A bloated ballroom, a six-storey military HQ, a helipad-cum-cocktail patio, a gilded angel on a giant arch honouring himself … our architecture critic deplores the decorator-in-chief’s mutilation of Washington

When you have a developer as US president, you might expect some zhooshing up of the capital. A few buildings renovated, maybe some parks replanted. But when you have a megalomaniac builder in charge, things can get out of hand. A decade ago, when Donald Trump was first elected, I asked what it might mean for the US to be led by a real estate tycoon whose career had left a trail of broken promises, angry buyers and endless lawsuits, with rules flouted, heritage trampled and the world pockmarked by a fleet of aspirational towers clad with a flimsy veneer of luxury. The answer is worse than I could have imagined.

With the air of a nightmarish Hollywood sequel, Trump 2 has seen the president’s true architectural ambitions unleashed: The Blingpire Strikes Back. As America’s self-styled decorator-in-chief, Trump has not only overseen the gilded mutilation of the White House, but embarked on the Mar-a-Lagofication of Washington DC itself, applying his gold paintbrush to statuary, daubing ponds with flaking pool liner, and brewing plans for a colossal triumphal arch – all procured in a blizzard of no-bid contracts. And, in true dodgy salesman style, this programme of bauble-building is turning out to be a high-profile decoy for deeper damage being wrought elsewhere.

After an agonising experience, I avoided checkups for four years. But a practice that assured a stress-free process for scared patients was transformative

I haven’t always been afraid of the dentist. If you had asked me a decade ago whether sitting in the dentist’s chair filled me with dread or made me break out in a cold sweat, I would have laughed and said no – what is there to be afraid of? It was only in 2021, after I had a filling without being properly numbed, that I understood why people are afraid of dental work. Despite telling him I was in excruciating pain, the dentist carried on with the procedure anyway, and I was left with a newfound and deep-seated fear.

At first, this was easily managed. I simply binned the reminders to book checkups, avoided their calls and carried on with my life. After a year, I told myself I’d see the dentist soon – just not yet. I firmly shoved the problem to the back of my mind.

Your rating is vital when taking on debt, but you could be in for a surprise as a big player changes its rules

Your credit score is the magic number that helps lenders decide whether or not to approve a mortgage, loan or credit card application.

Typically, the higher the number, the better your borrowing prospects. But a shake-up of the scoring system at TransUnion, one of the UK’s three main credit reference agencies, could mean a shock next time you log in.

Progressive politicians such as Zohran Mamdani offer answers to the bitter post-9/11 legacy of failures at home and abroad

Twenty-five years after 9/11, two pieces of journalism, describing two different phenomena in contemporary New York, tell us a great deal about a city, and indeed a world, caught between two eras. In one, New York Magazine dives into “Habibi City”, a New York where a “cultural shift is underway, led by a generation of New Yorkers coming into its own”. This new generation is labelled as originating in “SWANA” – south-west Asia and north Africa, a region that “includes countries from Palestine to Iran to Sudan”. In the other, Vanity Fair describes calls for Zohran Mamdani to not attend the 9/11 memorial ceremony as partly founded in “inchoate, emotional” impulses, that see “the city’s first Muslim mayor as a stand-in for the 19 Muslims who hijacked four planes and turned them into deadly weapons, part of the ‘them’ who attacked ‘us’.”

Together they capture what has changed over a generation, and what remains stubbornly the same. Members of a diaspora of Muslim background are indeed breaking through and accumulating, as New York Magazine says, “clout”. They are no longer simply a fixture of bodegas and halal carts, but of Saturday Night Live, upmarket dining, entertainment and politics too. Mamdani is both the expression of that cohort and the catalyst of its recognition as an emerging force. They care deeply for their local communities but also for those in Gaza and beyond.

A sharp analysis of the damage wrought by the reckless super-rich, and progressive toolkit for repairing it

The more power the radical rightwing nationalists of our age accrue, the greater the risk that their destructive brand of politics becomes normalised. We should not, for instance, regard it as normal that the man in charge of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal casually promises “a whole civilisation will die tonight”. We should not accept that history’s first trillionaire is allowed to spread racist conspiracy theories to a hitherto unimaginable extent. We should be alarmed that, here in the UK, a party tipped to lead a potential future government is trying to cruise to power in the slipstream of this international movement.

In fact, we shouldn’t just be alarmed by such developments: we should stop them and urgently repair the damage already done. But how? And what is the nature of that damage? This bold, clarifying intervention from Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor provides some of the answers. “End times fascism” is their term for a convergence of interests that can broadly be understood as a response to the climate crisis. Faced with a world coming under unprecedented strain from environmental shocks and an unequal, resource-hungry economic system, today’s reactionaries are effectively saying: bring it on.

Going deep underground used to offer a refuge from the pressure to be constantly connected. That’s soon to change – and I’m not happy

Rejoice! For by the end of 2026, 4G and 5G mobile coverage is expected across the whole London underground network. After months of delays and setbacks, 121 subterranean tube stations will be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, joining Paris and Berlin in perma-connectivity bliss. But should we really be so happy about the rollout?

Going deep underground was once a way of escaping the incessant communications of this exhausting modern life. Emails to respond to? WhatsApp messages piling up? The tube used to be one of the last remaining bastions of resistance against the constant expectation to do. To optimise. A simpler place where you could justifiably and believably ignore messages and reply later with a “sorry, I was on the tube”.

Lucy Pasha-Robinson is a Guardian assistant Opinion editor

From Elizabeth I’s backing of early voyages to royal investment in trafficking companies, generations of monarchs were central to Britain’s slave trade

Enslaved African people were seared with hot metal brands bearing the royal crown, according to research by historians who have documented the monarchy’s centuries-long involvement in Britain’s slave trade.

The Register of British Slave Traders identifies thousands of people who invested in Britain’s trafficking of enslaved Africans, including kings and queens.

Paul Nowak says the donations to Reform UK suggest that Nigel Farage is a ‘politician for sale’

Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, has said that the two donations worth a total of £72m to Reform UK announced over the weekend show that democracy is in crisis.

In his speech to the TUC conference, he called for a permanent ban on crypto donations, overseas donations, and foreign-funded political ads.

Why is it that two crypto billionaires have donated £72m to Reform in just 2 days?

The evidence is clear: Reform UK is a party for sale. Nigel Farage is a politician for sale. And given half the chance, they’d sell our country down the river.

There is a direct political thread, a nasty politics, that links Nigel Farage, Rupert Lowe, and Tommy Robinson, with Donald Trump, Maga and the US white supremacist movement.

It starts with demonising migrants. It flies flags, not as an expression of national pride, but to intimidate. It fans the literal flames that set fire to hostels and libraries. And it ends up with proto-fascist mobs roaming our streets in balaclavas, targeting brave volunteers in lifeboats.

The parliament isn’t set to meet until late September to elect a new speaker, and then prime minister

While the Social Democrats are understandably raring to take a crack at forming the next government, it’s easy to overlook that, despite coming out on top again, the party has actually lost ground since 2022 – recording its lowest vote share since universal suffrage was introduced in 1921.

With 95% of votes counted, the party sits at 28.1%, down more than two percentage points from 2022 (30.3%) and below its previous low of 28.3% in 2018.

Report by Israeli human rights group says systematic and broad assault being waged on conditions required for Palestinians’ existence

Israel is working towards the systematic “elimination” of the conditions that sustain Palestinian collective life in the occupied West Bank, according to a major report published by the human rights group B’Tselem.

The Israeli organisation’s hard-hitting report, shared with the Guardian in advance of publication, says Israel is “dramatically intensifying its attacks on every aspect of Palestinian life in the West Bank”, including “the ability to get to work, take children to school or university, receive medical treatment or municipal services, meet family and friends, cultivate land or go on vacation … routine activities that make up human life”.

1,107
Number of Palestinians killed by Israel in the West Bank since October 2023