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Welcome to the resistance, Tucker Carlson?
Forgive me; I’m sorry; mea culpa! Having spent considerable time analyzing the events of the past week, I’ve realized I should probably issue a public apology for some of my statements over the years. Here we go: I’m sorry for expressing radical and dangerous opinions like “women deserve equal rights and shouldn’t be treated like walking wombs”. I’m sorry for suggesting Palestinians shouldn’t be systematically exterminated while Donald Trump posts about building a resort in Gaza. Going forward I will do better and ensure that I double-check all my opinions with the government. There isn’t an official Department of Thought Control yet, but no doubt we’ll get there soon.
I wish I was joking about all this but, as you will have noticed, we are in a critical moment for free speech in the US. The killing of Charlie Kirk was a tragedy for his family, but the Trump administration has been ruthlessly using Kirk’s death to further a crackdown on dissent and erode first amendment protections.
The day after Kirk was fatally shot, for example, the deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, urged people to report any “foreigners” to the state department who post on social media “praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event.” The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, later said that the state department has “most certainly been denying visas” to people celebrating Kirk’s death. It’s obviously not in good taste to celebrate anyone’s murder, but the fact that calling out Kirk’s divisive and bigoted views could possibly be considered “rationalizing” his death and get you deported is chilling.
It’s not just foreigners who are being told they should be wary about what they say. On Monday Vice-President JD Vance, who was guest-hosting an episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, encouraged people to report anyone celebrating the influencer’s death to that person’s employer. Presumably so said employer can fire them.
There have, of course, already been numerous Kirk-related firings and suspensions. An employee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency was reportedly placed on administrative leave over an Instagram post describing Kirk as “the literal racist homophobe misogynist.” MSNBC fired political analyst Matthew Dowd after he suggested Kirk’s “awful words” fueled “awful actions”. Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was suspended “indefinitely” after he noted “many in Maga Land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk”. Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah has also said she was fired over social media posts after Kirk’s killing.
The weaponization of Kirk’s death is so alarming that even one of Trump’s former allies is rattled. Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who was once one of the loudest voices in the Magasphere, recently issued a stark warning about the way that the Trump administration appears to be leveraging Kirk’s murder to trample civil liberties.
“You hope that a year from now, the turmoil we’re seeing in the aftermath of [Kirk’s] murder won’t be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country,” Carlson said on Wednesday during an episode of his podcast. This was in reference to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s comments (which she has now walked back) that the Trump Department of Justice would “target” people disseminating “hate speech” following Kirk’s killing.
“And trust me, if it is, if that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that, ever,” Carlson added. “Because if they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think … There is nothing they can’t do to you because they don’t consider you human.”
Like Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right congresswoman who has recently started speaking a limited amount of sense on certain topics, Carlson is no ally to progressives. Indeed Carlson’s hate-mongering, and his former public cheerleading for Trump, are a large part of why we are in such a mess. But the fact that even a far-right voice like Carlson is worried about the authoritarian direction in which the US is heading should chill you to the bones. Carlson appears to have realized that no one is safe in the dictatorship that Trump appears intent on building. Not even him.
Nuns on the run in Austria
Sister Regina, 86, Sister Rita, 81, and Sister Bernadette, 88, are doing it for themselves. And by “it” I mean defying their diocese by running away from their nursing home and returning to their former convent. The convent has no electricity or running water so the nuns have started an Instagram account and are crowdfunding for supplies.
French first lady will present court with ‘evidence’ she is a woman
Rightwing influencer, crackpot and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens has repeatedly insisted that Brigitte Macron is actually a man. Owens even said she would “stake [her] entire professional reputation” on it. Now the Macrons, who are suing Owns for defamation, are submitting “scientific evidence” to a US court to prove Brigitte was not born male. RIP Owens’s “professional reputation”.
Girls and women in Colombia are being held as sex slaves
The country’s Catatumbo region, near the border with Venezuela, has seen increased violence in recent years. The Guardian reports on more than 150 girls and women aged from 11 to 50 who have escaped what they describe as “sexual slavery” by armed groups in the region. Escapees have warned there are many more women and girls in captivity.
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The Trump administration compares birth control to abortion
Trump officials recently ordered that millions of dollars’ worth of contraceptives intended for low-income countries be destroyed. “President Trump is committed to protecting the lives of unborn children all around the world,” a spokeswoman from USAID told the New York Times. “The administration will no longer supply abortifacient birth control under the guise of foreign aid.” By falsely claiming that pills, intrauterine devices and hormonal implants induce abortions, the Trump administration may be paving the way to ban birth control, experts warn.
Israeli minister salivates over ‘real estate bonanza’ in Gaza
“A business plan is on President Trump’s table,” Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said at a property development conference in Tel Aviv this week. “The demolition, the first stage in the city’s renewal, we have already done. Now we just need to build.” Mainstream media outlets keep referring to what is happening in Gaza as a “war”. But as the likes of Smotrich make clear, this is a genocidal land grab.
Pete Buttigieg criticizes Kamala Harris for passing him over because he’s gay
In her new memoir, Harris said Buttigieg was her “first choice” for running mate; “he would have been an ideal partner – if I were a straight white man”. Forget Buttigieg’s sexuality, the fact that Harris thinks a former McKinsey consultant, the epitome of an out-of-touch elite, who polled at 0% with Black voters would have been a good running mate is mind-boggling.
The week in pawtriarchy
A new study has found chimpanzees may consume the equivalent of about one beer a day because of all the fermented fruit they eat. Some researchers believe this supports the “drunken monkey” hypothesis: the idea that humans got a taste for booze because our primate ancestors were constantly on the jungle juice. It seems the ape-oclayptical state of the world is enough to drive anyone to drink.
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Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
