Diane Abbott has confirmed she has been banned from standing as a Labour MP at the next election, bringing to an end a near 40-year career as one of the party’s highest-profile politicians.

The MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington issued a statement to broadcasters on Wednesday morning confirming she had been handed back the Labour whip after a months-long investigation into her conduct, but would not be allowed to stand again as a Labour candidate.

The decision leaves Abbott, the first black woman to be elected to the British parliament, likely to head out of parliament having sat as an MP since 1987.

According to the BBC, Abbott said: “Although the whip has been restored, I am banned for standing as a Labour candidate.”

Separately, Abbott said on X she was “dismayed” that reports overnight suggested she was being barred as a candidate, reflecting a chaotic 24 hours in which her political future hung in the balance.

She appeared to suggest she would not stand as an independent candidate to challenge Labour, tweeting: “Naturally I am delighted to have the Labour Whip restored and to be a member of the PLP. Thank you to all those who supported me along the way. I will be campaigning for a Labour victory.”

Abbott did not respond to a request to comment further.

Her allies had previously said she had not been informed of a reported decision to ban her from standing as a Labour candidate. Reports on Wednesday suggested she had wanted to announce her own retirement but was caught off guard by a story in the Times saying she would be barred from standing for Labour.

Abbott was suspended from the party last year after writing a letter to the Observer that appeared to play down racism against Jewish people. She argued that minority groups such as Jewish people, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people faced similar levels of prejudice to people with red hair.

Abbott apologised for her remarks, was placed under investigation and lost the Labour whip.

Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, sparked some hope among Abbott’s allies when he defended her this year after the Guardian revealed she had been the subject of racist remarks by the Conservatives’ biggest donor, Frank Hester.

Starmer praised Abbott at the time as a “trailblazer”, adding: “She has probably faced more abuse than any other politician over the years on a sustained basis.”

Abbott’s friends were dismayed that she did not get the whip back in the subsequent weeks.

Starmer said this week that the investigation into her conduct was ongoing. But it emerged on Tuesday it had concluded in December, with Abbott being told to complete an online antisemitism training course in February.

Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, said on Wednesday: “The Labour party has been telling everybody this investigation into Diane Abbott is ongoing, [but] it now appears it concluded months ago. So really it’s a question for them to clear this all up, what happened when, be transparent about it.”

John McTernan, a former adviser to Tony Blair, described the events of the last 24 hours as “a mess that could have been avoided”.

Jacqueline McKenzie, a lawyer at Leigh Day and a friend of Abbott, told the BBC on Wednesday: “What was really astonishing was the fact that just this week we saw Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour party, as well as senior officials saying that an investigation was still under way. I think it’s really incumbent upon them to explain. Have they been honest about this process? And I think that’s what’s really shocking.”

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This is a decision for the Labour party’s national executive committee.”

He sought to put Abbott’s case in the context of Starmer’s desire to clamp down on antisemitism in the party. “Keir Starmer, when he talks about improving standards in the Labour party, he really meant it,” he said.

Asked on Times Radio whether he felt comfortable about the way Abbott’s case had been handled, Streeting said: “No, not particularly.”

The poet Patrick Kavanagh was inspired to write sonnets about the “leafy-with-love” banks of the Grand Canal near Baggot Street bridge in south-central Dublin. There was not much poetry or love on the same stretch of the canal the other day, as rain whipped a row of brightly coloured tents neatly lining the towpath, side by side.

The occupants I met were mostly keeping hidden from the rain and, perhaps, from those who kick the tents and attack volunteer helpers, or the self-styled “patriots” who travel the country burning down designated refugee accommodation sites, chanting that Ireland is full.

But Nabil, who arrived in Ireland on 8 May, told me about his journey from the Gaza Strip, through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, reaching Ireland via “Italia”. Despite the pitiful and precarious conditions, he was relieved to be in the country, he said, and hoped his family – including a newborn – would eventually be able to join him. He made a cradling gesture as he said the word “baby”.

If Nabil had heard about Ireland’s advocacy for Palestinian rights, he might be puzzled by his current plight. As of 28 May, Ireland officially recognises that the Palestinian state exists. Nabil is no longer stateless in the eyes of Ireland – he is just homeless on the streets of its capital.

Ireland’s recognition of Palestine is applauded by millions of people around the world. Younger generations in particular feel immense pride at the willingness of a small country to go out on a limb, to take a historic step that the taoiseach Simon Harris told the Dáil on Tuesday, is “the right thing to do”.

Micheál Martin, the foreign minster, told the Guardian in March that empathy was a factor driving Ireland’s outspokenness on the slaughter and starvation in Gaza. “We’ve experienced famine, we know what it’s like in our psyche,” he said.

Martin is right that Ireland’s national trauma should give its people a particular antenna for injustice. Few families were not touched by mass starvation, displacement or dispossession. My ancestor Rose died at the age of 20 on a “coffin ship” crossing the Atlantic to reach the US in the spring of 1850, when famine had claimed nearly one million lives. I see little difference between her resolve and that of Nabil, and the many others who risk their lives every day to reach Europe.

But if our history can inspire a bold and principled foreign policy, why at home is the state telling a vulnerable Palestinian that the best Ireland can do for him is a pop-up tent and a sleeping bag?

About 1,800 people seeking asylum are homeless in Ireland. Mini-encampments began to mushroom in Dublin after the distressing forcible dismantling by the authorities of a bigger “tent city” on 1 May. The tents keep sprouting because Ireland’s asylum system is broken, and a panicked government, having failed to find spaces for asylum seekers or make them less visible ahead of local and European elections on 7 June, wants to be seen to be putting a “full” sign on the door.

They have become symbolic of immigration as an issue that is dominating an Irish election campaign – for the first time. The toxic context is months of small but persistent protests, clashes and arson attacks on vacant buildings designated for refugee accommodation. No charges have been brought, but online conspiracists, racists and ultra-nationalists, some of whom found an anti-vaxxer, anti-lockdown platform in the pandemic, have openly encouraged anti-refugee hatred.

In December, the government announced that it could no longer provide beds for asylum seekers – only tents. The timing, only weeks after riots in Dublin in which far-right agitators tried to whip up violence against foreigners by circulating a false rumour that an asylum seeker was responsible for a stabbing, was not a coincidence.

Claims and counterclaims about the “Rwanda effect” of UK policy have added a new layer of panic. Is the UK pushing its unwanted asylum seekers to Ireland via Northern Ireland? Gardaí have been stopping and searching buses travelling from Belfast to Dublin.

Either way, tents in the streets are welcome visual evidence for international conspiracists that Europe is swamped by “refugee camps”. To many Irish voters, they signify chaos and failed policy, but also a sense that immigration in all its forms is “out of control”.

And so Ireland, which has never elected a far-right politician, and whose government is showing commendable moral leadership over Palestine, risks heading down the same perilous rightward lurch on immigration as much of the rest of Europe.

Not all of this was inevitable. True, immigration is a very recent Irish phenomenon. Before the mid-1990s, and then an influx of labour from eastern Europe after 2004 that framed the “Celtic Tiger” boom years, the idea of anyone coming to Ireland for work or refuge would have seemed ridiculous.

Refugee numbers have risen sharply since 2022, even if Ireland is not by any stretch the most burdened EU state. In 2013, there were 940 first-time asylum applicants to Ireland. Between 2022 and the end of 2023, there were more than 26,000.So far this year, more Palestinians have applied for protection from Ireland than for the whole of 2023.

The suddenness of the transition from a country that was almost entirely monocultural and white to one in which 20% of the population was born abroad created an obvious space for pushback. Yet, in the 2020 general election, only 1% of people said immigration was an important factor in how they voted. Ireland took in about 100,000 Ukrainians after the 2022 Russian invasion – to zero public outcry. Until late 2023, immigration registered as a concern for only about 5% of respondents in an Irish Times survey.

At least some of the tolerance was the result of planning. I know this because about 3,000 refugees from nearly 30 countries were resettled in small rural places (including my home town) between 2000 and 2019, and a further 2,100 Syrians arrived from UN camps in Lebanon and Jordan between 2015 and 2021, with minimal fuss.

Language and other professional supports were provided. Schools and sports clubs were liaised with, and were happy to have new pupils and players in their midst. A councillor in another part of the region proudly told the local paper in 2023 that most of the Syrians who had arrived a few years earlier had become part of the community. “It’s good for your heart to see it,” he said.

The place where I grew up, and where my family has lived (and emigrated from) for generations, has a population of less than 8,000. Almost imperceptibly, it has gone from homogeneity to multi-ethnicity in 20 years. Syrian families have settled in alongside eastern Europeans. The small Muslim community has a prayer centre a few streets away from the church. Modular housing for 200 Ukrainian refugees opened in July 2023, barely noticed. No doubt racism shows its face occasionally, but immigration has been a non-issue. And this in itself is a remarkable achievement.

Or it was. Now, in a climate of disinformation and hardened mainstream political rhetoric, 63% of voters in Ireland clamour for a tougher asylum policy and more than a third say immigration is a negative thing. A modular homes project like the one that raised no eyebrows a year ago, has drawn violent protests in another town in the region.

A structural housing and rent crisis is often cited as a source of justified anger across Ireland. But refugees are not competing with people trying to get on the housing ladder. It is far-right and anti-immigrant voices who conflate the two issues, to foster a dishonest narrative in which foreigners are jumping the queue. Deliberately or not, the government’s hard talk seems to confirm the connection: you can’t get a house? Don’t worry, no foreigner will get anything better than a tent.

A dehumanising and shambolic refugee system – the current backlog of unprocessed cases is 21,000 people – could have been fixed.

When I was back visiting family this month, it was disturbing to see canvassers for far-right candidates handing out their incoherent and hate-filled flyers for the European elections.

But it’s been even worse to hear elected politicians on local radio, dog-whistling thinly disguised nativism as concern about the safety of local communities. Most people in small towns will not have had a negative encounter with a refugee, but once the public discourse is contaminated it is hard to detoxify.

When trouble flared at a protest against an asylum centre in County Wicklow recently, most of the social media posts egging on the “patriots” were generated in the US, UK and Canada. This suggests that support for hi-vis vest-wearing troublemakers is still fringe. But letting them set the discourse is playing with fire.

Anti-immigration candidates are standing in each of Ireland’s three European parliament constituencies. They may not gain an electoral foothold this time, but the anti-immigrant vote will almost certainly build if the political class nods along with their arguments. A general election must be held by March 2025. And as Ireland’s neighbours elsewhere in Europe have discovered, when mainstream politicians make elections about far-right issues, voters don’t vote mainstream – they vote far right.

In our old world, the national story was simpler: stagnation, unemployment, emigration. Now, having dwindled for a century, the population has, for the first time since the famine, recovered to exceed 5 million people and is growing.

This is good news. The Irish government is running a country which has full employment. It has enough wealth to fix its multiple housing issues and support those communities that are hosting refugees.

It is not too late to challenge the baleful myths of the far right. And just as they have dared to do on Palestine, Ireland’s leaders must pull public opinion with them behind a confident and hopeful narrative for a progressive, inclusive country that knows “the right thing to do”. If Ireland can inspire others with its political and moral leadership in the world, it can do the same at home.

The next government should force all tradespeople who install home heat pumps, solar panels and insulation to sign up to a mandatory accreditation scheme to counter mistrust in the industry, a leading consumer group is demanding.

A report from Which? found that households face “significant anxiety” in choosing tradespeople to fit low-carbon heating systems, such as heat pumps, and insulation after “press stories about poor work and rogue traders”.

It said 45% of households report that they do not know what qualifications to check for when selecting a tradesperson to carry out work in their homes, and 55% find it difficult to trust the available information, including contractors’ own claims and customer reviews.

The lack of clear information and quality controls threatened to delay home upgrades that were essential if Britain was to wean households off fossil fuel heating and hit its climate targets, the consumer group said.

Under current rules, installers who undertake work through the government’s boiler upgrade and energy efficiency schemes must sign up to either the Microgeneration certification scheme or the Trustmark certification scheme.

However, installers who plan to undertake work paid for without government funds are not required to sign up to any accreditation body.

Which? has called on whoever wins the 4 July election to set a clear deadline for all tradespeople to be certified via the same schemes, and to take responsibility for their oversight in order to maintain standards.

Rocio Concha, a director at Which?, said: “Over the next few years, millions of households across the UK will make significant changes to their home heating systems – such as installing heat pumps – to make their homes more energy efficient and support lower energy costs.

“It’s essential that the right standards are in place to ensure that work is done to a good quality and people are protected against the small minority of rogue traders and cowboy builders.”

Government data shows that by the end of January this year fewer than 5,000 homes had been insulated under a scheme which aimed to insulate 300,000 homes to guard against volatile energy prices.

Separate research from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) thinktank found that a lack of progress on insulating British homes is costing bill payers £3.2bn a year, despite recent drops in energy prices.

It reported that upgrading the average UK home with an energy performance certificate (EPC) rating of D to a C would have saved the bill payer £200 a year. For the 4.4m homes that have a rating of E or F the savings would have been between £400 to £550.

Last year, the government scrapped its target for all privately rented homes to be rated EPC C or above by 2025, in an overhaul of its net zero pledges. The ECIU said upgrading those homes alone would save those households a total of £1.4bn a year under the new prices.

The NSW government is “very concerned” that asbestos has been found in landscaping soil bought in Sydney, the environment minister has said.

A Guardian Australia investigation revealed this week that contaminated soil fill products were on sale at landscape and garden stores, a decade after NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) investigators first raised concerns about potential contamination.

The Greens said the revelation pointed to widespread and systemic failure.

But the government has delayed taking action until the state’s chief scientist completes his review into the management of asbestos, which is expected to be delivered in December, at least a year behind schedule.

That review is examining approaches to asbestos management in other Australian jurisdictions and whether a “tolerable threshold level” can be set for asbestos in waste intended for beneficial reuse.

The minister, Penny Sharpe, said the government would make any “necessary changes” once it received the chief scientist’s advice. The final report was due by the end of last year.

“It is illegal to provide any product that contains asbestos. The NSW government is very concerned,” Sharpe said when asked about Guardian Australia’s findings.

Sharpe pointed to new laws that increase maximum penalties for breaching resource recovery orders from $44,000 to $2m, or $4m where asbestos is involved.

But the Greens environment spokesperson, Sue Higginson, said it was “obvious” the new laws had not been enough to protect consumers from potentially harmful products.

The Guardian also revealed this week that some of the best-known waste companies in NSW were among those that broke safety rules meant to limit the spread of contamination found in a type of cheap soil fill.

The soil fill, made from recycled residues from construction and demolition sites, is known as “recovered fines”. An estimated 700,000 tonnes of the product is applied to land in NSW each year.

Higginson, who had asked for the names of the waste companies that had breached regulations to be tabled in parliament, called for a review of landscaping product supply chains and a new regime for tracking recovered fines.

She said the contamination found in the products the Guardian bought and tested was not a one-off situation.

“What we are seeing is evidence of a widespread and systemic failure that is putting potentially dangerous materials into household products, and the community is not being informed of the risks,” she said.

Guardian Australia reported earlier this year that the environmental regulator had known for more than a decade that some producers of recovered fines had failed to comply with rules to limit the spread of contaminants such as lead and asbestos.

The EPA’s investigations found that instead of reporting non-compliant results to the watchdog and disposing of contaminated products, some companies asked private laboratories to retest samples until they received a compliant result.

In 2022, under the former Coalition government, the EPA abandoned a proposal to tighten the regulations for producers of recovered fines products after pressure from the waste industry.

The small business minister at the time, Eleni Petinos, welcomed the about-face as a win for small skip bin operators, which she said would have faced a significant financial burden from stricter testing and sampling rules.

In December 2022, the Coalition government commissioned the chief scientist’s review.

The opposition environment spokesperson, Kellie Sloane, said the government should prioritise the review.

“Just as the opposition supported tougher penalties for operators doing the wrong thing earlier this year, we would welcome the opportunity to review the findings,” she said.

“The public should have confidence that they are not purchasing contaminated landscaping products.”

An EPA spokesperson said earlier this week the watchdog was considering further regulatory change, which would be informed by the chief scientist’s review.

A former California water official has pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal water in a deal with federal prosecutors in the state’s crop-rich central valley.

The Los Angeles Times reports Tuesday that 78-year-old Dennis Falaschi, who used to head the Panoche water district, entered the plea in federal court in Fresno. He also pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return.

Falaschi was accused in a case that alleged that more than $25m in water was stolen over two decades when it was siphoned from a federal irrigation canal through a secret pipe and sold to farmers and other water districts. The Panoche water district supplies irrigation for farmland in Fresno and Merced counties – much of it from the federal Delta-Mendota canal.

Authorities said in court documents that Falaschi wasn’t the only one taking water, but did not specify who else was involved. They estimated Falaschi stole less than $3.5m in water, a small portion of what they initially alleged had been stolen.

The case comes as California has embarked on a years-long effort to conserve water use by passing a groundbreaking law to regulate groundwater pumping, encouraging urban users to replace thirsty lawns with more drought-friendly landscaping and ramping up water storage efforts to help the state navigate expected dry years ahead.

The state moved to reduce groundwater use after over-pumping led farmers to drill deeper for water and some rural wells to grow dry. The prospect of pumping limits has worried California farmers who grow much of the country’s fresh produce.

Falaschi, who has agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in any additional investigations, is scheduled to be sentenced in September. He declined to comment after Tuesday’s hearing.

Assistant US attorney Joseph D Barton also declined to comment.

Harvard University announced on Tuesday that it would no longer take official positions on policy issues following widespread student-led protests over the war in Gaza.

The decision from Harvard comes after the university formed a working group in April to decide if it should continue making public comment on “salient issues”, according to an email announcing the decision.

The working group determined: “The university and its leaders should not … issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.”

When asked for comment, a representative of Harvard University directed the Guardian to an earlier statement.

The university said, in part: “We have accepted the faculty Working Group’s report and recommendations, which also have been endorsed by the Harvard Corporation. The process of translating these principles into concrete practice will, of course, require time and experience, and we look forward to the work ahead.”

Harvard’s decision has already received intense scrutiny from other academics who accuse the university of pretending to be neutral amid Israel’s war in Gaza while being financially invested.

Michael S Roth, the president of Wesleyan University who spoke out about the upcoming election and how politicians have been attacking “higher education”, “democracy” and “the rule of law” in his commencement speech this year, quipped on X, formerly known as Twitter, that his speech was not intended to be taken quite this way.

“By ‘fighting back’ I didn’t mean neutrality about the freedoms, rights & responsibilities that make education possible.”

He told students in his speech: “The attack on higher education, on democracy, on the rule of law, threatens to sweep away the freedoms that have been hard won over the last 100 years. We can fight back. Between now and 5 November, many of our students, faculty, staff and alumni will be practicing freedom by participating in the electoral process. They will work on behalf of candidates and in regard to issues bearing on the future of fairness, inclusion, free speech and the possibilities for full engagement with others.”

Eric Reinhart, a PhD candidate at Harvard and psychoanalytic clinician, also criticized Harvard for suggesting neutrality while having investments in the US and Israeli military.

“Harvard declares itself neutral with respect to political affairs, while actively investing in arms manufacturers and continuing with its myriad contracts with Israel and the US military. Rather convenient notion of neutrality and institutional responsibility, if you ask me,” Reinhart said on X.

Others have defended Harvard’s decision as a needed step to protect free speech.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression applauded Harvard’s decision as a form of institutional neutrality “which preserves colleges and universities’ ability to defend the rights of all students and faculty without apology or qualification”, the organization said on X.

The latest change in policy comes after graduating students led a mass demonstration at Harvard University’s commencement ceremony over its treatment of pro-Palestinian student protestors.

Thirteen students were barred from graduating over their involvement in pro-Palestinian encampments, a decision that was met with widespread condemnation from students and faculty.

Two commencement speakers criticized the university’s decision to bar the students, despite pushback.

Harvard joins other universities who have embraced public neutrality as a strategy to defend free speech. In a unanimous vote earlier this year, Columbia University’s senate recently adopted institutional neutrality; efforts by faculty at schools like the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University are looking to follow suit.

The University of Chicago is widely known for its protection of free speech on campus, including its refusal to make public statements on policy issues. But the university recently came under scrutiny for calling police on pro-Palestinian encampment protests, a move that many interpreted as a stance on the issue, the New York Times reported.

Manchester United staff have been offered early payment of an annual bonus if they resign by next ­Wednesday, as part of Sir Jim ­Ratcliffe’s edict to get all employees into the club’s offices and his push to trim the workforce.

United have made it compulsory from 1 June for staff to work from their offices in either ­Manchester or London rather than at home. Staff were informed in an email on Tuesday that anyone who does not wish to ­conform can quit and claim their bonus early for this season.

It is understood the terms are also on offer to those who work exclusively from the offices but want to take the opportunity to leave with a payoff.

The bonus, which will ­otherwise be paid in September, can be worth four-figure sums for some staff. United employees have until noon next Wednesday to confirm they wish to resign.

The email said of the office‑only policy: “Whilst many have ­welcomed our new approach, we are aware that a number of colleagues prefer not to commit to this new way of working and are keen to understand their options. With this feedback in mind and the fact that we respect each colleague’s right to choose their approach to work, we will allow those who wish to resign now to claim their bonus early for this season if they cannot work from our offices from 1 June.”

United believe, the email said, that “a return to office will bring ­substantial benefits for ­individuals, teams, and the wider club and ­support our journey to return Manchester United to footballing success”.

A United spokesperson said: “This isn’t a voluntary redun­dancy programme. The club recognises that not everyone wants to work from the office full‑time so has provided options for staff who don’t wish to return to the office to step away now.”

Ratcliffe, the 27.7% minority owner, believes the workforce can be trimmed and has previously cited email traffic statistics to staff as the basis for a ban on working from home, telling them to seek ­“alternative employment” if they were not ­willing to come to club offices.

In an email sent to staff last ­Friday, plans for an end to home ­working were outlined.

“To ensure we have enough space for colleagues to work safely, we will convert the Trinity Club, the Knights Lounge and the 1999 Suite in East Stand into office space,” the email said. “This is ­addition to ­existing facilities in the Engine Room and elsewhere across the stadium. Each desk will have a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

“The London office will be reconfigured to allow additional space for teams. Some teams will also be based at the Ineos office at Hans ­Crescent in Knightsbridge.”

Ratcliffe is this week leading a ­season review, which was not expected to be concluded on Tuesday. Sir Dave Brailsford, Ratcliffe’s key lieutenant, Jean-Claude Blanc, the acting chief executive, and Jason ­Wilcox, the technical director, are the other individuals most prominently involved. Joel Glazer, the United co-owner, will also be consulted.

Once the review is completed a decision will be confirmed on the future of the manager, Erik ten Hag.

With more than $500m in court fines on his back, Donald Trump has sold one of the two private jets he owns to a major Republican donor.

According to FAA records, the former US president transferred ownership of the 1997 Cessna Citation X on 13 May. While it is unclear how much he sold the plane for, the private aviation company evoJets estimates a Citation X costs about $8.5m to $10m.

While FAA records do not name an individual who now owns the plane, the agency lists a Dallas-based holding company called MM Fleet Holdings LLC as the owner of the plane.

The Daily Beast tied the company to Mehrdad Moayedi, an Iranian American real estate developer in Dallas.

FEC records show that Moayedi donated nearly $250,000 to Trump’s re-election campaign in 2019 and 2020. Records show that he has also donated millions to other campaigns, including to Ted Cruz’s Senate re-election campaign and to the Republican National Committee.

Trump’s website still boasts the Cessna Citation X as a “rocket in the sky” that also allows “for entry into smaller airports”. Trump still owns his Boeing 757, his main jet emblazoned with his name, along with a small fleet of helicopters.

The extra cash for Trump will probably help him pay off his various court entanglements. Earlier this year, Trump spent over $200m paying off fines from two civil cases earlier this year. The first was a defamation case from the writer E Jean Carroll, in which Trump was ordered to pay $83.3m. The second was a civil fraud trial that ended in a $454m fine.

In March, a Manhattan appeals court agreed to allow Trump to pay $175m – just a portion of the $454m as the fraud case is under appeal. Trump has said he has about $500m in cash, with the rest of his assets tied up in real estate holdings.

Though Trump was able to pay the appeals bonds for both cases, and will get the money back entirely if his appeals are successful, the cases are just two on Trump’s court docket.

Trump is also facing a criminal trial for covering up hush-money payments during the 2016 election and is working through three other criminal trials. In total, the former president faces 88 criminal charges and is paying hefty legal fees to fight them.

According to the New York Times, Trump has paid more than $100m in legal fees for the cases that have put him in court. While Trump has mostly used donations into political action committees, known as Pacs, to pay the fees, the money has been running out, and Trump’s legal bills continue to rack up. While Trump can tap into his 2024 campaign funds to pay the legal fees, the more he has to pay his lawyers means less money to spend on swaying voters.

Documents obtained from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicate the agency may have presented false information to the public about testing for harmful contaminants in pesticides, according to allegations being made by a watchdog group and a former EPA research fellow.

The claims come almost a year to the day after the EPA issued a May 2023 press release that stated the agency found no per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in testing of samples of certain insecticide products. The press release contradicted a published study by the former EPA researcher that had reported finding PFAS in the same pesticide products.

PFAS contamination is a hot topic in environmental and public health circles because certain types of PFAS are known to be very hazardous for human health, and world governments and public health advocates are pushing to sharply limit exposure to these types of chemicals. Accurate testing for PFAS contamination is key to regulating exposure, making the accuracy and transparency of EPA testing a critical issue.

The allegations that the EPA incorrectly reported some PFAS test results were made Tuesday by the nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), led by former EPA employees.

The Peer director of scientific policy Kyla Bennett said that the organization obtained pesticide product testing data from the EPA through a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) request. The documents they received back from the EPA showed the agency had indeed found PFAS in the tested products, directly contradicting the press release the agency had issued.

“It’s pretty outrageous,” said Bennett. “You don’t get to just ignore the stuff that doesn’t support your hypothesis. That is not science. That is corruption. I can only think that they were getting pressure from pesticide companies.”

Joining in the allegations is environmental toxicologist Steven Lasee, who authored the 2022 study that the EPA challenged. Lasee is a consultant for state and federal government agencies on PFAS contamination projects and participated as a research fellow for the EPA’s office of research and development from February 2021 to February 2023.

Retraction sought

The EPA declined to comment, saying “because these issues relate to a pending formal complaint process, EPA has no further information to provide”. But in past statements, the agency has presented itself as taking a tough stand on PFAS contamination. The agency recently finalized drinking water limits for PFAS and is classifying two types of PFAS as hazardous substances. And EPA administrator Michael Regan has stated publicly that the adverse health effects of PFAS “can devastate families”.

The EPA has also recognized the potential for PFAS contamination of pesticides, focusing on pesticides that are stored in fluorinated high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic containers. Last year the agency ordered a prominent manufacturer to stop using PFAS chemicals when producing plastic containers for pesticides and other products.

PFAS chemicals have been used by a variety of industries since the 1940s for such things as electronics manufacturing, oil recovery, paints, fire-fighting foams, cleaning products and non-stick cookware. Some types of PFAS have been linked to cancer, damage to the immune system, birth defects, delayed development in children and other health problems.

In challenging the EPA over the testing issue, Peer submitted a letter to the agency demanding a correction of the EPA’s public statement about the pesticide product analyses and a retraction of the agency’s research memo on the matter.

Peer alleges that as the EPA sought to refute Lasee’s study findings, the agency engaged in “egregious” misconduct and is “guilty of numerous departures from both accepted scientific and ethical practices”.

The agency “provided misinformation to a national audience and intentionally damaged Dr Lasee,” the Peer complaint alleges.

Questions about key findings

The Lasee study that kicked off the fight with the EPA was published in November 2022 in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Letters. The study said a key finding was the detection of a very harmful type of PFAS known as perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) in six out of 10 insecticides used in cotton fields and in growing other crops, posing a contamination threat to agricultural areas.

The EPA’s response to the study, released six months later, said the agency obtained samples of the same pesticide products from Lasee and also purchased additional products with the same registration numbers to analyze. The agency said unlike Lasee’s results, EPA scientists found no detectable levels of PFOS, nor any of 28 additional PFAS it screened for, and said its equipment and methodology were better than those used by Lasee.

Those findings immediately raised questions about the validity of the testing, according to Lasee and Peer. One concern was that the EPA report did not identify any of the “matrix spike” of PFOS, which was intentionally added to the samples before they were analyzed.

It is common in analytical chemistry to use a matrix spike as a type of quality-control to evaluate the performance of an analytical method. Lasee had not told the agency of the matrix spike, but if their methods were accurate, the agency scientists would have found the spike, he said.

Numerous other flaws and deviations from scientific norms were seen in the testing analyses by the EPA, according to the Peer complaint.

Another significant concern was that while the EPA publicly disclosed the results of two tests conducted on the pesticide product samples, the agency’s internal documents turned over to Peer in response to the Foia request showed the agency had actually conducted four tests.

The documents show that one of the tests did find evidence of PFOS as well as other types of PFAS, which were not introduced as a matrix spike, Peer said.

Peer said it is unclear why the EPA did not report the positive findings of PFAS in pesticides. Regardless, the “presence of PFAS in pesticides points to an appalling regulatory breakdown by EPA”, Peer states in its complaint.

In a letter to Peer responding to some of the concerns raised, the EPA division director Anne Overstreet said the agency “remains confident in our findings” and said the agency’s scientists “maintained scientific integrity and is in compliance with established good laboratory practices”.

Amid the uproar over his paper and the subsequent EPA testing, Lasee sought to reproduce his initial results but was unable to do so. That created enough doubt about his own methodology that he sought to retract his paper.

Now, after seeing the EPA’s internal testing data showing the agency did find PFOS and other types of PFAS in pesticides but failed to disclose those results, he has a new level of doubt – over the credibility of the agency.

“When you cherry pick data, you can make it say whatever you want it to say,” Lasee said.

• This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group

After Donald Trump on Monday again denied rape and defamation claims successfully brought against him by E Jean Carroll, a lawyer for the writer said “all options are on the table”.

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, has previously suggested that she could file a third defamation lawsuit against the ex-president for comments he has continued making against Carroll.

During the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social a long rant about his various civil and criminal court entanglements, including litigation leveled against him by Carroll. In April, a federal judge upheld a jury’s decision to award Carroll $83.3m and denied Trump a new trial.

“Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country,” he wrote. He referred to Caroll as “a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!)”.

“She didn’t know when the so-called event took place – sometime in the 1990s – never filed a police report, didn’t have to produce the ‘dress’ that she threatened me with (it showed negative!) … The Rape charge was dropped by a jury!”

Carroll has filed and won two defamation lawsuits against Trump, who she said sexually abused her in a New York department store changing room in 1996. In the lawsuits, Carroll said that Trump’s accusations that she is lying about the case had ruined her reputation.

Trump, who is appealing both cases, appears to be undaunted by the fact that Carroll has already had success in court against him and continues to make comments disparaging her credibility.

In March, Trump told CNBC that “this woman is not a believable person”. He called Carroll “Ms Bergdorf Goodman”, referring to the department store where Carroll said Trump abused her.

“I have no idea who she is,” Trump said in March.

In response to those comments, Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said that “the statute of limitations for defamation in most jurisdictions is between one and three years”.

“As we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client,” Kaplan said.

On Monday, Kaplan responded to Trump’s Memorial Day comments, appearing to reiterate her statement from earlier in the spring that suggested she could help Carroll pursue yet another defamation lawsuit against the former president.

“We have said several times since the last jury verdict in January that all options were on the table,” Kaplan said. “And that remains true today – all options are on.”