53 h. ago First Trump joked he wanted a third term. Then he got serious | Moira Donegan

The US president made himself explicit this week by saying: ‘I’m not joking’ when asked about his ambitions to stay in officeJokes have a specific relation to Trumpian politics: they are the tip of the spear for introducing illegal or once-unacceptable ideas to the public, under a thick gloss of irony or plausible deniability, to advance a far-right agenda.In 2016, Donald Trump’s support from the young, online “alt-right” was underestimated in part because so much of the profession of love for Trump, and for his racist and authoritarian ambitions, came in the form of supposed jokes. Trump himself, meanwhile, uses humor to charm and titillate, making jokes to demean adversaries, get audiences on his side, and hint, with winking coyness, about his next move. This has been his strategy for years.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

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6 d. ago The US government is effectively kidnapping people for opposing genocide | Moira Donegan

Rumeysa Ozturk, a visa holder, was snatched off the streets by Ice agents and sent to a detention center 1,000 miles away for opposing war crimes in GazaThe abductors wore masks because they do not want their identities known. On Tuesday evening, Rumeysa Ozturk exited her apartment building and walked on to the street in Somerville, Massachusetts – a city outside Boston – into the fading daylight. Ozturk, a Turkish-born PhD student at Tufts University who studies children’s media and childhood development, was on her way to an iftar dinner with friends, planning to break her Ramadan fast.In a video taken from a surveillance camera, she wears a pink hijab and a long white puffer coat against the New England cold. The first man, not uniformed but wearing plain clothes, as all the agents are, approaches her as if asking for directions. But he quickly closes in and grabs her by the wrists she has raised defensively toward her face. Continue reading...

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9 d. ago What the accidentally leaked war group chat reveals about the Trump administration | Moira Donegan

Thanks to the Signal leaks, we can see how the administration acts when they think they are in private. It’s not a pretty sightPerhaps one of the greatest lessons of the Donald Trump era, for me, has been in learning the difference between being shocked and being surprised. And indeed it was a bit shocking to learn, via an essay published by the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, that a high-profile journalist had been included on a chat on the commercial messaging app in which a military strike on the Houthi rebels in Yemen was coordinated – including discussions of the timing of the attack, debates about political messaging, personnel coordination and weapons to be used – seemingly without anyone noticing that he was there.It was shocking that their incompetence was so fortuitous – that the person they included, seemingly accidentally, in their unsecured group chat about war plans was someone so uniquely equipped to broadcast their idiocy to a large audience. But it was ...

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2 w. ago Politics have changed but the Democrats haven’t – they are old and out of touch | Moira Donegan

Leading Democrats vainly hope for a return to the politics of the past – they must engage with the realities of the presentIs this the way the Democratic party ends – not with a bang, but with a whimper? Last week, the party’s Senate caucus seemed poised to do something that they had never done before: block the Trump administration’s proposed continuing resolution, and shut down the government. It would have been a largely symbolic move, one that signaled opposition to the Trump administration’s usurpation of Congress’s spending authority and a willingness to play procedural hardball in order to slow Elon Musk’s radical anti-government agenda. It would have signaled, too, a party willing to take itself seriously as the opposition to a president with authoritarian ambitions.Government shutdowns are unpopular, but so, right now, is the Democratic party: several senators from swing states seemed ready to stick their necks out, ready to bet that it would be better to be seen doing some...

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3 w. ago Andrew Tate is back in the US – and a model of Trump’s worldview | Moira Donegan

As the anti-woman influencer sees it, domination is its own end. Is it any surprise he’s a supporter of the president?Andrew Tate is now a free man.The rightwing anti-woman influencer landed in Florida last week after being held detained for over two years in Romania on rape, sex trafficking and money laundering charges. The Romanian courts abruptly reversed their previous refusal to allow Tate to leave the country after several high-level Trump administration officials took an interest in his case – including Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr, who called Tate’s arrest in Romania “absolute insanity”. The Romanian foreign minister, Emil Hurezeanu, was reportedly approached by a Trump envoy about Tate’s case at a security conference in Munich in February; Tate arrived in the US within weeks. When asked if Trump had played a role in Tate and his brother’s release, the Tates’lawyer Joseph McBride said: “Do the math. These guys are on the plane.” Continue reading...

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4 w. ago Democrats are acting sedate and silent during Trump’s worst excesses | Moira Donegan

Trump is getting comfortable in power. And Democrats are nowhere to be seenWhat was the point of Donald Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday night? The annual speech – called the “State of the Union” address in every year except the one just after the president’s ascent to office – has long been a somewhat outdated bit of political theater, an event light on policy specifics and heavy on messaging in an era in which political messaging’s most effective venues have long since moved online.It’s perhaps even less clear what a speech to Congress is supposed to mean for this president, who has proven himself so indifferent to constitutional limits on his power – or for this Congress, which has shown itself so willing to abdicate its own constitutional responsibilities. It seems, like so many of the formalities of American politics do now, a bit like a phantom limb: something that Americans keep feeling for long after it has been excised. How long will it be, one wonders, until everyone...

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