First Thing: Hunter Biden found guilty in federal gun case

Republicans double down on conspiracy theories after conviction of president’s son. Plus: the new forms of toxic masculinity dominating social media

Good morning.

Hunter Biden was found guilty Tuesday on three felony counts relating to buying a handgun while being a user of crack cocaine. He now faces up to 25 years in prison, though such a sentence would be highly unusual given that he is a first-time offender.

As the only surviving son of the Joe Biden, Hunter has long been a target of far-right Republicans seeking to use his woes and business dealings as a political weapon against the president. After the verdict, they continued to push unfounded conspiracy theories that the trial was a distraction from “the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family”.

How has Joe Biden responded? The president has previously said he would not pardon his son if he was convicted. On Tuesday, he said: “I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal.” He went on to deliver a gun-safety speech just hours after the verdict.

Did Hunter Biden have his family’s support during the trial? Even as Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and the White House attempted to distance themselves from the case, Hunter’s family and close friends attended the trial en masse to show their support. The first lady, Jill Biden, was seated in the Delaware courtroom behind her stepson for the first three days of the trial until leaving to attend a D-day commemoration ceremony in France.

US ‘evaluating’ Hamas response to Gaza ceasefire proposal

Late on Tuesday, a Hamas official said the group had submitted to Egyptian and Qatari mediators a response to the three-stage UN security council ceasefire resolution outlined by Joe Biden that centers on the return of the hostages taken in the 7 October attack. A Hamas spokesperson, Jihad Taha, said the response included “amendments that confirm the ceasefire, withdrawal, reconstruction and [prisoner] exchange”. Washington has received the reply and was “evaluating” it, the national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said.

This comes after a UN report found both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes on and after 7 October.

In other news …

The European Union is expected to impose tariffs of up to 25% on imports of Chinese electric vehicles, a decision likely to prompt a trade war with China.

Azerbaijan’s government has been accused of cracking down on media and civil society activism before it hosts UN climate talks at Cop29 later this year.

The US House representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the supreme court had been “captured and corrupted by money and extremism”, provoking a “crisis of legitimacy” that threatened the stability of American democracy.

Russia’s economy is showing surprising resilience despite the thousands of sanctions imposed by the west after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Observers are warning of “sanction holes”: secretive routes supplying Russia with western tech and goods.

Stat of the day: Less than a fifth of Wikipedia’s content, including biographies, is focused on women

Groups have sprung up around the world to address Wikipedia’s gender balance. Women account for less than 15% of the site’s volunteer editors, and just under a fifth of Wikipedia’s content is focused on women. Groups such as Wikiesfera in Spain are hosting gatherings for volunteer editors to add entries on women and edit texts that downplay women’s achievements by focusing on their appearance or their links to prominent men.

“For the first time, civil society has the power to make women visible,” said Patricia Horrillo, who launched Wikiesfera a decade ago. “History has always been told by those in power – now we have that power.”

Don’t miss this: The stupid, sad rise of the sigma male

A new form of toxic masculinity has taken over social media: sigma masculinity. The sigma male is characterized as a lone wolf, a confident and competent independent thinker who makes his own rules. “It’s helped define what could be a masculine archetype for our times, supposedly exemplified by characters played by the likes of Keanu Reeves, Cillian Murphy, Bryan Cranston and Christian Bale, plus the manosphere influencer Andrew Tate as well as actual, real life wolves,” writes Steve Rose.

… or this: The nonexistent study used to demean Asian women in interracial relationships

Now for the flip side of toxic masculinity: Asian women, in particular Asian women in relationships with white men, have always faced harassment on social media. Asian men blame them for what they see as the degradation of their own dating pool, casting the women as both victims of white supremacy and villains for upholding it. Over the past year, these trolls have begun invoking a peculiar phrase in their harassment of Asian women: “Oxford study”. This refers to an academic study out of Oxford University that these commenters believe explores why Asian women date white men instead of men of color. The problem? The study does not exist – at least, not in the way they think it does.

Climate check: Protecting the ozone layer

Damaging gases in the atmosphere are declining faster than expected, and scientists are attributing this environmental win to international efforts to protect the ozone layer. “In terms of environmental policy, there is some optimism that these environmental treaties can work if properly enacted and properly followed,” said Luke Western from the University of Bristol.

Last Thing: Looking back on life in the Brat Pack

In 1985, a New York Magazine cover story coined the term Brat Pack in a cruelly unflattering assessment of a new breed of 80s movie stars. The name, thought up by the journalist David Blum, purported that 80s youth actors such as Andrew McCarthy, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy and Demi Moore captured the zeitgeist by playing extensions of themselves, members of the lost and unambitious generation portrayed in St Elmo’s Fire. McCarthy’s forthcoming documentary, Brats, aims to reclaim that period of their lives. “The Brat Pack is who people say it is,” said McCarthy, “because the Brat Pack never ‘existed’ in any real way.”

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