15 h. ago I really hate to say it, but I agree with JD Vance. Britain has a free speech problem | Arwa Mahdawi

Despite the ongoing crackdown on protesters in Los Angeles, the US constitution (for now) provides far more freedom of speech than there is in the UKHello from the US where, if you’re a fan of things such as civil liberties and not getting shot in the leg by masked thugs sporting law enforcement badges, the situation is somewhat suboptimal. Over in Los Angeles, national guard troops have been brought in to rough up protesters who are demonstrating against immigration raids. There were at least 27 attacks on journalists by law enforcement recorded at the protests between 6 and 8 June, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).One of the most alarming things about the crackdown against protesters in LA is the memo greenlighting it. It acts pre-emptively, a first in the US, authorising the military to be deployed in locations where protests are “likely to occur”. Scarier still, Donald Trump has said he won’t rule out invoking the Insurrection Act: an 1807 law that empowers the presi...

Politics

3 d. ago Women of West Virginia: inform on yourself to the miscarriage police! | Arwa Mahdawi

A prosecuting attorney warns women to get ahead of law enforcement in a state where abortion is all but banned“911. What’s your emergency?”Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Events

5 d. ago Trump v Musk: the two worst people in the world are finally having a big, beautiful breakup | Arwa Mahdawi

The bromance might be over but Trump has kissed and made up with his enemies before. Enjoy it while it lastsIf you paid attention during physics class you will remember the third law of ego-dynamics. Namely: when two egos of equal mass occupy the same orbit, the system will eventually become unstable, resulting in an explosive separation and some very nasty tweets.To see this theory in action please have a gander at the dramatic collapse of the Donald Trump and Elon Musk bromance. The news has been a nonstop horror show for what feels like forever. Watching two of the very worst people in the world direct their nastiness at each other is extremely cathartic. Continue reading...

Politics

6 d. ago Are we heading for a recession? Show me your nails | Arwa Mahdawi

Who needs boring old facts and figures? According to a host of entirely authoritative influencers, changing tastes in manicures can tell us all we need to know about the economyIs there going to be a recession this year? Economists have been umm-ing and ahh-ing and crunching the numbers, but the answer could be at the tip of your fingers. According to various expert sources (influencers on TikTok), a wobbly economy means people are ditching elaborate and expensive manicures for more understated styles. Cue numerous headlines about “recession nails”.When I first saw these headlines, I felt pretty smug. An inadvertent trendsetter, I have been rocking recession nails for the past decade now. Except I have been calling them “freelance lesbian nails”. Or, alternatively, “harried parent nails”. Then I read past the headlines and was no longer quite so smug. Turns out that the trend doesn’t mean frantically cutting your nails with a cheap clipper while yelling “BE THERE IN A MINUTE!” to yo...

Politics

7 d. ago Move over Harry and Meghan: Britain’s real royal family are now dominating the US headlines | Arwa Mahdawi

Family fallout. Two feuding brothers. An ambitious American actor wife the Beckhams certainly seem to have a lot in common with the SussexesSo long, and thanks for all the jam. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and queen of Montecito, recently announced that she is reimagining As Ever, her raspberry spread and “flower sprinkle” business. In an interview with Fast Company, which Meghan conducted in fluent buzzword, the actor and entrepreneur said she is thinking bigger than jarred goods and partnering with Netflix to bring forth a vision in which “content and commerce meet, not in a product placement way, but rather in an ideological way”. (I think the ideology she is referencing here is capitalism). Meghan is now involved with so many different projects that she notes: “If I had to write a résumé, I don’t know what I would call myself.”It looks as though her husband, Henry Charles Albert David Mountbatten-Windsor, doesn’t know what to call himself either. The big Harry news from recent days...

Politics

1 week ago A dystopian surveillance fear has become reality in Texas | Arwa Mahdawi

Law enforcement used license-plate readers in several states to search for a woman who had an abortionHello and welcome to the latest edition of “lo and behold, the dystopian thing that women and activists warned would happen ends up happening”. This time the issue is automated license plate readers (ALPRs), which capture (no prizes for guessing!) license plate data and allow law enforcement to build a picture of where a particular vehicle has been. There’s no opting out of being tracked: if you drive, you should simply assume that these cameras, which are sometimes hidden in objects like traffic cones, are logging your movements. And you should assume that this license plate data can be combined with other surveillance data to paint a very detailed picture of your life. Privacy only exists for our billionaire overlords these days. The rest of us are just data points.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Have you looked at images of Gaza on Google Maps? You should | Arwa Mahdawi

If you don’t trust Palestinians, maybe you’ll trust Google Maps. Satellite imagery shows the extent of the devastationA picture says a thousand words. And the imagery slowly seeping out of Gaza tells a story that many politicians and media figures are still doing their best to ignore or obfuscate. Updated satellite imagery on Google Maps of the devastated region, drone shots of dystopian aid checkpoints, and military maps of so-called “safe zones” make it increasingly hard to argue that Israel’s military “operation” (to use a sanitizing word the media is incredibly fond of) is about eradicating Hamas. This isn’t an operation – it’s a cremation: one with the ultimate goal of eradicating not just Palestinian life in Gaza, but Palestinian identity altogether.First, though, I want to stress that there still isn’t a lot of imagery coming out of Gaza. This is by design – and something I wish more of my colleagues in the western media were outraged about. Israel has not allowed foreign jou...

Politics

1 week ago Have you looked at satellite images of Gaza? You should | Arwa Mahdawi

Imagery is filtering on Google Maps through from October and November 2023. If that was the reality then, imagine what it looks like nowA picture says a thousand words. And the imagery slowly seeping out of Gaza tells a story that many politicians and media figures are still doing their best to ignore or obfuscate. Satellite imagery on Google Maps showing the devastated region as of October and November 2023, drone shots of dystopian aid checkpoints, and military maps of so-called “safe zones” make it increasingly hard to argue that Israel’s military “operation” (to use a sanitizing word the media is incredibly fond of) is about eradicating Hamas. This isn’t an operation – it’s a cremation: one with the ultimate goal of eradicating not just Palestinian life in Gaza, but Palestinian identity altogether.First, though, I want to stress that there still isn’t a lot of imagery coming out of Gaza. This is by design – and something I wish more of my colleagues in the western media were out...

Politics

1 week ago How long will it be before Melania steps aside for MelanAI? | Arwa Mahdawi

Mrs Trump is seemingly so disinterested in her role as first lady that along with being mostly absent from the White House, she’s got an AI to read her audiobook. How long before she replaces herself with a robot?I imagine students at the US Military Academy at West Point are trained to handle unexpected situations, but I’m not sure anyone could have prepared them for the bonkers speech Donald Trump delivered to graduates on Saturday. I wish I could point you to a government transcript, but the White House recently started removing official transcripts of the president’s public remarks, replacing them with curated videos instead. I imagine (just a hypothesis!) that this is to make Trump seem more coherent.One of the “highlights” of the disjointed ramble Trump delivered at West Point was his thoughts on trophy wives: “I must tell ya. A lot of trophy wives, doesn’t work out [sic],” he mused in the middle of an anecdote about a divorced real estate developer (not him). This has raised ...

Politics

2 w. ago Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘vagina candle’ is still burning bright – at five times the original price | Arwa Mahdawi

In the latest twist in the Goop candle saga, the famous creation, which retailed at $75 in 2020, is now on offer at $400 on eBay. Not bad for a product that started out as a jokeI have a foolproof way to make millions. It’s a little tricky to execute, but hear me out, OK? Step one: find a time machine. Step two: travel back to 2020. Step three: quickly, before they all get nabbed, buy the entire stock of the This Smells Like My Vagina candle that Gwyneth Paltrow notoriously sold on Goop for $75 a pop. Then come back to 2025 and sell them on eBay for $400 each. Seriously, that’s what they are going for now. We’re talking a 433% return!How do I know this? Not, to be clear, because I am spending my evenings searching for vagina-scented candles. No, I know this because the chatter around Paltrow’s candle is impossible to fully extinguish; it keeps popping back up in the news. In 2021, for example, there was a big hoo-hah because a Texas man claimed that the candle exploded on his bedsid...

Events

3 w. ago Don’t be fooled. Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ is typically ugly and typically misnamed | Arwa Mahdawi

Republicans love to make the most harmful laws sound sensible or even noble. This pretty-sounding package of tax breaks and spending cuts is just the latest exampleWhat’s big, beautiful and kept a lot of Republicans up late on Sunday night? There might be various responses to that question, but the answer I’m looking for is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Coming in at 1,116 pages, the bill isn’t quite War and Peace but it’s definitely big. Whether the mega-package of tax breaks and spending cuts is beautiful, however, is up for debate.And there has certainly been a lot of debate. The bill has been in limbo for a while because a few Republicans who consider themselves “fiscally conservative” are happy with the package’s extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and increased spending for the military and immigration enforcement, but don’t think enough social and climate-related programmes have been slashed to pay for it all. In particular, they want deeper cuts to food stamps and Medicaid, ...

Politics

3 w. ago The livestreamed killing of an influencer could be femicide – a misunderstood crisis | Arwa Mahdawi

Much remains uncertain about Valeria Márquez’s death. But it shines a light on a universal issueValeria Márquez was killed in one of the most horrifically public ways possible. On Tuesday evening, the 23-year-old Mexican social media influencer, who had built up a large following with videos about beauty and makeup, was recording a TikTok livestream in the beauty salon where she worked in Jalisco, a state in west-central Mexico. A man entered the establishment and, with her video still running, shot her dead.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Forget the DEI hires – meet Trump’s latest WTF hire | Arwa Mahdawi

The new pick for surgeon general, Casey Means, doesn’t have an active medical license. But she does have ‘impeccable Maha credentials’The US health secretary doesn’t think you should really listen to him when it comes to health issues. During an appearance before House and Senate committees this week, Robert F Kennedy Jr, famous for his unconventional views about medicine and his revelation that a parasite ate part of his brain, seemed to think it was strange that lawmakers were asking him about vaccines.“What I would say is my opinions about vaccines are irrelevant,” Kennedy said when pressed on whether he would vaccinate his child for measles. “I don’t want to seem like I’m being evasive, but I don’t think people should be taking advice, medical advice, from me.” The US health secretary repeated his refrain about not wanting to give advice a number of other times. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Who would win in a fight between 100 Brits and 100 Americans? I know how to find out | Arwa Mahdawi

Americans could have a psychological edge – but British people have a high tolerance of physical discomfort, which could provide all sorts of advantages ...Shall we take a brief moment to forget the hellworld outside and focus on something utterly inane? That was a rhetorical question, because you’re coming with me immediately to the far depths of TikTok, where there is a furious argument raging about a hypothetical transatlantic brawl. Riffing on an online debate about whether 100 men or a single gorilla would win in a fight, someone posted a viral video asking: “100 British people v 100 Americans. One big room. No weapons. Who’s winning?”I have not conducted a thorough analysis of the answers, but from my cursory glance it would seem the consensus is the Americans would win. For science’s sake I polled a real-life American (my wife), and her opinion, largely based on the whole 1776 thing, was also that there would be a US victory. “We just care more about winning,” she told me (a ...

Politics

4 w. ago Ivanka Trump is now a food waste entrepreneur – but there's just one glaring problem | Arwa Mahdawi

It’s a little bit rich to talk about food insecurity in the US when your last name is Trump. But after stints as a feminist influencer and political adviser, the president’s favourite daughter has found a new pathIvanka Trump has had her manicured fingers in many pies. She’s designed jewellery and shoes. She’s written a book called Women Who Work, marketed at women who work, full of inspirational quotes and touching anecdotes about how she, a woman, has sometimes worked so hard that she has had to sacrifice massages.That was Early Influencer Ivanka, anyway. Then came Ivanka’s political era. During Donald Trump’s first term as president, she appointed herself Daddy’s special adviser and did a lot of very special advising. In that capacity she gallivanted around the globe, dropping in on the G20 and hobnobbed with world leaders, all while insisting: “I try to stay out of politics.” And, of course, the president’s eldest daughter, who very nearly became the head of the World Bank, tire...

Politics