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The Hill
7 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Conservative influencers accuse each other of not being racist enough
As President Trump's base begins to view him as a lame duck, a familiar dynamic is taking hold: Like gangs battling over physical turf, prominent Trump supporters are jockeying for a bigger slice of the MAGA influencer economy. The problem? Without any institutional gatekeeping, the only way to rise is to drag someone else down. Think of crabs in a bucket, but everyone is livestreaming. Enter Nick Fuentes: white nationalist, mascot to incels and professional radioactive embarrassment. You may remember him from that cursed Mar-a-Lago dinner with Trump and Kanye West — a meal that looked less like a political summit and more like the world's worst episode of 'Celebrity Rehab.' Lately, Fuentes has been venting his spleen at Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Vice President JD Vance — the golden children of the 'new New Righ,' and, in at least one case, a possible 2028 Republican presidential contender. Fuentes's tone is familiar: The bitter whine of a true believer watching the tourists cash in. In a recent podcast with Owens, Carlson (my former boss at The Daily Caller) dismissed Fuentes as a 'weird little gay kid in his basement in Chicago.' (For what it's worth, Fuentes says he's not gay, just involuntarily celibate — a distinction that seems to matter a lot to him.) Fuentes responded with his usual cocktail of resentment and delusional self-mythologizing. Tucker, he noted, is an heir to a TV dinner dynasty, a product of boarding schools and the offspring of a Reagan-era bureaucrat. 'Now he's going to be the spokesperson for all white America?' Fuentes scoffed. 'Now he's gonna roll up his sleeves [and act like], 'I just like to hunt and fish in my log cabin. I care about Klarna and credit card debt.'' Fuentes — never one to miss an opportunity for aggrieved autobiography — then proclaimed himself the real voice of disaffected white America. A 'precocious' college student, red-pilled by Trump, punished for asking the 'hard questions' about Israel years before Tucker and Owens got around to it. Picture Joan of Arc, but with a ring light. From there, the accusations flew: Carlson is allegedly a CIA brat (his father was a journalist and a diplomat, but that's the rumor they spread), a neocon plant (thanks to his stint at the Weekly Standard) and a phony populist who didn't 'discover' working-class politics until it polled well on YouTube. Even Richard Spencer — an embittered former poster boy and has-been of the alt-right — weighed in, accusing Carlson and company of playing footsie with white nationalism without the courage to actually own it. It's an updated version of the Southern Strategy, he said — skip the racial slurs, just talk about welfare queens and school buses. Owens got the Fuentes treatment, too. According to Fuentes, she parlayed her identity into a DEI sinecure at Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire, married rich and now thinks she's the voice of Middle America. As for Vance, Fuentes dismissed him as a man who couldn't even marry a white, much less represent whites. 'He named his kid Vivek,' Fuentes said — as if naming a child something not pulled from a Confederate military roster was an act of betrayal. Ordinarily, this would be dismissed as garden-variety internet bile — petty, performative and deeply online. But some of these figures under attack are poised to inherit the right, provided they can strike the balance between MAGA street cred and polished respectability — a line the 'original' racists don't want to allow them to walk. The underlying grievance is that folks like Carlson, Owens and Vance aren't truly committed. They haven't suffered for the cause, haven't been canceled, deplatformed or disgraced. In other words, they haven't paid their dues. To them — Fuentes leads a group of white nationalist activists called Groypers — Tucker is stealing material from the ideological underground. Owens is an opportunist who packaged her politics for maximum virality. Vance is a convert who doesn't practice what he preaches. It's the old punk-rock grievance: we were here first, and now you're rich because you cleaned up a bit and added background vocals. I'm left wondering — do they have a point? To paraphrase a now-cliched expression: No, you do not, under any circumstances, 'gotta hand it to' Fuentes and Spencer. Still, there's a kind of logic that says authentically embracing the darkness is more 'honest' than winking at it. The ideologies peddled by Fuentes and Spencer are repugnant. Their whining is not noble, and their martyrdom is not real. But they have sniffed out a core truth about the MAGA movement: It is populated by rich kids cosplaying as working-class saviors (in between Fox News hits and Turning Point Action panels). What offends the out-and-proud racists is the feeling that the populist right has been taken over by influencers with soft hands and trust funds, who pretend that they speak for the broken white working class. But this isn't primarily a civil war over principles (as twisted as some of those principles may be) — it's brand warfare between the purists and the polished. The former are furious that the grift they helped build now belongs to better-looking influencers with more money and nicer lighting.
Al Jazeera
07-08-2025
- Business
- Al Jazeera
Trump to sign order requiring universities to disclose admissions data
United States President Donald Trump is preparing to sign an order that would require universities to disclose to the federal government data about their student admissions. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the news in a post on the social media platform X, reposting an article from the right-wing publication The Daily Caller. Trump has long sought to exert greater control over the country's higher education system, which he and other prominent Republicans consider ideologically skewed. At the same time, Trump has also sought to dismantle initiatives to promote diversity, equity and inclusion — goals known collectively by the acronym DEI — on the basis that such efforts are inherently discriminatory. Rolling back DEI This was such a priority for Trump that, on January 20, during the first day of his second term, he signed an executive order titled 'Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing'. That order repealed a previous directive, issued under President Joe Biden, to advance 'racial equity' and better support 'underserved communities'. It also called diversity initiatives 'illegal and immoral' and ordered the termination of any such programmes run by the federal government. 'Federal employment practices, including Federal employee performance reviews, shall reward individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work and shall not under any circumstances consider DEI,' the order explained. Trump has sought to extend his campaign against DEI beyond the auspices of the federal government, including to private enterprises. In the immediate aftermath of Trump's inauguration, major US companies like the retailer Target and the carmaker Ford have reframed or dialled back their DEI programming, in an apparent response to the president's platform. But critics have questioned whether Trump may be exceeding his constitutionally mandated powers. Some have argued that an embrace of diversity practices falls well within a private enterprise's free speech rights under the First Amendment of the Constitution. They also point out that, without proactively supporting diversity in companies and universities, those institutions are likely to maintain imbalances in race, gender and ability that do not reflect the wider public. That, in turn, keeps certain groups out of positions of power, perpetuating a history of segregation and bias in the US. Peeling back affirmative action But Trump and his allies have long argued that diversity-promoting practices use race, gender and other factors to discriminate against qualified candidates who may belong to over-represented groups. In a subsequent executive order on January 21, Trump pledged to restore 'merit-based opportunity' in the US. 'Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex,' the executive order said. Under Trump, the Department of Education has taken steps to roll back diversity initiatives and other 'divisive ideology' in schools, including by freezing federal funds to institutions that do not comply. That has put it at loggerheads with academic freedom advocates, who fear the independence of US schools is being trampled in favour of advancing a political agenda. Opponents of diversity initiatives, however, have won significant victories, most recently in 2023. That year, the US Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action — the practice of considering race and other diversity factors in school admissions — violated the US Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, which asserts the right to equal protection under the law. That decision, delivered by the court's conservative supermajority, overturned decades of precedent and barred schools from using race as a factor for choosing students. Some conservative groups, however, have continued to question whether there is a bias in school admissions against white, male and Asian students. Trump versus the Ivy League The US president has been among the sceptics clamouring for more information about university admissions and hiring practices, and he has made that demand a pillar in his fights with various top schools. Trump has yanked billions in federal contracts, grants and other funds from schools, including Columbia University in New York, Harvard University in Massachusetts and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which reported this week a pause on $584m in grants. To restore those suspended funds, Trump has called on university leaders to agree to his demands, including oversight over admissions. Columbia was the first major campus to do so. As part of its deal with the Trump administration, Columbia agreed to review its admissions practices and establish an advisory group to 'analyze recent trends in enrollment'. The advisory group will then 'report to the President', according to the deal. The Trump administration has also launched federal investigations into universities, alleging violations of civil rights law. Some universities have submitted to Trump's demands in part to bring those probes to a close. On July 30, for instance, another Ivy League school, Brown University in Rhode Island, announced it had struck a deal in exchange for the continuation of its federal funding and a 'permanent closure' to the 'open reviews and investigations' the Trump administration had launched. As part of the deal, however, Brown agreed to spend $50m on workforce development programmes and maintain 'merit-based admissions policies'. 'No proxy for racial admission will be tolerated,' the deal reads. 'Brown may not use personal statements, diversity narratives, or any applicant reference to racial identity as a means to introduce or justify discrimination.' Still, some schools have resisted Trump's demands, most notably Harvard, the nation's oldest university. In April, Harvard President Alan Garber rejected an agreement proposed by the Trump administration, which would have required a 'comprehensive audit' of the school's hiring and admissions practices. That data would have then been shared with the federal government. 'No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,' Garber wrote at the time.
American Military News
19-07-2025
- Politics
- American Military News
Sexual LGBT books revealed in list of 596 books banned by Pentagon
A list of 596 books banned from use at the Department of Defense's military schools under President Donald Trump's administration was recently released by a U.S. district court. The list includes numerous books on graphic LGBTQ topics, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) topics, and other left-wing topics. According to The Daily Caller, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia released a list on July 11 of the books the Pentagon has banned from its military schools. The list was released as part of the lawsuit brought against the Department of Defense Education Activity by the American Civil Liberties Union. The Trump administration's Department of Defense was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union, military students, and the family members of military students in April following multiple book bans and curriculum changes implemented by the administration to remove DEI policies and curriculum from the military. 'Our DoDEA schools are not playgrounds for left-wing activists pushing race-baiting, gender confusion, and anti-American propaganda,' DOD Watch Executive Director Nicole Kiprilov said in a statement to The Daily Caller. 'This isn't about banning ideas; it's about stopping the deliberate indoctrination of military children with a radical ideology that directly contradicts the values that should be shaping our children's growth and development.' READ MORE: Defense Department sued over Trump admin's alleged 'book bans' 'The Trump administration is fighting for military families by making sure DoDEA schools reflect the values of service, sacrifice, and country, and not the woke agenda of activist bureaucrats,' Kiprilov added. The Daily Caller reported that a significant number of the books included in the list feature sexual LGBTQ themes aimed at minors, while other books on the list feature DEI and other left-wing topics. One of the books on the list is a children's book titled 'My Dad Thinks I'm a Boy?!: A Trans Positive Children's Book.' According to a description on Amazon's website, 'This powerful and uplifting book for children aged 6 – 9 and their families humorously portrays a situation that is often too common, where a trans child is forced to negotiate between their true self and their parents' love.' Another book on the list is titled 'Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School.' A description of the book claims that it explains 'how the 'specter of the fag' becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the 'fag discourse' is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality.' Other books included as part of the Pentagon's ban include 'Sex Is a Funny Word: A Book about Bodies, Feelings, and YOU, 'ABC's of LGBT+,' 'Auntie Uncle: Drag Queen Hero,' and 'Baby Drag Queen.'
New York Post
17-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
CBS News reporter says he got ‘PTSD' from Trump assassination attempt because of crowd anger at media
Advertisement CBS News Capitol Hill correspondent Scott MacFarlane told podcaster Chuck Todd on Wednesday about how traumatized he was by Trump rallygoers blaming the media for the assassination attempt against President Donald Trump in 2024. Americans reeled in shock from the attempt on Trump's life during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, but MacFarlane said he had personal trauma from the crowd's immediate rage in response. 'For those of us there, it was such a horror because you saw an emerging America,' MacFarlane told Todd on his podcast. 'And it wasn't the shooting, Chuck. This was – I got diagnosed with PTSD within 48 hours. I got put on trauma leave, not because, I think, of the shooting, but because you saw it in the eyes, the reaction of the people.' 'They were coming for us,' he said in the clip flagged by The Daily Caller. 'If [Trump] didn't jump up with his fist, they were going to come kill us!' Advertisement 'I know,' Todd agreed. Later in the discussion, MacFarlane added that, 'Many of us on press row, as we talked about this on our text chains for weeks after, were quite confident we'd be dead if he didn't get back up.' 3 CBS News Capitol Hill correspondent Scott MacFarlane opened up about how traumatized he was by Trump rallygoers blaming the media for the assassination attempt against President Donald Trump in 2024. Youtube/ Chuck Todd Podcast 3 Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by Secret Service agents as he is taken off the stage at a campaign event at Butler Farm Show Inc. in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. AFP via Getty Images Advertisement 3 'For those of us there, it was such a horror because you saw an emerging America,' MacFarlane said. 'And it wasn't the shooting, Chuck. This was – I got diagnosed with PTSD within 48 hours. I got put on trauma leave, not because, I think, of the shooting, but because you saw it in the eyes, the reaction of the people.' Aristide Economopoulos While it wasn't everyone in the crowd, MacFarlane claimed that dozens of people turned on them and said, ''You did this. This is your fault. You caused this. You killed him,' and they were going to beat us with their hands. I mean, they were going to kill us. And respectfully, the Secret Service had bigger issues [than] protecting us. When he jumped up triumphantly, it saved us.' Nonetheless, he said, 'I can't eliminate from my mind's eye the look in their faces. That's what America is right now. It's not rational. It's an irrational thought to think the media shot somebody from the top of a building, but the lack of rationality is what connects January 6 to this.' 'How do we pull out of this as a country is the defining question of our time,' he said.
American Military News
14-07-2025
- Politics
- American Military News
Biden admits his staff used autopen for mass clemency, pardons
Former President Joe Biden admitted in an interview on Thursday that his administration used the autopen to sign mass pardons and clemency orders because he granted clemency to 'a whole lot of people.' The former president's comments come after President Donald Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the Biden administration's use of the autopen. In a Thursday phone call interview with The New York Times, Biden explained that he 'made every decision' regarding the clemency and pardons he granted to over 1,500 people at the end of his administration following Trump's win in the 2024 presidential election. 'I made every single one of those,' Biden told The New York Times. The former president explained that his administration used the autopen because 'we're talking about a whole lot of people.' During Thursday's interview, Biden described Trump and other Republican leaders as 'liars' for suggesting that Biden's aides used the autopen to sign orders without his consent or authorization. Asked about his decision to grant pardons to his family members, Biden said. 'Everybody knows how vindictive he [Trump] is, so we knew that they'd do what they're doing now. And my family didn't do anything wrong.' 'And all it would do is, if they, if he went after them, would be, is run up legal bills. I just, I just know how he operates,' Biden added. 'And so I made — but I consciously made all those decisions, among others.' The Daily Caller reported that the only pardon Biden signed with his own hand in December and January was his pardon for Hunter Biden, the former president's son. READ MORE: Fmr. top Biden aide admits to controlling autopen The New York Times reported that while Biden did not personally approve each of the individuals he granted clemency and pardons at the end of his administration, the former president orally communicated with his staff members and approved certain standards and criteria that were used to determine which individuals were granted clemency and pardons. According to The New York Times, Biden's staff members, including White House Staff Secretary, Stefanie Feldman, used the autopen to sign off on the final versions of official documents instead of having Biden sign updated versions of the documents. In a memorandum to Bondi last month, Trump said, 'In recent months, it has become increasingly apparent that former President Biden's aides abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden's cognitive decline and assert Article II authority.' 'This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,' Trump added. 'The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden's signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.'
