Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on some of its largest trading partners on Wednesday, upending decades of US trade policy and threatening to unleash a global trade war on what he has dubbed “liberation day”.

“This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history,” Trump said, speaking on the White House lawn. For decades America had been “looted, pillaged and raped” by its trading partners, he said. “In many cases, the friend is worse than the foe.”

Trump said he intends to impose “reciprocal tariffs” on foreign imports, charging US trading partners the same duties imposed by the country of origin on the same goods. Among other examples, Trump criticized European bans on imported chicken, Canada’s tariffs on dairy, and Japan’s levies on rice.

Trump said the US would charge half of the fees he feels trading partners unfairly impose on the US because the US people are “very kind”.

The president displayed a chart that said China charged the US 67% in “unfair” fees, and said the US would now levy a 34% fee. The EU charges 39% on imports, according to the White House, and will now be levied at 20%. Trump said the UK would be charged 10% more – equal to the Trump administration’s calculations of the UK’s fees on US imports.

The tariffs come on top of a lineup of levies that Trump has already implemented: an additional 20% tariff on all Chinese imports and a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminum imports. There is also a 10% tariff on energy imports from Canada.

Trump also announced in March a 25% tariff on all imported vehicles and, eventually, imported auto parts, which will start going into effect on Thursday.

“Reciprocal: that means they do it us and we do it to them. Very simple, can’t get any more simple than that,” he said. “This indeed will be the golden age of America,” he said.

Over the past few months, Trump has rattled global stock markets, alarmed corporate executives and economists, and triggered heated rows with the US’s largest trading partners by announcing and delaying plans to impose tariffs on foreign imports several times since taking office.

Trump has made clear the goals he wants to accomplish through his tariffs: bring manufacturing back to the US; respond to unfair trade policies from other countries; increase tax revenue; and incentivize crackdowns on migration and drug trafficking.

But the implementation of his tariffs has so far have been haphazard, with multiple rollbacks and delays, and vague promises that have yet to come to fruition. The threats have soured US relations with its largest trading partners. Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has called them “unjustified” and pledged to retaliate. The European Union has said it has a “strong plan” to retaliate.

Senate Democrats are also expected to bring a resolution that would block any tariffs on Canadian products. Democratic senator Tim Kaine, who is leading the resolution, told reporters he has the support of four Republican senators: Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul and Susan Collins.

If four Republicans vote with Democrats, the resolution will pass, though it will still have to go through the Republican-controlled House.

The US stock market closed slightly up on Wednesday, ahead of Trump’s announcement, with a slight boost from news that Elon Musk may step away from his role in the White House soon to focus on his businesses.

Even with the slight upswing, two of the three major stock exchanges saw their worst quarter in over two years after Monday marked the end of the first quarter.

In March, consumer confidence plunged to its lowest level in over four years. Polls have shown that tariffs are unpopular with Americans, including Republicans. Only 28% of people in a poll from Marquette Law School released Wednesday said that tariffs help the economy.

The uncertainty around Trump’s tariff policies have increased the likelihood of a recession, according to recent forecasts from economists at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and other banks.

Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, told Bloomberg News that it is “the most dramatic shift in confidence that I can recall, except for when Covid hit”, he said. “It’s conceivable that the hit to confidence could have a bigger effect than the tariffs themselves.”

The Trump administration has tried to argue that the drop in confidence has to do with the uncertainty over trade policy, not the impacts of the tariffs themselves.

Multiple reports have suggested internal conflicts within the White House over how far and wide the tariffs should be.

Recent reporting from Politico suggests that some within the White House see the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, as the most aggressive about tariffs, pushing across-the-board measures. Meanwhile, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and trade adviser Peter Navarro are both more averse to dramatic tariffs.

But all conflict within the White House has been largely internal, while Trump and his cabinet have spent the last few weeks trying to pitch the tariffs as good for the US economy, even as the US stock market has been sliding downward and consumer and business sentiments have plummeted.

Yet economists say the impacts of tariffs will be another uncertainty in itself, likely leading to higher prices as American businesses, which will have to pay the tariffs on imports, ultimately shifting the cost down to consumers.

“CEOs are consistently saying they want to hike prices,” Alex Jacquez, CEO of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive thinktank and advocacy group, told reporters on Tuesday. “What the major retailers and companies who may be affected by tariffs are already planning to do … is pass these costs along to consumers as much as they possibly can.”

Donald Trump hit the UK with tariffs of 10% on exports to the US as he ignited a global trade war that could wipe billions off economic growth.

The US president accused other nations, including allies, of “looting, pillaging, raping and plundering” the US, as he announced tariffs on economic rivals including 20% on the EU and 34% on China.

Downing Street, which had been expecting a 20% rate to be imposed on the UK, will be relieved to have escaped the higher rate, with Keir Starmer’s more conciliatory approach to the Trump administration appearing to have paid off.

UK ministers have ruled out imposing retaliatory barriers while talks on an economic deal with the US continue, and are hoping for further carve-outs for UK companies, which export more than £60bn worth of goods to the US a year.

At a press conference in the White House rose garden, Trump said: “For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike … our country and its taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years, but it is not going to happen any more.

“This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history. It’s our declaration of economic independence. For years, hard-working American citizens were forced to sit on the sidelines as other nations got rich and powerful, much of it at our expense, but now it’s our turn to prosper.”

Addressing a crowd including his vice-president, JD Vance, the cabinet, White House aides and US workers, Trump added: “This will be, indeed, the golden age of America. It’s coming back, and we’re going to come back very strongly.”

In a watershed announcement for global trade, Trump announced a universal “baseline” 10% tariff on imports into the US, while singling out around a dozen trading partners for higher levies.

Earlier, Starmer had told MPs the government was “prepared for all eventualities” when it came to what Trump is calling “liberation day” and while all options were on the table he would avoid any kneejerk response.

UK officials are understood to have reached broad agreement with US counterparts on a trade deal, focusing on technology but including other sectors, which they hope will eventually reduce tariffs. However, they acknowledge getting a trade deal over the line could take weeks, if not months.

There is also a risk of the UK being flooded by cheap goods from countries such as China as trade is diverted from the US to other markets, and the government is drawing up plans to protect key industries such as pharmaceuticals, cars, food and drink.

“A trade war is in nobody’s interest, and the country deserves, and we will take, a calm, pragmatic approach,” Starmer told MPs at prime minister’s questions.

“That is why constructive talks are progressing to agree a wider economic prosperity deal with the US. That is why we are working with all industries and sectors likely to be impacted.

“Our decision will always be guided by our national interests, and that’s why we have prepared for all eventualities, and we will rule nothing out.”

The prime minister dismissed a suggestion from the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, that there should be “coalition of the willing” among trade allies to line up against the Trump tariffs, arguing siding with other nations was a “false choice”.

“It is important at moments like this that we don’t have kneejerk reactions, that we are actually cool-headed about this,” he added.

However, Rachel Reeves revealed the UK was in talks with trading partners about how to respond, and had spoken to the European trade commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, about the EU’s plans to retaliate with their own tariffs.

The chancellor insisted the UK would not jeopardise the possibility of its own economic deal with the US by “posturing” in response to tariffs.

“We don’t want to be posturing here. The prize on offer is a good economic agreement between us and the United States. We are not going to do anything to put that in jeopardy,” she told the Treasury select committee.

But she warned that the UK would not be “out of the woods” even if it could secure a deal, as the main impact on the British economy would be from global tariffs rather than UK-specific ones, thanks to depressed demand and higher inflation in other countries.

In its economic forecast last week, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) warned that the most “severe” scenario, in which the UK and other nations retaliated to US tariffs, would result in GDP being 0.6% lower than expected this year and 1% lower next year.

This would almost entirely eliminate the chancellor’s £9.9bn headroom under her fiscal rules, potentially forcing her to implement further spending cuts or tax rises this autumn.

An alternative scenario, in which the UK does not retaliate, would mean a smaller reduction in growth, with GDP 0.4% lower than expected this year and 0.6% lower next year.

The US dollar was falling sharply against key currencies on Wednesday evening as Trump delivered his tariffs announcement at the White House. The dollar had dropped about 0.7% against the pound, at 0.768, shortly after the speech began.

The US currency was weakening further against the euro, falling about 1%, at 0.9162. Traders have been reacting to developments from the US amid uncertainty over how global trade will be affected by new tariffs, and how far affected countries will respond.

Trump confirmed a previously announced 25% tariff on cars imported into the US, set to come into effect this week, hitting a UK export market to the US worth £6.4bn, which includes luxury car manufacturers such as Rolls-Royce and Aston Martin.

The US president has already imposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, and industry bosses have warned that customers were already looking for alternative suppliers and in some cases cancelling orders.

The White House’s tariff wars also risk reopening simmering Brexit tensions in Northern Ireland, which has continued to apply EU customs laws since Brexit, meaning splits between London and Brussels over the response to US tariffs could drive a wedge between the nation and the rest of the UK.

EU retaliatory tariffs on US imports would need to be paid by Northern Irish importers, even if Starmer secured a carve-out for the UK or chose not to immediately respond. Businesses can claim back the tax through a reimbursement scheme but trade experts said the issue could reopen old political sores.

Since taking office, Trump has rattled global stock markets and caused consternation among business leaders by announcing and then delaying plans to impose tariffs on foreign imports, including from Canada and Mexico. The US has also brought in rounds of tariff hikes on China.

The threats have soured relations between the US and its largest trading partners. Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has called them “unjustified” and said his country would react robustly. The EU has said it has a “strong plan” to retaliate.

What is the best way to respond to Donald Trump and his sweeping tariffs? Keir Starmer thinks the answer is to tread softly, softly – while engaging in intensive negotiations behind the scenes.

There are signs that this strategy is bearing fruit. On Wednesday night, the president announced “reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world” including a 10% import tax on UK exports to the US – crucially, lower than the 20% imposed on the EU. The 10% rate was the lowest imposed by the US and was imposed on several other countries.

It is a sign that the prime minister’s lovebombing campaign – including an invitation to Trump to meet King Charles in June – has put the UK in good stead. There will be no great sigh of relief inside government, however. The 10% tariff is bad news for the UK economy and Starmer’s priority will be to negotiate its withdrawal.

Ministers have been unsuccessful so far in their efforts to sign an economic deal with the US by offering concessions on taxes for big tech firms and lower taxes on meat and fish imports. By Wednesday morning, No 10 was resigned to the fact that the UK would not be exempt from the wave of tariffs, which Trump announced in the White House Rose Garden in an act of political theatre and unabashed projection of his power on the world stage.

There are reasons for Starmer to be optimistic as his focus shifts to inking an economic deal within weeks or even days. Leslie Vinjamuri, the director of the US and Americas programme at Chatham House, said that so far the UK had “played its hand extremely well” and “one can imagine a scenario where that US-UK deal is announced pretty quickly”.

Vinjamuri said Trump had “boxed himself into a corner” where he had to announce universal tariffs before negotiating country by country but that there were signs the UK would be at “the front of the queue” for a deal.

“If the UK decides to roll back the tax on America’s tech firms that will be a huge win and, for the president, far better to announce that after he’s levied a punishment,” she said, adding that ministers could “lace it up with a visit to Scotland by Trump to meet the king”.

Others argue that Starmer’s approach is fraught with risk, however, by unnecessarily drawing Trump’s attention to the UK – which could lead him to exact concessions that wouldn’t otherwise have needed to be made.

David Henig, a trade expert, said Starmer’s approach was “in one sense softly-softly not threatening, in another quite aggressive in seeking a deal, when that could cast a spotlight on perceived UK faults when we weren’t otherwise in the firing line”. He said the risk was that the US administration could target areas such as the UK’s digital safety laws, food standards or VAT.

Government officials said an economic deal with the US is broadly ready and could even be finalised within days. The success of Starmer’s approach will be judged by how quickly that happens – South Korea, Japan, India and Australia have all been trying to strike similar deals.

The EU, meanwhile, has vowed to respond with “robust” retaliatory tariffs against the US. Starmer has come under pressure from some quarters to harden his own approach. Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, called for the UK to join an “economic coalition of the willing” with the EU and Canada to counter Trump’s bullying tactics. Stuart Rose, a Conservative peer and former chair of Marks & Spencer , said Starmer had been “supine” and should “find some way to retaliate”.

For the prime minister and his team, including the foreign secretary, David Lammy, the settled strategy is to follow the approach set by the former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. Abe established a good rapport with Trump during his first term thanks to some carefully choreographed flattery and behind-the-scenes diplomacy.

“The hard-edged singular focus on retaliation is misplaced. It assumes that by retaliating you win but everybody loses,” Vinjamuri said. “One doesn’t want to be prescribing that America’s allies and partners become overly sycophantic, but there is a lot to play for and there is a lot to win.”

A forensic doctor who examined the bodies of some of the 15 paramedics and Palestinian rescue workers shot dead by Israeli forces and buried in a mass grave in southern Gaza has said there is evidence of execution-style killing, based on the “specific and intentional” location of shots at close range.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society, the Palestinian Civil Defense and UN employees were on a humanitarian mission to collect dead and wounded civilians outside the southern city of Rafah on the morning of 23 March when they were killed and then buried in the sand by a bulldozer alongside their flattened vehicles, according to the UN.

Israel has expanded its aerial and ground attacks in Gaza since ending the ceasefire last month. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Wednesday it intends to “divide up” the territory.

The killing of the paramedics and rescue workers has triggered outrage around the world and demands for accountability. On Wednesday, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said Gaza was the deadliest place on Earth for humanitarian workers.

“Recent aid worker deaths are a stark reminder. Those responsible must be held accountable,” Lammy said.

Ahmad Dhaher, a forensic consultant who examined five of the dead at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis after they had been exhumed, said all of them had died from bullet wounds. “All cases had been shot with multiple bullets, except for one, which could not be determined due to the body being mutilated by animals like dogs, leaving it almost as just a skeleton,” Dhaher told the Guardian.

“Preliminary analysis suggests they were executed, not from a distant range, since the locations of the bullet wounds were specific and intentional,” he said. “One observation is that the bullets were aimed at one person’s head, another at their heart, and a third person had been shot with six or seven bullets in the torso.”

He emphasised that there was room for uncertainty due to the decomposition of the remains, and that in other cases he reviewed “most of the bullets targeted the joints, such as the shoulder, elbow, ankle, or wrist”.

Two witnesses to the recovery of the bodies told the Guardian on Tuesday that they had seen bodies the hands and legs of which had been tied, suggesting they had been detained before their deaths. A Red Crescent spokesperson, Nebal Farsakh, said on Wednesday that one of the paramedics “had his hands tied together with his legs to his body”.

Dhaher said there was no clear evidence of restraints on the five bodies he examined. “I could not recognise any tying marks on their hands due to the state of decomposition of the five cases I checked, so I can’t be sure of it,” he said.

The Israel Defense Forces and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have said IDF soldiers opened fire on the ambulances and rescue vehicles because they were “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals”. Government officials claimed to have killed a Hamas military operative they named as Mohammad Amin Ibrahim Shubaki, and “eight other terrorists” from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in the attack on 23 March.

However, Shubaki was not among the bodies recovered from the mass grave outside Rafah on Saturday and Sunday, eight of which were identified as Red Crescent ambulance workers, six as civil defence rescue workers, and one as an employee of the UN relief agency Unrwa. The IDF has not responded to questions about why the dead were buried with their vehicles or to reports that some showed signs of having been tied up.

The sole survivor from the shootings on 23 March, Munther Abed, a Red Crescent volunteer, contradicted the official Israeli account, saying the ambulances had been observing safety protocols when they were attacked.

“During day and at night, it’s the same: external and internal lights are on. Everything tells you it’s an ambulance that belongs to the Palestinian Red Crescent. All the lights were on until we came under direct fire,” Abed told The World at One on BBC Radio 4. He denied that anyone from a militant group was in the ambulance.

Abed, who was in the first ambulance to come under fire in the early morning of 23 March, said he survived because he threw himself to the floor at the back of the vehicle when the shooting started. The two paramedics in the front seats of the ambulance were killed in the hail of Israeli gunfire. Abed was detained and interrogated by Israeli soldiers before being released.

The other 13 victims were all in a five-vehicle convoy dispatched some hours later to recover the bodies of the two dead ambulance workers. All of them were shot dead and buried in the same grave.

A Guardian investigation published in February found that more than 1,000 medical staff had been killed across Gaza from the beginning of the conflict on 7 October 2023 – triggered by a Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis – until the beginning of a temporary ceasefire in January. Many hospitals have been reduced to ruins in attacks that a UN Human Rights Council commission concluded amounted to war crimes.

Since ending the two-month ceasefire last month, Israel has vowed to step up its military campaign against Hamas. On Wednesday the defence minister, Israel Katz, said that campaign was expanding to “seize extensive territory” in the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu said Israel intended to build a new security corridor as it was “dividing up the Strip”.

Hospital officials in the occupied Palestinian territory said Israeli strikes overnight and on Wednesday had killed at least 40 people, nearly a dozen of them children.

Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is “seizing territory” and intends to “divide up” the Gaza Strip by building a new security corridor, amid a major expansion of aerial and ground operations in the besieged Palestinian territory.

“Tonight, we have shifted gears in the Gaza Strip. The [Israeli army] is seizing territory, hitting the terrorists and destroying the infrastructure,” the prime minister said in a video statement on Wednesday evening.

“We are also doing another thing – seizing the ‘Morag route’. This will be the second Philadelphi route, another Philadelphi route,” he said, referring to an Israeli-held corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border.

“Because we are currently dividing up the strip, we are adding pressure step by step, so that our hostages will be given to us,” Netanyahu added.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have seized buffer zones around Gaza’s edges totalling 62 sq km, or 17% of the strip, since the war began in October 2023, according to the Israeli human rights group Gisha.

The Netzarim corridor, named for a defunct Israeli settlement, now cuts off Gaza City from the south of the strip.

Morag was a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis, so the use of the name suggests the new corridor is designed to separate the two southern cities.

The Israeli prime minister’s announcement follows remarks on Wednesday from his defence minister, Israel Katz, who said the Israeli army would “seize large areas” of Gaza, necessitating large-scale civilian evacuations.

Neither Netanyahu nor Katz elaborated on how much Palestinian land Israel intended to capture in the renewed offensive, but the move is likely to complicate ceasefire talks and inflame fears that Israel intends to take permanent control of the strip when the war ends.

Israel’s newly stated intentions to establish another military corridor followed a night of intense airstrikes on Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza, which hospital officials said had killed at least 21 people.

An airstrike on Wednesday afternoon on a Jabaliya health clinic housing displaced people killed at least 19 people, including nine children, according to the civil defence agency.

The IDF said in a statement it had taken precautions to avoid civilian casualties in the bombing of what it said was a Hamas control centre in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the strip. It later said it was aware the target was located in the same building as the clinic.

Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said in a statement that the strike hit “two rooms on the first floor of an Unrwa destroyed health centre” that had been used as a shelter for 160 displaced families.

“Many displaced families have not left the site, simply because they have absolutely nowhere else to go,” the statement said. The agency had shared the building’s coordinates with the IDF, it added.

In Khan Younis, the bodies of five women, one of them pregnant, two children and three men from the same family were brought to Nasser hospital on Wednesday morning, medics said. The IDF said it was examining the reports of civilian deaths.

Palestinian media reported bombing and shelling along the Egyptian border, at least two airstrikes on Gaza City, and Israeli troop movement in the Rafah area. The IDF said it had deployed an extra division to southern Gaza early on Wednesday.

The Israeli military issued sweeping evacuation orders last week telling people in Rafah and a swath of land stretching northwards towards Khan Younis to move to al-Mawasi, an area on the shore that Israel has designated as a humanitarian zone but has repeatedly bombed.

Israel renewed intensive bombing across Gaza on 18 March, followed by the redeployment of ground troops, abruptly ending the two-month ceasefire and exchanges of Israeli hostages held by Palestinian militant groups and Palestinians in Israeli jails.

According to the terms of the truce, the sides were supposed to negotiate implementing further phases of the deal during the first 42-day stage, but the Israeli government repeatedly postponed the talks.

The latest UN estimate, from 23 March, suggested approximately 140,000 people had been displaced since the end of the ceasefire. More than 90% of the strip’s population of 2.3 million have been forced to flee their homes during the conflict, many of them multiple times.

Hundreds of people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since it ended the ceasefire. Israel has also cut off humanitarian aid, food and fuel to the strip in an effort to pressure Hamas. The month-long blockade is now the longest in the war to date.

Efforts led by Qatari and Egyptian mediators to resume talks aimed at ending the war have not yet led to a breakthrough. The resumption of fighting in Gaza has also fuelled protests in Israel against the government from supporters of the remaining hostages and their loved ones.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents most captives’ relatives, said it was “horrified to wake up this morning to the defence minister’s announcement about expanding military operations in Gaza”.

The group said: “Our highest priority must be an immediate deal to bring ALL hostages back home – the living for rehabilitation and those killed for proper burial – and end this war.”

The 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel, in which Israel says 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians, were killed and a further 250 taken captive, was the trigger for the conflict in Gaza, the worst war between Israel and the Palestinians in more than 70 years of fighting.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 50,357 people, the majority of them civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Democrats were tasting unfamiliar triumphalism on Wednesday after the election for a vacant Wisconsin supreme court seat turned into an emphatic repudiation of Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s richest supporter and key ally.

Musk endured a wave of gloating on Twitter/X, his own social media platform, after Brad Schimel, a Trump-endorsed judge that he spent $25m supporting lost by 10 percentage points to Susan Crawford, whose victory sustained a 4-3 liberal majority on the court.

On a day that Trump has earmarked as “liberation day” to mark his long-awaited roll out of trade tariffs, Democrats seized on the result as a referendum on Musk – who has spearheaded the president’s slashing of federal government workers and spending programmes – while casting it as a platform for a recovery in next year’s congressional midterm elections.

In a display of schadenfreude, the Democrats’ official account posted a picture of Musk donning a cheese head and accompanied with the single word “Loser”.

Crawford, a former attorney for Planned Parenthood, presented her success as a triumph over Musk. “As a little girl, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin. And we won,” she told cheering supporters on Tuesday night.

The result is politically significant because the court is due to issue abortion rulings while also deciding on electoral redistricting questions which now have the potential to help Democrats in future elections in a state where contests are traditionally close.

Democrats have sought to exploit Musk’s growing unpopularity to tar Trump and the Republican generally. Recent polls show a majority of voters have a negative view of Musk, who was once popular with the US public.

Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat leader in the House of Representatives, said it was now on Republicans to separate themselves from Musk.

“Time for them to walk away from this unelected, unpopular, unhinged and un-American billionaire puppet master,” he told MSNBC. “He tried to spend his unlimited resources to buy a state supreme court seat in Wisconsin, and it failed spectacularly.”

Chuck Schumer, the party’s leader in the Senate, said the result “sent a decisive message to Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Doge… our democracy is not for sale.”

Other party figures were blunter. Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and Kamala Harris’s running mate for the Democrats in the 2024 presidential election, was succinct on Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

“Wisconsin beat the billionaire,” he posted.

Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat House member from Texas, posted: “Well well well, I guess Wisconsin agreed on the message for old Elon: “F’ off!,” she wrote.

Eric Swalwell, a California representative, called the result an “ass-kicking” for Republicans, adding: “Where else does Elon want to try and buy an election.”

JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois and himself a billionaire, wrote: “Elon Musk is not good at this.”

Suspicions that Musk’s profile and conspicuous wealth have become an electoral turnoff also appeared to infect Republicans.

Pam Van Handel, a Republican party chair in Wisconsin’s Outagamie county, told Politico: “I thought [Musk] was gonna be an asset for this race. People love Trump, but maybe they don’t love everybody he supports.”

The site quoted Rohn Bishop, the Republican mayor of the Wisconsin city of Waupun, as saying: “I thought maybe Elon coming could turn these people to go out and vote, [but] I think… he may have turned out more voters against [Schimel].”

Charlie Kirk, a pro-Trump social media influencer and activist, implied – without mentioning Musk by name – that his wealth and profile might have played a role.

“We did a lot in Wisconsin but we fell short,” he wrote. “We must realize and appreciate that we are the LOW PROP party now. We are the party of welders, waiters and plumbers. We are the party of people who work with their hands, who shower before and after work.”

Neither Musk nor Trump mentioned the supreme court result in its immediate aftermath, trumpeting instead another Wisconsin ballot result that amended the state constitution to require photo ID as a condition for voting.

Then on Wednesday afternoon, Politico and ABC News reported that Trump told his inner circle, including some Cabinet secretaries, that Musk will soon leave his role as a top adviser to the president, overseeing federal government job cuts. The reports cited anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile, Republicans won victories on Tuesday in two special House elections in Florida caused by the resignations from the US Congress of Matt Gaetz, Trump’s original attorney general designee but who later withdrew amid sexual misconduct allegations, and Mike Waltz, now the national security adviser.

But the elections were won by margins of around half of what Trump achieved last November. Jimmy Patronis beat Democratic challenger Gay Valimont to win Gaetz’s former seat, while Randy Fine defeated Josh Weil in Florida’s sixth district, once held by Waltz.

The results bolstered the GOP’s wafer thin House majority to 220-213.

Trump hailed the outcomes, which he attributed to his personal endorsement. “THE TRUMP ENDORSEMENT, AS ALWAYS, PROVED FAR GREATER THAN THE DEMOCRATS FORCES OF EVIL. CONGRATULATIONS TO AMERICA!,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

But Jeffries claimed the reduced victory margins augured well for the Democrats in next year’s midterms.

“One point that should have my Republican colleagues quaking in their boots,” he said. “In the Florida sixth race, which was a Trump +30 district, the margin was cut in half. There are 60 Republicans in the House who currently represent districts where Trump did worse than 15 or 16 points.”

Elon Musk’s polarizing stint slashing and bashing federal bureaucracy will probably soon end, with the world’s richest person’s government service hitting its legal limit in the coming weeks.

“He’s got a big company to run … at some point he’s going to be going back,” Donald Trump told reporters on Monday.

“I’d keep him as long as I could keep him,” the president added.

As a special government employee, Musk faces a strict 130-day cap on his service – probably expiring in late May if counted from the day of inauguration, despite earlier White House claims Musk was “here to stay”.

Administration insiders told Politico on Wednesday that Musk would indeed be stepping down from his lead role in the weeks to come.

But Musk called the reporting “fake news” and the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Wednesday said the Politico story was “garbage”.

“Elon Musk and President Trump have both publicly stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at Doge is complete,” she said.

The White House did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.

While Musk looks for the exit door, his “department of government efficiency” (Doge) is set to continue until 2026 under Trump’s executive order, and high-level leaders installed by Musk to run agencies throughout the government are likely to outlast the billionaire’s tenure in public service.

Doge has operated figuratively – and one time literally – with a “chainsaw” through government agencies since Musk joined Trump’s team as an unvetted, high-level employee in January.

Doge has since triggered large-scale civil service layoffs including about 10,000 people at the Department of Health and Human Services this week alone, while moving to eliminate entire agencies such as humanitarian-focused USAID and the state-backed global media outlet Voice of America.

There have been an estimated 56,000 federal jobs cut since 20 January and another 75,000 accepting voluntary buyouts, with at least another 171,000 planned reductions, according to the New York Times.

The huge cuts have not gone over well, according to a new poll from Marquette Law School, which found that just 41% of the US public approve of Doge’s work, while Musk’s personal likeability was even lower, at 38%.

A mid-March Quinnipiac poll found that over half the country believed Musk and Doge were harming the US.

Doge claims $140bn in savings already – though eagle-eyed reporters have identified significant errors in these calculations. Musk told Fox News he expected to accomplish “most of the work required to reduce the deficit by $1tn” before his time expires.

The billionaire’s involvement has raised significant conflict-of-interest concerns given his companies’ extensive government contracts, though as a special government employee, his financial disclosure forms remain confidential.

The nearly shuttered USAID had initiated an investigation on agency oversight into Starlink terminals sent to Ukraine, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau was targeted nearly a week after publishing a rule that would put technology companies such as X – which was planning a partnership with Visa – in its crosshairs over regulation, and many other agency attacks.

Democrats have increasingly targeted Musk politically, most recently criticizing his over $20m investment in a Wisconsin supreme court race. The New Jersey senator Cory Booker broke the record for longest speech in Senate floor history after more than 24 hours assailing Trump and Musk.

Tesla reported a 13% drop in vehicle sales in the first three months of the year, making it the electric vehicle maker’s worst quarter since 2022. It’s another sign that Elon Musk’s once high-flying electric car company is struggling to attract buyers.

The drop is probably due to a combination of factors, including its ageing lineup, competition from rivals and a backlash from Musk’s embrace of rightwing politics. It also is a warning that the company’s first-quarter earnings report later this month could disappoint investors.

Tesla reported deliveries of 336,681 vehicles globally in the January-March quarter. Analysts polled by FactSet expected much higher deliveries of 408,000. The figure was down from sales of 387,000 in the same period a year ago. The decline came despite deep discounts, zero financing and other incentives.

Tesla’s stock has plunged by roughly half since hitting a mid-December record as expectations of a lighter regulatory touch and big profits with Donald Trump as president were replaced by fear that the boycott of Musk’s cars and other problems could hit the company hard. Teslas around the country were vandalized in protest of Musk after he dismantled entire federal agencies in his role as the head of the so-called “department of government efficiency”. Musk also made a gesture at a rally that his estranged daughter called “definitely a Nazi salute”.

Despite Donald Trump’s attempts to shore up company sales with a Tesla presentation in front of the White House and Musk’s assurances to employees that the company has a “bright and exciting” future, the drop in sales was striking.

Matt Britzman, a senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “The scale is worse than many had expected.

“There’s no way to sugarcoat it, Tesla’s first-quarter delivery numbers are a disappointment, though many investors were already preparing for a soft number,” Britzman said.

Analysts are still not sure exactly how much the fall in sales is due to the protests or other factors. Electric car sales have been sluggish in general, and Tesla in particular is suffering as car buyers hold off from buying its bestselling Model Y because of plans for an updated version later this year. Even before Musk took up his role in government alongside Trump, Tesla had struggled with meeting its delivery targets. Earnings calls and delivery reports failed to match analysts’ expectations throughout 2024.

“Headlines will point to branding issues, and it’d be naive to assume that’s not a factor here, but it misses the key point,” Britzman said. “Deliveries have been significantly impacted by downtime at factories as Tesla launched the long-awaited refreshed version of the Model Y, its bestselling car.”

The Austin, Texas, electric vehicle maker has also lost market share to rivals in recent months as their offerings improve, including those of BYD. The Chinese EV giant revealed in March a technology that allows its cars to charge in just a few minutes.

Despite what analysts describe as strong demand for the Model Y, they expect to see continue volatility for the company for a while. Tesla’s most recent release, the futuristic Cybertruck, has failed to find widespread adoption.

Investors seem to anticipate a light at the end of the tunnel, however. After a new report from Politico indicated Musk might be leaving his post at the White House, Tesla shares rose about 5%. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt called the Politico story “garbage” in a post on X. Musk was granted a “special government employee” status for 130 days, which would end in late May, though previous reports indicated White House insiders expected Trump to attempt to extend Musk’s position beyond that time limit.

The “brand is under pressure”, Britzman said. “It’s rare to see sentiment toward a company so closely tied to a polarising White House, and until Musk pulls his focus back to Tesla, shares will remain volatile.”

Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and his team have created at least 20 different group chats on the encrypted messaging app Signal to coordinate sensitive national security work, sources tell Politico.

The revelation, which cites four people with direct knowledge of the practice, follows heightened scrutiny of the administration’s handling of sensitive information after the Atlantic recently published messages from a chat that included the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, sharing operational details of deadly strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Those anonymous sources told Politico the Signal chats covered a wide range of policy areas, including Ukraine, China, Gaza, broader Middle East policy, Africa and Europe. All four individuals reported seeing “sensitive information” discussed in these forums, though none said they were aware of classified material being shared.

Over the last few days, Waltz’s flippant nature over the protection of national security secrets has been exposed. The Washington Post reported on documents revealing that Waltz’s team had been conducting government business through personal Gmail accounts.

The White House has again defended the practice, with a national security council spokesperson, Brian Hughes, telling Politico that Signal was “not banned from government devices” and was automatically installed on some agencies’ phones.

“It is one of the approved methods of communicating but is not the primary or even secondary,” Hughes said, adding that any claim of classified information being shared was “100% untrue.”

The insistence by administration officials that none of the messages were classified, including past remarks by the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, and Hegseth, fly in the face of the defense department’s own rulebook on what would count as classified.

In the earlier chat, Hegseth shared specific operational details about military strikes in Yemen, including launch times for F-18 fighter jets and Tomahawk missiles. These details, according to the former state department attorney Brian Finucane, who advised on past strikes on Yemen, would typically be classified based on his experience.

Others in the national security establishment have similarly warned that using a messaging app like Signal could potentially violate federal record-keeping laws if chats are automatically deleted, and could compromise operational security if a phone is seized.

Despite the earlier controversies, Leavitt indicated on Monday that Trump stood firmly behind his national security adviser, and that an investigation into how Waltz accidentally added a journalist to a sensitive chat had been closed.

Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and his team have created at least 20 different group chats on the encrypted messaging app Signal to coordinate sensitive national security work, sources tell Politico.

The revelation, which cites four people with direct knowledge of the practice, follows heightened scrutiny of the administration’s handling of sensitive information after the Atlantic recently published messages from a chat that included the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, sharing operational details of deadly strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Those anonymous sources told Politico the Signal chats covered a wide range of policy areas, including Ukraine, China, Gaza, broader Middle East policy, Africa and Europe. All four individuals reported seeing “sensitive information” discussed in these forums, though none said they were aware of classified material being shared.

Over the last few days, Waltz’s flippant nature over the protection of national security secrets has been exposed. The Washington Post reported on documents revealing that Waltz’s team had been conducting government business through personal Gmail accounts.

The White House has again defended the practice, with a national security council spokesperson, Brian Hughes, telling Politico that Signal was “not banned from government devices” and was automatically installed on some agencies’ phones.

“It is one of the approved methods of communicating but is not the primary or even secondary,” Hughes said, adding that any claim of classified information being shared was “100% untrue.”

The insistence by administration officials that none of the messages were classified, including past remarks by the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, and Hegseth, fly in the face of the defense department’s own rulebook on what would count as classified.

In the earlier chat, Hegseth shared specific operational details about military strikes in Yemen, including launch times for F-18 fighter jets and Tomahawk missiles. These details, according to the former state department attorney Brian Finucane, who advised on past strikes on Yemen, would typically be classified based on his experience.

Others in the national security establishment have similarly warned that using a messaging app like Signal could potentially violate federal record-keeping laws if chats are automatically deleted, and could compromise operational security if a phone is seized.

Despite the earlier controversies, Leavitt indicated on Monday that Trump stood firmly behind his national security adviser, and that an investigation into how Waltz accidentally added a journalist to a sensitive chat had been closed.

Potentially deadly flash flooding, high-magnitude tornadoes and baseball-sized hail could hit parts of the midwest and south on Wednesday as severe thunderstorms blowing eastward become supercharged, forecasters warned.

There were tornado warnings Wednesday morning near the Missouri cities of Joplin and Columbia – merely the opening acts of what forecasters expect will be a more intense period of violent weather later on Wednesday, as daytime heating combines with an unstable atmosphere, strong wind shear and abundant moisture streaming into the nation’s midsection from the Gulf.

The potent storm system will bring “significant, life-threatening flash flooding” starting Wednesday and continuing each day through Saturday, the National Weather Service said.

With more than a foot (30cm) of rain possible over the next four days, the prolonged deluge “is an event that happens once in a generation to once in a lifetime”, the service said in one of its flood warnings. “Historic rainfall totals and impacts are possible.”

The flood fears come as residents in parts of Michigan continue to dig out from a weekend ice storm.

Thunderstorms with multiple rounds of heavy rain were forecast in parts of Texas, the lower Mississippi Valley and the Ohio Valley beginning midweek and lasting through Saturday. Forecasters warned the storms could track over the same areas repeatedly and produce heavy rains and dangerous flash floods capable of sweeping cars away.

Rain totaling up to 15ins (38cm) was forecast over the next seven days in north-eastern Arkansas, the south-east corner of Missouri, western Kentucky and southern parts of Illinois and Indiana, the weather service warned.

“We’re potentially looking at about two months of rain in just a handful of days,” Thomas Jones, a weather service meteorologist in Little Rock, Arkansas, said Monday.

Parts of Arkansas, west Tennessee, western Kentucky and southern Indiana were at an especially high risk for flooding, the weather service said.

At least one tornado was spotted Tuesday night in Kansas. “Take cover now!” the weather service’s office in Wichita warned residents on the social platform X. No injuries were reported.

Another tornado touched down in the north-eastern Oklahoma city of Owasso at about 6.40am Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service office in Tulsa. There were no immediate reports of injuries, but the twister heavily damaged the roofs of homes and knocked down power lines, trees, fences and sheds.

Tornado warnings were also issued in Missouri on Wednesday. Authorities in eastern Missouri were trying to determine whether it was a tornado that damaged buildings, overturned vehicles and tore down utility poles, tree limbs and business signs Wednesday morning in and around Nevada, Missouri.

The Missouri state highway patrol reported that the damage shut down a portion of US Route 54 in the city of about 8,300 people about 95 miles (153km/h) south of Kansas City, Missouri.

Along with tornadoes, high winds with gusts of up to 50mph (80 km/h) were also expected across large parts of the midwest.

The ominous forecast comes nearly two years to the day that an EF-3 tornado struck Little Rock, Arkansas. No one was killed, but that twister caused major destruction to neighborhoods and businesses that are still being rebuilt today.

More than 90 million people are at some risk of severe weather in a huge part of the nation that stretches from Texas to Minnesota and Maine, according to the Oklahoma-based Storm Prediction Center.

About 2.5 million people are in a rarely called “high-risk” zone. That area most at risk of catastrophic weather on Wednesday includes parts of west Tennessee including Memphis; north-east Arkansas; the south-east corner of Missouri; and parts of western Kentucky and southern Illinois.

A tornado outbreak was expected Wednesday, and “multiple long-track EF3+ tornadoes, appear likely”, the Storm Prediction Center said. Tornadoes of that magnitude are among the strongest on the Enhanced Fujita scale, used to rate their intensity.

In Michigan, crews worked to restore power after a weekend ice storm toppled trees and power poles. More than 135,000 customers in northern Michigan and 11,000 in northern Wisconsin were still without electricity Wednesday morning, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide.

Heavy, wet snow also was forecast into Wednesday across the eastern Dakotas and parts of Minnesota.

There was “no agenda” in the Guardian’s investigation of sexual misconduct allegations against Noel Clarke, the high court has heard.

In her second day in the witness box, Lucy Osborne, an investigative correspondent at the Guardian, defended the publication’s reporting in the face of questioning from the former Doctor Who star’s barrister, Philip Williams.

Osborne, co-author of the investigation that led to the actor’s libel claim, denied Williams’s assertions that there were “major inconsistencies” in the accounts of alleged victims or that there was a conspiracy to bring down Clarke.

She said that if there had been any concerns, she would have flagged them to the Guardian’s head of investigations, Paul Lewis.

“There was no agenda,” Osborne told the court on Wednesday. “We conducted a very careful investigation and if at any time I’d been concerned that these allegations lacked in credibility in any way or had any concerns about any of the sources I would have raised it with Paul and I wouldn’t have wanted to publish.”

She said she kept an open mind throughout and gathered information from as many sources as possible – too many to list in her witness statement.

“It’s absolutely not in my interests to publish something before we were ready to do so,” Osborne told the court.

Williams questioned her on aspects of behaviour by alleged victims that he said should have raised “red flags”, including Gina Powell, who worked with Clarke at his company Unstoppable Productions, and who alleges sexual assault and abusive behaviour.

Williams claimed that if Osborne had looked into it, she would have discovered that Powell made “sexually bold comments” and sent pornography to Clarke.

The journalist responded: “Gina had told me early on, without me asking, that it was a sexual environment she was working in with Noel and she felt pressure … that there was a culture that Mr Clarke led that was sexualised and there was an expectation on her to speak in the same way.”

She described Powell as an “incredibly strong and inspiring woman” for speaking out.

Williams also asked Osborne about another witness, Evelyn (not her real name), who alleges Clarke took a picture of her underwear while she was dancing and attempted to show it to their colleagues. Williams suggested she was wearing a minidress at the time.

“I don’t think it made any difference whether she’s wearing a minidress or not,” said Osborne. “The allegation is that Mr Clarke took a picture of her that had her underwear on, [and] it was fairly close up.”

When Williams raised it, Osborne also said that whether Evelyn was drunk or not was irrelevant to her allegations against Clarke.

A US healthcare executive has sued John Oliver for defamation following a Last Week Tonight episode on Medicaid, in which the British-American comedian quoted the doctor as saying it was okay for a patient with bowel issues to be “a little dirty for a couple of days”.

Dr Brian Morley, the ex-medical director of AmeriHealth Caritas, argues that Oliver – an outspoken comic whose show has not only addressed muzzling lawsuits but been subject to them – took the quote out of context in an April 2024 episode on Medicaid.

The suit against Oliver and the Last Week Tonight producers Partially Important Productions seeks unspecified damages “in an amount to be determined and in excess of $75,000”, according to Deadline. It does not name Last Week Tonight’s broadcaster, HBO.

The suit, filed in New York last week, stated: “Defendants falsely told millions of viewers of their show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, that Dr Morley testified in a Medicaid hearing that ‘he thinks it’s okay if people have shit on them for days,’ intentionally leading viewers to believe that Dr. Morley made these alleged statements about – and illegally denied Medicaid services to – a young man who has severe mental impairment, was harnessed in a wheelchair, wears diapers, and required in-home bathing and diaper changing because he could do neither himself.”

The suit claims: “Defendants’ false accusations were designed to spark outrage, and they did. The false accusations Defendants made were so heinous that John Oliver felt justified in telling his millions of viewers: ‘fuck that doctor with a rusty canoe. I hope he gets tetanus of the balls.’ Oliver’s feigned outrage at Dr Morley was fabricated for ratings and profits at the expense of Dr Morley’s reputation and personal well-being.”

The quote in question, which occurs around 21 minutes into the episode’s 28 minute-long main segment, refers to the story of Louis Facenda Jr, a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy whose in-home care program was disrupted following cuts to Iowa’s Medicaid services.

Oliver cited an interview with Facenda and his mother and primary caregiver, Joann, on the difficulties faced by people with disabilities as the state shifted to for-profit “managed care organizations”, leaving Facenda spending hours in dirty diapers.

Oliver played audio from Morley’s testimony at a 2017 administrative hearing, that aired as such: “People have bowel movements every day where they don’t completely clean themselves, and we don’t fuss over [them] too much. People are allowed to be dirty … You know, I would allow him to be a little dirty for a couple of days.”

Oliver said of the snippet: “Look, I’ll be honest, when I first heard that, I thought that has to be taken out of context. There is no way a doctor, a licensed physician, would testify in a hearing that he thinks it’s okay if people have shit on them for days. So, we got the full hearing, and I’m not going to play it for you, I’m just going to tell you: he said it, he meant it, and it made me want to punch a hole in the wall.

“If I absolutely had to put it into words, I guess I’d say fuck that doctor with a rusty canoe, I hope he gets tetanus of the balls,” he continued. “And if he has a problem with my language there, I’d say I’m allowed to be dirty. People are allowed to be a little dirty sometimes, apparently that’s doctors fucking orders.”

Oliver also added that legally, he was required to say that AmeriHealth Caritas restored the patient’s services, but called it a “disgrace” that it was disrupted in the first place.

The lawsuit argues that context cut from the show changes the meaning of Morley’s words, which they quote as thus: “In certain cases, yes, with the patient with significant comorbidities, you would want to have someone wiping them and getting the feces off. But like I said, people have bowel movements every day where they don’t completely clean themselves and we don’t fuss over too much. People are allowed to be dirty. It’s when the dirty and the feces and the urine interfere with, you know, medical safety, like in someone who has concomitant comorbidities that you worry, but not in this specific case. I would allow him to be a little dirty for a couple days.”

According to the complaint, a senior Last Week Tonight producer spoke to Morley before the episode aired and stated that they had listened to the full administrative hearing.

But “Defendants knowingly manipulated Dr Morley’s testimony and then knowingly manipulated the context in which they placed it such to convey the defamatory meaning.”

Morley later “demanded that Defendants retract their False and Defamatory Statements”, which the show refused. The lawsuit further claims: “Defendants published the False and Defamatory Statements and Meanings with common law malice, with the intent to injure and reckless disregard for the rights of Dr Morley.”

This is not the first lawsuit faced by Last Week Tonight.

In 2017, a West Virginia judge tossed a defamation suit filed against the comedian and his show by Bob Murray, the CEO of a coal company. The judge agreed with HBO’s argument that Oliver’s comments were either factual and sourced from various court documents, or clearly satirical and thus protected by the first amendment.

When Bonnie Prince Charlie fled the Scottish Highlands after defeat at the Battle of Culloden, his route may have crossed the fossilised footsteps of massive meat-eating dinosaurs, researchers say.

Newly discovered impressions at Prince Charles’s Point on the Isle of Skye, where the Young Pretender is said to have hunkered down in 1746, reveal that megalosaurs, the carnivorous ancestors of the T rex, and enormous plant-eating sauropods gathered at the site when it was a shallow freshwater lagoon.

Researchers analysed 131 fossilised footprints at the boulder-strewn shore and reconstructed the tracks the animals made across the landscape 167m years ago. Overlapping tracks suggest that the dinosaurs drank at the lagoon at about the same time.

“The footprints are mostly worn, but there are some fantastic examples that preserve really exquisite features which showcase these dinosaurs to the max,” said Tone Blakesley, the research lead on the project at the University of Edinburgh. “It’s surprising they haven’t been found until now.”

The most striking footprints are about 45cm long and belong to the three-toed megalosaur, a mid-Jurassic predator that sported sharp, curved claws. The sauropod footprints, which are round and slightly larger, had previously been mistaken for fish resting burrows.

Using a drone, the scientists took thousands of overlapping images of the shoreline bordering the remote bay on the Trotternish peninsula. These were processed to reconstruct digital 3D models of the footprints. Their report is published in Plos One.

“Rocks that date to the mid-Jurassic are very rare, which is annoying for us researchers because this was a time when dinosaurs were rapidly evolving into a variety of forms,” Blakesley said. “When we find dinosaur footprint sites like Prince Charles’s Point, we can look at how these dinosaurs interacted with their environment and how they were distributed as well.”

The footprints were created as the dinosaurs ambled through the shallow water lagoon. Over millions of years, the prints became preserved in the vast, rippled sandstone platform that stretches out to sea today.

“It looks like someone has pressed the pause button,” said Blakesley. “It’s a surreal feeling to see these footprints with my own eyes, to be able to put my hand in the sole of these footprints. You close your eyes and the tides wash back and you are in the mid-Jurassic. It’s a spine-tingling feeling.”

Researchers discovered the first tracks at the site five years ago, but it has taken successive trips to uncover the full extent of the impressions preserved in the rock. On one recent visit, the team found what appeared to be a theropod footprint inside a sauropod trackway, suggesting the predator was walking in the larger beast’s footsteps. “There are definitely more footprints to be found,” said Blakesley.

“It boggles my mind to think that when Bonnie Prince Charlie was being pursued by English troops, he might have been following the footprints of dinosaurs to safety on Skye,” said Steve Brusatte, a professor of palaeontology and evolution at Edinburgh. “He wouldn’t have known what a dinosaur was, as the word hadn’t been invented then, and of course he had many other more pressing things on his mind, but I do wonder if he looked down and saw these big holes in the rock with finger and toe impressions and wondered what they might be.”

Researchers who tracked cases of dementia in Welsh adults have uncovered the strongest evidence yet that the shingles vaccination reduces the risk of developing the devastating brain disease.

Health records of more than 280,000 older adults revealed that those who received a largely discontinued shingles vaccine called Zostavax were 20% less likely to be diagnosed with dementia over the next seven years than those who went without.

Pascal Geldsetzer, at Stanford University, said: “For the first time we are able to say much more confidently that the shingles vaccine causes a reduction in dementia risk. If this truly is a causal effect, we have a finding that’s of tremendous importance.”

The researchers took advantage of a vaccination rollout that took place in Wales more than a decade ago. Public health policy dictated that from 1 September 2013, people born on or after 2 September 1933 became eligible for the Zostavax shot, while those who were older missed out.

The policy created a natural experiment where the older population was sharply divided into two groups depending on their access to the vaccine. This allowed the researchers to compare dementia rates in older people born weeks apart but on either side of the vaccine eligibility divide.

After accounting for the fact that not all those eligible for the vaccine received it, the researchers found vaccination led to a 20% reduction in dementia risk, with the strongest effect in women. Anupam Jena, a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School, said the implications were profound.

Dementia affects more than 55 million people globally and is the leading cause of death in the UK. One in three will develop the condition in their lifetime, and while drugs that slow the disease have recently been approved, there is no cure.

When people contract chickenpox the virus remains dormant in their nerve cells for life. But the virus can reactivate and cause shingles in older people whose immune systems are waning, or in individuals with weakened immunity.

The latest work, published in Nature, is not the first hint that shingles vaccines might shield against dementia. When Zostavax was rolled out in the US in 2006, several studies found lower rates of dementia in people who received the shots. Last year, Oxford researchers reported an even stronger protective effect in people who received Shingrix, a newer vaccine. Geldsetzer is now looking for philanthropic and private foundations to fund a randomised clinical trial to confirm any benefits.

It is unclear how shingles vaccines might protect against dementia, but one theory is that they reduce inflammation in the nervous system by preventing reactivation of the virus. Another theory is that the vaccines induce broader changes in the immune system that are protective. These wider effects are seen more often in women, potentially explaining the sex differences in the study.

In an accompanying article, Jena wrote: “Although it is still unclear precisely how herpes zoster vaccination lowers the risk of dementia, the implications of the study are profound. The vaccine could represent a cost-effective intervention that has public-health benefits strongly exceeding its intended purpose.”

Julia Dudley, the head of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said the study strengthened the emerging link between shingles vaccination and reduced dementia risk. “While previous studies suggested an association, this research offers stronger evidence of a direct link, with greater benefit observed in women.

“It’s unclear exactly how the shingles vaccine might influence dementia risk. It may reduce inflammation, support the immune system in ways that protect the brain or involve other mechanisms. It’s important to note that this study looked at the Zostavax vaccine rather than Shingrix, which is now more commonly used.

“Understanding this link better, including the reason for any differences between men and women, could open new avenues for dementia prevention and treatment,” she said.

Maxime Taquet, whose Oxford study found a reduced dementia risk after Shingrix vaccination, said adjuvants in that vaccine, which make the immune response more potent, may play a role. Both studies “provide strong support for the hypothesis that shingles vaccination reduces dementia risk, with the newer recombinant vaccine offering superior protection,” he said. “A key question is whether this enhanced protection is due to improved shingles prevention or the adjuvant’s immunological effects.”