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Marjorie Taylor Greene says she’s had ‘warnings for my safety’ after posts by Trump

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Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime Republican ally who previously fiercely defended Donald Trump and his Maga movement, said on Saturday she had been contacted by private security firms “with warnings for my safety” after Trump announced on Friday he was withdrawing his support for and endorsement of the Georgia representative.In a post on X, Greene said that “a hot bed of threats against me are being fueled and egged on by the most powerful man in the world”, without referring to Trump by name, adding it was “the man I supported and helped get elected”.Greene said that “aggressive rhetoric attacking me has historically led to death threats and multiple convictions of men who were radicalized by the same type rhetoric being directed at me right now. This time by the President of the United States.”Greene did not specify any threats against her that had been received by security firms, but said that “as a woman I take threats from men seriously. I now have a small understanding of the fear and pressure the women, who are victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his cabal, must feel.”The post is the latest in an increasingly bitter war of words with Trump, primarily over the release of government-held documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein, which Greene supports. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, is expected to hold a vote next week to decide whether to release the entirety of unclassified communications and documents.“Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Green is a disgrace to our GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY!” Trump fumed on social media, a day after ending his support for Greene, calling her “Wacky Marjorie” and saying he would endorse a challenger against her in the next midterm election “if the right person runs”.Earlier on Saturday, Greene posted on X that she never thought she would be in the position of “fighting to release the Epstein files, defending women who were victims of rape, and fighting to expose the web of rich powerful elites would have caused this, but here we are”.The dispute between Greene and Trump, simmering for months, has broken out into the open as the once solid Maga supporter has found herself opposing Trump on a series of issues, including US military aid to Israel, the government shutdown and the so-called “Epstein files”.That has led Trump to accuse Greene of going “Far Left” as she offered a series of dissenting opinions against the Maga mainstream. Trump wrote that all he had witnessed from Greene in recent months was “COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” adding: “I can’t take a ranting Lunatic’s call every day.”Greene said she had supported Trump “with too much of my precious time, too much of my own money, and fought harder for him even when almost all other Republicans turned their back and denounced him”. Greene added: “I don’t worship or serve Donald Trump.”Trump has indulged flame wars before with otherwise loyal political allies, including Elon Musk, only to make up after a cooling-off period. Like Musk, Greene’s newfound opposition appears rooted in what both see as a dilution of Trump’s “Americas first” political philosophy, including grappling with foreign peacemaking projects.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe trajectory of Greene’s dissatisfaction dates to at least May, when she announced she wouldn’t run for a Senate seat and attacked Republican donors and consultants who feared she couldn’t win. She later said she wouldn’t run for Georgia governor and attacked what she said was a political “good ole boy” system in the state.She sided with Maga dissenters, including Tucker Carlson, in June over possible US efforts at regime change in Iran.But as the Epstein files controversy heated up in recent months, she placed herself in opposition to the administration’s reluctance to release the documents and videos in full. In September, she said she wanted to expose the “Epstein rape and pedophile network” and asked people to remember she is “not suicidal” should something happen to her.Earlier this month, Greene sharply criticized her party during an appearance on The View, describing the Republican-controlled Congress as “an embarrassment” for not being in session for more than a month and saying she’d grown “really tired of the pissing contest in Washington DC between the men”.Asked whether she planned on becoming a Democrat, she said both political parties had failed and called for women to step in and steer the country. “Our red-white-and-blue flag is just being ripped to shreds,” she said. “And I think it takes women of maturity to sew it back together.” More

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    Marjorie Taylor Greene says she’s had ‘warnings for my safety’ after posts by Trump

    Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime Republican ally who previously fiercely defended Donald Trump and his Maga movement, said on Saturday she had been contacted by private security firms “with warnings for my safety” after Trump announced on Friday he was withdrawing his support for and endorsement of the Georgia representative.In a post on X, Greene said that “a hot bed of threats against me are being fueled and egged on by the most powerful man in the world”, without referring to Trump by name, adding it was “the man I supported and helped get elected”.Greene said that “aggressive rhetoric attacking me has historically led to death threats and multiple convictions of men who were radicalized by the same type rhetoric being directed at me right now. This time by the President of the United States.”Greene did not specify any threats against her that had been received by security firms, but said that “as a woman I take threats from men seriously. I now have a small understanding of the fear and pressure the women, who are victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his cabal, must feel.”The post is the latest in an increasingly bitter war of words with Trump, primarily over the release of government-held documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein, which Greene supports. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, is expected to hold a vote next week to decide whether to release the entirety of unclassified communications and documents.“Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Green is a disgrace to our GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY!” Trump fumed on social media, a day after ending his support for Greene, calling her “Wacky Marjorie” and saying he would endorse a challenger against her in the next midterm election “if the right person runs”.Earlier on Saturday, Greene posted on X that she never thought she would be in the position of “fighting to release the Epstein files, defending women who were victims of rape, and fighting to expose the web of rich powerful elites would have caused this, but here we are”.The dispute between Greene and Trump, simmering for months, has broken out into the open as the once solid Maga supporter has found herself opposing Trump on a series of issues, including US military aid to Israel, the government shutdown and the so-called “Epstein files”.That has led Trump to accuse Greene of going “Far Left” as she offered a series of dissenting opinions against the Maga mainstream. Trump wrote that all he had witnessed from Greene in recent months was “COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” adding: “I can’t take a ranting Lunatic’s call every day.”Greene said she had supported Trump “with too much of my precious time, too much of my own money, and fought harder for him even when almost all other Republicans turned their back and denounced him”. Greene added: “I don’t worship or serve Donald Trump.”Trump has indulged flame wars before with otherwise loyal political allies, including Elon Musk, only to make up after a cooling-off period. Like Musk, Greene’s newfound opposition appears rooted in what both see as a dilution of Trump’s “Americas first” political philosophy, including grappling with foreign peacemaking projects.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe trajectory of Greene’s dissatisfaction dates to at least May, when she announced she wouldn’t run for a Senate seat and attacked Republican donors and consultants who feared she couldn’t win. She later said she wouldn’t run for Georgia governor and attacked what she said was a political “good ole boy” system in the state.She sided with Maga dissenters, including Tucker Carlson, in June over possible US efforts at regime change in Iran.But as the Epstein files controversy heated up in recent months, she placed herself in opposition to the administration’s reluctance to release the documents and videos in full. In September, she said she wanted to expose the “Epstein rape and pedophile network” and asked people to remember she is “not suicidal” should something happen to her.Earlier this month, Greene sharply criticized her party during an appearance on The View, describing the Republican-controlled Congress as “an embarrassment” for not being in session for more than a month and saying she’d grown “really tired of the pissing contest in Washington DC between the men”.Asked whether she planned on becoming a Democrat, she said both political parties had failed and called for women to step in and steer the country. “Our red-white-and-blue flag is just being ripped to shreds,” she said. “And I think it takes women of maturity to sew it back together.” More

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    ‘Trump is inconsistent with Christian principles’: why the Democratic party is seeing a rise of white clergy candidates

    He grew up on a farm in Indiana, the son of a factory worker and eldest of five children. He studied at Liberty, a Christian university founded by the conservative pastor and televangelist Jerry Falwell, and recalls wearing a T-shirt expressing opposition to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.Two decades later, Justin Douglas is running for the US Congress – as a Democrat.He is among around 30 Christian white clergy – pastors, seminary students and other faith leaders – known to be potential Democratic candidates in next year’s midterm elections, including a dozen who are already in the race. While stressing the separation of church and state, many say that on a personal level their faith is calling them into the political arena.The trend marks a break from a traditional racial divide. Whereas Black pastors who run for office are typically Democrats, their white counterparts are usually Republicans, reflecting the strength of the religious right and the party’s dominance among evangelical voters.Douglas, 41, based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is among a new generation of the Christian left aiming to change that narrative by ensuring that the Democratic brand is not associated with only college-educated urbanites, but can also connect with white working-class churchgoers.“We’ve seen Democrats time and time again sell out working-class people and we’ve seen Democrats time and time again look like liberal elitists who are looking down on people who think going to church on Sunday is a core part of their life,” said Douglas, who has been in ministry for more than 20 years. “Some people might feel judged for that.“But I also think the stereotypes of Republicans being pro-faith are bullshit too. We’re seeing a current administration bastardise faith almost every day. They used the Lord’s Prayer in a propaganda video for what they’re now calling the Department of War. That should have had every single evangelical’s bells and whistles and alarms going off in their head: this is sacrilegious.“But unfortunately, sometimes, when you’re in it, you can’t see it and it takes somebody who has an ability to communicate to that audience, to help show that you’re being manipulated.”For decades, many white Christians were not partisan and often voted Democratic, especially in the south. But by the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Democratic party’s identity was shifting toward civil rights, feminism and secular liberalism. Many white conservative Christians felt increasingly alienated from the party they had long inhabited.The racial divide can in part be traced to the mid-1970s when the Internal Revenue Service began removing tax-exempt status from private schools that discriminated by race. Conservative Christian leaders such as Jerry Falwell saw this as federal overreach and seized on abortion as an issue that could be framed in religious and political terms.Falwell’s organisation the Moral Majority used abortion as a broader symbol of moral decline alongside feminism, sex education and gay rights. His followers then felt betrayed when Jimmy Carter, the first evangelical Christian to occupy the White House, failed to pursue their priorities.View image in fullscreenThey defected to Republican Ronald Reagan, and, by the end of the 1980s, white evangelicals had become one of the most consistently Republican voting blocs, even as Black churchgoers remained loyal to Democrats. That has persisted over the past decade under Donald Trump, seen by critics as vulgar and unchristian but by supporters as a blunt instrument to defend a church under siege by a godless liberal culture.Whereas Carter earned 60% of the white evangelical vote in 1976, fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton gained only a 16% share in 2016. It was a troubling realignment that caught the eye of Doug Pagitt, a pastor and executive director of the progressive Christian group Vote Common Good.He said: “That’s not natural. That’s not just a policy change. There was something more significant going on. It’s been a two-sided effort. Republicans have oriented themselves primarily around religious voter identity and Democrats have set aside religious voter identity, including the fact that in 1992 Democrats removed from the voter access file the category of religious identity.”Pagitt said Charlie Kirk’s organisation Turning Point USA was vital in turning out young Christian voters for Trump last year: “The difference couldn’t be more stark, which is why white clergy running for office is such a big deal when they’re running as Democrats in Iowa, in Arkansas, in Pennsylvania, in California.”Trump’s first election was the trigger for a new wave of white clergy to overcome fears of being seen as partisan and run for elected office. Pagitt added: “After 2016 and 2018, a whole lot of people started thinking: ‘Hey, maybe running for office is something we should actually do.’“Few people are surprised when Raphael Warnock says: ‘I’m a working pastor at Ebenezer Baptist church.’ He comes from the Martin Luther King tradition, from that pulpit, and it made sense: people are like: ‘Yeah, of course a Black clergyman’s going to run as a Democrat.’ But when a white woman pastor in Iowa says, ‘I’m going to run as a Democrat,’ it’s a real statement. It’s taken some of these people a little while to get comfortable with the fact that they are going to be partisan.”Vote Common Good was founded in response to a schism created by the election of Trump, which left many religious people feeling “politically homeless”. The group operates as a “dating service”, connecting these voters with Democrats and non-Maga Republicans. The group will spend time in 50 congressional districts this year helping candidates meet faith voters and leaders in their districts.Douglas is a county commissioner looking to unseat Republican Scott Perry in Pennsylvania’s 10th district. But he was previously the lead pastor of a growing church that allowed LGBTQ+ individuals to participate fully in its community; over the course of a year, this developed into a huge bone of contention and in 2019 Douglas eventually lost his licence. He had to find a new house and go from one job to three jobs including driving an Uber and CrossFit coaching. He started a new church that is still operating today.Douglas recalls: “I paid the price for standing with the LGBTQ+ people. I would do it again. It taught me that doing what’s right is often costly but always necessary, and everyone deserves to be safe, respected and fully included. That’s not a religious belief. It’s a human belief that I have.”James Talarico, a Texas state representative and a 36-year-old part-time seminary student who has amassed a sizable social media following – has become an unlikely standard-bearer in the Democrats’ 2026 Senate primary.In a series of social media posts, he deploys scripture to champion the poor and vulnerable while castigating Republicans for what he casts as their drift towards Christian nationalism and corporate interests. He asked in one: “Instead of posting the Ten Commandments in every classroom, why don’t they post, ‘Money is the root of all evil’ in every boardroom?”View image in fullscreenIn Iowa, state representative Sarah Trone Garriott, an Evangelical Lutheran pastor, is seeking her party’s nod to challenge Republican incumbent Zach Nunn in what is already billed as one of the nation’s marquee congressional races.In Arkansas, Robb Ryerse, a Christian pastor and former Republican, is mounting a challenge to representative Steve Womack, adopting the slogan “Faith, Family & Freedom” – rhetoric more commonly found in Republican campaign literature.Ryerse, 50, from Springdale, Arkansas, said: “I joke sometimes that the two people who have changed my life more than any others are Jesus and Donald Trump, for very different reasons. Donald Trump is absolutely inconsistent with Christian principles of love and compassion, justice, looking out for the poor, meeting the needs of the marginalised.“But Donald Trump has also used and been used by so many evangelical leaders who want political power. He has used them to validate him to their followers and they have used him to further their agenda, which has been a Christian nationalist culture war on the United States, which I think is bad for both the church and for the country.”White clergy are deciding to run for office, Ryerse believes, in part as a response to the rise of Christian nationalism and the reality that, according to a Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) survey, Trump won 85% of the white evangelical vote in last year’s presidential election.Ryerse said: “We realise, hey, our churches and the people in our churches have been duped by this guy and so rather than hope someone else will clean up the problem, what we’ve seen is a lot of pastors respond with, you know what, I’m going to jump in and I’m going to be a part of the solution.“On a more positive note, there’s also that notion we need to do something for the common good. There’s so much alignment between what I believe personally is good for my neighbour, what it means to love my neighbour, and how that aligns with what public policy ought to be.” More

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    Questions arise over strikingly similar signatures by Trump on recent pardons

    The Trump administration’s clemency drive is coming under scrutiny after the justice department this week replaced pardons posted online that bore strikingly similar copies of Trump’s signature with others that are distinctively variable.The corrections came after online commenters seized on the similarities in the president’s signature granting “full and unconditional” pardons to seven men, including to former New York Mets player Darryl Strawberry, former Tennessee House speaker Glen Casada and former New York police sergeant Michael McMahon, on 7 November.Administration officials have blamed “technical” errors and staffing issues for the apparent oversight and insisted to the Associated Press that Trump had originally signed all the pardons himself.Chad Gilmartin, a justice department spokesperson, said the “website was updated after a technical error where one of the signatures President Trump personally signed was mistakenly uploaded multiple times due to staffing issues caused by the Democrat shutdown”.“There is no story here other than the fact that President Trump signed seven pardons by hand and [the Department of Justice] posted those same seven pardons with seven unique signatures to our website,” Gilmartin said in a statement to the Associated Press, referring to the latest wave of clemency Trump has granted in recent weeks.White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson wrote in an email that Trump “signed each one of these pardons by hand as he does with all pardons”.“The media should spend their time investigating Joe Biden’s countless autopenned pardons, not covering a non-story,” she wrote.The errors come after a sustained administration campaign to undermine the validity of pardons issued by Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden that were in many cases signed by autopen. Trump has claimed that Biden was not aware of the signatures on orders and pardons bearing his name.Trump, who typically makes an elaborate show of signing executive orders with a Sharpie at afternoon press calls, has gone so far as to replace Biden’s portrait in a new “Presidential Walk of Fame” he created along the West Wing colonnade with a picture of an autopen.Asked last week whether he had considered replacing that image with a portrait, Trump responded: “No, I don’t think so.”Questions about Trump’s signature come amid a new flurry of clemency orders. Last month, Trump issued a pardon to Changpeng Zhao, later telling CBS News that he had “no idea who he is” but had been told the crypto-currency businessman was a victim of a “witch-hunt” by the Biden administration.Zhao, who is also known as “CZ”, pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering in 2023. He served four months in prison and agreed to step down as the chief executive of Binance, the crypto exchange he co-founded.“A basic axiom of handwriting identification science is that no two signatures are going to bear the exact same design features in every aspect,” Thomas Vastrick, a Florida-based handwriting expert and president of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners, told the AP.“It’s very straightforward,” Vastrick added.Legal experts say the use of an autopen has no bearing on the validity of the pardons.“The key to pardon validity is whether the president intended to grant the pardon,” said Frank Bowman, a legal historian and professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law who is writing a book on pardons. “Any re-signing is an obvious, and rather silly, effort to avoid comparison to Biden.”The pardons issued by Trump earlier this month include Casada, a disgraced former Republican speaker of the Tennessee house who was sentenced in September to three years in prison after being convicted of working with a former legislative aide to win taxpayer-funded mail business from state lawmakers who previously drove Casada from office amid a sexting scandal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStrawberry was convicted in the 1990s of tax evasion and drug charges. McMahon was sentenced to 18 months in prison earlier this year for his role in what a federal judge called “a campaign of transnational repression”.On Friday, Trump issued a pardon to Dan Wilson, a militia member who joined the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021, on a conviction for felony gun possession, Politico reported. Wilson, who has identified himself as a member of the Oath Keepers and Gray Ghost Partisan Rangers militia, had already been given clemency for his involvement in the riot.The justice department’s replacement of Trump’s signature on the pardon documents is unlikely to stall Republicans’ autopen trolling of Biden.Last month, Republicans in Congress released a sharp critique of Biden’s alleged “diminished faculties” and mental state during his term that ranked the Democrat’s use of the autopen among “the greatest scandals in US history”.The Republicans said their findings cast doubt on all of Biden’s actions in office and sent a letter to the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, urging a full investigation.“Senior White House officials did not know who operated the autopen and its use was not sufficiently controlled or documented to prevent abuse,” the House oversight committee found. “The committee deems void all executive actions signed by the autopen without proper, corresponding, contemporaneous, written approval traceable to the president’s own consent.”On Friday, Republicans who control the committee released a statement that characterized Trump’s potential use of an electronic signature as legitimate, which it distinguished from Biden’s.Dave Min, a California Democrat on the House oversight committee, seized on the apparent similarities in the initial version of the pardons and called for an investigation of the matter, deploying the Republican arguments against Biden in a statement to AP that “we need to better understand who is actually in charge of the White House, because Trump seems to be slipping”.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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    Judge bars Trump administration from cutting funding to University of California

    The Trump administration cannot fine the University of California or summarily cut the school system’s federal funding over claims it allows antisemitism or other forms of discrimination, a federal judge ruled late on Friday in a sharply worded decision.US district judge Rita Lin in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction barring the administration from cancelling funding to the university based on alleged discrimination without giving notice to affected faculty and conducting a hearing, among other requirements.The administration over the summer demanded the University of California, Los Angeles, pay $1.2bn to restore frozen research funding and ensure eligibility for future funding after accusing the school of allowing antisemitism on campus. UCLA was the first public university to be targeted by the administration over allegations of civil rights violations.It has also frozen or paused federal funding over similar claims against private colleges, including Columbia University.In her ruling, Lin said labor unions and other groups representing UC faculty, students and employees had provided “overwhelming evidence” that the Trump administration was “engaged in a concerted campaign to purge ‘woke’, ‘left’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities”.“Agency officials, as well as the president and vice-president, have repeatedly and publicly announced a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of pre-eminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune,” Lin wrote.She added: “It is undisputed that this precise playbook is now being executed at the University of California.”At UC, which is facing a series of civil rights investigations, she found the administration had engaged in “coercive and retaliatory conduct in violation of the first amendment and 10th amendment”.Messages sent to the White House and the US Department of Justice after hours on Friday were not immediately returned. Lin’s order will remain in effect indefinitely.The president of the University of California, James B Milliken, has said the size of the UCLA fine would devastate the UC system, whose campuses are viewed as some of the top public colleges in the nation.UC is in settlement talks with the administration and is not a party to the lawsuit before Lin, who was nominated to the bench by Joe Biden, a Democrat. In a statement, the university system said it “remains committed to protecting the mission, governance and academic freedom of the university”.The administration has demanded UCLA comply with its views on gender identity and establish a process to make sure foreign students are not admitted if they are likely to engage in anti-American, anti-western or antisemitic “disruptions or harassment”, among other requirements outlined in a settlement proposal made public in October.The administration has previously struck deals with Brown University for $50m and Columbia University for $221m.Lin cited declarations by UC faculty and staff that the administration’s moves were prompting them to stop teaching or researching topics they were “afraid were too ‘left’ or ‘woke’”.Her injunction also blocks the administration from “conditioning the grant or continuance of federal funding on the UC’s agreement to any measures that would violate the rights of plaintiffs’ members under the first amendment”.She cited efforts to force the UC schools to screen international students based on “’anti-western” or “‘anti-American’” views, restrict research and teaching, or adopt specific definitions of “male” and “female” as examples of such measures.Donald Trump has decried elite colleges as overrun by liberalism and antisemitism.His administration has launched investigations of dozens of universities, claiming they have failed to end the use of racial preferences in violation of civil rights law. The Republican administration says diversity, equity and inclusion efforts discriminate against white and Asian American students. More

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    Welcome to the great unwokening of Hollywood! Shame no one can be bothered to turn up | Jason Okundaye

    I was on a walk around my local area in London when I was stopped in my tracks by a young man sauntering past me, wearing stone-wash jeans, a pair of shades and a “Reagan-Bush ’84” T-shirt. He gave off an incredibly smug air but, to be fair, he did look good. It’s a nice T-shirt, not like those garish Reform-branded football kits, so I could see why it might be appealing. A quick search informed me that for gen-Z rightwingers in the US, it has become the “conservative take on a band shirt or the once-ubiquitous Che Guevara tee”.That casual display of conservative aesthetics reminded me of something else too: a much discussed cover of New York magazine from earlier this year, after Trump 2.0’s inauguration, which showed young rightwingers celebrating as they “contemplate cultural domination”.“Conservatism – as a cultural force, not just a political condition – is back in a real way for the first time since the 1980s,” the journalist Brock Colyar wrote. Perhaps, given the way the British and American cultural spheres seem more enmeshed than ever, it was only a matter of time before I happened upon a Republican T-shirt in my back yard.View image in fullscreenThe US right has long had designs on controlling culture – frustrated by the idea that, despite many political successes, the arts remain in the grip of a liberal-left orthodoxy. (It’s neatly echoed in Britain by debates about BBC “wokeness”.) If there is anything members of the Maga movement want more than their guys in office, it is to feel that their worldview is reflected back to them whenever they turn on a screen or head into a gallery. That is what lies behind Donald Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian museum, which he seeks to purge of “improper ideology”, and his threatened imposition of 100% tariffs on non-US-made films.But as we draw to the close of the year, what has come to pass from this prediction of a conservative seizure of culture? There were early claims of victory. In the Atlantic, after the latest season of The White Lotus came out, the commentator Helen Lewis wrote that it was “the first great work of art in the post-woke era”. The critic Kevin Maher in the Times proclaimed simply that “woke is dead” and that “middle-aged white men” are back in – he cited the return of Mel Gibson, who has been repeatedly accused of bigotry, and his forthcoming follow-up to The Passion of the Christ.What caused the biggest stir, however, was the trajectory of Sydney Sweeney, the breakout Euphoria actor who fronted an advertising campaign by American Eagle that played with the idea of her having “great jeans/genes”. Some critics saw the advert as flirting with white supremacist eugenics. Meanwhile, Sweeney, who was reported to have registered as a Republican voter in Florida a few months before Trump’s election, has been hailed as representing a return to more “traditional”, white-centric beauty standards in the culture.View image in fullscreenEarlier this month, when addressing the controversy in an interview for GQ, the journalist Katherine Stoeffel said the criticism centred around the idea that “in this political climate, white people shouldn’t joke about genetic superiority”, offering Sweeney the opportunity to clarify. With startlingly empty eyes, Sweeney answered: “I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.” For this, rightwing zealots see her as leading the great unwokening of Hollywood: stars, rejoice! You need no longer kowtow to cancel culture. Perhaps she simply thinks the furore is silly and doesn’t want to entertain it. But presented with the chance to distance herself from such a divisive narrative that’s been projected on her, why would she not?If there is a great popular desire for fewer woke cultural figures, the verdict is still decidedly out: Sweeney’s latest film, Christy, in which she portrays the boxer Christy Martin, has recorded one of the worst opening weekends in box-office history. (It follows on from her box-office bombs of Eden and Americana, which opened in the US this year.) A few flops don’t tell us everything. But as Sweeney is perhaps the most talked about star of the year, it raises a question: the right may be determined to disrupt Hollywood and the arts, but does it actually care enough about it to consistently show up? Buying a political T-shirt is an easy commitment; having to sit through a two-hour biopic to prop up the conservative-leaning lead star, less so.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhatever electoral successes, and no matter how much it attempts to reorder institutions, the right will not enjoy cultural domination because you cannot so easily manufacture popularity. It may cry out for the Super Bowl half-time show to feature a Nashville-approved conservative singer, but it will have to get on Duolingo in time to understand record-breaker Bad Bunny’s 2026 performance, in which he’ll most likely cuss out Trump and ICE entirely in Spanish.Contemporary conservatism has failed to become cool because its instincts are more about edgy provocation than any serious appreciation of art and culture. Great art will always be about expanding our worlds, not making them smaller. Even Kelsey Grammer, arguably Hollywood’s most prominent conservative, knows this: despite being an open Trump supporter, he has affirmed his decades-long commitment to diversity, which includes executive-producing the 2000s sitcom Girlfriends, about four Black women in Los Angeles.Those predictions about a post-woke Hollywood also look laughable considering some of the great woke film successes of the year: take Sinners, an African-American horror film scored with southern Black music, or One Battle After Another, about an ex-revolutionary and his mixed-race daughter fighting against explicitly racist US state authorities. Both have garnered critical success (the former doing very well at the box office) and have Oscars buzz. The young mixed-race actor Chase Infiniti looks in much better stead than Sweeney.In the end, people will queue up for what they want to watch and listen to. When most people ask for culture recommendations, they don’t ask “Is it diverse?” or “Is it conservative?”, they ask, “Is it any good?” So perhaps Sweeney should spend more time letting us know why her films are worth watching rather than what colour her eyes are.

    Jason Okundaye is an assistant newsletter editor and writer at the Guardian. He edits The Long Wave newsletter and is the author of Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain More

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    US judge bars Trump from cutting off University of California funds

    A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding and threatening hefty fines against the University of California amid the administration’s attempts to coerce elite US universities into adopting and promoting conservative ideals.US district judge Rita Lin of San Francisco issued the preliminary injunction late Friday, saying the government was not allowed to demand payments from the California school system over the administration’s claims that it violates civil rights by allowing antisemitism and practising affirmative action.In her ruling, Lin said that the plaintiffs – who include UC faculty, researchers and students – have submitted “overwhelming evidence” illustrating the Trump administration’s “concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities”.Lin ruled that the government had a “playbook of initiating civil rights investigations” at universities in order to cut federal funding, “bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune”.In July, the Trump administration froze $584m in federal funding for the University of California, Los Angeles, while accusing the university of discrimination and violating civil rights over its handling of the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on campus. The administration claimed UCLA was “acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students”.In October, the administration proposed a deal to nine prominent universities in the US that promised funding in exchange for schools imposing policies and changes that included banning race or sex as considerations in admissions and hiring and removing departments that “purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas”.While the University of California school system was not offered the deal, the University of Southern California – a private institution – was.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, responded to the offer with a warning that any California universities that signed Trump’s proposed settlement would lose their state funding.Democracy Forward, a progressive legal advocacy group, called the Trump administration’s efforts to influence policy at universities “strong-arm tactics”.“This is not just a harmful attempt to stifle speech, it is a betrayal of the constitution and a dangerous step toward autocracy,” the group said in a statement. More

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    Trump ends support for Marjorie Taylor Greene amid growing Epstein feud

    Donald Trump announced Friday that he is withdrawing his support and endorsement of Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime ally and previously fierce defender of the president and the Maga movement.Trump’s move away from Greene came just hours after she said in an interview she thought the president’s attempts to stop the release of the files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein is “insanely the wrong direction to go”.“I am withdrawing my support and endorsement of ‘Congresswoman’ Marjorie Taylor Greene, of the great state of Georgia,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday evening. “All I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!”Trump said he would give his “unyielding support” to a primary challenge against her “if the right person runs”. Greene currently represents Georgia’s 14th congressional district.Earlier on Friday, Greene told Politico that Trump should not be trying to stop the release of the Epstein files when rising costs in the US are making it difficult for even the president’s own supporters to pay their bills.“It’s insanely the wrong direction to go. The five-alarm fire is healthcare and affordability for Americans. And that’s where the focus should be,” Greene said.“Releasing the Epstein files is the easiest thing in the world. Just release it all. Let the American people sort through every bit of it, and, you know, support the victims. That’s just like the most common sense, easiest thing in the world. But to spend any effort trying to stop it makes – it just doesn’t make sense to me.”Greene has spent the past few months voicing opinions that are at odds with those of the White House and some of her Republican colleagues. Earlier this week, Trump pushed back against criticism from Greene, saying she had “lost her way” after she accused him of paying too much attention to foreign affairs and not enough to the rising cost of living in the US.Greene responded to Trump’s remarks on X a day after, saying that “the only way is through Jesus”.“That’s my way, and I’ve definitely not lost it. Actually I’m working hard to put my faith into action,” she posted.Escalations have increased since Trump’s return to office, as the 51-year-old has increasingly broken with the party on domestic and foreign policy. She criticised the White House for its plans to send “billions of dollars” in weapons to Ukraine and departed from the Republican party’s traditional support for Israel by calling its war in Gaza a “genocide”.In an interview with the Washington Post, the Georgia congresswoman spoke about her discontent with congressional leaders of her own party, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson, amid the government shutdown that ended this week.During the shutdown, she sided with Democrats in their push to provide healthcare subsidies, a rare move for a Republican. More

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    Epstein was texting US House member during 2019 hearing with Michael Cohen

    Newly released documents from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate show the convicted sex offender appeared to be texting with a member of Congress during a 2019 House hearing with Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former fixer and personal attorney, and that those messages may have influenced the lawmaker’s questioning.The documents provided to Congress this week include transcripts suggesting Epstein was in direct contact with the lawmaker as the hearing unfolded, the Washington Post reports.Although the transcripts do not name the lawmaker Epstein was texting during the February 2019 hearing, an analysis by the Post suggests it was Stacey Plaskett, the US Virgin Islands’ non-voting Democratic delegate. By matching the timestamps of the messages with video of the hearing, the analysis concluded that Plaskett was the member of Congress in contact with Epstein.At the time, Cohen was appearing before the House oversight committee to testify against Trump, accusing him of racism, financial fraud and directing hush-money payments to conceal his extramarital affairs. Trump denied all of these allegations.“Cohen brought up RONA – keeper of the secrets,” Epstein texted the person, referring to former Trump executive assistant Rhona Graff, but misspelled her name.“RONA??” the person responded. “Quick I’m up next is that an acronym,” the person added, suggesting they would question Cohen soon.Plaskett’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. Her chief of staff told the Post that she was “not in a position to confirm or not” whether the congresswoman was texting with Epstein during the hearing.When Plaskett questioned Cohen during the hearing, she asked about Trump associates that he had mentioned previously and if there were “other people that we should be meeting with?”“So Allen Weisselberg is the chief financial officer in The Trump Organization,” Cohen replied.“You’ve got to quickly give us as many names as you can so we can get to them,” Plaskett jumped in to say. “She is Ms Rhona, what is Ms Rhona’s – … ”“Rhona Graff is the – Mr Trump’s executive assistant … She was – her office is directly next to his, and she’s involved in a lot that went on,” Cohen replied.This interaction is part of the more than 20,000 pages released Wednesday that reignited a long-running scandal over Epstein’s relationship with the rich and powerful. Democratic lawmakers said the messages, along with three newly disclosed emails, suggest Trump may have known more about Epstein’s activities than he has suggested in public.In another instance on the day of the hearing, Epstein texted the person: “Are you chewing”. One minute before, a live television feed of the hearing had cut to Plaskett, as she appeared to be chewing.“Not any more,” the person replied to Epstein. “Chewing interior of my mouth. Bad habit from middle school.”Plaskett was the first non-voting delegate to the House to serve as an impeachment manager during Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate in 2021 for inciting the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. She represents the US Virgin Islands, a territory that does not have a vote in Congress. More