Michael Safi

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Courtney Yusuf |Homa Khaleeli |Elizabeth Cassin |Ta-Nehisi Coates

“This is a cultural president. Make no mistake about it.”For Ta-Nehisi Coates, the award-winning writer and journalist, the US president, Donald Trump, and his allies clearly understand the power of story-telling in politics. Coates has recently written a new book, The Message, and he tells Michael Safi that the stories told in TV, films, literature and beyond are not a distraction from politics today but are actively shaping it.

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Eli Block |Priya Bharadia |Courtney Yusuf

Just after midnight on Tuesday, EDT time, the wall of tariffs Donald Trump announced last week came into effect. The new system upends decades of precedent from the world’s strongest economy and has sent global markets reeling. The Guardian’s senior economics correspondent, Richard Partington, explains to Michael Safi the dynamics of a market crash and a trade war and how together they may contribute to the onset of a global recession.

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Adam Gabbatt |Lucy Hough |Rudi Zygadlo |Homa Khaleeli |Elizabeth Cassin

“Border Patrol always had the right to grill people trying to enter the US, right,” Guardian US reporter Adam Gabbatt tells Michael Safi. “But from what we can tell now, Border Patrol agents are now much more likely to basically get into people’s business, so to search people’s devices, particularly mobile phones, and there seems to have been a real spike in the number of people being questioned and now detained.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Michael Safi |Richard Partington |Homa Khaleeli |Eli Block

Donald Trump is on a mission to Make America Wealthy Again. Speaking outside the White House, he said for too long the country had been ‘looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike’. Now that would come to an end, he said, as he slapped eye-watering tariffs on countries around the world. The Guardian’s senior economics correspondent, Richard Partington, explains why Trump has taken such action and how it could affect the global economy.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Lorenzo Tondo |Michael Safi

Earlier this month, No Other Land won the Oscar for best documentary feature. The film chronicles the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta as it resists being driven off its land by settler violence and the demolitions of the Israeli military. The film’s two protagonists, Palestinian film-maker Basel Adra and Israeli film-maker Yuval Abraham, gave speeches when they accepted their award.