5 h. ago The Trump dynasty could run and run – but will Ivanka, Barron or Kai take the crown? | Arwa Mahdawi

This week, Trump’s granddaughter announced she definitely doesn’t want to go into politics. Expect a run for office very soonLast week Kai Trump, Donald Trump Jr’s daughter and the president’s eldest grandchild, publicly declared she had no plans to run for office. The 18-year-old appeared on Logan Paul’s Impaulsive podcast, where she stated that “politics is such a dangerous thing I think if both sides met in the middle, everyone would be so much more happier.” (Maybe tell that to your grandpa, kid.) “To be honest with you,” she said, “I stay out of politics completely I don’t want anything to do with politics.”Look, I know you’re still very young, Kai, so here’s a little advice from an old lady: maybe work just a teeny bit harder at keeping a safe distance from politics. It has not gone unobserved that the influencer and golfer has made a lot of content about life behind the scenes at the White House. She’s also launched an apparel collection, which she’s modelled on the White Hou...

Politics

7 d. ago Nicki Minaj’s Maga conversion is doing nothing for her career – or is it? | Arwa Mahdawi

The rapper’s recent cosying up to the Trump administration has upset a lot of her fans, but is she playing the long game?Starships are meant to fly, but Nicki Minaj’s musical career is now doing a Maga-propelled nosedive. For the past few months, the rapper and former gay icon has been horrifying many of her fans by cosying up to the Trump administration.In November, for example, Minaj shared a post by Donald Trump about the treatment of Christians in Nigeria and agreed to collaborate with the administration on awareness around the issue. Then, in December, the rapper made a surprise appearance at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest convention, where she heaped praise on the late Charlie Kirk (who once said Minaj was not a good role model for “18-year-old Black girls”) and the vice-president, JD Vance. She also accidentally called Vance an “assassin” while talking to Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow, but was quickly forgiven for her word choice. “I love this woman,” Erika Kirk proclaimed aft...

Politics

8 d. ago Elon Musk is moving back into politics. Can’t he take up a new hobby instead? Arwa Mahdawi

It didn’t go very well for him last time, but the tech billionaire seems to have abandoned his plans for a third party and has renewed his bromance with the president “You know, I’ve generally found that when I get involved in politics, it ends up badly,” Elon Musk mused on Nikhil Kamath’s podcast in November.Oh, we know, Elon, we most definitely know. The world is still reeling from the tech billionaire’s little experiment in politicking last year. Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) slashed federal jobs, dismantled foreign aid programmes and left a trail of chaos in its wake. It’s not clear whether any taxpayer money was saved, but experts are warning a lot of lives will be lost. By one calculation, there could be about 14 million excess deaths across the globe by 2030 if the US fails to restore aid funding. Thanks, Elon! Continue reading...

Politics

8 d. ago Greta Thunberg came to stay – and my kid may have inadvertently helped her get arrested | Arwa Mahdawi

The activist had held a sign written with my daughter’s crayon. Try explaining that to a four-year-oldIt was 6am. London. A few days before Christmas. My four-year-old is singing at the top of her lungs and charging around my parents’ house on a hunt for the perfect crayon. There is nothing particularly unusual about this scene except for the fact that the crayon in question was for Greta Thunberg. The world’s most well-known activist needed a writing tool and my daughter, O, was on the case. (Remember this crayon: it’s going to be important later on.)O, I should note, had absolutely no idea who Greta was. We’re not longtime chums or anything like that. Rather Greta was in London to support the Palestine Action-linked hunger strikers. She needed somewhere to stay and my dad, who is a Palestinian refugee, and appreciative of anyone speaking up about the place where he was born but can’t return to live in, keeps an open house for activists who need a bed or a meal. When the visit had ...

Events

1 week ago Tennessee actually just did something amazing for women | Arwa Mahdawi

The state has created the first registry in the US to track repeat domestic violence offendersLet’s say you’re going on a first date and you want to make sure the person you’re meeting up with isn’t a registered sex offender. If you live in the US, you can find this out very quickly: there’s a centralized website provided by the US Department of Justice that lets you search a name or location in seconds.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago The year in patriarchy: Taylor Swift, Trump 2.0 and the Epstein files | Arwa Mahdawi

The year 2025 saw a Swift engagement, a rapid rollback of rights and a slow release of the heavily redacted Epstein filesThe year 2025 would have been far better if we could have sent a few billionaires and world leaders into intergalactic exile. Instead, we had to make do with Katy Perry spending 11 minutes on the edge of space as part of Blue Origin’s all-female crewed mission. Perry promised us all that, in service of women’s empowerment, the crew would “put the ‘ass’ in astronaut” and “make space and science glam”. Truly, one giant leap for womankind!Space may have got glam, but it was another glum year for many on Earth. The war in Ukraine continued, with increasing numbers of women volunteering to fight. The civil war in Sudan raged on, with the UN urging the world not to ignore harrowing details of targeted sexual violence, torture, and abductions from the region. The slaughter in Sudan is so extreme that the blood can even be seen from space. Although I’m not sure the billio...

Politics

4 w. ago I spent a month trying to smile like Zohran Mamdani – it’s no easy feat | Arwa Mahdawi

While the New York mayor-elect is constantly smiling in the face of his detractors, having a perma-grin didn’t come so easily to meAs a big fan of citizen science, I have spent the past month conducting a very important experiment. While I am not quite as hardcore as the American virologist Jonas Salk, who injected the polio vaccine into himself and his family before large-scale trials, this scientific inquiry has involved some personal pain. You see, I have spent the last month trying to smile like Zohran Mamdani. This is not, as I have discovered, an easy feat.Ever since the incoming mayor of New York became a household name, I’ve been intrigued by his perma-smile. His detractors call him a “jihadist”, and he smiles. He meets Donald Trump, and he smiles. Some Republican lawmakers launch a campaign to investigate his path to citizenship and deport him? He keeps on smiling. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him look angry. Continue reading...

Politics

last month It’s the media’s job to hold power to account. This year, too many got into bed with it instead | Arwa Mahdawi

The lines between advertising, public relations and journalism have become dangerously blurredFunded by readers, the Guardian’s fierce independence is guaranteed. Please help us reach our year-end fundraising goalEnough time has passed now, I think, that I can safely tell you about one of the stupidest things I have ever done. Almost a decade ago I decided to quit my well-paid job in advertising in order to pursue a precarious career in freelance journalism. The merits of that decision are up for debate but the real stupidity is in how I quit my job: I wrote a rather cringeworthy column for the Guardian about my “meaningless job in advertising” and publicly proclaimed that I’d decided to quit. My boss saw the piece and, well, he obviously wasn’t happy. (Sorry, Sean!)I bring this embarrassing anecdote up because I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting recently on the reasons why I left advertising. Maybe this sounds twee, but I was sick of selling people things they didn’t need. I wanted...

Politics