Last year, a significant majority of more than 1,500 poll respondents who voted for former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election believed that "racism against white Americans has become a bigger problem than racism against Black Americans." The Yahoo/YouGov poll's results are not entirely shocking: Trump has unabashedly stoked a series of racist fires, and at the same time overtly rejected many of the historical truths about America's bigoted past. 

With the prospect of a second term, Trump and his advisers have begun planning to federalize that inverted interpretation of discrimination. Trump's next Justice Department would likely "dramatically change the government's interpretation of Civil Rights-era laws to focus on 'anti-white racism,'" Axios said.

Extremist groups are planning
At the forefront of the Trump circle's plan to upend civil rights legislation to favor white people is Stephen Miller, the former White House adviser largely responsible for some of the administration's most draconian anti-immigration policies. Miller founded America First Legal — a conservative nonprofit he's described as the right wing's "long-awaited answer to the ACLU." After the group successfully blocked the implementation of a pandemic-era federal program designed to aid women and minority-owned businesses, Miller bragged that the victory was a "first, but crucial, step towards ending government-sponsored racial discrimination." Miller "could be your next attorney general," reported Axios. 

Miller's AFL is just one of the many "extremist groups planning for a second Trump presidency," The Guardian said, noting as well the right-wing Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025" initiative that was coauthored in part by AFL's general counsel and former Trump Justice Department official Gene Hamilton. 

The Supreme Court's 'turn to the right'
These groups have "gained momentum" amid the "Supreme Court's turn to the right," Axios said, citing in particular the court's 2023 gutting of affirmative action. By framing racism against minorities as a "thing of the past," the court has effectively "given white people a legal pretext to jettison any guilt they may have harbored over systemic racism" resulting in an ongoing "effort to roll back racial progress in just about every arena imaginable," MSNBC's Ja'han Jones said. With the power of the federal government, Trump will "turn his racist record into official government policy," Biden's reelection campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond told The Guardian. 

Critics are accusing filmmakers of cashing in on Amy Winehouse with a new biopic that comes just 13 years after her death from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27. Named after the title track of her 2006 album, "Back to Black," it stars Marisa Abela (pictured above) as Winehouse and is expected to chronicle the singer-songwriter's rise to stardom, tumultuous marriage to Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O'Connell), and battles with addictions. 

Fans claim the film, out May 17, comes too soon — and a preview clip of Abela covering Winehouse’s debut single, "Stronger Than Me," has triggered further criticism. For die-hard fans, Abela's performance isn't "Winehouse-y enough," said Tanya Sweeney in the Irish Independent, and is a "major affront" to the late musician's life and career. 

'Motivated by greed' 
"It's not just Abela's abhorrent cover that besmirches Winehouse's legacy," said Coleman Spilde at The Daily Beast. It's also the "content of the clip itself, which speeds through time and barely gives us a sense of Winehouse's character." The signs are that the biopic is "another attempt" to "leech cash out of someone who fended off bloodsuckers for her entire career."

Given the "vulture-like efficiency" with which Winehouse's life was "picked over," said Roisin O'Connor in The Independent, it's "near-impossible to think of a sincere reason" to make a film about her — or "at least not one that isn't motivated by greed."

'Singular vibe' 
The biopic's director, Sam Taylor-Johnson, has strenuously denied that the film is exploitative, insisting that "we've made it through Amy's words, music, her perspective" and it "joyfully honors" her. "Anything else would, yes, have been exploitative, but this retelling lacks tragic hindsight," Taylor-Johnson told The Sunday Times. 

The backlash hints at a new standard for big-screen biopics in general. For many viewers, "mere mimicry no longer cuts the mustard," said Sweeney in the Irish Independent. Actors "need to be able to fully channel the famous person they are pretending to be," but Winehouse's look and "vibe" was "singular." Abela faced a "near-impossible task," and making a Winehouse biopic was "always going to be a risky strategy."