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7NEWS
an hour ago
- Politics
- 7NEWS
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Trump threatens to strip Rosie O'Donnell of US citizenship
President Donald Trump said he was weighing using the power of the government against one of his long-time entertainment world nemeses, comedian and actress Rosie O'Donnell, threatening to revoke her citizenship. Shortly before 10am Saturday, Trump said on Truth Social, 'Because of the fact that Rosie O'Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.' The president called O'Donnell a 'threat to humanity' and said she should stay in Ireland, where she moved to in January after Trump won a second term. Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today Trump's headline-grabbing provocation about O'Donnell comes at a moment in which his administration is contending with criticism on many fronts: His top law enforcement officials are bitterly feuding over the Jeffrey Epstein saga; there remain unanswered questions about the decision to halt munitions to Ukraine and who authorized it; the homeland security chief is facing intense scrutiny over the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response in Texas; and so on. O'Donnell snapped back at Trump with her own barrage of insults on Instagram. 'The president of the USA has always hated the fact that I see him for who he is — a criminal con man sexual abusing liar out to harm our nation to serve himself,' she said. 'This is why I moved to Ireland.' She further taunted the president in a subsequent post showing a photo of Trump with Epstein, taken in 1997 in Palm Beach, Florida. 'You want to revoke my citizenship? Go ahead and try, King Joffrey with a tangerine spray tan,' she said, referring to the sadistic child-king in Game of Thrones. Experts said the president does not have the power to take away the citizenship of a U.S.-born citizen. Julia Gelatt, associate director of the immigration program at the Migration Policy Institute, said: 'U.S. citizens can relinquish their citizenship voluntarily, and federal courts can strip naturalized citizens of their citizenship if there is proven fraud or misrepresentation or other major cause. But U.S.-born citizens cannot have their citizenship taken away.' Amanda Frost, an expert on citizenship law at the University of Virginia School of Law, cited Supreme Court precedent. 'In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Afroyim v. Rusk that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment bars the government from stripping citizenship, stating: 'In our country the people are sovereign and the government cannot sever its relationship to the people by taking away their citizenship,'' she said in an email. Trump's feud with O'Donnell dates to 2006, when she mocked the president on 'The View' for defending a Miss USA contestant roiled in a controversy. She questioned his own moral compass and role as a businessman. Trump, who at the time was best known for his show, 'The Apprentice,' threatened to sue 'The View' over her comments. Soon after, Trump began hurling insults at O'Donnell, calling her 'fat' and 'wacko.' In a 2015 Republican debate on Fox News, one of the moderators said, 'You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.' Trump interjected: 'Only Rosie O'Donnell.' Trump's threat to revoke O'Donnell's citizenship is the latest in a series of statements he has made about political adversaries and celebrities who have criticized him. After billionaire Elon Musk and Trump fought publicly over the president's sprawling domestic policy bill, the president suggested he might be interested in deporting Musk. When asked by a reporter if he would deport Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in South Africa, Trump responded, 'I don't know. We'll have to take a look.' Trump has repeated baseless claims that Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, is living in the U.S. without legal status. Trump has threatened to arrest him if he interfered with the federal crackdown on illegal immigration. He's also called for 'major investigations' into celebrities like Bruce Springsteen and Beyoncé, calling their endorsements of Kamala Harris in last year's presidential election 'corrupt and unlawful.'
New York Post
4 hours ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Former Obama speechwriter admits shunning conservative in his family was a mistake
A speechwriter for former President Barack Obama suggested in a guest essay on Sunday that it might be time to stop shunning conservatives over a disagreement with their politics. David Litt wrote in The New York Times that he felt 'a civic duty' to be rude to his brother-in-law, citing his support for Joe Rogan and disagreements over the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines. Advertisement 'My frostiness wasn't personal. It was strategic. Being unfriendly to people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right thing to do. How else could we motivate them to mend their ways?' Litt wrote. However, Litt revealed that he wanted to take up surfing and his brother-in-law, Matt, was the only surfer he knew. So, Litt wrote, he put his unfriendliness towards him aside, and admitted his cold shoulder towards Matt had backfired. 'Matt and I remain very different, yet we've reached what is, in today's America, a radical conclusion: We don't always approve of each other's choices, but we like each other,' Litt conceded. Litt said his brother-in-law's generosity while they surfed together made him rethink his behavior, and that his surfing guidance had made Litt more courageous. Advertisement 'Ostracizing him wouldn't have altered his behavior — and it would have made my own life worse,' Litt wrote. 3 David Litt (left) wrote in The New York Times that he felt 'a civic duty' to be rude to his brother-in-law. Donald Kravitz 3 Litt said his brother-in-law's generosity while they surfed together made him rethink his behavior. The White House 'Our differences are meaningful, but allowing them to mean everything is part of how we ended up here. When we cut off contacts, or let algorithms sort us into warring factions, we forget that not so long ago, we used to have things to talk about that didn't involve politics. Shunning plays into the hands of demagogues, making it easier for them to divide us and even, in some cases, to incite violence,' he wrote. Advertisement According to Litt, Matt had told him he would vote for him if he ran for office. 3 'Ostracizing him wouldn't have altered his behavior — and it would have made my own life worse,' Litt wrote. The White House Litt added that he would still decline a surf lesson with Trump aide Stephen Miller, but suggested he wouldn't close the door on a person over a political disagreement. 'In an age when banishment backfires, keeping the door open to unlikely friendship isn't a betrayal of principles — it's an affirmation of them,' Litt continued. Advertisement Several liberals have agreed that cutting ties with family members over their support for Trump in 2024 might be necessary, especially around the holidays. The co-hosts of 'The View' agreed with the notion, calling it a 'moral issue.'
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Leveled A Baffling Threat At Rosie O'Donnell — Experts Explain Why It's Truly Terrifying
President Donald Trump's recent threat that he was considering revoking Rosie O'Donnell's citizenship says a lot about how the president intends to govern — and it's 'terrifying,' experts say. On Saturday, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that he was 'giving serious consideration to taking away' O'Donnell's citizenship because he said the comedian, who moved to Ireland in January, is 'not in the best interests of our Great Country.' 'She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!' he wrote. O'Donnell, a longtime Trump critic, had posted a video denouncing the president the day before, criticizing Trump's 'mental decline' and 'what has become of our country,' among other condemnations of the Trump administration and the 'Trump cult.' She has since hit backat the president's citizenship threat in a series of social media posts. 'The president of the USA has always hated the fact that I see him for who he is — a criminal con man sexual abusing liar out to harm our nation to serve himself — this is why I moved to Ireland,' she wrote in one post. O'Donnell and Trump's feud can be traced back nearly two decades. In 2006, O'Donnell — then a talk show host on 'The View' — memorably mocked Trump's response to a Miss USA scandal that unfolded that year. (Trump was then the co-owner of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants.) O'Donnell was born in the United States. Trump's threat to take away her citizenship is 'unadulterated dictator behavior, and it's terrifying,' said Paul A. Gowder, professor of law at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law. 'By attacking citizenship in the many ways he has done, Donald Trump is making it clear that he wants the power to kick people out of the country for angering him,' Gowder told HuffPost. Trump's attacks on citizenship are 'a familiar practice of authoritarians,' Gowder said elsewhere, citing political philosopher Hannah Arendt, who 'explained in the context of deliberating on Nazi Germany [that] citizenship is really the 'right to have rights.'' 'Noncitizens traditionally have much weaker rights than citizens, and, of course, noncitizens have the greatest vulnerability of all, namely the fact that there are many, many reasons (sometimes just including variations on a theme of raw sovereign will) that they might be forcibly removed from the country, whereas citizens are never subject to that,' he continued. 'The 14th Amendment doesn't say 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside **unless they annoy the President,'' Gowder said. 'It's a constitutional right.' 'Not even Congress can pass a law taking away a person's citizenship,' he continued. 'Afroyim v. Rusk, a Supreme Court case from 1967, struck down a law divesting Americans of citizenship for voting in a foreign election. The court made clear that the only way an American citizen can lose their citizenship is if they voluntarily renounce it.' 'This is 100% clear — nobody on earth, probably including Trump himself, seriously believes that the president has the power to arbitrarily take away someone's citizenship,' he added, later calling Trump's post about McDonnell a 'frivolous, absurd, empty mad king-style threat.' But Gowder said that Trump's remarks to O'Donnell are 'part and parcel' of his general behavior toward American citizenship. 'He seems to view it not as an inalienable right but as a status that he can grant and take away at will, a meaningless instrument of his personal public policy,' Gowder said, noting that this behavior can be seen in other examples of the administration'simmigrationagenda and policies. Gowder said elsewhere that for the first time in American history, the presidency is 'in the hands of a guy who thinks that he ought to be able to roam the streets pointing at people and saying, 'You're not a citizen anymore, get out.'' That means he will also use the powers he has 'in a way that is self-centered, arbitrary and utterly faithless to his duty of loyalty to the U.S. Constitution and the American people,' he said, adding, 'The only remedy for this is impeachment and removal.' Jacob Neiheisel, associate professor of political science at the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, told HuffPost that he believes Trump's Truth Social post about O'Donnell was 'concerning on a number of levels.' 'It is disturbing that expressing disagreement or dissent is apparently reason enough in his mind to strip someone's citizenship,' he said, later noting that he thinks the threat said a lot about how Trump intends to govern. 'He appears ready and willing to use the apparatus of the state to settle old scores and pursue his own personal animosities,' he said. 'Lost in the mix is any sense of the public good. Even though Trump appears to have couched this suggestion in broader terms, saying that O'Donnell is not good for the nation, it is hard to read this move as anything other than an effort to limit dissent.' Neiheisel later emphasized that it's 'important that these types of statements not become normalized in political discourse.' Ellen DeGeneres Sends Rosie O'Donnell Unexpected 4-Word Message After Trump's Citizenship Threat Rosie O'Donnell Responded To Trump's Citizenship Threat — And She Didn't Hold Back Trump Mocked For Claiming 'Big Beautiful Bill' Helps Ugly Rich Guys Stay Married
The Hill
7 hours ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Democrats say Biden needs to quit taking GOP bait
Democrats are slamming former President Joe Biden's response to a series of investigations of him by Republicans on Capitol Hill and the Trump administration, arguing he is again taking the GOP bait to the detriment of his own party. At a time when Democrats have sought to go on offense over President Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' and the MAGA world furor over the Jeffrey Epstein files controversy, party operatives are scratching their heads at Biden's need to insert himself into the conversation – not to mention his defensive rhetoric. They say Biden is again helping Republicans with his actions, though they say there are ways for him to engage without interfering in the party's strategy. 'If he's able to go out and be a spokesperson on the issues that matter to him, if he wants to go talk about Medicaid, if he wants to go and offensively talk about that or other pressing issues, I think that makes sense and that does the work,' said one Democratic strategist. 'But I don't think you have that conversation on Donald Trump's terms. I don't see the logic on what the Biden inner circle is thinking here.' 'You'd have to question a lot of his PR decisions over the last two years,' the strategist added, arguing Biden and his aides did too little to sell his accomplishments in office. 'The selling of his presidency falls short, and this falls short,' the strategist said. One Democratic consultant, asked about the weekend interview, was blunt: 'He is adding nothing. Not a thing. And at this point, he's making it worse.' Since Biden left office in January, Democrats have grown increasingly frustrated with the former president as he has taken up oxygen with a string of public remarks and appearances. In May interviews on the BBC and The View, the Democrats say Biden shifted the focus away from the party's rebuilding effort. Biden sat for an interview with The New York Times last Thursday, responding to allegations made against him in the investigation of his use of an autopen to sign pardons. Republicans have used Biden's use of the autopen to bolster their narrative that Biden's aides were running his administration. The Democrats critical of Biden's latest interview say the subject was tangential, at best, to the national discourse. And they say that the autopen investigation will have no bearing on voters in the 2026 midterms. 'Democrats need to be on the offensive, and we cannot be running a rear guard operation to defend the Biden administration,' said Democratic strategist Garry South. 'It's not a helpful factor for him to re-emerge publicly at this point, particularly in terms of…defending his administration.' 'There is still a lot of disappointment, if not downright anger, that he decided to run again and left the party in the position of having to switch horses midstream in last year's election, leading to the second term for Donald Trump,' South added. Enthusiasm within the Democratic party continues to wane in the wake of a devastating loss in 2025, a new poll by the Democratic superPAC Unite the Country revealed. Voters view Democrats as 'weak,' 'woke,' and 'out of touch,' the same poll showed, and there is a prevailing perception of the party as weak. At a fundraiser in New Jersey on Friday, former President Barack Obama criticized the party's feeble strategy and urged Democrats to take a different approach in countering Trump. ''I think it's going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions,' said the former president. 'And it's going to require Democrats to just toughen up.'' A few Democrats said Biden's interview would hardly hurt the party. 'Trump's approvals are going down pretty precipitously. I don't think that Biden talking to the times about autopen is going to change that,' said David Litt, a speechwriter for former President Barack Obama, who recently published a new book 'It's Only Drowning' about searching for common ground during a politically divisive moment for the nation. 'It's almost off to the side of this broader conversation that people will vote on in the midterms…It's just kind of a niche subject, and…there are just so many bigger fish to fry in all directions,' the former speechwriter said. Litt said he could even see a short-term scenario where Biden's response to the autopen investigation taken with the Epstein files controversy helps Democrats and hurts Trump. 'His [Trump's] willingness to go down any rabbit hole…unless that rabbit hole involves Jeffrey Epstein…is going to be the story this week,' said Litt. 'And to the extent that Biden sort of highlights Trump's hypocrisy…I think that could actually turn out to be politically helpful for people who are not fans of Trump.' 'If the Republicans in Congress say, 'We're going to investigate a bombshell,' and it's not the Epstein files, people's biggest question is going to be, 'Why isn't it the Epstein files now?' from both the right and the left,' Litt added. 'So I actually think that it may coincidentally be a moment that highlights Trump's willingness to investigate everything other than Jeffrey Epstein.' Other Democrats are harsher critics of Biden's latest interview and his re-emergence altogether. They acknowledge that Biden will likely hold minimal influence over the midterms either way but worry that his appearances drag the party back to the very moment they are trying to build back from. Party operatives also question Biden's ability to be an effective counter, saying that he propagates the perception of Democrats as a weak contrast to Republicans. 'In his diminished state, he simply can't come off as a powerful voice against Trump, even though one can sympathize with his anger at how Trump and his partisans have tried to depict him,' South said. 2024 Election Coverage Litt said that Biden's remarks are a bad attempt at a good strategy, one that indicates growth and proactivity within the party. 'A broader lesson that Democrats are learning is engaging more and earlier is better in this day and age,' said Litt. 'It used to be that Democrats would see these conspiracy theories bubble up on the internet, and they would say, 'Okay, we'll just let it run its course.'' 'What you're seeing in general from Democrats, and I suspect that Biden is an example of this…is a recognition that these days, if somebody sort of right wing comments or tweets something that goes viral, it can very quickly become policy, and so you can't just let it run its course,' Litt added. 'Internet trolls are really the tail wagging dog of a lot of Trump administration policies here.'
Daily Mirror
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
Ellen DeGeneres praises Rosie O'Donnell after President Donald Trump's threats
Former talk show host Ellen DeGeneres threw her support behind Rosie O'Donnell after she was slammed by President Donald Trump Ellen DeGeneres threw her support behind comedian Rosie O'Donnell after US President and convicted felon Donald Trump threatened to illegally revoke her US citizenship for moving her family to Ireland until "it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America". Rosie, who was born in the United States, moved her family to Ireland earlier this year after Trump was re-elected - saying: "When it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America, that's when we will consider coming back." Rosie has been open about her dislike for Trump, with her trading insults online while she was a host on TV's The View in 2015. After the comedian said she would only consider returning to the US when it is "safe", Trump lashed out on his Truth Social platform, saying he's giving "serious consideration" to revoking her citizenship - something he is not legally able to do. POTUS wrote: "Because of the fact that Rosie O'Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. "She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!" Removing the citizenship of a natural born citizen of the US would put the President in breach of the 14th Amendment of the constitution. It guarantees: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." Amid the feud, former talk show host Ellen took to her Instagram to share a screenshot of Trump's tweet. She added: "Good for you @rosie." She also shared a screenshot of Rosie's response, which said: "Hey donald - you're rattled agan? 18 years later and I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours. "You call me a threat to humanity - but I'm everything you fear: a loud woman, a queer woman, a mother who tells the truth, an American who got out of the country b4 u set it ablaze. You build walls - I build a life for my autistic kid in a country where decency still exists. "You crave loyalty - I teach my childre to question power. You sell fear on golf courses - I make art about surviving trauma. You like, you steal, you degrade - I nurture, I create, I persist." Rosie concluded: "You are everything that is wrong with America - and I'm everything you hate about what's still right with it. You want to revoke my citizenship? Go ahead and try, King Joffrey with a tangerine spray tan. I'm not yours to silence. I never was."
