Once upon a time, an unkempt front lawn could have landed you in trouble with the neighbours. But now, councils are telling UK households to put away their lawnmower for No Mow May.

The one-month celebration of unmown gardens and parks was started in 2019 by the nature charity Plantlife, which encourages people to let grass and wildflowers grow and identify any interesting plants that spring up from the lawn.

The charity says 40 local councils have signed up to leave some of their verges and parks to grow. This not only provides space for rare wildflowers but also gives habitat and food to birds and invertebrates.

Andrew Doyle, the conservation officer for road verges and green spaces at Plantlife, said: “Experiencing the biodiversity benefits and cost savings a magical month of No Mow May brings in is a glorious gateway for councils to pass through en route to the more long-term wildlife-friendly grasslands green space management our wild plants and fungi – and the ecosystems that depend on them – need to thrive, benefiting the local community and climate.”

Wandsworth council in south London is leaving 20 designated sites unmown and recommending local households do the same with their gardens. Councillors have said private domestic gardens cover 716 hectares (1,770 acres) in Wandsworth, almost 20% of the borough’s total area.

Bradford council is letting 85 green spaces go unmown around the area. A Bradford council spokesperson said: “We are looking to implement ‘no mow’ on some of our sites to sustain biodiverse area and natural preservation. We all need to do what we can to create a more sustainable district for the future.”

Councillors on the Isle of Wight say its natural heritage is an important facet of the island’s Unesco status, so protecting it by doing No Mow May makes sense.

Natasha Dix, the council’s service director for waste environment and planning, said: “Encouraging biodiversity holds significant importance for our environment. The presence of wild orchids, including the declining man orchid, green-winged orchid, southern marsh orchid, northern marsh orchid and bee orchid can brighten up liberated lawns and enhance our natural spaces.

“The urgency lies in the threat to the world’s bee population. By allowing lawns to bloom, even for just a month, we actively support our local bees and contribute to the broader biodiversity structures that play a critical role in maintaining balance. I encourage everyone to participate in this meaningful endeavour. Let’s unleash the power of wildflowers.”

Warwick council is also participating. A councillor, Will Roberts, said: “Nature isn’t neat, but it’s a big part of where we live. Beneath the long grass, wildflowers and what might be viewed as ‘weeds’ lies a thriving habitat of vital species that will help us combat the negative effects of climate change, delivering multiple benefits for wildlife and people.”

Ian Dunn, the chief executive of Plantlife, said: “Support for Plantlife’s campaign is blossoming beautifully as people recognise the benefits to plants, people, pollinators and planet of mowing less and later for nature. The small act of giving the mower a month off, and then mowing less through the summer, can make a big difference at a time when we face interlinked climate and biodiversity emergencies.”

Bev Adrian, a retired career placement counselor for people with disabilities, lives in Woodlawn Terrace, a mobile home park just outside Minneapolis, Minnesota. The nearby streets are full of bustling local businesses – a Sota Boys Smoke Shop, a Pump N Munch Gas – but Woodlawn is a quiet park tucked away under maples and pines.

Adrian moved there four years ago, coincidentally right as Woodlawn’s owner was looking to sell. Woodlawn’s landlord was well liked, but for years Woodlawn’s residents had been hearing rumors about possible sales to much less friendly owners.

“People lived here in fear,” Adrian says, “because these places are just swallowed up.”

Mobile home parks, also known as trailer parks, are officially and more accurately called manufactured housing parks. Prefab homes are substantial constructions; once placed in a park, more than 80% of them are never moved.

In these parks, residents own their homes but pay rent to landlords who own the land and its infrastructure (including water and gas hookups). Over the last decade, private investors have discovered one very simple thing: owning a manufactured housing park is an incredibly lucrative thing to do. Now, throughout the country, local landlords are making way for out-of-state owners notorious for jacking up rents while letting conditions deteriorate.

But Adrian knew about a non-profit group called Roc USA that helped manufactured housing residents buy their own parks. So she set about facilitating a sale – to Woodlawn’s own people.

As private owners work to maximize profit, Roc USA is fighting for a radical oppositional model: resident-owned communities, or Rocs. According to an industry analysis from 2019, the average annual rent increase in privately owned parks is 3.9%. In recent years, according to the Washington Post, some park residents have seen their rents rise much more rapidly, even doubling or tripling. According to a 2020 Roc USA analysis, the average annual rent increase in community-owned parks is just 0.9% – or $3 a year.

For the kinds of people who traditionally live in manufactured housing communities – retirees and low-income earners – the best chance to protect their housing is to take ownership of it themselves.

In February, the Biden administration announced the details of the Preservation and Reinvestment Initiative for Community Enhancement (Price) Act, which Congress passed in 2022 and mandates the creation of a $225m grant to improve manufactured housing infrastructure nationwide. The act, which Roc USA and members of its resident-owned communities lobbied for, marks the first time the federal government has laid out a funded program to support manufactured housing.

Advocates for manufactured housing say this kind of national recognition is long overdue. Manufactured housing communities make up 7% of the country’s housing stock and more than 14% of its rural housing stock. They house 22 million people and are the single largest provider of unsubsidized affordable housing.

In 2000, the number of homes in cooperative-owned manufactured housing communities was in the hundreds. Today, there are more than 22,000 homes in Roc USA communities. Not a single Roc USA community has ever closed, reverted to private ownership, or otherwise displaced its residents.

In the winter of 2021, Adrian and Woodlawn’s residents purchased their park through a local subsidiary of Roc USA. Thanks to strong recent support from its state legislature, Minnesota has become a hotbed for cooperatives like Woodlawn. Each time a park becomes a cooperative, a tiny bit more of the country’s affordable housing is taken out of the private market. Each new cooperative proposes a radical concept: what if we stopped seeing housing as an investment? What if we simply saw housing as housing?

Who owns the parks?

Before private equity entered the market, the most notorious landlord in manufactured housing was Frank Rolfe. “There’s a huge number of poor people,” Rolfe would tell potential new landlords at his investor’s boot camp, “and there’s more poor people, like, every day.” But Rolfe’s one-man operation looks quaint compared with today’s investors.

The list of names is glitzy and notorious, including billionaires such as Warren Buffett and Sam Zell; massive investment entities such as Blackstone and Apollo Global Management; and the NBA superfan James Goldstein, who can afford his courtside tickets thanks to a fortune amassed in part from fighting drawn-out legal battles against rent control ordinances for manufactured housing parks. As the Financial Times has reported, the parks provide a return on investment of more than 4%, “double the average US real estate investment trust return”.

Buffett, known ostensibly as a good-guy investor, has created a closed loop of exploitation in manufactured housing. One Buffett-controlled company, Clayton Homes, dominates the market: through various subsidiaries, the Seattle Times has reported, Clayton sells manufactured houses, high-interest loans on those houses, and their high-priced insurance policies. Clayton is closely intertwined with the Manufactured Housing Institute, the industry’s primary lobbying group, which has spent over $4.5m over the last two decades protecting the interests of private owners.

The residents strike back

On a recent winter morning, I drove south from Minneapolis to meet Bev Adrian at Woodlawn, the resident-owned community where she’s now president. The sun was shining on the pickup trucks, the vinyl-siding-clad homes, and the park’s communal garden beds. Adrian – small-framed, abundantly energetic – hustled me into her home, which was full of Bob Dylan posters, cookbooks, and political manifestos.

Woodlawn voted to become a cooperative in March 2020, right at the outset of the pandemic. Indoor gatherings weren’t allowed, so the residents – “ecstatic” to vote yes, says Adrian – grabbed chairs and posted up in a central patch of Woodlawn they redubbed Park Square. Through its local subsidiary, Roc USA ran its traditional playbook for Woodlawn, which means giving the residents technical assistance on how to form a cooperative and navigate the purchasing process.

Roc USA and its subsidiaries can also lend directly to cooperatives. The cost of a park varies depending on its size and location; for the last seven years, the average sale price for a ROC USA community has been $4.15m. The Roc USA loans are repaid, with often better-than-market interest rates, thanks to the organization’s savvy use of state subsidies. On average, Roc USA residents pay $417 a month to service these loans. Residents also pay a one-time fee, usually just a few hundred dollars, to join the cooperative. If they leave, they’re refunded the money.

Before Woodlawn became a cooperative, Adrian used to regularly see folks drive in and out in Escalades and other conspicuous luxury vehicles – potential buyers, she was sure. To this day, she says, she gets solicited weekly, via postcards and calls: “‘Are you the owner of the park? Are you interested in selling?’” Despite Woodlawn’s status as a cooperative, private investors haven’t given up, Adrian says: “They’re just out there.”

As a non-profit, Woodlawn is eligible for a “boatload” of state grants, Adrian says, and so Woodlawn has money and plans: to revitalize a private well for drinking water; to replace a load of sewer lines; to properly fix up the park’s rental units. “Who gets to spend millions?” Adrian says, laughing, incredulous at her good fortune. “It’s like winning the lottery.”

Adrian is part of an informal network of activist resident-owned community presidents fighting to increase the number of cooperatives in the state. That includes Natividad Seefeld, who helped turn her own community – the 88-home Park Plaza in nearby Fridley, Minnesota – into a cooperative in 2011. Since then, Seefeld has become a nationally recognized crusader for the resident-owned community model. When I visit her in Park Plaza, she peppers her monologues with phrases like “that is serious straight-up bullshit” and “I would kill a bitch”.

As the chair of the resident-led Roc Association’s policy and advocacy committee, she was instrumental in helping push through the Price Act, which will provide hundreds of millions in federal funding for manufactured housing. She’s become adept at luring high-profile politicians such as Minnesota’s US Representative Ilhan Omar and the state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, to Park Plaza. She’s also testified at state capitol hearings for years; she just has to figure out scheduling ahead of time, so she can get time off her full-time job at a General Mills warehouse.

At those hearings, Seefeld regularly comes face to face with Mark Brunner, president of the Manufactured and Modular Home Association of Minnesota, the state’s main lobbying group for private owners of manufactured housing parks.

“He gets up there and he will straight-up lie,” Seefeld says. “I always want to stand up and say, ‘That makes no sense!’ I have to sit there and calm myself down,” she says with a laugh. “He just fully despises me. I don’t know why. Some people are just that way.”

Before I leave Park Plaza, I sit in on a board meeting in the community center, which doubles as Park Plaza’s storm shelter. Built a few years back to replace an inadequate bunker, it’s dotted with primary-color children’s handprints and flags representing residents from Afghanistan, Italy, and Mexico.

The first order of business is the installation of solar panels on a resident’s roof. Another family’s home desperately needs new doors. Some of the community’s trees need shots to protect them from invasive emerald ash borer beetles. Again and again, residents ask the same fundamental question: how are we going to pay for this? And again and again, they find a make-do solution.

Before we wrap up, Seefeld reports that a resident named Suad has asked Seefeld if he can form a cleanup committee. Everyone is pleasantly shocked, but also unsure how to proceed: no one has ever actually volunteered to start a committee before. They decide they’ll figure out the details later.

Seefeld recounts her conversation with Suad, doing her best to imitate the accent of his native Bosnia. Dramatically raising her hands stiffly into the air, she shouts, “I want us to be beautiful!”

A model for the country

The Democrat Matt Norris, 35, smiley and sincere, represents district 32B in the state’s house of representatives, encompassing a small chunk of central Minnesota that Norris says has more manufactured housing than any other district in the state.

Just outside Norris’s office is a framed Tupac poster, paraphrasing the rapper’s lyrics: “Even though you’re fed up, you gotta keep your head up.”

Norris has become the go-to guy for manufactured housing in Minnesota. He’s seen residents’ anger first-hand, recently and most prominently at a park called Blaine International Village in Blaine, Minneapolis, that was purchased by Havenpark Communities. Based in Utah, Havenpark is highly active in Minnesota and has become notorious locally for rent increases and deteriorating infrastructure. As one Blaine resident told me, “There was 40 years of family ownership. They raised rent $200 in 40 years. Havenpark, they’ve done $200 in four years.”

After Havenpark’s takeover, Norris held a town hall at Blaine to hear its residents’ complaints, which went beyond rent to crumbling streets and an inadequate storm shelter.

“The room was at capacity – the fire marshal would have stepped in if we had packed any more people in there,” Norris says. “And there were 100 people waiting outside on a 90-degree day because they were so furious about what was going on.”

Norris says he’s had success forcing Havenpark to address some of the basic maintenance issues, but there has been no compromise on rent.

Norris has been instrumental in passing legislation to support resident-owned communities. The state of Minnesota’s housing fund now has a revolving $10m fund that cooperatives can utilize to quickly make an offer. Furthermore, if park owners sell to their residents, they get a tax credit that makes offers from their residents more lucrative, even if a private investor offers more cash.

Mike Bullard, Roc USA’s spokesperson, says that even more than the actual loan, it’s the technical assistance – expert guidance through the process of owning a park and maintaining its infrastructure – that is crucial to a resident-owned community’s success.

Traditionally, your local municipality is responsible for things like the upkeep of roads and the sewage system. In manufactured housing communities, the owners are responsible for all of that. If a pipe bursts, they need to know how to fix it. If a tornado smashes up a playground, they need to know how to fix it.

“In the affordable housing space, everybody agrees that there’s a huge need for technical assistance,” Bullard says. “It helps guarantee success, but nobody wants to pay for it. We bake it into the model.”

Others, like Linda Shi, a professor at Cornell University’s department of city and regional planning, emphasize the strengths of the Roc USA system. Shi, who’s published research on the topic, believes that Roc USA’s practices could be expanded beyond the ownership of manufactured housing parks to other forms of housing.

Could that model work for a group of big-city tenants wanting to buy their apartment building? Or a group of small-town retirees wanting to buy their retirement community? “Why don’t people replicate this model?” Shi asks. “We’re waiting for an answer.”

The UK government’s climate action plan is unlawful, the high court has ruled, as there is not enough evidence that there are sufficient policies in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, will now be expected to draw up a revised plan within 12 months. This must ensure that the UK achieves its legally binding carbon budgets and its pledge to cut emissions by more than two-thirds by 2030, both of which the government is off track to meet.

The environmental charities Friends of the Earth and ClientEarth took joint legal action with the Good Law Project against the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) over its decision to approve the carbon budget delivery plan (CBDP) in March 2023.

In a ruling on Friday, Mr Justice Sheldon upheld four of the five grounds of the groups’ legal challenge, stating that the decision by the former energy security and net zero secretary Grant Shapps was “simply not justified by the evidence”.

He said: “If, as I have found, the secretary of state did make his decision on the assumption that each of the proposals and policies would be delivered in full, then the secretary of state’s decision was taken on the basis of a mistaken understanding of the true factual position.”

The judge agreed with ClientEarth and Friends of the Earth that the secretary of state was given “incomplete” information about the likelihood that proposed policies would achieve their intended emissions cuts. This breached section 13 of the Climate Change Act, which requires the secretary of state to adopt plans and proposals that they consider will enable upcoming carbon budgets to be delivered.

Sheldon also agreed with the environment groups that the central assumption that all the department’s policies would achieve 100% of their intended emissions cuts was wrong. The judge said the secretary of state had acted irrationally, and on the basis of an incorrect understanding of the facts.

This comes after the Guardian revealed the government would be allowing oil and gas drilling under offshore wind turbines, a decision criticised by climate experts as “deeply irresponsible”.

The CBDP outlines how the UK will achieve targets set out in the sixth carbon budget, which runs until 2037, as part of wider efforts to reach net zero by 2050. Those emissions targets were set after a 2022 ruling that Britain had breached legislation designed to help reach the 2015 Paris agreement goal of containing temperatures within 1.5C (2.7F) of pre-industrial levels.

The Climate Change Committee’s assessment last year was that the government only had credible policies in place for less than 20% of the emissions cuts needed to meet the sixth carbon budget.

The lawyer for Friends of the Earth, Katie de Kauwe, said: “This is another embarrassing defeat for the government and its reckless and inadequate climate plans. We’ve all been badly let down by a government that’s failed, not once but twice, to deliver a climate plan that ensures both our legally binding national targets and our international commitment to cut emissions by more than two-thirds by 2030 are met.

“We urgently need a credible and lawful new action plan that puts our climate goals back on track and ensures we all benefit from a fair transition to a sustainable future. Meeting our domestic and international carbon reduction targets must be a top priority for whichever party wins the next general election.”

Ed Miliband, the shadow energy secretary, said: “This is a new low even for this clown show of a government that has totally failed on energy and climate for 14 years. Their plan has now been found unlawful twice – once might have been dismissed as carelessness, twice shows they are incapable of delivering for this country.

“The British people are paying the price for their failure in higher bills, exposed to the dictators like [Vladimir] Putin who control fossil fuel markets. Only Labour can tackle the climate crisis in a way that cuts bills for families, makes Britain energy independent, and tackles the climate crisis.”

Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP, said: “Once again the government’s climate plan has been ruled unlawful. When dealing with the climate emergency, simply ‘hoping for the best’ and putting your faith in unproven technologies and vague policies is not good enough – we need concrete plans and investments and there is no time to lose. The government must now go back to the drawing board and urgently pull together a credible plan to put the UK back on track to delivering our climate commitments.”

A DESNZ spokesperson said: “The UK can be hugely proud of its record on climate change. Not only are we the first major economy to reach halfway to net zero, we have also set out more detail than any other G20 country on how we will reach our ambitious carbon budgets. The claims in this case were largely about process and the judgment contains no criticism of the detailed plans we have in place. We do not believe a court case about process represents the best way of driving progress towards our shared goal of reaching net zero.”

Keir Starmer has hailed Labour’s “seismic” win in Blackpool South in a night of local elections that provided further evidence that the party is heading for a large majority at this year’s general election.

The Labour leader called the result in the Blackpool South byelection “truly historic” after the party’s candidate, Chris Webb, won the seat with the third biggest swing from the Conservatives to Labour in postwar history.

Webb, a local and the firm favourite, won with 10,825 votes, followed by David Jones, the Conservative candidate, with a distant 3,218 votes, who finished narrowly ahead of the Reform candidate, Mark Butcher, on 3,101 votes.

Webb’s victory is the latest sign that Labour is winning again in leave-voting areas it lost to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in 2019, with the party also gaining control of the councils in Rushmoor, Thurrock and Hartlepool. However, it was defeated in Oldham, amid signs that it has lost ground in areas with high Muslim votes as a result of the party’s stance on the war in Gaza.

Starmer said on Friday morning: “This seismic win in Blackpool South is the most important result today. This is the one contest where voters had the chance to send a message to Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives directly, and that message is an overwhelming vote for change.”

Webb’s win in Blackpool South came on the back of a 26% swing, the third largest from the Tories to Labour since the second world war and the fifth time in the last 18 months it has won a seat from the government on a swing of more than 20%.

John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, told the BBC the results were further indication of a significant Labour majority to come at the general election.

“This is now the fifth parliamentary by election in which we’ve seen swings of over 20% from Conservative to Labour,” he told Radio 4’s Today programme. “The last time we had swings with that size of a degree of regularity was the 1992-1997 parliament. Tony Blair didn’t get as many as that, and we know what happened in 1997.”

Jonathan Carr-West, the chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit, said: “Against the backdrop of a steady Conservative decline since 2019, the results so far indicate the trend will not be bucked this year.”

Pollsters said early results suggested the Tories could lose half of the council seats they contested on Thursday night, putting them on course for as many as 500 losses.

Bad results are likely to lead to another attempt by Tory rebels to oust the prime minister just months away from the general election. However, Sunak’s allies have pinned their hopes on retaining the mayoralties in the Tees Valley and West Midlands, where polls show the results are likely to be very close.

While Labour celebrated its successes in Blackpool, Thurrock and Hartlepool, the party suffered shock losses in Oldham where it surrendered control of the council. Several Labour candidates lost their contest to independents amid deep local unhappiness over Starmer’s stance on Gaza.

Carr-West said: “This is the first indication that the party’s position on Gaza may cost it votes in this election and we will be watching how this plays out in other areas. It’s a reminder of how global and local politics intertwine and that local elections are not a straight dress rehearsal for the general election.”

Many in the party believe the Labour leader has been slow to criticise Israel’s actions in the Middle East, and insensitive to the anger it has caused among British Muslims and progressive voters.

Some believe this could cost the party as many as a dozen potential victories at the general election, although with Labour making such large gains elsewhere, experts say this is unlikely to cost the party a majority.

For Sunak’s party, the loss of Blackpool South was not unexpected but may be taken as an indication of how voters in less affluent constituencies are likely to vote in the general election expected later this year.

The constituency includes some of the UK’s most deprived wards, where many would argue the government has not delivered on its promises of levelling up.

The byelection was triggered after Scott Benton stood down in March over a lobbying scandal.

It was discovered in April 2023 he had offered to table parliamentary questions, leak documents and lobby ministers on behalf of gambling companies in return for “thousands of pounds per month”.

He sat as an independent MP after being suspended from the Conservative party, and was later suspended from the House of Commons.

The Conservative candidate faced competition from Reform’s Butcher, a local businessman who runs a soup kitchen being investigated by the Charity Commission over claims it was used to promote his campaign.

Reform ran a strong campaign in which Butcher distanced himself from the wider party, insisting he was “not a politician” and taking aim at the Tories and Labour, which played well in hustings.

Reform recently overtook the Lib Dems nationally to take third place in opinion polls and has led an ambitious local election campaign, fielding 300-400 candidates for councils across England. Meanwhile, those same polls show support for Labour has stayed level since dropping back after peaking during the short-lived Liz Truss prime ministership in 2022.

“It was a cracking good night,” Gawain Towler, Reform’s spokesperson, told the Guardian. “Of course we would have liked to have done better, we always do, but this is the best we’ve ever done. We’ve shown ourselves to be an effective force and success breeds success.”

He said Butcher should be “proud” of achieving such strong results and was now an experienced campaigner with one fight behind him.

“You’re gonna be disappointed because that extra 100 votes would have made such a difference but he knows how well he’s done,” Towler said.

Students at Rutgers University in New Jersey and the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis reached agreements with administrators on Thursday to peacefully dismantle their Gaza solidarity encampment protest.

Rutgers and the University of Minnesota now join Northwestern and Brown in successfully reaching deals to peacefully end their encampment protests.

The peaceful resolutions are in contrast to the scenes at other universities in the US where pro-Palestinian protesters have been met with police violence after university administrations called on law enforcement to intervene and break up the encampments. More than 2,000 pro-Palestinian protesters have been arrested at campuses across the country.

The agreement at Rutgers was reached on Thursday after students met with administration to present their demands, some of which include: divesting from corporations participating in or benefiting from Israel; terminating Rutgers’ partnership with Tel Aviv University; accepting at least 10 displaced students from Gaza; and displaying the flags of occupied peoples – such as Palestinians, Kurds, and Kashmiris – alongside other existing international flags on campus.

Eight out of the 10 demands were met, but Rutgers students, faculty and alumni were still fighting for the remaining two: the actual call for divestment as well as severing ties with Tel Aviv University.

In an email, the RU Muslim alumni group wrote: “Even though most of the demands have been met, there is still much work to be done … These demands will require great effort and continuous pressure to bring to fruition and your continued support is still needed.”

Just like 80 other universities across the country, Rutgers students established their own encampment earlier this week.

On Thursday morning, final exams at Rutgers were postponed due to the encampment protest, and university president Jonathan Holloway in an email threatened student demonstrators with police intervention if they did not “comply and disperse, clearing the area of their tents and belongings” by 4pm.

Shortly before 4pm, students began taking down their tents.

After four days, University of Minnesota students have also dismantled their encampment as of Wednesday, when interim university president Jeff Ettinger agreed to meet with protesters to hear their demands.

At Northwestern, university administration agreed to disclosing university investments, a community house for Middle Eastern and North African/Muslim students, and funding to support admitting Palestinian faculty and students.

Shortly after Northwestern protesters dismantled their encampment on Monday, Brown University followed suit. The Brown Corporation agreed to hold a vote on a divestment measure in October.

Campus encampment protests began taking place across the US after Columbia University students earlier this month pitched tents and began occupying the main lawn, igniting a worldwide movement that calls for universities to financially divest from Israel while it continues its military assault on Gaza and occupation of Palestinian land.

On the docket: a rough day for prosecutors takes a turn at the end

Prosecutors faced their first rough day in court on Thursday – but a bit of tape might have just turned everything around for them.

Late in the afternoon, prosecutors played an audio recording of a phone conversation between Donald Trump and his attorney and fixer Michael Cohen openly discussing in September 2016 the plan to keep former Playboy model Karen McDougal from telling her story about her alleged affair with Trump.

“I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David,” Cohen says on the September 2016 tape.

That tape has been out in the public since 2018, but it’s the first time the jury is hearing it. The David in question here seems to be National Enquirer boss David Pecker, who testified earlier in the trial that he bought McDougal’s silence after offering to help Trump’s campaign. And it makes clear that Trump knew about that plot – giving credence to the idea that he was involved in the scheme to keep adult film star Stormy Daniels quiet about her alleged affair with Trump as well.

The phone call, which Cohen had secretly recorded, was played after a chaotic day of testimony from Keith Davidson, the attorney who represented both McDougal and Daniels.

That part of the day didn’t go so great for prosecutors.

At one point, Davidson said he didn’t consider Daniels’ non-disclosure agreement “hush-money” but rather “consideration for a civil settlement”. That sounds a lot more like legitimate legal work, and undercuts prosecutors’ key argument that Trump broke the law by falsifying business expenses when he paid Cohen “legal expenses” to cover the payment transfer.

Trump’s attorneys, during cross-examination, got Davidson to admit he had never personally met Trump. They also did a lot to rough up his reputation and try to paint him as an extortion artist, getting Davidson to acknowledge that authorities had investigated him for extorting wrestler Hulk Hogan over a sex tape in Florida (Davidson was not charged) and highlighting his involvement in salacious cases involving Charlie Sheen and Tila Tequila.

At one point, Trump attorney Emil Bove asked Davidson if his job required “getting right up to the line without committing extortion”.

Davidson did back up his claim that Cohen had made clear to him, beforehand and afterwards, that he was paying off Daniels with Trump’s knowledge and at his request. Prosecutors played audio of a telephone call recorded in 2018 in which Cohen tells Davidson: “I can’t even tell you how many times he said to me, you know, I hate the fact that we did it,” which Davidson says he understood was a reference to Trump paying Daniels.

Davidson also explained his election-night text to National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard. After it became clear Trump had won, Davidson proclaimed: “What have we done?”

Davidson said that the text message, which had been included in the prosecution’s opening argument, was “gallows humor” about the fact that “our activities may have in some way assisted the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.”

You can read a full recap of the day here, and read more key takeaways here. Trial will resume on Friday morning.

The day began with prosecutors requesting that Judge Juan Merchan hold Trump in contempt once again for four more violations of the gag order and fine him the maximum $1,000 per violation for each penalty. Prosecutors said they’re not currently asking for jail time to avoid delaying the proceedings. While Merchan didn’t seem likely to side with them on every example (he seemed willing to let Trump fire back at Cohen, who keeps attacking him online), Merchan made clear that he was unhappy that Trump had gone after the jury.

“He spoke about the jury, he said that the jury was 95% Democrat, and the jury was being rushed through. The implication that this is not a fair jury,” Merchan said.

Later in the day, before trial resumed after a lunch break, he refused a request from Trump attorney Susan Necheles to say whether or not a stack of news articles that Trump hoped to share on social media would violate the gag order.

Merchan wasn’t having it.

“I’m not going to be in the position of looking at posts and determining in advance whether he should and should not post these on Truth Social,” Merchan said. “I think the best advice you can give your client is when in doubt, steer clear.”

Russian military personnel have entered an airbase in Niger that is hosting American troops, after a decision by Niger’s junta to expel US forces from the country.

The military officers ruling the west African country have told the US to withdraw its nearly 1,000 military personnel, which until a coup last year had been a key partner for Washington’s fight against insurgents who have killed thousands of people and displaced millions more.

A senior US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Russian forces were not mingling with US troops but were using a separate hangar at Airbase 101, which is next to Diori Hamani international airport in Niamey, Niger’s capital.

The move by Russia’s military puts US and Russian troops in close proximity at a time when the countries’ military and diplomatic rivalry is increasingly acrimonious because of the conflict in Ukraine.

It also raises questions about the fate of US installations in the country after a withdrawal.

“[The situation] is not great but in the short term manageable,” the official said.

The Nigerien and Russian embassies in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The US and its allies have been forced to move troops out of several African countries after coups that brought to power groups eager to distance themselves from western governments. In addition to the impending departure from Niger, US troops have also left Chad in recent days, while French forces have been kicked out of Mali and Burkina Faso.

At the same time, Russia is seeking to strengthen relations with African countries, pitching Moscow as a friendly country with no colonial baggage in the continent.

Mali, for example, has in recent years become one of Russia’s closest African allies; the Wagner group mercenary force has been deployed there to fight jihadist insurgents.

The US official said Nigerien authorities had told Joe Biden’s administration that about 60 Russian military personnel would be in Niger, but the official could not verify that number.

After the coup, the US military moved some of its forces in Niger from Airbase 101 to Airbase 201 in the city of Agadez. It was not clear what US military equipment remained at Airbase 101.

The US built Airbase 201 in central Niger at a cost of more than $100m. Since 2018 it has been used to target Islamic State and al-Qaida affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen fighters with armed drones.

Washington is concerned about Islamic militants in the Sahel who may be able to expand without the presence of US forces and intelligence capabilities.

Niger’s move to ask for the removal of US troops came after a meeting in Niamey in mid-March, when senior US officials raised concerns including about the expected arrival of Russia forces and reports of Iran seeking raw materials in the country, including uranium.

While the US’s message to Nigerien officials was not an ultimatum, the official said, it was made clear American forces could not be on a base with Russian forces.

“They did not take that well,” the official said.

A two-star US general has been sent to Niger to try to arrange a professional and responsible withdrawal.

While no decisions have been taken on the future of US troops in Niger, the official said the plan was for them to return to US Africa Command’s home bases in Germany.

Fossil fuel companies will be allowed to explore for oil and gas under offshore wind-power sites for the first time, the government will announce on Friday, in a move which campaigners say is further proof that ministers are abandoning the climate agenda.

The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which regulates North Sea oil and gas production, will confirm that it is granting licences to about 30 companies to look for hydrocarbons on sites earmarked for future offshore windfarms.

The move has brought renewed criticism of Rishi Sunak from environmentalists, including from the prime minister’s own former net zero tsar, who worry that any future oil and gas production could hamper clean energy generation.

But it will also give the embattled prime minister a welcome piece of news to sell to his restive backbenchers – many of whom are keen to see more oil and gas production in the North Sea – the day after what are set to be a bruising set of local election results.

Chris Skidmore, the former Conservative MP who recently quit as Sunak’s net zero champion in protest at the government’s climate policies, said: “With a general election just months away, this is a deeply irresponsible and divisive move that goes against all advice from the International Energy Agency or the UN, and regrettably will further set back the UK’s climate reputation.

“Instead of wind powering new oil, the investment should instead be in more wind and renewables. More fossil fuels will only create stranded assets and stranded jobs at a time when demand for oil and gas is falling.”

He added: “This is a political and cynical stunt that will only backfire … We need to stop playing politics with climate and people’s future, and take a grownup position on seeking to find consensus for an end date to new oil and gas.”

A spokesperson for the NSTA said: “The NSTA have worked closely with other regulators to consider matters of co-location with offshore wind and other users.”

Sources say that the oil exploration itself will not involve any drilling, with companies largely using data to decide whether sites have the potential to be profitable for extraction.

Supporters of the scheme add that if any of the sites under windfarms prove suitable for production, oil and gas platforms will be able to use power from the wind turbines to lower their emissions. They will also have to strike an agreement with windfarm operators before they can begin drilling.

Experts say, however, that the emissions from burning any oil and gas produced will far outweigh whatever is saved in the drilling and extraction processes. They add that Friday’s announcement is likely to undermine investor confidence in Britain’s green energy sector as a whole.

The Guardian understands that investors in offshore wind have already expressed concern to the government about the decision, even threatening to pull out of the UK clean power sector altogether.

Doug Parr, policy director at Greenpeace UK, said: “It’s hard to think of a worse use of clean electricity from windfarms than powering the dirty industry that’s driving the climate crisis. It’s like using a nicotine patch to roll a cigarette.”

Sunak has made a series of announcements since becoming prime minister to roll back the government’s climate policies, including delaying the end of new sales of petrol and diesel cars and giving the green light for the huge new Rosebank oilfield off the coast of Shetland.

The prime minister has said the policies are part of a push to bring energy costs down and improve energy security. But his critics believe Sunak is using them as a dividing issue between the Conservatives and Labour going into this year’s general election.

Last month, Chris Stark, the outgoing head of the Climate Change Committee, accused the prime minister of abandoning Britain’s reputation as a world leader in the fight against the climate crisis.

Sunak, however, is also under pressure from Tory rebels, with the party more than 20 points behind in the polls and heading for heavy losses after Thursday’s local elections. A group of unhappy backbenchers is planning a move to unseat him altogether if the Tories lose the mayoralties in both the Tees Valley and the West Midlands this weekend.

No 10 has been working for weeks on a fightback plan to ward off any potential coup, and sources have told the Guardian the prime minister is likely to put his energy policies at the heart of any offer he makes to get his own MPs back on side.

Friday’s announcement marks the third phase in the 33rd round of North Sea oil and gas licensing. Earlier this year the government gave licences to 17 companies to look for hydrocarbons, including Shell, Equinor, BP, Total and Neo.

This phase differs from previous ones, however, because officials are opening up parts of the sea which have been leased to offshore wind operators for the first time. The government issues about 100 licences a year, only 2% of which go on to receive consent for production.

Dan McGrail, the chief executive of the trade body RenewableUK, said: “Prioritising offshore wind over oil and gas isn’t just the right choice for the planet, but given renewables are the lowest-cost means of generating power, we should be doing this for bill payers.”

Parr said: “Most of the planet-heating emissions from oil and gas rigs come from burning the polluting fuels, not extracting them.

“At best, this will make a small dent in the carbon footprint of a few oil companies’ operations. But more likely than not, it will end up greenwashing the fossil fuel industry’s image just as the government keeps trying to expand extraction against the advice of leading scientists and experts.”