\n<\/p>\n
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/p>\n
Way back in 2018, before she had ever held any kind of political office, Marjorie Taylor Greene reportedly endorsed a plan to murder former President Barack Obama. \u201cStage is being set,\u201d she wrote in response to one Facebook commenter\u2019s request to \u201chang\u201d Obama and Hillary Clinton. \u201cWe must be patient. This must be done perfectly or liberal judges would let them off.\u201d (Greene later distanced herself from the comments but did not deny having written them.)<\/p>\n
Oh how things change. After nearly five years in Congress, the hard-right North Georgia representative is calling for an extension of provisions in the Affordable Care Act, Obama\u2019s signature health-care policy, breaking with her party over the central policy issue of the current government shutdown and creating ripples of anxiety throughout the broader MAGA movement. \u201cI\u2019m absolutely disgusted that health insurance premiums will DOUBLE if the tax credits expire this year,\u201d she wrote on X. Today, Greene put the blame for the government shutdown squarely on Republican leadership. (Greene\u2019s office did not respond to a request to comment on some of her recent statements.)<\/p>\n
Greene is no Democrat: She believes that Obamacare created many of the problems with today\u2019s health-insurance market, but she also believes that Republicans \u201chave no new solution.\u201d Lately, her impulse to go after both sides has left her very much on her own.<\/p>\n
Her sudden criticism of Republicans\u2019 approach to health care comes after a summer of minor defections from the far-right political milieu. In June, while many Republicans were throwing their full support behind Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza, Greene became the first Republican congressperson to call Israel\u2019s actions a \u201cgenocide.\u201d And whereas the White House has tried to put an end to the discussion about the sex offender and former Donald Trump associate Jeffrey Epstein, Greene has pushed for transparency, supporting a petition to force a vote on the release of information about individuals connected to Epstein (the other backers have largely been Democratic House members). She has also continued to champion oddball issues that few others in Congress seem to care about. Her Clear Skies Act, for example, doubles down on Greene\u2019s stated belief that \u201cthey\u201d control the weather. Jury\u2019s out on who \u201cthey\u201d are.<\/p>\n
Neither the White House nor congressional leaders have been shy about expressing frustration with Greene\u2019s heel turn. \u201cWhat\u2019s going on with Marjorie?\u201d Trump reportedly asked at least two different senior Republicans. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, whom Greene tried to oust from Congress last year, alluded to the idea that Greene doesn\u2019t have all the facts. \u201cNot everyone knows everything,\u201d he said during a press briefing. Democrats, however, are praising Greene for her new stances. \u201cYou are going to hear me utter words I never thought I\u2019d say,\u201d said Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia. \u201cMarjorie Taylor Greene is right.\u201d<\/p>\n
When she first ran for Congress, Greene was more known for her fanatical adherence to the QAnon conspiracy theory than for her vision for sound policy. Even as she was publicly praising Trump from afar during her campaign, Greene didn\u2019t receive the president\u2019s endorsement right away\u2014she was well on her way to winning before he threw his support behind her. Greene has hewed closely to the MAGA movement during her time in Congress, even after the White House reportedly discouraged her from attempting a Senate run this past spring and neglected to give her a Cabinet position. But she insists that she is still a free thinker: \u201cI\u2019m not some sort of blind slave to the president,\u201d Greene told NBC News this week. \u201cI got elected without the president\u2019s endorsement, and I think that has served me really well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The question is whether Greene\u2019s actions are the result of genuine disenchantment with the congressional GOP and its mode of governing\u2014an expression of the anti-establishment spirit that got her elected in the first place\u2014or just political maneuvering. Her political calculations may have to do with the fact that an estimated 2.3 million Georgians signed up for Obamacare from 2014 to 2024\u2014one of the highest numbers of any state. \u201cIt\u2019s as authentic as anything is in Congress,\u201d my colleague Mark Leibovich told me of Greene\u2019s recent moves. \u201cWhether it\u2019s a heel turn, or whether it\u2019s a calculated heel turn,\u201d he isn\u2019t yet sure. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t pretend to understand her thought process.\u201d Still, he said, her ideological independence has \u201cgotten her pretty far in a pretty short period of time\u201d: Not every representative secures a subcommittee chairmanship so quickly.<\/p>\n
Upstart political candidates in the GOP broadly understand that their potential for success is correlated with their fealty to the MAGA movement and its leader. Greene understood this before most; she was bending the knee well before Trump even acknowledged her. And perhaps it\u2019s thanks to those political instincts that she now seems to be recognizing an opportunity to seize the narrative. With the government at a standstill, Greene is once again making noise.<\/p>\n
Related:<\/p>\n
Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:<\/strong><\/p>\n Today\u2019s News<\/strong><\/p>\n Dispatches<\/strong><\/p>\n Explore all of our newsletters here.<\/em><\/p>\n Evening Read<\/strong><\/p>\n Illustration by Ben Kothe \/ The Atlantic<\/p>\n Can Gen Z Get Rid of Their iPhones?<\/p>\n By Elias Wachtel<\/p>\n In 2009, Apple coined a catchy slogan: \u201cThere\u2019s an app for just about anything.\u201d The original commercial is a time capsule from the early years\u2014when the idea that smartphones could be used in every corner of life read more as a promise than a threat.<\/p>\n Now we have apps to help us stop using apps. The deterrents are creative. Some apps slow down how quickly we can open others; some block everything except calls and texts until we enter a specific password; some prompt us to reflect on a mantra or take deep, meditative breaths before scrolling on. One shows a little animated tree growing\u2014a tree that dies if we open Instagram.<\/p>\n If an app for everything was prophecy, this is its dark fulfillment.<\/p>\n Read the full article.<\/p>\n More From The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Culture Break<\/p>\n Wenn \/ Alamy<\/p>\n Read. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Krasznahorkai is unusually experimental for a Nobel Prize winner, but in an unstable world, his selection feels perfectly timely, Walt Hunter writes.<\/p>\n Explore. A conversation between the director Benny Safdie and David Sims about Safdie\u2019s first big-budget film, The Smashing Machine\u2014which takes an unusual approach to the sports biopic.<\/p>\n Play our daily crossword.<\/p>\n Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.<\/p>\n When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Way back in 2018, before she had ever held any kind of political office, Marjorie Taylor Greene reportedly endorsed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[3644,3643,3611,264],"class_list":{"0":"post-27103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-greene","9":"tag-marjorie","10":"tag-taylor","11":"tag-whats"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n