When Andrew Carter and Adam DeMartino started their business Smallhold in 2017, they set out with a simple vision they thought could have a big impact: feed people mushrooms.

“Mushrooms are one of the most sustainable calories on the planet, in every aspect,” Carter said, whether you’re looking at water, waste, plastic use or greenhouse gas emissions. “We just wanted to get more people eating them.”

For the better part of seven years, Smallhold successfully did just that, getting specialty mushrooms such as shiitake, blue oyster and trumpets into grocery stores and on to Americans’ plates. And they built a cult favorite brand while doing so – a feat made notable by how much harder it is to accomplish with produce than, say, processed snack foods. (Think about how differently you shop for chips or ice-cream, on the lookout for a specific brand you like, versus peaches or tomatoes, the brand of which you may not even notice.)

As mushrooms became emblematic of a new vision of sustainability at the start of the pandemic lockdowns, achieving zeitgeist-y star status, Smallhold found itself both riding that wave and helping propel it, earning a range of buzzy media coverage and being valued at $90m at its peak. Just six years after starting in a shipping container in Brooklyn, the brand had built out farms in New York, Texas and California, and had begun selling in 1,400 stores across the country, including Whole Foods.

“We gave others hope that a sustainable business could rise quickly, become popular, and change an entire category for the better,” said DeMartino. Smallhold was just one of a host of food startups that have cropped up with the promise that they’re growing food more sustainably or reducing waste.

So it came as a disappointing shock to many when the founders both stepped down this spring and Smallhold announced that it was filing for bankruptcy shortly thereafter.

Though the company was taken over by investors who restructured and brought the company out of bankruptcy at the end of August, Smallhold emerged as a “shadow” of the company DeMartino once envisioned; it shut down its farms and laid off much of its staff without severance, to the dismay of the founders and customers who had come to associate the brand with the ethical treatment of its employees and farmers as well as the earth. (The brand’s current leadership declined to comment for this article.)

What does the brand’s trajectory mean for the prospects of using entrepreneurship to right traditional agriculture’s wrongs? In the example of Smallhold and other produce-focused startups like it, there are lessons to be learned about what role business can – and can’t – play in fixing our food system.

Do: find a niche, and sell more than sustainability

Elly Truesdell was working at Whole Foods as a “forager” who helped the grocery chain identify new local suppliers when Smallhold started out, and she remembers being impressed at their unique offering. Where most shoppers had only encountered the most common varieties of button mushrooms, Smallhold was introducing varieties with more interesting and varied flavor profiles, such as lion’s mane and blue oyster.

“I traveled the country and visited a ton of local food stores and other grocers and very, very rarely could you see specialty mushrooms of the varieties that they were growing in grocery stores,” she said. That’s some of what convinced her, once she left Whole Foods to get into venture capital with a focus on food businesses, to invest in Smallhold.

For a world increasingly thinking about both personal and planetary health, mushrooms hold great appeal as an easy and nutritious meat alternative. And Smallhold was paying farmers a living wage to grow them on waste material, using minimal water and electricity, composting the leftover materials after, and selling their product in compostable retail packaging (an industry first).

But startups that gain a foothold in the produce aisle have to offer customers more than that to succeed, Truesdell said. “You cannot hang your hat on sustainability only. Product quality, cost – all of the things that matter in a typical food business still matter.”

In some ways, Smallhold excelled at that: in addition to the unique flavor and high quality of its produce, it also built a strong brand through a combination of the charming aesthetics of the mushrooms themselves, a witty social media presence and the relationships its founders built with tastemakers who helped cement Smallhold as part of the zeitgeist.

Smallhold isn’t the only produce company that has benefited from creating a unique visual identity. Bowery Farming, an indoor agriculture company that sells greens and berries, and Gotham Greens, which sells salad greens, dressings and herbs, are two others that have invested in top-notch design and branding.

While all three companies have claimed to be growing food more sustainably than peer companies in their categories, their unique approach to branding produce is part of what lures in new customers, Truesdell noted.

Don’t: take on too much money

Entrepreneurs who want their business to be sustainable by environmental standards have to also be sustainable in the financial sense of the word.

Though what Smallhold set out to do was sell mushrooms that would help people “reconnect with their food, environment, and farmers”, the technology it was using to do so was often what excited funders. “Over time, we were really leading with that,” said DeMartino. “The pitch got crafted around technology further and further.” He often felt that they were adding tech that was cool, but overcomplicated things: “You don’t need to press a button to open a window. You can just open the window,” he said.

Plus, creating and maintaining the technology infrastructure was expensive, which made building new farms costly. That in turn made becoming profitable more difficult to do – and when venture capitalists are looking for a return on their investment quickly, a slow path to profitability can be a death knell.

“VCs need their money back,” said Ari Greensburg, professor of entrepreneurship and management at NYU Stern. “They need you to get there by five, six years, seven maximum … If you can’t do that, they abandon you.”

That is, in some sense, what happened to Smallhold: after years of ample VC funding, investors decided they weren’t making enough progress toward profitability, stopped cutting them checks, and the company was left without adequate cashflow.

Smallhold wasn’t the only buzzy produce company to go bankrupt under these circumstances. AeroFarms and AppHarvest, two other indoor farming companies that had attracted big venture capital investments in the past, also declared bankruptcy last year when the VC landscape began to shift away from its former optimism about tech-based food startups.

Lessons for other entrepreneurs

It’s easy to tell an entrepreneur that it’s dangerous to take on VC funding, but often harder to offer viable alternatives for startups that need cash. But those options do exist, insisted Truesdell, especially for agriculture companies. She pointed to Ark Foods, a produce startup founded in 2013 that helped create the US market for shishito peppers, as an example. Though the company has taken on some modest equity investments from funds including Truesdell’s, those haven’t made up the bulk of the company’s funding.

“They rely a ton on farm credit and on loans from the Farm Bureau, rather than on venture dollars,” she said. “They’re almost always hovering at break-even or slightly profitable, so that they’re not in this difficult situation that companies like Smallhold found themselves in.” She named the family-owned salad and greens business Taylor Farms, which has opted to grow slowly over time rather than taking on big investments in the hopes of scaling up quickly, as another example of how to do things differently.

There’s no one-size-fits-all way to build or run a produce startup to ensure that it’ll be around in the long run, and the most effective strategy for changing the food system for the better won’t rely on entrepreneurship alone, but will incorporate policy change and regulation, too.

But there are a few lessons worth trying to take away from the successes and failures of the startups that have tried to do so in the last few years: build a strong brand, even in a category like produce that hasn’t historically been known for branding. Offer sustainability, but pair that with other values, such as new flavors or higher quality to lure in customers. And take financial responsibility just as seriously as planetary and social responsibility.

“No matter how much you love it, this business runs on money, not on love,” DeMartino said. “We needed to make really key decisions around that in order to sustain the vision of a circular economy business.”

Lastly, learn to define success on your own terms.

Despite its eventual bankruptcy, Smallhold did help carve out a market across the nation for specialty mushrooms – and getting more people hooked on what could be the “most sustainable calories on the planet” is a legacy the company’s founders think is worth celebrating.

For decades, drinking water fluoridation opponents were often portrayed as a fringe element and conspiracy theorists, but a federal ruling in the US may put an end to the practice and marks a pivotal point in their campaign to convince the public and policymakers of the substance’s dangers for infants’ developing brains.

Armed with a growing body of scientific evidence pointing toward fluoride’s neurotoxicity, public health advocates say the legal win shows they are overcoming “institutional inertia” and the unwillingness of federal public health agencies to admit they may have been wrong.

The order last week requiring the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to begin the process of strengthening fluoride regulations represents a “landmark” legal win that has long been in the making, said Stuart Cooper, director of the Fluoridation Action Network advocacy group.

“After many years of them ignoring us and defending fluoridation, we had an opportunity to get a fair and balanced adjudication in courts,” Cooper said.

The Obama-appointed US judge Edward Chen found fluoridation could cause developmental damage and lower IQ in children at levels to which the public is generally exposed in drinking water. Though the ruling did not state the level at which fluoridation would damage brains, the levels in US water present an unreasonable risk, the court found.

The EPA now must perform a risk assessment that is among the first steps in setting new limits under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

US water has been fluoridated since 1945, though the recommended levels have since been lowered over health risks. Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and dentistry groups say it protects young children’s gums and developing teeth.

It is added to drinking water for more than 200 million Americans, or about 75% of the population, at recommended levels of 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water.

Though those opposed to fluoridation can point to credible evidence to back their case, anti-fluoridation history has included conspiracy theories that the process was a post-second world war communist plot, or, later, a coordinated effort to sap US society of intelligence.

But there has always been evidence of the risks, and the practice is rare in most other countries, including those in Europe. The last 15 years have seen an “uptick” in high-quality scientific research demonstrated the risks, said Michael Connett, a Food and Water Watch lead attorney on the case.

The EPA had been “a good soldier” and toed the federal government’s line, but that required it to ignore evidence and abandon its statutorily required duties, Connett said.

“You have agencies that have aggressively promoted fluoridation for decades in a very un-nuanced, sledgehammer way, so it’s quite a departure from that party line to say, ‘Oh, oops, looks it might actually be damaging the brain,” Connett said. “There’s an institutional credibility and inertia issue.”

Still, even after the ruling, many fluoridation supporters are not backing down. Much of the medical establishment supports the process. In a statement last week, the American Dental Association, which supports fluoridation, said: “The key takeaway for the public and public health community from this ruling is that it does not conclude with any certainty that fluoridated water is injurious to public health.’”

Cooper pointed to a statement made by an American Pediatric Association official during the court case in which she said she would not oppose fluoridation even if it reduced five IQ points for up to 10% of the population.

Cooper said the fight over fluoridation over the last several decades had been with the medical establishment and regulatory agencies, while everyday residents generally agreed that the practice should end.

“The vast majority of the public was always on our side, there was never a citizen who said, ‘Yes, please give us fluoridated water,’” Cooper said.

The shift in part picked up momentum as scientists like Linda Birnbaum, a former head of the EPA’s toxic chemicals program, came out in support of ending fluoridation, and some government agencies over the last several years found unreasonable risk.

“When do we know enough to revise long-held beliefs? We are reminded of the discovery of neurotoxic effects of lead that led to the successful banning of lead in gasoline and paint,” Birnbaum said in a 2020 op-ed.

In the ruling’s wake, four water systems, including that which provides water to Salt Lake City, have stopped or suspended fluoridation.

Despite the win, Connett said he did not expect support for fluoridation to immediately vanish.

“There’s a scientific paradigm and deep beliefs that exist that say fluoridation is safe and effective, and that doesn’t just go away overnight,” he added.

Donald Trump unleashed a foul-mouthed tirade about undocumented immigrants and predicted that this “could be the last election we ever have” if Kamala Harris wins during a private fundraising dinner this summer.

The Guardian obtained a 12-minute recording of a speech that the Republican presidential nominee gave at a dinner on 10 August in Aspen, Colorado, where attendees were required to donate anywhere from $25,000 to $500,000 a couple.

Trump devoted most of his address to border security and immigration, recycling xenophobic claims now familiar from his rallies. “Radical leftwing lunatics” want people to come in from prisons, mental institutions and insane asylums, he asserted without evidence, adding that the US was harbouring “a record number of terrorists”.

The former president insisted that “smart, very streetwise” leaders of Venezuela and other South American countries were sending murderers and drug dealers to the US to reduce their own crime rates, relieve the burden on their prisons and save money.

Trump cited a false example of 22 people he claimed had come to the US after being released from prison in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “We said, ‘Where do you come from?’ They said, ‘Prison’. ‘What did you do?’ ‘None of your fucking business what we did.’ You know why? Because they’re murderers.”

The candidate added, “I hate to use that foul language”, apparently recognising that his use of the F-word went further than his campaign rallies. The Congolese government has said there is no truth to Trump’s statements.

The candidate went on: “These are the toughest people. These people are coming in from Africa, from the Middle East. They’re coming in from all parts of Asia, the bad parts, the parts where they’re rough, and the only thing good is they make our criminals look extremely nice. They make our Hell’s Angels look like the nicest people on earth.”

Studies show that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native-born Americans.

Trump flew to Aspen on a Gulfstream G-550 jet once owned by Jeffrey Epstein, the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, after his own private plane – a Boeing 757 known colloquially as Trump Force One – encountered engine trouble.

The dinner was held at the $38m home of the investors and art collectors John and Amy Phelan. Guests included the casino mogul Steve Wynn, billionaire businessman Thomas Peterffy, Texas governor Greg Abbott, Florida congressman Byron Donalds, Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert and former Colorado senator Cory Gardner.

Trump, who instigated an attempted coup on 6 January 2021 and has claimed that his Democratic rival Harris poses the true threat to democracy, used the exclusive event to warn of dire consequences if she becomes president.

“Look, we gotta win and if we don’t win this country’s going to hell,” he said. “You know, there’s an expression, this could be the last election we ever have and it’s an expression that I really believe, and I believe that this could be the last election we ever have.”

The ex-president was speaking a month before his first and probably only televised debate against Harris, of which opinion polls and pundits would widely judge her to be the clear winner. That was not what he predicted.

“I’m telling you we have a radical left person that’s going be president – if she wins it’s going to be a disaster – she wants to be president very badly. Thank God she’s supposed to be horrible at debating, although she’s nasty, and she’s supposed to be really bad at interviews. She can’t do an interview.”

Trump also claimed that Harris supports the “defund the police” movement, suggesting that she was a typical politician who will revert to type once she is elected.

“Her policy is defund the police. She wants to defund the police. She wants open borders. With a politician – and I’ve seen it because I’ve been on both sides of politics for a long time; now, a short time for this side but I was always a contributor – she wants to go out and she wants to defund the police. And they always go back to their original plot. They always do.”

Harris, a former courtroom prosecutor, did voice support for the “defund the police” movement in a radio interview in June 2020 but later reversed her position after becoming Joe Biden’s running mate.

Trump also reflected on surviving an assassination attempt at a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where 20-year-old Thomas Crooks opened fire from a rooftop, killing firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, and injuring two other Trump supporters.

Trump told how members of his Florida golf club, Mar-a-Lago, asked to make a contribution to Comperatore’s family. “I said absolutely and they gave me a cheque for a million dollars. That’s a lot of money. Maybe even more impressively we put out a GoFundMe and we raised more than $6m for the group that got hurt, which is essentially three people.”

Then, recalling a meeting with Comperatore’s widow, Helen, he made a risky attempt to find humour in the tragedy. “So they’re going to get millions of dollars but the woman, the wife, this beautiful woman, I handed her the cheque – we handed her the cheque – and she said, ‘This is so nice, and I appreciate it, but I’d much rather have my husband.’ Now, I know some of the women in this room wouldn’t say the same.”

As dinner guests erupted in laughter, Trump quipped: “I know at least four couples. There are four couples, Governor [Abbott], that I know and you’re not one of them. At least four couples here would have been thrilled, actually.”

The event is understood to have raised $12m for Trump’s campaign but was not enough to prevent Harris raising more than four times as much as her opponent in August, the first full month of her bid for the White House.

Political leaders “walking the talk” on climate action by flying less or eating less meat could be a “crucial missing link” in fighting global heating, according to a study.

Researchers found that people are significantly more willing to reduce their own carbon footprint if they see leaders doing the same. The finding, by psychologists in the UK, was not a given, as green action by high-profile people can sometimes be dismissed as virtue-signalling.

The study also found that people were significantly less willing to change their behaviour when leaders do not lead by example. The former prime minister Rishi Sunak took 40 helicopter and small jet flights within the UK while in office, according to a freedom of information request by the Guardian.

The findings are significant because many experts argue that encouraging and enabling behaviour change by people is vital to tackling global heating. But there have been strikingly few examples of politicians leading by example.

Research for the UK Climate Change Committee estimates that 60% of the emissions cuts still required will involve behaviour change, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change increasingly recognises this need. To date, politicians have focused only on the systemic changes also needed, such as renewable energy rollouts and international agreements.

A second study suggests why politicians are reluctant to publicise their personal green actions. Even MPs who strongly back climate action are afraid of criticism, such as being labelled fanatics or hypocrites if other aspects of their lives remain high-carbon.

There is the possibility of a win-win situation, the first study suggests, as it shows that people’s overall approval of political leaders increases for those leading by example. The key, the researchers say, is for leaders to be consistent over time – avoiding green stunts – and to acknowledge that some changes may be too difficult or costly for everyone to make, such as using public transport, buying an electric car or installing a heat pump.

“[Leading by example] is a missing link because climate change is addressed politically in a technocratic, top-down way: new technology, changed systems of energy provision,” said Dr Steve Westlake, from Cardiff University, who led both studies. “These solutions avoid impact on people’s daily lives.”

“From now on, progress is really going to require people to change their behaviour and yet that has been avoided by politicians. We don’t like being told what to do,” he said. “But taking personal action can bridge that gap between the individual and the system. If we see leaders saying ‘here’s what I am doing’, it brings it back to daily life.” Westlake said there existed a stand-off, with politicians reluctant to ask people to change their behaviour and people reluctant to change without politicians showing the way.

Politicians failing to lead by example can also lead to people feeling that global heating was not a crisis, he said, despite the clear scientific evidence. “The urgency of their words [on climate] doesn’t seem to be matched by the signals they send through their behaviour. I think many leaders are still sending the signal that no emergency response is required.”

The study on leading by example, published in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, told almost 1,300 people about a political leader who was backing technological and international climate action and saying behaviour change was necessary, too. In some groups, the leader said they had made those changes themselves while in others the leader said they had not yet done so. The leaders did not directly call on people to make the behaviour changes.

“We found that leading by example sends very strong signals,” Westlake said. “We found an increase in people’s willingness to adopt low-carbon behaviour if they see leaders doing it, and the reverse. There’s also a really strong reaction in terms of perceptions of the leader.” Those leading by example were seen as more competent, effective and caring.

The study also told some groups about celebrities, rather than political leaders, and found the same strong effect of leading by example.

Instances of high-profile politicians leading by example are yet to occur, Westlake said, unlike negative examples. “What springs to mind is Boris Johnson flying back from the Cop26 climate conference” in Glasgow in 2021 rather than taking a train. “That is a quite powerful message,” he said.

The second study, published in the journal Energy Research & Social Science, was based on interviews with 19 MPs. It found those who were taking personal green action “tended to do this quietly for fear of negative reactions from the media, political rivals, and constituents”. The former prime minister David Cameron’s journey from “hugging a husky” in the Arctic to “cutting the green crap” was frequently cited by the MPs as showing the risk of being inconsistent.

Dr Maya Singer Hobb, from the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank, said: “This research confirms what we hear again and again in our engagement with the public, which is that people are sensitive to hypocrisy; ‘why should I change my behaviour when politicians are taking private jets?’”

“There is a strong imperative for politicians to lead by example, both as a means of shifting the norms around behaviour change, but also from a fairness angle, since it is likely they will have greater emissions than most people,” she said.

“The research also suggests that fears of appearing ‘too virtuous’ are perhaps overblown, again reassuring politicians that they can take personal action. The democratic mandate for climate action is high, and the politicians will better maintain public support for green policies if they show that the responsibility for action will be fairly shared.”

It may be tempting to add cardboard, plastic, old clothing and other waste to your home fire to keep warm and save money. But a study has shown that burning waste indoors has serious consequences for air pollution and especially for the amount of cancer-causing chemicals in the air.

Stoves and fireplaces cause about 29% of particle pollution emitted in the UK, but there are even greater problems in eastern Europe, where solid fuel heating is responsible for more than 45% of the particle emissions in many cities.

Dr Dóra Mentes, a research fellow at the University of Miskolc, Hungary said: “The town where I live, Miskolc, is known to have some of the most polluted air in Europe. Every winter, everyone notices the poor air quality.”

The problem is augmented by burning waste at home. In Hungary, 2-10% of households also burn waste in their home heating boiler, while in Poland it is at least 10%. In the UK, at least 4% of homes that burn solid fuel indoors also burn rubbish on their fire, and one survey suggests this could be as high as 37%.

Mentes and her team set about investigating what home waste burning meant for air pollution. A typical home wood burner was installed in their laboratory with sensors and sampling equipment connected to the chimney.

First, the researchers tested the air pollution when oak logs were burned. They then tested mixtures of oak logs and 10% waste, including plastics, textiles (both cotton and polyester), cardboard and coated papers such as drinks cartons.

Cotton, cardboard and coated paper caused the biggest increases in the particle pollution in the chimney. In some cases, adding 10% waste doubled the particle pollution.

Mentes also looked at the size and shape of the pollution particles using a scanning electron microscope. She said: “They can take on many different shapes. My two favourites are tar-ball conglomerates and soot agglomerates associated with inorganic crystal particles. As dangerous as they are, they are also remarkably beautiful.”

Adding waste meant many more globules of tar going up the chimney, along with greater amounts of carbon monoxide.

Perhaps of greatest concern were cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These increased by about two- to four times, depending on waste. Plastics and coated paper led to the biggest increases.

Modern municipal waste incinerators in the UK and Europe go to great lengths to reduce these toxic emissions but there are no protections when waste is burned at home.

Ironically, Mentes’ team found that adding waste reduced the efficiency of the wood stove. Adding plastics meant the wood burned too fast for the stove design, while paper and cotton clogged the air flow with ash. This meant that adding waste reduced the heat from the main fuel.

Problems with waste burning are not confined to eastern Europe. Air pollution in India’s cities often includes chemicals from burning waste and plastics. Globally, the climate impact of soot from open burning of waste is estimated to cause 2-10% of all carbon dioxide emissions.

A former carbon offsetting executive has been charged with fraud by US federal authorities, who allege that he helped to manipulate data from projects in rural Africa and Asia to fraudulently obtain carbon credits worth tens of millions of dollars.

Kenneth Newcombe, former CEO of C-Quest Capital LLC and a leading figure in the offsetting industry, was indicted on Wednesday in New York with commodities and wire fraud.

Prosecutors alleged he was part of a multi-year scheme that manipulated information on the impact of cooking stove projects in Africa and south-east Asia to make them appear far more successful at reducing emissions than they were in reality, also using the figures to attract investment of more than $100m in C-Quest.

From 2007 to December 2023, the 77-year-old was a board member of Verra, the world’s leading certifier of carbon offsets, and he also worked at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs at different times. He faces up to 20 years in prison if he is convicted of the most serious charges. He denies all allegations against him.

A spokesperson for Newcombe told Bloomberg that their client was dying of cancer. “He is confident that if he lives to see a jury hear this case, that jury will reject these false charges and return his good name to him,” the spokesperson said.

Cooking stove projects are one of the most popular carbon offsetting schemes, theoretically generating emissions reductions by swapping smoky fuels such as wood, paraffin or kerosene with cleaner alternatives.

By changing fuels, they can have major benefits: improving air quality, reducing the amount of time people spend collecting wood and slowing the loss of the world’s forests. But studies have raised widespread concerns about their claimed environmental impact, finding that schemes are overstating their effect by an average of 1,000%.

Shell and BP have both invested in C-Quest and are among several leading firms that have bought carbon credits from the firm.

Newcombe stepped down as CEO of C-Quest in February this year. In June, the new management of C-Quest announced that they had reported their former CEO to US authorities for his role in allegedly faking emissions data to generate millions of worthless carbon credits.

Following the announcement Verra said it was suspending the 27 projects implicated in the allegations and that it would be working with C-Quest to cancel the overissued credits as quickly as possible. Its statement at the time added: “Verra and the voluntary carbon market (VCM) as a whole are built on trust and integrity. We take any accusation of impropriety that undermines that trust very seriously.”

On Wednesday, US authorities said they would not be pursuing charges against C-Quest due to its open and timely disclosure of the alleged wrongdoing.

Prosecutors also charged Tridip Goswami, former head of C-Quest’s carbon and sustainability accounting team, with fraud. He could not be immediately reached for comment. Former chief operating officer Jason Steele has pleaded guilty to charges and is cooperating with the US government, the announcement said.

US attorney Damian Williams said: “As alleged, Kenneth Newcombe and Tridip Goswami, among others, engaged in a multi-year scheme to fraudulently obtain carbon credits by using manipulated and misleading data. They then sold those credits to unsuspecting buyers in the multi-billion-dollar global market for carbon credits.”

Bruce Springsteen has officially thrown his support behind Kamala Harris, endorsing her for president and simultaneously opposing Donald Trump, calling him “the most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime”.

The Born to Run singer made the announcement in a video posted to his Instagram on Thursday evening (US time) in which he described the upcoming election as “one of the most consequential elections in our nation’s history”.

“Perhaps not since the Civil War has this great country felt as politically, spiritually and emotionally divided as it does at this moment. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Springsteen, who was a vocal supporter of Barack Obama and Joe Biden in their respective presidential campaigns, is the latest high-profile endorsement for Harris, joining Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand.

In the video, he praised Harris and Walz’s commitment to “a vision of this country that respects and includes everyone, regardless of class, religion, race, your political point of view or sexual identity, and they want to grow our economy in a way that benefits all, not just a few like me on top”.

“That’s the vision of America I’ve been consistently writing about for 55 years.”

Trump, by contrast, “doesn’t understand the meaning of this country, its history or what it means to be deeply American”, the singer said.

“His disdain for the sanctity of our constitution, the sanctity of democracy, the sanctity of the rule of law and the sanctity of the peaceful transfer of power should disqualify him from the office of president ever again.”

Concluding, Springsteen said: “Now, everybody sees things different, and I respect your choice as a fellow citizen. But like you, I’ve only got one vote, and it’s one of the most precious possessions that I have. That’s why come November 5 I’ll be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Thanks for listening.”

The US ports strike that shut down shipping on the east and Gulf coasts for three days came to an end on Thursday after dock workers struck a tentative deal with port operators.

The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) announced that the union had reached an agreement with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) on wages, suspending their walkout until January. Work would resume immediately, the union said.

The strike – which involved 45,000 workers across 36 ports, from Texas to Maine – was the first to hit the east and Gulf coast ports of the US since 1977.

The tentative agreement is for a wage hike of around 62%, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. Both sides said in a statement they would return to the bargaining table to negotiate all outstanding issues.

Concern had been mounting about the potential economic impact of the strike, and the threat of shortages. JP Morgan analysts estimated the walkout could cost the US economy as much as $5bn a day.

After it emerged that the strike had ended, Joe Biden told reporters: “By the grace of God and goodwill of neighbors, it’s going to hold.”

“Today’s tentative agreement on a record wage and an extension of the collective bargaining process represents critical progress towards a strong contract,” the US president said in a statement. “I want to thank the union workers, the carriers, and the port operators for acting patriotically to reopen our ports and ensure the availability of critical supplies for Hurricane Helene recovery and rebuilding.

“Collective bargaining works, and it is critical to building a stronger economy from the middle out and the bottom up.”

Negotiations between ILA and USMX had broken down in June after the union accused USMX of violating the contract by introducing automation at some ports.

Both sides had accused the other of refusing to bargain, with the ILA demanding significant wage increases in line with the profits the industry has made in recent years.

Among the outstanding issues left in the contract that will be negotiated before the current contract extension until 15 January is the union seeking improved protections for automation in ports. The union opposes the introduction of automation that would result in any job losses.

The launch of a strike so soon to the election prompted scrutiny of key figures’ political views. ILA president Harold Daggett faced questions about his relationship with Donald Trump, while the Guardian uncovered social media posts by David Adam, chair and CEO of USMX, that were staunchly critical of Democrats.

Rachel Reeves is paving the way for a multibillion-pound increase in public-sector investment at the budget after the government announced plans to commit almost £22bn over 25 years to fund carbon capture and storage projects.

In what is expected to be one of the biggest green spending promises of the parliament, the chancellor, prime minister and the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, will unveil the details on a visit to the Liverpool city region on Friday declaring a “new era” for clean energy jobs.

With less than a month before the 30 October budget, Reeves said the announcement would come as one of a “drumbeat” of measures to kickstart economic growth.

The government hopes the investment will reignite Britain’s struggling heavy industry by funding two major carbon capture and storage (CCS) clusters; one in Teesside in north east England, and a second in north-west England and north Wales.

The technology is controversial because it has never been used at commercial scale in the UK before, while environmental campaigners have warned big energy firms could use it to extend the life of their fossil fuel assets.

Greenpeace said there was a danger the government was “locking ourselves into second-rate solutions”.

However, ministers and officials expect it to play a major role in the government’s climate ambitions as a vital way to reach net zero.

The prime minister will say the commitment had helped to bring in an expected £8bn of private investment by some of the world’s biggest energy companies, including BP and Norwegian energy company Equinor.

Reeves’ comments come after she hinted in her speech to Labour’s party conference in Liverpool last week that she would change the government’s fiscal rules to allow billions of pounds more in capital spending.

“We’ll set out details of the fiscal rules at the budget, but we have got to make sure we unlock that space for capital investment,” she told journalists ahead of Friday’s announcement.

Friday’s announcement comes amid fears of a fresh energy price shock triggered by an escalating Middle East conflict.

Reeves issued a warning that Britain would not be immune to the fallout from spiralling oil prices, which rose 5% on Thursday, although cautioned that the response so far on financial markets had been muted.

“There’s a risk both on inflation and on GDP. It’s something we’ll keep a close eye on .”

Carbon capture technology works by trapping emissions from power plants or factories before the emissions enter the atmosphere and contribute to the climate crisis. The emissions will be transported via gas pipes to be stored beneath the seabed.

Keir Starmer said: “Today’s announcement will give industry the certainty it needs – committing to 25 years of funding in this groundbreaking technology – to help deliver jobs, kickstart growth, and repair this country once and for all.”

Officials expect the projects to attract private sector investment of about £8bn while directly creating 4,000 jobs and supporting 50,000 jobs in the long term.

The East Coast Cluster is backed by oil companies including BP and Equinor. The HyNet North West project is being developed by the Italian oil company Eni.

Using CCS to produce “blue hydrogen” or to run gas power plants is controversial among green groups and some climate researchers because it requires a steady supply of fossil gas, which produces emissions that are not captured when it is extracted and transported.

Instead, the government should invest more in clean power sources and “green hydrogen”, which is made from water and renewable electricity using a device called an electrolyser, according to campaigners.

Doug Parr, policy director at Greenpeace UK, said: “For a government that is committed to tackling the climate crisis, £22bn is a lot of money to spend on something that is going to extend the life of planet-heating oil and gas production.

“Carbon capture may be needed for hard-to-abate sectors, such as cement production, however, hydrogen derived from gas is not low-carbon and there is a risk of locking ourselves into second-rate solutions.”

Lorenzo Sani, an analyst at Carbon Tracker, a climate thinktank, told the Guardian the government’s decision “repeats the mistakes of the previous administration” by committing new funding without first reassessing its CCS strategy.

Sani said the plan “remains anchored in outdated and overly optimistic [cost] assumptions”, which risk “squandering even more taxpayer money on carbon capture projects that are both high risk and not future proof”.

Dr Andrew Boswell, an independent researcher into the CCS industry, dismissed the investment as a “massive giveaway to the fossil fuel industry” and a “bad decision” for bills, energy security and the planet.

Britain’s initial attempt to establish a carbon capture industry began in 2009 under a Labour government. But after the Conservative victory in 2010 the £1bn funding plan faltered and was scrapped in 2015. The Conservatives went on to shortlist the two CCS projects for funding in 2021 but did not commit to the investment before they were voted out of power in July.

Miliband said: “I was proud to kickstart the industry in 2009, and I am even prouder today to turn it into reality.

“On Monday, 150 years of coal in this country came to an end. Today, a new era begins. By securing this investment, we pave the way for securing the clean energy revolution that will rebuild Britain’s industrial heartlands.”

A local elections official who became a hero to election deniers was sentenced to nine years in prison on Thursday for leading a voting system data-breach scheme inspired by the rampant false claims that fraud altered the 2020 presidential outcome.

Tina Peters allowed a man affiliated with the pillow salesman and election-lie trafficker Mike Lindell to misuse a security card to access to the Mesa county election system.

Jurors found Peters guilty in August, convicting her of seven counts related to misconduct, conspiracy and impersonation, four of which were felony charges.

Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced her on Thursday. Peters had argued for probation. Barrett, in delivering his sentence, said it was clear Peters had not shown remorse for her actions.

Barrett called out Peters for being “as defiant as a defendant that the court has ever seen” and said he believed Peters would do it all over again if she could. He accused her of seeking fame, despite her claims that she didn’t want attention for her actions.

He said she didn’t respect the courts, law enforcement, government officials or her colleagues, and had abused the power of her position. She didn’t take the clerk role “particularly seriously”, he said, noting she hadn’t completed certification, and that “one scandal after another followed you in your time as the clerk.”

He added, “You are no hero, you abused your position, and you’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”

At trial, prosecutors said Peters, a Republican, was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the presidential election results.

Peters was charged for allowing access to county voting equipment by an outside person, who was given security credentials under a different name. Materials and passwords were then published online on Telegram and on the rightwing outlet the Gateway Pundit, which is also being sued for defamation for election-related lies.

During the sentencing hearing, Peters said she was “very taken aback” by how she was being depicted and said she felt bad for her critics who were asking for harsh sentences. She said she was just trying to do her job as a clerk.

“I’m just appalled. I feel bad for them because I know, I’ve often said, God doesn’t like people messing with his kids, and I believe I’m a child of God,” she said, according to video posted to social media. “And I believe that it was important for someone to stand up, and I chose to do that.”

She also told the judge she cannot go to prison because she needs to sleep on a magnetic mattress, which she has been using since 1995 to help with health conditions such as chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.

Peters’ actions came as conspiracies grew around vote tabulation machines, especially those owned by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion has fought against the lies spread about its machines, securing a large settlement from Fox over its false claims on the topic.

That anti-machine sentiment is still at play on the right in the 2024 election – with some pushing for hand counts of all ballots instead of machine tabulation.

Peters exemplifies the type of insider threat to elections that officials fear – people working within elections themselves could upend systems from within. Pro-democracy groups praised the sentencing on Thursday, saying it should make clear to those trying to undermine elections that there are consequences.

“It’s good that she’s being held accountable,” said Nick Penniman, CEO and founder of Issue One, a cross-partisan democracy group. “Today’s sentencing should send a message to other potential saboteurs that messing with America’s elections isn’t a game, and that law enforcement is watching.”

Peters’ actions in Mesa county came at a cost, both financial and reputational. County officials say they are now associated with this breach and with election denialism. A county commissioner estimated the financial fallout to county taxpayers at $1.4m, Colorado Public Radio reported, for Peters’ salary and recounts, among other costs.

The county clerk position was the first Peters held, starting in 2018. She ran unsuccessfully for the state’s top elections job, the secretary of state, in 2022.