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      Sold-out farm shops, smuggled deliveries and safety warnings: US battle over raw milk grows

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      It’s 8am, and Redmond, an 11-year-old Brown Swiss dairy cow and designated matriarch of the Churchtown Dairy herd, has been milked in her designated stall. She is concentrating on munching hay; her seventh calf is hovering nearby.The herd’s production of milk, sold unpasteurised in half-gallon and quart glass bottles in an adjacent farm store, sells out each week. It has become so popular that the store has had to limit sales.Redmond and her resplendent bovine sisters, wintering in a Shaker-style barn in upstate New York, appear unaware of the cultural-political storm gathering around them – an issue that is focusing minds far from farmyard aromas of mud and straw.The production and state-restricted distribution of raw milk, considered by some to boost health and by ­others to be a major risk to it, has become a perplexing political touchstone on what is termed the “Woo-to-Q pipeline”, along which yoga, wellness and new age spirituality adherents can drift into QAnon conspiracy beliefs.Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick to run the US Department of Health, is an advocate. He has made unpasteurised milk part of his Make America Healthy Again movement and recently tweeted that government regulations on raw milk were part of a wider “war on public health”.View image in fullscreenRepublican congresswoman and conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene has posted “Raw Milk does a body good”. But the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that “raw milk can carry dangerous germs such as salmonella, E coli, listeria, campylobacter and others that cause foodborne illness”.Last week, the US Department of Agriculture issued an order to broaden tests for H5N1 – bird flu – in milk at dairy processing ­facilities, over fears that the virus could become the next Covid-19 if it spreads through US dairy herds and jumps to humans. Since March, more than 700 dairy herds across the US have tested ­positive for bird flu, mostly in California. But the new testing strategy does not cover farms that directly process and sell their own raw milk.At the same time, another dairy product has become the subject of conspiracy theories after misinformation spread about the use of Bovaer in cow feed in the UK. Arla Foods, the Danish-Swedish company behind Lurpak, announced trials of the additive, designed to cut cow methane emissions, at 30 of its farms. Some social media users raised concerns over the additive’s safety and threatened a boycott, despite Bovaer being approved by regulators.In the US, raw milk is seen as anti-government by the right, anti-corporate by the left, and amid the fracturing political delineations, lies a middle ground unmoved by either ideology.“Food production has always been political,” says Churchtown Dairy owner and land reclamation pioneer, Abby Rockefeller.Churchtown manager Eric Vinson laments raw milk has been lumped in with QAnon and wellness communities. “There’s an idea around that ­people who want to take ownership of their health have started to become conspiratorial,” he says. “It’s unfortunate. Raw milk may be a political issue but it’s not a right-left issue.”Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, Georgia, and Wyoming have passed laws or changed rules to allow the sale at farms or shops since 2020. In New York, sales are legal at farms with permits, although supplies are smuggled into the city marked “for cats and dogs”. There is no suggestion Churchtown is involved in that.Amish communities abandoned a non-political stance in the national elections in November and voted Republican, in part over the raw milk issue. An Amish organic farm was raided by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture in January.There are also the health-aware “farmers’ market mums”, who say they are looking to raw milk for an immunity boost, and who harbour latent anger over the government pandemic response and vaccine mandates.View image in fullscreenRachel, a Manhattan mother of a three-year-old, who declined to be fully identified, citing potential social judgment, said: “After Covid, more of us started thinking about our bodies and health because of scepticism around doctors, hospitals and a corrupted health care system.” But like many people, she said, she felt she’d been “caught in the middle” of a political battle.Sales of raw milk are up between 21% and 65% compared with a year ago, according to the market research firm NielsenIQ. Mark McAfee, California raw milk advocate and owner of Raw Farm USA in Fresno, says production and supply across the state is growing at 50% a year. But the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call raw milk one of the “riskiest” foods people can consume. Experts say they are “horrified” by a trend they consider a roll-back of Louis Pasteur’s 19th-century invention of pasteurisation.Vinson disagrees with the idea that raw milk is “inherently dangerous” and argues, because conventional dairies rely on pasteurisation, “they don’t have to worry about sanitation around the milking practices – they can cut corners”. “You have to be more careful producing raw milk but it brings a higher price,” he adds.View image in fullscreenSince the pandemic, visitors to Churchtown have increased.Earlier this month, McAfee’s Raw Farm was hit by a notice from the California Department of Health warning that H5 virus, better known as bird flu, had been detected in a batch of cream-top whole raw milk.It’s not yet known if the virus can be transmitted to people who consume infected milk but the CDC officials warn that people who drink raw milk could theoretically become infected.Back at Churchtown Dairy, Vinson is tending the herd. A huge Jersey cow shadows her four-day old calf. At weekends, he offers tours of the barn to raw milk-curious visitors. “One of my main jobs is informing the public about farming and agricultural issues,” he says. That includes being receptive to changes. “It is important to say we don’t know everything and keep an eye open.” More

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      Mitch McConnell condemns petition to revoke approval of polio vaccine by RFK Jr adviser

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      US Senate minority leader and polio survivor Mitch McConnell has condemned attempts to undermine the polio vaccine after reports that a lawyer affiliated with Robert F Kennedy Jr – the health secretary pick for Donald Trump’s second presidency – petitioned for the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval of the vaccine.In a statement reported by numerous outlets on Friday, McConnell, who contracted the disease as a child in 1944 – 11 years before the licensing of the world’s first polio vaccine – said: “The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed – they’re dangerous.”The 82-year-old went on to add: “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”McConnell’s latest comment comes after the New York Times first reported that Aaron Siri, a lawyer helping Kennedy select incoming health officials for Trump’s second White House term, filed a petition in 2022 in which he called on the FDA to revoke its polio vaccine approval. Trump has nominated Kennedy, an avowed vaccine skeptic, as health secretary for his incoming administration – a move widely criticized by health experts.According to the New York Times, Siri filed the petition on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, a major anti-vaccination organization in the US. Siri has also asked federal regulators to withdraw or suspend vaccines for hepatitis B and 13 other vaccines, the outlet reported.Kennedy’s anti-vaccination beliefs have been widely debunked, including the unsupported link between vaccines and autism.Polio, also known as poliomyelitis, is a highly infectious viral disease that mostly affects children under five years old. Transmitted through contaminated water, food or contact with an infected person, the poliovirus destroys nerve cells in the spinal cord, in turn causing muscle wasting and paralysis.Since 1988, polio cases have decreased by more than 99% across the world, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated on its website, adding that polio vaccines have prevented approximately 20m cases of paralysis in children since then.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn response to the reports, a Trump spokesperson for Kennedy Jr told the Washington Post that Siri “has never had a conversation about these petitions with Mr Kennedy or any of the [health and human services] nominees at any point”.Among other things, the spokesperson added that the vaccine “should be investigated and studied appropriately”, which it already has been. More

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      Trump eyes privatizing United States Postal Service during second term

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      Donald Trump in recent weeks has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the US Postal Service (USPS) because of its financial losses, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing three people with knowledge of the matter.Trump, who begins his second US presidency on 20 January, has discussed his desire to privatize the USPS with Howard Lutnick, his pick for commerce secretary, at his Mar-a-Lago home, the report said.As the Post noted, the move could disrupt consumer shipping and business supply chains while pushing hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of government.Nonetheless, Trump gathered a group of officials advising him on his transition back to the White House and asked them for their views on privatizing the agency. Informed of its annual financial losses, Trump said the USPS should not be subsidized by the government, according to the people who spoke with the Post on the condition of anonymity so that they could speak frankly about private conversations.Trump’s specific plans for possibly overhauling the USPS and privatizing it were not immediately clear. But he feuded with the agency during his first presidency, seeking to compel it to turn over key functions – including labor relations, managing relationships with its largest clients, rate-setting and personnel matters – to the federal treasury department.Meanwhile, before his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election after his first presidency, Trump argued that the USPS was incapable of facilitating mail-in voting because he was blocking the agency from accessing emergency funding. Ultimately, as the Post noted, the USPS delivered nearly 98% of voters’ ballots to election officials within three days despite the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.The USPS is older than the US itself, having been founded in 1775. It became a financially self-sustaining agency in 1970 and is one of the most well-liked federal agencies, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center study cited by the Post.In the fiscal year ending 30 September, the USPS lost $9.5bn after modernizing facilities and equipment did little to offset declines in mail volume as well as a parcel shipping business that was slower than anticipated, according to the Post’s reporting. The postal service’s annual financial report disclosed nearly $80bn in liabilities.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Washington DC steels itself for Trump’s ‘takeover’: ‘We’re in for a bumpy ride’

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      View image in fullscreenBoth a senator and a pastor, Raphael Warnock reflected on being asked to give closing remarks at an annual congressional dinner in Washington. “Since we are meeting in what used to be the Trump International Hotel,” he mused, “perhaps it is an exorcism”.That was last year, when the ghost of Donald Trump had seemingly been banished for good from the nation’s capital. But like all the best horror movies, there is going to be a sequel. Next month Trump will return to a city that he has openly disparaged – the feeling is generally mutual – when he is inaugurated as the 47th US president.Trump lost the Republican primary election to Nikki Haley in the District of Columbia. He lost the presidential election there to Democrat Kamala Harris by 86 percentage points. Even so, he has vowed to radically overhaul the capital, threatened its political autonomy and recruited the billionaire Elon Musk to slash the federal workforce.Sally Quinn, an author, journalist and socialite, said: “The mood is pretty grim. People are depressed. I had a dinner last night with a number of people from Washington and I would say that everyone was very subdued and there’s not a lot of gaiety or celebration. I don’t know anybody who’s in the Christmas spirit right now.”During his first term, Trump, a New Yorker and now Florida resident, never truly embraced Washington, a city of around 700,000 people that has been home to the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the singer Marvin Gaye and the comedian Dave Chappelle.During his presidency, the only DC restaurant he patronised was his own, ordering a well-done steak with ketchup at BLT Prime in the Trump International Hotel, half a mile from the White House. He has since sold the hotel, and its new restaurant is run by José Andrés, a Spanish-American chef and outspoken Trump critic.The former president snubbed Washington rituals. He was the only president never to attend the annual Kennedy Center Honors. He also skipped the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. In late 2019 Trump did watch the Washington Nationals in the baseball World Series only to be met with loud boos and chants of “Lock him up!” and “Impeach Trump!”In 2020 Washington was convulsed by the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter demonstrators. Teargas was fired against nearby peaceful protesters outside the White House before Trump staged a photo opportunity holding a Bible outside a church. DC responded by painting “Black Lives Matter” on a nearby street and creating Black Lives Matter Plaza.Then came his defeat in the presidential election. First the city erupted in joy with people celebrating in the streets. Then it was stunned by the insurrection on 6 January 2021 at the US Capitol building, leading to five deaths. Washington was left reeling but, two weeks later, saw Trump depart the White House and assumed he was gone for good.Quinn reflected: “This is a Democratic town. People are in a state of shock and disbelief and trying to understand: how do you get over January 6? What is it that Democrats did wrong that was so much worse than January 6? What did the Democrats do that didn’t appeal to people? You have an indicted criminal as an elected president. How is that possible?”With the Trump hotel now under different ownership, it remains to be seen where his allies and supporters will congregate. Quinn recalls that some used to gather at Cafe Milano in Georgetown, much to the dismay of locals. “One night there were about 10 Trump people there and the buzz all around the room was such that I felt like everybody was going to stand up and start singing ‘La Marseillaise’ the way they did at Rick’s Café in Casablanca.”Trump’s return also has huge implications for the way that DC runs itself. The district has always lacked the autonomy of state. It was granted limited self-governance by the Home Rule Act in 1973 but Congress still essentially vets all DC laws and can outright overturn them.During his first term Trump threatened to federalise DC police, deployed the National Guard against protesters and expressed a desire to control city functions like road repair. On the campaign trail he expressed disdain for the city, raising fears about a potential escalation during his second term.Trump repeatedly vowed to “take over” the city and usurp the authority of the local government. In August last year, when he briefly came to town to plead not guilty on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 electoral loss to Biden, Trump derided the capital on social media, calling it a “filthy and crime ridden embarrassment to our nation”. He has long condemned it as “the swamp”.George Derek Musgrove, co-author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital, suggests that there are two Washingtons in Trump’s imagination. “One is the place where only lobbyists, lawyers and Hill staffers and federal regulators live. He sees those people as parasitical: if we got rid of those, we’d be able to have a much more functional democracy.“Contradictorily, he also sees the district where actual real people live but those people are poor and Black and highly criminal. Those are two DCs that he and House Republicans have presented to the country and both of them have a national political function. They’re a way of painting the Democratic party as part of the deep state and siding with criminals over victimised law-abiding citizens.”Trump has duly appointed Elon Musk and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to a “Department of Government Efficiency” intended to save money by shrinking the federal government – an effort that could risk the jobs of thousands of employees in Washington and nearby Maryland and Virginia. The president-elect has also vowed to dismantle the Department of Education.Musgrove, an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore county, said: “When you talk about the fear of the incoming Trump administration, it’s twofold. One is the attacks on democracy in the district. The other is this real fear that his plans to slash the federal workforce will fall disproportionately on us and cause economic pain in the district.”Congressional Republicans have become increasingly aggressive in using their power to override DC laws, restrict its budget and target liberal policies on criminal justice, marijuana legalisation and abortion. Andrew Clyde, a Georgia congressman, has proposed completely repealing the Home Rule Act, while Andy Ogles, a Tennessee congressman, has talked publicly of abolishing the office of DC mayor.The current mayor, Muriel Bowser, was a thorn in Trump’s side first time around. But she and other local officials are seeking ways to work with the Trump administration on issues such as bringing federal workers back to the office. Unlike Democratic state governors, who are already coordinating on how to resist Trump on issues such as immigration, the mayor’s reach is limited.Meagan Hatcher-Mays, a senior adviser for United for Democracy, a coalition of more than 140 organisations, said: “We have a Democratic mayor but we’re not a state and so the federal government can interfere with our local politics and our local decisions in a way that they can’t with the states. Whether Trump is physically present here or not, we’re in for a bumpy ride with a lot of his policy folks and administration.”Hatcher-Mays also warned that DC could also prove a laboratory for Project 2025, a radical policy blueprint drawn up by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank. “Pretty much everything that’s in Project 2025 that they might not be able to get through Congress to go national could become real and exclusively apply just to DC.”Republicans’ clean sweep of the White House and both chambers of Congress was also a heavy blow to the long-running campaign for DC statehood. Advocates argue that this is the only way to ensure full democratic rights for DC residents, who pay federal taxes but lack voting representation. Republicans, however, are fiercely opposed to the idea of adding two senators likely to be Democrats.Paul Strauss, the “shadow” senator for DC who does get a vote in the Senate chamber, admitted: “We’re on defence. Most of what I expect I’ll be doing in the next two years is defending attacks on DC autonomy without a majority in either chamber. There’s not going to be much of a chance to move a bill forward. We are going to be trying to preserve what little self-determination we have.”The storied culture of DC includes the Washington Post, a newspaper founded in 1877 and famed for its investigation into the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. It spent the first Trump term locked in an old fashioned newspaper war with the New York Times over a seemingly endless series of revelations about his administration.But since then the Post has suffered deep financial losses, job cuts and reports that its publisher, Will Lewis, tried to pressure Post staff not to report on questions of whether he was involved in covering up crimes more than a decade ago at Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid newspapers. The paper, owned by the billionaire Jeff Bezos, declined to endorse a candidate for president, reportedly prompting more than 250,000 readers to cancel subscriptions.Hatcher-Mays commented: “This is not a knock on any of the reporters who work at the Post. I know they’re independent and all great but it’s going to be a tough uphill climb to report out the various misdeeds of this administration when the owner of your paper is more interested playing footsie with a person who’s been impeached twice, is under indictment and has no interest in the product of democracy.”During his first term, Trump spent many weekends at his clubs in Florida or New Jersey but, when in Washington, was often driven to his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, where he played rounds. An accompanying pool of reporters would kill time at Lucia’s, an Italian restaurant nearby.Its owner, David Hackett, is preparing for their return after a four-year hiatus and prefers to not reveal his political allegiance. “It was definitely a nice Saturday and Sunday boost,” he said. “I’m looking forward to the journalists coming back. That might be the only plus to the whole deal for me.” More

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      Hiding in plain sight: Americans’ obsession with camouflage is a sign of paranoid times

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      It’s become an inescapable pop culture touchstone. A pattern of crispy brown leaves interspersed with twigs and moss darting around like advancing thickets, peeking out from underneath jackets, plastered on oversize pants and trucker hats.Hunting camouflage, a tactical pattern designed to resemble forest undergrowth to disguise hunters during deer season, is seen everywhere from Chappell Roan’s Midwestern Princess hat (and its ill-fated Harris-Walz dupe), to Lana Del Rey’s gator-wrangling husband, to Sweetgreen’s kale-themed camo merchandise, to lacy thong underwear sold by Bass Pro Shops that promises “a look that’s as thrilling as the hunt itself”.While we live in an age of ephemeral trends – anyone remember mob wife? What about grandpacore? – the recent rise of hunting camo outside hunting culture has been a slow burn.In 2021, the clothing brand Online Ceramics released a foliage-covered baseball hat. Later that year, GQ called Realtree camouflage “a cool-kid essential”. The designer Marine Serre released a fall 2022 collection featuring a glitchy camo pattern worthy of Elmer Fudd, and an $85 “God’s Favorite” cap became available via the luxury retailer SSENSE. The pattern has found itself increasingly in the closets of urban tastemakers, as likely to see the inside of a coffee shop as the muzzle of a gun. Even prior to this demographic expansion, Realtree, one of the most popular hunting camo licensors, estimated licensed partners sold $4bn in branded products each year.View image in fullscreenIt is also one of the few current fashion objects that could be considered truly democratic, accessible to all: you can buy a woody khaki denim maxi skirt for $300 or a hat with identical print at Walmart for $5.97.However, hunting camo’s creeping pervasiveness mirrors the rise of populism in the United States and a wholesale rejection of the “elite class”. During the most recent election, the Democratic party abandoned its core voters on the left by swinging rightwards with a bloodless campaign designed to capture centrist and undecided voters. (See: Kamala Harris palling around with Liz Cheney, and the refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.)Meanwhile, the Harris-Walz hunting camo hat was a doomed attempt to court young, hyper-online voters through an extremely shallow campaign based on fleeting internet parlance over addressing progressive voters’ real needs. As a result, the political system is thoroughly despised by many on the left and the right.View image in fullscreenAccording to Sarah Scaturro, chief conservator at the Cleveland Museum of Art, whose master’s thesis traced the evolution of camo in fashion, the pattern tends to appear outside military contexts during periods of political instability. During the Vietnam war, the military’s US woodland print was defaced and subverted by protesters as a form of dissent. It ascended again around the late 1990s and early 2000s, a time of unease over Y2K and the contested election of George W Bush. “[The current revival suggests] we’re really in an insecure moment where we don’t really know what will happen,” Scaturro says.Hunting camo, as worn by the denizens of Duck Dynasty, symbolizes autonomy, self-sufficiency and a rigid belief in personal liberties. “When that survivalist look becomes desirable, to me that reflects that we’re experiencing anxiety as a society,” says Louisa Rogers, an assistant professor of fashion communications at Northumbria University. A recent survey found that gen Z feels the need to make $587,000 a year to consider themselves financially successful; economic unease is being felt across the US.In 2024, hunting camo reflects our culture’s growing individualism, and a desire to arm oneself in the face of great uncertainty. As opposed to military camo, which can symbolize faith in or a direct criticism of our military institutions, hunting camo brings to mind the second amendment. Increasingly, we live in a sick society that forces people to fend for themselves, and what more poignant symbol do we have than the gun enthusiast? The pattern has been co-opted by libertarian self-determinists who reject government in all its forms, so it makes sense that such a paranoid archetype resonates widely in an era where neighbourly trust in one another has all but eroded away. Ironically, the widespread embrace of hunting camo could be the closest we have come to bipartisanship in a long time.View image in fullscreenRogers suggests that some of the appeal of hunting camo to non-hunters might also rest in its inherent taboo. At times, it can be difficult to tell whether it’s worn in earnest; meme accounts like Pathetic Fashion and Doomscroll Forever point out the aesthetic homogeneity – Realtree camo hat, white tank and New Balances – that now exists between the political poles. While some may be wearing the pattern to subvert its rightwing associations, others wear it cloaked under several levels of brain-fried irony to the point where they may actually be embracing the outlaw symbolism (like rightwing-coded “it” girls such as Red Scare’s Dasha Nekrasova). Others still, including the midwest musicians Ethel Cain and Chappell Roan, might see it as a way of reclaiming their rural roots.What do actual hunters make of the broad adoption of their hobby gear? Is it stolen valor? “I don’t think I’ve ever heard another hunter complain about it,” says Lindsay Thomas Jr, chief communications officer of the National Deer Association. “National surveys show a large majority of the public supports hunting, and if the non-hunting public is adopting camo for their own fashion, I think it’s symbolic of that support.” (According to a June survey, public support for legal hunting shooting is 76%, a figure that has been declining since 2021.)In the end, we’re left with a paradox. “Camouflage is a protective pattern. It’s meant to protect us, conceal us, save us from danger,” says Scaturro.But wearing camo in the city doesn’t offer protection, literally. What it does offer is a way to blend in, especially now that Donald Trump is about to enter office once again. It’s about “becoming part of a whole”, says Rogers. “There is a sense of community creation there, a leveling out between the people the pattern resonates with and the leftwing consciousness.” In this way, Realtree is the perfect pattern for these anxious times. More

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      Sad but true – Donald Trump really did wrestle his way into the White House | David Moon

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      Do you remember World Wrestling Entertainment? For many people, the show, in which muscle-bound wrestlers in tight tights throw one another around in staged fights, is a nostalgic throwback to the early 2000s, when it played briefly on Channel 4. Today, its mix of soap opera, theatre and athletic spectacle still draws millions of viewers each week. To some, it’s a guilty pleasure; to others, timeless entertainment. Still, few would associate it with the serious world of politics.For Donald Trump, though, professional wrestling is a lifelong passion. His announcement in November that the former CEO of WWE, Linda McMahon, would take up the role of education secretary in his cabinet of curiosities elicited shock and disbelief. It is impossible to fully understand US politics today without understanding the significance of pro wrestling.Long before McMahon’s nomination, Trump was the first occupant of the Oval Office to be a WWE Hall of Fame inductee, an honour that marked his decades-long business relationship with the company. Trump has hosted two WrestleManias, the WWE’s flagship annual event, appeared more than a dozen times on WWE programmes, played a leading role in two storylines, and gotten physical (albeit to a very limited, awkward degree) around the ring itself. It’s now widely acknowledged that pro wrestling is key to Trump as a political phenomenon. Yet its influence is bigger than Trump. Wrestling has become a key element to understand the reshaping of US politics itself – particularly the Republican right.Just look at the 2024 presidential campaign. Jesse “the Body” Ventura was named by the Robert F Kennedy Jr campaign as a potential vice-presidential running mate. Hulk Hogan tore his shirt off at the Republican national convention, rallied “Trumpaholics” at Madison Square Garden, and hinted at a possible role in a future Trump administration on Fox News. For his part, Donald Trump participated in a Fox News segment with former WWE superstar Tyrus, who dubbed him “the people’s champion” and gave him a replica title belt. He joined the podcasts of pro wrestling icon Mark “the Undertaker” Calloway and current WWE superstar Logan Paul, as well as receiving the endorsement of Calloway and Glenn Jacobs – better known as WWE’s Kane, the Undertaker’s storyline brother – in a TikTok video.One explanation for such behaviour is simply that it’s strategic. A former boxing promoter, Trump has become a fixture at combat sports in general, especially Ultimate Fighting Championship (which merged with WWE to form the media conglomerate TKO in 2023), whose CEO, Dana White, was one of the first people brought on stage at his victory speech. By attaching himself to entertainment forms widely dismissed in polite society, Trump burnishes his anti-establishment vibes while reaching out to a younger, often politically apathetic, male electorate that populates these fandoms. It is pro wrestling, however, that is his natural home. The idea that Trump’s pro wrestling background is used strategically is also linked to his infamous campaign rallies. From the fireworks and thumping entrance music, to the carefully choreographed conflict and spectacle on the stage, the atmosphere of these rallies has often been compared with pro wrestling shows.View image in fullscreenTrump frequently resorts to call-and-response chants and indulges in “smack talk” against the “losers and haters” – assigning them diminishing nicknames such as “lyin’ Ted”, “crooked Hillary” and “sleepy Joe”. Being part of a pro wrestling audience – much like attending a Trump rally – allows spectators to experience emotions that are usually forbidden. They can scream, shout and display rage in a rare public context where it’s socially permitted. Trump rallies are safe spaces where it’s acceptable to emote: to shout and cheer for your country and candidate, while vocalising hatred for political opponents. In 2016, it was possible to think these similarities were coincidental. Today, the influence of pro wrestling is unavoidable. Watch the post-election footage of Donald Trump emerging to the strains of Kid Rock’s American Badass – the Undertaker’s previous entrance music – through the roaring crowd of a recent UFC event and it’s impossible not to make the connection.As the US political sphere becomes one gigantic pro wrestling arena, traditional theories and frameworks are inadequate for making sense of events. We need, therefore, to turn to pro wrestling for answers, particularly the industry-specific concept of “kayfabe”. Initially a label for the illusion that pro wrestling’s predetermined performances were “real”, today, kayfabe describes the peculiar way fans engage with pro wrestling as an acknowledged performance form. In her own insightful writings on pro wrestling and politics, the writer and author Abraham Josephine Riesman proposes “neokayfabe” as a label for Trump-inspired Republican strategies that deliberately blur truth and fiction so that producers and consumers lose the ability to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t.The idea of politics as kayfabe can be taken further. In my view, the relationship between pro wrestling fans and performances are analogous to how electorates engage with contemporary politics more generally. Trump and his supporters are an extreme case of a wider phenomenon. Enjoying pro wrestling involves a deliberate suspension of disbelief, whereby fans acknowledge the theatricality of the performance while investing in it emotionally. Spectators collaborate with the performers by playing along as “believing fans”, cheering and booing as conventions dictate, embracing the spectacle even while recognising its pretence. In pro wrestling terms this is called “keeping kayfabe”.This mirrors people’s engagement with the artifice surrounding contemporary, professionalised politics. We all know, for example, that politicians’ words are written by speechwriters, based on focus group findings, targeted at specific voter demographics, identified by pollsters and strategists. Yet supporters suspend disbelief, cheer conference speeches and emotionally invest in sentiments they express, all while knowing and accepting and even discussing in detail the calculations behind their construction. In other words, they keep kayfabe. Politics increasingly amounts to this: electorates acting out their role as “believing supporters” while maintaining a knowing cynicism about the whole performance.What makes Trump special is thus not that he personifies “pro wrestlingified” politics, but that his supporters are willing to suspend their disbelief and support his campaign when its fakery is so blatant. If the best our political systems offer their understandably jaded electorates is the option to “suspend disbelief” and “keep kayfabe” with a political campaign they view as essentially simulated, we shouldn’t be shocked many choose the one with an anti-establishment pose and chaotic performance style (each products of a pro wrestling pedigree). It may be a performance, sure, but at least it’s entertaining.

      Dr David Moon is head of division for politics at Bath University More

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      Ex-FBI informant agrees to plead guilty to lying about Bidens’ Ukraine ties

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      A former FBI informant accused of falsely claiming that Joe Biden and the president’s son Hunter had accepted bribes has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges, according to court papers.As part of the plea deal with the justice department special counsel, David Weiss, Alexander Smirnov will admit he fabricated the story that became central to a Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.The plea agreement comes just weeks after prosecutors filed new tax-evasion charges against Smirnov. The two sides will recommend a sentence of at least two years behind bars and no more than six years, according to the agreement.David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, attorneys for Smirnov, said they will make their case for a fair sentence in court and declined to comment further.Smirnov was arrested in February on allegations that he falsely reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter Biden and Joe Biden $5m each in 2015 or 2016. Smirnov told his handler that an executive claimed to have hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems”, according to court documents.Prosecutors said Smirnov had had contact with Burisma executives, but it had been routine and actually took place in 2017, after Barack Obama’s presidency and Biden, his vice-president, had left office – when Biden would have had no ability to influence US policy. Prosecutors said Smirnov made the bribery allegations after he “expressed bias” against Biden while the latter was a presidential candidate in 2020.Smirnov repeated some of the false claims when he was interviewed by FBI agents in September 2023, changed his story about others and “promoted a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials”, prosecutors said.Smirnov has agreed to plead guilty to charges of tax evasion and causing a false FBI record, according to court papers.Smirnov is being prosecuted by the same special counsel who brought federal gun and tax charges against Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden was supposed to have been sentenced this month on his convictions in those cases, until he was pardoned by his father. More

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      New Jersey governor asks Biden for federal help on unexplained drones – as it happened

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      Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former speaker of the House of Representatives, sustained an injury while on an official visit to Luxembourg and was hospitalized, her office announced.“While traveling with a bipartisan Congressional delegation in Luxembourg to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi sustained an injury during an official engagement and was admitted to the hospital for evaluation,” spokesperson Ian Krager said.“Speaker Emerita Pelosi is currently receiving excellent treatment from doctors and medical professionals. She continues to work and regrets that she is unable to attend the remainder of the CODEL engagements to honor the courage of our servicemembers during one of the greatest acts of American heroism in our nation’s history.”He added that the 84-year-old, who just won another term representing her district that centers on San Francisco, “looks forward to returning home to the US soon”.More signs have emerged of how Donald Trump will make good on his pledge to transform the US government, once he is inaugurated president. The New York Times has reported that Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has challenged the approval of vaccines for polio, hepatitis B and other preventable diseases, is sitting in on interviews for job candidates conducted by Robert F Kennedy Jr. Separately, the Wall Street Journal says that Trump’s transition team is exploring ways to downsize or get rid of banking regulators that were created in the wake of the Great Depression, and which have repeatedly stepping in to stabilize the US economy in the decades since.Here’s what else happened today:

      Phil Murphy, New Jersey’s Democratic governor, has asked Joe Biden for federal help to learn more about the unexplained drones flying over his state.

      Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker, has been hospitalized after fracturing her hip in Luxembourg, during a trip to commemorate the Battle of the Bulge.

      Daniel Penny, who was acquitted earlier this week on charges related to the chokehold death of an unhoused man on a New York City subway, will attend the US army-navy football game with JD Vance.

      Anita Dunn, a former Biden White House adviser, criticized the pardon of Hunter Biden.

      Trump said Republicans should repeal daylight savings time.
      Texas has launched a legal challenge to laws enacted by Democratic states to shield doctors who prescribe abortion pills, the Associated Press reports.The lawsuit by the Republican-led state against a New York doctor who prescribed abortion pills to a Texas woman could spark a fight over how abortion pills, which are the most common way the procedure is accessed, are prescribed. Here’s more, from the AP:
      Texas has sued a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas, launching one of the first challenges in the U.S. to shield laws that Democrat-controlled states passed to protect physicians after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
      Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit on Thursday in Collin County, and it was announced Friday.
      Such prescriptions, made online and over the phone, are a key reason that the number of abortions has increased across the U.S. even since state bans started taking effect. Most abortions in the U.S. involve pills rather than procedures.
      Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, said a challenge to shield laws, which blue states started adopting in 2023, has been anticipated.
      And it could have a chilling effect on prescriptions.
      “Will doctors be more afraid to mail pills into Texas, even if they might be protected by shield laws because they don’t know if they’re protected by shield laws?” she said in an interview Friday.
      The lawsuit accuses New York Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter of violating Texas law by providing the drugs to a Texas patient and seeks up to $250,000. No criminal charges are involved.
      In yet more Donald Trump policy news, the president-elect just weighed in on daylight saving time, saying on Truth Social he will support undoing it:
      The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.
      He’s not the only one in the GOP who’d like to see the seasonal time change – in which Americans set their clocks back an hour in the fall, and forward an hour in the spring – go away:The New York Times reports that Nancy Pelosi fell and broke her hip during her trip to Luxembourg.Citing unnamed people close to the Democratic former House speaker, they said doctors were confident they could repair the damage in a “routine operation”, but it was not yet known if that would be done in Luxembourg or the United States.New Jersey’s recently elected Democratic senator Andy Kim said he went out last night with a police officer to Round Valley reservoir in the state, where he could see the unexplained drones flying over.“The officer pointed to lights moving low over the tree line. Sometimes they were solid white light, others flashed of red and green,” Kim wrote on X.He continued:
      We oriented ourselves with a flight tracker app to help us distinguish from airplanes. We often saw about 5-7 lights at a time that were low and not associated with aircraft we could see on the tracker app. Some hovered while others moved across the horizon.
      We saw a few that looked like they were moving in small clusters of 2-4. We clearly saw several that would move horizontally and then immediately switch back in the opposite direction in maneuvers that plane can’t do.
      The police officer said they see them out every night. They only seem to start when it gets dark and they disappear before dawn. They get reports that they sometimes fly low over homes, especially up in the hills.
      The officer said they’ve tried to get closer with use of a helicopter but that the drones would turn off the lights and go dark if approached.
      New Jersey’s Democratic governor Phil Murphy is asking Joe Biden for more help from the federal government in determining the cause of a series of mysterious drones seen flying over the state.In a letter sent to Biden today, Murphy wrote:
      While I am sincerely grateful for your administration’s leadership in addressing this concerning issue, it has become apparent that more resources are needed to understand what is behind this activity. This week, the FBI testified in a joint subcommittee hearing before Congress that the federal government alone cannot address UAS [unmanned aircraft systems]. New Jersey residents deserve more concrete information about these UAS sightings and what is causing them.
      Here’s more on the unknown drones and Murphy’s request to the president:Progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has picked up the support of two congressional caucuses in her bid to be named the top Democrat on the prominent oversight committee.The Congressional Progressive Caucus announced its endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez, writing on X:
      AOC’s fearless advocacy leading the Oversight Committee will help ensure Democrats retake the House in 2026. Our Caucus is proud to support her candidacy.
      The Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s incoming leadership committee is also backing her, saying:
      With her strong national profile and media presence, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is critical in combating misinformation and ensuring the truth reaches the American people.
      Travis Timmerman, an American imprisoned in Syria for seven months, has been flown out of the country, the US military told AP.A US official said Timmerman was flown out on a US military helicopter. The 29-year-old said he had gone to Syria on a Christian pilgrimage and was not ill-treated while in Palestine Branch, a notorious detention facility operated by Syrian intelligence.He said he was freed by “the liberators who came into the prison and knocked the door down (of his cell) with a hammer”.Timmerman said he was released Monday morning alongside a young Syrian man and 70 female prisoners, some of whom had their children with them.He had been held separately from Syrian and other Arab prisoners and said he didn’t know of any other Americans held in the facility.Annoyance has been growing among politicians and law enforcement in New Jersey following proliferating reports of drone flights in recent weeks, including almost 50 on Sunday night alone. The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe has this report on the growing demand for answers:The governor of New Jersey has demanded that Joe Biden take control of an investigation into mysterious and more frequent appearances of multiple large drones flying over his state amid mounting frustration that federal officials are downplaying the incidents.Democrat Phil Murphy released on Friday a letter he wrote to the White House to express his “growing concern” after representatives from the Pentagon and FBI ruled out involvement by the US military, or hostile foreign actors, in numerous sightings of unexplained flying objects above about a dozen counties since the middle of November.“It has become apparent that more resources are needed to fully understand what is behind this activity,” he wrote in the letter, published the same day that reports emerged of multiple drones breaching airspace at Naval Weapons Station Earle in Monmouth county.“I respectfully urge you to continue to direct the federal agencies involved to work together until they uncover answers as to what is behind the UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] sightings.”Tens of millions of Americans cast ballots in the November election that sent Donald Trump back to the White House – and tens of millions of other did not bother. The Guardian’s Jedidajah Otte spoke to some of those in the latter group to learn why:The 2024 US presidential election had been widely characterized as one of the most consequential political contests in recent US history. Although turnout was high for a presidential election – almost matching the levels of 2020 – it is estimated that close to 90 million Americans, roughly 36% of the eligible voting age population, did not vote. This number is greater than the number of people who voted for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.More than a month on from polling day, eligible US voters from across the country as well as other parts of the world got in touch with the Guardian to share why they did not vote.Scores of people said they had not turned out as they felt their vote would not matter because of the electoral college system, since they lived in a safely blue or red state. This included a number of people who nonetheless had voted in the 2020 and 2016 elections.While various previous Democratic voters said they had abstained this time due to the Harris campaign’s stance on Israel or for other policy reasons, a number of people in this camp said they would have voted for the vice-president had they lived in a swing state.“I’m not in a swing state, and because of the electoral college my vote doesn’t count. I could have voted 500,000 times and it would not have changed the outcome,” said one such voter, a 60-year-old software developer with Latino heritage from Boston.Donald Trump has made clear that ordering a draconian crackdown on undocumented immigrants will be one of the first things he does, once he becomes president. The Guardian’s Adrian Carrasquillo reports that migrant rights groups are preparing to fight back:With Donald Trump ready to unleash his mass deportation policy in January, many local and national immigrant rights, legal aid and civil rights organizations are preparing for the unexpected.During his campaign, Trump often spoke of launching – on day one – “the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America”. Now that he has been elected, various rights groups are preparing for the uncertainty of how quickly and to what extent Trump will be able to execute his plans.After his inauguration, these groups expect a flurry of executive orders around rescinding Joe Biden’s orders on immigration and facilitating efforts to deport people. Trump is likely to rescind old rules on who is a priority for deportation, making it clear that authorities will deport anyone at any time. NBC News reported there could be five executive orders on immigration.Also expected is an immediate focus on criminals and work-site raids, which the former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) director and incoming “border czar” Tom Homan has confirmed.“Trump’s going to try to go big and portray his effort as focused on criminals,” said Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director of America’s Voice. “But of course, they’re blurring the lines on who is considered a criminal.”More signs have emerged of how Donald Trump will make good on his pledge to transform the US government, once he is inaugurated president. The New York Times has reported that Aaron Siri, a lawyer who has challenged the approval of vaccines for polio, hepatitis B and other preventable diseases, is sitting in on interviews for job candidates conducted by Robert F Kennedy Jr. Separately, the Wall Street Journal says that Trump’s transition team is exploring ways to downsize or get rid of banking regulators that were created in the wake of the Great Depression, and which have repeatedly stepping in to stabilize the US economy in the decades since.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker, has been hospitalized after sustaining an injury in Luxembourg, during a trip to commemorate the Battle of the Bulge.

      Daniel Penny, who was acquitted earlier this week on charges related to the chokehold death of an unhoused man on a New York City subway, will attend the US army-navy football game with JD Vance.

      Anita Dunn, a former White House adviser to Joe Biden, criticized the pardon of Hunter Biden.
      Remember Herschel Walker?The former NFL player was a Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia two years ago, but lost to Democrat Raphael Warnock after allegations of a variety of problematic conduct by Walker emerged.Walker has not been heard from much since then, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Patricia Murphy has revealed the reason why: he went back to school to get a degree he set aside to pursue a career in football.Here’s more:
      It’s not often that a story in politics makes you smile, especially these days. But that’s exactly what’s happening with the news that Herschel Walker, the former University of Georgia star running back, is graduating this week with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia at the age of 62.
      Like a lot of people, Walker had planned to get his degree long ago, but, as he explained, “life and football got in the way.” In his case, “life” meant a lot – starting with getting married and signing a multimillion-dollar contract to play for Donald Trump’s New Jersey Generals in the short-lived USFL. From there, he moved to Texas to play for the Dallas Cowboys before becoming a sort of journeyman – playing for three more NFL teams and eventually returning to Dallas to play for the Cowboys once again.
      …
      Despite Washington Republicans’ most aggressive defense during the campaign’s frenzied final weeks, Walker lost to Warnock in a runoff and quickly disappeared from public view. He put his house in Atlanta on the market, cut off contact from most of his political staff and, for all anybody knew, returned to Dallas where he’d started out.
      But then, more than a year after the campaign ended, came a picture. It was Walker, tucked into a tight desk-and-chair combo, snapped in a classroom during summer school classes on UGA’s main campus in Athens. A call to the registrar’s office confirmed that he had quietly reenrolled as an undergraduate at UGA’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences where he began more than 40 years earlier. Yes, at the age of 62, Walker was a college student again.
      It’s important here to say that this was no publicity stunt. There were no press releases to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution nor quiet tipoffs from Walker or his team. He simply seemed to be back in Athens to take care of long unfinished business. More