time on the tour, it has been fascinating to witness so many opponents attempting to test his patience and temper: “Older people are always going to try to teach you some lessons,” he says. “Some of them are pretty good. Some of them are just because of ego. And when it’s because of ego, then they just say that because you are younger and that’s it. Some guys tried to get under my skin because I was young.”

As many of his contentious moments with opponents are relayed to him, including Dan Evans, Alexander Zverev and Thiago Seyboth Wild needling Fils during matches, his mouth slowly forms a mischievous smile. The assertion that he is tough and never backs down instantly provokes a fiery response: “No, no. Hell, no . I never back down from a fight,” he says. “It’s how my dad raised me. My mom as well.

“When guys are talking to me, we’re on the same level. I’m not the kid and they’re not the adult.”

Fils’s relationship with his father, Jean-Philippe, is at the core of everything he has accomplished. It was Jean-Philippe, a former basketball player, who first envisioned his eldest child’s success and has guided his son every step of the way. He has described his son’s career as a project, throwing his time, resources and sporting expertise into ensuring its completion. The pair are incredibly close and Fils’s father accompanies him to nearly every tournament.


Jean-Philippe hails from Haiti, emigrating to France when he was 10 years old. Fils unsurprisingly cites his Haitian roots as the source of his fighting spirit and the tough love from his father that has been key in his success: “It’s a different mentality. It’s not a French mentality,” he says. “It’s tough. It’s really tough. He has been through a lot of things so he tried to make me understand life a bit more.”

There is one particularly obvious example of his father’s lessons. During his youth in Essonne, a small district south of Paris, Jean-Philippe deliberately made his son train on a horrendous, decrepit court despite having the means to play elsewhere. Fils believes that court helped to build his character, instilling in him greater perspective and grit. He is blunt about the state of it: “It was a disgrace,” he says, laughing.

Not even Fils could have anticipated the progress he has made so early into his comeback. He sits at No 5 in the ATP Race after a series of remarkable, consistent results yielded his first two Masters 1000 semi-finals, in Miami and Madrid, and an ATP 500 title in Barcelona.

These are a reflection of his ambition and hard work. Fils and his team, which now includes Goran Ivanisevic alongside his primary coach, Ivan Cinkus, used Fils’s extended time on the sidelines to make a startling amount of changes to his game. He has lengthened his service motion and shortened his forehand swing, learned how to properly slide in open stance to his backhand corner on all surfaces and chose to significantly drop weight from his muscular frame, primarily to lessen the stress on his back. He is, by far, a better player now.

Few countries are as cynical and critical of their athletes as France. Even this magnificent comeback has been accompanied by some negativity before the French Open starts this weekend. The general subject of proving doubters wrong prompts Fils to directly call out a particularly harsh pundit by his name. “In Barcelona, I saw one guy talking very bad about me: Simon Dutin,” he says, shaking his head.


“So I was very happy to win the title to show him that he was completely wrong. I try to not react to these things. I try to not see them. But when it’s coming to me, then I have to see them and I have to think about it.

“I was very surprised about what he said and not happy with the way he said the things. But when I won the title, it was the best answer.”

There will be plenty more criticism and potential distractions to come and despite how he endeavours to avoid reading about himself on social media, there is no way for the 21-year-old to avoid the frenzy that accompanies being France’s latest candidate to follow Yannick Noah’s 1983 triumph at Roland Garros, the last time a Frenchman or black man won a grand slam singles title.

The most effective thing Fils can do to protect himself is to ensure that the noise he continues to generate on the court drowns out everything else.

Garance review – Adèle Exarchopoulos gives it her all in ripe but flimsy portrait of alcohol addiction

Cannes film festival
Garance review – Adèle Exarchopoulos gives it her all in ripe but flimsy portrait of alcohol addiction
Peter Bradshaw
Mon 18 May 2026 00.59 CESTLast modified on Mon 18 May 2026 11.47 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/may/18/garance-review-adele-exarchopoulos-gives-it-her-all-in-ripe-but-flimsy-portrait-of-alcohol-addiction

I t’s always a pleasure to see that funny, smart performer Adèle Exarchopoulos in Cannes – after all, she made Cannes history by being jointly awarded the Palme d’Or for the 2013 film Blue Is the Warmest Colour , sharing the big prize itself with the director Abdellatif Kechiche and her co-star Léa Seydoux. Exarchopoulos has her moments in this film from Jeanne Herry, in which she plays an actor struggling with a drinking problem. The scenes in which we see her up on stage, boisterously performing in a touring theatre for schoolkids, are genuinely great. But really this is a very glib and unsatisfying drama, whose essential naivety becomes apparent when the lead character is forced to confront the crisis in her life.

Exarchopoulos plays a young actor called Garance; she adores Arletty’s character of the same name in Marcel Carné’s movie classic Les Enfants du Paradis . At the moment, she has an assistant stage manager position in a prestigious Paris repertory company, believing herself to be on the verge of getting some serious speaking parts when the next season’s casting is announced. But she is instead relegated to the touring schools company, where her undoubted talents are compromised by partying extremely hard every night and waking up with a terrible hangover every morning.

Garance is one of those people who show up chaotically late to meetings with a drama-queen swirl of excuses about late buses and trains. With an awful inevitability, she is fired from the theatre troupe, a sacking which is made worse by being executed collectively with a stern injunction to get help, like an intervention. She forms a new relationship with a set designer, Pauline (Sara Giraudeau) but this is also placed under pressure by her drinking and she begins to suffer anxiety attacks and depression. To make things worse, her pregnant sister, who is there to be the unimpressed voice of common sense, gets cancer – a contrived health crisis that exists to facilitate Garance’s own path to maturity.

It is when Garance is forced to confront her life choices by a doctor that the film looks very flimsy. This doctor professes herself astonished by how good Garance looks for someone supposedly necking litres of white wine daily. Yes, it is astonishing; she looks like a well-groomed movie star who isn’t drinking anything like that amount. When she finally admits she needs to quit because her liver is packing up, there are some tearful scenes in which she says how “scared” she is but then she just quits, without going to AA. And it doesn’t even look that hard. She is surely therefore what AA veterans call a “dry drunk” or a “white knuckle drunk”, someone who thinks that they can just go it alone. Surely this film isn’t suggesting that you can do it the way that Garance is fancifully shown? It’s a very superficial portrait.

Garance screened at the Cannes film festival .

Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa review – lost voices from an Irish asylum

History books
Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa review – lost voices from an Irish asylum
Brian Dillon
Mon 18 May 2026 10.01 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/18/said-the-dead-by-doireann-ni-ghriofa-review-lost-voices-from-an-irish-asylum

C ork Mental Hospital, also known as Our Lady’s, was once the longest building in Ireland: a monster of 19th-century gothic, much added to before its closure in the 1990s, that stares from the north bank down to the River Lee and the city beyond. In recent years, a lot of the complex has been turned, predictably, into apartments. A developer’s website now invites you to “Live comfortably, live conveniently, live with us”.

This, surely, is a spectral sort of invitation: hard for “us” not to conjure, amid bright mockup interiors, the fretful shades of the unwell – and the unwilling. When Doireann Ní Ghríofa – celebrated poet and author of the nonfiction A Ghost in the Throat – began exploring the derelict site several years ago, she recognised it straight away as a place she might herself, but for historical fortune, have ended up. Said the Dead is an intimately researched but also wildly imaginative study of lives (mostly female) lived and often concluded during the hospital’s first 70 years or so.

The book’s historical span is a matter of official constraint. When she goes divining in the archive, chiefly in the hospital’s large green casebooks, Ní Ghríofa must stop reading at a century’s distance: anything more recent risks breaching confidentiality. As a result, the Victorian and Edwardian voices she has been hearing fall silent in the early years of an independent Ireland.

Regardless, her notes seethe with the names, characters, adventures and misfortunes of patients. Bridget, heavily pregnant, who had emigrated to America but was thrown out and sent home by her brother when he discovered her condition. Anna Martha, a painter, “peculiar in her antics”, who pulled a gun on magistrates who wished to put her in the asylum. Sixteen-year-old Dora, who “wishes to be dead”: a great reader of novels, beaten into depression by her parents. Muriel, whose husband was Terence MacSwiney: republican lord mayor of Cork, soon to die on hunger strike in Brixton prison.

There are names that fade quickly from the record, others that stubbornly, mysteriously or even merrily persist in the archival pages. Behind these accounts of lives ruined and sometimes recovered, there are the doctors who treated the women. In the archive, their voices are most forthcoming at the time of admission, recording fears and delusions. “Says that fairies work on her nerves … Said she has changed into many shapes since I last saw her. Said that she will be burned soon, and that people are foretelling it.” Affect and intellect are noted: “dull”, “sullen”, “stupid”, “intelligent”. In many instances, these accounts decline into seemingly careless repetition: “No change.”

But in 1896, into this institution arrived Lucia Strangman, the first woman qualified as a psychiatrist in the British Isles. She is Ní Ghríofa’s double in Said the Dead, a reader of faces and bodies and letters, a listener to voices on the edge of extinction. On the evidence here, Lucia seems to have been at the humane, inquiring end of early 20th-century psychiatry.

Reading is Ní Ghríofa’s version of doing justice to these lives, but reading is double-edged, a kind of love and a type of surveillance. Early on, her presence on the page sunders: she is there as an exploring “I”, but refers to herself some of the time as “the Reader” who presides even over Lucia and her staff, who assumes authority and responsibility for all of these dead, vivid souls. Ní Ghríofa’s treatment of the patients and their textual remains is never less than sensitive. Like Freud with certain celebrated cases, she will use first names only. But the Reader is also obsessive and susceptible: she is the one who pursues the dead, impossibly, out of the written record and into their hopes and regrets, dreams and extravagant desires. It is these that give this book its extraordinary formal and ethical force.

Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa is published by Faber (£18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu review – helmeted hero tangles with hateful Hutts in decent feature outing

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu review – helmeted hero tangles with hateful Hutts in decent feature outing
Peter Bradshaw
Tue 19 May 2026 15.00 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 15.01 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/may/19/star-wars-the-mandalorian-and-grogu-review-helmeted-hero-tangles-with-hateful-hutts-in-decent-feature-outing

H ere is a non-canonical, or semi-canonical tale – maybe the distinction is beginning to blur – from the Star Wars universe, serving up some entertaining but very familiar Star Wars narrative tropes on a spectacular Imax scale. And if you thought it was possible to end a movie like this without a climactic aerial combat scene involving X-wing fighters, think again. It is developed from the Disney+ streaming TV series The Mandalorian and set in the timeframe just after Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi , in which holdout warlords from the defeated Empire are plotting a return against the New Republic.

Pedro Pascal plays the Mandalorian, a badass freebooting bounty hunter not unlike Han Solo, only he has on his shoulder Grogu, his “ward”. (That quaint Victorian term is revived here for the first time since the days of Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne.) Grogu is the Yoda-species infant with nascent telekinetic powers. As for the Mandalorian, he has a voice like Clint Eastwood’s man with no name, and in fact he’s the guy with no face; he hardly ever removes his helmet – apart from in one key scene – despite the fact that it must surely restrict his visual field. And he must surely remove it occasionally to eat and drink and trim his moustache. Body-double actors Lateef Crowder and Brendan Wayne variously play the helmeted Mandalorian striding around, giving director Jon Favreau and Pascal exceptional leeway with the filming and voice-recording schedule. The Mandalorian is a vivid symbol of the importance of genre IP over old-fashioned star presence and the obvious comparison with Dave Prowse body-doubling Darth Vader is disconcerting.

The Republic’s Colonel Ward – a martial role which Sigourney Weaver politely phones in, rather as she did with her part in the Avatar films – hires the Mandalorian and Grogu to exfiltrate from imprisonment Rotta the Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allen White); he is the son of the loathsome Jabba the Hutt, and Hutt Jr is being held by an imperial warlord played by Jonny Coyne. The deal with the hateful Hutts is that in return for Rotta’s freedom, they will give the Republic intel about what the Empire schemers are up to.

TM&G begin their bold quest at the wheel of a reconditioned battlecraft not entirely unlike the Millennium Falcon, and they encounter more than few wacky minor characters, including a nervy and over-caffeinated four-armed street-food vendor, cheerfully voiced by Martin Scorsese . Favreau gives us a fair few exotic and horrible creatures that the Mandalorian, often called “Mando”, has to battle, including a colossally yucky snake that emerges from the goopy depths presided over by the reptilian and duplicitous Hutts.

The film is watchable and barrels along capably enough, but perhaps there isn’t enough of the humanity, humour and extravagant space melodrama which has made and continues to make Star Wars lovable.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is out on 21 May in Australia and 22 May in the UK and US.

Raducanu loses at Strasbourg Open in first match since Richardson reunion

Emma Raducanu
Raducanu loses at Strasbourg Open in first match since Richardson reunion
Tumaini Carayol
Tue 19 May 2026 14.26 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 22.23 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/may/19/emma-raducanu-loses-strasbourg-open-first-match-since-richardson-reunion

Emma Raducanu’s return to competition for the first time in more than two months ended in a frustrating defeat as she fought hard but failed to convert a string of early opportunities, eventually falling 6-4, 7-6 (4) to France’s Diane Parry in the first round of the Strasbourg Open.

This was an unsurprising result for Raducanu, who now faces the challenge of regaining her rhythm, form and confidence after not competing since her loss to Amanda Anisimova at Indian Wells in early March. She was outplayed here by a talented and accomplished clay-courter in Parry, the world No 94, who dominated with her forehand while effectively using her variation to keep Raducanu uncomfortable.

Raducanu, who has fallen slightly to No 37 in the WTA rankings, had been on the sidelines due to post-viral illness, with her symptoms dating back to the virus she struggled with in February during the Middle East swing. She had considered returning to competition at the Italian Open two weeks ago but, after training on-site, she chose to withdraw.

This week also marks her first tournament since rehiring Andrew Richardson as her coach after spending a few weeks with Richardson training on clay at the Ferrer academy in La Nucia, Spain, his previous base, during the early stages of her recovery. Richardson was vocal throughout the match from Raducanu’s player box on the corner of the court, feeding his charge with a steady stream of strategic advice and encouragement.

The last time Richardson and Raducanu were together on a match court, the pair were holding the US Open trophy on Arthur Ashe Stadium in 2021 after combining to pull off one of the most remarkable, shocking results in the history of the sport despite working together for less than two months. There will be no instant, magic resolution this time. The biggest question surrounding Raducanu for the next few months is whether the pair can work together consistently over an extended period, competing and training without issue. So much of her career has been disrupted by her numerous physical issues and a lack of continuity within her coaching setup.

Still, Raducanu had her chances. She established a 4-2 lead in both sets before she was punished for her poor serving throughout the match. After losing four games in a row to fall in the opening set, Raducanu lost three in a row to trail Parry 5-4 in set two.


With the match hanging in the balance, Raducanu fought well. Parry served for the match at 6-4, 5-4, establishing a 30-0 lead, before Raducanu pulled herself back into the match by gutsily forcing herself inside the baseline and taking her forehand early. Then, after losing her serve in a bruising, extended service game, Raducanu recovered to force a tie-break.

While Raducanu served poorly, Parry is a talented and completely unique player armed with a sweet, heavy top-spin forehand and ample variety. Parry was first known as one of the few top 100 WTA players with a single-handed backhand, but she now curiously employs a dual backhand, often returning serve with a two-hander and using her left hand when most convenient.

Parry’s clay-court expertise exposed the difference between the two players in the tight moments, with Parry dragging Raducanu off the court with angles and keeping the ball out of the Briton’s strike zone. Despite her difficulties in the final stages, she closed out a well-deserved victory in straight sets.

Why more US women are moving abroad: ‘It’s because of Trump, right? Yes and no’

US news
Why more US women are moving abroad: ‘It’s because of Trump, right? Yes and no’
Ashifa Kassam
Tue 19 May 2026 12.00 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 12.22 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/19/us-women-migrating-europe-politics

It was in 2022, when Americans were reeling from the news that the supreme court had overturned Roe v Wade , that Jen Barnett got a firsthand glimpse of just how viable her new business could be.

Days before the court ruling, she had launched a website aimed at Americans looking to move abroad. As confusion and consternation set in over what the ruling meant for US women, Barnett watched traffic to her website steadily tick upward. “We had this huge spike.”

It was all she needed to co-found her company, Expatsi, which has since helped thousands of Americans looking to move abroad. Women remain a key part of her demographic, making up around two-thirds of her clients. “If it weren’t for young women, this business wouldn’t exist,” she said.

Her experience offers a hint of what appears to be a growing gender gap among Americans: last year a Gallup poll found that 40% of American women aged 15 to 44 said they would move abroad permanently if they had the chance.

While the sample size was just 1,000 people, Gallup noted that the findings were a striking contrast to previous iterations of the same poll; from 2014 onwards, the number of women in the US who said they wanted to leave had soared fourfold. When it came to young men, however, the numbers had held steady at around 19%, giving rise to what Gallup described as the widest recorded gender divide of any country polled.

The findings come as Americans appear to be leaving the country in record numbers. From London to Lisbon, relocation firms have reported a surge in inquiries from Americans, while the first two months of last year saw US applications for Irish passports climb to their highest level in a decade. France last year reported a rise in the number of long-stay visa requests from Americans, while in March, the number of Americans who had solicited British citizenship in the 12 months before surged to its highest since record-keeping began in 2004.

The Guardian spoke to five US women who in recent years had uprooted their lives to move to Latin America and Europe , as well as one who was planning to move imminently. While all of them had long dreamed of a life abroad, they cited anxieties over gun violence, the quest for a better work-life balance and the turbulence of US politics as the tipping points.

Few were surprised to hear that as many as 40% of American women were dreaming of doing the same. “It has become harder and harder and more dangerous to even exist as a woman in the US,” said Emily Burt, 32, who moved to Ecuador with her husband and two young children earlier this year. “I think our generation, and even some gen Z women, we’ve just become disillusioned with the story that was sold of American exceptionalism and best country in the world.”

While some women continue to make strides in the US, Burt said it felt like things had moved backward overall. “The way women are spoken about, not by everyone and everywhere of course, but some of the loudest voices of influence – without naming names – are very disrespectful,” said Burt. “And that trickles down to how regular people that you interact with think that they can speak about, and speak to and treat women.”

All of this was playing out against the backdrop of social media, where women were getting an unprecedented view of what life could be like in other countries. “Why wouldn’t they dream big and want to go places where they can feel respected and safe and the opportunities are open and endless?” Burt asked.

She and her husband decided to move after her oldest child started kindergarten in Texas. Suddenly the exhaustion of balancing life and work was compounded by the stress of active shooter drills. “It was fairly often that we were getting threats, but then they were unfounded. But it doesn’t even matter if they were real or not,” she said. “That anxiety is still there.”

Others said the tumultuous politics of the US had played a role. “The politics were just like fuel for the fire,” said Jenelle Jones, who last year left Tennessee in search of walkable cities, accessible public transport and abundant community spaces across the Atlantic.


“Everybody’s like, ‘It’s because of Trump, right?’ It’s yes and no, though it just kind of confirmed my decision,” said Jones, 39, who was renting an apartment near Tirana, Albania, after a year of travelling through Europe in a camper van. “The US has always had inherent racism and classism, propaganda – all this stuff that’s built into it. But it’s never been so in-your-face before.”

The result was the kinds of tensions that had convinced Courtney Schuyler, 43, and her wife that the time had come for a move, rather than waiting until retirement as they had initially planned. “Walking around the United States when you know you might not be as protected or you might be judged a little bit more harshly or openly than years before – there’s always a level of stress on your shoulders when you’re part of a marginalised community,” said Schuyler.

Their three dogs in tow, they traded their lives in the Tampa Bay area for Madrid last year. “It’s almost like being able to take a deep breath again. So that feels good, but it is so sad because there are a lot of people we still love and care about in the United States, and those we can emphathise with.”

All of the women were swift to point out that their new lives came with a different set of challenges, from language barriers to being far from their family and loved ones. “Being American abroad, it’s an endless cycle of trying to find ways to get a visa,” said Alexandra Blydenburgh, 27, who left the US more than four years ago and had moved between various countries in Europe.


“On social media, lots of people are like, ‘Everyone move abroad; it’s perfect.’ But I think it’s not necessarily for everyone. It is difficult,” she said, citing the often-lower salaries in Europe as one example.

For her, however, these were trade-offs she was prepared to make. “A lot of people say, ‘Why move abroad? Why not try to work on or solve the issues you have in your home country?’ But in the US, I really feel like we’re in a place politically where that’s not really possible – in my lifetime I don’t see that the US could ever become a country where there’s free healthcare and this emphasis on work-life balance and six weeks of paid vacation.”

It’s the kind of shift Barnett had watched play out among those looking to go abroad. Before 2024, most of her clients had pointed to adventure and personal growth as their reason for wanting to leave. Others said they were interested in lowering their cost of living.

But since Donald Trump was re-elected in November 2024, “the number one reason is politics,” she said. “That November 6th was the biggest day we’ve ever had on our side. It was the craziest. Our lives just changed dramatically overnight.”

Her company has since become part of a blossoming industry, from She Hit Refresh, an online community for women over the age of 30 who are looking to move abroad to Blaxit Global, which caters to Black Americans, and GTFO tours, which tends to draw critics of Trump and his administration.

Barnett saw little indication that the trend would reverse, particularly as the political climate in the US remained fraught. “Listen, we would rather have democracy than the business,” said Barnett. “But we are going to seize the moment and make sure we can help as many Americans as we can.”

Why data sleuths are archiving the Jeffrey Epstein files: ‘We want to provide some clarity’

Jeffrey Epstein
Why data sleuths are archiving the Jeffrey Epstein files: ‘We want to provide some clarity’

Tue 19 May 2026 14.00 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 17.53 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/19/jeffrey-epstein-files-data-sleuths-archives

B efore the US Department of Justice (DoJ) missed a legally mandated, December 2025 deadline to release unclassified files related to the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein , the Denmark-based data scientist and bioinformatician Tommy Carstensen was not especially concerned with the case of the accused sex trafficker.

“I hadn’t even watched the Netflix documentary,” he said.

“It did not interest me because I thought he was ‘just’ another monetarily wealthy pedophile,” he added, noting the only Epstein associates he was aware of were Ghislaine Maxwell and Britain’s then Prince Andrew .

Now Carstensen oversees one of the internet’s most sophisticated archives of material on Epstein, who officials say died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial. He has published interactive graphics of the financier’s properties and financial transactions, an analysis of more than 1m documents released by the DoJ that groups them into subject areas, court records, transcripts of audio and video files from the releases and a facial recognition tool that lets anyone upload an image of a face to see if it appears in any images in the files.

He spends as much as 50 hours per week maintaining the archive, on top of a full-time job, he said. Journalists and researchers have praised his efforts.

Carstensen was motivated to build the archive after lawmakers accused the justice department in December of failing to comply with a law that mandated the declassification and release of files related to Epstein to the maximum extent possible by 19 December 2025.

Volunteer sleuths like Carstensen, who also joined online efforts to identify participants in the January 6 insurrection earlier this decade, are not alone.

An increasing number of journalists, researchers and activists have applied technical analyses to the Epstein files that draw out information not readily available in the DoJ’s raw dumps of material.

The latest is a searchable database of faces of individuals who appear in original images in the Epstein files, published earlier this month by the non-profit Decoherence Media .

The founder, Tristan Lee, said the new database, which also includes a visualization that shows people who appear in the Epstein files, reveals images of more than 100 individuals who are not mentioned in Epstein’s email files and nearly 200 who have not been reported on, among them a Hollywood agent and the head of a large fitness chain.

Appearing in the Epstein records does not indicate any wrongdoing.

Faces in the database were identified in part using facial recognition technology, notably with Amazon web services’ Rekognition. Lee said he adhered to Rekognition’s recommended 99% similarity threshold for law enforcement matters, essentially ruling out all but exact matches in order to screen out false positives. Rekognition also had useful features, including the ability to recognize public figures and detect nudity.

Considerations about the technology’s known shortcomings were also weighed.

“Facial recognition models are notoriously less reliable for non-white faces, so there were multiple cases where we discarded a match because we weren’t confident in it,” he said. IDs have also been double checked with multiple recognition models and manually.

While the technology has drawn criticism and concern for its potential use in surveillance, Lee said “Epstein’s network [is] particularly well-suited for using facial recognition.”

“Many of the people in Epstein’s network are notable in some way, prominent enough to have news articles written about them or be featured on company websites,” he noted, alluding to the vast amount of material that can be used to identify individuals in these cases. “The second factor is that Epstein’s network contains multiple well-defined social circles. The third is that we have nearly 20 years of Epstein’s emails and communications, so matches can be cross-checked.”

For example, one previously identified person that the new database of faces uncovered additional material on is Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Three undated photographs in Epstein’s files that Decoherence identified show Brin, who remains a board member at Google parent Alphabet, at a resort on Guana Island.

On Thursday, 28 December 2006, Epstein’s associate Maxwell emailed him stating that Brin would be on Guana. Epstein inquired as to the timing of his visit, saying he would be there on “Saturday.”

Brin, who court documents suggest used Epstein for tax advice, did not reply to a request for comment made through Google.

Lee was motivated to build the database, he said, because “there’s still so much confusion about who Jeffrey Epstein was, who was in his network, and what his crimes were. I’ve seen viral TikTok videos about how Epstein was actually a cannibal, or elaborate conspiracy theories linking unrelated people to him. We wanted to provide some clarity, to help regular people, as well as journalists and policymakers, better understand who is actually part of Epstein’s social circle, and how these elite networks of power and influence actually operate.”

In the course of documenting those networks, researchers have also had to contend with the DoJ previously removing or retroactively redacting documents, in some cases because they had erroneously failed to redact identifying information on victims.

Carstensen wrote a code to monitor the DoJ website for changes, and maintains a list of victim names and names of victims’ family members who are automatically redacted from his archive. Images of known survivor’s faces, as well as minors, are also redacted, and he has been responsive to takedown requests from survivors.

“The DoJ did a disgraceful job with redactions,” said Lee. “The worst example I saw was that they released nearly 100 naked photos of one outspoken victim.” While the DoJ conceded it made some errors during the release of the files, officials maintain they have ultimately complied with Epstein Files Transparency Act. A departmental watchdog is investigating the issue.

Emma Best, a co-founder of Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS), which publishes leaked and hacked datasets, has been particularly careful in their approach to an archive of more than 20,000 unredacted emails from Epstein’s Yahoo account that the group obtained.

DDoS has only made the complete archive available to vetted researchers and journalists, which has resulted in a wide range of reports on and revelations about Epstein’s personal and business dealings.

“We’ve kept the standard to access the Epstein emails higher than usual for many other datasets because it’s especially sensitive and salacious,” Best said, noting that those who are cleared to access the files are “only to republish emails which are relevant to their reporting, and that unless it can be determined otherwise the assumption should be that people in the emails are potential victims.”

The Yahoo emails, with redactions to protect victims and minors in accordance with DDoS’s wishes, are being released by Jmail , a browser-based archive of Epstein’s emails and other files from the DoJ and other sources developed by a group of volunteer tech workers and engineers.

Best added: “We’ve been fortunate that most journalists understand the duty we have to Epstein’s survivors.”