Even Marjorie Taylor Greene Hates the Anti-Muslim Crank Whom Trump Wants to Hire

Just days after being arrested on criminal fraud charges and attacking the family of the Manhattan judge hearing his case, former President Donald Trump reportedly is now looking to hire far-right Islamophobe Laura Loomer.

The New York Times reports that Trump recently met with Loomer, a two-time loser for the U.S. House of Representatives, and told advisers to bring her onto his 2024 campaign. Loomer on Tuesday attended Trump’s post-arraignment speech at Mar-a-Lago.

“Out of respect for President Trump, I’m not going to comment on private conversations that I had with the president,” Loomer told the Times. “The president knows I have always been a Trump loyalist,” she continued, “and that I’m committed to helping him win re-election in 2024. He likes me very much.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene, who endorsed Loomer’s failed 2022 bid in Florida’s 11th congressional district, now has a different opinion of her:

Loomer, a self-proclaimed “#proudislamaphobe,” has described Islam as a “cancer” and has celebrated the deaths of Muslim refugees, hoping for “more.”

In 2018, Loomer was banned from Twitter after tweeting that Representative Ilhan Omar was “anti Jewish,” “pro-Sharia,” and part of a religion in which “homosexuals are oppressed” and “women are abused” and “forced to wear the hijab.” After Loomer’s banning, she handcuffed herself to the doors of Twitter in protest, but perhaps not in a very efficacious manner:

Loomer later called Omar a “bitch” and “despicable human being” and said, “Muslims should not be allowed to seek positions of political office in this country.” After Elon Musk bought Twitter, she was allowed back on the platform.

Loomer was also banned from using Uber and Lyft after she made anti-Muslim remarks: “Someone needs to create a non Islamic form of Uber or Lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver.”

On a podcast called Nationalist Public Radio, Loomer explained why she is “pro–white nationalism,” saying that “immigration” and “diversity” are “starting to destroy this country.”

Fear not, Loomer’s actions are as loud as her words. In 2017, Loomer was arrested for disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing after disrupting a Shakespeare in the Park presentation of Julius Caesar in New York City. In 2019, she was arrested again after jumping over the wall of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s mansion while wearing a serape and sombrero.

The far-right malefactor has also said she doesn’t care about the mass murder of 51 people in the Christchurch, New Zealand, shooting and has spread conspiracy theories surrounding other shootings, including that those in Parkland, Florida, and Santa Fe, Texas, were staged and that the shooter in the 2017 Las Vegas shootings was connected to ISIS.

Loomer herself told the Times that she is not “some kind of fringe person,” by virtue of having been supported by Trump in her previous failed congressional bids and because she worked for Project Veritas.

Perhaps Trump is all the more eager to hire her because she has accused Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his wife, Casey, who previously had breast cancer, of playing the “cancer survivor” card to avoid criticism.

Not a full day has passed since the Republican-led Tennessee House’s shameless expulsion of Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, and already it looks like the Democratic representatives have a path to regaining their seats.

Jones, Pearson, and their colleague Gloria Johnson were targeted by Republicans for disrupting House proceedings last week in solidarity with the thousands of children, teachers, and parents protesting against gun violence outside the Capitol. The protests erupted after a Nashville school shooting left three children and three adults dead.

The House charged the trio with breaking “decorum” and voted Thursday to expel Jones and Pearson, both of whom are Black and represent Nashville and Memphis, respectively. Johnson, who is white, survived expulsion by just one vote.

But now, at least 24 of 40 members of Nashville’s Metro Council have expressed their plan to reappoint Jones to the state House; only a simple majority is needed to do so. A special council was scheduled for Monday. Typically, electing an interim representative would take at least four weeks, but members of the council are looking to suspend the rules and hold a vote to nominate Jones. If events unfold accordingly, Jones could be back in the House before the sun sets on Monday.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper, a Democrat, echoed the calls.

Meanwhile, in Shelby County, home to Memphis, the County Commission is considering reappointing Pearson to his seat. Chairman Mickell Lowery had said last week that if Pearson were expelled, he would call a special meeting to vote on an interim representative and inquire whether Pearson could be legally reappointed. The county’s assistant attorney told The Commercial Appeal that she saw no reason why he couldn’t. The 13-person commission has a nine-member Democratic supermajority, and one Democrat, Britney Thornton, has already said she supports the move.

“As a fellow millennial elected to serve, I believe it’s crucial for my generation to be represented,” Thornton told The Commercial Appeal. “I stand with Representative Pearson and his fellow colleagues—all of whom are unfairly being mislabeled and othered. Wholeheartedly will I support his reappointment.”

As it turns out, California cannot cut ties with pharmacy chain Walgreens.

Governor Gavin Newsom announced last month that his state would cease to do business with Walgreens because the pharmacy chain decided not to dispense abortion pills in nearly half of U.S. states following pressure from Republican attorneys general. Medication abortions make up more than half of all abortions in the United States and are considered a crucial tool in maintaining access to the procedure since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

But California legally has to maintain ties with Walgreens because of the state’s Medicaid program, Kaiser Health News reported Thursday, citing health law experts.

Medi-Cal provides health coverage for about 15 million people. Federal law states that patients can get their Medicaid-covered prescriptions at any approved pharmacy. Had California abruptly stopped covering Medi-Cal prescriptions filled at Walgreens locations, it would have broken federal law. This also would also have contradicted a key part of Newsom’s platform: to expand Medi-Cal as much as possible.

The Newsom administration said it will “continue to comply” with federal law by keeping its partnership with Walgreens. Gubernatorial spokesperson Anthony York said Newsom will not “take any action that hurts people who need access to care.”

Walgreens had said in January that it would offer mifepristone, one of the medications used to induce an abortion. The Food and Drug Administration changed its rules to allow pharmacies in states that still allow abortion to dispense the drug. Pharmacies would need to get certified to do so because the FDA currently classifies mifepristone as a high-risk drug, despite the fact that there is no data backing that decision up.

Walgreens and CVS, two of the biggest U.S. pharmacy chains, said they would seek certification. But in March, following intense pressure from Republican attorneys general in 20 states, Walgreens announced it wouldn’t dispense mifepristone in those states—and threw Kansas in there for good measure, too.

The chain has said it will dispense mifepristone “in any jurisdiction where it is legally permissible to do so.” Abortion is still legal in more than half of the states where Walgreens will no longer offer the drug, but the company said in a statement to TNR that some of those states don’t allow pharmacists to dispense mifepristone. “Failure to follow these state laws could result in individual pharmacists facing very real and serious legal risk, including criminal charges that could lead to jail time, steep fines and the loss of their license by state boards of pharmacy,” the company said.

In February, Newsom slammed Walgreens for its decision and said the chain “cowers to extremists and puts women’s lives at risk.” He said California was “done” with Walgreens but did not clarify what he meant. It now appears that was never an option.

This article has been updated to clarify Walgreens’ position.

Just over a week ago, North Dakota lawmakers voted to prevent giving free school lunches to low-income students. Then, on Thursday, they voted to increase the amount of money they get to spend on their own lunch.

On March 27, the Senate narrowly rejected a bill, which had passed the House, guaranteeing free school lunches to K-12 students in families at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

On Thursday, the Senate voted 26–21 to pass a bill to raise per diem meal reimbursements for state employees traveling within the state, from $35 to $45.

Republican Assistant Majority Leader Jerry Klein told local outlet InForum that state employees should be getting a higher sum because inflation costs have made meals more expensive. Klein voted against giving students, whose parents are also being squeezed by inflation, free school lunch.

“I thought today’s vote was very self-serving,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Kathy Hogan told InForum. “How can we vote for ourselves when we can’t vote for children?”

The effort to give low-income students free school lunches for the next two years would have cost just some $6 million, a relatively small price to pay to ensure children don’t go hungry. While the Senate failed to pass the bill, the House is not giving up quite yet, reattaching the provision to a broader school funding bill.

Bills that target marginalized people, meanwhile, have been sailing through the North Dakota legislature. On Monday, the Senate passed bans on providing gender-affirming care to people under 18 and on transgender women’s participation in female sports in grade school and college.

The Senate also revived a push to prevent teachers and government employees from recognizing transgender students using their preferred pronouns—a bill that Republican Governor Doug Burgum had vetoed last month. While the House fell short of overriding his veto, Senate lawmakers put the language back into a separate bill that aims to restrict transgender students’ access to restrooms. Last month, Republican state Representative Lori VanWinkle likened respecting students’ preferred pronouns to murder.

The U.S. labor force held relatively steady in March, with unemployment sticking near a 50-year low, according to a report released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Non-farm employers added 236,000 jobs in March, a slower pace than in recent months but almost precisely as expected, while the unemployment rate remained at 3.5 percent. The unemployment rate in February 2020—just before the pandemic kicked off in earnest in the United States—was also 3.5 percent. Unemployment for Black people fell to 5 percent, a record low.

The labor force participation rate, or the number of people in the labor force, was mostly unchanged, ticking up one-tenth of a percent to 62.6 percent. The leisure and hospitality sectors, which were some of the hardest-hit at the peak of the pandemic, added the most jobs in March as businesses begin to recover.

Crucially, hourly earnings also held fairly steady, with average wages increasing 0.3 percent in March, up just a little from an average of 0.2 percent in February. This is the lowest increase since the fourth quarter of 2019.

Harvard economics professor Jason Furman warned that “average hourly earnings are poorly measured and volatile,” but if the rate holds, it could be a sign that inflation is on its way out. Slower wage gains help keep businesses’ operating costs down, which means employers will be less likely to keep consumer prices high to offset in-house expenses.

Both the employment gains and the potential decrease in inflation are huge wins for President Joe Biden, who has been under fire since he took office for sky-high inflation and unemployment, due to first Covid-19 and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

People have been jumpy about the economy lately, particularly after a string of high-profile bank failures, including Silicon Valley Bank’s. Economists have been warning that a recession is on the horizon—some even claim that “a recession is underway now”—and the Federal Reserve has kept up its relentless campaign of interest rate hikes, although it has decreased by how much.

But Friday’s jobs report is a good sign that a soft landing, when inflation is brought down without tipping the economy into a recession, could still be possible.