The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Good Point on Israel
On X Monday evening, Marjorie Taylor Greene castigated fellow MAGA Republican Representative Randy Fine for denying the starvation crisis in Gaza. She also notably joined the small cohort of members of Congress to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.
Greene’s post came in reaction to a New Republic story on AIPAC hiding its endorsement of Fine, following his controversial comments last week in which he dismissed a report about the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, including children, as “Muslim terror propaganda.” “Release the hostages,” Fine wrote. “Until then, starve away.”
Greene questioned Fine’s commitment to his constituents in Florida’s 6th congressional district, citing his alleged decision to move with his wife to Washington, D.C., rather than, per Greene’s advice, to “live in the district he will represent.”
“I can only imagine how Florida’s 6th district feels now that their Representative, that they were told to vote for, openly calls for starving innocent people and children,” Greene wrote. “It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza.”
Greene added that Fine’s statement, as “a Jewish U.S. Representative,” will only “cause more antisemitism.”
Greene joins only a handful of progressive lawmakers in condemning Israel for committing genocide. Several leading humanitarian organizations have already concluded that Israel’s war on Gaza amounts to genocide, including Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and, most recently, B’Tselem, a prominent Israeli human rights group.
Greene’s stance on Israel has radically changed since the period immediately after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack—at which time she smeared a pro-Palestinian protest on Capitol Hill as an “insurrection” and sought to censure Representative Rashida Tlaib on spurious allegations of antisemitism. (The resolution attacked Tlaib for allegedly sharing a social media post “blaming America for allowing the deaths of Palestinian babies at the hands of Israel.”)
Since then, Greene has become a frequent critic of Israel, even introducing a bid earlier this month to cut funding for Israel’s missile defense system, in which she was joined only by four progressives and fellow Republican Thomas Massie.
This story has been updated.
Donald Trump’s Justice Department is moving to retaliate against one of the federal judges who stood up to Trump’s extrajudicial deportations.
Judge James Boasberg first appeared on the MAGA radar in March after blocking the Trump administration’s invocation of the wartime 1798 Alien Enemies Act to indiscriminately deport men Trump claimed were Tren de Aragua gang members to El Salvador. The administration ignored Boasberg’s order, and he claimed to have found probable cause for contempt on the administration’s part, although the D.C. Circuit Court has paused proceedings. Boasberg’s principled opposition quickly made him a villain to Trump, culminating in the DOJ’s most recent attack on him.
“Today at my direction, @TheJusticeDept filed a misconduct complaint against U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg for making improper public comments about President Trump and his Administration,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote Monday on X. “These comments have undermined the integrity of the judiciary, and we will not stand for that.”
While Bondi has yet to actually specify what “improper public comments” Boasberg made to elicit such an attack, both her chief of staff and the right-wing Federalist have reported that this huge, inappropriate mistake Boasberg made was simply expressing his (valid!) concern that the Trump administration was liable to “disregard rulings of federal courts leading to a constitutional crisis,” while at a judicial conference.
So Trump and Bondi are trying to sanction Boasberg for sharing his expert opinion, one of the primary functions of a federal judge.
Trump has called for Boasberg’s impeachment since March when he first ruled against the president’s deportations, and has continued to slander any judge who dares to rule against him as some radical, activist Obama judge. The targeting of Boasberg is unfortunately par for the course now, as judges will have to consider either capitulating to Trump or risking their safety, reputation, and livelihood.
Public interest in the president’s reported connections to Jeffrey Epstein is apparently boggling the Trump mediasphere.
Speaking with Newsmax host Katrina Szish on Monday, attorney David Schoen—who has represented both Epstein and Donald Trump—claimed that the nation’s ongoing fascination with the scandal was an invention of “competing agendas” on both sides of the political aisle.
“Just explain this to me because you, again, you’re a former Epstein lawyer,” Szish said. “Why, then, are people so obsessed? And I’m not just talking about one side of the party or on one side of party lines or others. Overall, people are obsessed. What will it take to get this story—I’m just going to say to go away because it doesn’t seem like there’s anything there?”
But Schoen’s response included an unexpected dig at some of the president’s longest allies.
“On the left, New York Times and the Democratic Party, the hypocrisy is outrageous, as I’ve said, but they want to continue to sow as much dissension as they can and distract from the accomplishments of the Trump administration,” Schoen said.
“On the other side, you’ve got, you know, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, conspiracy theorists, who will never be satisfied by anything,” he........© New Republic
