Number of migrants in asylum seeker hotels rises despite Labour pledge to end their use

More than 36,000 asylum seekers were being housed in Home Office hotels in September, a rise of two per cent year-on-year despite a pledge by Labour to curb their use, new data shows.

Data published by the Home Office on Thursday showed there were 36,273 asylum seekers being housed temporarily in UK hotels by the end of September. Three months earlier, the figure was 32,041, demonstrating a 13 per cent rise since June. The latest figure is also up on the same point in September 2024, when there were 35,628 asylum seekers in hotels.

New data shows that the number of asylum seekers in hotels peaked at 56,018 at the end of September 2023 under the Conservatives but fell to a record low of 29,561 at the end of June 2024.

More follows…

Nigel Farage accused of ‘persistent’ racial abuse by ex-schoolmate

Nigel Farage has been accused of “persistent” racial abuse by a school contemporary who rejects the Reform UK leader’s claims it was “banter”.

Peter Ettedgui, whose Jewish grandparents escaped Nazi Germany, has alleged Mr Farage growled “Hitler was right”, hissed “gas them” and told him “to the gas chambers” when the pair attended Dulwich College in the late 1970s.

He is among more than a dozen former pupils of the south London school who have accused Mr Farage of making antisemitic and racist remarks in claims originally reported in The Guardian.

The Reform UK leader appeared to leave open the possibility he may have made racist remarks without “intent” during his first interview since the claims were published, telling ITV on Monday: “I would never, ever do it in a hurtful or insulting way.” He also admitted to engaging in “banter in a playground”.

But in a prepared statement given on Tuesday, Mr Farage “categorically” denied he had ever made such comments and suggested the claims were politically motivated.

Mr Ettedgui, a Bafta-winning film director, has now told The Times it is “no surprise” that the Reform leader has denied the allegations.

He told the newspaper: “This is no surprise, he has been denying any kind of racist behaviour since 2013.

“Last week, a spokesman from Reform not only denied it but said The Guardian was trying to smear him, but maybe yesterday actually felt like a tiny step forward. At one point, he admitted to ‘probably misspeaking in my younger days when I was a child’, and then saying it was just banter.

“And there was this thing that it was the 1970s and a different era. Certainly I never experienced anything remotely similar to the kinds of things he said to me, either before or since.

“So, it wasn’t banter, banter was calling someone a y** – this was different, it was persistent. It was throughout the year that we shared a class, in class 3R, and we were seated in alphabetical order, 30-odd kids, I was right next to him.”

But Mr Farage has insisted he never “engaged in direct, unpleasant, personal abuse” during his time as a schoolboy at the top private school.

“I can tell you categorically that I did not say the things that have been published in The Guardian aged 13, nearly 50 years ago,” he said in his statement on Tuesday.

“Isn’t it interesting: I am probably the most scrutinised figure in British politics, having been in public life for 32 years.

“Several books and thousands of stories have been written about me, but it is only now that my party is leading in the polls that these allegations come out. I will leave the public to draw their own conclusions about why that might be.

“We know that The Guardian wants to smear anybody who talks about the immigration issue. But the truth is that I have done more in my career to defeat extremism and far-right politics than anybody else in the UK, from my time fighting the BNP right up to today.”

Speaking to ITV on Monday night, the Reform leader was asked about claims of alleged incidents of deeply offensive behaviour throughout his teenage years.

“This is 49 years ago, by the way. Forty-nine years ago. Have I ever tried to take it out on any individual on the basis of where they’re from? No.”

Asked to categorically rule out that he had engaged in racial abuse, Mr Farage said: “I would never, ever do it in a hurtful or insulting way.”

As he continued to face questions about the allegations, he replied: “I had just entered my teens. Can I remember everything that happened at school? No, I can’t.

“Have I ever been part of an extremist organisation or engaged in direct, unpleasant, personal abuse, genuine abuse on that basis? No.”

When asked again if he engaged in racial abuse at the school, Mr Farage replied: “Not with intent.”

Asked to elaborate, he replied: “No, I have never directly, really tried to go and hurt anybody.”

Mr Farage added: “Have I said things 50 years ago that you could interpret as being banter in a playground, that you can interpret in the modern light of day in some sort of way? Yes.”

Asked then if this meant he had abused people, Mr Farage replied: “I’ve never directly racially abused anybody. No.”

A spokesperson for Mr Farage told The Independent the Reform leader will not be commenting further.

Arsenal’s demolition proves they are the best side in Europe – here’s why

Another victory of outstanding quality, that may yet set up more to come. And maybe a new Champions League winner.

If a theme of this second campaign of an expanded Champions League has been the sense of lower stakes, this 3-1 Arsenal win over the next best side in Europe may yet be a sign of how this season is actually decided. That isn’t just for the fact that Mikel Arteta’s supremely complete side comprehensively won a tactically-rich contest between fine sides, or even that 17-year-old Bayern Munich revelation Lennart Karl looked so promising.

There was also the nature of the tactical contest, which has started to form another theme of this season.

While Arsenal are notionally the best examples of a newly technocratic Premier League, where set-pieces have become the most prominent example of this attempt to use its ample wealth to really maximise every single margin, Bayern are another continental side who continue to almost exclusively insist on a more open positional game.

That could initially be seen in the first-half goals. First, Arsenal showed off their speciality with Jurrien Timber scoring an almost indefensible corner to go ahead, and ensure that the last five goals Bayern have conceded have been from set-pieces.

It was inevitable, as sure an eventuality as you could have – Bayern then followed by doing what so few now do to this Arsenal defence, and properly opened them up. Joshua Kimmich played a near-perfect cross-field ball, that found Michael Olise just inside. He immediately supplied his own fine delivery for Karl to finish.

If we’re talking about fine margins, Bayern showed the difference of millimetres and milliseconds at this level. Even a defence as good as Arsenal’s can’t keep out such a side indefinitely.

These are the standards. The issue for the rest of Europe, however, is that Arsenal might have risen to them – or even past them?

Their quality from set-pieces shouldn’t obscure the fact that Arteta’s team could do almost anything Bayern could in open play, and more. The two clinching goals came from there, with the contrasts between the sides compounded by how Vincent Kompany’s team coughed up so many errors.

Noni Madueke’s goal came from a sloppy Dayot Upamecano pass out from the back straight to Declan Rice, and Gabriel Martinelli’s from another loss as Manuel Neuer did his wandering act.

By then, however, Arsenal were completely dominant. As with the north London derby victory over a chastened Tottenham Hotspur, the Premier League leaders could genuinely have hit five or six here – especially in the second half.

Maybe Spurs weren’t actually that bad. Maybe Arsenal are actually this good. They just have more, even than a fancied side like Bayern – at least for now.

It is ominous for Chelsea at the weekend, as Arsenal now threaten to turn a very challenging week into the best you could possibly have.

They are flying, able to come up at you from all angles – which is where the contrast is all the more relevant. It is not that the English sides have set-pieces and the best continental sides persist in a more purist approach. It is that the English sides have that and more.

There might always be that extra advantage in games like this.

Arsenal know better than any recent side how you can’t read too much into one half of the season. A lot can change. It was around this time last year that they comprehensively beat Paris Saint-Germain at home in the group stage.

The nature of that victory, as well as the football, might lend to a feeling that – in classic European style – an emphasis on open play will eventually out; that, like PSG, a side such as Bayern will eventually find that extra rhythm when it really matters.

It just feels risky to presume that right now, when Arsenal were that good. They battered Bayern into submission on set-plays, but then overwhelmed them in play, too. Right now, they have everything.

There was even the happiness of Martin Odegaard coming back, as the fans got to gleefully sing at Harry Kane about the score.

Arsenal are the only side left with a 100 per cent Champions League record, to go with their domestic form, as confidence only grows. Barely anyone can touch them right now, unless you’re a player of Karl’s potential.

Arteta is keen to ensure that the team retains this ultra-focus above all else. Right now, though, they just look above everyone else – no matter how you try and play them.

They’ve already set themselves up for so much. They know they just have to make it really matter.

Woman killed and man critically injured in rare double shark attack

A woman died and a man was seriously injured after they were attacked by a shark during an early morning swim at a remote beach on Australia’s east coast.

Experts said it was “very rare” for a single shark to attack more than one person in an incident.

The two victims were identified as two European tourists in their 20s, but officials have declined to provide further details, saying they are still in the process of notifying family members.

Emergency crews were called to Kylies Beach in Crowdy Bay National Park – a largely unpatrolled stretch of shoreline nearly 360km north of Sydney – shortly after 6.30am on Thursday following reports of a double shark attack.

Witnesses attempted to help the pair before paramedics arrived. Despite their efforts, the woman died at the scene.

The man was stabilised by paramedics and flown to John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle in a critical condition, later improving to serious but stable.

Chief inspector Timothy Bayly of the New South Wales Police said the pair “were known to each other” and had been swimming together at the time of the incident.

Superintendent Joshua Smyth of NSW Ambulance praised the bystander who used clothing to fashion a makeshift tourniquet on the man’s leg.

“I just really need to have a shoutout to the bystander on the beach who put a makeshift tourniquet on the male’s leg which obviously potentially saved his life,” he said.

“The courage from some bystanders is amazing,” he was quoted as saying by the Guardian. “It did give us time to get to that male patient.”

A forensic assessment by shark scientists at the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries concluded that a “large bull shark was likely involved”.

Bull sharks are among the world’s most dangerous shark species. They can tolerate both salt and fresh water and are known to enter estuaries and rivers.

Authorities ordered Kylies Beach and neighbouring beaches closed. Five SMART drumlines – baited devices that alert contractors when a shark is hooked so it can be tagged and released – were deployed.

The beach previously had no shark-detection infrastructure and listening stations 20km and 40km away registered no detections on Thursday morning.

Officials are reviewing whether more surveillance capacity is needed along this remote section of the coast.

Shark specialists noted the rarity of a single shark biting more than one person.

“Individual shark attacks are rare. And shark attacks on two people by the same individual is not unheard of, but it’s very rare,” Gavin Naylor, director of the International Shark Attack File, told the Associated Press.

He added that the behaviour could depend on prey availability, shark age or feeding conditions.

Rob Harcourt, a marine ecologist at Macquarie University, said that although uncommon, a shark foraging for food could bite more than one person to discourage other animals from interfering. “It is quite unusual, but it’s not unheard of,” Professor Harcourt told the Guardian.

Surf Life Saving NSW issued condolences and urged the public to stay out of the water while drones surveyed the coastline. “This is a terrible tragedy and our deepest condolences go to the families of the woman and man involved,” said chief executive Steve Pearce.

“This area is so remote, there’s no lifeguarding services up there at all,” he told 2GB.

“These incidents are horrific for everyone, and unfortunately, we’ve had a few this year already. We’re thinking of all of those people dealing with this at the moment.”

A report will be prepared for the coroner.

The woman’s death is Australia’s fifth fatal shark attack this year. It comes less than three months after Mercury Psillakis, 57, was killed by a great white shark at Long Reef Beach in Sydney.

The forgotten winter war: A timely reminder of Russia’s threat today

War and literature have shared an ageless and classic relationship ever since The Iliad. Helen (of Troy) is a mythical woman celebrated less for her jaw-dropping beauty than for her stunning charisma, the face (and majesty) that “launched a thousand ships”. Similarly, no fiendish war machine is more famous than the Trojan horse.

Military adventures, as much as literature, repeat an old tale. In Trotsky’s famous bon mot, war is the locomotive of history. Today, more than a hundred years after the Russian revolution, that ferocious engine, still driven by Moscow, continues to threaten, or devastate, some of the most strategic (and scenic) parts of Europe.

Eastern Ukraine has been reduced to a hellscape reminiscent of 1916 Flanders. Far to the frozen northwest, along 190 miles of Finland’s North Karelia border on the exposed Nato-Russia frontier, with its dense pine and silver birch forests, Finnish forces now rehearse guerrilla warfare against a potential Russian offensive that many expect to happen in the near future. For the vigilant Finns, the odds are just as atrocious as they were the last time enemy troops materialised out of a snowstorm. Finland can barely muster 900,000 fighting men from a population of 5.6 million.

Their preparations are a conscious re-enactment of a brutal David-and-Goliath campaign from 1939-40, the forgotten “Winter War” in which Stalin’s Soviet army advanced on Finland, expecting, like Putin in Ukraine, a quick victory. Three months later, it was over, but not as Stalin had hoped. It’s here that literature becomes braided with conflict once again.

The epic, and intimate, story of how Finland mounted a last-ditch resistance against the Red Army, often in merciless battle conditions of -40C, is every bit as gripping and heroic as some other, more famous military actions from the Second World War. Before the Soviet Union, baffled and finally broken by Finnish resistance, signed a peace treaty in March 1940, it had lost more than 130,000 soldiers. And Finland had forged its own imperishable myth of national defiance against overwhelming odds.

The Winter Warriors is the timely, thrilling, and deeply affecting novel of this extraordinary national cliffhanger, the work of the award-winning French crime writer Olivier Norek. The hellish events described in this documentary novel took place on the ice fields at Petsamo and as far north as Lapland. Norek, who undertook some gruelling research for this story on location in brutal, sub-arctic conditions, reports an exchange of some 20 million shells during a 90-day campaign in which “the Earth almost cracked”.

He goes on: “Tank columns against old-fashioned rifles. A million Red Army soldiers against workers and peasants. But past conflicts tell us it takes five soldiers to face a single man fighting for his land, his home country and his own people, hands clutching a carbine, a sentinel behind the door of his barricaded farm … A single man can change the course of history.”

This historical thriller, animating the forgotten horrors and heroism of real soldiers and actual battles from the Finnish-Soviet war, tells the story of the legendary sniper Simo Häyhä, whose awesome marksmanship earned him the accolade “The White Death”. And, of course, it also chimes with Russia’s brutal stalemate in the eastern provinces of Ukraine.

Combining fascinating reportage with actual and imagined conversations, this page-turner falls into a genre of new fiction in which the vérité of events becomes subordinated to Norek’s brilliant character-study of a shy but natural-born killer. Students of contemporary fiction will find a similar manipulation of newsprint, imagination, and archives in Ben Macintyre’s recent thriller The Siege.

Norek, who is not yet well known to British readers, is a literary phenomenon in France, a winner of the Prix Renaudot, and a writer who turned to crime fiction after 18 years in the police. In The Winter Warriors, he not only revels in what we might call the pornography of war – soldiers reduced to a pink mist; the stench of death in disabled tanks; the incineration of tank crews inside horrific fireballs; he also gets under the skin of his humble hero marksman who is inspired by sisu, an untranslatable word for the soul of Finland.

The appeal of this tour de force owes a lot to its intensity, brilliance, and ferocity, but also to a deeply moving portrait of an accidental patriot who discovers that the way to save his country is to perfect the fine art of the sniper’s revenge: “The first kill of the day was always painful. The second anaesthetised whatever feelings of pity he still had; by the third, he was nothing more than a machine…”

The Finnish-Soviet war may have become neglected in the West, though not in Finland. To European readers, dismayed by the stand-off in Ukraine, it offers a timely history lesson in the limits of Russian aggression.

It closes with an ironic reflection: that the Red Army’s humiliation “attracted the attention of Adolf Hitler in the way that a wounded animal entices a predator”. The Führer had planned to attack the Soviet Union only once he had secured his grip on the West. Instead, having watched Russian forces disintegrate in the face of the Finnish counterattack, Hitler changed his plans to launch Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in military history, which met its doom at Stalingrad. Who knows what we owe to the Finnish heroes of the Winter War?

‘The Winter Warriors’ by Olivier Norek (Open Borders Press, £18.99)

Cruise through Cajun Country on this unforgettable Louisiana road trip

A circular route from New Orleans takes you north along the Mississippi through Louisiana’s River Parishes to Baton Rouge. Loop through Lafayette and Houma on Highway 90, before returning to New Orleans. Whilst the 300-mile road trip can be done in a week, a fortnight or more best suits the southern laidback spirit to truly discover treasures along the way.

Best planned for early spring, when Louisiana jumps to its feet with music festivals and parties, or in the calmer autumn months when food festivals, gumbo cook-offs, and fall colours light up the oak-lined avenues. Here’s what not to miss en route…

New Orleans gives main character energy, even though the state capital, Baton Rouge, sits just 80 miles west along the river. Start the journey here with a day (or night) lost in the French Quarter, where lacy iron balconies and pastel facades are the backdrop to Jackson Square street performers and jazz music on every corner. Grab a coffee and oh-so-light powdered sugar beignet at Café du Monde, to fuel exploration of the city’s great cultural institutions, such as The National WWII Museum or the evocative Historic Voodoo Museum. Ride the St. Charles Streetcar past moss-draped oaks and stately mansions in the Garden District, or explore the city by foot to find your own adventure.

For a quirky day trip, drive across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway – the world’s longest continuous bridge over water, according to the Guinness World Records – to find Abita Mystery House in Abita Springs; a curious folk-art installation of animated miniature towns and oddities from the mind of local inventor, John Preble.

Follow the Mississippi River north towards Baton Rouge, with a few stops en route. Explore Houmas House Estate and Gardens: once one of the largest sugar plantations in the country, visitors can now dine at one of the many restaurants and take guided tours showcasing the extensively-restored manor house and expansive gardens. Whitney Plantation, about 30 miles downriver gives a heartbreaking and evocative account of enslavement, and visiting these two plantations gives a sense of how both sides lived.

Baton Rouge emerges like a stately figurehead, rocking on the porch at the top of the Great River Road. A hub for art, music and politics, Baton Rouge is also a food mecca with fine dining, soul food, and the Red Stick Farmers Market – filled with homemade goods on the weekend. The gothic inspired Old State Capitol museum wouldn’t look out of place in a medieval fairytale, whilst climbing the current State Capitol building’s tower unravels views of the Mississippi river snaking through the landscape below.

Drive 55 miles westward, and find yourself in Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge – halfway along Interstate 10. The conservation area protects over 15,000 acres of hardwood forest and swamp habitat; spot alligators paddling through the bayous riverways, bird watch for woodpeckers, wrens and warblers, or just take in the impressive scenery.

Follow the sound of zydeco music down the Interstate to the dance halls of Lafayette. The heart of Cajun and Creole country, Lafayette is the ultimate place to tap your feet to this blend of French accordion and Afro-Caribbean beats. Louisiana’s French history is very much alive, as French conversations linger in the porchlight or come to life in Vermilionville folk museum, the re-creation of a 19th-century Acadiana village. Lafayette is also a food lover’s paradise. Try spicy boudin sausage from a roadside meat market, feast on gumbo as dark as a bayou at dusk, or savor po’boys and crawfish étouffée stew at a local café.

U.S. Highway 90 takes you southeast to the coastal wetlands of Houma. If you like it spicy, make a stop off in New Iberia and follow the pepper-scented air to Avery Island, home to the world’s only Tabasco factory and the botanical Jungle Garden of conservationist and hot sauce founder, Edward Avery McIlhenny.

As you travel further south, sing along with the southern leopard frogs on a guided swamp tour, spot another alligator, or drop into Houma’s Bayou Terrebonne Waterlife Museum to hear the story of shrimpers, oystermen, and how this slice of coastline has been shaped by cultural, industrial and ecological events.

With a suitcase full of memories and joie de vivre, head back to New Orleans. Every mile offers a detour worth taking; from the turbulent history and uplifting music, to watery labyrinths and astounding swamp wildlife. A Louisiana road trip invites you to slow down and enjoy a journey into the true Deep South.

For more travel inspiration and information visit Explore Louisiana

My daughter wants to go to a sleepover with boys. Should I let her?

Dear Vix,

My teenage daughter has a mixed friendship group – they’re all sweet kids and they get along really well. I often let them “hang out” at my house on a Friday but it’s always been a fairly straightforward “pick up at 10pm” scenario. Only now, she’s begging to be allowed to have the whole group – boys included – sleep over for her 14th birthday. And I’m conflicted.

On the one hand, I want to show that I trust her – we talk openly about sex and bodies and I’m not overly worried that anything inappropriate would actually happen. But on the other hand, I can’t rule out the complete possibility and am agonised by the idea that if something untoward were to occur, it would happen under my roof and therefore be my fault!

I don’t want to make my child feel bad when she’s done absolutely nothing wrong. I also don’t want her – or her friends, who are all great kids – to think I’m suspicious of them. She doesn’t understand why I’m saying “no”. How do I explain it to her?

Worried Parent

Dear Worried Parent,

What a relief to read your email. I’ve been going through something very similar – and am similarly worried about how to respect my child and not undermine my belief and trust in her.

The idea of our kids doing something they’re not ready for rings loud and can be frightening, I know. At some point we are all going to have to let go and let them get on with it – to make mistakes and to learn from them. All I hope, personally, is that when that happens, I’ll have created a warm and loving and accepting space for my kids to ask questions and to ask me for help if they need it. And it sounds like we are on the same page.

If your daughter was 16, 17, 18… I might be saying something different – that you can’t control what goes on, that you have to accept that she will be making choices – and that you can only stand by and hope she makes the right ones, based on what you’ve taught her: to be independent, to be considered (and considerate). To take care of herself and her body. To understand consent.

But I want to reassure you that at this age – while it’s overwhelmingly likely that you’re right and that nothing untoward would happen – I do think you’re making the right parental decision in saying “no”, actually.

We don’t want to demonise our kids, but we all know that teenagers can be rash, impetuous; that they can make silly decisions without fully appreciating the gravity of what they’re doing in the moment. Teenagers often tend to be more emotionally reactive and find it harder to think things through, because their brains are still developing – particularly the prefrontal cortex, which looks after reasoning and risk assessment.

At 13, your daughter and her friends simply aren’t biologically ready to make clear, rational, correct decisions all the time. And I don’t see anything wrong with you being a little extra protective until they are.

As for how to explain it to her, I would say something like this: “I know it’s annoying, but when you are teenagers, things are a bit different. When you are 13 or 14, girls and boys are getting older and don’t always make the best choices. I know you’re responsible and trustworthy and we always want you to be independent. I just think that mixed sleepovers are a bit of a risky scenario. I was once also 13 and 14 and remember what it’s like. I do understand it’s annoying, though.”

(Spoiler: my co-parent said almost exactly this in a brilliant, firm, kind and loving way. And it worked!)

Do you have a problem you would like to raise anonymously with Dear Vix? Issues with love, relationships, family and work? Email dearvix@independent.co.uk

MTG goes on rant about Charlie Kirk, Republican men and her resignation

Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a lengthy screed about Republican men and the threats she faces as a political figure, after someone suggested she stay in office.

The firebrand congresswoman has broken from the Republican Party on several major issues in recent months, a split that culminated in a falling out with President Donald Trump. In a shock announcement last week, Greene said she plans to step down in January after enduring years of personal attacks and threats.

On Tuesday afternoon, in response to one of Greene’s (Twitter) X posts, right-wing internet personality Mike Cernovich insisted she rethink her resignation. “You need to serve out your full term,” he wrote.

She responded with a tirade Wednesday, defending her decision to resign and alluding to the dangers of being an outspoken political figure in 2025.

“Oh I haven’t suffered enough for you while you post all day behind a screen? Do I have to stay until I’m assassinated like our friend Charlie Kirk. Will that be good enough for you then?” she wrote, referring to the 31-year-old Turning Point USA founder’s assassination in September.

“S*** posting on the internet all day isn’t fighting. Get off YOUR ass and run for Congress. I fought harder than anyone in the real arena, not social media. Put down your little pebbles and put your money where your mouth is,” Greene wrote.

An hour later, she posted a screenshot of that tweet and continued her thought — this time taking aim at “Republican men.”

“Typical of Republican men telling a woman to ‘shut up get back in the kitchen and fix me something to eat.’ F*** you in the sweetest most southern drawl I can enunciate,” she wrote.

“I have been trying tell all you ‘men’ that our kitchen pantry is empty with spider webs, our house has been ransacked, the windows and doors are broken and busted, and the greedy rich bastards have twisted your minds into a sick state that you all continue in the two party toxic political system that acts like college football playoffs yet is burying you and your children and their children and their children in a pine box in a shallow grave,” Greene continued.

“Get off your ass and fix your own damn food and clean up the kitchen when you’re done,” she concluded.

Greene has represented Georgia’s 14th congressional district since 2021. For years, she was a staunch MAGA ally of Trump, touting his “America First” policies and even promoting his 2020 election fraud claims. Trump, in turn, called her a “future Republican star” and “real winner.”

In recent months, the GOP congresswoman has publicly broken with her party over the war in Gaza, health care subsidies, and the handling of the Epstein files.

Perhaps most detrimental to her relationship with the president, Greene was one of just four Republicans to sign the discharge petition to force a vote on a bill to release the Epstein files, inciting Trump’s wrath. The president dubbed her “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Greene” and said he was withdrawing his endorsement of her.

Once the discharge petition garnered the final signature, Trump reversed course on the legislation and encouraged members of Congress to support it. The Epstein Files Transparency Act then swiftly passed both chambers of Congress and the president signed it into law.

Despite the victory on the bill she fought hard to pass, Greene announced her decision to resign days later. In her resignation statement, she alluded to the president’s insult.

“Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the president of the United States, whom I fought for,” she said.

In her time in Congress, Greene has endured “nonstop, never-ending personal attacks, death threats, lawfare, ridiculous slander and lies about me,” she added. “I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better.”