fbi finally reads its own paperwork on trump assassination attempt
Law enforcement officials stare at the scene like it’s a surprise that nonstop incitement and paranoia eventually produced exactly this.
The FBI has released files with new details about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, proving that yes, there was even more chaos behind the scenes than you imagined during the day America watched a presidential rally turn into a live-action security failure. The documents flesh out the would-be assassin’s planning, movements, and red flags that apparently blended seamlessly into the background noise of a country that’s been screaming into a megaphone for eight straight years.
Instead of reassuring anyone, the files mostly function as a greatest-hits compilation of how fragile U.S. political stability actually is, and how dependent it is on overworked security staff not having an off day. While Trump and his allies will no doubt weaponize every detail to demand more power, more crackdowns, and fewer constraints, the underlying story is simpler: a democracy that normalizes stochastic violence eventually gets the real thing. The FBI paperwork just gives us the footnotes.
#national-security#killing-democracy
stable genius discovers the fed prints approval ratings
Gas hits "please don’t look at the receipt" levels while Trump demands near-zero interest rates, because what is macroeconomics if not yelling at Jerome Powell’s replacement on TV?
Trump spent years calling Jerome Powell an economic war criminal for not cutting rates fast enough, then installed Kevin Warsh and told him to "just do your own thing." Four months later, "your own thing" has been helpfully redefined as "slash interest rates to the floor while inflation runs hot so I can brag about the stock market." We’ve arrived at the part of the movie where the president openly threatens the central bank while his economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, reassures everyone that Trump will absolutely respect Fed independence right after he tells them what to do.
The Fed is staring down 3.4% inflation, oil at $106 a barrel, gas prices up 45% since Trump’s very normal war with Iran, and a fresh trade war with Canada because why not torch another major trading relationship. AI data centers are eating the power grid and supply chains, tech prices are spiking, and wage growth is lagging inflation — but Trump is on Truth Social declaring, "A STRONG COUNTRY MEANS A LOWER INTEREST RATE" like monetary policy is a vibes-based science. He insists the U.S. should be at 0.5–1% rates while inflation and energy shocks are screaming the opposite, and finishes with the classic authoritarian flourish: "I won’t allow that to happen!" to a policy decision he legally does not control.
So the central bank is now trapped between fighting inflation and avoiding a presidential tantrum that could turn into a full-blown assault on its independence. Markets are pricing in a hike; Trump is pricing in a world where debt is free, trade wars don’t cause inflation, and the Fed chair’s real job is to keep his campaign ads supplied with new all-time highs. The AI economy is booming, the non-AI economy is wheezing, and the one constant is that the guy who lit the inflation bonfire with tariffs and wars is furious the firefighters won’t spray it with gasoline and call it rain.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump sends 40,000 'freedom craters' to gaza
Artist’s impression of US foreign policy: a conveyor belt of 2,000lb solutions to every political problem.
The Trump administration is gearing up to ship another mountain of explosives to Israel: a $2.8bn package featuring 40,000 bombs, including 20,000 MK-84s and 20,000 BLU-117s — the same 2,000lb crowd-erasers the Biden administration was at least embarrassed enough to pause. Trump, naturally, saw that as a to-do list, not a warning label, and lifted the hold the moment he was back in office. Most of the tab will be picked up by US taxpayers via foreign military financing, so Americans get the privilege of funding both the bombs and the international backlash.
The deal arrives on top of last year’s nearly $3bn sale that Trump pushed through by bypassing normal congressional review, plus another $6.67bn in arms this January, because if there’s one thing this administration hates more than Palestinians, it’s oversight. All this while Israel faces growing global isolation over its ongoing devastation of Gaza — where more than 73,000 Palestinians are dead and whole neighborhoods have been turned into dust samples. Experts say US-made bombs are already being used in densely populated areas, but Washington’s response is to send more, larger ones. Ceasefire on paper, endless arms in practice — truly a masterclass in how to pretend you’re brokering peace while you restock the ammunition.
#imperialism#national-security#killing-democracy
because why measure math when you can measure obedience to aquinas
Future leaders of America, carefully sorted by how many Federalist Papers they can quote without accidentally learning about, say, systemic racism.
Conservatives, tired of the SAT’s dangerous left-wing bias toward actual data, are rolling out the "Classic Learning Test" (CLT) as their very own culture-war Scantron. Instead of boring things like broadly normed benchmarks, the CLT leans into "great books," Christian thinkers, and the comforting knowledge that your admissions filter is pre-sorted for kids whose parents think PragerU is a documentary studio.
Colleges increasingly signing onto this thing aren’t exactly random; it’s a who’s-who of Christian and right-wing institutions eager to build a parallel universe where you don’t have to abolish higher education, you just quietly swap it out for something that looks like school but functions like a pipeline into the movement. No need for jackboots when you’ve got a standardized test that helpfully screens for the kind of student who thinks "classical education" means "the Founders were flawless and the Civil Rights Act was maybe a bit much."
What this really builds is infrastructure: a conservative-approved credentialing system that can be scaled, marketed, and eventually used to pressure mainstream universities—"accept our test or prove you hate Western Civilization." It’s not a crime; it’s just how you slowly replace pluralistic institutions with partisan ones, one bubble sheet at a time.
#killing-democracy#trumps-america
fbi now stands for 'friends of bigly indicted'
Kash Patel, pausing briefly from purging Trump investigators and subtweeting senators from the FBI’s official account, pretends to respect congressional oversight for the cameras.
Kash Patel showed up to his FBI oversight hearing and immediately started auditioning for the role of Trump’s personal secret police chief. While Democrats tried to ask boring little questions about why the FBI is bleeding staff, changing hiring to favor MAGA loyalists, and why the director treats government jets like Uber Black, Patel mostly responded by lashing out at them — while, magically, the official FBI X account started attacking the same senators in real time. Nothing says “independent law enforcement” like live-tweeting abuse of your congressional overseers from the bureau’s verified account.
Sen. Cory Booker called Patel a “thug” who’s using the FBI to go after reporters and stonewall Congress, which is probably the nicest thing anyone will say about this tenure. Patel is simultaneously suing The Atlantic for $250 million over a story about his alleged drinking and running internal leak investigations into that same reporting, because why abuse one lever of power when you can yank all of them at once? Meanwhile, Republicans on the committee patted him on the head for firing FBI employees who worked on Trump cases, including those involved in the Mar-a-Lago search, and praised him for helping Joe diGenova’s “grand conspiracy” witch hunt against former law enforcement officials. DiGenova, who just quit after clashing with DOJ leadership, still called Patel “absolutely superb” — which is exactly the kind of review you want from the guy investigating Trump’s enemies list.
Democrats muttered about someday holding Patel accountable if they ever retake a chamber of Congress, while Patel literally asked Sen. Chuck Grassley to just wrap the whole hearing up so he could get back to dismantling what’s left of an independent FBI. The bureau, once obsessed with projecting nonpartisan credibility, is now run by a Trump loyalist who purges disfavored agents, harasses the press, and turns congressional oversight into a performative nuisance. Law enforcement as a personal loyalty cult isn’t a subplot anymore; it’s the entire script.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#fascism
thomas massie discovers war crimes are bad, gop deeply confused
Pete Hegseth, seen here pondering which part of the constitution to ignore before lunch.
Thomas Massie, the libertarian cosplay congressman Trump helped politically kneecap in a primary, has now decided to return the favor by trying to impeach defense secretary and former Fox News action figure Pete Hegseth. The charges? Only the usual: running an illegal war in Iran past the 90‑day mark without congressional authorization, blowing off a bipartisan war powers resolution telling him to stop, and racking up civilian casualties like it’s a Pentagon loyalty program.
The impeachment articles read like a greatest hits album for a collapsing empire: a strike on a school in Minab, Iran that killed more than 168 people, at least 221 people extrajudicially killed on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, and a side quest where Hegseth allegedly helped kidnap former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. For extra constitutional spice, he’s also accused of retaliating against Democratic senator Mark Kelly for criticizing him, because nothing says “defending freedom” like punishing people for using it.
House rules mean Republicans actually have to vote on this by Thursday, which is awkward timing given they’re weeks away from midterms and Hegseth is the face of Trump’s Iran adventure that was supposed to be quick and popular and has turned out to be neither. If it passes, the whole mess goes to the Senate, where GOP leaders will have to decide whether to protect Trump’s favorite war cheerleader or pretend, briefly, that they remember what the constitution is. Massie has already used this wafer‑thin majority plus united Democrats to force out Epstein documents; now he’s testing whether there’s any limit at all to how much lawbreaking Republicans will swallow as long as it’s wrapped in a flag and shouted on Fox News.
#lawlessness#imperialism
trump tries to evict kennedy from the kennedy center
A tarp mercifully shields the Kennedy Center from having to wear Trump’s name, like a giant government-issued paper bag over a national monument’s head.
Donald Trump has discovered a bold new interpretation of history: if your name isn’t on a building, just slap it over a dead president’s and dare the courts to stop you. The Kennedy Center’s Trump-stacked board tried to rename the grounds "President Donald J. Trump Plaza" and re-Trumpify the façade, despite that pesky little detail where Congress explicitly created it as a living memorial to John F. Kennedy. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper responded with the legal equivalent of "read the statute," blocking the scheme and pointing out that the board can’t just install Trump shrines without Congress signing off.
Because this is the Trump era, the board wasn’t just renaming things, it was also flirting with blowing the place up financially. Minutes before a meeting to consider shutting the whole center down for "major renovations"—while it’s already hurtling toward bankruptcy—the court reminded them that no, they can’t ransom a national arts institution in exchange for bigger Trump signage. The board’s argument is that only Trump can raise $100 million for renovations, so naturally he deserves his name plastered over JFK’s. The judge, noting their vaunted "Trump Kennedy Center Fund" has raised exactly zero dollars, seemed unconvinced.
Attendance has cratered, artists keep canceling rather than perform at what’s rapidly becoming Mar-a-Lago on the Potomac, and Rep. Joyce Beatty—an ex officio board member—had to sue twice just to keep the building named after the guy it was literally created to honor. She calls it hostage-taking; Trump calls it branding. One side is citing federal law, the other is treating a national memorial like another failing golf course in need of a gold-plated rebrand. So yes, the Kennedy Center is broke and physically unsafe, but at least a federal judge briefly stopped the president from chiseling his own name over JFK’s on the way down.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
trump personally volunteers his brain as the ai kill switch
Trump, moments before explaining that Skynet will stand down once it sees his poll numbers.
Donald Trump has announced on Truth Social that AI risk is just another hoax, bravely taking on the combined paranoia of every major AI lab and most of the people who actually build the stuff. While Anthropic and friends are out here weakly suggesting a coordinated global slowdown so humanity doesn’t accidentally self-delete, Trump explains that all we really need is a president with a very high IQ — specifically, his — because somewhere deep inside every AI model is a default-off switch that kneels before the US president. Checks notes: the plan is literally “Trump will mind-control the supercomputers.”
Meanwhile, actual experts and even tech bros are saying there’s maybe a 10% chance we all die in the next decade, which apparently still ranks below “two crypto billionaires cut a £72m check to hard-right grifters” on the political panic scale. The UK government responds by assuring everyone there’s no need to get ‘hyperbolic’ about global extinction, while boasting about an AI Security Institute that depends on American and Chinese companies voluntarily handing over their code — something they have zero intention of doing because there are obscene profits to be made before the robots flip the table.
So we’re left with a familiar Trump-era governance model: ignore the experts, mock the risks, and replace regulation with the unshakeable faith that a deeply insecure septuagenarian’s self-reported genius will save the species. If humanity does go extinct, it won’t be because AI outsmarted us — it’ll be because we let a guy who can’t pass the Turing test claim he can out-think the machines and everyone else nodded along on cable news.
#anti-science#full-stupid
congress considers giving the arsonist more matches
Congress contemplates whether the solution to global instability is giving Donald Trump a larger tariff hammer and a fresher list of nails labeled "allies."
Congress is currently speed‑running a familiar game show: "Who Wants to Give Donald Trump Even More Unchecked Power?" The late Lindsey Graham’s parting gift to America, the Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia Act, would let Trump slap 100% tariffs not just on Russia, but on top buyers of Russian oil like China and India — and, depending on how he feels when he wakes up, potentially any ally that looks at him funny. The sales pitch is "help Ukraine," but the fine print is "expand presidential tariff authority for the guy who once declared Canada a national security threat."
Democrats are having a full public meltdown over whether helping Ukraine is worth handing Trump a new economic flamethrower. Gregory Meeks, Don Beyer, and Richard Neal are pointing out the blindingly obvious: the bill doesn’t even mandate sanctions on Russia, but it does massively juice Trump’s tariff superpowers, which he has already used to drive away allies and jack up prices for Americans. Isolationist Republicans, naturally, still don’t want to help Ukraine at all, so the whole thing hinges on whether enough Democrats decide that empowering a wannabe strongman is just an unfortunate but necessary side quest.
Ukraine’s government and pro-Ukraine advocates are stuck in the middle, begging Congress to pass the “best option available” while Democrats openly ask why they should give Trump a new button labeled "Tariff Whatever Country I’m Mad At Today." Representative Linda Sánchez helpfully summarized the mood by telling colleagues to "get off the fucking bill" and then confirming it on social media, because subtlety is for functioning democracies. Meanwhile, foreign governments watch nervously as the United States debates whether the path to supporting Ukraine runs through handing Donald Trump a bigger economic gun and hoping he aims it at the right target for once.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump discovers 'virtually unlimited' means 'we're running out'
Pentagon officials stare at an empty missile crate while Trump insists it’s actually full of ‘virtual ammo’ if you just believe hard enough.
The Pentagon’s own inspector general just quietly confirmed what ‘fake news’ outlets and basic math have been screaming for months: Trump’s Iran adventure has chewed through more than $22 billion in munitions in four months and left the US with ‘strategic inventory shortfalls.’ You know, the exact shortages Trump has repeatedly declared ‘fake’ while insisting our ammo is ‘virtually unlimited,’ which is a bold way to say we’re burning Patriot and THAAD interceptors faster than we can manufacture them.
The report describes ‘industrial base bottlenecks’ and a scramble to ‘streamline procurement’ so the Pentagon can maybe, someday, keep up with the president’s habit of using billion‑dollar hardware like confetti. Meanwhile, the US has racked up $33.4 billion in war costs in four months, lost four F‑15Es, one F‑35, and 30 MQ‑9 drones to ‘various circumstances’ (technical term for ‘we blew them up or someone else did’), and is now officially short on some of the very systems we’d need if a different crisis showed up.
While the inspector general quietly counts the missing missiles, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been on X and Truth Social calling reports of shortages ‘not true’ and even ‘treasonous’—because nothing says ‘healthy democracy’ like branding accurate reporting about war logistics as a crime against the state. Polls show the war is deeply unpopular and most Americans don’t think the US is in a stronger position with Iran, but don’t worry: Trump says it might all be over ‘right after’ the midterms. Just a coincidence, of course.
#national-security#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump renames geography, cleveland renames his dignity
Trump stares at a map like it’s a Trump Tower floor plan, while Cleveland quietly draws a mustache on Lake Erie in the corner.
Donald Trump has apparently decided that if he can’t run the country competently, he can at least rebrand the map like a bankrupt casino. After ordering federal agencies to call the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" and Lake Ontario "Lake America"—because nothing says strong foreign policy like petty cartographic cosplay—Cleveland’s City Council responded by voting 13–1 to rename part of Lake Erie the "Gulf of Cleveland." Council member Kris Harsh delivered a deadpan masterclass, praising Trump as "a man who clearly isn’t afraid to say what no one is thinking" and announcing, with a straight face, that "words don’t matter" but "the whims of powerful white men like me do." Subtlety is for administrations that can read.
The joke lands because the original isn’t. Trump’s renaming spree isn’t just embarrassing; it’s part of his ongoing effort to treat reality as a branding opportunity. He’s floated calling New Mexico "New America," mused about declaring the Strait of Hormuz U.S. territory and renaming it the "Trump Strait," and used an executive order to slap "Lake America" on Lake Ontario while he’s in a tariff tantrum with Canada. Apple and Google, ever eager to please the guy screaming from the world’s worst comment section, even updated their maps to match his government diktats, because apparently we now do geopolitics by UX refresh.
Meanwhile, local officials and comedians are doing what the Democratic Party still struggles with: making the authoritarian absurdity look as stupid as it actually is. Cleveland leans into the farce with the "Gulf of Cleveland," South Park announces it will become "South America" in honor of our brave patriots in Silicon Valley, and Harsh sums it up: the administration is "equal parts cruel and absurd"—swinging between gut-punch policies and cartoon-level nonsense. The renaming circus is the perfect metaphor for this presidency: change all the labels, break all the norms, and hope no one notices the country is on fire as long as the map looks properly patriotic.
#fascism#killing-democracy
trump hands foreign leader a 'key' to the white house, jokes he might get shot
Donald Trump, proudly displaying the latest amenity at Hotel White House: complimentary gold key, possible live-fire demonstration included.
Mark Carney, now prime minister of Canada, told an investment summit that Donald Trump once gifted him a gold key to the White House and said he could just show up with it and be let in – though, as Trump reportedly added, "maybe they'll shoot you". You know, just a casual chat about a foreign head of government getting gunned down at the front door of the U.S. executive mansion.
Trump treating the White House like a Mar-a-Lago timeshare is already bad; layering it with a ha-ha-maybe-they'll-kill-you punchline about security forces is the fascism-flavored frosting. The story is supposed to "sum up" the Canada–US relationship, but it does a better job summing up Trump’s America: the president as petty landlord, the people’s house as his personal prop, and political violence as a running joke.
Nothing says "stable democracy" like the commander-in-chief handing out symbolic keys like party favors while riffing about whether his own security apparatus might open fire on an allied leader. Totally normal country stuff. Very reassuring for those 100 global investors and sovereign wealth funds trying to decide if the United States is more G7 or Banana Republic.
#killing-democracy#fascism
nfl star joins fbi, quits when trump turns it into ice’s farm team
Charles Tillman knocking the ball out of Randy Moss’s hands, a skill he later repurposed to punch out of the Trump-era FBI once ICE went full dystopia.
Charles "Peanut" Tillman had one of those classic American overachiever résumés: 13 years locking down receivers in the NFL, then a second act as an FBI agent. You know, the kind of guy law-and-order conservatives claim to worship until he notices what they're actually doing.
The article is mostly wholesome stuff about a military kid turned Chicago Bears legend, who then quietly did eight years at the FBI. The one tiny, damning detail for our purposes? He quit the Bureau because of the Trump administration’s ICE policies and tactics. When your immigration policy is so grotesque that a guy who voluntarily signs up for background checks, polygraphs, and federal bureaucracy says "yeah, I’m out," that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of how things were going.
While Trump was out screaming about how the FBI was part of the Deep State Coup Against Dear Leader, here’s an actual agent walking away because the administration was busy turning immigration enforcement into a cruelty Olympics. Tillman is now in England teaching kids flag football, which, unlike Trump’s ICE, is a contact sport that doesn’t revolve around terrorizing families for political points.
#lawlessness#killing-democracy
trump admin heroically defends america from phd students and reporters
Trump officials bravely stand guard against the menace of foreign grad students curing cancer and journalists asking questions.
The Trump administration tried to fix America’s terrifying problem of too many scientists and reporters by shredding a 50-year system that lets foreign students and journalists stay for the “duration of status.” Judge F Dennis Saylor, a George W Bush appointee who apparently still reads laws before lighting them on fire, blocked the rule and called DHS’s rationale “exceptionally weak,” which is lawyer-speak for “did you write this on a cocktail napkin at Mar-a-Lago?”
DHS claimed it needed to cap student visas at four years and journalist visas at 240 days to stop “rampant abuse,” then somehow forgot it was legally required to respond to criticisms and consider less destructive alternatives. The judge noted that the existing system brought tens of millions of students and researchers to the US, fueling groundbreaking science, medicine, and economic growth. Trump’s DHS saw all that prosperity and thought: better crush it before someone invents another vaccine or publishes a story about ICE.
Under the blocked rule, universities like MIT and Harvard were staring down hundreds of millions in losses and plummeting enrollment, while ICE’s top lawyer James Percival wailed that now people might “come on a student visa, take one class per semester, and stay here for decades.” Yes, the real threat to America is obviously the grad student who spends 14 hours a day in a lab and the foreign correspondent who writes mean facts about the government. For now, thanks to the injunction, the US keeps its long-standing system that attracts global talent — which is exactly why Trump’s people were so eager to smash it.
#anti-immigration#killing-democracy
america’s new top doctor, brought to you by big tobacco and turmeric drops
Trump’s surgeon general pick, presumably explaining how her banned-ingredient drops and tobacco stocks fit into a bold new vision for American ‘wellness’.
Trump’s third attempt at finding a surgeon general has produced Dr Nicole Saphier, a Fox News alum who somehow looked at the nation’s health crisis and thought: you know what people really need? My $24.99 turmeric-ginger tincture. Her company Empower MD pulled in $270,605 selling Drop RX supplements, including a kava kava concoction so sketchy the US military literally bans the ingredient and the FDA has spent pages warning about liver damage. Naturally, she’s promised to sell the company after she gets the job, because nothing screams “ethics” like cashing in first and divesting later.
The fun doesn’t stop at Instagram snake oil. Saphier and her husband also hold investments in Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco, meaning Trump’s would-be surgeon general has been financially rooting for more people to keep using the very product her office has been calling deadly since the 1960s. Public health expert Peter Lurie politely translated this into: “no serious health professional would ever do this,” which is basically DC-speak for “are you kidding me?” Still, the White House insists she’ll be a “powerful asset” to Trump and his MAHA agenda, which at this point appears to be: deregulate everything, monetize disease, and then yell about the ‘politicization of science’ while your portfolio quietly thanks you.
So to recap: the nation’s top health spokesperson might be a supplement entrepreneur with banned ingredients, a tobacco investor, and a Fox News pundit, whose main qualification seems to be railing against Covid mandates and ‘big government’ while trying to run the government’s most prominent public health megaphone. America’s public health future: brought to you by kava, Coca-Cola, and carcinogens.
#forever-grifting#healthcare
trump fires the trans cia expert, keeps the signal group chat
The Trump-era national security brain trust: fire the trans CIA expert who understands classified systems, keep the influencers who think OPSEC is a new energy drink.
The Trump White House discovered a terrifying national security threat in early 2025: a highly qualified, Iraq-veteran, trans CIA officer who knew how classified systems work and kept the Situation Room from turning into a live episode of "Tech Support for Boomers." Julia Curlee, who had briefed Pence daily and Trump on Air Force One, was quietly told she was fired – but could she please still come in Monday and keep running things, just, you know, discreetly? The problem wasn’t that she was trusted with the nation’s secrets. The problem was that Laura Loomer posted about her on X and the bigot-in-chief couldn’t be seen relying on a trans woman to keep his government from accidentally posting TS/SCI to the family group chat.
Once Loomer blasted out that a "transgender, Biden holdover" was still working in the NSC intel office and begged followers to help identify her, the White House snapped into action – not to protect an employee targeted by a harassment campaign, but to dump her while still squeezing out her expertise behind the scenes. As Curlee tells it, the administration had no issue leaning on her to handle "programs of great sensitivity" as long as it was secret they were depending on a trans woman to do the actual governing. Publicly, Trump was busy turning anti-trans policy into a top governing priority; privately, his people were begging the same trans officials to keep the lights on.
Curlee’s bigger warning is that this wasn’t just cruelty, it was sabotage. Trump’s obsession with rooting out the "enemy within" – which turns out to mean “anyone who knows what they’re doing and isn’t a fascist podcaster" – led to an "extraordinary purging" of intelligence experts. The result: a national security apparatus gutted for ideological purity, staggering incompetence in places like Iran policy, and a government "crippled by its own decisions." The people who scream that DEI is destroying America replaced experienced CIA and NSC pros with rage-posting loyalists who have to be reminded not to bring their phones into SCIFs and that Signal is not where you discuss covert ops. Strong move for a crew that keeps insisting they’re the only ones who can keep us safe.
#killing-democracy#fascism#trumps-america
trump taps maga ice influencer to melt ethics in the arctic
Russia’s nuclear icebreaker fleet, seen here doing actual Arctic work, awaits the arrival of America’s contribution to the region: a MAGA influencer with a consulting firm and a dream.
For four decades, the U.S. Arctic Research Commission quietly did science, advised Congress, and did not openly audition for a spot on Russian state TV. Then Donald Trump installed Thomas Dans — Texas venture capitalist, MAGA influencer, and proud owner of zero scientific credentials — as chair, and suddenly the job description expanded to include: promoting a Trump-branded Greenland land grab, freelancing U.S. foreign policy, and doing PR for a shipbuilder he has business ties with.
Dans has been barnstorming the globe as the administration’s self-styled Arctic oracle, calling for more U.S. icebreakers while just happening to hype one company in particular: Damen Shipyards, a Dutch firm his consultancy was trying to help land a federal icebreaker contract. Under the commission’s conveniently loose ethics regime, he’s not even required to file a conflict-of-interest disclosure, which the White House eagerly cites as proof that, technically, this isn’t corruption — it’s just innovative vertical integration between government and private profit.
While wearing his official Arctic lapel pin and his unofficial Kremlin fan-club badge, Dans has backed Trump’s Greenland takeover fever dream and urged closer ties with Russia, even as Congress pushes for tougher sanctions and more aid to Ukraine. His social media history is peppered with pro-Kremlin posts, and he’s cheerfully planning Moscow trips under the banner of "we want a peaceful Arctic" — a phrase that apparently now means "let’s align U.S. policy with my Russia-facing business portfolio." Veteran commission leaders say this is wildly outside the body’s scientific mandate. The Trump White House’s position? He’s "doing a great job" — if the job is turning a science commission into a side hustle for Arctic grifters with a soft spot for Putin.
#forever-grifting#national-security
trump’s big crypto bailout for gamblers and grifters faceplants in the senate
Regulators gaze thoughtfully at the future of finance, wondering how many more times they’re supposed to pretend this isn’t just a very complicated casino with better lobbyists.
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — affectionately known as the CLARITY Act, because branding — just tripped over its own 600 pages and faceplanted in the Senate. The bill, written with obvious love by the crypto industry and loudly backed by President Trump, would have given the sector its dream: a shiny new regulatory framework that looks tough from a distance and like a doily up close.
Instead of clarifying anything for the public, the bill would have formally split oversight between the SEC and the CFTC, while conveniently dumping most power onto the smaller, weaker CFTC — the one less likely to harsh the industry’s vibes. After Biden’s SEC actually tried to police scams, Trump installed Paul Atkins, a former industry adviser, to make sure the watchdog remembered its true purpose: emotional support animal for crypto platforms.
Opponents pointed out that the bill was basically a legislative witness protection program for risky tokens and meme coins, with not nearly enough safeguards for the tens of millions of Americans already being used as exit liquidity. Democrats blocked the procedural vote, leaving Trump, Coinbase execs, and assorted coin-flippers to decide whether to try again later or just go back to their usual model: innovate first, implode later, and demand a bailout after.
So for now, the Trump-backed crypto wish list is stalled, and the industry will have to keep operating under that oppressive regime known as "existing law" instead of the customized rulebook they were hoping to slip into the U.S. Code like a promo code for fraud.
#forever-grifting#crypto
from russia with vows
Donald Trump Jr, seen here celebrating the sacred union of marriage and Russian oligarch money.
Donald Trump Jr allegedly got some extra-special help paying for his Bahamas wedding from Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch whose résumé reads like a casting call for "Putin’s Favorite Henchmen": extortion conviction, assault conviction, rebranded surname to sound more Kremlin-adjacent, and then a miraculous rise through the world of boxing and gambling thanks to friends in very high, very authoritarian places. Because when you’re a Trump, why use your own money when you can tap into the global autocrat gift registry?
Kremlev’s patron network includes a major general in Russia’s federal protective service (who also happens to be his brother-in-law), Igor Sechin of Rosneft fame, and of course, Vladimir Putin himself, whom Kremlev publicly thanks for all the "opportunities to earn money" — a charming euphemism for being handed seized assets and slices of the state-controlled gambling market. He grabbed control of Russia’s biggest car dealership after the Kremlin nationalized it from a critic who fled the country, helped run the International Boxing Association into such disrepute the IOC basically excommunicated it, and then hopped on a Putin business delegation to China before jetting off to the Bahamas. Totally normal person to be hovering anywhere near the Trump family finances.
So we’ve got: a Kremlin-loyal oligarch with a criminal past, enriched by state seizures and gambling monopolies, allegedly helping pay for the ex-president’s son’s luxury wedding. Republicans will surely respond by demanding a thorough ethics review — of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Meanwhile, the Trump orbit keeps proving that when it comes to oligarch cash and authoritarian buddies, they’re not just open for business; they’re the loyalty program.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
newsom promises not to primary harris, trump sends fruit basket
Gavin Newsom explains his anti-fascism strategy to Jake Tapper: catch, release, and hope voters somehow do the rest.
Gavin Newsom, America’s most aggressively coiffed anti-Trump avatar, has announced he will not run for president in 2028 if Kamala Harris does, because, he says, forcing voters to watch two California Democrats punch each other on stage while Trumpism eats the republic would be a “gift from God” to Republicans. Democrats, ever committed to bringing a strongly worded letter to a constitutional knife fight, are now publicly negotiating who gets to lose to fascism on the friendliest possible terms.
Newsom delivered this pledge while fly fishing in Montana with Jake Tapper, because nothing says “we understand working-class anxiety in a collapsing democracy” like a riverside CNN bromance on your in-laws’ ranch. Between casting lines, he explained that he almost ran in 2024 but “wasn’t ready,” unlike Donald Trump, who is always spiritually prepared to overthrow the government from a golf cart. Newsom insists you have to “meet the moment” and embody the “zeitgeist,” which in this case appears to mean: post strong tweets at Trump, court influencers, and hope voters don’t remember Harris already lost to him once.
To his credit, Newsom at least tried to fight Trump’s gerrymandering crusade using a California redistricting ballot initiative, while Harris has been mostly offscreen since her spectacular 2024 faceplant. She’s still undecided about running, but remains a top-tier contender because American politics now operates on Marvel rules: once you’re introduced in a major franchise film, you’re contractually required to keep returning until the universe collapses. So the plan, apparently, is this: Trump keeps testing how much democracy he can strip-mine, and the Democratic bench politely arranges itself in a no-conflict seating chart, just in case someone’s feelings get hurt during the last free election.
#killing-democracy#losses
