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Memri
5 days ago
- Politics
- Memri
In Webinar Of Muslim Legal Fund Of America – Whose Chairman Is American Muslims For Palestine (AMP) Head Hatem Bazian – Attorneys Recommend 'Donating Internationally' To Bypass 'Smear Campaigns', 'Cri
During a February 20, 2025, Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA) webinar on HR 9495 and its impact on Muslim American nonprofit organizations, Diala Shamas, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), said there have been "smear campaigns" accusing student organizations on U.S. campuses of being part of the "international propaganda arm" of Hamas. As a result, these student groups and their supporters risk being accused of providing material support for terrorism. Shamas called this theory "bananas." She expressed concern that under a Trump Department of Justice, there could be expanded criminal charges against pro-Palestinian groups, especially Muslim organizations, such as the Holy Land Foundation. She also discussed the designation of Samidoun as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) organization, and spoke about the legal risks nonprofits face depending on their focus. One example she gave was UNRWA USA, a CCR client that fundraises in the U.S. for UNRWA. Antonio Glenn, a Muslim attorney based in Texas, stated that many of the nonprofit organizations he works with are facing a "major concern" over accusations that they are providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). He differentiated between groups that focus on local American causes and those that fund overseas operations, noting that there is no FTO counterpart for those accused of supporting domestic terrorism. He said that there is a concerted effort to try and find "remedies and pathways through other nonprofit organizations that have encountered this situation, especially for foreign terrorist… or donating internationally, I should say," to continue supporting Muslim communities internationally. The Muslim Legal Fund of America (MFLA) is headed by Hatem Bazian, who is also Chair of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and a professor at UC Berkeley (see MEMRI TV clips nos. 12040, 12014, 11822, 11947). MFLA represented the Holy Land Foundation, which has been investigated for funneling funds to Hamas, and five of its members served prison sentences for their terror-linked activity. It also represented Al-Qaeda operative Aafia Siddiqui. MFLA has been praised by Rep. Ilhan Omar, Imam Yasir Qadhi, chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America, anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour. Diala Shamas: "There has [been] some smear campaigns that all put out this narrative that campus organizing is part of Hamas's propaganda arm, so student organizations, student activists, are actually part of this Hamas international propaganda arm, and therefore, these student groups and those who support them in the U.S. are liable for material support for terrorism. So it's again, a bananas – to use non-legal terminology – theory, it's meritless, to use more legal terminology. [...] "We've seen it being used in the past, particularly against Muslim organizations, criminal cases have been brought against the Holy Land [Foundation] Five, and other people who are still serving sentences. What I am worried [about] is that under a Trump DOJ we'll see an expansion of that. It hasn't yet happened. The Biden administration has designated Specially Designated Global Terrorist, under the provisions that we heard about earlier, a Palestinian advocacy organization called Samidoun, has been designated this, so that might be an indicator of a place where we might see efforts expand. What happens is that you first designate groups, and then there are 501C3 implications, but there are also possible criminal implications. [...] "The risk profile looks really different from organization to organization. Your risk profile if you are sending money to Gaza looks very different from your risk profile if you are organizing on campuses it is very different from if you are a think-tank doing policy briefings, doing policy. [...] "UNRWA USA, our client, is a donor to UNRWA. They're basically fundraising in the U.S., they have donors to UNRWA USA, then [the money] goes... Resources then go to UNRWA. So they certainly are trying to go after what they talk about as the money flow." [...] Antonio Glenn: "In some of our nonprofits that we are speaking of now there is a major concern [over accusations] of material support for foreign terrorist organizations [FTO]. Black Lives Matter didn't get so implicated in that because there were no foreign overseas operations going on. So that was a huge distinction here. For the most part, what we learn in those cases, if your sources and advocacy are somewhat focused more locally, nationally, you may not be implicated as much or caught up, so to speak, in these situations. [...] "There is no really counterpart for domestic terrorism support as it is for this FTO, and bringing them material support. [...] "I think [we need] a little more research on how to do that. I think that is what we are doing now, trying to find the remedies and pathways through other nonprofit organizations that have encountered this situation, especially for foreign terrorist... or donating internationally, I should say, on that part. That we can continue moving forward in donating overseas and helping overseas brothers and sisters with funding without [suffering] these repercussions."
Newsweek
5 days ago
- Politics
- Newsweek
Andrew Cuomo's Chances of Winning New York Mayoral Race
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has a strong chance of winning the New York mayor primary, latest betting odds show. Cuomo's odds of success stand at 82 percent while his nearest rival, Zohran Mamdani, is on 19 percent, according to Polymarket, at the time of publishing. Why It Matters Cuomo is standing in the primaries for New York City mayor, returning to public life after he resigned as New York Governor in 2021 amid the threat of impeachment over sexual misconduct allegations. Cuomo has always denied the accusations and no charges were ever brought against him. Whoever wins the Democratic primary will likely win the race, as New York City is reliably Democratic. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a Democratic mayoral primary debate, Wednesday, June 4, 2025, in New York. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a Democratic mayoral primary debate, Wednesday, June 4, 2025, in New York. AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, Pool The election uses ranked-choice ballots, meaning voters select up to five candidates in order of preference. What To Know On Wednesday, nine Democratic candidates faced off in a two-hour debate. The latest odds measure how prospective voters responded to the debate. They show that Cuomo had a slight dip from his 84 percent odds of victory before the debate, but that overall the debate didn't affect voting behavior to a large extent. Polls have shown Cuomo has a strong lead in the run up to the election. A May Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill survey of 1,000 registered voters, found that 35 percent backed Cuomo on the first round of the ranked-choice ballot, while Mamdani was favored by 23 percent. According to a Marist Poll conducted between May 1 and 8 among 3,383 likely Democratic primary voters, Cuomo was the first choice of 37 percent of respondents, including those who were undecided but leaning toward a candidate. What People Are Saying William F. Hall, an adjunct professor of political science and business at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri told Newsweek: "Several important factors, including the huge name recognition advantage and extensive political experience, coupled with the significant challenges that any Muslim candidate would face, including Mamdani as a Muslim American running for public office in a major American city populated with an extensive Jewish constituency and heavily sympathetic Jewish leaning political environment, the odds for his chances for success in the New York City Mayoral race, would appear to be extremely daunting and highly unlikely. "Despite several of Cuomo's negative issues that have blemished his career, on balance, there nonetheless still does appear to be a strong viable window for victory for Cuomo, because of the many positive successes he achieved while in public office in the past and especially, in light of the current difficulties experienced in the New York City's Mayors office, under the incumbent." Cuomo during the debate: "I know how to deal with Donald Trump because I've dealt with him before. We fought on a daily basis through COVID. And I won many of those battles ... So he can be beaten, but he has to know that he's up against an adversary who can actually beat him." Queens assemblyman and democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, during the debate: "The difference between myself and Andrew Cuomo is that my campaign is not funded by the very billionaires who put Donald Trump in D.C." What Happens Next The Democratic primary takes place on 24 June. The general mayoral election takes place on 4 November. Meanwhile, Cuomo is facing another legal issue as House Oversight Chair James Comer requested that the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate and potentially prosecute him for allegedly lying to Congress about New York State's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in nursing homes. Cuomo's spokesperson Rich Azzopardi told Politico the claims were "nonsense," adding: "As the DOJ constantly reminds people, this kind of transparent attempt at election interference and lawfare violates their own policies."
Al Jazeera
30-04-2025
- Al Jazeera
A ‘constitutional loophole': How phone inspections test US civil rights
Dearborn, Michigan – Travelling is a normal part of life for Michigan lawyer Amir Makled. As recently as December, he went overseas and returned home to the United States without any issues. 'I've been out of the country at least 20 times. I've been all over Europe. I go to Lebanon every year,' he said. But returning this month to the Detroit Metro Airport was a very different experience. He and his family had just come home from a spring-break holiday in the Dominican Republic when they reached a customs checkpoint. 'The agent looked over at me and then looked to another agent and asked him if the TTRT agents are here. I didn't know what this meant.' He googled the acronym. It stands for Tactical Terrorist Response Teams. 'As an Arab American and as a Muslim American, whenever I'm travelling, even if I'm driving in from Canada, I feel some sort of anxiety about it, that I'm going to be randomly selected to be stopped or profiled,' he explained. 'When he said those words, I thought: 'OK, I'm going to be profiled here.'' Sure enough, Makled and his family were asked to go to another room. Since Makled is a US citizen, born in Detroit, Michigan, he knew that he couldn't be denied entry into the country. He urged his wife and kids to pass through the checkpoint without him. 'I knew my rights at the border in that regard. And I was also familiar with the extent of border searches,' he said. 'This is the first time I've ever been stopped.' But what happened next would put the lawyer in a precarious position. Border control agents have considerable legal rights to search a person's belongings. The idea is to prevent security hazards, contraband or environmental threats from entering the country. Those searches, however, extend to the contents of electronic devices. And that raises questions about what material needs to be regulated — and what needs to be protected from the prying eyes of the government. Makled knew the border agents could take his phone. But as a lawyer, he faced a thorny ethical dilemma. His phone contained privileged attorney-client information. In the US, a basic tenet of the legal system is that a client can have frank discussions with their lawyer, with the safety of knowing anything they say will be kept confidential. A substantial amount of Makled's work was on his phone. When asked to hand it over, he told the border officers he couldn't give them the device. 'All my emails, my text messages, my files, the cloud-based software I use for my office,' he said, 'it's all through my phone.' As a civil rights and criminal defence lawyer, Makled represents people he said are particularly vulnerable. One of his clients is a protester who was arrested at a pro-Palestine encampment at the University of Michigan last year. She was later charged with resisting and obstructing police, a felony that carries up to a two-year prison sentence. Makled believes he was targeted because the border officers knew this information. One of the agents, he said, even called him a 'famous lawyer', a comment he took to be a reference to the protester's case. In the end, he gave the agents written permission to see his contacts but no other permissions. After about 90 minutes at the airport, he was allowed to leave with his phone. For nearly a century, Title 19 of the US code has allowed border control officers the right to search any person entering the country, their luggage or other items in their possession at the time of the inspection. But digital devices today contain far more information than is relevant to a person's trip. The most recent fiscal year saw 47,047 electronic devices searched by border control officers, the vast majority of which belonged to non-US citizens. That's a nearly 13 percent increase over the previous fiscal year in 2023, when US Customs and Border Protection clocked 41,767 electronic searches. The question of whether these searches can be manipulated for political gain or reprisals has long dogged the process. In November 2018, for instance, an employee of the tech company Apple, Andreas Gal, said he was detained while returning to San Francisco from an international trip. Like Makled, Gal was flagged for the TTRT. And like the lawyer, customs officers pushed to search his electronic devices. He refused. Gal later said he believed he was targeted in response to the political views he expressed online. But in recent weeks, experts fear the threat of such searches has risen. Since taking office for a second term in January, President Donald Trump has sought to deport noncitizens he sees as critical of the US or its ally Israel. Material from electronic devices has been among the evidence allegedly used to expel people from the country. For example, kidney transplant specialist Rasha Alawieh had been denied re-entry after flying back to the US from her native Lebanon. She held a valid H-1B visa that allowed her to work in the US. News reports indicate that the Trump administration cited photos recovered from her phone as motivation for expelling her, including images she had of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. 'Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied,' the Department of Homeland Security wrote in a statement after Alawieh's expulsion. Also in March, the French government said one of its citizens, a scientist, was prevented from entering the US on account of the political messages on his phone. The Trump administration has denied that accusation, however. 'The French researcher in question was in possession of confidential information on his electronic device from Los Alamos National Laboratory — in violation of a non-disclosure agreement,' Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin wrote on social media. 'Any claim that his removal was based on political beliefs is blatantly false.' There are two types of screenings a device may undergo while in border control custody. A 'light' search happens when an officer looks through an electronic device by hand. An advanced search, which legally requires 'reasonable suspicion' of a crime, involves the device being connected to external equipment. The device may not be returned to its owner for weeks or months. Border agents do not need a warrant to search an electronic device, although US citizens are not obligated to unlock their electronics in order to re-enter their country. However, for travellers who are not US citizens or permanent residents, refusing to share these details could result in being denied entry. But experts say these practices raise serious concerns about the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which grants protection from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. Esha Bhandari, the deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, explained she has seen examples of the government using these border checks to bypass Fourth Amendment protections. 'The government is increasingly treating this as a constitutional loophole,' Bhandari said. 'They have someone under investigation, and rather than waiting on whether they can establish probable cause, which requires a judge to give a warrant, they wait until someone crosses the international border and treat that as a convenient opportunity to search their devices.' But just how far that loophole can stretch is a matter of debate. Saira Hussain, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the courts in the US have yet to reach a consensus about just how far searches of digital devices can go — and what the limits are. 'At this moment, whether you fly into San Francisco vs Boston vs Atlanta, there are three different rulings on exactly which part of your phone can be searched, for what purposes [or] what level of suspicion is needed,' Hussain said. 'A number of lower courts have ruled on the issue, [but] there has not been uniformity.' For his part, Makled said he has not been deterred from travelling — or representing controversial causes. 'I feel that this is an intimidation tactic. It's an attempt to dissuade me from taking on these types of cases,' he said, referring to his defence of the protester arrested at the University of Michigan. 'I say I won't be dissuaded. I'm going to continue to do what I believe.'
The Guardian
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I had a recurring dream that Bin Laden was in my kitchen': Ramy Youssef on his 9/11 comedy
Ramy Youssef has this theory: 'The more fucked up the climate, the stupider television must be.' Granted, he came up with it barely 10 seconds ago, but the 34-year-old is committing. 'You need something dumb,' he's newly certain, 'to cut through the tension for relief.' Now he's frantically tapping away on his phone, searching for facts to prove it. Bingo. 'You see, [MTV celebrity prank show] Punk'd premiered on 17 March 2003. Know what happened three days later? The US invaded Iraq. Maybe my stupid new show is perfect for how fucked everything is right now.' In particular, Youssef is pointing to Palestine: his 2024 heartfelt SNL monologue calling for an end to the violence one of a litany of interventions he's made in recent years. 'I've sat down with too many people who've just lost entire sections of their families.' Does he feel speaking out could come at a cost to his career? 'If I was constantly waiting to be cast,' he says, 'I might not be so busy. We make TV like immigrants: not waiting around for someone else. We're trying to speak to something human, even if we do it while people are trying to dehumanise us, our culture, where we come from and who we are.' We're meeting in a downtown Manhattan hotel, late on an icy, mid-February Friday; Youssef lives with his wife and dog in Brooklyn. He is all smiles as he bops into the lobby sporting a baseball cap embroidered with 'Sufi Centre of North Jersey', a nod to the fictional community centre in Golden Globe-winning Ramy – a three season-deep comedy drama about a directionless, idiosyncratic millennial Muslim American. Youssef is its co-creator and star. His new, 'stupid' show is an animation called #1 Happy Family USA. Its protagonist is 12-year-old Rumi (it's only semi-autobiographical), and it opens at the Hussein family's suburban east coast home, halal food truck parked out front, on 10 September 2001 – all inside naive to the global upheaval tomorrow brings. 'It's hard to avoid the obviously dramatic things in it,' says Youssef: an act of mass terror, a seismic shift in geopolitics, an explosion of Islamophobic prejudice. 'It being a cartoon undercuts all that heaviness, and allows us to laugh at what happened, and reflect. South Park did that for me growing up. Often, it was more nuanced than anything on CNN, then suddenly it went back to crudeness.' Like South Park, Youssef's show uses a pre-adolescent outlook to its advantage. 'Global things feel personal at that age,' Youssef says, 'and personal things feel global. It's like, 'Oh my God, this tragedy happened', alongside, 'Oh my God, I love this girl'. At that age, it's all at the same volume.' One minute, Rumi is pained, fantasising unrequitedly about his teacher to the sound of K-Ci & JoJo, the next, his uncle is arrested – soon to be #1 Prisoner in Guantánamo – simply for having 'terrorist vibes'. Astute observations and sharp satire sit alongside farcical sequences: at the mosque, Rumi's mother meets an undercover FBI agent who introduces herself as 'Carol, from Mecca'; his father, invited on to Fox News, is billed as 'Halal Harry'. Pigeons are eaten at the dining table, there's a kitchen leaderboard ranking cousins, prepubescent Rumi smokes. 'I didn't smoke then,' Youssef clarifies, 'but I had the tension of a smoker as a middle schooler.' Fast-paced and funny, yes, but his depiction of that time teems with trauma. In the writers' room, all sorts of distressing details were shared. 'Look,' he's quick to qualify, 'I'm fortunate, I grew up in a town with good people, gracious neighbours and kind classmates. I'm also able to realise we were very afraid after 9/11, unsure and uncertain. What I've explored in this show, and am not sure I understood until a few years ago, is the amount of not self-hatred, but self-fear or self-paranoia I had.' These memories have been percolating since 2018. 'We did a flashback episode to that time in Ramy,' he says, 'and I realised I had so many stories from that period that I hadn't confronted.' Youssef was born in Queens, but his parents – both Egyptian – raised the family in New Jersey. 'It was a nice place to grow up,' he says. 'That added to the immigrant anxiety. When something is nice, the stakes are higher: I hope we can stay here, that we can afford it, and people will accept us.' Youssef was 10 on 9/11. He remembers the day. 'My dad was working in hotels, in between Newark and New Jersey,' he says. 'I didn't know where he was. There was a massive panic. My uncles and grandparents were all in New York. And it was super-surreal. Shocking with that proximity, but as a kid you don't really know what's happening.' He had a recurring dream 'that Bin Laden was in my kitchen. There was this weird rumour at school: a bomb in our town.' There weren't many brown or Muslim kids locally, and soon his experience diverged from that of his classmates. 'Looking back,' he says, 'I can see the huge impact on my family as culture and politics shifted.' Youssef felt it profoundly: 'scrutiny, being watched. I thought: 'Oh shit, my name matches one of these guys who did this thing. What if there's some secret in my family? Is who we are bad?' That inner dialogue played on me a lot more than I understood as a child. Sitting with that fear is more potent than anything anyone could say to you. It infiltrates your inner workings. That's what it does to the Hussein family.' For his cartoon characters, an identity crisis follows. Until starting at college, Youssef sees now, that was his experience too. There he found space to breathe. 'I joined the Muslim students association,' he says, 'and for the first time opted into being in a community of my own volition. Hanging out with these other Muslims I realised we all had shared experiences. I'd tried to block it during school. In the two years I went to college before dropping out I found it comforting to connect.' Then that safety was pulled from under him: 'We found out the NYPD was monitoring us; surveilling the Muslim organisation, treating us with suspicion.' It's why he started writing. 'I realised it was a way I could explore all of this, and my identity, without repercussion. Writing fucked-up jokes, specifically, helped me work through it.' First, in standup. Then in shows such as Ramy and Mo – the acclaimed Netflix series about a Palestinian refugee in Texas which Youssef co-created – and now his new series. In their own ways, each also delicately depicts Islamic ritual. 'It's almost like we create a playground that has emotional resonance to it, and feels safe, so we can also talk about and share things that are otherwise hard to.' For a while, being the Muslim showrunner of the moment felt like a weighty responsibility. 'There's such little representation of our communities on TV,' he feels, 'but now I've put that aside. I'm in an abundance mindset: I've spent years focusing on my specific corner of understanding, proving programmes from one specific point of view can repeatedly and returnable-y hit the target. That, I hope, creates more space for other really specific things to follow.' Certainly, Youssef says, he'll keep making work that mines his personal experience, but his horizons now feel more expansive. 'That's what was so fun about Poor Things,' he says (Youssef starred in Yorgos Lanthimos's 2023 Hollywood hit), 'and [acting in] Seth Rogen's new show, The Studio, and some of the standup I'm working on. It doesn't touch on any of those themes that defined my life. Doing projects that are so close to the core of who I am has shown me how I like to craft a story, but now it's fun to widen the palette of what I'll do with that.' The effects of Trump 2.0 are already being firmly felt by those in his crosshairs – the trickle-down effect on culture, though, will take a little longer to calcify. However, it's easy to imagine a shift in streamers' slates. Big tech has been cosying up to the new US administration. The future of commissioning is uncertain. #1 Happy Family USA is a Prime Video production: Amazon donated $1m to the Trump inauguration fund. Apple's Tim Cook did the same. Does Youssef believe shows his latest would be green-lit today? 'This feels like a glitch, honestly,' he replies. 'If I walked in and pitched this today, they'd say no; what are you talking about?' He laughs, nervously. 'They'd literally say what the hell are you thinking? We'd be told it was too polarising for now.' A few days previously, I'd seen Youssef perform a work-in-progress standup show at an intimate Brooklyn venue. His material mixed playful bits about his rescue dog and wedding, with the knotty: asking whether we should even try to laugh as a livestreamed genocide unfolds? The laughs were there, but so too was an edge; mania and tension. 'I'm not going to pretend that this stuff isn't getting to me,' he says. 'I don't think my comedy could be accused of leaving people with a warm, fuzzy feeling.' Deep breath. 'I hope people laugh, but also feel gross, sweaty and confused.' He started work on #1 Happy Family USA years ago, and couldn't have predicted how pertinent its eventual release would feel. 'It's somehow 2001 and 2025 right now,' he says: Guantánamo repopulated; state-sponsored snatch squads on US streets; a relentless news cycle of destruction, hatred and war. 'Look at the way you're seeing mostly Muslims forced to denounce the violence of others, again, because of their faith or identity.' Youssef experienced this post-Hamas' 7 October attacks in Israel. 'People coming up to my face asking: do you like what happened? I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? I thought you knew me … Everything that's happening with immigration, with speech, with college students, the forced cosplaying of Americanness. It's the same as post 9/11.' These days, he is moving in esteemed circles. After our interview, he's off to a suit fitting to wear at the SNL 50 celebrations, then to Hollywood for pre-ski trip meetings; the likes of Taylor Swift attend his standup shows. When it comes to Gaza, much of America's A-list has been mostly muted. It must, I suggest, be frustrating, shouting so loudly while plenty of peers hold their tongue. He pauses, then cautiously proceeds. 'It's a very difficult thing to tell anyone how to be in any relationship' he says, 'let alone a work one. It's hard to find that balance of me so clearly seeing what's happening and meeting other people where they're at. But yeah, it's getting to the point …' A sigh. 'Dude, I just know I've no reason to not speak. It feels a betrayal to not. If I didn't, I wouldn't deserve to be anywhere near a microphone.' #1 Happy Family USA premieres globally on Prime Video on 17 April.
New York Times
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Ramy Youssef Is Just Trying to Be ‘Emotionally Correct'
In the trailer for the new animated series '#1 Happy Family USA,' which premieres on Prime Video on April 17, there is a tag line that reads: 'From the childhood nightmares of Ramy Youssef.' That might seem like a warning, but the show, which tells the story of the fictional Hussein family as they try to fit into a changing America in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, is actually very funny. There are big musical numbers and irreverent 'South Park'-esque humor (Youssef's co-creator, Pam Brady, was a 'South Park' writer), and the characters' appearances change depending on whether they are inside their home or out trying to navigate the world. Youssef was 10, growing up in New Jersey in an Egyptian American family, when Al Qaeda attacked in 2001. He often refers to the dislocation and fear he experienced as a child in his stand-up comedy, and it has come up in 'Ramy,' the Hulu show he created and stars in about a young first-generation Muslim American guy figuring things out in New Jersey. (Youssef told me he makes work about his own life because 'it's the only thing I can actually account for with genuine insight.') This new series, though, is his most ambitious attempt yet to examine past events that are still very much with us. Again, it's a really funny show. Though much of Youssef's work is rooted in his own experiences and worldview, he has lately been taking on roles in other people's projects too. He had a part in Yorgos Lanthimos's 2023 film, 'Poor Things'; directed a memorable, dreamy episode of 'The Bear' (the one set in Copenhagen); and when we spoke, he was in Utah filming 'Mountainhead,' the first movie directed by the 'Succession' creator Jesse Armstrong, in which he plays a billionaire during a financial crisis. (He couldn't tell me much about the project, but he did say that 'what's happening and what we're portraying — it's been so surreal.') Our conversation, like much of his work, ranged from the personal to the universal. Your new animated project is called '#1 Happy Family USA,' which is a great name. I found it almost hopeful, that something like this can now be made: a comedy about one of the most terrible days in American history from the perspective of a Muslim American family. Why did you want to make this show now? The thing that compelled me is: The family in this show, they already have a lot going on before 9/11 happens. Pretty much the entire pilot, it's just this family comedy about a family you've never really seen in an animated space. To bring in the events of the early 2000s felt important in the sense that it's something we talk about all the time. It's part of what we're currently experiencing. It's never gone away. And when I think about how long these themes have been directly a part of my life and the lives of people that I know — to get to step into a period of time that I don't think has escaped us in any way, unfortunately, and to do it in a style that is familiar in terms of trodding on political things that can feel a little difficult, and undercuts them and doesn't make them feel so volatile — to give this kind of family that treatment is really exciting. And to go at this through a totally unexpected and very silly lens — maybe that's where that hope feeling comes from, because it's so unfiltered. It's one of the most inappropriate things I've gotten to be a part of. Yet there's a lot of love and care for the subjects involved. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
