Two [US military](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/us-military) service members were “physically attacked” in the port city of Izmir in western Turkey on Monday by members of an anti-American youth group, authorities said. Fifteen suspected assailants were detained in the attack on the two service members, who were dressed in civilian clothing at the time of the incident. Five other US service members joined in the incident after seeing the violent encounter, officials said. Those detained were members of the [Turkey](https://www.theguardian.com/world/turkey) Youth Union (TGB), a youth offshoot of the nationalist opposition Vatan Party. Police intervened in the incident and authorities are conducting an investigation, officials said. “We can confirm reports that US service members embarked aboard the USS Wasp were the victims of an assault in İzmir today, and are now safe,” the US embassy to Turkey [said](https://x.com/USEmbassyTurkey/status/1830635020077130111) on X. “We thank Turkish authorities for their rapid response and ongoing investigation.” An apparent TGB social media account posted a video on X that purported to show a group of men holding a US soldier and placing a white hood over his head. “No one will be able to respond to the cries for help from U.S. soldiers. Your hands are stained with the blood of our brave soldiers and thousands of Palestinians,” @YouthUnionTR [said](https://x.com/YouthUnionTR/status/1830626155486982655) in its X missive. TGB posted a video on X in November 2021 where members [boasted](https://x.com/YouthUnionTR) about putting a sack on a US soldier. “YANKEE GO HOME!” TGB said in a caption on the post. The US embassy in Ankara said earlier Monday that the Wasp was on a port visit to Izmir, a coastal town. The ship arrived on Sunday following joint training with Turkish military ships in the Mediterranean. The US has ramped up its military presence in the Middle East as the Israel-Gaza war continues. An aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, and its strike group are presently operating in the region’s waters of US Central Command, [according to Navy Times](https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2024/08/22/uss-abraham-lincoln-arrives-in-middle-east/). * _Reuters contributed to this report_

A rightwing activist who [last month trained poll workers](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/26/us/politics/republican-national-committee-2024-posobiec.html) for the Republican National Committee will speak in Washington DC on Thursday night alongside an extremist writer who is a “[proponent of scientific racism](https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/peter-brimelow)” and a law professor who was suspended after allegedly making “[racist, sexist and homophobic](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/us/university-of-pennsylvania-law-school-amy-wax.html)” remarks and inviting a white nationalist to address her class. Jack Posobiec, Steve Sailer and Amy Wax will appear together at the event, which will take place at the presidential suite at Washington DC’s Union Station, according to ticketing information obtained by the Guardian. The event has been promoted by Sailer’s far-right publisher Passage Press, and was originally scheduled to take place after Sailer’s speaking date at New College of Florida (NCF), which [the Guardian reported](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/28/new-college-of-florida-hosting-extremist-writer-steve-sailer) on last month. The Florida event has now been postponed until next year according to the NCF spokesperson Nathan March, who said that the NCF campus has been evacuated in advance of the expected arrival of Hurricane Milton. The event and Posobiec’s position as an influential pro-Donald Trump operative raise questions about the further penetration of openly racist politics into the Republican party. The Guardian emailed Events at Union Station and the Republican National Committee but received no response. Sailer’s publisher, Passage Press, is marketing the event as a leg of his book tour, Noticing. Last month, the Guardian [reported on the contents of that book](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/28/new-college-of-florida-hosting-extremist-writer-steve-sailer). In it Sailer claims that Black Americans are inherently more prone to criminal behavior on average; that liberal attitudes to race allows the purported criminal tendencies of Black people to go unchecked; that Black people around the world are on average less intelligent than white people; and that Black people are prone to “primitive” beliefs and behaviors. Earlier this year, the Guardian [identified](https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/14/far-right-twitter-identity-revealed) Jonathan Keeperman as the man behind Passage Press and the influential “New Right” Twitter/X account “L0m3z”. Posobiec’s history as a pro-Trump influencer has been extensively reported in [the Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/26/jack-posobiec-digital-influencers-far-right-republicans-trolling) and other outlets. Posobiec has been prominent since 2016 in promoting disinformation on social media and on fringe, partisan news outlets including Rebel News and One America News Network. The Guardian last year outlined Posobiec’s role in promoting conspiracy theories including “#Pizzagate” and claims about Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the murder of the Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. Posobiec has used X, where his account now has 2.7 million followers, to “promote Russian military intelligence operations, pushed false claims of election fraud and collaborated with white nationalists, Proud Boys and neo-Nazis”. But this has not hindered Posobiec’s rise in the Trump-era Republican party. Last year Semafor [reported](https://www.semafor.com/article/03/17/2023/the-2024-right-wing-influencer-primary-heats-up) that Posobiec was seen by Republican strategists as the influencer with “the most clout with Republican voters” and Posobiec has used this influence to promote false narratives about elections. According to the [Southern Poverty Law Center’s extremist file](https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/jack-posobiec) on Posobiec, he spread falsehoods about primary and general elections under the “#StoptheSteal” banner in 2016, 2018 and 2020, with the latter campaign preceding the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol. Posobiec has also spread misinformation in this election season, posting [unsourced](https://x.com/JackPosobiec/status/1843416528277975224) and [unverified](https://x.com/JackPosobiec/status/1843631337590403481) information about the [election itself](https://x.com/JackPosobiec/status/1842950615221317898), about Haitian immigrants, and [hurricane flooding](https://x.com/JackPosobiec/status/1841955852825063617) in Appalachia. Posobiec’s work as an author has so far drawn little scrutiny from reporters. Since 2017 he has published five books, including one children’s book, with a sixth title scheduled for publication later this month. The Guardian has reviewed a selection of his extant books. From 2018, 4D Warfare offers rightwingers “a new way of waging the culture wars–and winning!”, promotes tactics including “disinformation” (defined as “the dissemination of false, half-true, and misleading information”) and “large-scale deception programs”, and counsels: “Deception helps you to achieve your goals by confusing your adversaries about what they truly are.” Last July, Posobiec released Unhumans, whose title is a characterization of Posobiec’s perceived enemies, including “communists in the twentieth century and progressives of our own day”. The book comes with blurbs by rightwing luminaries including [Tucker Carlson](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/tucker-carlson), Donald Trump Jr and his vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance. The latter wrote: “In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR, college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people.” Posobiec writes of the titular “unhumans”: “They undo order. They undo the basic bonds of society that make communities and nations possible. They destroy the human rights of life, liberty, and property – and undo their own humanity in the process by fully embracing nihilism, cynicism, and envy.” The book praises murderous dictators including Francisco Franco and Chiang Kai-shek for their opposition to communism, and recommends that “unhumans” in the US be subject to targeted “lawfare” including “RICO lawsuits” against “Soros-affiliated NGOs”, and “well-publicized lists with dossiers” targeting perceived opponents in “education but also in media, throughout the economy, and more”. His co-writer on Unhumans, Joshua Lisec, has ghostwritten books for other rightwing influencers, and claims on [his website](https://web.archive.org/web/20241002004407/https://lisecghostwriting.com/) to be “the only Certified Ghostwriter and Certified Hypnotist in the world”, marketing his process as “hypnowriting”. Lisec is also co-author of the forthcoming Bulletproof, which claims to offer “the truth about the assassination attempts on Donald Trump”. Posobiec’s history as a conspiracy theorist has apparently not discredited him in the eyes of the current, Trump-aligned Republican establishment. According to the New York Times, [Posobiec told Republican committee volunteers](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/26/us/politics/republican-national-committee-2024-posobiec.html) scheduled to monitor polling in Michigan that the key to elections is that “it doesn’t matter who votes, it matters who counts the votes”. Heidi Beirich, chief strategy officer and co-founder of the Global Project against Hate and Extremism, said of Posobiec’s place inside the Republican party’s tent meant that “the Republican party has gone over the edge”. Beirich added: “This Republican party and its officials associate with extremists of seemingly every stripe,” and that the party “is unrecognizable … What the hell happened to Bush’s party, or Reagan’s party?” Wax, who will share the stage with Sailer and Posobiec, [was suspended](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/penn-suspends-amy-wax-law-professor-accused-of-racist-remarks) by the University of Pennsylvania this year after a string of controversial statements stretching back to 2017. That year she co-authored an [op-ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer](https://web.archive.org/web/20241007234000/https://www.inquirer.com/philly/opinion/commentary/paying-the-price-for-breakdown-of-the-countrys-bourgeois-culture-20170809.html) claiming: “All cultures are not equal,” and criticized “the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-‘acting white’ rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants”. Later that year, Wax [said in an interview](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/03/15/penn-law-professor-who-said-black-students-rarely-perform-well-loses-teaching-duties/) that she had “rarely, rarely” seen a Black student graduate in the top half of their class at Penn Law, a claim which was later disputed by Penn Law’s then dean, Theodore Ruger. In 2019, at the National Conservatism conference, [Wax said](https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-penn-law-professor-wants-to-make-america-white-again) that the US would be “better off with more whites and fewer non-whites”. In 2022, she told the conservative economist Glenn Loury [in an interview](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/penn-law-sanction-professor-said-us-better-fewer-asians-rcna12749) that the US would be “better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration”, and [told Tucker Carlson the same year](https://www.newsweek.com/amy-wax-tucker-carlson-black-people-resent-western-achievements-1697182) that “Blacks” and other “non-Western” groups harbor “resentment, shame, and envy” against western people for their “outsized achievements”, and non-white critics of the west know “on some level, their country is a shithole”. Wax’s Washington appearance comes just over a month before her [scheduled appearance](https://archive.is/YMhXQ) at American Renaissance, the annual white nationalist gathering hosted by Jared Taylor. Other advertised speakers there include Martin Sellner, founder of Austrian far-right nationalist group Identitäre Bewegung Österreich. Wax has [invited Taylor to her classroom](https://www.inquirer.com/education/amy-wax-penn-jared-taylor-white-nationalism-eugenics-20230912.html) several times. Beirich said that Wax is “a flat-out white nationalist with a ton of white nationalist friends. There’s no pussyfooting around her politics.” A Penn spokesperson told the Guardian: “Last year, a five-member faculty Hearing Board determined that Professor Amy Wax violated the University’s behavioral standards by engaging in years of flagrantly unprofessional conduct within and outside of the classroom that breached her responsibilities as a teacher to offer an equal learning opportunity to all students,” adding: “These findings are now final.”

The unknown artist or artists who fashioned [a swirled bronze piece of feces](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/25/poop-pelosi-desk-statue-january-6-insurrectionists) on a replica of the former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk – and placed it on the National Mall recently – appear to have struck again. This time, the artistic-political commentary is focused not on the 6 January 2021 US Capitol attack carried out by [Donald Trump](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump) supporters, when a participant did indeed defecate on Pelosi’s desk. Instead, the display satirically evokes the notorious white nationalist Unite the Right tiki torch parade through Charlottesville’s University of Virginia campus in August 2017, with some marchers chanting: “Jews will not replace us”. A tiki torch statue titled The Donald J Trump Enduring Flame was placed on display in Washington DC’s Freedom Plaza, a few blocks from the White House, on Monday. The plaque beneath the piece alludes to how the former president referred to “some very fine people on both sides” at the rally, which led to the murder of a counterprotestor demonstrating against white supremacy. “This monument pays tribute to President [Donald Trump](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump) and the ‘very fine people’ he boldly stood to defend when they marched in Charlottesville, Virginia,” the plaque reads. Alluding to remarks from Trump at the time that the media had treated people at the rally “absolutely unfairly”, the plaque adds: “While many have called them white supremacists and neo-Nazis, President Trump’s voice rang out above the rest to remind all that they were ‘treated absolutely unfairly’. This monument stands as an everlasting reminder of that bold proclamation.” [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/29/neo-nazi-tiki-torch-statue#img-2) Multiple white nationalist groups march with torches through the University of Virginia campus on August 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Photograph: Mykal McEldowney/AP The timing and placement of the scatological and torch works come as artists have sought ways to interpret the moment through satire. In September, a vast model of a naked Trump was placed on a highway outside Las Vegas, prompting complaints from local Republican officials supporting his second run for the presidency in the 5 November election against Kamala Harris. But the tiki torch is a more direct commentary on political undercurrents that have resurfaced in the closing days of the 2024 election, with the vice-president and her Democratic allies warning that a return to the White House for Trump risks a slide into authoritarianism. Torchlight parades were a feature of German national socialism in the 1930s. After a spell that returned the tiki to non-political purposes, including lighting summer barbecues and repelling mosquitoes, the Charlottesville rally reimbued them with sinister connotations. After the deadly Unite the Right rally, Tiki Brand Products of Wisconsin put out a [statement](https://x.com/KieranSuckling/status/896858551892815872/photo/1) that the brand “was not in any way associated with the events that took place in Charlottesville and … deeply saddened and disappointed. “We do not support their message or the use of our products in this way,” the company added. Civic Crafted LLC, the maker of the desk and tiki torch pieces, was granted a temporary license for display by the US park service. The agency said last week that when issuing permits it “does not consider the content of the message to be presented”. Vandals removed Pelosi’s name from the desk and poop piece soon after it was installed and drew crowds. An inscription on the piece said it was meant to honor “the brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6 2021 to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election” that Trump lost to Joe Biden. For its part, the 9ft tiki torch went largely unnoticed after it was put up, [according to the Washington Post.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/10/28/tiki-torch-statue-poop-artist-freedom-plaza-white-supremacists-charlottesville/) “I think it’s a perfect piece of satirical sculpture in its placement, in its timing, in its execution,” Eric Brewer, 56, told the Post. “It may be a warning sign of what could be to come.” The park service permit allows the tiki torch work to remain in place until Thursday.

By [David Gilbert](https://www.wired.com/author/david-gilbert/) and [Vittoria Elliott](https://www.wired.com/author/vittoria-elliott/) Nov 4, 2024 6:30 AM The weekend before the election, one Pennsylvania pastor told congregants that hosting Elon Musk weeks earlier was “phenomenal.” In Nevada, another dressed as a garbageman while urging his flock to vote Trump.  Photo-Illustration: Wired Staff/Getty In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania this Sunday, at the Life Center megachurch, hundreds of people filed in for a 9 am service. A table on the right side of the entryway stood under a sign reading “Voter’s Guide Here.” Congregants manning the tables asked others if they’d already voted, and handed out sample ballots for nearby counties—Dauphin, Lancaster, York, Lebanon. At the table, there was also an election guide from the evangelical magazine _Decision_, featuring a picture of Vice President Kamala Harris next to former president Donald Trump with a banner reading “Socialism vs. Freedom.” Another pamphlet, titled the PA Family Voter Guide—created by the evangelical Pennsylvania Family Council, which describes it as a “nonpartisan, informative guide” for candidates running for office in Pennsylvania—was also available. Families milled around, grabbing coffee at an in-house cafe, before joining a worship service that could rival many small rock concerts. “Tuesday, go vote,” [pastor Ben Evenson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1YiDyNHtFs), told congregants at the service. “Let your voice be heard, and let God handle the details. We love this nation, God loves this nation.” Just two weeks before, the church had played host to centibillionaire and X owner Elon Musk, as he hosted a town hall in support of Trump. There, he [quipped (again)](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-musk-harris-trump-assassination-joke-church-1235139632/) that “no one’s even bothering to try to kill Kamala Harris” because she is a “puppet” while answering questions at the event. The day after Musk’s visit, the church’s founder, Charles Stock, [gave a sermon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD3i-q8rQsI) entitled “How to Vote Like Jesus,” in which he discouraged congregants from voting third party or writing in a candidate, saying, “The devil will be happy you didn’t vote.” Stock also told congregants that “a flawed leader who does good things is better than suffering under Ahab and Jezebel, who are wicked,” and argued that government had stepped out of its role by “redefining marriage” and “erasing gender,” which he called a “plague upon our nation.” He also told worshippers about a petition from Musk’s America PAC supporting the First and Second Amendments, and Musk’s ([possibly illegal](https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/23/politics/elon-musk-justice-department-letter/index.html)) $1 million per day giveaway in the days leading up to the election. “It was phenomenal,” he said of hosting Musk’s visit. “It was an honor to host a wider community here, and be a blessing.” A congregant who spoke to WIRED said that some members of the church did attend the Musk event, and that he felt there was some alignment with Musk when it came to issues of constitutional rights and free speech. Across the country in Clark County, Nevada, just after 8 am in the low-ceilinged room at Calvary Red Rock church just east of the Las Vegas strip, the band on stage was finishing its set, the lights went up, and Pastor Gregg Seymour strode onto stage, dressed as a garbageman. The audience cheered loudly, and on two huge TV screens either side of the pulpit, an image of a garbage truck was displayed, alongside the phrase "G.A.R.B.A.G.E." It turned out to stand for "Great America Rebels Believing Almighty God is Everything." “You know that if anybody in here is a Trump supporter, you are now garbage," Seymour told the audience, trusting that the allusion to President Joe Biden [possibly](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdd09e4nl30o) having called Trump supporters garbage would be understood. “For any of you who are in that camp, you are garbage." The church is heavily involved in election integrity efforts. It has a dropbox in the lobby which is overseen by Seymour's daughter Alex, who tells WIRED that many members of the congregation feel safer posting their ballots at church because they don't trust the postal service. The church also ran training last month for people Seymour described as “patriots who care about upholding election integrity." The training helped organize people to work in shifts to observe the election processing center in Clark County. Seymour tells WIRED that he is certain the election was stolen, though he cannot say exactly why, mentioning Dominion voting machines and vague allegations of hacking and manipulation. Seymour tells WIRED he doesn’t see himself as a Christian nationalist, but in the same breath says the "church needs to be involved in government.” He adds that there are aspects of Trump's character he does not agree with, including his embrace of prophetic Christian groups and leaders like Lance Wallnau. But he's happy to vote for him because, he says, “less babies will die under a Trump administration.” American Christians as a whole [don’t see Trump as a Christian candidate](https://www.christianitytoday.com/2024/09/trump-harris-poll-neither-christian-or-religious/)—they also don’t see Harris as one—but white evangelicals, who have been [promised more power during a second Trump administration](https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/trump-tells-christian-nationalist-leaders-us-will-be-better-when-hes-given-them-more?utm_source=rww&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=bestof), do. They have been working overtime to help get him back into the White House. “Religious-right leaders rallied around Trump in 2016 and 2020 and they are working hard to put him back in power this year,” Peter Montgomery, research director at People For the American Way, tells WIRED. “Conservative white evangelicals have voted for Trump in overwhelming numbers and he is counting on them to put him back in power.” Trump has always had very strong support within the evangelical community, but this time around, there has been a concerted effort among leaders on the religious right to engage with members of their congregations who rarely or never vote. They have done this through high-profile events and tours across swing states while evangelical pastors have pushed the message to their own congregations from the pulpit. These evangelical groups have also been helping to recruit poll workers and train poll workers. The most high-profile of these efforts has been the Courage Tour, organized by Lance Wallnau, a leader in the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation movement, which wants to see Christianity put at the center of all aspects of American society. The tour combined religious revivalism with MAGA politicking and traveled to the key swing states in the months leading up to the election. The speakers on the tour claimed Trump was battling the [“forces of darkness”](https://apnews.com/article/conservative-christians-spiritual-warfare-donald-trump-kamala-harris-9c861aa7c58907ff67bde3c3499a9365) and that [demonic forces had overtaken America](https://theconversation.com/the-courage-tour-is-attempting-to-get-christians-to-vote-for-trump-and-focused-on-defeating-demons-241335). The Courage Tour was supported by pro-Trump conservative activist groups such as Turning Point USA and America First Works, the political arm of the America First Policy Institute. (Linda McMahon, chair of the latter—which the New York Times has [reported](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/us/politics/donald-trump-campaign-america-first-policy-institute.html) is poised to be more influential than Project 2025 in the event of a Trump victory—was recently [among those sued](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/wwe-vince-linda-mcmahon-sex-abuse-lawsuit-1235140067/) for allegedly turning a blind eye to child molestation in WWE.) Another Christian nationalist traveling roadshow that has been traversing the US since 2021 is the ReAwaken America tour, which brings leaders in the Christian nationalist world together with election deniers, far-right extremists, and MAGA insiders, including a number of Trump’s own family members. Life Center, the Harrisburg megachurch, has, as Evenson acknowledged in his sermon, been labeled as “Christian dominionist.” [In May](https://www.instagram.com/lifecenterharrisburg/p/C6beyrFOOmF/?img_index=1), the church played host to [Sean Feucht](https://www.mediamatters.org/turning-point-usa/right-wing-media-are-promoting-sean-feucht-christian-nationalist-singer-bringing), the political activist and Chrisitian nationalist worship leader, [who held large gatherings during Covid-19](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-01-01/sean-feucht-kirk-cameron-gatherings-new-years-eve). Earlier this month, [one of Life Center’s apostles performed the opening prayer for Feucht](https://www.pennlive.com/news/2024/10/a-christian-nationalist-church-is-hosting-elon-musks-town-hall-in-harrisburg.html), as part of his “Kingdom of the Capitol” tour of US state capitals. Feucht [unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2020](https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/post/charlie-kirk-endorses-sean-feucht-congressional-candidate-backed-by-christian-nationalists-and-dominionists), and has since dedicated himself to mobilizing evangelicals to be more politically engaged. He [performed](https://x.com/BrianKaylor/status/1589072000760582144) as part of the ReAwaken America tour. Feucht spent the [Sunday before the election in Scottsdale, Arizona](https://x.com/seanfeucht/status/1853201242950160652), with Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk and Republican senatorial candidate Kari Lake, hosting a worship service called Pray For The Nation ([Kirk endorsed Feucht](https://x.com/BrianKaylor/status/1589072000760582144) during his congressional run). Other groups that have spent millions of dollars to get Trump reelected with get out the vote efforts are Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, the American Family Association’s ivoterguide.com, the Paula White-led National Faith Advisory Board, and My Faith Votes, Montgomery tells WIRED. “Many Christian-right media figures have significant media platforms which they use to promote Trump to their supporters. Shows like FlashPoint on Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel provide a steady flow of pro-Trump propaganda,” Montgomery said. “Conservative Christians have been told over and over again that Trump has been anointed by God to lead the country. At a recent rally on the National Mall, New Apostolic Reformation leader Che Ahn issued an ‘apostolic decree’ that Trump would win the election.” While many conservative politicians have enjoyed broad support from evangelical Christians in the past, the way evangelical leaders speak about Trump as a messianic leader, [particularly in the wake of the failed assassination attempt in July](https://www.wired.com/story/supporters-believe-hand-of-god-saved-trump/), is something new. “Because many of Trump's core evangelical advisers and most prominent evangelical boosters are charismatic, they have also used charismatic spirituality to imbue Trump with a quasi-messianic aura, using their prophecies and messages to link him to many biblical characters,” Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, where he specializes in American Christianity, tells WIRED. “Paula White-Cain has been the chair of all of these efforts and a gatekeeper controlling religious leaders' access to Trump, so she has played a pivotal role in guiding these connections.” As well as supporting Trump’s candidacy, evangelicals are also more willing to indulge the former president’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen. “Evangelical Christians, particularly, but not exclusively white evangelicals, have been \[Trump’s\] most unwavering bloc of supporters,” Taylor said. “ If roughly one third of the country believes Trump's 2020 election lies, among white evangelicals it's closer to two-thirds.” Trump, who has struggled to present himself as a man of faith—in 2016, he proved [unfamiliar](https://www.npr.org/2016/01/18/463528847/citing-two-corinthians-trump-struggles-to-make-the-sale-to-evangelicals) with even the naming conventions of Biblical texts—has himself also been taking part, attending a "[Believers for Trump](https://believers.donaldjtrump.com/)" event in Michigan last month and taking part in a “national faith summit” organized by his first adminstratiuon’s faith leader Paula White last week. “We believe you’re a vessel,” Pastor Jentezen Franklin told Trump on stage during the event. “You’re a chosen vessel,” he added, while comparing the former president to the Apostle Paul.

Nov 5, 2024 8:01 PM At an Arizona polling location, a college GOP group, supporters of an antisemitic influencer, and a Christian nationalist pastor were handing out hot dogs and burgers—but only if you voted for Trump.  Pastor David McClellan serving a hot dog at a table for Republicans United outside a polling station at the Mesa Convention Center in Mesa, AZ.Photograph: Jamie Lee Taete Mesa, AZ — A group of America First groypers, college Republicans, and a Christian nationalist pastor were handing out burgers and hot dogs to voters in Phoenix on Tuesday—but only if they voted for former president Donald Trump. The cookout took place about 100 yards from a polling station—and it was likely illegal. The effort was organized by the far-right College Republicans United group, in association with the Patriot Party of Arizona. It began just after polls opened at the Mesa Convention Center. Groypers, the name that followers of white nationalist Nick Fuentes give themselves, were helping hand out hot dogs, burgers, and cold drinks. Manning the grill was Pastor David MacLellan, a Christian nationalist who is the chaplain for the Patriot Party of Arizona and subscribes to the [extremist ideology of the Black Robe Regiment](https://www.vice.com/en/article/who-are-the-black-robe-regiment/). “We’re giving away hot dogs and hamburgers to folks who are doing the right thing, voting for Trump,” MacLellan tells WIRED. Isaiah, a self-identified groyper who would not provide his last name, confirmed that the group was giving food only to Trump voters, but added that the food is “specifically for Trump voters, but we do welcome others if they do want to come over and change their mind.” Providing food for a specific group of people at a polling location is in breach of federal law. “Not only is it illegal to give just to voters for one candidate, one cannot limit it only to voters. It must be made available to all people in the area, including children and others ineligible to vote, to avoid running afoul of federal law against vote buying,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA, tells WIRED, [citing the same rules](https://electionlawblog.org/?p=146397) that Elon Musk was accused of breaching with his $1 million ballot. The Arizona Secretary of State’s office, which sets the rules for behavior at polling locations, did not respond to a request for comment. The College Republican United group was set up in 2018 by Rick Thomas, who is also a member of the Patriot Party of Arizona. Thomas told WIRED he founded the group out of frustration at the Republican student group that was in place at Arizona State University. “We eventually broke off and formed our own organization that was very pro-Trump,” Thomas said. “We are American first; we are MAGA.” While not all members of College Republican United are members of Fuentes’ group, there is a significant overlap, Isaiah told WIRED. Thomas portrayed the group as a relatively mainstream student group, but evidence online indicates otherwise: The College Republican United’s website’s book recommendations page features two deeply antisemitic works: the _Protocols of the Elders of Zion_ and Henry Ford’s _The International Jew_: The World’s Foremost Problem. Another member of the CRU, Kevin Decuyper, was recently [hired as an aide to former far-right sheriff Joe Arpaio,](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/04/joe-arpaio-aide-kevin-decuyper-known-extremist/76018418007/) "There are reasons why College Republicans United have been denounced by so many GOP organizations,” says Nick Martin, an investigative journalist who closely tracks extremist groups in Arizona and who runs the online publication [The Informant](https://www.informant.news/). “The organization recommends its members read discredited and debunked books filled with racist pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Their guest speakers have included white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Pizzagate peddlers, fringe political candidates and, rarely, some actual Republicans.” _You can follow all of [WIRED's 2024 presidential election coverage here](https://www.wired.com/2024-us-election/)._

Silicon Valley and the nativist right worked together to elect Trump. Now the infighting has begun.  Brandon Bell / Getty December 30, 2024, 12:55 PM ET Elon Musk spent Christmas Day online, in the thick of a particularly venomous culture war, one that would lead him to later make the un-Christmas-like demand of his critics to “take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face.” Donald Trump had ignited this war by appointing the venture-capitalist Sriram Krishnan to be his senior AI-policy adviser. Encouraged by the MAGA acolyte and expert troll [Laura Loomer](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/09/laura-loomer-trump-gop/679905/), parts of the far-right internet melted down, arguing that Krishnan’s appointment symbolized a betrayal of the principles of the “America First” movement. Krishnan is an Indian immigrant and a U.S. citizen who, by virtue of his heritage, became a totem for the MAGA right to argue about H-1B visas, which allow certain skilled immigrants to work in the United States. ([Many tech companies](https://www.epi.org/blog/tech-and-outsourcing-companies-continue-to-exploit-the-h-1b-visa-program-at-a-time-of-mass-layoffs-the-top-30-h-1b-employers-hired-34000-new-h-1b-workers-in-2022-and-laid-off-at-least-85000-workers/) rely on this labor.) In response to Krishnan’s appointment, some right-wing posters used [racist memes](https://x.com/unconquered_sol/status/1872739689758900529?s=51&t=GuMw7uqg32H9fNfPrixr7w) to smear Indians, who have made up nearly-three quarters of H-1B recipients in recent years. Loomer [called](https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1871639183900787083) such workers “third world invaders” and [invoked](https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1871642214327103749) the “Great Replacement” theory, which claims that America’s white population is being purposefully replaced by nonwhite people from other countries. Although Musk has seemingly embraced [white supremacy](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/11/x-white-supremacist-site/680538/) on the platform he owns, X, he apparently could not stand for an attack on a government program that has helped make him money. He is himself an immigrant from South Africa who has [said](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1850439863079678073) that he worked in the U.S. under an H-1B visa before becoming a citizen. Musk also employs such workers at his companies. He posted on X in support of the H-1B program, [arguing](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1872374103983759835) that it brings elite talent to America. This perspective is not remotely controversial for the Silicon Valley set, but the reactionary and nationalist wings of the Republican Party got very upset with Musk, very quickly. “The American people don’t view America as a sports team or a company,” the provocateur Jack Posobiec [wrote](https://x.com/JackPosobiec/status/1872378087431917777) in response to one of Musk’s tweets on Thursday. “They view it as their home.” Later, Musk [warned](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1872860577057448306?s=46) his critics that he will “go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” By the weekend, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, had [called](https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-slams-scam-h1b-visas-as-laura-loomer-warns-gop-about-elon-musk/) H-1Bs a “scam” and said that Musk’s defense of highly skilled immigrants is showing his “true colors.” The tech right and nationalist right are separate (but overlapping) factions that operated in tandem to help get Trump reelected. Now they are at odds. For possibly the first time since Trump’s victory, the racial animus and nativism that galvanized the nationalist right cannot immediately be reconciled with the tech right’s desire to effectively conquer the world (and cosmos, in Musk’s case) using any possible advantage. After winning the election together, one side was going to have to lose. [Read: Even the Koch brothers weren’t this brazen](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/12/tech-billionaires-trump-administration/680930/) It should be said that opposing H-1Bs is not an inherently MAGA position. The program has [well-documented flaws](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/19/biden-h-1b-visa-conundrum-524254), and has received bipartisan criticism. For instance, Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent, has [previously argued](https://www.computerworld.com/article/1367869/bernie-sanders-h-1b-skeptic.html) that highly skilled immigrant labor is a potential weapon that business owners can use to lower wages. Similarly, supporting H-1Bs says only so much about someone’s politics. Although Musk casts his defense of highly skilled immigrants as racially inclusive, he has repeatedly [flirted](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/05/elon-musk-tucker-carlson/) with [racial prejudice](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/07/twitter-elon-musk-white-genocide-nationalist-supremacist-tweets/) on X and has [vocally supported](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/28/world/europe/musk-support-for-german-far-right-afd.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare) a German far-right party with ties to neo-Nazis. In any case, the coalition of the tech right and the nationalist right was bound to be tested. The two are similar in certain ways: They share a reactionary, anti-“woke” commitment to reversing a perceived pattern of American weakness brought about by DEI initiatives, and both [have exhibited authoritarian tendencies](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/03/facebook-meta-silicon-valley-politics/677168/). But there were always fissures. The tech right’s desire for free markets is in fundamental tension with a rising conservative skepticism of unchecked capitalism; Tucker Carlson, for example, has spoken critically of “market capitalism,” [arguing that](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJrplNkmkcg) “any economic system that weakens and destroys families isn’t worth having.” Much of the nationalist far right sees itself as a movement that values the flourishing, vitality, and self-determination of human beings (as long as they are of the correct race or nationality). Meanwhile, much of the tech right is concerned with advancing technology above all else—the most extreme wings don’t even mind if that ultimately results in [human extinction](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/effective-accelerationism/). For a little while, it almost seemed like the right could dodge these conflicts. Vice President–Elect J. D. Vance is the physical embodiment of a compromise between the far-right, aggressively reactionary, nationalist wing of the Republican Party and its tech-evangelist faction. He worked in a venture-capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, the right-wing tech billionaire; has [criticized](https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/07/beyond-libertarianism#:~:text=We%20live%20in,take%20those%20drugs.) unbridled free markets; and [has been cheered on](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/07/jd-vance-silicon-valley-far-right/679058/) by far-right influencers with big followings. He has [spoken out against H-1B visas](https://www.axios.com/2022/04/22/jd-vances-investments-made-use-of-h-1b-visas-he-opposes?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=economy-business-jdvance) even as he invested in companies that applied to use them. But part of Vance’s job is to unite his party against a common enemy; that role became less urgent after Election Day. [Read: Silicon Valley got their guy](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/07/jd-vance-silicon-valley-far-right/679058/) This skirmish is a preview of how tension between the tech right and the nationalist right may play out once Trump takes office. The nationalists will likely get most of what they want—Trump has already promised mass deportations, to their delight—but when they butt heads with Silicon Valley, Trump will likely [defer](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/12/elon-musk-x-congress-shutown/681120/) to his wealthiest friends. That’s how things went during his first term. Despite Trump’s populist promise in 2016 that he would create an economy that benefited common people at the expense of large corporations and the rich (a position popular with the more nationalist wing of the right), he largely did the opposite, supporting and signing into law tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. This happened even as much of the tech world rebuked Trump over his “[Muslim ban](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/trumps-travel-ban-logic-flaw/579631/)” and family-separation policy, which employees of tech giants prodded their leaders to oppose. This time around, with Musk and the tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy running the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, the billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen helping [staff the department](https://fortune.com/2024/12/05/marc-andreessen-department-of-government-efficiency-trump-musk-bezos-recruiter-staff/), and Krishnan set to advise on AI policy, the tech right is being integrated into the incoming administration. Trump’s other appointments also suggest that his administration will be friendly to the rich and powerful. His advisers and Cabinet appointments [so far consist of](https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-tapped-unprecedented-13-billionaires-top-administration-roles/story?id=116872968) ultra-rich confidants from finance and real estate—industries that prioritize markets above other conservative principles. His proposed Cabinet includes few who would be considered dedicated members of the nationalist right. No surprise, then, that Trump seemed to side with Musk, [telling](https://nypost.com/2024/12/28/us-news/donald-trump-backs-h-1b-visa-program-supported-by-elon-musk/) the _New York Post_ on Saturday, “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them.” Perhaps even more so than last time, the plutocrats are in control.

Now that Trump is president again, the right’s moment of unity is over.  Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Allen Eyestone / Alamy; Somodevilla / Getty; David Dee Delgado / Getty; Kimberly White / Getty. January 23, 2025, 2:20 PM ET On Sunday night, in the basement ballroom of the Salamander Hotel in Washington, D.C., Charlie Kirk was happier than I’d ever seen him. “I truly believe that this is God’s grace on our country, giving us another chance to fight and to flourish,” Kirk, the head of Turning Point USA, a conservative youth-outreach organization, said to cheers from the hundreds of MAGA loyalists who had come out for his pre-inaugural ball. “What we are about to experience is a new golden era, an American renaissance.” The celebrations have continued now that Donald Trump is back in the White House, as he has signed a flurry of executive orders to make good on his campaign promises. But this might be the best mood that MAGA world will be in for a while. The president’s coalition is split between two distinct but overlapping factions that are destined for infighting. On one side are the far-right nationalists and reactionaries who have stood by Trump since he descended down his golden escalator. Among them are Stephen Miller, [who is seen as a chief](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/us/politics/stephen-miller-trump.html) [architect of Trump’s anti-immigration agenda](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/us/politics/stephen-miller-trump.html), and Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and the former executive chair of _Breitbart News_. On the other side is the tech right: Elon Musk and other Silicon Valley elites, including Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, who have become ardent supporters of the president. Already, these groups are butting heads on key aspects of Trump’s immigration crackdown. In Trump’s second term, not everyone can win. During the campaign, it was easy for these two groups to be aligned in the goal of electing Trump. Members of the nationalist wing took glee in how Musk boosted their ideology on X, the social platform he owns. With his more than 200 million followers, Musk has helped spread far-right conspiracy theories, such as the false claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio [are eating people’s pets](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/09/donald-trump-cat-memes/679775/). Meanwhile, the tech right has relished attacks on DEI efforts in the workplace—attacks that have allowed them to more easily [walk back hiring practices](https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/01/the-end-of-the-dei-era/681345/), against the wishes of their more liberal employees. But the two groups also want different things. The nationalist right wants an economy that prioritizes and assists American-born families (specifically, traditional nuclear ones), sometimes at the expense of business interests; the tech right wants a deregulated economy that bolsters its bottom line. The nationalist right wants to stop almost all immigration; the tech right wants to bring in immigrant workers as it pleases. The nationalist right wants to return America to a pre-internet era that it perceives as stable and prosperous; the tech right wants to usher in a bold, globally focused new economy. Already, the cracks have started to show. Last month, Trump’s pick of the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as an AI adviser led to a bitter and very public spat between the two camps over visas for highly skilled immigrants. (“FUCK YOURSELF in the face,” Musk at one point told his critics on the right.) At the time, I argued that [the MAGA honeymoon is over](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/12/elon-musk-maga-fight-h1b/681187/). The disagreements have only intensified. Last week, after former President Joe Biden used his farewell speech to warn about the influence of Silicon Valley oligarchs and the “tech industrial complex,” the white-nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes posted on X that “Biden is right.” Bannon in particular has not relented: Earlier this month, he [told an Italian newspaper that](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/us/politics/steve-bannon-elon-musk.html) Musk is a “truly evil person” and that would get the billionaire “kicked out” of Trump’s orbit by Inauguration Day. (Considering that [Musk is reportedly getting](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/us/politics/elon-musk-office-west-wing.html) an office in the West Wing, Bannon does not seem to have been successful in that quest.) In an [interview](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/01/tech-zuckerberg-trump-inauguration-oligarchy/681381/) with my colleagues Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, Bannon described the tech titans as “nerds” whom Trump was humiliating. Seeing them on Inauguration Day was “like walking into Teddy Roosevelt’s lodge and seeing the mounted heads of all the big game he shot,” Bannon said. In a sense, he is right. During the inauguration ceremony, tech billionaires—including Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Apple CEO Tim Cook—sat directly behind Trump’s family on the dais. They are not all as forcefully pro-Trump as Musk, but they have cozied up to the president by dining with him at Mar-a-Lago and making million-dollar donations to his inaugural fund (in some cases from their personal bank accounts, and in others from the corporations they head). In doing so, they’ve gotten his ear and can now influence the president in ways that might not line up with the priorities of the nationalist right. On Monday, during his first press conference from the White House this term, Trump defended the H-1B visa program: “We want competent people coming into our country,” he said. Later, Bannon responded on his podcast, lamenting the “techno-feudalists” to whom Trump is apparently listening. Both factions still have overlapping interests. They are both fed up with a country that they see as having grown weak and overly considerate to the needs of the vulnerable, at the expense of the most productive. America lacks a “masculine energy,” as Zuckerberg recently put it. Some members in both camps seem interested in trying to reconcile their differences, or at least in not driving the wedge further. On the eve of the inauguration, just before Turning Point USA’s ball, the right-wing publishing house Passage Publishing held its own ball in D.C.—an event intended to be a [night when](https://x.com/PassagePress/status/1876350531679244480) “MAGA meets the Tech Right.” The head of Passage Publishing, Jonathan Keeperman, has been keen on playing peacemaker. Last month, he went on Kirk’s podcast and tried to frame the debate over visas as one where his reactionary, nativist wing of the right could find common cause with the tech right. By limiting immigration and “developing our own native-born” STEM talent, he said, Silicon Valley can “win the AI arms race.” Kirk couldn’t keep his frustration toward the tech elite from seeping out. “Big Tech has censored us and smeared us and treated us terribly,” he said. “Why would we then accommodate their policy wishes?” It’s easy to imagine Musk asking the same question. He and his peers run some of the most powerful companies in the world. They’re not going to give that up because a few people, on the very platforms that they own, told them to. Each side is steadfast in what it wants, and won’t easily give in. We already can guess how this will end. During his first administration, despite making populist promises on the campaign trail, Trump eventually sided with the wealthy. Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist during the start of his first term, pushed for tax hikes on the wealthy. Seven months into his presidency, Trump fired him, and then proceeded to pass tax cuts. In his new administration, the nationalist right will certainly make gains—it is thrilled with Trump’s moves around birthright citizenship and his pledge to push forward with mass deportations. But if it’s ever in conflict with what Trump’s rich advisers in the tech world want, good luck. Remember, it was Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Musk who sat on the dais at Trump’s inauguration. Bannon, Keeperman, and Kirk were nowhere in sight.

A disgraced speechwriter gets a second shot at the State Department.  Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: John Rudoff / AP; Getty. February 5, 2025, 3:06 PM ET Darren Beattie may not be a household name, but you are almost certainly familiar with his long-standing ideas and preoccupations. Beattie, a speechwriter whom Trump fired in 2018 and appointed to a top State Department job this week, is a fixture in far-right conspiracist circles. Over the years, Beattie has [reportedly](https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/03/politics/kfile-darren-beattie-state-department-controversial-tweets-white-nationalist-conference/index.html) spoken alongside white nationalists, alleged that the FBI orchestrated January 6—his preferred term is [_Fedsurrection_](https://x.com/DarrenJBeattie/status/1661785756245929999)—and repeatedly posted online that various Black personalities and politicians should “take a KNEE to MAGA.” In his new role as under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, he will help shape the tone of America’s public messaging abroad, oversee “the bureaus of Educational and Cultural Affairs and Global Public Affairs,” and participate “in foreign policy development,” according to the State Department’s website. Beattie’s ascent is another sign that the new administration has no interest in catering to norms established by its critics or perceived political foes. What was a scandal in Trump’s first term is grounds for a promotion in his second. Beattie’s 2018 firing came after [CNN reported](https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/03/politics/kfile-darren-beattie-state-department-controversial-tweets-white-nationalist-conference/index.html) that he had spoken at the 2016 H. L. Mencken Club, an event whose attendees have included prominent white nationalists such as Richard Spencer and Peter Brimelow. Beattie then launched Revolver News, a right-wing website that trumpeted his appointment and described him as “a relentless force in exposing the left’s DEI agenda, their censorship schemes, and the J6 entrapment operation.” Many of the site’s articles are standard conservative fare: attacks on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats alongside criticism of powerful technology companies that purportedly censor the right, including Revolver itself. Other content on the site veers sharply into conspiracism: It often posts external links to content from the likes of [Bronze Age Pervert](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/09/bronze-age-pervert-costin-alamariu/674762/), a pseudonym of the pro-authoritarianism writer Costin Alamariu, who has posited that “Black Africans” are so genetically ”divergent from the rest of humanity that they exceed the threshold commonly used in other species to draw sub-species boundaries,” and Steve Sailer, another prominent booster of [pseudoscientific racism](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/08/race-science-far-right-charlie-kirk/679527/). Beattie has also used Revolver as a platform to advance his nationalist views, including [pushing for mass deportation and](https://revolver.news/2024/06/american-people-demand-mass-deportation-squads-now/) “America-first [trade policy](https://revolver.news/2024/08/trump-manufacturing-victories-and-the-right-way-of-doing-america-first/).” [From the September 2023 issue: How Bronze Age Pervert charmed the far right](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/09/bronze-age-pervert-costin-alamariu/674762/) Beattie is a “well-regarded” and “beloved” figure in Trump world, as [_Semafor_](https://www.semafor.com/article/02/02/2025/maga-intellectual-darren-beattie-will-fill-key-state-department-role) and [_Politico_](https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2025/02/03/the-brits-take-on-the-next-trump-era-00202177) describe him, respectively. (Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson both praised Beattie in text messages to _Semafor_’s Ben Smith_._) His appointment will likely be seen as a win for the nationalist wing of the Republican Party, which has been fighting against tech-right figures including Elon Musk and the venture capitalist David Sacks for influence in the Trump administration. While the tech-right and nationalists have been aligned in many areas, they vocally diverged on H-1B visas for highly skilled immigrants in [a very public internet fight](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/12/elon-musk-maga-fight-h1b/681187/) in December. More recently, as my colleagues Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer [reported](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/elon-musk-doge-green-card-trump/681575/), Trump advisers stopped Musk from hiring a noncitizen at DOGE, the team he leads within the Trump administration. Bannon, who sits squarely in the populist-nationalist camp and is friends with Beattie, has aggressively criticized Musk and other tech elites and said publicly that he wants to impede their influence. True adherents to the nationalist-populist wing of MAGA are almost nonexistent in Trump’s Cabinet. For as long as he is in his acting role in the State Department, however, Beattie joins a small but powerful group of nationalist Trump appointees. The immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller, who is now Trump’s deputy chief of staff, and his fellow conservative intellectual Michael Anton, who is also at the State Department, are among this cohort. The ascendant intellectual wing of the nationalist right will be particularly pleased with Beattie’s appointment. Prior to his time in the Trump administration, Beattie received a Ph.D. in political theory from Duke University, where he wrote his dissertation on the prominent German philosopher Martin Heidegger, and he has contributed to _The_ _New Atlantis_, a publication with a reputation among the right for its rigorous critiques of technology. If nothing else, Beattie’s eccentricities—buttoned-up intellectualism on one hand, crude and offensive polemic on the other—demonstrate one underlying truth of Trump world: It’s a big tent. Kiss the ring, and you may just be welcomed back.

Paul Ingrassia, an online reactionary, is in place at the DOJ.  Pete Kiehart / The Washington Post / Getty February 8, 2025, 6 AM ET Paul Ingrassia is just your average right-wing edgelord with a law degree and a high-level position at the Justice Department. In the past several years, on X, he has likened Andrew Tate, the misogynist influencer, to the “ancient ideal of excellence”; he has written a Substack post titled “Free Nick Fuentes” in support of reinstating the white nationalist’s X account (when it was still banned); and he has called Nikki Haley, Donald Trump’s former United Nations ambassador who ran against Trump in the Republican primary, an “insufferable bitch” who might be an “anchor baby” too. On Inauguration Day, Ingrassia was sworn in as the new White House liaison for the DOJ. In his new job, Ingrassia—who did not respond to a request for comment—is [responsible for managing](https://oig.justice.gov/news/doj-oig-releases-management-advisory-memorandum-regarding-lack-department-justice-process) other White House appointments within the DOJ, and for identifying and recommending people to potentially be hired or promoted within the agency, according to a department memo. As such, Ingrassia is part of a small but growing class of important Trump officials with a history of posting things (and doing things) that might have been disqualifying for any other administration in recent memory, up to and including Trump’s own four years ago. This group includes [Darren Beattie](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/darren-beattie-state-department/681582/), appointed to a top post at the State Department despite having been dismissed from his job as a Trump speechwriter in 2018 after reportedly appearing at an event alongside white nationalists, and having claimed online that January 6 was orchestrated by the FBI. And also Gavin Kliger, an employee of Elon Musk’s DOGE, who appears to have [shared](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/musk-doge-techies-young-what-we-know-1235256687/) a Fuentes post that disparages white people who adopt Black children and uses the pejorative slang term for women, “huzz.” (Kliger did not respond to a request for comment.) [Read: A speechwriter gets a second shot at the State Department](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/darren-beattie-state-department/681582/) Not every such indiscretion has been completely ignored by the Trump administration and its allies. Another DOGE employee, Marko Elez, resigned on Thursday, [reportedly](https://www.wsj.com/tech/doge-staffer-resigns-over-racist-posts-d9f11a93) over having made racist posts including “Normalize Indian hate” and “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.” Within 24 hours, however, Vice President J. D. Vance was [lobbying](https://x.com/JDVance/status/1887900880143343633) to rehire him under the justification that “stupid social media activity” shouldn’t “ruin a kid’s life.” Later that afternoon, Musk [announced](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887957783783391423) that Elez would be brought back. Ingrassia’s appointment represents another win for young, online reactionaries in Washington. He praised and reposted an article from the fitness enthusiast and proponent of [”race science”](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/08/race-science-far-right-charlie-kirk/679527/) Raw Egg Nationalist. He has worked for the Gateway Pundit—a conservative news site that frequently publishes lies and conspiracy theories. And he has extensive ties to Tate, having worked on his legal team; he even [posted a picture](https://jasonahart.com/2025/02/05/meet-doj-white-house-liaison-paul-ingrassia/#:~:text=Joseph%20McBride%2C%20Andrew%20Tate%2C%20Paul%20Ingrassia%2C%20and%20Tristan%20Tate) of himself with Tate and Tate’s brother. Tate is currently being investigated by Romanian authorities for alleged rape and human trafficking, and he has been separately accused of rape and assault in the United Kingdom. He has denied all of the allegations against him. Ingrassia’s “Free Nick Fuentes” post called for Musk to end a ban on Fuentes’s account that dated to 2021. (Fuentes was banned after what a Twitter spokesperson described as “repeated violations” of the company’s rules.) Such a move was necessary, Ingrassia argued, to [“shift the Overton Window”](https://x.com/PaulIngrassia/status/1655271622092128257) on social media. People who argue against content moderation on social platforms often do so by arguing that more speech is always better. (In Fuentes’s case, that meant more Holocaust denial, more praise of Adolf Hitler, and more denigration of women and Black people.) But Ingrassia also appears to be drawn to at least some of the substance of what Fuentes posted. And although there were almost certainly members of the first Trump administration who shared Ingrassia’s views, few if any publicly said so, or discussed their ideas online under their own name. They seemed to understand that there were stakes and consequences for airing such beliefs in public. Ingrassia’s presence in the new administration reflects a departure from that era. It also shows that not all young, online reactionaries are the same. Ingrassia appears to represent the populist, nationalist wing of the MAGA coalition, which [stands in opposition](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/01/maga-trump-tech-nationalist-conflict/681422/), in certain ways, to the tech-right faction including Kliger and led by Musk. The two groups were aligned through the election and still have many shared goals: Witness Ingrassia and Kliger’s shared interest in Nick Fuentes. But they have also [aggressively diverged](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/12/elon-musk-maga-fight-h1b/681187/) on some issues. The tech industry generally supports the use of H-1B visas for highly skilled immigrants, whereas MAGA nationalists tend to oppose them. Ingrassia, in the latter camp, has written that the United States should end the H-1B-visa program as well as birthright citizenship, and institute a “20 year moratorium on legal immigration.” That this internal disagreement has been spilling out into public view may be the flip side of the no-longer-need-to-hide-it administration. The H-1B fight, which took off at the end of December, was very visible online. People like Ingrassia, Kliger, and Beattie, with their freewheeling and unapologetic social-media personas, have helped make these internal tensions very clear. They’re just posting through it.

No one else with direct access to the president has been as outwardly bigoted.  Nicole Craine / The New York Times / Redux April 5, 2025, 9:44 AM ET White House staffers, it seems, had better hope that they stay in Laura Loomer’s good graces. This week, Loomer—a far-right provocateur who has described herself as “pro–white nationalism” and Islam as a “cancer on humanity”—met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. After she [reportedly](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/us/politics/trump-meeting-laura-loomer.html) railed against National Security Council officials she believed were disloyal to the president, the White House fired six NSC staff members the next day. More firings could be on their way: Yesterday, a person close to the administration [told my colleague Michael Scherer](https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/04/the-conspiracy-theorist-advising-trump/682289/) that “Loomer has been asked to put together a list of people at State who are not MAGA loyalists.” Loomer doesn’t have an official job in the Trump administration, and the president has denied that she had anything to do with the NSC firings. But she is one of the president’s confidantes, and she has come to exercise a significant amount of influence over the White House. Lots of people in Trump’s inner circle have unlikely backgrounds (defense secretaries are not usually hired straight from Fox News), but Loomer’s is probably the least likely of them all. Over the past decade, she has earned a reputation as an unapologetically racist troll. In 2018, after she was banned from Twitter for criticizing then-incoming Representative Ilhan Omar and her Muslim faith, she famously handcuffed herself to the door of Twitter’s New York City headquarters. She was reinstated after Elon Musk bought the platform, and has continued to post racist things on X: In September, she suggested that a Kamala Harris election win would mean that “the White House will smell like curry.” (Loomer did not respond to a request for comment.) Loomer’s power marks how little Trump now seems to care about being around people who have expressed racist and extremist ideas and [kept racist and extremist company](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/watch-laura-loomer-and-neo-nazi-nick-fuentes-toast-to-the-hostile-takeover-of-the-republican-party/ar-AA1qwWs5?ocid=BingNewsVerp&apiversion=v2&noservercache=1&domshim=1&renderwebcomponents=1&wcseo=1&batchservertelemetry=1&noservertelemetry=1). She is a bit like the Forrest Gump of Trumpworld—an unlikely but persistent character who just keeps popping up during some of the right’s biggest moments. When Trump got off his private plane on his way to the presidential debate in September, Loomer appeared with him. The next day, when Trump traveled to New York for a 9/11-anniversary memorial, Loomer was again there with him. (She has called 9/11 an “inside job.”) [As I wrote at the time](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/09/laura-loomer-trump-gop/679905/), prominent Republicans did not like that their presidential candidate was associating himself with Loomer, and publicly challenged Trump over it. He seemingly has not listened. [Read: Laura Loomer is where Republicans draw the line](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/09/laura-loomer-trump-gop/679905/) Loomer has also played a role in directing discourse on the right. She was integral to drumming up the hoax that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets, which became one of the most prominent right-wing causes du jour during the presidential campaign. In December, she instigated a war on the right over high-skilled immigration after she criticized the administration’s hiring of Sriram Krishnan as an AI-policy adviser and called attention to his past comments advocating for expanding H-1B visas. Most workers on H-1B visas are from India, and Loomer [posted](https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1871639183900787083) that Indian immigrants are “third world invaders.” There is perhaps no one with direct access to the president who has been as outwardly and vociferously racist and bigoted. For all of the arguments that critics of Musk make about how he has [bo](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/11/x-white-supremacist-site/680538/)[osted white supremacy on X](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/11/x-white-supremacist-site/680538/), he has maintained a level of plausible deniability by never disparaging minority groups in a manner as direct as Loomer has. Someone like Loomer likely would not have had access to Trump in his first term. Richard Spencer never made it into Trump’s administration, and the president went out of his way to disavow the white nationalist. In 2018, when [CNN reported](https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/19/politics/darren-beattie-mencken-club/index.html) that Darren Beattie, then a White House speechwriter, had spoken at an event that also featured a white nationalist, he was fired. But now Beattie has been [hired to a senior role in this administration](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/darren-beattie-state-department/681582/). The president has already clearly established that his second term will be more extreme. Instead of the limited Muslim travel ban, he is pushing for mass deportations and has effectively shut down USAID, an agency largely devoted to helping poorer countries. But by welcoming Loomer into his inner circle, Trump is offering an even starker glimpse into how this administration is different. She is a testament to how much further to the right Trump has moved since his first term, and how much further he may be open to going. [Ali Breland](https://www.theatlantic.com/author/ali-breland/) is a staff writer at _The Atlantic_.

The [Trump administration](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/trump-administration)’s promotion of white Christian nationalists and prosperity gospel preachers to key government roles will lead to the “further dismantling of government institutions” and the chilling of free speech, experts have warned. Donald Trump announced the creation of an “anti-Christian bias” taskforce and a White House Faith Office (WHFO) [in February](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/establishment-of-the-white-house-faith-office/), saying it would make recommendations to him “regarding changes to policies, programs, and practices” and consult with outside experts in “combatting anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and additional forms of anti-religious bias”. Both initiatives are dominated by rightwing Christian loyalists – a stark contrast to similar faith-based efforts under Joe Biden and Barack Obama, both of whom welcomed Muslim and Sikh leaders. This has prompted concern that a specific brand of [Christianity](https://www.theguardian.com/world/christianity) will be prioritised over other faiths and Christian denominations. With Trump having recently been pictured being prayed over in the White House by a host of white Christian nationalists, concerns are rising about what a government influenced by those beliefs could mean. White Christian nationalists typically are anti-LGBTQ+, anti-immigration and anti-[efforts to ensure racial equality](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/apr/27/bad-faith-documentary-christian-nationalism), and broadly believe that America was founded as a white Christian nation and must be returned to such. “We will see the further dismantling of government institutions. We will see an abandonment of democratic principles and a further perversion of the institutions of justice,” said Katherine Stewart, a journalist and author of [Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy](https://www.amazon.com/Money-Lies-God-Movement-Democracy/dp/163557854X), which explores what Stewart calls the “antidemocratic movement” – a mix of Christian nationalists, billionaire or super-rich oligarchs and conservative ideologues who have seized control of the Republican party, and aim to fundamentally change the US. “Trump’s anti-Christian bias taskforce will lead to a further chilling of free speech, political opposition, and investigations of corruption. We will see public funds flowing directly to religious institutions, and the insertion of the Bible and sectarian messaging in public schools, town meetings and other places that serve religiously diverse populations. The intention is to make anyone who is not onboard with their agenda feel that they don’t belong.” The faith office [is headed by Paula White](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/paula-white-faith-office-trump), the tongues-speaking, multimillionaire televangelist who called the Black Lives Matter movement the “Antichrist” and said Jesus would have been “sinful” and not “our Messiah” if he had broken immigration law. And the other appointees to the WHFO are also Christian. Trump appointed Jennifer Korn as deputy assistant to the president and faith director of WHFO. Korn was previously senior adviser of the National Faith Advisory Board, [the rightwing, Trump-backing](https://religionnews.com/2021/09/04/trump-and-his-religion-advisors-launch-new-national-faith-advisory-board/#:~:text=The%20Pentecostal%20megachurch%20pastor%20said,we%20are%20one%20strong%20voice.%E2%80%9D) Christian group founded by White. Jackson Lane will serve as deputy director of faith engagement. Lane graduated from Missouri Baptist University and was previously deputy director of faith outreach for the Trump-Vance 2024 campaign. Barack Obama had a similar faith-based office, but his leadership notably [included people of Muslim and Jewish faith](https://fedsoc.org/commentary/publications/an-overview-of-the-white-house-office-on-faith-based-and-neighborhood-partnerships-and-the-council-on-faith-based-and-neighborhood-partnerships). In announcing his own office, Joe Biden said that “when Methodists and Muslims, Buddhists and Baptists, Sikhs and Secular Humanists serve together, we strengthen one another and we strengthen America,” and his office sought to include a range of religious voices, including at [its 2022 United We Stand](https://religionnews.com/2022/09/16/biden-includes-faith-leaders-in-summits-charge-to-rise-together-against-hate/) anti-hate summit. The makeup of Trump’s faith office is so far “not at all” representative of the various religions practiced in the US, said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor at Calvin University and research fellow at the center for philosophy of religion at the University of Notre Dame. “It’s not even representative of Christianity in the United States,” said Du Mez, who authored the book ​​[Jesus and John Wayne](https://kristindumez.com/books/jesus-and-john-wayne/): How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. “It’s a pretty narrow slice of rightwing, predominantly, but not exclusively, white conservative Protestantism. But that is the Christianity that Trump thinks of when he thinks of Christianity.” Trump appears unlikely to reach out to non-Christians, however, and the contrast between him and his predecessors was shown in [a White House post on X](https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1902462717010575809/photo/1) in March. “The White House Faith Office and Faith Leaders from across the country joined President Trump to pray in the Oval Office,” the post read, beneath a photo showing more than a dozen people, most of them white, looking solemn behind Trump, some with their arms on his shoulders. The trophy for the upcoming Club World Cup soccer competition was next to Trump’s desk, apparently left over [from a photoshoot](https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/mar/12/gianni-infantino-donald-trump-2026-world-cup) that had, oddly, taken place a week earlier. [The Daily Mail](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14519421/trump-prayer-army-faith-leaders-advising-president.html) identified all 15 of the faith leaders, and found that each of them was Christian, including some who are openly Christian nationalist. They included William Wolfe, who worked in the first Trump administration and who [told the rightwing Daily Signal](https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/03/19/christian-leader-urges-white-house-faith-office-protect-unborn-life/) that he had used the March meeting with Trump to “push aggressively” for pro-life policies. Wolfe claimed that “Christians were not welcome in the Biden administration or the Obama administration,” and according to the Daily Signal said mass deportations were a Christian issue. “We actually believe it is directly related to the preservation of America as we know it,” Wolfe said. Du Mez pointed to other figures who carry a lot of influence in the Trump administration, including Russell Vought, who [Associated Press reported](https://apnews.com/article/trump-russell-vought-confirmation-budget-project-2025-7d1c476694176876256e95cecbd49231) has “unabashedly advanced ‘Christian nationalism”. Vought, one of architects of Project 2025, the rightwing plan for Trump’s second term, was appointed White House budget director in February. It’s one of the less glamorous roles, but holds sprawling responsibilities including managing the development and implementation of the federal budget and overseeing federal agencies. In [a 2021 opinion article](https://www.newsweek.com/there-anything-actually-wrong-christian-nationalism-opinion-1577519), Vought wrote that Christian nationalism was “a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society”. That influence could extend beyond social issues, Du Mez said. “When people hear ‘Christian nationalism’, they tend to think of a narrow set of \[beliefs\] prioritizing Christian faith, Christian supremacy – people tend to think of these kind of moral values issues,” Du Mez said. “But it is also anti-woke. It is also anti-immigration, and it is also, if you look historically at the Christian right ideas of Christian America and returning America to its Christian foundations, have always been, for almost a century, intertwined with deregulationism, free market capitalism.” Stewart warned that Trump’s appointment of Pete Hegseth to defense secretary could also be problematic. Hegseth drew scrutiny in March after it emerged he had a tattoo of what the Council on American-Islamic Relations described as “a display of … anti-Muslim hostility”, along with other tattoos tied to the Christian crusades. Last year [the Idaho Capital Sun reported](https://idahocapitalsun.com/2024/11/21/trumps-defense-secretary-nominee-has-close-ties-to-idaho-christian-nationalists/) that Hegseth “has close ties to an Idaho-based Christian nationalist church”. Also concerning is [the sheer number of people](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/key-project-2025-authors-now-staffing-trump-administration-rcna195107) involved in Project 2025, which the Charles F Kettering foundation, a non-partisan research foundation which seeks to preserve democracy, [described as](https://kettering.org/project-2025-the-blueprint-for-christian-nationalist-regime-change/) “The Blueprint for Christian Nationalist Regime Change”, who are now in Trump’s government. “It’s not unimportant that there are some people who identify as Christian nationalists who are playing a big role in the administration,” Stewart said. “But what’s important to understand is that the movement is driving policy, whether or not the people who are pushing that policy identify themselves as Christian nationalists or adhere to Christian nationalist ideas. “Part of what we’re also seeing is the favoring not of Christians per se, but of a certain kind of Christianity. Trump and his people are aiming not to just work with the movement, but to shape the movement itself, to make it more faux-populist, demagogic and frankly authoritarian.”

A national network of American neofascist fight clubs is endorsing youth-oriented offshoots aimed at grooming the next generation of racist activists. So-called “active clubs” have proliferated across the US and are a combination of fitness and mixed martial arts groups that often espouse neo-Nazi and fascist ideologies, openly taking their historical cues from the Third Reich’s obsession with machismo and European soccer hooliganism. Active clubs have emerged as perhaps the most dangerous form of far-right political organizing today. With links to other militant organizations, including Patriot Front, they encourage a seemingly mainstream version of masculinity, layered with ideologies promoting a US race war and using the popularity of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) as a gateway to recruiting. Earlier this month, their main Telegram account, endorsed “youth clubs”, which are chapters beginning to spring up online across the country, showing pictures of 18-year-olds and under engaging in mixed martial arts, racist meme-ing, and posts referencing genocidal and bigoted literature. “Youth clubs are for those under 18 that still want to get active,” said the recent active club post with thousands of views, linking to the central account of all youth clubs. By all appearances, these youth clubs are proliferating. On Telegram alone, there are accounts showing nationwide chapters with photos of teens between the ages of 16 to 18 in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, the New England states, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC, lowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Michigan, among others. The chapters have close to a thousand followers in total and in some cases list the same recruitment contact, suggesting a certain level of national coordination and vetting – an important aspect of far-right recruiting done to prevent against police or antifascist infiltration. “Unapologetically Pro White”, posted one of the youth clubs, adding they were also “American Nationalist”. Combined with the massive popularity among teen boys of [the Tate brothers](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/06/im-andrew-tates-audience-and-i-know-why-he-appeals-to-young-men), mixed martial arts enthusiasts in their own right, young men and boys have emerged as the prime targets for far-right recruitment in recent years. “The youth clubs are part of the same concept of active clubs’ white supremacism ‘3.0’ strategy: a decentralized movement focused on combat sports, fitness, propaganda activities, and building local groups,” said Joshua Fisher-Birch, an analyst of the American far right who has documented its rise for nearly 10 years. “The youth clubs are self-described white nationalist activist groups for young men 18 and younger who train in combat sports and participate in extreme right propaganda activities.” Their direct links to active clubs aren’t a secret or hidden, either. Fisher-Birch continued: “Several youth club Telegram channels have also shared posts from active club-affiliated accounts. Additionally, youth club chapter logos are modeled on active club symbols. The logos are nearly identical in some cases.” [skip past newsletter promotion](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/28/active-youth-clubs-neo-nazi-groups#EmailSignup-skip-link-14) Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning **Privacy Notice:** Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our [Privacy Policy](https://www.theguardian.com/help/privacy-policy). We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google [Privacy Policy](https://policies.google.com/privacy) and [Terms of Service](https://policies.google.com/terms) apply. after newsletter promotion The network of active clubs’ original founder, Robert Rundo, [pleaded guilty in 2024](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/13/neo-nazi-founder-robert-rundo-sentencing) to conspiracy to riot at 2017 political rallies in California. During that period, he was the leader of the [Rise Above Movement](https://www.propublica.org/article/white-hate-group-campaign-of-menace-rise-above-movement), a violent neo-Nazi gang that promoted combat sports and physical assault of perceived enemies. [Four](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/02/charlottesville-arrests-far-right-rally-protests-police-latest) of its members were charged for their part in the infamous [2017 Unite the Right rally](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/19/charlottesville-white-nationalist-torch-marchers-indicted) in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rundo and other members of the active clubs network made it clear in the past that they saw young men and boys as the next and important frontier for building the new American fascist movement. Writing in a 2022 post on one of its main websites Rundo and others described how their “tools of persuasion” can draw underage boys to join them. Along with flyers and stickers of local areas with their Nazi propaganda they told followers to “target boxing and [MMA](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/mma) tournaments, gyms, and motocross courses”, but then went further. “Ground-level intelligence collection might then inform that same activist crew that changing demographics at a local high school have led to gang-beatings of minority White youth,” they said. “The cunning and resourceful activists see this news as \[an\] opportunity for a campaign focusing on the importance of a Brotherhood of young White men having each other’s backs.” During the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler made it a staple of his regime to create the Hitler Youth organization for minors to learn combat and survivalism skills under the guise of self-improvement and nationalist pride. Ever since, modern neofascists and Nazis like active clubs, have always placed particular emphasis on securing the next generation of white supremacy. “You will grow up to be men,” Hitler once said at [one of his German rallies](https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/1936/sep/13/life1.lifemagazine) for his young acolytes.

The number of white nationalist, hate and anti-government extremist groups in the US has dropped not because of their declining influence, but because many of their proponents feel their beliefs have become normalized in government and mainstream society, according to a new [report](https://www.splcenter.org/resources/guides/year-hate-extremism-2024/) by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC’s annual Year in Hate and Extremism report, published on Thursday, said it documented 1,371 hate and extremist groups across the country in 2024, down from 1,430 groups in 2023. These groups use “political, communication, violent, and online tactics to build strategies and training infrastructure to divide the country, demoralize people, and dismantle democracy”, the non-profit group said. The 5% drop in hate and extremist groups in 2024 can be attributed to the fact that many feel a lesser sense of urgency to organize, because their beliefs have infiltrated politics, education and society in general, according to the report. In 2024, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives became “ground zero” for many of these groups, the report said, some using threats of violence and “creating chaos that opened the door for political strongmen and authoritarian measures”. These efforts built a foundation for nationwide policy actions to follow by [Donald Trump](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump), including legislative measures to restrict discussions of race and gender in classrooms, and cutting funding for programs that disproportionately affect marginalized communities. The SPLC said there were 533 active hate groups in 2024, including ones that express views that are anti-LGBTQ+, anti-immigrant, antisemitic and anti-Muslim. Last year’s report saw “record numbers” of white nationalist and anti-LGBTQ+ groups, as well as an increase in direct actions such as hate crimes, flyering, protests and intimidation campaigns. The groups featured in this year’s report make up the “hard-right movement that has long been behind rhetoric and actions that target Black people, women, immigrants, Jewish people, Muslims, and low-income, Indigenous and LGBTQ+ people”, according to the SPLC Intelligence Project’s interim director, Rachel Carroll Rivas. “Their power comes from the use of force, the capture of political parties and government, and infesting the mainstream discourse with conspiracy theories.” The report’s release comes as a Japanese American college professor is scheduled to make his first public appearance after he was brutally attacked in Los Angeles last month in a possible hate crime. Aki Maehara, 71, was struck by a vehicle and called a racial slur while riding his bike in Montebello, 10 miles (16km) east of downtown Los Angeles. He suffered serious injuries to his elbow, neck, cheekbones, jaw, hips and lower back, [according](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-05-13/asian-american-professor-attacked-possible-hate-crime) to the Los Angeles Times. Maehara teaches a course on the history of racism in the US at East Los Angeles Community College. “There’s a long history,” he told the paper. “They’ve picketed my classroom at East LA College. Chicano Republicans came after me and picketed me at Cal State Long Beach. The KKK came to my classroom at Cal State Long Beach when I was teaching a course on the US-Vietnam war. This is not the first time I’ve been targeted.”

[](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/jun/01/united-states-polarization#img-1) The residential community was lodged near a national forest on the outskirts of Scottsdale, [Arizona](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/arizona). Forbidding gates and sentry posts restricted access to the exclusive development and its elegant homes. But security here went much further. Each cul-de-sac in the colony had its own individual railway gate, and many of the homeowners had installed gates across their own driveways as well. Anyone coming in or out of those houses would have to clear three checkpoints that set them apart from the wider world beyond. I was astonished. But the security director at the gated community saw nothing unusual in such arrangements. “People shouldn’t be able to just walk into where you live. You should be able to defend yourself against the rest of the world.” Immigration officers were doing exactly the same thing along the country’s border, he added: defending us. I couldn’t help but think about what I had seen in the company of migrant aid volunteers earlier that week in southern Arizona, all the tattered clothes and humble belongings caught in the brush of a desert trail, attesting to the desperation of those who had fled through that harsh terrain. How could people be indifferent to such suffering, I asked one of the volunteers. “It’s like talking to a wall,” he replied. [ What I learned from an unlikely friendship with an anti-masker ](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/aug/19/anti-masker-unlikely-friendship) Over the last eight years, I have crisscrossed the United States as an anthropologist, trying to make sense of why the rifts in our national culture run so deep. I have talked with homebuilders in North Dakota and activists for housing justice in north Texas, with diesel truck enthusiasts in Iowa and pedestrian safety planners in Florida, with white nationalist demonstrators in [Tennessee](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/tennessee) and environmental justice organizers in the Hudson River valley. I have logged many thousands of miles on local highways and country roads, striking up conversations with strangers on park benches and in derelict shopping malls. I recount those travels and their lessons in my new book, [Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down](https://www.sup.org/books/anthropology/something-between-us). In it I argue that, in the US, we are at crossroads, poised between a politics of suspicion and retreat, and another founded on more expansive relationships of mutual aid and collective solidarity. In the many conversations and encounters that led this book, I tried to approach people on their own terms, paying heed to their everyday commitments and concerns, often very different from mine. I have come away with a much better understanding of why things are as stuck as they are, and what it would take to truly change them. The challenges are real, as I saw one October in Shelbyville, Tennessee. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/jun/01/united-states-polarization#img-2) “How are you feeling?” I asked the Nepali woman behind the counter of a gas station. She replied with a single word and a tight-lipped smile. “Scared”. Scheduled that Saturday morning in Shelbyville was a [“White Lives Matter” political rally](https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2017/11/01/white-lives-matter-shelbyville-rally-attendance-white-nationalist/819784001/). Businesses downtown were shuttered. Police had cordoned off roads heading into the town. A pervasive thrum was in the air, from helicopters circling overhead. Dozens of officers in riot gear massed on the roofs of low buildings. The October 2017 rally followed the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, where clashes between demonstrators and counter-protesters left dozens injured and one young woman, Heather Heyer, dead. The Shelbyville rally was organized by a southern separatist group called the [League of the South](https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/league-south/), working with a larger umbrella of white nationalist groups called the Nationalist Front. “Which side are you on?” an officer asked as I approached the site. Long metal barricades divided the white nationalists from the counter-protestors who were also gathering that morning. I followed a handful of journalists into the security clearance area for the white nationalist demonstrators. I was hoping to talk with some of them, to try and understand why they had come to think of their own wellbeing in such starkly racist terms. Everyone was forced to mill around the checkpoint and submit to a pat down in the name of safety. The process was long and arduous, so much so that it helped break the ice between a brown ethnographer and the white nationalists in his midst. Here was something we could complain about together, as if this was a painfully slow line at an airport terminal. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/jun/01/united-states-polarization#img-3) White nationalists attend a ‘White Lives Matter’ rally on 28 October 2017 in Shelbyville, Tennessee. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images I struck up a conversation with a bearded man who worked at a uniform factory in northern Alabama. He was wearing a red Maga cap, with an American flag draped around his shoulders – flagpoles had been banned. He admitted feeling stupid with a flag on his back. “What would look cool is a Swat vest and a gun,” he suggested, eyeing the officers nearby. Some of the demonstrators came down to the checkpoint in quasi-military formation, with helmeted young men in rows marching behind plastic shields as a ruddy-faced man with a thick white beard led them in a chant: “Closed borders! White nation! Now we start the deportation!” When they halted, I could see that some of them had swastikas and the letters “KKK” tattooed on their arms. Styled as foot soldiers, many startlingly young in age, these men were a deliberately provocative spectacle of fascist unity. They were also a minority among those who gathered for the white nationalist rally in Shelbyville. That left me curious about the other demonstrators who had joined in plain clothes. How did these ideas speak to them? I fell into conversation with a tall white man in a black Carhartt jacket. He didn’t want to divulge who he was, and nor, frankly, did I, but it turned out that he was raised in Brooklyn, not far from the Bronx borough where I was born. In his late 40s, with a salt-and-pepper beard, he had gone to the rally in Charlottesville and had come to Shelbyville for this event. > What seemed to have gone missing here was the faith that one could live alongside others unlike oneself “I have an affinity for this side,” he admitted. I introduced myself as a writer, and we wound up getting into a long discussion. “What do you think of this idea of an ethnostate?” I asked the man, bringing up the vision of a Balkanized white nation floated by rally organizers. “What would you do with people like me?” “What’s your heritage?” he asked. “My family is from India,” I said. “I was born and raised in this country, but my parents immigrated here.” “Aren’t you guys Aryans?” Both of us laughed uneasily. He asked when my family had come to the United States, adding that he had ancestors who came here during the revolutionary war era. “Our ancestors built this country for their posterity. We feel this is our inheritance.” “Let me tell you why I’m here,” I told him. “In the 1970s, there was a shortage of doctors in the United States. The government put out a call, and a whole bunch of them came from India. My dad’s a cardiologist. Over the years, he’s taken care of thousands of patients, saved a lot of lives. Does that give us a place here, or not?” “Yeah, that’s a part of our history,” he replied. “We can accept that. We can absorb a certain amount of other cultures.” The way he spoke, he seemed to be thinking of a national organism, its ability to tolerate some degree of foreign bodies in its midst. Still, the man from Brooklyn insisted, “there’s no living with the other.” What seemed to have gone missing here was the faith that one could live alongside others unlike oneself, sharing a collective life with them rather than living at the other’s expense. “You gotta put your own air mask on first,” he said. “You gotta take care of yourself before you can take care of someone else. You can’t help people if you cut your own throat.” [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/jun/01/united-states-polarization#img-4) Places of belonging can be conceived in defensive and xenophobic ways, as that white nationalist rally had in Shelbyville. But they can also be imagined and sustained in a more hopeful manner, as shared spaces of cultural resistance and transformation. I think, for example, of the members of the [Denton Women’s Interracial Fellowship](https://dentonrc.com/news/landmarks_and_legacies/denton-s-women-s-interracial-fellowship-was-one-of-denton-s-finest-moments/article_a499bf86-0d11-5183-81c1-a206e05808a0.html) in north Texas, who led the effort to desegregate their town in the 1960s. I was privileged to meet some of these courageous women during my research. At the turn of the 20th century, the Black community of Denton was anchored in a prosperous enclave at the heart of the town, known as [Quakertown](https://dentoncountyhistoryandculture.wordpress.com/2017/04/21/the-history-of-quakertown/). Like many other Black townships at time, Quakertown had thrived, with a school and many churches and businesses. Then, in the early 1920s, white civic leaders in Denton led a campaign to appropriate the Black township’s land, raze its buildings and place a public park for white families there instead. Many Black families were forced to leave Denton altogether, for other towns and states or farther afield. Those who remained rebuilt their community once again on a tract of land south-east of the town, past flour mills and two sets of railway tracks, a distant periphery that remains the nucleus of Denton’s Black population to this day. I met Alma Clark for the first time at the American Legion Senior Center in south-east Denton in 2017, when she was 89 years old. She scoffed at the ideas of health and sanitation used as rationale for Quakertown’s removal. “We went into the homes of white folk and cooked their food and cleaned their houses. We took care of their children. We were good enough for that,” she told me with a tart smile. However much labor the Black women and men of Denton contributed to the wellbeing of the town’s white residents, they had been cast into a space of public neglect. Under these circumstances, families in the community turned to strategies of collective support and caretaking. Women relied on one another to help with their children, as they juggled work and other responsibilities. Families added rooms to their own homes to house Black students admitted to Denton’s universities but denied a place in their dormitories. In the 1960s, Clark and other Black women in Denton came together with some white women in the town to create what came to be known as the Denton Women’s Interracial Fellowship. They began by opening their homes to each other, sharing meals for the first time. Eventually, their conversations led to public campaigns that drew dozens of active women in the town. The organization ensured that its membership remained Black and white in equal measure at any given time, and alternated its meetings regularly between Black and white homes. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/jun/01/united-states-polarization#img-5) A 1994 photograph from the Denton Record-Chronicle documenting a 30th-anniversary Denton Women’s Interracial Fellowship meeting. Photograph: Denton County Office of History and Culture Women in the fellowship made visible the harsh realities of racial segregation. They led a successful campaign to pave south-east Denton’s streets and equip them with streetlights. They organized voting drives to register new Black voters, and took to visiting local restaurants in interracial pairs to support their desegregation. They distributed cards that encouraged Denton city residents to sign a “[good neighbor pledge](https://dentoncountyhistoryandculture.wordpress.com/2018/03/02/encouraging-change-the-denton-womens-interracial-fellowship/)” that affirmed the right of every person to rent, buy or build a home anywhere they wished, even as social and economic forces conspired to keep people mostly where they were. The legacy of the Women’s Interracial Fellowship remains widely visible in Denton today. A vivid mural depicting Clark and several other Black women activists with the organization spans both sides of the railway underpass leading into south-east Denton. An art installation commemorating their work for racial justice adorns a small downtown park, close to the central courthouse square from which a [Confederate monument](https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-texas-el-paso/news/2020/08/06/confederate-statue-removed-from-denton-s-square-after-21-year-fight) was finally removed in 2020. Contemporary antiracist organizing in the Black Lives Matter era has drawn from historical struggles in the town, on the more inclusive vision of home and community that activists have long summoned. “We had to help each other to survive,” Clark recollected to me in 2022, when I returned to Denton for the [Juneteenth celebration](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/18/juneteenth-quakertown-texas-black-race-white-supremacy/) that year. She went on to add a striking analogy. “It’s like making cornbread. You need meal, you need flour, you need baking powder, you need eggs. You need to put all those ingredients together to make that cornbread. You can’t do anything if you keep them separate.” [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/jun/01/united-states-polarization#img-6) All of us have much to lose in the erosion of neighborly concern, the impetus to look out for others we don’t know that well. Neighborliness is a powerful image of collective belonging, especially in a world where relationships span the globe and the consequences of how we live extend to many distant and unseen places. In saying this, I don’t mean to idealize American neighbors and neighborhoods. Contemporary patterns of isolation draw on deep histories of racial segregation and systemic neglect in the United States, lines that have long been drawn between lives that matter and lives that don’t. At the same time, [neighborliness](https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691169439/good-neighbors) has also long been practiced as a more expansive form of conviviality, equipping people to live with the reality of social difference and disagreement. One afternoon a few years ago, passing through a small town in southern Michigan, I went out to a park to catch up on some notes and phone calls. After some time, a white man in his 60s sat down on the bench beside me, and we fell into conversation. He was slightly drunk, a little red in the eye, and keen to talk. He had recently retired from work as a mechanic at a nearby plant. His wife was ailing, mostly bedridden at home, and he was worried about her medical care. I can’t remember how the subject of politics came up, but he told me that he had voted for Donald Trump in 2016. He also wanted me to understand that this didn’t change what he owed me as a newcomer to his town. No, he didn’t know me from Adam, but our meeting was the Lord’s blessing, he told me, and I ought to have someone around there to call on in case of trouble. He scribbled down his number and address on a scrap of paper and insisted that I take it. “I don’t care if you’re brown or red or whatever,” he told me, and I believed him. > The problem lies less with the strangers among us than the strangeness within I was heading out the next morning, but I kept thinking about that unexpected gesture of kindness. It was like a flash of some other solidarity that still remained possible. I picked up a pie at a market nearby, meaning to drop it off for that man and his family. When I pulled up at the address he had shared, the shades were drawn, and no one seemed to be home. I left the pie and a note on the concrete landing of that small tract house clad in blue vinyl siding. I felt a bit nervous and exposed, walking back to my car. I was, after all, a stranger. But it felt like the right thing to do. He had treated me like a neighbor, and I wanted to reciprocate. Such aspirations will face serious tests in the years to come. How will people respond to the deportation of families who have lived beside them for decades, or the gutting of hard-won protections for clean water and air, or the removal of books meaningful to the most marginal members of their communities from local school curricula, or the deepening of media foxholes that celebrate masculine aggression and disdain for the struggles of others elsewhere? Xenophobic and authoritarian politics draw their power from a fear of foreigners and strangers, an idea that the dangers they pose are already around us, needing to be identified and rooted out. But [as Toni Morrison observed](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674976450), such ideas often reflect “an uneasy relationship with our own foreignness, our own rapidly disintegrating sense of belonging”. The problem lies less with the strangers among us than the strangeness within, the consequences of a feeling of radical estrangement from the world. [](https://interactive.guim.co.uk/embed/from-tool/book/index.html?opinion-tint=false&is-extract=false&image=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.gutools.co.uk%2Fimages%2F63dde83b147715d24e31b6d983409fb0b908dfaa%3Fcrop%3D0_0_1125_1678&title=Something%20Between%20Us&author=Anand%20Pandian&publisher=Stanford%20University%20Press&link=) In my writing, I try to show how [everyday structures of isolation](https://www.theguardian.com/global/2022/jan/16/look-around-you-why-increasingly-polarized) – at home and on the road, for the body and the mind – magnify the social and political divides we lament so often. These interlocking walls of everyday life sharpen the divide between insiders and outsiders, making it hard to take unfamiliar people and perspectives seriously, to acknowledge the needs of others and relate to their struggles. So much turns on the edges between the familiar and the foreign, these lines we’ve come to live with on a daily basis. Can we learn once again to take these edges as spaces of encounter, rather than hard divides between ourselves and the world beyond? It may be daunting, the idea of making a common life – in public space, in the pursuit of wellbeing on an imperiled earth, even in the unpredictable span of a conversation – with others unlike ourselves. But we need to find our way back to the communion we may share with those beyond our bounds. We need to rekindle that open spirit of kinship once again. _[Anand Pandian](https://bsky.app/profile/anandian.bsky.social) is Krieger-Eisenhower_ _professor of_ _anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. Parts of this essay were adapted from his book, Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down, out now._ _Spot illustrations by Peter Gamlen._

A [journalist](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/08/abc-news-suspends-journalist-stephen-miller-trump) who lost his job at ABC News after describing top White House aide Stephen Miller as someone “richly endowed with the capacity for hatred” has said he published that remark on social media because he felt it was “true”. “It was something that was in my heart and mind,” the network’s former senior national correspondent Terry Moran said Monday on [The Bulwark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpAscuiibVo) political podcast. “And I would say I used very strong language deliberately.” Moran’s comments to Bulwark host Tim Miller about standing by his statements came a little more than a week after he wrote on X that Stephen Miller – the [architect](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/15/trump-immigration-stephen-miller-influence) of Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies – “eats his hate”. “His hatreds are his spiritual nourishment,” Moran’s post read, in part. He added that the president “is a world-class hater. But his hatred \[is\] only a means to an end, and that end \[is\] his own glorification”. Moran subsequently deleted the post, which had been published shortly after midnight on 8 June. [ABC](https://www.theguardian.com/media/abc) News initially suspended Moran pending an investigation, citing a policy against “subjective attacks on others”. But then the network announced it would not be renewing his employment contract, effectively dismissing him. Among the polarizing reactions which stemmed from Moran’s deleted post was one from Stephen Miller, [a white nationalist](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/24/stephen-miller-white-nationalist-trump-immigration-guru), which read: “The most important fact about Terry’s full meltdown is what it shows about the corporate press in America. For decades, the privileged anchors and reporters narrating and gatekeeping our society have been radicals adopting a journalist’s pose. Terry pulled off his mask.” But Moran on Monday maintained that he is “a proud centrist” who opposes “the viciousness and the intolerance that you feel when we argue politics”. Tim Miller asked Moran whether he was drunk at the time of the post. Moran replied that it had actually been “a normal family night” that culminated with him putting his children to bed before he wrote out his thoughts about Stephen Miller. “I typed it out and I looked at it and I thought ‘that’s true’,” said Moran, who had been at ABC since 1997. “And I hit send. “I thought that’s a description of the public man that I’m describing.” Some of Trump’s most high-profile allies took verbal aim at Moran before his departure from ABC News was announced. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared on Fox News and said Moran’s post was “unacceptable and unhinged”, and JD Vance said it was a “vile smear”. Nearly six months earlier, ABC News had agreed to pay $15m to a Trump presidential foundation or museum to settle a defamation case that he brought after the network’s anchor George Stephanopoulos incorrectly asserted that Trump had been found “liable for rape” in a lawsuit filed by columnist E Jean Carroll. Trump had actually been found liable for sexually abusing Carroll. Moran by Monday had joined the Substack publishing platform as an independent journalist. He told Tim Miller that he was hoping to interview members of the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio. Members of that community were politically villainized after Trump boosted debunked stories about Haitian immigrants eating pets ahead of his victory in November’s presidential election. Moran alluded to how the vast majority of the Haitian immigrants in Springfield were there legally through a temporary protected status that had been allocated to them due to violent unrest in their home country. They generally arrived in Springfield to work in local produce packaging and machining factories whose owners were experiencing a labor shortage after the Covid-19 pandemic. And many are facing the prospect of being forced to leave the US by 3 August after the [Trump administration](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/trump-administration) decided to end legal visa programs for Haitians such as humanitarian parole and temporary protected status. “The town had come to depend on them,” Moran said. “That town was falling flat and now had risen.”

The nationalist historian Karol Nawrocki has been sworn in as the Polish president, using his inaugural address to criticise the EU as he vowed to represent “sovereign” Poland, in a sign of potential clashes to come with the country’s pro-European government. In a combative speech in parliament aimed squarely at the prime minister, [Donald Tusk](https://www.theguardian.com/world/donald-tusk), and his allies, Nawrocki said on Wednesday that the voters in June’s presidential election had “sent a strong message … that things cannot continue to be governed in this way”. The 42-year-old attacked his rivals for the “propaganda, lies … and contempt” to which he said he had been subjected during the polarising campaign. He said he opposed “illegal migration … and joining the euro”, and wanted a “sovereign [Poland](https://www.theguardian.com/world/poland) that is in the European Union … but is and will remain Poland”. A devout Catholic, Nawrocki ended his speech with a cry: “May God bless Poland, long live Poland.” Backed by the populist rightwing opposition Law and Justice party, which ruled Poland between 2015 and 2023, Nawrocki ran under a Trumpesque slogan of “Poland first, Poles first”. [](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/nationalist-karol-nawrocki-sworn-in-as-polish-president#img-2) Nawrocki and his wife, Marta, arrive at parliament before his swearing-in ceremony in Warsaw. Photograph: Paweł Supernak/EPA He defied the polls to narrowly beat the Oxford-educated liberal Warsaw mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski, and replace the conservative incumbent, Andrzej Duda, who was stepping down after two terms. Nawrocki, who faced controversy during the campaign when it emerged he had taken part in an organised brawl between football hooligans in 2009, has little experience in frontline politics. He served as the head of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, a state research institute. His manifesto – going far beyond presidential powers – contained 21 promises, including to lower taxes and energy costs, stop the EU’s green policies, block irregular migration and ensure “safe childhood without ideology”, a phrase taken to mean opposition to same-sex adoption and gender education in schools. After an unexpected visit to Washington in the final weeks of the campaign, Nawrocki sought and secured Donald Trump’s endorsement before the vote. A White House delegation also took part in the swearing-in ceremony. As it tries to stand up to an increasingly aggressive Russia, Poland will hope that his personal relationship with Trump will help in defence talks with the US administration. Marek Magierowski, Poland’s former US ambassador, said in an analysis for the Atlantic Council that the links could “help keep both countries aligned in the contest against Russia”. [](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/nationalist-karol-nawrocki-sworn-in-as-polish-president#img-3) Karol Nawrocki with Donald Trump at the White House in May. Photograph: The Whitehouse/X On Ukraine, Nawrocki has pledged to continue support for Kyiv, but opposes its Nato membership. Domestically, the new presidency is expected to directly challenge Tusk’s pro-European coalition government. [skip past newsletter promotion](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/nationalist-karol-nawrocki-sworn-in-as-polish-president#EmailSignup-skip-link-15) Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment **Privacy Notice:** Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our [Privacy Policy](https://www.theguardian.com/help/privacy-policy). We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google [Privacy Policy](https://policies.google.com/privacy) and [Terms of Service](https://policies.google.com/terms) apply. after newsletter promotion While the role of the Polish president carries limited powers, it gives him some influence over foreign and defence policy, a high public profile, and the ability to veto new legislation. The veto can only be overturned with a majority of three-fifths in parliament, which the government does not have, potentially stymying its ability to pass promised changes on contentious issues such as abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Nawrocki is expected to make the most of his powers, seeking to stand up to the increasingly unpopular Tusk. He is expected to put forward his first legislative proposals this week in an attempt to set the political agenda for the autumn. On Wednesday, Nawrocki drew some early battle lines. He challenged the government’s plans to restore the rule of law after the previous administration’s clashes with the EU, accusing Tusk’s government of undermining the country’s constitution and calling for its broader rewrite by 2030 – an ambition with a clear political implication. Any change to the constitution would require a two-thirds majority in parliament. The Law and Justice party hopes to use Nawrocki’s success in the buildup to the 2027 parliamentary election to return to power, potentially in a coalition with the libertarian far-right Konfederacja party. [](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/nationalist-karol-nawrocki-sworn-in-as-polish-president#img-4) Nawrocki supporters gather near St John’s Archcathedral in Warsaw’s old town during a mass after the swearing-in ceremony. Photograph: Radek Pietruszka/EPA “He spoke about a confrontation with the government, and, of course, we are ready for that,” Tusk told reporters after the speech. He said he hoped “the rather defiant and confrontational tone won’t lead to any practical consequences”. Still, he added that “if needed, we will stand firm”. He also pointedly criticised Nawrocki’s comments about the rule of law, putting them in the context of investigations into alleged irregularities under the previous Law and Justice government. He said: “Even if some people complain that the reckoning process is going slowly, I’m not surprised PiS \[the Law and Justice party\] is desperate for President Nawrocki to somehow paralyse the work of the prosecutor’s office. But let me just say: dream on.”