13 h. ago Golf for them, grind for us: Trump, Vance and the hellish US holiday divide | Arwa Mahdawi

While American workers battle burnout and ‘infinite workdays’, the men at the top are living the endless vacation dreamYou know what the problem is with the US? Nobody wants to work any more. People feel entitled to cushy jobs with fat salaries and unlimited holiday time. And by “people” I mean American politicians, who seem to treat public office as an excuse for endless vacations. Because the president and vice-president are technically always on duty, there’s no official holiday policy – and it rather feels as if they are taking advantage of this.Take the vice-president, JD “OOO (out of office)” Vance. When he’s not inspiring memes or threatening to deport menswear influencers, he always seems to be off on a jolly. So far this year, the man has been skiing in Vermont, shut down bits of Disneyland for his family’s use and apparently raised the water level of a river in Ohio for a kayaking trip. Now, the Vances are summering in the Cotswolds. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago What is going on with Marjorie Taylor Greene? | Arwa Mahdawi

The far-right Republican and conspiracy theorist is suddenly speaking (a small amount of) sense. Weird!Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right conspiracy theorist and bigot who also happens to be a Republican congresswoman, has suddenly started to speak (a small amount of) sense. It’s unclear what exactly precipitated it, but the Georgia congresswoman has declared war on her fellow Republicans.“The course that [the Republican party] is on, I don’t want to have anything to do with it,” Greene told the Daily Mail last week. Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago When will we finally admit: the Gaza death toll is higher than we’ve been told | Arwa Mahdawi

We have no idea how many people have been killed in Gaza but I would bet my own life that the number is far higher than the 60,000 number the media usesHow many people have been killed by Israel in Gaza since 7 October 2023?It’s an almost impossible question to answer but, as the likes of the New York Times publish atrocity-minimizing op-eds that argue Israel hasn’t killed all that many people really – certainly not as many people as it could kill if it wanted to with all the big-boy bombs US taxpayers have helped fund – it’s an increasingly important issue to grapple with. “The first question the anti-Israel genocide chorus needs to answer is: Why isn’t the death count higher?” Brett Stephens asked in his recent New York Times op-ed. Here’s the thing, Brett. It almost certainly is.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Events

7 d. ago How did John Oliver become the moral compass of the US? | Arwa Mahdawi

He and other late-night hosts are rare voices when it comes to honest discussion of Gaza and Trump – which says something frightening about our public discourseSome time ago, an acquaintance sent me a cryptic text message. “Thought of you after I saw one of your recent articles,” they said. “Thank you for saying it.”I write columns regularly. Some are about vaginas; some are about the genocide in Gaza. Was this person thanking me for drawing attention to the desperate plight of people on eBay who are prepared to pay five times the original sales price for Gwyneth Paltrow’s delisted This Smells Like My Vagina candle? Or were they referencing Gaza? Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago The Trump administration is making viruses great again | Arwa Mahdawi

Measles cases are at their highest rate in the US in decades. Robert F Kennedy doesn’t seem too botheredDo you enjoy getting sick from preventable diseases? Do you have a hankering to make once-declining viruses great again? If so, why not pop over to the US where the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and his anti-vaccine cronies are making a valiant effort to overturn decades of progress in modern medicine?Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Politics

4 w. ago Does Kash Patel deserve to run the FBI? Of course he does – and I’ll take a lie detector test to prove it | Arwa Mahdawi

He may be insecure and lack any obvious qualifications, but he’s also extremely devoted to Donald Trump. And isn’t that what really matters?‘Once upon a time, in the land of the free, there lived a wizard called Kash the Distinguished Discoverer.” That piece of verbal wizardry is the opening line of a children’s book trilogy called The Plot Against the King (aimed at children aged three and above) by a Mr Kash Patel. The first book, published in 2022, is like Harry Potter for conspiracy theorists. Kash helps King Donald battle Hillary Queenton and a “shifty knight”, who have been spreading lies about the king working with the Russionians. In the final book in the trilogy (The Plot Against the King 3: The Return of the King) a couple of villains called Comma‑la‑la‑la and Baron Von Biden make an appearance.Not so long ago, publishing deeply weird books about the president while also promoting wild QAnon conspiracy theories would get you put on some kind of watchlist. Now it gets you a...

Events