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marjorie taylor greene
‘Incompetence Everywhere’: Fury as US Embassy Says Americans Stuck in Israel Are On Their Own
"The strike itself is illegal and disastrous but their lack of readiness for what comes next is unforgivable as well," said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Mar 03, 2026
The US Embassy in Jerusalem sparked outrage on Tuesday when it said it was unable to help Americans stuck in Israel leave the country amid an escalating regional conflict with Iran.
In a message posted on social media, the embassy said it "is not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel," and recommended seeking help from Israeli tourism officials.
"The Israeli Ministry of Tourism has begun operating shuttles to the Taba Border Crossing as of March 2," the embassy stated. "To be added to the passenger list for a shuttle, you must register via the Ministry’s evacuation form. The US Embassy cannot make any recommendation (for or against) the Ministry of Tourism's shuttle. If you choose to avail yourself of this option to depart, the US government cannot guarantee your safety."
The embassy's message came three days after the US and Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Iran, which has retaliated by launching drone strikes on US allies throughout the Middle East.
Many critics slammed the US embassy for being so unprepared to help its own citizens despite having advance knowledge that a large-scale attack on Iran was a real possibility.
"Mike Huckabee’s embassy is always ready to defend Israel," wrote Zeteo News editor-in-chief Mehdi Hasan, "but not to help American citizens, it seems."
US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said that the Jerusalem embassy's helplessness in the face of an emergency was evidence of "incompetence everywhere."
"So the State Department is forcing everyone to immediately leave the region but is also refusing to help people leave the region," he wrote. "The strike itself is illegal and disastrous but their lack of readiness for what comes next is unforgivable as well."
Murphy's criticism was echoed by former US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a one-time ally of President Donald Trump who in recent months has become a staunch critic of the president's decisions.
"American tax payers are forced to give Israel $3.8 BILLION every single year," she wrote, "and here is our own US Embassy in Jerusalem telling Americans good luck getting out, you are on your own. The betrayal is unbelievable."
Tommy Vietor, former National Security Council staffer under President Barack Obama, expressed outrage at the Trump White House for leaving Americans out to dry.
"All those years demagoguing Benghazi and pretending to give a shit about Americans overseas," wrote Vietor, "and now the White House starts a reckless war with Iran and tells everyone trying to escape the chaos that you're on your own."
Sam Stein, a reporter at The Bulwark, observed that the US Department of State only put out an alert encouraging Americans to leave Israel and 13 other countries in the region on Monday, two days after the strikes against Iran began.
"This morning, the Embassy in Jerusalem says it can't help with that," Stein marveled.
Anti-gun violence activist Fred Guttenberg unleashed an angry tirade at the Trump administration upon seeing the US embassy's message.
"THEY HAD NO FUCKING PLAN!!!" he wrote. "Americans are at risk now because they had no FUCKING plan."
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‘Reality Breaking Through,’ Says Casar, as MTG Scolds Fellow Republicans Over Healthcare
"Not a single Republican in leadership... has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!" wrote MAGA firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Oct 07, 2025
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar said Tuesday that "reality" was finally starting to hit some Republicans in Congress about the catastrophic results of reopening the government without a plan to extend tax credits that help tens of millions of Americans afford healthcare.
The government shut down this past Wednesday after Democrats refused to vote for a GOP funding bill that did not extend Biden-era subsidies for the more than 24 million Americans who purchase health insurance on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace.
Republicans did not vote to extend the subsidies in July's One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). And if they are allowed to expire at the end of 2025, KFF estimates that the average recipient's insurance premiums will more than double, from $888 to $1,906 per year, which will result in about 4 million people losing their insurance due to unaffordability, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
This is on top of the roughly 10 million expected to lose insurance coverage due to the GOP's massive cuts to Medicaid and other ACA marketplace spending in the Republican budget law.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have maintained that they would not negotiate on extending the subsidies unless Democrats vote to reopen the government, thereby sacrificing their main point of leverage.
But while many Republicans have hoped to divert attention from the wildly unpopular subsidy cuts to instead push the false narrative that Democrats are pushing for "free healthcare for illegal aliens," one of the most outspoken members of the MAGA coalition put her own party's leaders on blast Monday for their apparent willingness to let millions face higher healthcare costs.
In a blistering post on X, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said that while she was "not a fan" of the ACA and blamed it for "skyrocketing premiums," she was "going to go against everyone on this issue because when the tax credits expire this year my own adult children's insurance premiums for 2026 are going to DOUBLE, along with all the wonderful families and hardworking people in my district."
"No, I'm not [toeing] the party line on this, or playing loyalty games," Greene continued. "I'm carving my own lane. And I'm absolutely disgusted that health insurance premiums will DOUBLE if the tax credits expire this year."
Greene lamented that "not a single Republican in leadership talked to us about this or has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!"
She then turned her attention to the tens of billions of dollars worth of military aid sent to Israel and Ukraine in recent years: "All our country does is fund foreign countries and foreign wars, and never does anything to help the American people!!!"
Johnson brushed off Greene's attack, noting that she "does not serve on the committees of jurisdiction to deal with those specialized issues, and she’s probably not read that in on some of that, because it’s still been sort of in their silos of the people who specialize in those issues."
But Casar described Greene's post as evidence that Republicans were beginning to recognize the hardship their policy may have wrought.
" Mike Johnson hasn't picked a fight with Democrats—he's picked a fight with reality," Casar said. "Here's reality breaking through."
While hardly toning down her conspiracy theorizing or her attacks on immigrants and transgender people, Greene has taken some notable stands against her party, as well as President Donald Trump, on some key issues in recent months. These have included opposing additional weapons aid for Israel's war in Gaza, which she has described as a "genocide," and the full release of the Epstein files, which Trump and other Republicans have seemed intent on burying.
But she may not be the only Republican for whom the reality of the GOP's healthcare cuts is "breaking through." On Monday, Trump told reporters gathered at the Oval Office: "We have a negotiation going on with the Democrats that could lead to good things... And I'm talking about good things with regard to healthcare."
Asked if he'd be willing to extend the expiring subsidies, Trump said: "If we made the right deal, I'd make a deal. Sure," adding that "we're talking to the Democrats."
The top House and Senate Democrats denied talking to Trump, and the president did not specify which party members he's allegedly talking to. But it nevertheless marked a notable shift in tone from the week before, when Trump responded to Democrats' healthcare demands with derisive, artificially generated sombrero memes and top congressional Republicans swore off any negotiations unless Democrats agreed to fund the government first.
Other Republicans have joined calls for the subsidies to be extended, including Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who told reporters: "You've got to do something to make sure the premiums don't essentially double, which they will in my state for private insurance. I mean, we just can't allow that to happen. That's a lot of Missourians who will not be able to afford healthcare."
Hawley notably raised similar concerns about the OBBBA's cuts to Medicaid earlier this year but ultimately voted for the legislation.
Nevertheless, the rhetorical change from some Republicans may have something to do with public opinion on the tax credits.
A poll released Friday by KFF found that 78% of Americans want Congress to extend the credits, compared to just 22% of Americans who want to let the credits expire. These majorities extend across the political spectrum, including 92% of Democrats, 82% of independents, and even 57% of Republicans who identify themselves as part of Trump's MAGA movement.
The same poll found that if the tax credits are not extended, about 4 in 10 adults would blame Trump, while another 4 in 10 would blame Republicans in Congress. Just 2 in 10 would blame Democrats.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Tuesday that waiting to extend the subsidies until after the shutdown ends is not an option.
"Mike Johnson wants to kick the can down the road when it comes to addressing skyrocketing premiums—but this is a crisis right now," Jayapal said. "Now is the time to negotiate to lower costs—not after millions have been kicked off their healthcare."
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Ilhan Omar Slams Latest Trump Attack on Venezuelan Boat as 'Egregious Violation'
"There is NO legal justification," the progressive congresswoman said. "It risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes."
Sep 16, 2025
US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on Tuesday condemned the Trump administration's attack the previous day on a second boat allegedly transporting drugs off the coast of Venezuela as blatantly illegal, highlighting her introduction last week of a war powers resolution in a bid to stop the aggression.
President Donald Trump announced Monday that the US destroyed what he said was a boat used by Venezuelan drug gangs, killing three people in what one Amnesty International campaigner called "an extrajudicial execution."
The strike followed a September 2 US attack on another alleged drug-running boat that killed 11 people, which Omar (D-Minn.) called a "lawless and reckless" action.
Responding to Monday's attack, Omar said on the social media site X that the Trump administration "is once again using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law."
"There is NO legal justification," she said of the attack. "It risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes. I have a war powers resolution to fight back."
Introduced last Thursday, the measure aims to stop the US attacks, which coincide with Trump's deployment of a small armada of warships off the Caribbean coast of Venezuela, a country that has endured to more than a century of US meddling in its affairs.
"All of us should agree that the separation of powers is crucial to our democracy, and that only Congress has the power to declare war," Omar said at the time.
The War Powers Act of 1973—enacted during the Nixon administration at the tail end of the US war on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos—empowers Congress to check the president’s war-making authority. The law requires the president to report any military action to Congress within 48 hours and mandates that lawmakers must approve troop deployments after 60 days.
Also last week, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) led a letter signed by two dozen Democratic colleagues and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asserting that the Trump administration offered “no legitimate justification” for the first boat strike.
Omar's condemnation of the US attacks followed Monday's announcement by US Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) of separate resolutions to strip Omar of her committee assignments and, in the case of Mace's measure, censure the congresswoman after she reportedly shared a video highlighting assassinated far-right firebrand Charlie Kirk's prolific bigotry.
Trump also attacked Omar on Monday, calling her a "disgraceful person," a "loser," and "disgusting."
Omar is no stranger to censure efforts, which critics say are largely fueled by Islamophobia—and haven't just come from Republicans. In 2019, she was falsely accused of antisemitism by leaders of her own party and was the subject of an anti-hate speech resolution passed by House lawmakers after she remarked about the indisputable financial ties the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and members of Congress.
In February 2023, Omar was ousted from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for years-old comments that allegedly referenced antisemitic tropes.
Last year, Congressman Don Bacon (R-Neb.) introduced a censure resolution after Omar said of Jewish students at Columbia University, "We should not have to tolerate antisemitism or bigotry for all Jewish students, whether they're pro-genocide or anti-genocide."
The measure failed to pass, as did another put forth earlier last year by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) after she mistranslated remarks Omar made in Somali.
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