For all its gloss and elitist governance, football will not bend to the will of a president so eager to demonise and exclude

At 4.38pm on 28 June Donald Trump dropped a Truth. Nothing unusual in that. Trump’s Truth Social feed is relentless and ever-giving.

That same afternoon he also Truthed at 3.58pm, 3.59pm, and twice at 7.42pm, all in the same instantly recognisable, weirdly cartoonish tone, as if a giant maize-based salted snack from a jaunty 1970s TV advert has been pumped full of voodoo and vitamins and propped up behind a lectern to explain geopolitics to the world, but only in the kind of words you might use while arguing with your nine-year-old sister.

An estimated 185,000 babies were taken from unmarried mothers in England and Wales between 1949 and 1976. I was one of them

After my adoptive father died in November last year, my adoptive siblings found a short story by Enid Blyton among his possessions. The Child Who Was Chosen was read to us as children to explain the circumstances of my adoption. It follows a nice middle-class couple whose domestic bliss is marred by childlessness, prompting them to go to a “very kind lady” who helps them to find a “chosen baby” instead. In its foreword, Blyton advises adoptive parents to tell the tale to their adopted child “again and again … so that to him ‘adoption’ means something lovely”.

The “chosen child” narrative, where parents tell adoptees they were specially picked, helped to shape the still widespread public perception of adoption as unambiguously altruistic. But it has also long been criticised by adult adoptees for masking the trauma of separation from their original parents. Reading Blyton’s saccharine story, I was struck by its glaring omissions. There is no mention of how the boy, who is unnamed until he is adopted, came to be put up for adoption; nor any suggestion that he once had another family and identity. There is no recognition of his first mother or her loss, only the loneliness of the prospective adoptive mother. The woman from the adoption agency also tells the couple that if this child isn’t the one they really want, she will find another one – as though she’s running a baby market.

David Batty is a news editor and writer for the Guardian

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Women from minority backgrounds are less likely to receive adequate pain relief during childbirth

• Women from minority backgrounds in UK less likely to get epidurals, study finds

• How the ethnicity pain gap follows people from birth to death

Julie Hammond, a 35-year-old mother of three from Kent, believes that the “excruciating” pain she experienced during the birth of her second child was not well managed by the medical professionals caring for her.

“It’s difficult to put into words just how traumatic it was,” Hammond says. “I could just feel myself panicking throughout the whole procedure, while also trying to tell myself to calm down.”

Whether it’s a brilliant beach towel or the perfect party bag, our fashion expert’s monthly edit is full of summer winners

• The best summer sandals for men and women

Summer arrived with a bang in that heatwave, right? And it’s the World Cup. And Wimbledon. And nearly the end of term. Which means: it’s time to have fun.

Welcome to my secret shopping list for July: high-street treasures to snap up, an upgrade on the classic white T-shirt, a perfect wedding-party handbag and a towel to elevate your beach basket. Get them while it’s hot!

As GLP-1s drive the current protein craze, a supplement once only taken by powerlifters is now so popular US producers are struggling to keep up

For generations, the Meives family made cheese. Tony Meives’s grandfather, a Swiss immigrant, and his father both ran small cheese factories in Wisconsin, in the heart of America’s dairyland. “I worked in the cheese factory my whole life,” Meives says. “I have four world-class cheesemakers in my family.” But when it came time to inherit the family business, Meives found there was more money in the industrial runoff that his grandfather would have once thrown away. Today, the 39-year-old bodybuilder and gym owner runs a company that sells whey protein powder, the watery byproduct of cheesemaking that was once considered waste. “Twenty years ago, the only people who took whey were bodybuilders,” he says. “Over the past five years, the market has really opened up to each and every type of person you can probably think of.”

When Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, declared late last month, that “the war on protein is over”, he sounded a bit like one of those Japanese soldiers of second world war lore, who spent years hunkering in the jungles of south-east Asia, oblivious to the fact that hostilities had long ceased. Perhaps there was a time when advice leaned more towards a diet based around fruit, vegetables and carbohydrates – but by May 2026, the war on protein was surely over. Protein had won.

As she tours the UK, we pick the best of an artist who defined the ‘sad banger’ – but also radiates joy and strength from her perfect pop songs

Robyn has written and recorded more striking and melodically rich songs than this, but the opening track of Body Talk Part 1 might be this famously unbiddable pop star’s mission statement: an appealingly minimal bit of house music that dismisses a list of eye-rolling complaints aimed at everything from the music industry to uncomfortable shoes by repeating the title over and over again.

NCA says offenders arrange to sexually assault and film victims via online networks with crimes often taking place in trusting relationships

Criminal investigators in the UK say they have uncovered a “truly international network” of organised drug-facilitated sexual assault in which victims are sedated before being raped and sexually assaulted.

The National Crime Agency [NCA] has said online networks, “many as yet unidentified by law enforcement”, were allowing offenders to arrange to rape and abuse victims or arrange for sexual assaults to be filmed.

Exclusive: Guardian analysis exposes evidence of racial inequalities in pain relief offered across healthcare

• ‘The epidural failed and no one believed me’

• How the ethnicity pain gap follows people from birth to death

Women from black and Asian backgrounds are less likely than their white counterparts to receive an epidural while giving birth, research has revealed.

The findings, based on data collected from more than 2.7 million births in the UK, prompted experts to raise the alarm about an “ethnicity pain gap” that means people of colour are more likely to be deprived of adequate pain relief within medical settings.

Exclusive: Findings cast doubt on Starmer claims that reallocation of funds to MoD will boost British jobs

Keir Starmer’s decision to cut billions of pounds of infrastructure spending to pay for more defence equipment will end up costing the UK 10,000 jobs, according to an analysis of the government’s own figures.

The prime minister announced this week he was putting an extra £15bn into defence investment to revamp the country’s armed forces and boost British manufacturing.

NEC told it must take steps to address fears – including not hiring Everton stadium to announce new leader before nominations even open

Labour chiefs have been warned they must placate disgruntled Labour members who are angry at the lack of party democracy because Andy Burnham is not expected to face a challenge to become Labour leader.

MPs have told the party there are growing complaints from members about the lack of involvement from members if Burnham does not face a leadership contest from any other MP.