Trouble in Paradise

Plus: Zohran-Trump lovefest, bitcoin down, Heritage kerfuffle, and more...

Trumpworld schism: On Friday night, MAGA Queen Marjorie Taylor Greene announced her resignation from Congress. "I've always represented the common American man and woman as a member of the House of Representatives, which is why I've always been despised in Washington, D.C. and just never fit in. Americans are used by the political industrial complex of both political parties, election cycle after election cycle, in order to elect whichever side can convince Americans to hate the other side more," the Georgia Republican said in her resignation video:

My message to Georgia's 14th district and America.
Thank you. pic.twitter.com/tSoHCeAjn1

— Marjorie Taylor Greene ???????? (@mtgreenee) November 22, 2025

Greene struck predictably populist America First notes ("Americans' hard-earned tax dollars always fund foreign wars, foreign aid, and foreign interests") and mapped her disagreements with the president ("H1Bs replacing American jobs, AI state moratoriums, debt for life 50 year mortgage scams, standing strongly against all involvement in foreign wars, and demanding the release of the Epstein files") while touting her loyalty. Read her full statement here.

Until recently, Greene and President Donald Trump seemed to be thick as thieves. But the Epstein files tore them asunder, with Greene positioning herself as an ardent advocate for full transparency while Trump (until recently) refused to go along. The president, pissed off by Greene's adamance, disavowed her and started publicly musing about how someone should mount a primary challenge, calling his once-loyal acolyte a "ranting lunatic."

The Epstein issue wedged the door open for Greene to raise more grievances with Trump, especially the idea that he's been getting distracted from his domestic agenda and hasn't delivered much financial relief to the American people. The conflict came to a head during the recent government shutdown. "I don't see political party lines," said Greene, discussing health care and the many Americans who could soon see premiums spiking. Greene criticized her own side for having no workable plan in place to prevent these higher costs.

"I don't know what happened to Marjorie," said Trump recently. "Nice woman, but I don't know what happened. She's lost her way, I think."

Many of her constituents are still behind her. "I feel like she has stood her ground," Meredith Rosson, a 43-year-old paralegal and the chairwoman of the Republican Party in Chattooga County, told The New York Times. The Republican Party in Floyd County, also in Greene's district, issued a statement of "unwavering support" for Greene as soon as she announced her resignation. "She's realized, 'I need to do what's right for my community and for people who are mostly in the middle ground,'" cocktail bar/gun store owner Brandon Pledger told the Times.

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Scenes from New York: "Violent crime is overwhelmingly the work of a small group of repeat offenders—that is, it is highly concentrated. The remedy, as [James Q.] Wilson argued half a century ago in his classic book Thinking About Crime, is not social engineering but incapacitation: keeping the violent few from striking again," argues Tal Fortgang in City Journal. "In 2022, the New York Times reported that 'nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in New York City…involved just 327 people,' or 0.004 percent of the population, who had been 'arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times.'"

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QUICK HITS

• "We had some interesting conversation, and some of his ideas really are the same ideas I have," President Donald Trump said of his Friday meeting with incoming New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. "The new word is affordability." They appeared to be rather fond of each other, and Trump was in peak form:

Q: Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist?

MAMDANI: I've spoken about--

TRUMP: That's okay. You can just say yes. I don't mind. pic.twitter.com/uWZFRcmGxB

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 21, 2025

• "It's not as though [Tucker] Carlson's decision to platform [Nick] Fuentes—a Gen Z livestreamer with a history of making Holocaust jokes, who predictably used his appearance on Carlson's show to rail against 'organized Jewry in America'—came out of nowhere. Anyone who's been paying attention knows that the former Fox News star left the world of responsible politics behind long ago," writes Reason's Stephanie Slade. "Not that [Heritage President Kevin] Roberts seemed to care….Once you crawl into bed with the likes of Tucker Carlson, you're stuck. What you told yourself was a strategic play for relevance can turn out to be a deal with the devil instead."
• "Exchange-traded funds investing in Bitcoin are heading for their worst month of outflows since launching nearly two years ago, piling yet more pressure on a jaded crypto market," reports Bloomberg. "Investors have pulled $3.5 billion from the US-listed Bitcoin ETFs so far in November, almost equaling the previous monthly record for outflows of $3.6 billion set in February, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. BlackRock Inc.'s Bitcoin fund IBIT, which accounts for about 60% of the cohort's assets, has registered $2.2 billion in redemptions in November, meaning it will slump to its worst month barring a sharp reversal."
• North Carolina's Republicans aren't so sure about the federal immigration raids in their districts.
• I'm getting some crazy hate mail for defending the tradwives: