Move over, Javanka, it’s Lerica’s time to shine
Once upon a time, before she retired to Florida, Ivanka Trump reportedly had her sights set on being the first female US president. According to a book about the first Trump administration by Michael Wolff, Ivanka made a pact with her husband, Jared Kushner, that “if sometime in the future the opportunity arose, she’d be the one to run for president”.
After “making” a fortune during Daddy’s first term, Ivanka has now sworn off politics. Jared Kushner has also made a big show of leaving government behind, although he’s still doing plenty of behind-the-scenes politicking. Per a Times of Israel report from February, Kushner was reportedly behind Trump’s plan “for the US to take over Gaza and clear it of Palestinians”.
Nature abhors a vacuum. And into the void left by Javanka, briefly the most influential couple in DC, has stepped Eric and Lara Trump (Lerica?): a terrible twosome with some very big plans.
Let’s start with crypto bro and hair gel enthusiast Eric, who recently suggested to the Financial Times that he might run for president when his dad’s second term ends. “I think the political path would be an easy one, meaning, I think I could do it,” he said. “And by the way, I think other members of our family could do it, too.” With oratory skills like that, Eric, you can go anywhere!
The other family members Eric was referencing probably include his wife Lara Trump, née Yunaska, who has political ambitions of her own. As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade; when life gives you a Trump husband who was once accused of stealing lemonade, you cash in on nepotism and call it public service.
Like Ivanka, Lara is a big fan of female empowerment. In 2016, she led the Trump-Pence Women’s Empowerment Tour, kicking things off by telling a crowd in Ohio: “We really don’t have any idea what we’re doing, except we said: ‘We’ve got to go out and tell people what a great guy Donald Trump is.’” She added that her peers leading the initiative were a diverse group of women: “It speaks to who Donald Trump is, these are all women he’s touched in very different ways.” (One imagines Trump’s PR people told her not to use that phrase again.)
Also like Ivanka, Lara seems to believe that charity begins at home and the most important woman to empower is herself. And she’s certainly doing a great job there. In early 2024, Lara was elected co-chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), after winning the coveted endorsement of her father-in-law. She stepped down later in the year, amid speculation she was mulling a run for North Carolina’s open Senate seat in 2026.
A busy woman, Lara was also given her own show, My View with Lara Trump, on Fox News this year. Which is handy publicity for her because her Senate run is looking more likely. On Monday, the RNC chair, Michael Whatley, said that if Lara chose to run, “she is certainly going to have the entire Republican universe – myself included – that are going to coalesce behind her”.
While she considers her next move, Lara is busy with what used to be Ivanka’s job: softening Donald’s image and making him look less like a wildly misogynistic sexual predator and more like a misunderstood feminist. In an interview with the New York Post earlier this year, for example, Lara gushed: “Donald Trump helped me get to where I am today. And he’s a constant champion for women with whom he surrounds himself.”
Donald “cares about whether or not you are going to be able to perform a job to your best ability”, Lara added. “It’s something I appreciate as a woman because I never want someone to give me a job because of my gender.” But if someone gives her a job because of who she is related to? Well, that’s a completely different story.
A self-styled ‘alpha male’ Maga influencer is Trump’s pick for ambassador to Malaysia
The Australian-born Nick Adams once tweeted: “I go to Hooters. I eat rare steaks. I lift extremely heavy weights. I read the Bible every night. I am pursued by copious amounts of women.” He also wrote a book called Alpha Kings, which promises to “show the young men of America what it means to be a true alpha male in today’s hyper-feminized world”. If you fancy a fast track to a cushy ambassador gig one day, then it would seem your best bet is donating to the president or going the Adams route and being a manosphere influencer who has tweeted about Hooters more than 500 times in four years.
A third of UK women who died during or after pregnancy were known to children’s services
A new study has found that a lot of vulnerable women are not getting the postpartum help they need. The Guardian reports that many of the women who died during pregnancy or within a year of giving birth, and were in touch with children’s social care services, came from “backgrounds of trauma and abuse, and yet despite their efforts to keep up with demanding appointment schedules, they often face scrutiny and judgment rather than receiving support for the issues they are facing”.
Texas overhauls controversial anti-abortion program
This comes after a ProPublica and CBS News investigation found tens of millions of taxpayer dollars had been funneled into the program, which aimed to discourage people from terminating pregnancies.
Sudanese author Leila Aboulela wins PEN Pinter prize
Aboulela’s work “is marked by a commitment to make the lives and decisions of Muslim women central to her fiction, and to examine their struggles and pleasures with dignity”, said the novelist Nadifa Mohamed.
Nobel peace prize laureate Narges Mohammadi says Iran threatened her life
Mohammadi, who was awarded the 2023 Nobel peace prize for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran, says she has been threatened with “physical elimination by agents of the [Iranian] regime”.
Israeli strike kills children queueing for medical treatment in Gaza
Headlines like this are routine now; the UN human rights office said on Friday that at least 798 people have been killed while trying to receive food aid in Gaza since the end of May. It seems clear that daily massacres in Gaza – along with settler violence and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank – will continue until every Palestinian is dead or forced to leave the region. Meanwhile, a lot of western companies are getting very rich from the genocide. And the likes of the senators Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, who talks a big talk about human rights, cozied up to the accused war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu this week in Washington.
Singer Hayley Kiyoko and The Bachelor’s Becca Tilley get engaged
Congrats to the pair! One day I will write a 20,000-word thesis about the heterosexual reality-TV-to-queerness pipeline. There are a surprisingly large number of Bachelor stars who have come out after appearing on the franchise.
The week in pawtriarchy
Hippo birthday to the internet sensation and “the people’s pygmy princess” Moo Deng. The chaotic pygmy hippo turned one on Thursday and celebrated with a fruit cake and crowds of adoring fans. She also devoured an enormous tropical fruit platter, making quite the hippopota-mess.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
