Marjorie Taylor Greene Blows Gasket Over Biden Trying to Stop Airline Fees

Never let anyone tell you Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t have a platform. On Monday, the MAGA lawmaker put a double whammy on record: that she doesn’t want the federal government helping families, and she actually loves airline fees.

After Joe Biden called for airlines to limit fees for families who want to sit next to each other on the plane, the Georgia representative blew a gasket.

“What’s next? Joe Biden using his power as president to demand kids eat free at all restaurants too?” Greene posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Why don’t you do your job and CLOSE THE BORDER instead of pandering for votes!!!”

Never mind that Greene’s own party is at fault for the lack of a border deal, as GOP leadership has spent months systematically killing any possibility of an agreement. On Sunday, the Senate unveiled a $118 billion bipartisan agreement to address security at the U.S.-Mexico border, offering exactly the kind of bill that Republicans had been requesting. And yet House Speaker Mike Johnson said the package would be “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber. Greene also rejected the 370-page deal just hours after it was announced, alleging that anyone who supports it must be a foreign agent.

“House Republicans have to decide. Do they want to solve the problem? Or do they want to keep playing politics with the border? I’ve made my decision. I’m ready to solve the problem. I’m ready to secure the border. And so are the American people,” Biden said in a statement on Monday.

“I urge Congress to come together and swiftly pass this bipartisan agreement. Get it to my desk so I can sign it into law immediately,” he continued.

Meanwhile, Greene has spent her own valuable time fruitlessly attacking progressives. Last week, instead of working with her colleagues to coordinate a border package that actually would pass muster in the Senate, Greene drew up a censure resolution against Representative Ilhan Omar, utilizing a bad-faith translation of one of her speeches in Somali to claim that the Muslim lawmaker is working as a “foreign agent.”

Georgia Republicans have introduced a bill they have dubbed the “Women’s Bill of Rights.” But in reality, the measure would expose women, both cis- and transgender, to increased violence and discrimination.

House Bill 1128 was introduced Friday by a group of six Republican state representatives, five of whom are women. The bill starts by defining sex as only biologically male or female.

“An individual’s sex can be observed or clinically verified at or before birth and in no case is an individual’s sex determined by stipulation or self-identification,” the measure states.

This would define transgender people out of the law, stripping them of many rights and protections. The bill also stipulates that everyone must use utilities such as bathrooms, locker rooms, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and sports teams that correspond to their gender assigned at birth.

Under the bill, “laws, rules, and regulations that distinguish between the sexes are subject to intermediate constitutional scrutiny.” This could affect measures aimed at eliminating gender discrimination, such as ensuring equal pay or barring discriminatory hiring practices.

The measure also changes state criminal procedure so that attacks based on someone’s sexual identity or gender no longer qualify as a hate crime. Trans people are over four times more likely than cis people to be the victim of violent crimes. If H.B. 1128 becomes law, trans people could no longer seek legal recourse if they are attacked.

Georgia’s bill is the latest in a years-long onslaught in Republican-led states attacking trans rights. There are currently 428 anti-trans bills working their way through state governments. About half of those bills were carried over from 2023.

Many of the measures passed in 2023 were aimed at banning gender-affirming care for trans and nonbinary children, despite the fact that the medical community widely considers gender-affirming care to be life-saving treatment. In 2024, many Republicans have moved on to targeting trans adults.

Three days after taking the case off the docket due to months of grandstanding by Trump’s legal team, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is musing over the possibility that Donald Trump’s January 6 criminal trial could be postponed until August.

On Monday, Chutkan told attorneys in another case that she planned to be out of the country in early August, unless Trump’s trial had already begun, reported Politico.

“I hope not to be in the country on August 5,” Chutkan said during a press conference for another trial related to January 6, adding that if she is in the country, it will only be because “I’m in trial in another matter that has not yet returned to my calendar.”

That would push the case—which has been on hold since December while higher courts question the legitimacy of Trump’s presidential immunity claim—past the Republican National Convention on July 15 and possibly until the general election.

Sources close to the former president have said that in private, Trump is bracing for the possibility of serving jail time over the case if it comes to trial this spring. Instead, the delay might play out as a best-case scenario for Trump’s team, who are hoping that independent voters will be upset by the optics of a Democratic administration prosecuting the nation’s GOP nominee.

As Trump’s January 6 trial remains delayed, the next trial on the docket is Trump’s Stormy Daniels hush-money case in New York, which is set to begin in March.

If all else fails, Trump could still technically run for president from behind bars, and there’s a precedent for it. In 1920, the Socialist Party nominee, Eugene V. Debs, garnered nearly a million votes while serving a 10-year sentence for urging U.S. citizens to resist the World War I draft.

Meta’s Oversight Board decided Monday that a Facebook video manipulated to show President Joe Biden behaving inappropriately with his granddaughter can stay on the platform, because the company’s own moderation policy tied the board’s hands.

The video, which was posted last spring, shows Biden putting an “I Voted” sticker on his adult granddaughter’s chest. The clip was edited to make it look like he repeatedly and inappropriately touched her chest. When a user first reported the video, Facebook parent company Meta decided not to take it down. So the user appealed the decision to the Oversight Board, an independent agency tasked with moderating content on Meta’s platforms.

The board determined Monday that the video does not violate Meta’s manipulated media policy, which only applies to videos that have been manipulated with artificial intelligence to make it seem as if someone said something they did not. The policy does not apply to manipulated audio, however.

The rule is too narrow to affect the video in question, the board said, but that doesn’t make the rule good. In fact, the board warned that the policy is problematic in and of itself and could contribute to increased disinformation during the 2024 election cycle.

“The Board is concerned about the Manipulated Media policy in its current form,” the Board said in its decision, “finding it to be incoherent, lacking in persuasive justification and inappropriately focused on how content has been created, rather than on which specific harms it aims to prevent (for example, to electoral processes).”

“The policy should not treat ‘deep fakes’ differently to content altered in other ways,” the board said. “The current policy does not clearly specify the harms it is seeking to prevent. Meta needs to provide greater clarity on what those harms are and needs to make revisions quickly, given the record number of elections in 2024.”

As artificial intelligence improves, the number of so-called “deepfakes” is increasing. A deepfake is an artificially created form of media intended to make it appear that someone said or did something they did not.

During the New Hampshire primary in January, state Democratic voters received a robocall that used a digitally manipulated recording of Biden urging them to “save” their votes and not participate in the primary.

Representative Nancy Mace’s former staffers agree on one thing: The South Carolina lawmaker’s work culture is “toxic.”

As of Monday, every member of Mace’s staff had turned over since November 1, 2023, shortly after Mace joined hands with seven other House Republicans to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Eight employees turned in their resignations after Mace fired her former chief of staff Dan Hanlon, reported The Daily Beast. Hanlon is now running against her in the 2024 primary race for South Carolina’s 1st congressional district.

Those who tapped out on their own accord include her deputy chief of staff Richard Chalkey, her legislative director Randal Meyer, communications director Will Hampson, a financial adviser, a staff assistant, two legislative assistants, and her military legislative assistant.

According to former staff, Mace was “abusive” and “all about control,” utilizing staff not as people “but as property,” reinforcing that environment via unauthorized software systems to constantly “micromanage the office all day and into the night and early morning.”

“If she needed us, we had to answer within eight minutes,” one staffer told the Beast, clarifying that the eight minute mark was a “rule.”

“Nancy is delusional as a boss,” the unidentified employee continued. “She says nothing publicly without her consultants or senior staffers telling her to, but takes credit for everything. She’s a walking teleprompter.”

Another former staffer went further, taking a jab at Mace for recently onboarding disgraced former Representative George Santos’s communications director, Gabrielle Lipsky, to fill the void.

“All this is why pretty much every staffer and fellow member on the Hill thinks she’s a joke,” the staffer told the publication. “Also a big reason why she’s only able to hire former George Santos staffers right now.”

Mace’s new crew tried to brush off the massive turnover as a “non-issue,” according to the Beast.

“​​New coach, new team in the DC office,” Mace’s new chief of staff, Lori Khatod, wrote the outlet in a text message.