Joe Biden’s delay in sanctioning the use of western weapons against targets in Russia has left the Kremlin’s forces laughing at Ukraine and able to “hunt” its people, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has told the Guardian.

In a wide-ranging interview in Kyiv, the Ukrainian president said that the White House’s equivocation had cost lives and he urged the US president to overcome his perennial worries about possible nuclear “escalation” with Moscow.

On Thursday night it emerged that, after months of lobbying, the US had taken a small but symbolic step – and for the first time would permit some American-made weapons to be used by Kyiv’s military to fire inside Russia in its defence of the city of Kharkiv.

But in his Guardian interview, Zelenskiy made clear he needed to be able to use “powerful” long-range weapons that could hit targets inside deep Russian territory – a red line the White House has refused to lift.

The US, he said, needed to “believe in us more”.

Without this green light, Zelenskiy said other allies, such as the UK, may not allow Ukraine to use their long-range weapons either. “Believe us, we have to respond. They don’t understand anything but force. We are not the first and not the last target,” he said of Russia.

“I think it is absolutely illogical to have [western] weapons and see the murderers, terrorists, who are killing us from the Russian side. I think sometimes they are just laughing at this situation,” he said. “It’s like going hunting for them. Hunting for people. They understand that we can see them, but we cannot reach them.”

Zelenskiy also said:

• New US weapons had still not arrived in sufficient quantities to equip additional Ukrainian brigades in the north-east, where Russia is advancing.

• Vladimir Putin was similar to Adolf Hitler, saying: “Putin is not crazy. He’s dangerous, which is much scarier.”

• He had asked the former British prime minister Boris Johnson to lobby Donald Trump in the run-up to a vote in the US Congress in April to approve $61bn in aid to Ukraine, which hard-right Republicans had opposed.

• The UK Labour leader, Keir Starmer, whom he met in Kyiv last year, was a “good guy”. He added, after a pause: “Rishi [Sunak] is also a good guy.”

Zelenskiy’s remarks came as the Biden administration on Thursday relaxed its longstanding policy forbidding Ukraine from using US weapons against targets inside Russia. It gave permission for Ukraine to fire back – but only near Kharkiv, where Moscow has been waging a fresh offensive.

The decision allows Ukraine to use US-supplied Himars artillery to strike Russian soldiers and command and control centres. Zelenskiy’s press spokesperson, Serhii Nykyforov, welcomed the US move. He told the Guardian: “It will significantly boost our ability to counter Russian attempts to mass across the border.”

But the White House insisted its policy prohibiting deeper strikes had not changed. Ukraine would still not be able to use the long-range Atacms system within Russia, it said.

Speaking inside his presidential headquarters, Zelenskiy made clear he wanted to use long-range weapons such as the UK-made Storm Shadow missiles. He said that, despite reports to the contrary, the UK had not given “100% permission” to do so. Thursday’s shift is unlikely to change the position either.

In reality, Downing Street waits on the Americans, Zelenskiy suggested. “We raised this issue twice. We did not get confirmation from him [David Cameron, the foreign secretary],” he said.

A final decision by the UK and other partners depended on “consensus”, with the position in Washington being crucial, he suggested. “You know how it works,” he said.

Biden has long been concerned about the risks of a direct nuclear conflict with Moscow. The US president is likely to skip a peace summit in Switzerland next month, which Zelenskiy has organised. Asked if he felt let down by the US and its leadership, he replied: “I think they need to believe in us more.”

Ten countries had indicated support for the scrapping of “red lines”. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, indicated his backing on Wednesday, saying Ukraine could use long-range French Scalp missiles against hostile Russian military sites.

In the past week Russia has used guided bombs to kill at least 25 civilians in Kharkiv. Yet Ukraine had not been allowed to fire into Russia, Zelenskiy said. Nor did it have enough conventional weapons to equip reserve brigades, which might be deployed to push the Russians out.

“No one is accusing anyone,” he said. “We are where we are. We are fighting, and we are at war, and not at the beginning. That’s why we need to find a way out of the situation every day.”

Zelenskiy noted that western countries at peace had “different priorities” and, understandably, did not share Ukraine’s sense of existential urgency. This meant that “dialogue” rather than action could be frustrating. “For us, time is our life,” he said. “If you don’t go down in a minute [to a bomb shelter] you can be dead. Therefore the attitude to time is completely different.”

He said Russia was “moving faster” than the west in terms of making and supplying weapons for its armed forces. Zelenskiy likened Ukraine to a ship – “not a sinking one” – that had to get to its destination “fairly” and in one piece, saving “as many lives as possible”.

He spoke, too, about the emotional and personal toll the war was taking on the people of his country. “You don’t know what war is until it comes to your house, to your street, to a friend of yours, to someone you studied with or to someone you love,” he said. “Until you have this, the war is somewhere afar.”

During his one-hour interview with the Guardian, Zelenskiy appeared relaxed and positive despite the bleak military situation and a gruelling schedule that saw him visit four EU countries this week. He described Johnson as a “good friend” who “really helped Ukraine”. Asked if he missed the former prime minister, Zelenskiy joked: “He does not give me the opportunity to miss him. He is always here.”

Zelenskiy said he had used Johnson as an “instrument” to reach Trump, after Republicans in Congress spent six months obstructing aid to Ukraine. Johnson had a productive “conversation” with Trump, Zelenskiy said. It was one of several initiatives to get through to Republicans, including to the House speaker, Mike Johnson.

On Britain, Zelenskiy said good relations would continue, whatever the result of the 4 July general election. “He [Keir Starmer] is a good guy … Rishi is also a good guy,” he said.

“It seems to me that the policy of Great Britain has never changed in relation to Ukraine. And it seems to me so important, because the leaders can be changed in different countries, but the most important is to never change the values … We will be working with the choice of the British people, with the prime minister who will be elected by the people of Britain.”

With no end to the war in sight, Zelenskiy said negotiations with Russia were unrealistic. He said a peace deal would be a “trap” since Putin would violate any agreement and “could not be believed”.

Russia’s president launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 because the west had responded weakly to his annexation of Crimea and takeover of parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014, Zelenskiy said.

Russia insists Ukraine has to accept new territorial realities. Zelenskiy said Moscow would exploit any pause in the fighting to “strengthen its muscles on the battlefield” and would strike again, sooner or later. He said the conflict in Ukraine was similar to the second world war, though on a smaller scale, because of the “ideology of Russian fascism”. Putin’s brutal “methodology” was the same as in Nazi Germany, he stated. It featured “mass executions, burials and rapes”.

Russian soldiers even used the “same routes” as Hitler’s army in their campaign to overrun Kyiv and to dominate the country, he said. If Russia won in Ukraine, Putin would seek to further reshape the boundaries of Europe by attacking other nations, , Zelenskiy said. “This is the real third world war.” He emphasised: “I don’t think Putin is crazy. He’s dangerous. It’s much scarier. You see, he will not stop.”

Zelenskiy revealed he reads books about 20th-century history, a few pages before bed, that explore the “mentalities” of cold war figures, such as Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, and relations between the two superpowers, plus Cuba.

There is little prospect that Europe’s biggest war since 1945 will end soon. Zelenskiy was elected in 2019. Elections that were due to take place this month have been postponed because of the conflict. Did he, at the age of 46, have the stamina to carry on? Zelenskiy said that when he became president he promised to be with the people “until the end” and to defend the constitution. It would therefore be unfair to show any weakness, he said.

“I just don’t have the right. It is not worthy of me. And then you are a liar. I definitely wouldn’t want to be a liar, especially for my children.”

The market for carbon offsets shrank dramatically last year, falling from $1.9bn (£1.5bn) in 2022 to $723m in 2023, a new report has found. The drop came after a series of scientific and media reports found many offsetting schemes do nothing to mitigate the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.

The research by Ecosystem Marketplace, a nonprofit initiative that collects data about the carbon market from brokers and traders, found the market had shrunk 61%.

It attributed the contraction to a flurry of scientific studies and media reports that concluded millions of offsets were “worthless”, with some projects linked to human rights concerns.

Each carbon credit is meant to represent the reduction or removal of one tonne of CO₂ emissions removals or reductions, and they have been used by leading companies to label their products “carbon neutral”, or to tell consumers they can fly, buy new clothes or eat certain foods without making the climate and biodiversity crises worse.

Offsets generated by schemes protecting rainforests, the most popular type, lost 62% of their value between 2022 and 2023. These schemes were the focus of a joint investigation by the Guardian, which found more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets from a large sample of projects from Verra – the world’s leading certifier – are worthless, and uncovered potential human rights abuses at a flagship project. Verra disputed the findings.

Julia Jones, a co-author on one of the studies in the investigation and a professor at Bangor University, said urgent reforms were necessary so carbon markets could work as intended.

“The media scrutiny revealing that many projects issuing Redd+ credits to the voluntary carbon market have sold more credits than justified is important,” she said.

“However, I am deeply concerned that some of the recent coverage of the issue gives the impression that the very idea of tackling climate change by slowing tropical deforestation is a scam – this is not true and the idea could harm forests.

“Dramatically more finance is urgently needed to stop the ongoing loss of forests and the vital services they provide – a reformed voluntary carbon market could play a key role in providing that finance,” she said.

On Tuesday, the White House held an event to support industry-led efforts to reform carbon markets, backing initiatives to help companies avoid greenwashing and ensure credits represent actual environmental impact.

The US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said companies should be prioritising cuts to emissions, but the Biden administration still wanted carbon credits “to succeed”.

The move comes amid deep divisions between environmental groups about the role of carbon credits in helping companies meet net zero targets.

Stephen Lezak, a programme manager at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, said people should not turn away from carbon markets.

“The current market for carbon offsets is a bit like a burning building. We need folks to be firefighters and run toward it, rather than walk away and let it burn to the ground. Limiting global warming to 1.5C simply isn’t feasible without having a functioning market for this sort of climate finance,” he said.

Kaya Axelsson, a research fellow at Oxford Net Zero, said: “This is a critical transition moment. Carbon markets will lose relevance unless they radically reform in line with net zero aims.”

Rene Velasquez, managing partner at the carbon markets consultancy Valitera, disputed the size of the fall reported by Ecosystem Marketplace and said there were problems with the methodology.

“As with previous years, their report is incomplete and relies on a survey of market participants to provide confidential trade data,” he said. “The reality is fewer and fewer institutional respondents participate. While I will concede the market retreated, this skews the numbers.”

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has threatened to discipline and withhold degrees from at least 55 students involved in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, according to faculty members supporting the students.

Students who were arrested on 2 May when police forcefully raided the Gaza solidarity encampment received letters on Friday from administrators accusing them of violating the student code of conduct and warning them of a range of potentially serious sanctions. In the letters, copies of which have been reviewed by the Guardian, assistant deans write that the students failed to respond to police’s dispersal orders and engaged in “disorderly behavior”, “disturbing the peace” and “failure to comply”.

The students are required to attend a meeting to discuss the “allegations” against them, according to the letters, and “no degree may be conferred until any pending allegations and any assigned sanctions and conditions have been completed”.

The letters further warn that if students do not schedule their meetings by 5 June or miss their appointments, the administration will place a “hold” on their records, preventing them from registering for future classes, obtaining grades or graduating. Some students said “active holds” were already placed on their online accounts, with a “you are prevented from graduating” warning.

The letters also said the university had not made a “final decision” about their cases: “Please note that during our meeting, you will be given the opportunity to explain this situation from your perspective.”

UCLA spokesperson Eddie North-Hager declined to comment, citing confidentiality policies. He pointed to the university’s disciplinary procedures, which lay out a wide range of possible sanctions for code violations, including forced apologies, housing exclusion and suspension.

The threats come as university administrations and law enforcement across the US continue to crack down on student demonstrators who set up encampments in the past two months calling for their institutions to divest from military-weapons-production companies and firms supporting Israel’s attacks on Gaza. New York University recently faced backlash for requiring student protesters to write an apologetic “reflection paper” as punishment.

UCLA, one of the nation’s most prominent public universities, has faced particularly intense scrutiny after counter-protesters physically attacked pro-Palestinian protesters in the solidarity encampment on then night of 30 April. Police stood by for hours as the attacks escalated.

Later that week, police cleared the encampment and arrested members and organizers. The militarized response sparked criticism from faculty across the campus, some calling for the chancellor’s resignation. This week, UCLA graduate student workers also went on strike in protest of the university’s response to protests.

In congressional testimony last week, UCLA chancellor Gene Block declined to answer questions about potential disciplinary measures, but said he wished he had dismantled the encampment sooner: “With the benefit of hindsight, we should have been prepared to immediately remove the encampment if and when the safety of our community was put at risk.”

Graeme Blair, a UCLA political science professor who is part of a group of faculty supporting the students facing discipline, said his group was, as of Thursday afternoon, aware of 55 students who had received the letters, but expected many more could be called into meetings, since more than 200 people were arrested on campus on 2 May.

“These are students who were standing up for something they believe in, and they are now subject to potential life-altering consequences,” Blair said.

Arrested students have not yet been arraigned on criminal charges, and it’s unclear if local prosecutors will be moving forward. Faculty assisting the students have expressed concerns that the disciplinary meetings could place the students in legal jeopardy – that if they admit to certain conduct to administrators, their comments could be used against them by prosecutors.

Vincent Doehr, a PhD student in political science who received one of the letters, said the communications from administrators have caused significant anxiety: “These are students already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from having been attacked and subjected to the violence of the state on behalf of the UCLA administration, and now they have to go through another disciplinary process.”

Doehr said he believed the administration’s response not to be grounded in concerns over student safety, but in a desire to discourage pro-Palestinian activism. “The university wants to silence students speaking about a genocide,” he said.

Marie Salem, a graduate student and media liaison for the encampment, who also received one of the letters, described the disciplinary process as an “intimidation tactic” and said targeted students felt a “sense of abandonment”. She said: “It’s the same abandonment that students felt when the camp was being attacked by counter-protesters and then police.”

Salem reiterated protesters’ demands that the university issue disclosures about its financial ties: “This shows us that the university again would rather hurt their students than even consider divesting.”

The process was particularly stressful for graduating seniors, students on scholarships and international students with visas, said Nour Joudah, professor in Asian American studies, who is part of a UCLA Faculty for Justice in Palestine group and is supporting students facing discipline. The Palestinian professor, who has lost family in Gaza, urged the administration to engage with students’ divestment demands, which they have continued to push despite risk of discipline.

“Even when their physical safety is under threat, when they are being arrested and subjected to code-of-conduct meetings, they continue to not center themselves and to recenter Gaza – to insist that the most and only important things is the end to genocide and that the university not be complicit in the Israeli occupation.”

On Thursday, a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty of all 34 counts of conspiracy and fraud in a case stemming from payments that the former president arranged to cover up an affair with the adult film actor Stormy Daniels. The presumptive Republican nominee is now a convicted felon.

He was already an adjudicated sexual predator and fraudster. Trump once quipped that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Maybe not.

Sentencing has been set for 11 July. Of course, it is unlikely that Trump will serve time in prison for what amounts to a bookkeeping offense. Rather, he could be placed on probation and required to report to New York City’s probation department, which has been described as a “humbling” experience. Regardless, the conviction does not disqualify him as a candidate or bar him from again sitting in the Oval Office.

Practically speaking, Americans who support Joe Biden must internalize that Trump’s conviction is unlikely to greatly affect his odds of being re-elected president – which are already far higher than many Democrats care to acknowledge. The betting markets are in his corner.

The deadline for further motions is 27 June, which is also the day of the first presidential debate. Trump, who denied the charges against him, had previously branded the trial “rigged” and a “scam”. As he exited the courthouse on Thursday, he told watching cameras: “This was a rigged, disgraceful trial. The real verdict is going to be November 5th, by the people.”

In the aftermath of his defeat in 2016 in the Iowa caucus and again after losing to Biden in 2020, he resorted to the same playbook. Regardless, his disgrace and lust for vengeance are real. Just look at January 6. Someone who would otherwise be barred from obtaining a security clearance could be the next president. For its part, the Republican party, the so-called law-and-order party, has embraced a convicted criminal as its standard-bearer.

Defeat in a New York courtroom, however, is not the same as a Trump loss in November. The 45th president possesses the good fortune of running against an 81-year-old with a halting gait and tentative mien.

The calendar will quickly test whatever boost Biden garners from his predecessor’s criminal conviction.

On 3 June, the trial of Hunter Biden on federal gun charges kicks off in Delaware. Seemingly clueless to this reality, the president hosted his prodigal son at a recent state dinner for William Ruto, the president of Kenya. Hunter Biden also faces a trial on criminal tax charges in early September, just as the fall campaign begins in earnest.

By the end of June, the US supreme court too may provide Trump with another boost. It is expected that the Republican-dominated high court will further slow the special counsel’s election interference case against Trump, ostensibly over the issue of presidential immunity.

Last, the first presidential debate is slated for 27 June. Four years have passed since Biden and a Covid-carrying Trump squared off before the cameras. Trump came in too hot while Biden bobbed and weaved. Biden also dinged fossil fuels, making the race in Pennsylvania closer than necessary.

However you slice it, Biden’s post-State of the Union resurgence is over. He persistently trails Trump in the critical battleground states. He runs behind the Democratic Senate candidates in places like Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Let’s be clear, the rejection is to some extent personal. Unabated doubts swirl about Biden’s continued capacity to lead and govern. Most Americans view Biden as incapable of taming inflation, let alone securing the border.

“Working-class voters are unhappy about President Biden’s economy,” Axios reports.

Beyond that, the sting of inflation is actually sharper in the precincts of so-called red America. Ominously for the incumbent, his difficulties with non-college graduates cut across race and ethnicity.

David Axelrod, chief political adviser to Barack Obama, has taken Biden – Obama’s vice-president – to task. It’s “absolutely true” that the economy has grown under Biden, Axelrod told CNN, but voters are “experiencing [the economy] through the lens of the cost of living. And he is a man who’s built his career on empathy. Why not lead with the empathy?”

Instead, Biden keeps touting his own record to tepid applause.

“If he doesn’t win this race, it may not be Donald Trump that beats him,” Axelrod continued. “It may be his own pride.”

By the numbers, Biden leads among suburban moms and dads and households earning more than $50,000, but lags among people with lower incomes. His voting base bears little resemblance to the lunch-bucket coalition that powered Franklin D Roosevelt and John F Kennedy to the White House last century.

“We keep wondering why these young people are not coming home to the Democrats. Why are [Black voters] not coming home to the Democrats?” James Carville, the campaign guru behind Bill Clinton’s win in 1992, recently lamented. “Because Democrat messaging is full of shit, that’s why.”

Once upon a time, Carville coined the phrase: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Three decades have not diminished its truth or resonance.

Similarly, Biden ignores the reality that he must hug the cultural center as he tacks leftward on economics. Working Americans want stability, safe streets and a paycheck that takes them far. Campus radicals, riots and identity politics are a turnoff.

Both Trump and Biden have aged and slowed down since their paths first crossed. Trump continues to display manic stamina on the stump. In contrast, Biden’s events are uninspired, under-attended and over-scripted. For the president, “spontaneity” is synonymous with “gaffe”.

Whether Biden brings his A-game to the June debate may determine his fate. If he fails, expect a long summer for the Democrats. Indeed, the party’s convention set for Chicago may rekindle unpleasant memories of 1968. And we know how that ended.

To win, Biden must quickly capitalize on Trump’s conviction. The jury is out on whether the 46th president possesses the requisite skill-set.

Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records set off a political firestorm in Washington on Thursday, with Republicans furiously lambasting the verdict as a miscarriage of justice while Democrats commended New York jurors for rendering a fair judgment in one of the most historic trials in American history.

Republicans unsurprisingly rallied around Trump, reiterating their baseless allegations that the Biden administration had engaged in political persecution of the former US president.

“Today is a shameful day in American history,” said Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker. “This was a purely political exercise, not a legal one. The weaponization of our justice system has been a hallmark of the Biden administration, and the decision today is further evidence that Democrats will stop at nothing to silence dissent and crush their political opponents.”

Congressman Jim Jordan, the pugnacious rightwing Republican chair of the House judiciary committee, similarly bemoaned the verdict as “a travesty of justice”, adding: “The Manhattan kangaroo court shows what happens when our justice system is weaponized by partisan prosecutors in front of a biased judge with an unfair process.”

Some of Trump’s advisers and family members were even more blunt in their assessment of the verdict. “Such bullshit,” Donald Trump Jr, the former president’s eldest son, wrote on X.

A number of Trump’s allies predicted the conviction would be reversed on appeal and would only mobilize Republican voters in the election, while at least one lawmaker suggested the verdict would set a dangerous precedent.

“This verdict says more about the system than the allegations. It will be seen as politically motivated and unfair, and it will backfire tremendously on the political left,” said Republican Senator and close Trump ally Lindsey Graham. “I fear we have opened up Pandora’s box on the presidency itself.”

Meanwhile, Democrats were more muted in their response to the verdict, framing the jurors’ decision as a reflection of the strength of the US justice system.

“In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law. Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain,” said Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign communications director.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary courts subcommittee, argued the verdict confirmed that Trump was “not fit to lead the greatest nation in the world”.

“It’s only in honest courtrooms that the former president has been unable to lie and bully his way out of trouble,” Whitehouse said. “Americans trust juries for good reason.”

Senator Chris Coons, a Democratic members of the Senate judiciary committee, added: “I commend the jurors for their service and urge all Americans, no matter their party affiliation, to accept and respect the outcome of this trial.”

Hillary Clinton posted an image on Instagram of a mug with her cartoon outline sipping from a mug and the phrase “turns out she was right about everything” on it. The New Yorker also debuted a cartoon for the front cover of their upcoming magazine, showing handcuffs being put on Trump’s exaggeratedly tiny hands.

Eric Adams, the New York mayor, tweeted that the NYPD would be ready to “respond to any and all circumstances, including large-scale protests”.

After dismissing the verdict as a “disgrace,” Trump immediately turned his conviction into a campaign issue, sending a fundraising email to supporters describing himself as a “political prisoner”.

“But with your support at this moment in history, WE WILL WIN BACK THE WHITE HOUSE AND MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” the email read. “WE MUST MAKE JOE BIDEN REGRET EVER COMING AFTER US!”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee also issued a fundraising pitch after the jury issued its verdict, attacking the trial as a “witch-hunt”.

Biden himself declined to offer any comment or reaction to the verdict on Thursday; Ian Sams, spokesperson for the White House counsel’s office, said in a statement, “We respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment.”

But Biden’s campaign team made it clear that the president would continue to prosecute his own case against Trump as the country looks ahead to November.

“Today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality,” Tyler said. “There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.”

Trump issued a rambling statement on Thursday night calling himself a “very innocent man” and describing the trial as “rigged”. He blamed the Biden administration and what he called a “Soros-backed” district attorney for the verdict, a reference to billionaire George Soros who is a common target of right wing conspiracy theories and outrage.

“This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt. It’s a rigged trial, a disgrace,” Trump stated. “This was a rigged, disgraceful trial.”

Donald Trump has been found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

The verdict came after a jury deliberated for less than 12 hours in the unprecedented first criminal trial against a US president, current or former. It marks a perilous political moment for Trump, the presumptive nominee for the Republican nomination, whose poll numbers have remained unchanged throughout the trial but could tank at any moment.

Trump was convicted by a jury of 12 New Yorkers of felony falsification of business records, which makes it a crime for a person to make or cause false entries in records with the intent to commit a second crime. He will be sentenced on 11 July at 10am ET.

“This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt,” Trump said at the courthouse after the verdict was read. “This was a rigged trial, a disgrace.”

Joe Biden’s campaign hit back in an email sent soon after the verdict.

“In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law. Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain,” wrote Michael Tyler, communications director.

“But today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.”

In Trump’s case, the Manhattan district attorney’s office alleged Trump falsely recorded the reimbursements he made to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who paid the adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her silence about her affair with Trump, as “legal expenses”.

The prosecution alleged the falsifications were made to conceal Trump’s violation of New York state election law, which makes it a crime to promote the election of any person to office through unlawful means.

Prosecutors argued in part that those unlawful means were the $130,000 payment to Daniels, which was in effect an illegal campaign contribution, because it was done solely for the benefit of his 2016 campaign and exceeded the $2,700 individual contribution cap.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office called 20 witnesses who, over the course of four weeks, gave evidence of how Trump plotted with the tabloid mogul David Pecker and Cohen to bury accounts of affairs with Daniels and the Playboy model Karen McDougal.

The witnesses – some friendly to Trump, others openly hostile – said Trump’s worry over the Daniels story intensified after the October 2016 release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump was caught on a hot mic bragging about sexual assault.

The recording featured Trump boasting about being able to grab women “by the pussy” without their consent because he was famous. Trial witnesses testified the Trump campaign worried that his efforts to dismiss the tape as “locker room talk” would fail if more boorish behavior came to light.

When the Daniels story threatened to become widely known weeks before the 2016 election, Cohen moved into action and paid Daniels $130,000 to buy the exclusive rights to her story – in order to suppress its publication.

After the 2016 election, prosecutors argued, Cohen worked out an illicit repayment plan in which he would be paid $420,000, an inflated sum that “grossed up” for tax reasons the $130,000 and other items Cohen billed.

The trial saw prosecutors elicit testimony from Cohen, Daniels and a parade of Trump’s confidants and employees, as they sought to establish that Trump concealed the alleged payoff scheme in an effort to ensure he would not lose support from female voters.

Cohen proved to be perhaps the most legally consequential witness for the prosecution, as he recounted how he used a home equity loan to raise the $130,000 he then wired to Daniels’ lawyer through a shell company. Cohen did so in the belief that Trump would reimburse him, he testified.

In January 2017, Cohen said, he discussed with Trump and the former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg about being repaid for the $130,000, an overdue bonus and other expenses he incurred doing work that benefited the Trump 2016 campaign.

Cohen produced 11 invoices seeking payment pursuant to a legal “retainer” that did not exist, according to Cohen, which led to 11 checks being cut to Cohen and the Trump Organization recording 12 entries for “legal expense” on its general ledger – totaling 34 instances of alleged falsifications.

Cohen, who was the final witness for the prosecution, said that Trump was furious when he learned that Daniels was on the verge of going public – not least because Cohen had previously worked with Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson, in 2011, to remove the affair story from a gossip website.

“Just take care of it,” Cohen recalled Trump saying. “This was a disaster, a fucking disaster. Women will hate me.”

“Would you have made that payment to Stormy Daniels without getting a sign-off from Mr Trump?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked Cohen.

“No, because everything required Mr Trump’s sign-off. And on top of that, I wanted the money back,” Cohen said.

Cohen said that he filed bogus invoices for legal services to cover up the reimbursements, and repeatedly said that Trump was the force behind the Daniels plot. He carried out the payoff “to ensure that the story would not come out, would not affect Mr Trump’s chances of becoming president of the United States”.

In a watershed moment, Cohen told jurors these repayments started not long after an 8 February 2017 meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, where they talked about money. Cohen hadn’t been repaid anything for the payoff.

“So, I was sitting with President Trump and he asked me if I was OK, he asked me if I needed money, and I said: ‘No, all good’,” Cohen told jurors. “He said, ‘All right, just make sure you deal with Allen.’”

“Allen” referenced Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer at the time, who was recently incarcerated for lying at Trump’s recent civil fraud trial. Weisselberg had previously pleaded guilty to tax crimes, for which he was also jailed.

Cohen submitted $35,000 invoices for each month, listing the bill as for legal services. He said it was actually for “the reimbursement, to me, of the hush-money fee along with [another expense] and the bonus”.

Hoffinger went through every invoice and pay document and asked Cohen whether it was for legal services – or false. Cohen repeatedly said that the descriptions of invoices and payments in emails and business documents were, in fact, false.

“What I was doing was at the direction of and benefit of Mr Trump,” Cohen said at one point, among the many times he directly implicated Trump. “Everything required Mr Trump’s sign-off.”

Daniels provided stunning testimony that undermined Trump’s denials that they had sex following a celebrity golf event in Lake Tahoe nearly two decades ago. After rejecting Trump’s invitation to dinner, Daniels decided to go at the advice of a colleague, who said: “It’ll make a great story.”

Daniels said that she went to Trump’s hotel room, and they decided to chat before grabbing something to eat. He asked over and over about her work as an adult film actor, repeatedly asking her questions such as: “What about testing? Do you worry about STDs?” Had she been tested?

“Yes, of course, and I volunteered it as well,” Daniels said. “He asked me, oh, well, have you ever had a bad test? I said: ‘Nope, I can show you my entire record.’”

Trump started to show photos to Daniels at one point, including one of Melania, about which she commented that his wife was “very beautiful” – but allegedly added she should not worry about Melania because “we don’t even sleep in the same room”.

They spoke about Trump’s show, The Apprentice, and Daniels remarked there would be no way she would make it on TV given her line of work.

“You remind me of my daughter, she is smart and blonde and beautiful and people underestimate her as well,” Daniels remembered Trump saying.

Daniels excused herself for the restroom, which was through a bedroom. When she came out, Trump was on the bed, in his underwear and a T-shirt.

“At first I was just startled, like a jump scare,” Daniels said. “I just thought: oh my God, what did I misread to get here? The intention is pretty clear if someone’s stripped down to their underwear and on the bed.”

Daniels tried to leave but he stood between her and the door, albeit “not in a threatening manner”, she said.

“He said, I thought we were getting somewhere. I thought you were serious about what you wanted, if you want to get out of that trailer park … ” Daniels testified. “I was offended, because I never lived in a trailer park.” Daniels said they had sex.

The description of the hotel room encounter was uncomfortable and cringe-inducing testimony, one of the prosecutors suggested in closing arguments. But that was precisely why Trump was so desperate to suppress the story – and conceal that he had done so.

“This scheme, cooked up by these men, at this time, could very well be what got President Trump elected,” the prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said.

An elderly California man accused of menacing his neighborhood for almost a decade with a slingshot and ball bearings has died a day after bonding out of jail.

Prince King, 81, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to a number of vandalism charges relating to what authorities said was a nine-year reign of terror in which he would maliciously smash windows of homes and vehicles in his Azusa community.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles county department of medical examiner said, Prince died at a private residence. According to California’s ABC7, no immediate cause of death was determined for Prince.

The senior, however, did suffer from a number of ailments – including heart issues and nerve problems in his leg and back – and took medication for some of them.

Lt Jake Bushey of the Azusa police department told reporters on Saturday that detectives learned most of the ball bearings were shot from the suspect’s backyard – and that he broke numerous car windshields as well as the windows of nearby residences.

“During the course of nine to 10 years, dozens of citizens were being victimized by a serial slingshot shooter,” the department said in a statement, adding that several people narrowly avoided being injured by ball bearings propelled at them.

Bushey told the Southern California News Group: “It’s been ongoing for many years because we just didn’t identify who the suspect was. We’re not aware of any kind of motive other than just malicious mischief.”

A search of Prince’s residence turned up a slingshot and metal ball bearings, though police did not say exactly how many.

Prince was released from custody after an initial court appearance on Tuesday, at which he was ordered to stay 200 yards away from affected homes and not contact any alleged victims. He had been due to attend his next hearing on 17 June.

The world has enough fossil fuel projects planned to meet global energy demand forecasts to 2050 and governments should stop issuing new oil, gas and coal licences, according to a large study aimed at political leaders.

If governments deliver the changes promised in order to keep the world from breaching its climate targets no new fossil fuel projects will be needed, researchers at University College London and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) said on Thursday.

The data offered what they said was “a rigorous scientific basis” for global governments to ban new fossil fuel projects and begin a managed decline of the fossil fuel industry, while encouraging investment in clean energy alternatives.

By establishing a “clear and immediate demand” political leaders would be able to set a new norm around the future of fossil fuels, against which the industry could be held “immediately accountable”, the researchers said.

Published in the journal Science, the paper analysed global energy demand forecasts for oil and gas, as well as coal- and gas-fired electricity, using a broad range of scenarios compiled for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that limited global heating to within 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

It found that in addition to not needing new fossil fuel extraction, no new coal- and gas-fired power generation was needed in a net zero future.

The paper is expected to reignite criticism of the UK’s Conservative government, which has promised to offer hundreds of oil and gas exploration licenses to boost the North Sea industry, a policy that has emerged as a key dividing line with the opposition Labour party before the 4 July general election.

Labour has vowed to put an end to new North Sea licences if it comes to power, and also plans to increase taxes on the profits made by existing oil and gas fields to help fund investments in green energy projects through a new government-owned company, Great British Energy.

Dr Steve Pye, a co-author of the report from the UCL Energy Institute, said: “Importantly, our research establishes that there is a rigorous scientific basis for the proposed norm by showing that there is no need for new fossil fuel projects.”

“The clarity that this norm brings should help focus policy on targeting the required ambitious scaling of renewable and clean energy investment, whilst managing the decline of fossil fuel infrastructure in an equitable and just way,” Pye said.

The report expanded on work by the International Energy Agency (IEA) which has warned in recent years that no new fossil fuel projects were compatible with the global goal to build a net zero energy system.

The IEA ruled out any new investment in long-lead time fossil fuel projects, but acknowledged that continued investment would be required in existing oil and gas assets and already approved projects.

Dr Fergus Green, from the department of political science at UCL, said: “Our research draws lessons from past shifts in global ethical norms, such as slavery and the testing of nuclear weapons. These cases show that norms resonate when they carry simple demands to which powerful actors can be held immediately accountable.

“Complex, long-term goals like ‘net zero emissions by 2050’ lack these features, but ‘no new fossil fuel projects’ is a clear and immediate demand, against which all current governments, and the fossil fuel industry, can rightly be judged.”

The outgoing head of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, Chris Stark, said last month that the concept of net zero had become a political slogan used to start a “dangerous” culture war over the climate, and may be better dropped.

“If it is only a slogan, if it is seen as a sort of holding pen for a whole host of cultural issues, then I’m intensely relaxed about dropping it,” Stark said. “We keep it as a scientific target, but we don’t need to use it as a badge that we keep on every programme.”

Green said a political stance on supporting new fossil fuel projects should “serve as a litmus test” on whether a government was serious about tackling the climate crisis. “If they’re allowing new fossil fuel projects, then they’re not serious,” he added.

Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, is planning a sweeping ideological legislative drive that aims to make Donald Trump “the most consequential president of the modern era” if the Republicans win power in November.

A far-reaching bill containing a range of policy priorities at once – including tax cuts worth trillions, border security and rolling back Obamacare – is being prepared to avoid the mistakes the GOP believed happened early in Trump’s first term, when Johnson says the party wasted time because its victory over Hillary Clinton took it by surprise.

In an interview with Semafor, Johnson said he had already spoken to Trump about introducing an omnibus package immediately after he retakes office.

“I told him that I believe he can be the most consequential president of the modern era, if we are focused on a policy and agenda-driven administration and Congress – and that’s our intention,” Johnson said.

“We don’t want to make the mistake that we made in the past. Back in the 2017 timeframe and in previous years, we Republicans kind of took a single-subject approach. We did one round of healthcare reform, one round of tax reform. But for [fiscal year 2025], we want to have a much larger scope, multiple issues to address in addition to the expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.”

The ambitious vision has been thrashed out in recent weeks in meetings with up to nine Republican congressional committee chairs, producing a “transformational” legislative wishlist. The plans have been communicated across the entire Republican conference, as Johnson seeks to heal the bitter divisions with the party’s hard right that has seen his own speakership challenged.

The Republicans’ wafer-thin House majority meant that he needed the votes of Democrats to save his job from a motion tabled by the hardline Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, making Johnson’s radical vision for the future of his speakership all the more startling.

“A lot of this has to do with communication and coordination and we’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way on both of those things,” he told Semafor. “When you have a historically small majority as we do right now, those are really necessary components to building consensus. And we’ve already begun that process.”

In a separate interview with Punchbowl, Johnson – who became speaker last October after an internal GOP coup toppled his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy – said he had analysed the legislative calendar to ensure the radical reform package would pass in the event of the Republicans capturing both House and Senate, as they did when Trump won in 2016.

“We’re very carefully analysing the number of calendar days that we’ll have to work, floor time, all the rest – everything that will be required to achieve all these big goals that we have,” he said.

First on the agenda is expected to be renewing Trump’s enormous 2017 tax cuts, due to expire next year. Their restoration would cost trillions of dollars.

Johnson did not commit to fully repealing Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022.

He also said “no coordinated policy” had been established towards Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, dubbed Obamacare. But he signalled an intention to tackle the issue by saying that “innovation and change is desperately needed” in healthcare.

Trump tried to replace the act in the early months of his presidency in 2017 but failed to get his alternative legislation past the Senate.

Johnson is also close to sending an invitation to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to address a joint session of Congress, an event he has predicted will happen before it goes into recess in August.

The invitation letter has already been signed by Johnson and Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, who has criticised Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war in Gaza and said Israel needs fresh elections and new leadership.

Having already secured the approval of Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, Johnson has passed the letter to the Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, for review in an effort to present the invitation as bipartisan and bicameral.

Nevertheless, with the progressive wing of the Democratic party fiercely critical of Israel’s Gaza offensive – which has so far killed more than 36,000 Palestinians – Netanyahu’s appearance in Washington in an election season is likely to further exacerbate and expose deep Democratic divisions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, presenting a boon to Republicans.

On the legislative package, which would also include energy policy, Johnson said there were multiple priorities that could survive the “Byrd rule”, named after the late Democratic senator Robert Byrd and which prohibits non-budgetary provisions being included in reconciliation legislation brought before the Senate.

“We’re just looking at it from a very different, much more comprehensive approach,” he said. “And I think there’s a lot of interest among House Republicans – and the outside groups of course – about what that can look like and what the potential is.”

20. Every Which Way But Loose (1978)

Against all advice, Clint Eastwood switched direction with a knockabout comedy that would be one of his biggest hits. He plays a bare-knuckle fighter who falls for a country singer, though the real romantic chemistry is between him and Clyde the orangutan. Barroom brawls aplenty! Ruth Gordon (as “Ma”) v Nazi bikers!

19. Million Dollar Baby (2004)

In a role that fits him like a comfy old overcoat, Eastwood plays a curmudgeonly boxing trainer who reluctantly takes on a waitress and soon-to-be surrogate daughter (Hilary Swank). But disaster strikes … Eastwood also directed, and the film won multiple Oscars, despite (or perhaps because of) its controversial ending.

18. Kelly’s Heroes (1970)

Dirty Dozen-lite meets The Italian Job as Eastwood leads his platoon in a heist comedy set in France in 1944. Eastwood is solid, but gets comprehensively upstaged by Donald Sutherland’s stoned tank commander. Jolly good fun, though the slapstick sometimes sits awkwardly with the horrors of war.

17. Space Cowboys (2000)

Eastwood directed this amiable geriatric riposte to Armageddon, and reunited with Sutherland, alongside James Garner and Tommy Lee Jones, to play retired test pilots launched into space to save the world from obsolete satellite tech. Plot, dialogue and brawling are all 100% predictable, which only adds to its charm.

16. Gran Torino (2008)

“Get off my lawn!” Septuagenarian Eastwood directs himself as a racist Korean war veteran who bonds with his Asian neighbours in blue-collar Detroit. The action and dialogue are a little clunky, but viewed in light of his long career, even the clunkiness becomes rather moving.

15. Where Eagles Dare (1968)

Eastwood and Richard Burton co-star in a cracking Alistair MacLean action pic in which they infiltrate a Schloss in the Bavarian Alps. Result: explosions, stunts galore and Nazis falling like ninepins. All this gung ho budgetary extravagance inspired Eastwood to found the parsimonious Malpaso Productions.

14. High Plains Drifter (1973)

Eastwood’s first western as a director was a gothic homage to Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, the film-makers who shaped his early career. As “The Stranger”, he rides into a frontier town to wreak semi-supernatural vengeance on the townsfolk, using methods that include getting them to paint the town red – literally.

13. Escape from Alcatraz (1979)

After a production dispute, this taut fictionalisation of a real-life 1962 escape attempt would be Siegel and Eastwood’s final collaboration. Clint plays Frank Morris, banged up on the notorious prison island in San Francisco Bay, ruled by Patrick McGoohan as an unyielding warden. Filmed on location in Alcatraz itself.

12. Tightrope (1984)

Richard Tuggle gets the credit, but Eastwood allegedly ended up directing most of this underrated thriller himself. In one of his most fearlessly uningratiating performances, he subverts his own macho persona as New Orleans cop Wes Block, whose sexual kinks are uncomfortably similar to those of the serial murderer his department is hunting.

11. In the Line of Fire (1993)

Eastwood never balked at acting his age, and visibly gets short of breath as a veteran Secret Service agent, still depressed by his failure to protect JFK, who is forced into a battle of wits against John Malkovich. Smart directing from Wolfgang Petersen lifts this into almost-classic thriller territory.

10. Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)

After Coogan’s Bluff, Eastwood’s second film for Siegel was this spaghetti-adjacent western with an Ennio Morricone score, filmed in Mexico. Clint plays an American mercenary who rescues a nun (Shirley MacLaine) from bandits. They join up with Mexican revolutionaries to fight the occupying French forces. Breezy fun with an action-packed finale, and you’d never guess Clint and Shirley weren’t best mates on set.

9. The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

Eastwood’s no-nonsense directing style is perfectly suited to this Brief Encounter-type romance, adapted from a bestselling novel. He plays a peripatetic photographer who stops taking pictures of Iowa’s historic bridges long enough to have a passionate affair with a local housewife (Meryl Streep in frumpy frocks). Acting-wise, Eastwood wisely leaves most of the emoting to his co-star, with results that are genuinely affecting.

Michael Cimino made his directing debut with this likable buddy caper movie set in rural Montana. Eastwood gives one of his most underrated performances as a fugitive bank robber who teams up with Jeff Bridges’ cocky young drifter. Knockabout comedy rubs shoulders with brutal violence, new Hollywood-style, as a getaway goes horribly wrong and the typically 1970s ending is a heartbreaker.

7. The Beguiled (1971)

With three releases cementing and subverting his tough guy persona, 1971 was a watershed year for Eastwood. In Siegel’s unnerving southern gothic thriller (remade in 2017 by Sofia Coppola), he plays a wounded Yankee soldier trapped in an all girls’ school in rural Mississippi, where his attempts to manipulate the women’s emotions only result in him being systematically unmanned.

6. Play Misty for Me (1971)

Sixteen years before Fatal Attraction, Eastwood made his directing debut with a psychological thriller in which his strapping DJ is reduced to a nervous wreck by a slip of a woman (Jessica Walter AKA Arrested Development’s Lucille Bluth) as their initially casual relationship leads to jealousy, stalking and scissor attacks. Filmed in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where, from 1986 to 1988, Clint would serve as mayor.

5. A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

Hitherto best known as Rowdy Yates from TV’s Rawhide, Eastwood took a risk in playing a poncho-clad anti-hero, The Man With No Name, in a low-budget Italian production with a Morricone score. The gamble paid off. Leone’s unauthorised remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (itself a reworking of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest) gave birth to the spaghetti western subgenre. And a screen icon was born.

4. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Eastwood controversially ousted Philip Kaufman to take over directing on one of his most enjoyable westerns. A farmer hunts down the soldiers who murdered his family, but vengeance is deferred while he acquires a surrogate family of misfits, including Chief Dan George as the Cherokee who can’t sneak up, and Sondra Locke in the first of six films she made with Clint, her real-life partner.

3. Dirty Harry (1971)

Eastwood added another signature role to his repertoire in the first of five films featuring poster boy for police brutality Inspector Harry Callahan, as he goes after the psychopath terrorising San Francisco. Director Siegel keeps it gritty and exciting, and Clint, road testing a 1970s pompadour, makes Harry cool, instead of just a vigilante thug.

2. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

The final part of Leone’s Dollars Trilogy adds Eli Wallach as comic foil to the dream team of Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef, who last met in For a Few Dollars More (1965). All three play scumbags on the trail of buried treasure, set against an epic American civil war backdrop. The squinty showdown in the cemetery, choreographed to Morricone’s score, is peak cinema.

1. Unforgiven (1992)

Eastwood stars in this Oscar-winning western as William Munny, a widowed pig-farmer who thinks his bounty hunting days are over (“I ain’t like that any more”) until he hears about a $1,000 reward on the heads of men who slashed a sex worker’s face. But first he has to get past Sheriff Gene Hackman. With the director-star completely in control of his screen persona and drawing on his history of playing violent men, he builds without irony towards a showdown that is more tragic than cathartic.