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    Democrats accuse Trump of ‘intimidation’ campaign as FBI seeks interviews

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    A group of Democrats accused by Donald Trump of “seditious behavior” have said that the US president is using the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) against them as a “tool to intimidate and harass members of Congress”.The four politicians, along with two others, had made a video encouraging US military service members to resist unlawful orders – a message that angered Trump, who posted on social media that the group were “traitors” and thus could be jailed or even face the death penalty.The statement, released by congressional lawmakers Jason Crow of Colorado, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, confirmed that the FBI had contacted the House and Senate sergeants at arms requesting interviews with them.“No amount of intimidation or harassment will ever stop us from doing our jobs and honoring our constitution,” they said, adding that they had each sworn an oath “to support and defend” the US constitution.“That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. We will not be bullied. We will never give up the ship,” they added.The statement deepens a dispute between the Trump administration and Democrats, including Arizona senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly and Michigan congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, over the video message, which urged the military and intelligence services members to “refuse illegal orders”.Slotkin said the FBI’s counter-terrorism division had notified the group that “they are opening what appears to be an inquiry against the six of us” and described the move as a “scare tactic” by Trump.“To be honest, the president’s reaction and the use of the FBI against us is exactly why we made the video,” she said.“He believes in using the federal government against his perceived adversaries, and he’s not afraid to use the arms of the government against people he disagrees with. He does not believe the law applies to him … which is exactly why we made the video, to give people some assurance that they weren’t alone as they watch this stuff unfold.”The Pentagon has also said it is conducting a review of misconduct allegations against Kelly that could, it said, result in him being recalled to active duty to face court-martial proceedings. More

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      Mark Kelly: call for troops to disobey illegal orders is ‘non-controversial’

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      Senator Mark Kelly said it was “non-controversial” for him and other congressional Democrats to implore military personnel to disobey “illegal orders” from the Trump administration – hitting back at accusations of “serious allegations of misconduct” leveled against him by the Pentagon.“I said something that was pretty simple and non-controversial – and that was that members of the military should follow the law,” the Arizona Democrat senator, a former US navy officer and astronaut who flew on four separate space shuttle missions between 2001 and 2011, told MS Now on Monday night.Kelly then alluded to how the president went on social media to say Kelly and the others had engaged in “seditious behavior, punishable by death” – while also republishing another user’s post containing the phrase “hang them”.“And in response to that, Donald Trump said I should be executed, I should be hanged, I should be prosecuted,” Kelly said to political talkshow host Rachel Maddow.He added: “If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work. I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the constitution.”Kelly’s remarks came after the Pentagon announced it was launching an investigation into the senator after Trump protested that Kelly and the other five Democratic lawmakers “should be in jail right now” for releasing a video advising service members that “threats to our constitution” are coming “from right here at home”. The video also said military members can “refuse illegal orders”.On Tuesday, Fox News reported that the FBI had contacted US Capitol police in Washington DC to schedule interviews with the six Democrats in question.The Pentagon warned that it could recall Kelly to active duty to be court-martialed and cited a federal law that bans military retirees against interfering “with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces”.In a statement of his own, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, argued that the video at the center of the controversy was “despicable, reckless, and false”.“Encouraging our warriors to ignore the orders of their commanders undermines every aspect of ‘good order and discipline,’” Hegseth said.Trump weighed in with his own point of view, calling the senators’ statement “seditious behaviour at the highest level” and for an example to be set. “Their words cannot be allowed to stand – We won’t have a Country anymore!!! punishable by DEATH!”Active military members in the US – whose oath is to the constitution rather than the president – can face execution for the crime of sedition. Civilians, meanwhile, can be fined and imprisoned for up to 20 years if found to have engaged in seditious conspiracy.Meanwhile, the US Manual for Courts-Martial states that military requirements to obey orders do not apply “to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime” – while also prohibiting “contemptuous speech”.The dispute between the Trump administration and Kelly – whose wife, Gabrielle Giffords, narrowly survived an attempted assassination in 2011 while she was meeting her congressional constituents – comes amid claims from Democrats that the Pentagon has issued illegal orders. Democrats allege that the purported illegal orders include sending military personnel to the seal the US-Mexico border and in carrying out deadly strikes on so-called fast boats in the Pacific and the Caribbean that the administration claims were carrying illegal narcotics.Elizabeth Beaumont of Middle Tennessee State University’s Free Speech Center told the Associated Press that US military regulations “have been used to restrict political expression as well as other activities”.The dispute also hits a nerve on the use of “sedition” after Trump supporters were accused of precisely that by carrying out a deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 – when the first of his two non-consecutive presidential terms in ended in defeat to Joe Biden.Some of the mob members even called for the hanging of Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president at the time, who oversaw a congressional session certifying Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.Trump then granted presidential clemency to more than 1,500 Capitol attackers shortly after his second term began in January.In his remarks on Monday to MS Now about Trump and the video, Kelly said “sending a mob to round me and the other folks up … says a lot more about him than it says about me. He doesn’t want accountability.”Retired air force officer and Nebraska Republican congressman Don Bacon offered some measure of calm to the political mud-slinging, calling the Democrats’ video “unnecessary and foolish” but also drawing attention to the Pentagon’s response with an insult over its formal Department of Defense name.“Amateur hour once again at the Department of Dense,” Bacon wrote on X.Bacon added that Kelly and his fellow Democrats in the video “said don’t follow illegal orders – that is the law by the way”.“Good luck prosecuting someone who is quoting the law,” Bacon continued. “The administration should have just pointed out how dumb it was. The threats looked dumber.” More

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      Is the Democratic party embracing Bernie Sanders-style politics? | Dustin Guastella

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      Since the Democrats’ sweeping victories on 4 November, a strange thing has happened among the party factions: a semblance of unity has emerged.At first, “affordability” became the slogan of rapprochement. Moderates, populists and socialists agreed Democrats must campaign around the cost-of-living crisis and hang the broken economy around Donald Trump’s neck.At the same time party grandees – left, right and center – quietly agreed to ditch wokeness and embrace common-sense appeals to American solidarity and equality. Ideologically, we see the same convergence. Last week, writing in the Atlantic, Rogé Karma argued that the left has pulled the moderates toward populism, while the centrists have won debates on a number of cultural issues.And this week, James Carville – the bête noire of every leftwing Democrat and Bernie Sanders voter, the architect of Clintonian centrism – writes in the New York Times that he is become a populist.Here is Carville (James Carville!) describing what Democrats should do:“I am now an 81-year-old man and I know that in the minds of many, I carry the torch from a so-called centrist political era. Yet it is abundantly clear even to me that the Democratic party must now run on the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression.”Carville advocates a program that includes raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour (blowing past the old progressive demand of $15 an hour), universal childcare, free university education, and major investments in utilities. But more important than the suite of policies itself, the editorial signals to Democratic bigwigs that populism has won. A decade after he announced his first campaign for president, it seems that Sanders has won his crusade for the soul of the Democratic party.Winning consensus on the need for a “seismic” economic program is no small feat and it will go a long way to helping Democrats win back their working-class base. Still, there is a lot of work to be done and many pitfalls along the way.First, progressives must resist the temptation, so attractive to scorned factions, to reject centrist overtures. There is a danger that if moderates fulsomely embrace a social populist program, figures on the left will attempt to differentiate themselves by reanimating the dead-end politics of fringe woke causes.But being lefter-than-thou serves no one and would only succeed in helping the right paint the left as a collection of sky-pilots, eggheads, and weirdos. This is, in part, the lesson of the old Socialist party of Norman Thomas. Franklin Delano Roosevelt adopted the political narrative, and much of the practical program, of the socialists of his day. However, instead of embracing FDR’s social-democratic turn, Thomas & co tried more and more to distinguish themselves and discredit Roosevelt claiming that he only “carried out the socialist program on a stretcher”.Some on the left attacked Roosevelt’s enormously popular New Deal and lambasted Democrats as cynics and opportunists. The result was to hasten the political irrelevance of the very figures most responsible for inspiring a great populist revival in the 1930s. If today’s left wants to avoid a similar fate, they should embrace the new populists of the center and work with them to craft visionary social policy. And they should have the humility to revise their own opinions when the centrists have a point.Second, the turn toward populism will remain incomplete until party leaders are willing to stridently declare war on the economic elite – the same elite who fill the campaign coffers of powerful Democrats. Not only is it essential for candidates to draw lines between themselves and the very rich to demonstrate their populist convictions, but without naming the “millionaires and billionaires” as the cause of so much economic misery, Democrats will be unable to mount a serious challenge to rule by the rich.Many moderates who have lately flirted with populism have as yet been unwilling to point the finger at Wall Street and Silicon Valley as the villains of the contemporary order. Yet, it is precisely because the ultra-wealthy have hijacked American society that so many working-class Americans struggle to pay their bills. The fact is we cannot win a society that is more equal and more prosperous without directly challenging the plutocrats at the top.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFinally, policy matters. Becoming the party of “economic rage” is a good way to win elections but to fix the crisis (crises?), the new social populism must go beyond the standard welfare state toolbox. Carville and other newfound populists have made a huge political leap in embracing a suite of big, new public services and for that they should be commended. Yet it isn’t enough.No doubt, we urgently need bold redistributive programs to rebalance income and wealth and to address the persistent cost crunch. But these alone will not fix our broken economy. Nor are such programs popular enough to propel a populist takeover in Washington. To get a sense of just what is wrong, consider that since Bill Clinton was president, we have shed some 7m middle-income jobs in manufacturing, and in an exaggerated inverse-proportion we have gained some 700 billionaires.If a renewed leftwing populism is to succeed it needs to address this. We need to de-globalize the economy, to disentangle the home market from the increasingly dysfunctional world market. We need to bring manufacturing home and reindustrialize the rustbelt.We need to reign in and repatriate the hyper-global banking sector. We need to rebuild American infrastructure from coast to coast. And we need to strengthen the power of labor on the shop floor by leveling the legal playing field between workers and employers. All of this would amount to a democratic reorganization of the political economy away from the global rich and toward the domestic working class.This would be a populism worthy of the name and if moderate Democrats are embracing such a call, they ought to be welcomed with open arms. And if the hour isn’t too late, this kind of appeal might be the only chance Democrats have of winning back the working class and retaking Washington.

      Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 More

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      Majority of Latino voters disapprove of Trump, Pew study finds

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      A majority of Latinos disapprove of Donald Trump and his economic and immigration policies, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.After receiving support from nearly half of Latino voters in the 2024 election, Trump had lost the backing of a majority surveyed in October. Pew found that 70% of Latinos “disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president”, while 65% disapprove of his administration’s approach to immigration and 61% believe his economic policies have worsened economic conditions.Trump won 48% of the Latino vote in 2024, up from 28% in 2016. Latinos, one of the fastest-growing demographics in the United States, account for one in five Americans.After the 2024 election, Latinos, particularly Latino men, credited Trump’s economic proposals and immigration policies – suggesting he was not serious about threats of mass deportations – for winning their vote.At the time, two-thirds of Latinos said they “do not feel like he is talking about me” when Trump discussed his immigration policies, and more than 40% approved of his proposal to build a border wall, according to an October 2024 Siena poll for the New York Times.But since Trump implemented sweeping tariffs and social safety net spending cuts, alongside aggressive immigration raids, that support has dwindled. In June, a co-founder of Latinas for Trump criticized widespread immigration arrests as “unacceptable and inhumane”.The results of the November elections showed that Democrats won back Latino voters in New Jersey and Virginia’s gubernatorial races.The shifts within the Latino electorate are still markedly divided by political party. According to the Pew report, while nearly all Latinos who voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election disapprove of Trump, 81% of those who voted for Trump approve of the president’s job (down from 93% at the start of his term).A majority of Latinos worry that they, a family member or a close friend could be deported under the president’s heightened immigration enforcement – where 42% expressed such fear in March, 52% do now. Nearly 60% said they had witnessed or heard of immigration raids or arrests in their community in the past six months.For the first time in nearly two decades, Pew reported that “most Hispanics say their situation has worsened”. While 10% of Hispanics told Pew that Trump’s policies helped them, 78% said the president’s policies harmed their community. More

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      Why did young men move left in this month’s US elections? | Cory Alpert

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      Just a few months ago, it seemed that the political landscape was changing permanently, with young people shifting right – especially young men. Democrats spun up a vortex of efforts to win them back, but they often appeared to be flailing. This month’s elections, however, told a different story.Young men in the US face a political identity crisis. It should not be controversial to say that the world that many were promised as children has not come to fruition. Two decades of war and a turbulent economy have combined with a massively changing workforce. Young men’s disaffection should come as no real surprise.An entire ecosystem of hucksters has emerged to take advantage of these young people, peddling a dark vision that offers violence and control as a response to a changing world. Meanwhile, the Democratic party failed to imagine a political future that included these young men. In Democrats’ parlance, anyone who took one step in that direction was hopelessly lost, unable to see the beautiful egalitarian future that we could create together.There is a fine line here. I am not arguing for the redemption, welcome, or whitewashing of the people who have peddled this bleak reality. But we can and should build a political coalition that includes this generation, that doesn’t leave them out in the cold, only to find a home in the most bleak fringes of a political movement that tells them that a lust for control over other people, especially women, is the only way to find meaning.On the left, we tell ourselves the story of our own vaunted sympathy, and yet we assign only blame to the young men who do something similar, looking for community and only finding it among the most opportunistic and dangerous political movements. We have done little to welcome them in.And while Democrats had solid policies and economic plans, Republicans, backed by an army of digital content, were able to take the mantle of running on the economy and framing the left as cultural warriors out of touch with the majority of Americans.But the good news is that this month’s elections in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City show Democrats have learned a lesson.The three marquee campaigns of this year were all remarkably similar, despite coming from different parts of the ideological spectrum. Their messaging was relentlessly focused on affordability – how expensive and difficult life has become for the working and middle-class people of their communities. Their solutions covered a wide ideological range, but the focus remained the same.Most young men, like most trans people and Black people and immigrants and everyone else, are dealing with housing that has skyrocketed in price, especially compared with our parents’ generations. Instead of having one career in our lifetimes, we now have to continually seek new jobs. Living independently as an adult is much more expensive and complicated now than it has been. These affordability campaigns gave young men something to do about those pressures rather than ceding that frustration to the most cynical actors.Undoubtedly this conversation is easier to have when Donald Trump is taking three steps every day to dismantle the economy. There’s a real sense that the economy is getting worse. That it’s more difficult to pay bills and keep food on the table, especially when Republicans are, quite literally, ensuring that 42 million people cannot afford to keep food on their table by refusing to fund Snap during their government shutdown.Republicans got distracted, trying to defend Trump and also trying to repeat his playbook of tying Democrats to the culture war of the moment. But without Trump’s singular ability to control a media narrative, Republicans with far less political talent and capital floundered, making themselves look weak and silly in the process.The political miracle is that this ruthless focus on affordability and cost of living may have brought in many of those same young men who had followed Trump a year ago. In Virginia and New Jersey, men under 30 broke for their new Democratic governors, with about six in 10 supporting Spanberger, according to the AP. In New York, young men went for Zohran Mamdani over Andrew Cuomo by a margin of nearly 40 points, according to a Tufts Circle analysis.It turns out that these young men are not completely lost to us. We just failed to imagine a reality where they could be in our camp.Affordability broke through amid the longest government shutdown in US history, as consumer prices were rising ever higher thanks in part to Trump’s tariffs. For all of his bluster, eventually the economic reality becomes an unavoidable political crisis for anyone not far gone in his cult of personality who has to pay their bills.Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, and Mamdani in New York City showed us that the frustration that every working and middle-class person feels could be directed into a political coalition that sees marginalized people as people also affected by the greed and corruption that has made life unaffordable for so many.Young men, like everyone else, are looking for a politics that can make life a little better. Democrats are finally figuring out how to offer them that chance.

      Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He served in the Biden-Harris administration for three years More

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      US senator slams Republicans’ silence on Trump’s violent threats to Democrats

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      Senator Mark Kelly on Sunday urged congressional Republicans to publicly reject Trump’s threats against him and five other Democratic lawmakers who stated that military personnel are not obligated to follow illegal commands.“We’ve heard very little, basically crickets, from Republicans in the United States Congress about what the president has said about hanging members of Congress,” Kelly, of Arizona, said on CBS’s Face the Nation.Kelly noted that both Donald Trump and Republican legislators had previously asked Democrats to moderate their language after the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September, asking: “What happened to that?”“His words carry tremendous weight, more so than anybody else in the country, and he should be aware of that, and because of what he says, there is now increased threats against us,” Kelly said of Trump’s accusations.Earlier in the week, Kelly and five other Democratic members of Congress released a video on X directed toward active-duty military and intelligence workers, stating: “Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders.” All six participants have backgrounds in military or intelligence service. Kelly spent 25 years in the navy.Trump reacted on social media on Thursday, writing that the lawmakers should be arrested and tried for “seditious behavior”. In another post, he declared “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” and reposted a message saying “HANG THEM, GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!”In response, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic whip Katherine Clark, and Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar issued a joint statement condemning Trump’s remarks, emphasizing that “political violence has no place in America.”Kelly reiterated on Sunday that the president is “trying to intimidate us” and added: “I’m not going to be intimidated.”Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar, in an interview on Meet the Press on Sunday, condemned Trump’s “dangerous” posts. “What is dangerous is the president of the United States threatening these members of Congress with death. Literally, saying that they should be executed,” Klobuchar said.Vice-president JD Vance also weighed in on Sunday, posting on X: “If the president hasn’t issued illegal orders, then members of Congress telling the military to defy the president is by definition illegal.” More

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      Politicians shocked by Marjorie Taylor Greene’s surprise resignation announcement

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene’s surprise resignation from Congress late on Friday, saying she refused to be a “battered wife” following her public fallout with Donald Trump, has been slammed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman and Greene’s frequent sparring partner.“She’s carefully timing her departure just 1-2 days after her pension kicks in,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement on her Instagram account, and criticized her voting record on healthcare.Greene abruptly resigned from Congress, effective 5 January, in a 10-minute video post outlining her unhappiness with Republicans on issues including the public release of the Jeffrey Epstein files in the government’s possession, US financing of foreign conflicts, Trump’s decision to potentially back a candidate against her, and the cost of living and healthcare.After her service to Trump, she said she objected to being “expected to defend the President against impeachment after he hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against me and tried to destroy me”.“I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better,” Greene said.But Ocasio-Cortez said Greene “is saying a lot but her ACTIONS have not backed up the rhetoric. For all her talk, she’s STILL voting with them to gut healthcare … ”Greene voted in the summer for cuts to Medicaid and the reduction of enhanced tax credits for the Affordable Care Act, but then in October criticized the ACA cuts as premiums soared.Ocasio-Cortez also repeated some of her criticism of shares bought by Greene earlier this year before Trump said he was pausing tariffs. Greene has denied any impropriety in her stock trading.Kentucky Republican congressman Thomas Massie, who has also taken public stands against Trump including over the Epstein files release, said on X that he was “very sad for our country but so happy for my friend Marjorie. I’ll miss her tremendously.”Massie added that Greene “embodies what a true Representative should be. Everyone should read her statement; there’s more honesty expressed in these four pages than most politicians will speak in a lifetime.”Early on Saturday, Trump also reacted to Greene’s announcement, posting on Truth Social that “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown” had decided to call it “quits” because of “PLUMMETING Poll Numbers, and not wanting to face a Primary Challenger with a strong Trump Endorsement (where she would have no chance of winning!) … ”Trump also said that Greene’s political relationship with Massie “did not help her”.“For some reason, primarily that I refused to return her never ending barrage of phone calls, Marjorie went BAD,” he added. “Nevertheless, I will always appreciate Marjorie, and thank her for her service to our Country!”But Trump later told NBC News he would like to see Greene resume her political career.“It’s not going to be easy for her” to revive her career in politics, he said, adding: “I’d love to see that.” In the meantime, “she’s got to take a little rest”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDavid Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland school massacre in 2018 who briefly served as a co-vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee and tussled with Greene over gun control, posted: “See ya!” on X.Greene was seen in a 2019 video following a then-18-year-old Hogg outside Capitol Hill, calling him a “coward” for not defending his stance on guns and accusing him of “using” kids to pass gun control laws. Hogg and other Parkland survivors used the video as evidence to call for Greene’s resignation when she was appointed to the House Republican committee in 2021.Barbara Comstock, a former Republican House member and a Trump critic, lauded Greene’s decision on social media. “She doesn’t want to be a Republican ‘battered wife’ taking Trump’s abuse and getting death threats and pretending it’s all ok only to end up in the minority. Good for her,” Comstock posted.Greene’s decision to leave Congress came soon after another plot twist was playing out in the White House between Trump and New York City’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, who spoke of their shared commitment to the future of the nation’s most populous city.Trump, who had in the past called Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and a “total nut job”, spoke of how impressed he was with the man who had called his administration “authoritarian” and said he anticipates a productive relationship.“I expect to be helping him, not hurting him,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after a private meeting on Friday afternoon that lasted under an hour. “Because I want New York City to be great.”Mamdani said that he appreciated that during their meeting they “had focused not on places of disagreement, which there are many, and also focused on the shared purpose that we have in serving New Yorkers”.Both said they had shared ideas about affordability and developing new housing in the city. “Some of his ideas are really the same ideas that I have,” the president said of Mamdani about inflationary issues. 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      Trump calls Marjorie Taylor Greene resignation ‘great news for the country’

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican Georgia congresswoman who had a dramatic blow-up with Donald Trump despite being his longtime ally, announced on Friday she would be resigning – which the president called “great news”.“Loyalty should be a two-way street,” Greene said in a lengthy resignation statement shared on social media, adding that it was “unfair and wrong” that Trump turned on her for disagreeing with him.Trump, who last week announced he was withdrawing his support of Greene, appeared to celebrate her resignation. “I think it’s great news for the country. It’s great,” he told an ABC News reporter.When asked if Greene had informed him, Trump said: “Nah, it doesn’t matter, you know, but I think it’s great. I think she should be happy.”Greene had said last week she was the subject of “a hotbed of threats” after Trump withdrew his support for and endorsement of her.Greene reiterated those threats in her statement, saying she had faced “never-ending personal attacks, death threats, lawfare, ridiculous slander and lies about me, that most people could never withstand even for a day”.Texas congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat, posted on social media: “I’m going to be honest … I didn’t see this coming but the threats that come with being on the opposite side of Trump ARE REAL!”The move sent shockwaves through US politics. The Republican political strategist Shermichael Singleton called it “a big shocker”.“Maybe she’s looking at future plans,” Singleton told CNN.Greene may have an ally in Democratic congressman Ro Khanna, who worked with her to pass the bill to release the files related to the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.“MTG is likely to be a formidable 2028 candidate,” Khanna told NBC News. “Her stances on Epstein, on regulating AI, and anti-war are more in touch with MAGA voters than JD Vance.”Maga influencer Steve Bannon told the New York Times “the House is not big enough” for Greene’s ambitions or personality. “She had her committee assignments pulled by Pelosi in her first term – and rose to be a national figure. We haven’t seen or heard the last of M.T.G,” he wrote in a text message.Some observers couldn’t help but point out the strange turn of events – a one-time Trump ally resigning hours after an Oval Office meeting in which Trump heaped praise on Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist mayor-elect of New York City whom he had called a “100% Communist Lunatic”.“Trump glazed Mamdani so hard Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned from Congress,” Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic National Committee vice chair, wrote on X.Salleigh Grubbs, who used to chair the party in Cobb County – which overlaps with Greene’s 14th congressional district in north-west Georgia, said she was “heartbroken”. “MTG put it all on the line time after time. She fought for her district and put America First. What more could anyone have wanted?” she wrote on X.Shawn Harris, a Georgia Democrat running for Congress in Greene’s solidly Republican district, sought to rally supporters in response to the announcement.“As you’ve likely heard, Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced her resignation effective January 5, 2026,” Harris said in a post on social media on Friday. “Get ready Georgia! Teachers, farmers, veterans, EVERYONE, I need your support.”“Her split with Trump made her an even bigger national sensation,” reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia’s biggest newspaper, in its coverage of her resignation. More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene announces resignation; Trump and Mamdani have cordial White House meeting – as it happened

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      This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments.

      Donald Trump hosted Zohran Mamdani, New York’s mayor-elect, for an Oval Office meeting and news conference that was surprisingly cordial.

      Republican lawmakers and pro-Trump news outlets were stunned by how thrilled Trump seemed to be by Mamdani, throwing their plans to cast the democratic socialist as the face of the Democratic party into disarray.

      Marjorie Taylor Greene announced that she was resigning from Congress in January rather than fight a primary against a Trump-backed candidate.

      Perhaps no one was more aggrieved by Trump’s embrace of Mamdani than Elise Stefanik, the New York congresswoman who has made vitriolic attacks on Mamdani as a “jihadist” the platform for her run for New York governor against Mamdani supporter Kathy Hochul. When Trump was directly asked if he agreed with Stefanik that Mamdani is a jihadist, he dismissed the charge.

      Trump repeatedly stepped in to defend Mamdani from hostile questioning from outlets like the New York Post and Fox News. When a Fox News correspondent pressed Mamdani about whether he considers Trump to be a “fascist”, the president offered the mayor-elect an unusual life raft. “That’s OK,” Trump said while tapping Mamdani’s arm. “You can just say it, it’s easier than explaining it.”

      When asked by a reporter whether he would live in New York under Mamdani’s leadership, Donald Trump says “absolutely”, after his meeting with the mayor-elect today.

      Samuel Alito, the conservative supreme court justice, paused a lower court order that new congressional maps in Texas, gerrymandered to favor Republicans, are illegal.
      Normal service has resumed on Donald Trump’s social media account, after he spent Friday evening posting photos of himself with Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, the president returned to type with a screed against the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, in which he announced his intention to terminate Temporary Protected Status for Somali refugees in that state.Although Trump cast this as a change “effective immediately”, the president has no legal power to do so.As Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a lawyer with American Immigration Council, explains, there is “no legal means by which he can do this. It’s not a presidential power. TPS by law cannot be terminated early. Somali TPS is not set to expire until March 17, 2026. DHS may make an attempt to do this but it would be immediately struck down.”Trump’s post was likely prompted by claims from rightwing activists featured on Fox News they had uncovered fraud among Somalis in Minnesota. In his post, Trump claimed, without evidence, that “Minnesota … is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.”Michigan state police responded on Friday to a bomb threat at the home of Elissa Slotkin, a Democratic senator Donald Trump accused of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” on his social media platform on Thursday.Slotkin was not home, according to her Senate office.Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who served in Iraq, joined five Democratic lawmakers who served in the military and intelligence community to remind those in active service that they can “refuse illegal orders”. The six lawmakers recorded a social media video that was released on Tuesday, and quickly became the focus of outrage on rightwing news channels.At a White House briefing, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, falsely said that the Democrats had encouraged active-duty military and intelligence officer to disobey lawful orders.On Friday, a dozen House Republicans who served in the military recorded a video of their own reminding soldiers that they have a duty to obey lawful orders.Justice Samuel Alito of the US supreme court temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that found Texas’ 2026 congressional redistricting plan likely discriminates on the basis of race.Alito’s order will remain in place until Monday at 5pm while the court considers whether to allow the new map favorable to Republicans to be used in the midterm elections.The court’s conservative majority has blocked similar lower court rulings because they have come too close to elections.Alito handles emergency appeals from Texas.Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Maga Republican congresswoman who was denounced by Donald Trump over her support for the release of the Epstein files, announced on Friday that she is resigning from office, effective in January.Greene explained her decision in a scathing 10-minute social media video in which she defended her record of support for Trump and far-right priorities, like the crackdown on immigration, the defeat of green energy policies and anti-trans initiatives, but said she did not want her district “to have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary” against her by a Trump-backed candidate.She went on to argue that she had broken with Trump over just a few issues, including the issuing of H-1B visas to skilled foreign workers, a ban on AI regulation, “50 year mortgages scams”, involvement in foreign wars and the release of files related to the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender Trump socialized with for more than 15 years.“Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States, whom I fought for,” Greene said.“Loyalty should be a two way street,” she said. “American First should mean America First and only Americans First, with no other foreign countries ever being attached to America First in our halls of government.” Greene has been an outspoken opponent of Israeli’s war on Gaza, with US support, calling it “a genocide”.“If I am cast aside by MAGA Inc and replaced by Neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Military Industrial War Complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class that can’t even relate to real Americans, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well,” Greene said.She then hinted at a future role in politics, amid widespread speculation that she could be positioning herself to run for the 2028 Republican nomination.“When the common American people finally realize and understand that the Political Industrial Complex of both parties is ripping this country apart” Greene said, and understand that “common Americans, The People, possess the real power over Washington, then I’ll be here by their side to rebuild it.”“Until then, I’m going back to the people I love, to live life to the fullest as I always have, and look forward to a new path ahead. I will be resigning from office with my last day being January 5, 2026,” she concluded.The Georgia congresswoman has recently claimed that she was simply misled by the internet when she embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory and wrote on Facebook in 2018 that wildfires in California had been started by lasers from “space solar generators” controlled by “Rothschild Inc, international investment banking firm”.The armies of lefty America and of Maga were assembled ready to watch their champions do battle. After all, Donald Trump had called Zohran Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and “total nut job”. The incoming democratic socialist New York mayor in turn had called the Republican US president a “despot” and “fascist”.But anyone expecting to see fists fly and shirts torn in the Oval Office was in for a disappointment. Trump, 79, and 34-year-old Mamdani actually got on rather well. In fact beautifully, bewilderingly, bizarrely well. Instead of Batman v Superman, this was Toy Story besties Woody and Buzz Lightyear.Perhaps the old left v right binaries really are dead. This was a case of game recognising game – of Queens recognising Queens. Trump is now on much better terms with Zohran Mamdani than Marjorie Taylor Greene, his fellow Republican. Mamdani got a warmer reception from Trump than from the leaders of his own party – a world turned upside down.The buddy movie began with Trump sitting behind the Resolute Desk and Mamdani standing to his side, a statuette of George Washington behind him. “We have one thing in common – we want this city of ours that we love to do very well,” the president said, referring to New York.He added: “I think you’re going to have hopefully a really great mayor. The better he does – the happier I am. I will say there’s no difference in party, there’s no difference in anything, and we’re going to be helping him to make everybody’s dream come true, having a strong and very safe New York.”That great thud was the sound of White House reporters’ jaws hitting the floor of the Oval Office. That shredding noise was the sound of Republican strategists destroying their playbook to demonise Mamdani as the Marxist face of the Democrats.Three weeks ago, Donald Trump posted on his social network 20 photographs of his marble makeover of the bathroom in the Lincoln Bedroom. A few days later, his party was heavily defeated in elections as voters complained that he was more focused on redecorating the White House than bringing down the cost of living.Today, after claiming that he is focused on affordability at a friendly meeting with the mayor-elect of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, the president shared photographs of himself, grinning and giving a thumb-up sign, with Mamdani in the White House.Trump’s caption for the first of the photos was a sharp departure from his previous rhetoric about Mamdani being a “communist lunatic”. It was, Trump wrote on his social media platform, “a Great Honor meeting Zohran Mamdani, the new Mayor of New York City!”The highly anticipated Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani – the mayor-elect of New York City, the US president’s beloved home town – was hardly the combustible tête-à-tête many had predicted. For the moment at least, the two New Yorkers appeared relaxed, smiling and cautiously optimistic about the work they might accomplish together.Neither revived their hot campaign trail rhetoric, in which they cast each other as diametrically opposed political adversaries. Trump had labeled Mamdani a “100% communist lunatic” and urged voters to back his opponent, the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. In turn, Mamdani assailed Trump as a “despot” and pledged to be the president’s “worst nightmare”.Republicans and pro-Trump media outlets were gravely disappointed by the lack of fireworks at Friday’s Oval Office meeting between New York’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, and Queens native Donald Trump, who had attacked the democratic socialist as “a 100% Communist lunatic”, before showering him with praise at the meeting Mamdani requested.In the hours before the meeting, the encounter was described by Fox News as Trump’s “showdown with socialism” and equated to a prize fight and billed as “the Battle of the Ages: capitalism versus communism” on pillow salesman Mike Lindell’s TV outlet.As Mamdani made his way to Washington on Friday morning, Rick Scott, a Republican senator from Florida, shared the selfie he posted from his flight with the ominous caption: “Here’s the new face of the Democrat party — a literal communist — on his way to the White House to be schooled by President Trump.”In the end, the meeting went so well for Mamdani that the Democratic Socialists of America mocked the Fox “showdown” graphic in a post that said simply: “Socialism won! Join DSA”.In the immediate aftermath of the meeting, a Fox Business anchor David Asman was stunned, saying: “Just one word – wow.”“Commie Mamdani as the president has [been] referring to his guest in the Oval Office there for the past several months, uh, looked like best friends with president Trump now,” he added.On Friday morning a host on the slavishly pro-Trump outlet Newsmax, Todd Starnes, posted a fantasy of how rough the meeting would be for Mamdani. “SCENARIO: Mamdani enters the Oval Office today only to be greeted by Tom Homan who then personally escorts the Communist back to Uganda.”By Friday afternoon, Starnes was puzzled by the very different reality: “I thought Mamdani was supposed to be a fascist dictator?” he asked. “What the heck is going on at the White House?”As Aaron Fritschner, an aide for Democratic congressman, Don Beyer of Virginia, pointed out: “Republicans spent the whole day in the House making everyone re-vote on the ‘horrors of socialism’ resolution specifically over Mamdani, it’s literally the only thing we did today, and hours later Trump says ‘He has the same ideas I have.’ It’s just beautiful.”The fact that Mamdani seemed to charm Trump into submission baffled even some of his supporters. Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan congresswoman who is a fellow democratic socialist and DSA member, shared video of Trump telling Mamdani it is fine to call him a fascist with the words: “What the heck just happened?”Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, just posted video of Donald Trump nodding in agreement with him as he told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that, during his campaign, “what we found, time and again, is that working people were left behind in the politics of our city, and what we’re looking to do is put those people right back at the heart of our politics, so that we don’t have a situation where we’re in the wealthiest city in the history of the world, and yet one in five can’t even afford $2.90 for a Metro card”.Mamdani was responding to a question from a correspondent for the far-right outlet Newsmax who had asked him if he accepted that, because “Democrats have run New York City for a long time … do you see Democrat policy specifically as being a problem?”Mamdani, who ran partly as a critic of the Democratic establishment, began his reply by saying: “Look, I think that there are many things in our city where we have to own the responsibility of it, things that existed long before the president was the president, and those are also part of the message of our campaign, was to take on a broken politics of the past. And I ran against a number of candidates who represented different versions of that past.”At one point during the exchange with reporters in the Oval Office, Zohran Mamdani took a moment to mention that he appreciated seeing a painting of another New York president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, among the portraits in Donald Trump’s White House.“One thing I also appreciated is in our meeting to appreciate a portrait of FDR, and the incredible work that was done with the New Deal, and also in thinking about what it can look like when the federal government and New York City government work together to deliver affordability, it can be transformative,” Mamdani said.Trump then took credit for selecting the “great portrait of FDR” hanging in the cabinet room he re-decorated. “When the mayor saw that portrait, he said, ‘Sir, do you mind if I have a picture taken by that? It’s an amazing portrait.’”Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor-elect, walked out of their meeting on Friday afternoon with an unlikely alliance, agreeing to work together on housing, food prices and cost-of-living concerns that have defined both their political appeals to working-class voters.“We agreed a lot more than I would have thought,” Trump said in the Oval Office, sometimes jumping in to shield Mamdani from aggressive questioning from the press.The sit-down – which many had anticipated would be contentious, given months of intense rhetoric in which Trump branded Mamdani a “communist lunatic” – instead produced camaraderie, warm words and concrete pledges of cooperation between the Republican president and the self-described democratic socialist who secured a commanding electoral victory earlier at the beginning of November with over 50% of the vote.“I feel very confident that he can do a very good job,” Trump said after the meeting, offering praise for his ideological opposite. “The better he does, the happier I am. I will say there’s no difference in party. There’s no difference in anything, and we’re going to be helping him to make everybody’s dream come true, having a strong and very safe New York.”During their Oval Office exchange with reporters, which was staged in a familiar fashion for this White House, with Donald Trump seated behind his desk and his guest forced to stand, Zohran Mamdani referred to conversations he had, last November, with Queens residents who voted for Trump in the 2024 election.Mamdani even said that he spoke with a pharmacist who told him that Trump’s father, Fred, had been a customer.Some of those conversations, days after the election, were recorded and featured in a social media video posted on Mamdani’s YouTube channel before he launched his mayoral campaign. In the video, voters told Mamdani that Trump’s promise to lower the cost of living was a major factor in their decision. He told them that he planned to run for mayor on a platform of freezing rents, making buses free and making universal child care a reality.Here is that November 2024 video:Several observers of the meeting between Trump and Mamdani pointed out on social media that, by embracing the popular young mayor-elect instead of confronting him, Donald Trump seemed to upend well-laid Republican plans to make the democratic socialist the face of the Democratic party, as strategy to cast Democrats as extremists.John DeLillo, a writer, posted a satirical version of the disconnect on social media with this imaginary dialogue between the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the president:
      mike johnson: we are going to make zohran mamdani the face of the democratic party
      donald trump: and what a beautiful face it is! look at that smile! we love zohran mamdani, don’t we folks
      A close ally of New York’s mayor-elect, the city comptroller Brad Lander, responded to Donald Trump telling Zohran Mamdani it is fine to call him a fascist by posting on social media: “Pretty sure Zohran just charmed Donald Trump into agreeing that he’s a fascist.”The surprisingly cordial Oval Office meeting between Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist mayor-elect of New York City, and Donald Trump, the Queens native who tried and failed to keep him from being elected, just concluded.Despite the best efforts of a slate of correspondents from pro-Trump outlets selected by the White House to ask the pair questions, Trump and Mamdani refused repeated attempts to goad the two men into conflict.Here are some of the key moments:

      Mamdani said that his meeting with the president was “productive” and “focused on the place of shared admiration and love – which is New York City and the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers”.

      Trump repeatedly stepped in to defend Mamdani from hostile questioning from outlets like the New York Post and Fox News, When Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich pressed Mamdani about whether he considers Trump to be a “fascist”, the president offered the mayor-elect an unusual life raft. “That’s OK,” Trump said while tapping Mamdani’s arm. “You can just say it, it’s easier than explaining it.”

      When the same Fox correspondent tried to frame Mamdani as a hypocrite for flying to the meeting from New York instead of taking a train, which is better for the environment, Trump said “I’ll stick up for you” and pointed out that it is much faster to fly and the mayor-elect is busy.

      When asked by a reporter whether he would live in New York under Mamdani’s leadership, Trump said “absolutely”. “We agree on a lot more than I would have thought,” Trump said. “I want him to do a great job, and we’ll help them do a great job.”

      For his part, Mamdani was relentlessly focused on the issue of making New York a more fair and affordable place to live, refusing to be knocked off course even by questions from the Pizzagate conspiracist Jack Posobiec who falsely accused Mamdani of planning to tax white New Yorkers more than New Yorkers of color.

      Trump wished Mamdani success in running the city he called home: “I think he wants to make it greater than ever before, and if he can, we’ll be out there cheering.”

      Trump stressed that he admired Mamdani’s political campaign and distanced himself from how own previously vitriolic denunciations of the democratic socialist as a communist. “I think he’s different, and that can be in a very positive way”, Trump said. “He has a chance to do something really great for New York … we’re going to be helping him”.

      Asked by a reporter if he agrees with his Republican ally Elise Stefanik’s characterization of Mamdani as a “jihadist”, Trump dismisses that as campaign rhetoric and says: “I met with a man who’s a very rational person”.

      Trump tried hard to attach himself to Mamdani’s focus on affordability. “I congratulated him, and we talked about some things in very strong common like housing and getting housing built, and food and prices,” Trump said. While the president has insisted for months that prices have gone down during his administration, a false claim that is contradicted by government data, his sagging poll numbers make it plain that the public is not buying this big lie. Having previously said that he didn’t want to hear the word “affordability” again, casting is as “a Democratic hoax”, Trump spent much of the appearance with Mamdani stressing that this is one of their shared concerns.
      Asked by a reporter if he agrees with his Republican ally Elise Stefanik’s characterization of Mamdani as a “jihadist”, Trump dismisses that as campaign rhetoric and says: “No, I don’t… I met with a man who’s a very rational person”.Throughout this spray with the media, after his meeting with Zohran Mamdani, Trump has been exceptionally cordial.He’s extolled how the mayor-elect “came out of nowhere” and praised his campaign and staff. Trump also defended Mamdani from adversarial lines of questioning, including being pressed by Fox News about why the mayor-elect flew to DC, and whether he believes the president to be a “fascist”. Trump even wished Mamdani success in running the city he called home: “I think he wants to make it greater than ever before, and if he can, we’ll be out there cheering.” More