Jamie Raskin Faces Backlash After Saying Democrats Could Accept MTG

Maryland Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin is facing some backlash for extending party membership to hard-line MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene—once again raising the issue of just how big the Democratic tent should be.

“We are a big tent. We must be a huge, vast tent. I say this is a party that’s got room for Marjorie Taylor Greene if she wants to come over!” Raskin said on Sunday while speaking to a group of Florida Democrats. “We got room for anybody who wants to stand up for the Constitution, and for the Bill of Rights today.… You’re damn right I’m a liberal, the heart of that word is ‘liberty.’ And I’m a progressive because the heart of that word is ‘progress.’ But my favorite thing to call myself today is a conservative, because I wanna conserve the land, the air, the water, the climate system, the Constition.”

Raskin’s comment is certainly eyebrow-raising. Greene has been making headlines in recent weeks due to her surprising break from Trump on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, his decision to bail out Javier Milei in Argentina, and his insistence that the economy is great and there is no inflation. Just this weekend, Trump called her a “traitor” to the country, leading her to fear for her safety.

But this is also the same woman who has supported Trump on nearly every other issue, spreading racist, antisemitic, and generally unhinged rhetoric that has made her one of the most radical members of Congress.

“Fuck no. Stop trying to rehabilitate terrible people just because they said one bad thing about Trump,” one frustrated X user wrote.

“I’m an admirer of @RepRaskin & I think the Dems should be a ‘big tent’ too BUT as @AdamKinzinger has pointed out, MTG still supports election denial & the Big Lie and, I would add, the ICE cruelty & violence against people, including Americans, of color,” journalist Medhi Hasan said. “Let’s not whitewash her.”

Hours after Donald Trump targeted an Indiana Republican, that same state senator became victim to a swatting incident. 

On Sunday,  Trump accused Greg Goode and fellow Republican state Senator Rod Bray of going against his idea to redraw Indiana’s congressional districts. The president called the pair “RINO senators” on Truth Social and said he was “very disappointed” in them. 

That same night, Goode’s home was swatted, meaning that a false emergency call was made to law enforcement in Vigo County, Indiana, that people were in danger inside the residence. Officers from the Vigo County Sheriff’s Office responded, and initially couldn’t make contact with anyone at the house before they finally spoke to people there. 

Goode and others “were secure, safe, and unharmed. Investigation showed that this was a prank or false email (also known as ‘swatting’),” Vigo County Sheriff Derek Fell said in a statement. 

“While this entire incident is unfortunate and reflective of the volatile nature of our current political environment, I give thanks to God that my family and I are ok,” Goode said in his own statement Sunday. 

Swatting incidents go well beyond pranks, and can cause injury or even death, not to mention trauma and wrongful arrests. They are a tool of intimidation designed to threaten people. Trump bears responsibility for his post inspiring stochastic terrorism, and Goode has not even made a public statement on redistricting. 

Trump’s post also claimed that every Indiana Republican senator against redistricting would have their names released to the public later on Sunday, which did not seem to happen. If it had, Goode might not have been the only victim of Trump’s worst supporters. All of this goes to show that Trump is demanding total obedience and authority, and his supporters see any defiance as worthy of violence. 

Iconic and recently troubled rapper Nicki Minaj will address the United Nations on Tuesday to speak up against what the Trump administration describes as “atrocities against Christians” in Nigeria.

“.@NICKIMINAJ is not only arguably the greatest female recording artist, but also a principled individual who refuses to remain silent in the face of injustice,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz wrote on X on Sunday. “I’m grateful she’s leveraging her massive platform to spotlight the atrocities against Christians in Nigeria, and I look forward to standing with her as we discuss the steps the President and his administration are taking to end the persecution of our Christian brothers and sisters.”

Minaj responded to the right-wing Christian Zionist graciously.

“Ambassador, I am so grateful to be entrusted with an opportunity of this magnitude. I do not take it for granted. It means more than you know,” she wrote. “The Barbz & I will never stand down in the face of injustice. We’ve been given our influence by God. There must be a bigger purpose.”

Minaj has never been that politically inclined, aside from a few Obama endorsements, and her music wouldn’t suggest that she feels strongly enough about the persecution of Christians to speak on behalf of the Trump administration at the U.N. But her flailing career—marked by her incessant use of Grok and nasty, manic beefs with younger female rappers—and the sex offense and rape charges of her husband and brother certainly would. Earlier this month, Minaj also reposted Trump’s Truth Social message from earlier in which he pledged to “stand ready, willing, and able” to step in and aid Nigerian Christians.

“Reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude. We live in a country where we can freely worship God. No group should ever be persecuted for practicing their religion. We don’t have to share the same beliefs in order for us to respect each other,” she said at the time. “Numerous countries all around the world are being affected by this horror & it’s dangerous to pretend we don’t notice. Thank you to The President & his team for taking this seriously. God bless every persecuted Christian. Let’s remember to lift them up in prayer.” She also reposted a pro-Trump TikTok around the same time she started talking about Nigerian Christians.

The claim that Christians in Nigeria are being targeted for their faith is as contentious as Minaj’s expertise on the matter. Trump has threatened to invade the “now disgraced country guns-a-blazing” to stop Islamic extremist groups.

Nigerians and their government have pushed back on assertions of anti-Christian prosecution.

The Nigerian government wrote in a statement in September, “Nigeria’s security challenge is not a war of religion.” The statement continued:

‘Portraying Nigeria’s security challenges as a targeted campaign against a single religious group is a gross misrepresentation of reality.’ Terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology—Muslims, Christians, and those of no faith alike.

Between May 2023 and Feb 2025, over 13,500 terrorists were neutralized and nearly 10,000 hostages rescued. Just last month, the top leaders of ANSARU, Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Nigeria, were captured.

‘The Nigerian story is not one of genocide or persecution, but of resilience, diversity, and a globally acknowledged commitment to peaceful coexistence.’

Christianity is neither endangered nor marginalized in Nigeria. Our nation is home to some of the world’s largest Pentecostal churches, the largest Anglican congregation, and one of the biggest Muslim communities anywhere.

Anyone should be skeptical of Trump’s plans to invade a West African country under the guise of religious freedom—especially when it comes after what The Guardian described as “weeks of lobbying by U.S. lawmakers and conservative Christian groups urging him to designate Nigeria as a ‘country of particular concern.’”

Kash Patel has reportedly assigned a security detail of SWAT agents to guard his country singer girlfriend, in the latest chapter of the FBI director’s blatant misappropriation of bureau resources.

A group of elite agents from the FBI Field Office in Nashville have been assigned to protect Patel’s girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, two sources told MS NOW, formerly MSNBC. The sources added that those agents, who are typically charged with responding to high-risk situations, would likely be unable to respond in the event of a crisis in the Nashville area. People familiar with FBI security protocols told MS NOW that they’d never heard of a top FBI official’s girlfriend receiving a security detail staffed by government agents.

Patel’s efforts to heighten his girlfriend’s security come after he was caught using a $60 million government jet to visit Wilkins at a wrestling event at Penn State and then fly her back to Nashville. Patel responded to the scandal by making it harder to track his jet and arguing that people were wrong for “attacking” Wilkins, though it seems that most people were just criticizing him.

“Attacking her isn’t just wrong—it’s cowardly and jeopardizes our safety. My love of family will always be my cornerstone, and you will never tear that down or keep me from them,” he wrote in a post on X earlier this month.

Patel’s commute to work in Washington, while he keeps a legal residence in Las Vegas, has sparked concern from lawmakers over whether Patel reimbursed the government for personal trips. The leaks to MS NOW suggest Patel’s unorthodox use of government resources hasn’t won him any friends at the bureau, either.

* An earlier version of this post gave the incorrect age of Alexis Wilkins.

Donald Trump has changed his mind and now wants House Republicans to vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.

The president announced his reversal on Truth Social Sunday night, saying, “We have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown.’”

Why the sudden flip-flop, especially since House Republicans have been trying to delay a vote to force the release of the Epstein files for months? Well, after the House Oversight Committee released pages and pages of damaging correspondence from the Epstein estate, Trump feels as though he’s going to lose anyway. House GOP leadership was already projecting that as many as 100 Republicans could vote to release the files.

By agreeing now, Trump is trying to get ahead of the release and placate his fellow Republicans, who have no defensible reason to keep blocking the files with their base clamoring for their release. Over the past week, emails and text messages have revealed that Trump was very close to Epstein in recent years, despite his many denials. Trump is eager for the stories to end and the issue to fade out of news coverage, and now he wants to rip off the Band-Aid.

“The House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to, I DON’T CARE! All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT,” his Truth Social post said.

It’s a rare instance that the president has caved to pressure from Congress, and shows some cracks in his control over the GOP. What happens now? Will Senate Republicans also vote to release the files? And what is in the files that the president has fought so hard to keep hidden?

Outspoken GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene says she has received multiple threats of doxing and violence, and she directly blames President Trump and his “dog whistle” rhetorical attacks for endangering the lives of her and her family. 

The jabs became more serious  last Friday, as Trump announced that he’d be “withdrawing” his support from Greene after she pressed for the Jeffrey Epstein files to be released in full, broke with Trump on inflation and affordability, and criticized his foreign policy decisions on bailing out Argentina and bankrolling Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. 

“All I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” Trump wrote Friday, claiming that Greene was only publicly disagreeing with him because he told her not to run for senate or governor in her home state of Georgia, which Greene denies. 

Over the next few days, Trump went on to say that Greene (who he called “Marjorie Taylor Brown” because of green turning brown when it rots) “betrayed the entire Republican Party when she turned Left” and that she was a fake Republican, a “traitor,” and a “disgrace” to the “great Republican party.” 

Greene was quick to respond. 

“I stood with President Trump when almost no one else would. I campaigned for him all over this country and spent millions of my own dollars helping him get elected,” she said Sunday on CNN. “That’s why being called a ‘traitor’ isn’t just hurtful, it puts a target on my back and puts my life in danger.”

Greene elaborated on that danger in a post on X later that same evening. 

“The hoax pizza deliveries have started now, to my house and my family members. Update: we also received a pipe bomb threat on my construction companies office building. President Trump’s unwarranted and vicious attacks against me were a dog whistle to dangerous radicals that could lead to serious attacks on me and my family,” Greene wrote. “Unfortunately, I’ve been down this road before. As a matter of fact, as I campaigned all over the country and defended President Trump, I received dozens of swatting calls on my house and my family members homes along with these hoax pizza deliveries, but even more severely I have received some of the most death threats of any Member of Congress that led to multiple men being convicted and serving time in prison. And all of that came from the left.

“Now that President Trump has called me a traitor, which is absolutely untrue and horrific. Mark Levin has been calling me a traitor. And so have other prominent likely paid social medial activists. This puts blood in the water and creates a feeding frenzy. And it could ultimately lead to a harmful or even deadly outcome.”

The president had no regard for Greene’s fear. 

“Wacky Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown (Remember, Green turns to Brown where there is ROT involved!) is working overtime to try and portray herself as a victim when, in actuality, she is the cause of all of her own problems,” he wrote on Truth Social. “The fact is, nobody cares about this Traitor to our Country!”

Trump is no stranger to inciting violence through rhetoric, but this is a significant shift given how loyal Greene was to Trump and the MAGA agenda. Still, she has no intention of dropping her push for the release of the Epstein files.

“I stand with these women, I stand with rape victims, I stand with children who are in terrible sex abuse situations, and I stand with survivors of trafficking,” Greene said on CNN. “I will not apologize for that. I believe the country deserves transparency in these files. And I don’t believe that rich powerful people should be protected if they have done anything wrong.” 

President Donald Trump’s obsessive focus on deporting immigrants has led to extreme changes at the Department of Homeland Security and undermined efforts to combat child exploitation and sex trafficking, a new report found.

According to The New York Times, the department has been forced to shift its priorities and sideline other important law enforcement activities to make way for the president’s agenda.

Agents investigating sexual crimes against children have been temporarily reassigned, a national security probe into the Iranian black market slowed and lost momentum, and agents working on sex trafficking issues have been forced to pause their work in order to support the Trump administration’s deportation goals. Even the Coast Guard has been pulled in to aid the deportation work, the Times reported.

The new data that the report is based on comes from previously unseen internal DHS documents, and interviews with more than 60 officials.

People inside the agency spoke of being “berated” by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller for not arresting enough people. Yet the Trump administration’s extensive focus on immigration hasn’t played out the way they might have imagined. Less than 40 percent of people ICE arrests carry criminal convictions, the report says.

The Trump administration’s pressure campaign extended to all parts of the agency.

As of August, there are currently more than 60,000 people being detained by DHS, and the Trump administration has shown no signs of pulling back anytime soon.

While so many government agencies have been gutted, depriving Americans of much needed aid and assistance, DHS has received a hefty funding boost. ICE is expected to grow its staff by 66 percent over the next few years.

Hany Farid, a computer scientist who worked on software that detects child sexual abuse materials and aids law enforcement, told Times reporters that it was heartbreaking. “You can’t say you care about kids when you’re diverting actual resources that are protecting children,” he said.

The internet had a field day this week when the House Oversight Committee released thousands of billionaire child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s emails to the public—including an exchange with his brother Mark that seemingly referred to Donald Trump performing fellatio on someone named “Bubba.”

Now, Mark Epstein has come out to remove a modicum of the mystery surrounding the remark, by revealing who Bubba is not.

In the message in question, from March 2018, Mark Epstein told his brother to ask former Trump adviser Steve Bannon whether Russian President Vladimir Putin “has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba.”

Jeffrey Epstein replied, “and i thought- I had tsuris,” using the Yiddish word for “troubles.”

Because “Bubba” is a nickname for Bill Clinton—who, like Trump, had a relationship with Epstein—social media was awash with jokes and speculation that Mark Epstein was, in jest or not, describing kompromat depicting the current and former presidents.

Mark Epstein issued a statement Saturday, shared online by Business Insider’s Jacob Shamsian, which described the emails as “simply part of a humorous private exchange between two brothers.”

“For the avoidance of doubt, the reference to ‘Bubba’ in this correspondence is not, in any way, a reference to former President Bill Clinton,” the statement continues. “Any attempt to conflate that reference with President Clinton, or to read sweeping implications into them, misrepresents both the purpose and the tone of the original correspondence.”

But while clarifying the unserious nature of the message, the statement leaves the true identity of Bubba unknown.

Senator Bill Cassidy gave a puzzling answer about his role in placing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services.

During a Sunday appearance on Face The Nation, moderator Margaret Brennan asked if Cassidy—a physician whose support of vaccines has put him at odds with Kennedy—regrets his February confirmation vote.

Brennan observed that Cassidy decided to vote for Kennedy after receiving assurance that a key CDC vaccine advisory committee would be maintained “without changes”; Kennedy went on to fire all of its members, anyway, and appoint new ones, including vaccine skeptics, in their place.

In lieu of an answer, Cassidy offered the following gem: “You live life forward. Again, you just do,” he said, going on to quote Matthew 6:34. “Let the day’s own troubles be sufficient for the day.”

The senator continued, “He and I have publicly disagreed on some matters, but I strongly agree with him on others, and so, so that’s how I’ll answer your question.”

“That sounds, um, like yes,” Brennan noted.

Online, social media users mocked Cassidy’s enigmatic comments. “Translation: Yes, but I’ll pretend it’s a philosophical riddle,” wrote one. “Cassidy sounds like a fortune cookie,” posted another.

Before giving his nonanswer, Cassidy noted that “every reporter asks me that.” One would think he’d have a better response by now.

Far-right politician Marjorie Taylor Greene became embroiled in a bitter public fight with President Donald Trump this weekend which led her to receive threats against her life, she said—but she still supports him.

Their falling out highlights a growing divide in MAGA world, as Trump’s connections to convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and his administration’s clumsy attempts to make the issue go away enrage some members of his base.

Greene, a Republican representative from Georgia, recently joined Democrats and three other House Republicans in signing a discharge petition intended to force a vote to make the DOJ’s Epstein files public, which displeased the president.

Greene said she texted Trump Friday about the files, and urged the president to be transparent and support the full release of the documents. She shared screenshots on social media of the purported texts.

In response, apparently, the president grew enraged, and denounced his former supporter in a post on Truth Social on Friday. Trump said he was withdrawing support for Greene and referred to her as a “raging Lunatic,” among other things. He kept going on Saturday, inventing new disparaging nicknames for his former ally and calling her a traitor.

Greene said she found his aggressive response “shocking,” that he had said things that were simply not true, and that she had received threats after his attacks on social media.

But speaking to CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday morning, the Georgia Republican pointed out that she had supported Trump and the Trump administration in the past, and still would.

“I stood with President Trump when virtually no one else did,” she said. “Campaigned all over the country, spent millions of my own dollars helping him get elected, and I think that’s incredibly important, and I do support him and his administration.”

His remarks had been hurtful, she said. “However, I have something in my heart that I think is incredibly important for our country, and that is to end the toxic fighting in politics. And this has been going on for years.… The most hurtful thing he said, which is absolutely untrue, is he called me a traitor. That is so extremely wrong. Those are the types of words used that can radicalize people against me and put my life in danger.”

It’s worth mentioning here that Greene has engaged in more than her share of vile, hateful rhetoric over the years. She’s espoused white supremacist and antisemitic views, endorsed conspiracy theories, and more.

The president’s attacks on her, however, seem to have crossed some sort of a line, as far as Greene was concerned.

“What do you think happened, what do you think is the reason for this is?” Bash asked.

“Unfortunately, it has all come down to the Epstein files,” Greene said.

Later in the interview, Bash asked if she could see a situation in which she and the president resolved things.

“I certainly hope that we can make up,” Greene said.