trump scraps $1.8bn slush fund, keeps 'no audits for me' clause
Todd Blanche explains that the $1.8bn hush fund is gone, but the "Thou Shalt Not Audit Trump" commandment remains carved into the stone tablets of U.S. tax policy.
The administration has heroically decided not to move forward with a secretive $1.8bn federal hush-money piggy bank for Trump’s friends, which, under normal circumstances, would be the headline. Instead, acting attorney general Todd Blanche calmly informed Congress that while the slush fund is dead, the truly deranged part of the deal lives on: a binding agreement that the IRS may not audit Donald Trump, his family, or their web of entities.
So the government won’t spend $1.8bn compensating MAGA loyalists, but it will keep a bespoke legal force field around the president’s tax returns, plus ongoing immunity for Trump & Co. on tax issues up to last month. Blanche framed it as final: "We are not moving forward with the fund, period" — then followed it up with the far more important fine print that yes, the Trump family’s personal tax get-out-of-jail-free card remains fully active. American taxpayers still have to follow the law; the First Family of Fraud does not.
In a functioning democracy, the IRS is supposed to be independent. In Trump’s America, it’s apparently just another family office, barred by agreement from looking too closely at the boss’s books. The $1.8bn pay-off scheme was outrageous, but the real prize was always this: an entrenched, formalized two-tier tax system where the people who write "TRUMP" on the building are legally untouchable.
#corruption#forever-grifting
trump slaps 25% tariffs on brazil to protect fragile bolsonaro feelings
Trump grins in the Oval Office with the Bolsonaros, helpfully illustrating why US trade policy now comes with a family loyalty punch card.
The Trump administration is proposing another round of tariffs on Brazil — 25% this time — despite the awkward little detail that the US actually runs a hefty trade surplus with Brazil. The official line is that Brazil’s trade practices are "unreasonable" and "burden or restrict US commerce". The unofficial line is written in crayon: Jair Bolsonaro is in legal trouble at home for trying to overturn his 2022 election loss, and Donald Trump is once again using US trade policy as a loyalty rewards program for failed coup enthusiasts.
Lula, who has the misfortune of being both Brazil’s president and not a fascist, points out that the whole thing seems suspiciously tied to the Bolsonaros’ little family lobbying trip to Washington. While the US Trade Representative talks about "constructive" meetings and "substantial differences," Trump is busy posting Oval Office glamour shots with Bolsonaro’s sons — the same guys Lula calls "traitors" for asking a foreign power to meddle in Brazil’s internal politics. Democracy promotion, Trump-style: sanction the country that prosecutes an attempted coup, reward the guys who helped try it.
After the Supreme Court already ruled in February that Trump overstepped his authority by abusing the International Emergency Economic Powers Act for his last tariff joyride, the administration has simply pivoted to Section 301 of the Trade Act like a tax-collecting hydra. The goal now: slap Brazil with new tariffs under a legally sturdier pretext and use them to backfill the revenue hole created when the Court told him, again, that the presidency is not a monarchy. Bonus farce: US data shows a $14bn goods surplus and an even bigger services surplus with Brazil, but the White House is pretending it’s under siege by Brazilian soybeans.
So we end up with US foreign economic policy being driven by three forces: Trump’s obsession with tariffs as a magic nationalist totem, Marco Rubio’s cartoon-villain hostility to Latin America, and the Bolsonaros’ attempt to launder their scandals in Washington. The administration calls it "trade enforcement"; everyone else can see it for what it is: a president using the US economy as a blunt instrument to help a foreign mini-Trump and punish a democratic government that had the audacity to prosecute a would-be autocrat.
#killing-democracy#trade-war#forever-grifting
nothing says 'free press' like maybe moving the dinner to trump’s old hotel
The White House press corps prepares to defend the First Amendment the traditional way: with rubber chicken, step-and-repeat photos, and a president treating an attempted shooting like a promo event for his old hotel.
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner, famously known as Nerd Prom and less famously as "that time Trump got evacuated from a shooting scene," has been rescheduled for 24 July. Trump has already RSVP’d, promising he might recycle his "rather nasty" material, but hey, it’ll be a "HOT" ticket, so who cares about the whole attempted-assassination thing. The Washington Hilton may be out due to its security layout, but Trump eagerly announced the new site as the Waldorf Astoria — a property his Trump Organization used to own, because of course the first instinct after gunfire is: real estate plug.
WHCA president Weijia Jiang told reporters that the event will be a more "intimate gathering" with "significantly enhanced safety measures" and new access procedures, which is a polite way of saying: fewer bodies, more metal detectors, and probably three background checks per canapé. She framed the rescheduled dinner as a First Amendment stand, insisting the free press won’t be intimidated into silence, especially in America’s 250th anniversary year, when the country celebrates all the freedoms it keeps almost getting shot for. Meanwhile, the alleged shooter has pleaded not guilty to attempting to assassinate the president, and Trump—who demanded the event be rescheduled within 30 days—missed his own deadline but not the chance to turn a brush with political violence into a marketing opportunity.
So the message going into July: violence has no place in American life, the free press will bravely show up in tuxes and ballgowns, and the president will be there to prove that not even gunfire can stop him from workshopping material and casually floating venues tied to his brand. Democracy may be wobbling, but the grift-adjacent gala circuit marches on.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump endorses congressional schrodinger’s cat
Tom Kean Jr, photographed in the distant past, before he evolved into a theoretical concept of representation beloved by Trump.
Donald Trump has issued his "Complete and Total Endorsement" to New Jersey Congressman Tom Kean Jr, a man who, minor detail, has not been seen by colleagues, constituents, or cameras since early March. Kean has missed more than 100 votes, doesn’t show up in Washington, doesn’t show up at home, but does show up where it actually counts in today’s GOP: as a name on a ballot and a reliable "America First" rubber stamp.
The congressman’s office says it’s a medical issue, his aide says "there's no cameras where Tom is", and Trump swears Kean is "working tirelessly" from whatever undisclosed location he’s allegedly not being filmed in. Representation in 2026 apparently means a press release, a phone interview, and a promise that you’ll be back "very soon"—just not before the election, obviously.
Kean is running unopposed in the primary, in a key swing district that could decide control of the House, so the party is totally fine with the whole "missing person but make it legislative" vibe. As voters head to the polls, they’re being asked to re-elect a congressman who exists primarily as a statement on X and a disembodied voice on the phone. Trumpism has finally achieved its ideal candidate: invisible, unaccountable, and 100% loyal.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
trump demands a 30‑day head start on skynet
Trump signs a "landmark" AI order while the Pentagon Googles "how do you update Windows securely."
The Trump White House has decided that if anyone is going to get early access to world-breaking AI models, it sure as hell better be the federal government that already can’t secure a PDF. Trump quietly signed an executive order asking companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google to hand over their most powerful AI systems 30 days before they share them with other "trusted partners" — because nothing says "national security" like giving the Pentagon, Treasury, and CISA a first look at tools that can find catastrophic software vulnerabilities.
To reassure everyone this definitely won’t morph into an AI permission slip regime, the order explicitly bans mandatory licensing or pre-clearance. It’s all "voluntary collaboration" — just the government politely asking the companies whose entire regulatory fate it controls to let it poke around in their most dangerous models. Totally casual. Just pals sharing doomsday tech.
This comes after Anthropic’s Mythos Preview model demonstrated superhuman skill at uncovering critical vulnerabilities in the world’s most-used operating systems, which apparently convinced Scott Bessent and JD Vance that the real solution is to centralize early access to that capability inside the same government that routinely leaks classified material like it’s a hobby. Trump previously killed a stronger version of the order because it might hurt U.S. competitiveness with China, then turned around and signed this softer version — a perfect compromise where corporations keep the profits and the state gets the toys.
#killing-democracy#national-security#forever-grifting
america learns the president saw a doctor faster than voters saw the truth
Joe and Jill Biden walk offstage after the Trump debate, moments before doctors checked him out and months before anyone bothered to tell the voters what actually happened.
The Biden team originally claimed doctors examined him "days" after his catastrophic 2024 debate with Trump. Jill Biden now casually mentions on NPR that, actually, the doctors checked him moments after he left the stage because she thought he might be having a stroke. So the medical care was prompt; the truth, not so much.
Jill calls the performance "inexplicable," says she's never seen him like that before or since, and waves away staff accounts that it wasn't a one-off. Meanwhile, we find out Biden once planned to be a one-term president but changed his mind after everyone told him the midterms were good and he had to keep going — a bold strategy that delivered President Trump 2.0 and a Kamala Harris memoir subtitled "107 Days of Cleaning Up Other People's Choices."
So the public got a secretly immediate medical exam, a publicly delayed explanation, and a campaign run on "he's fine" right up until he wasn't a candidate anymore. American democracy remains a shining beacon where voters are informed of critical facts about their leaders' health on the traditional schedule: years later, in someone’s book tour.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump pays a billion dollars to make sure you burn more oil
Doug Burgum proudly announcing that the best way to lower Americans’ energy costs is to give a French oil giant a billion dollars to not build clean power.
Six states just filed a lawsuit because the Trump administration allegedly discovered a new form of energy: burning taxpayer money. After federal courts repeatedly told Trump he couldn’t just executive-order offshore wind out of existence, Doug Burgum’s Interior Department allegedly found a workaround: hand nearly $1 billion in public funds to French oil giant TotalEnergies to kill two offshore wind projects off New York and North Carolina and promise never to touch US offshore wind again, while plowing "hundreds of millions" into oil and gas instead. Judicial review who?
New York AG Letitia James and her colleagues from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont say this genius scheme violates the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the Judgment Fund Act, among other minor inconveniences like "laws." Those statutes slightly frown on the Interior Department unilaterally canceling leases and using a fund meant for court judgments to bribe a company into abandoning clean energy. Meanwhile, Burgum calls it “another win for President Trump’s commitment to affordable and reliable energy,” which is a bold way to describe paying a foreign corporation to remove cheap, homegrown power from the grid so Americans can stay chained to volatile fossil fuel prices.
While green groups point out that nuking offshore wind will leave consumers with higher bills and fewer union jobs, the administration is busy insisting offshore wind is “expensive, unreliable, environmentally disruptive, and subsidy-dependent” — unlike, say, the totally unsubsidized and famously eco-friendly oil and gas industry. So if this deal stands, Americans get more pollution, fewer clean-energy jobs, and a billion-dollar bill for the privilege. But hey, at least TotalEnergies and the fossil fuel lobby will be very warm this winter.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
housing guy now runs spies too, what could go wrong
Bill Pulte, freshly promoted from regulating mortgages to regulating reality, prepares to refinance the intelligence community at an adjustable authoritarian rate.
Trump has decided that the perfect person to run America’s intelligence community is… the housing finance guy who moonlights as his personal vengeance concierge. Bill Pulte, currently running the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, will now also serve as acting director of national intelligence, because why have checks and balances when you can just stack every lever of power under one loyalist with a Truth Social fan club.
Pulte will keep all his existing jobs while overseeing the nation’s spies, presumably managing "the safety and soundness of the Markets" in between drafting criminal referrals against whoever annoyed Trump that week. This is the same Pulte who used his housing post to fire off baseless criminal referrals against New York AG Letitia James and Rep. Adam Schiff, turning a financial regulator into a political hit squad. Naturally, Trump is exploiting the "acting" loophole to bypass Senate confirmation, because nothing screams "healthy democracy" like quietly converting the DNI into a side hustle for a partisan attack dog already sitting on top of $10 trillion in government-backed mortgages.
Democrats have begged inspectors general to investigate Pulte’s habit of inventing mortgage fraud allegations against Trump enemies, and Eric Swalwell even sued him for "concoct[ing] fanciful allegations" before Swalwell imploded in his own scandal. Yet instead of being sidelined, Pulte is promoted to oversee U.S. intelligence. The message is crystal clear: if you turn your regulatory office into a weapon for Trump’s retribution fantasies, you don’t get punished — you get a bigger arsenal.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
doctors stage hostile takeover of america’s collapsing immune system
Richard Pan explaining that insulin shouldn’t cost more than a used Honda, which in Trump–RFK Jr health policy terms qualifies as full-blown radical socialism.
Trump hands the Department of Health and Human Services to Robert F Kennedy Jr, a man whose life’s work is convincing Facebook groups that vaccines are a Bill Gates mind-control serum, and shockingly the result is not “better health outcomes” but a 20,000-person purge of HHS staff, over $12bn in public health cuts, and more than 2,000 NIH research grants tossed in the trash. Top scientists at NIH and CDC are being fired like Apprentice contestants, and over 1,000 current and former HHS employees are publicly begging RFK Jr to resign, which in this administration is basically the Hippocratic Oath.
Into this bonfire of expertise walk actual doctors and scientists who, having watched measles and other once-eradicated diseases rip through their communities, have decided that maybe the people writing health policy shouldn’t be YouTube comments in human form. Abdul El-Sayed, Jasmine Clark, Richard Pan and a wave of Democratic clinicians are running for office on the radical proposition that the FDA, NIH and CDC should be scientific agencies again, not staging grounds for anti-vax fanfic and bogus “make America healthy again” slogans that are literally costing children their lives. When microbiologists feel compelled to run for Congress just to stop the government from repeating history’s medical abuses, that’s less a normal election and more a code blue for American governance.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
eight-week artisanal bootlicking for donald trump
Peter Mandelson, seen here pondering whether commissioning a luxury prop briefcase for Donald Trump was really the best use of a functioning state.
The newly released Mandelson files reveal a truly vital matter of state: during Trump’s UK state visit, officials scrambled to get him a bespoke replica ministerial red box, because nothing says "healthy democracy" like showering a defeated authoritarian with cosplay props from a different country’s constitutional monarchy.
The best part? The lovingly traditional manufacturer quoted a "lead time of 8–10 weeks" to produce the presidential participation trophy. So while Britain can’t build a functioning rail line before the sun burns out, it can spend months trying to handcraft a leather symbol of responsible governance for a man who treated classified documents like fast-food napkins. Peak late-stage democracy: the institutions are collapsing, but we’re still meticulously engraving the souvenirs for the guy who helped light the match.
Meanwhile, Keir Starmer’s government appears to exist mostly as a spectral presence in its own emails, while Trump’s ego remains the only reliably delivered product in Western politics. The UK can’t do housing, infrastructure, or growth, but it can absolutely find time to debate whether the world’s neediest strongman should get his own little red cosplay briefcase. Rule of law, no; rule of vibes, yes.
#forever-grifting#trumps-america
trump wants your 401(k) to hodl his bag
Trump officials proudly unveiling their new retirement plan: a roulette wheel, a QR code, and a photo of Trump winking on a digital coin.
The Trump Labor Department has a bold new vision for your retirement: turn your 401(k) into a casino and hand the house keys to the Trump family. A new proposal would let 401(k) plans stuff workers’ savings into crypto, private credit, and private equity, because nothing says "prudent retirement planning" like chasing yield in the same asset class the FBI politely describes as a giant fraud magnet. Democrats, led by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Bobby Scott, are pointing out that this would expose roughly $14.2 trillion in retirement savings to products that make roller coasters look stable.
To really underline the wisdom of the plan, critics cite Trump’s own memecoin, which mooned to $75 during his 2025 inauguration and is now languishing at $2 — a crash so brutal it should qualify as elder abuse. The FBI reports over $11bn in crypto fraud losses in 2025 alone, FINRA warns you can lose literally everything, and consumer advocates politely note that turning 401(k)s into a "Ponzi-like scheme" seems less like financial innovation and more like a bailout for an industry that’s run out of suckers.
Meanwhile, the Trump family is sitting on a new fortune from their very own digital currency, reportedly hauling in up to $5bn off the Trump-branded coin since launch. While Trump pretends to be president, his adult sons run the family’s crypto empire, and—what an astonishing coincidence—the administration is now trying to open the firehose of worker retirement savings directly into that same market. The Labor Department, which suddenly discovered a deep hatred of "picking winners and losers," is proposing a rule that just so happens to benefit the president’s business interests. Purely accidental, we’re sure.
Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling claims this is about giving workers more "choice," because when you’re already facing a 22.8% senior poverty rate, why not add "rug-pulled by your own government" to the list of retirement risks? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, never one to skip the cult-branding, calls it another step toward Trump’s "Golden Age"—a fitting name for an era where the gold is tokenized, wildly volatile, and somehow always ends up in the Trumps’ wallets.
#forever-grifting#crypto#corruption
trump personally solves middle east, war rudely continues anyway
A Lebanese hospital damaged in the latest round of "all shooting will stop" diplomacy from the Trump White House.
Donald Trump hopped on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu and, according to Donald Trump, also with Hezbollah, declared that "all shooting will stop" and that there would be "no Troops going to Beirut" because the Commander-in-Chief of Vibes said so. Within hours, Israel was still striking southern Lebanon, a civil defense center was hit, soldiers were wounded by a drone, hospitals were damaged, and people were fleeing Beirut while the self-described dealmaking genius posted through the collapse of his own ceasefire.
The White House now says the president had a "very productive" call with Netanyahu in which Trump reportedly called him "crazy" in an expletive-laden rant, and then bragged that Hezbollah had also agreed to stand down after his "very good call" with them — marking what appears to be the first time a U.S. president has chatted up a State Department–designated terrorist organization like it’s a condo board dispute. Meanwhile, Iran threatened to suspend negotiations and floated retaliation if Israel keeps bombing Lebanon, while Trump alternated between saying talks might be over and insisting they're continuing "at a rapid pace," because nothing projects stability like your nuclear diplomacy sounding like a live tweet of a reality show reunion.
So on one side: Israel, Hezbollah, and Iran trading threats, rockets, and airstrikes; on the other: Trump, announcing ceasefires that don’t exist, freelancing U.S. war policy in public, and turning the entire region into a stage for his personal fan fiction about being the world’s greatest negotiator. Actual diplomacy remains missing in action, but at least the president got a fresh Truth Social post out of it while civilians in Tyre and Beirut dig themselves out of the rubble.
#national-security#imperialism#full-stupid
america’s biggest fraudster discovers projection
Donald Trump explains fraud to Ilhan Omar, much like a bank robber explaining vault security to the cops still standing in the lobby.
Donald Trump is calling Ilhan Omar “crooked as hell,” which is a bit like Bernie Madoff accusing someone of being too into index funds. As Omar politely walks us through the receipts, we’re reminded that Trump doesn’t fight fraud; he releases it on supervised probation. He pardoned or granted clemency to a who’s who of mega-grifters — from the architect of the largest healthcare fraud scheme ever charged by his own DOJ to a parade of nine-figure scammers and reality TV bank fraudsters — and then sweetened the deal with a proposed $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to compensate January 6 cop-beaters and Capitol wreckers. Law and order, but make it rewards points.
While Minnesota officials were actually prosecuting the child-hunger scamsters behind the Feeding Our Future fraud, Trump and his allies were busy turning “fraud” into a racist prop comedy routine aimed at Omar and Somali immigrants. She supported investigations and prison time; he opened the pardon window and started throwing fraudsters out like Mardi Gras beads. On top of that, there’s the long-running Trump Greatest Hits of Grift: Trump University’s mass con job, the dissolved Trump Foundation’s “shocking pattern of illegality,” billions in profiteering off the presidency, and a civil fraud judgment for years of asset inflation. Yet Republicans, who shrugged at all of this and cheered pardons for violent insurrectionists, are now staging purity pageants over fraud cases Democrats already prosecuted. The people who turned the presidency into a cash-back rewards program for criminals are suddenly very concerned about corruption — just not the kind that lives at Mar-a-Lago.
#forever-grifting#corruption#killing-democracy
turns out mass citizenship stripping is harder than screaming 'criminal aliens'
Artist’s rendering of the Trump DOJ trying to erase naturalized citizens with a very determined Sharpie and repeatedly losing in court.
The Trump administration promised a big, beautiful new era where naturalized Americans could lose their citizenship if Fox & Friends got bored. Reality, annoyingly, has laws. Despite months of chest‑thumping about "rooting out criminal aliens" and "warp speed" denaturalizations, NPR finds that DOJ has managed just 34 publicly announced cases, with 11 actual revocations. That’s less a mass purge and more a very angry HOA letter.
Officials like acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and America First Legal’s Gene Hamilton are out here solemnly insisting they’re just trying to "protect the integrity" and "value" of citizenship, as they aggressively market the idea that naturalized citizens are a different, more revocable species of American. Legal scholars point out the obvious problem: unlike the administration’s usual deportation dragnet, citizens—especially the naturalized ones Trumpworld keeps targeting—come with constitutional protections and due process, which really slows down the whole "strip their rights and toss them out" fantasy.
So instead of the promised conveyor belt of revoked passports, what we actually have is a smaller, legally constrained set of fraud-focused cases that nonetheless send a very loud message: if you weren’t born here, this White House wants you to know your status is conditional, your rights are negotiable, and your citizenship is a tool in their campaign talking points. The mass denaturalization machine isn’t fully operational yet, but the precedent—that some Americans are more American than others—is the real product they’re selling.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#lawlessness
trump doj to louisville: good luck with your unconstitutional policing, you’re on your own now
Nothing says ‘reimagining public safety’ like pointing a gun at a woman in crisis and calling it a mental health response.
Trump’s Justice Department, having decided that civil rights enforcement is for losers and people who read, quietly walked away from police reform lawsuits and consent decrees across the country. Louisville, which the feds had already found guilty of a pattern of unconstitutional policing — discriminating against Black residents, abusing police dogs, botching mental health calls — was told: congrats, you’re now in charge of fixing the department that’s been violating your residents’ rights for years.
City leaders responded by announcing they’d basically DIY the Biden-era consent decree and even hire an independent monitor. On paper, it’s reform-palooza. In practice, ProPublica’s records show officers still using force without serious review two years after the DOJ’s findings, mental health reforms moving at the speed of a police union contract, and a “review panel” that took nearly a year just to have its first meeting. Meanwhile, 28-year-old Katelyn Hall is shot to death in her own apartment during a mental health crisis — exactly the kind of scenario the DOJ flagged three years ago.
Now, after the killing, the mayor’s office is bravely considering pairing cops with mental health professionals — a thing the Justice Department explicitly recommended in 2023, back when the federal government still pretended it cared. City officials insist the Louisville Metro Police Department is in a “much better place” than three years ago, which is a bold way of describing a department still under fire for the same abuses, just without the inconvenience of federal oversight. Trump gets his ideological win against consent decrees, Louisville gets a body count and a stack of task force agendas, and the Constitution gets yet another thoughts-and-prayers email.
#lawlessness#killing-democracy
trump’s anti-weaponization slush fund gets weapon-locked
The DOJ, carefully placing Trump’s ‘anti-weaponization’ fund on a high shelf labeled ‘temporarily illegal, check back after appeals.’
The Department of Justice has informed the world that it will, for the moment, pretend to follow a court order and pause President Trump’s so‑called “anti-weaponization” fund — a pot of money designed to protect Americans from the terrifying menace of prosecutors doing their jobs. NPR’s Leila Fadel asks Rep. Tom Suozzi to play the role of Responsible Adult and explain why the executive branch can’t just conjure up a political defense fund and call it constitutional.
This magical fund was pitched as a shield against the ‘weaponization’ of government, which is a very polite way of saying: money to sabotage investigations that might inconvenience Donald Trump and friends. Now a court has temporarily blocked it, and DOJ is publicly promising to obey, as though respecting judicial rulings is some bold new innovation rather than the bare minimum for a functioning democracy.
So we’re left with a White House trying to launder its personal legal paranoia through federal coffers, a Justice Department awkwardly caught between law and loyalty, and Congress members like Suozzi pointing out that if you need an ‘anti-weaponization’ fund to stop investigations, maybe the problem isn’t the weapons. It’s what you’re trying so hard to keep them from finding.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
ukraine under fire, trump still workshopping his putin fan club merch
Kyiv’s skyline lights up with Russian missiles while the free world debates whether defending democracy is still on-brand.
Russia just launched one of its trademark "we swear we only hit military targets, please ignore the burning apartments" attacks across Ukraine, killing at least 16 people and injuring more than a hundred. Dnipro lost entire chunks of a four‑story apartment building, a rescuer died in what looked like a classic double‑tap strike, and a children’s playground was turned into scrap metal — which the Kremlin will no doubt insist was a very menacing swing set.
While Kyiv residents hauled mattresses into subway stations to sleep underground like it’s a World War II reenactment no one volunteered for, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was left begging the United States for more Patriot missiles. Unfortunately for him, U.S. diplomacy is busy being "stalled" as Washington’s attention wanders off to other wars and whatever grievance is currently trending in Trump’s brain. Russia, sensing the vacuum, fired more than 650 drones and 70 missiles in one night and then claimed, with a straight face, that it doesn’t target civilians — they just keep spontaneously combusting near apartment blocks.
The punchline: Ukraine is now openly pleading for help from Donald Trump, the same guy who once tried to extort them for dirt and has spent years treating Vladimir Putin like a lifestyle brand. As Ukraine runs out of air defense missiles and the lights literally go out, the message from MAGA foreign policy is clear: authoritarian buddies get weapons and cover stories, democracies get thoughts, prayers, and maybe a Truth Social post if they’re lucky.
#imperialism#national-security
pentagon turns press office into classified panic room
Pentagon press room, now available only to loyal stenographers and classified adjectives.
The Pentagon has solved the pesky problem of reporters asking questions by literally classifying the press office. Acting press secretary Jose Valdez proudly announced that the "most transparent war department in history" has redesignated its own press office as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) because speechwriters allegedly handle classified material there. Conveniently, this means journalists are now banned from entering the space where they’re supposed to, you know, talk to the government.
This isn’t a one-off tantrum; it’s the latest step in a systematic effort to turn the Pentagon into a black box with nukes. Since last September, the Trump-designated "war department" has tried to force reporters to sign pledges not to gather any unauthorized information — even unclassified documents — under threat of losing their press passes. When real outlets refused to play along, the Pentagon rolled out its "next generation of the Pentagon press corps": about 60 friendly faces from far-right media, ready to ask the hard-hitting questions like, "Mr. Secretary, how do you stay so strong and handsome while waging eternal war?"
Federal courts keep pointing out that this is wildly unconstitutional, which the department has treated as more of a suggestion than a ruling. After a judge smacked down its sweeping restrictions, the Pentagon responded with an "interim" policy requiring journalists to be escorted at all times, then kept it in place while appealing. The New York Times has now had to sue twice just to be allowed to independently report on the most powerful military on Earth. So yes, the press office is now a SCIF. Not to protect secrets from foreign adversaries, but to protect Trump’s war department from American journalists armed with notebooks.
#killing-democracy#fascism
maga beach accidentally orders one (1) gay immigrant trump critic
The Maga-nificent Seven stare at a congressional district map, slowly realizing they gerrymandered themselves into a Pride parade.
Huntington Beach, the self-branded "Maga-nificent" coastal enclave that banned the Pride flag and treats state housing mandates like Sharia law, may soon be represented by Robert Garcia: gay, immigrant, Democrat, and professional Trump aggravation device. Thanks to a new California redistricting measure, the city that proudly flies exactly zero rainbows could end up sending one to Congress.
The irony is doing cartwheels. Trump spent 2024 screaming at Texas to mid-decade gerrymander itself into a deeper shade of red, which helped normalize the whole "just redraw the maps whenever you feel like losing" strategy. California voters then said, "Fine, we can play that game too," passed Prop 50, and now Huntington Beach gets folded into a district where the leading contender is a Trump-critic House oversight Democrat whose job is literally to investigate the executive branch. Outstanding work, everyone.
Local officials are, of course, furious. City councilman Pat Burns denounces this as "California ugly-ass politics"—which is rich coming from a city council that calls itself the Maga-nificent Seven while banning non-government flags to make sure no one accidentally experiences visible tolerance. They fought masks, they fought housing, they fought Pride flags, and now their big reward might be a congressman who talks about infrastructure, healthcare, and rooting out corruption instead of owning the libs at city council meetings.
Garcia, for his part, is out here saying extremely radical things like, "People basically want decent services and less corruption." Meanwhile, the MAGA establishment in Huntington Beach is discovering the downside of normalizing partisan map-rigging: sometimes the gerrymander boomerang comes back and hits you right in the culture war.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
court to trump: you can’t purge trans troops, but you can still lock the door behind them
Pentagon officials bravely defending national security from the terrifying threat of qualified, patriotic transgender Americans with better fitness scores than half of Congress.
The DC circuit just told Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that their grand plan to purge hundreds of transgender troops from the military is illegal, "arbitrary," and based on plain old animus. So yes, the administration’s official position was basically: we hate them, your honor, and they still thought that would fly. Judge Robert Wilkins, in the majority opinion, pointed out that the government didn’t even bother to offer a factual basis for its smears of trans Americans, because when you’re running an anti-diversity crusade as policy, evidence is for suckers.
The court mostly upheld a prior injunction blocking Trump’s January 2025 order from booting currently serving trans troops, narrowing it to about 1,000 openly trans service members who can now keep doing the jobs they were already doing better than most of their political overlords. But in a very on-brand compromise with bigotry, the ruling still lets the Pentagon keep blocking new enlistments under Hegseth’s policy that treats gender dysphoria as a presumptive disqualifier. You can serve your country if you’re already in uniform; if you’re trying to join, the door is politely slammed in your face.
Trump’s order claimed that being trans somehow "conflicts" with an honorable, disciplined lifestyle and harms readiness — a bold claim from a man whose idea of discipline is rage-posting at 3am and whose concept of readiness is "did Fox & Friends talk about it yet?" Meanwhile, Trump-appointed Judge Justin Walker dissented, insisting courts shouldn’t second-guess the executive on who gets excluded from the military, effectively arguing that discrimination is a commander-in-chief perk. The ruling is on hold while appeals continue, but the message is clear: the administration’s culture war is still marching forward — it’s just being forced to salute the constitution on the way.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#full-stupid
