Latest news with #identityPolitics
Fox News
5 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Rep. Wesley Hunt: Our Service Members Know We Have A Commander-in-chief Who Respects & Understands The Military
Texas Republican Congressman Wesley Hunt joins Fox Across America With Jimmy Failla to explain why GOP-backed policies are popular with voters right now in part because they are not driven by identity politics. 'As an American and as a rational human being, and I think I talked about to give my one of my favorite stories this year I was going to the White House when President Trump was signing the bill that did not allow biological men to compete against biological women. And in that in ceremony he goes, I can't believe I'm signing this but I guess all common sense is not so common So not just as a conservative, but as a human being with simple common sense That's what I represent. And I represent 77 million people that voted for President Trump, and those people came from all walks of life. There are Black people, White people, Hispanic people, Asian people, you name it. And so the fact that our party isn't playing identity politics slaps the left right in the face and they can't handle it. And I love being the harbinger of that message.' Fox News Podcasts Presents: Great Americans With Wesley Hunt Rep. Hunt and Jimmy also talk about why the U.S. Army surpassed its fiscal year 2025 recruiting goals four months ahead of schedule. Listen to the podcast to hear what else they talked about!
Bloomberg
7 days ago
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Britain's Labour Party Needs to Listen to Its Social Conscience
Progressives on both sides of the English-speaking Atlantic have focused much of their energy and attention on championing minority rights and indulging in identity politics. Standing up for groups who've suffered historic discrimination is laudable; removing barriers to Black employment and giving gay people the right to marry are hard-fought achievements. Transgender people deserve protections too, with trade-offs necessary given the clashes of biological sex and gender ideology. But whether by preference or distracted by such concerns, social evils which used to fire up the liberal-left conscience — class inequality, lack of economic opportunity and cohesive societies — have been in danger of being overlooked or even downgraded. In the UK, a horrific, decades-long scandal of grooming and rape gangs of mainly Pakistani Muslim men who preyed on young white women has revealed the pitfalls of this lopsided approach.
Telegraph
16-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Orwellian new banking surveillance powers offer huge potential for abuse
To what extent do you trust this, or any previous, government? It's a relevant question, given the sweeping new powers that parliament is seemingly being asked to hand over to our elected – and unelected – masters on a weekly basis. The point of the question, however, is in the fact of its being asked at all: while there has always been a healthy degree of suspicion between the governed and the government, it is hard to imagine a time when that disconnect has been greater than it is today. A civil service obsessed with identity politics of all varieties, which threatens strike action if its members are not allowed to remain at home most of the week while suffering no loss in pay, which reserves the right to complain publicly about policies being pursued by the elected government, cannot hope to retain the good will and support of the public. Yet now the government has chosen to give middle-ranking civil servants with unprecedented powers to spy on ordinary citizens' financial affairs. As revealed by The Telegraph today, a new fraud Bill will allow civil servants to demand that banks provide personal information about an individual's account without a court order, and extract funds if they 'reasonably believe' that money is owed to the taxpayer. They will also be given the power to ask for a search and entry warrant and to freeze bank accounts. We may assume the new measures can be filed under 'seemed a good idea at the time', since they were initially proposed under the previous Conservative government in response to the eye-watering levels of fraud that took place during that weird period of history defined by the Covid pandemic and lockdown. So much public money disappeared under relatively little public scrutiny or oversight that the new government feels emboldened to clamp down on potential ongoing fraud, secure in the knowledge that the public would tolerate never-before-seen investigative powers wielded by relatively junior civil servants on behalf of the public purse. And if those powers could be guaranteed to be used only against the fraudsters, there would be very little opposition to the new measures. The question is whether those powers, once granted, will not be used more and more against ordinary citizens who are merely suspected, perhaps with little evidence, of not paying enough tax or claiming too many benefits without justification. Do we really want to live in a country where citizens' bank accounts can be examined, frozen or have cash withdrawn – all without the account holder being told what is happening or why? As the legislation currently stands, sign-off by a minister, which would offer at least the appearance of some democratic accountability, would not be required before an individual's bank account is accessed and further action proposed. The powers could be wielded by any anti-fraud official with a civil service rank above 'higher executive officer' – a Whitehall middle manager – and will apply to members of the Public Sector Fraud Authority, a new government body designed to crack down on criminal fraud against public bodies. Naturally, civil liberties groups have raised concerns about the legislation. Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties campaign group, told The Telegraph that the 'dangerous new bank spying powers' would 'effectively turn banks into agents of the state, tasked with spying on everyone's bank accounts and reporting back to the Government'. There's an ugly element of arrogance in all of this, a touch of 'We are the masters now' sort of philosophy from a party that won a 170-seat Commons majority on barely a third of the popular vote. The question posed earlier as to whether you trust this or previous governments can be reframed and put to current ministers: would you trust these powers to be used fairly by ministers of another party, after the next election? In the event of a Reform-led coalition government, are you content for such unprecedented executive power over individuals' livelihoods to be in the hands of your political opponents? Fraud must be challenged and detected and its perpetrators held to account. But in doing so, the government needs to take citizens with them. At the start of this century, the Proceeds of Crime Act was opposed by many in the legal establishment who felt it would result in miscarriages of justice in the legitimate fight against organised crime. Those concerns were proved groundless thanks to the legal safeguards in the legislation. Unless similarly robust safeguards are inserted into this new legislation, ministers risk damaging further, perhaps irretrievably, the delicate and essential political contract that exists between them and their voters.
Al Jazeera
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Have identity politics changed the course of pro-Palestine protests?
He joins us to discuss his latest book on the role of identity politics in the repression of campus protests in support of Palestine. Finkelstein explores how contradictions in wokeism are being weaponised against the pro-Palestine movement — and what that means for free speech today. Phil Lavelle is a TV news correspondent at Al Jazeera.
New York Times
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Punk, Monet and Puerto Rico: New Photography From Elle Pérez
Subtle resistance to representation is on display in a handful of new shows, where some artists are refusing the notion that figuration must be their primary subject, or what is required to be successful. 'Source Notes,' Lorna Simpson's riveting new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, highlights her shift toward painting while still emphasizing the artists' career-long interest in destabilizing expectations of Black life and the art that makes sense of it. The painter Jordan Casteel's newfound focus on florals is a dreamy drift away from her signature portraits. And one of the most fascinating new artists I found to be coyly refusing to play the game of identity politics is the New York photographer Elle Pérez, whose exhibition at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in Upper Manhattan centers the politics of personhood over the consumption of that same self. The lens lingers on physical terrain: yards, curving coastlines. The portraits included are mantle-size, which, in the cavernous space, dares you to come close and forge an intimate relationship with the work. At first glance, one could erroneously wonder if the show, comprising nearly 30 images, a slide show, a short film and a collage, is a premature retrospective. The works on display span the artist's career from 2009 to 2025 and seem to be organized semi-chronologically. But it quickly becomes clear that 'The World Is Always Again Beginning, History With the Present,' organized by Jenny Jaskey, chief curator, in collaboration with Pérez, functions as a cut section invitation into the sacred practice of process. This is a show that starts before you get to the show. The Academy is nestled in the vibrant and rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Washington Heights, near Boricua College. The elaborate iron gates of the 1923 building that welcome visitors invoke the Gilded Age and its arts patronage, a sorely needed reminder of possibility amid devastating arts defunding. As Pérez explains inside: 'This is the neighborhood that made me.' Pérez was born in 1989 in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents who were also born and raised there. (As Pérez said in a recent interview, 'My grandparents were the generation that made the jump.') Instead of traditional blocks of wall text, the artist chose to install fragments of their poetry, like those lines, which start the exhibition. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
