The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Ken Paxton, Trump-endorsed attorney general, serial ethics hazard, and aspiring US senator, has rolled out a bold new plan to stop the "negative impact" of datacenters in Texas — the same datacenters whose industry has handed him nearly half a million dollars and billions in tax breaks. The plan was posted as a slick "Texas first" graphic on X, which the platform promptly labeled "Made with AI", because when you're faking a populist conversion this hard, even the algorithm feels compelled to snitch.

Paxton now wants to ban Chinese tech from powering US datacenters, hold companies criminally liable if AI endangers children, and cut red tape so, he claims, Texans' power bills don't skyrocket — while backing Greg Abbott's push to keep new centers out of rural areas and yank their tax perks. Democrat James Talarico helpfully reminded everyone that Paxton previously voted to flood Texas with datacenters, showered them with tax handouts, ignored communities begging him to intervene, and only found his inner environmentalist once polling and focus groups suggested voters were ready to torch the server farms (and maybe his Senate hopes).

This sudden conversion comes from a man impeached for corruption, indicted for felony securities fraud (rescued by a pre-trial diversion), and freshly divorced "on biblical grounds" for adultery. Now he’s selling himself as a culture-and-land-protecting dad-hero guarding Texas kids from AI chatbots, while Trump gushes that opposing datacenters is a "mistake" because, shockingly, he likes giant capital-intensive projects that funnel money to whoever’s holding the tax breaks. It’s a perfect GOP 2026 tableau: the base hates the thing, the donors love the thing, and Ken Paxton is trying to pretend he hasn’t spent a decade auctioning off the thing to the highest bidder.

The Supreme Court briefly looked up from dismantling democracy to handle a truly urgent matter: making sure Donald Trump’s new White House ballroom doesn’t suffer the indignity of a construction pause. Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary stay blocking lower court rulings, letting the above-ground portion of Trump’s $400 million, "privately funded" monument to tackiness keep rising while the full court pretends to think about it.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation had the gall to suggest the president might not have the authority to bolt a mega-ballroom onto a national landmark and also that it looks hideous, which, given Trump’s design track record, is the safest bet in Washington. A district judge had split the baby — underground security and medical facilities could continue, but the glitzy ballroom-on-top had to wait. The D.C. Circuit agreed, setting a deadline for work to stop unless the Supreme Court stepped in to rescue the chandeliers.

Instead, Roberts waved the bulldozers through. The administration bragged in court filings that the project is already 65% done, with a 250-person crew working 20 hours a day, seven days a week — not for infrastructure, not for climate, not for housing, but for a presidential party bunker that just happens to massively upgrade Trump’s future events venue. Authoritarian chic meets Mar-a-Lago aesthetics, now with an "extensive underground component" for "security" and "medical facilities" — because nothing says stable democracy like turning the People’s House into a fortified event space for one man’s ego.

Trump’s personal trial lawyer Todd Blanche is one Senate vote closer to becoming attorney general, because this administration looked at the phrase "independent Department of Justice" and decided it was just a suggestion. Blanche squeaked through the judiciary committee after promising, cross-his-heart, to kill Trump’s $1.8bn "anti-weaponization" slush fund — a taxpayer-financed hug box for January 6 rioters and other "targeted" political allies.

Then Lisa Murkowski had the audacity to read the fine print and notice that once Blanche is confirmed, Trump can just resurrect the payout fountain with a Sharpie and a tantrum. She’s now a "no" vote, arguing the country needs an attorney general who might check Trump’s worst impulses, not laminate them. Experts politely note that Trump could reverse Blanche’s written assurances anytime, which is a fun way of saying the Senate is trading lifetime institutional damage for a pinky promise from the guy whose client tried to overturn an election.

Meanwhile, Republicans cling to a 53–47 majority minus an absent Mitch McConnell, meaning Trump’s dream of turning DOJ into a loyalty-rewards program for insurrectionists is suddenly at the mercy of a few senators pretending they still recognize the concept of rule of law. Blanche formally rescinded the fund to get Thom Tillis and John Cornyn on board, but the entire exercise is basically Congress haggling over the terms under which the president can pay off his co-conspirators with public money. Very normal separation of powers stuff, if you’re grading on the "late-stage democracy collapse" curve.

Career IRS employees have now entered the chat, joining a lawsuit to stop Donald Trump from cashing in on an IRS audit immunity carveout that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche quietly slipped into a settlement. The deal would give Trump, his family, and their "affiliates" a special tax forcefield that no other American gets, because of course the guy who screamed the loudest about weaponized government wants the power to personally disarm it when it points in his direction.

This whole mess grew out of Trump suing his own government over the leak of his tax returns, then somehow alchemizing that into (1) a promise not to pursue tax claims against him and (2) a proposed $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" that could shovel cash to his allies and even Jan. 6 rioters who claim they were victims of the big bad deep state. A federal judge already hit pause on the fund, but Democracy Forward and the National Treasury Employees Union say Blanche’s "settlement" is still a live grenade of unconstitutional, breathtakingly corrupt self-dealing.

Blanche, whose nomination to permanently run the Justice Department is currently winding through the Senate, insists the slush fund is over while, per the lawsuit, preserving every legal escape hatch needed to revive it later — like a loyalty rewards program for insurrectionists. Meanwhile, DOJ lawyers are telling another court to toss Jan. 6 rioters’ claims on statute-of-limitations grounds, proving that in Trump’s America the law is very consistent: it always expires faster for the foot soldiers than for the guy trying to buy himself lifetime audit immunity from the Oval Office.

Capital One has politely informed a federal court that, no, it did not close more than 300 Trump Organization accounts because of "woke" persecution; it did it because its anti-money-laundering team looked at the transactions and said, in banker-speak, "absolutely not." After months of AML analysis, the bank concluded the activity looked like the kind of thing federal guidance tells you to flag, which is generally not what you want your family business associated with when Dad is also the president.

The Trump Organization and Eric Trump responded the way they always do when confronted with compliance: sue and scream culture war. Their 2025 lawsuit claims Capital One was just chasing post–January 6 vibes and engaging in "discriminatory debanking" of conservatives. Capital One's filing delicately notes that this theory is based on "cherry-picked quotations" and that the real story is transaction patterns, not pronouns.

Meanwhile, in a stunning coincidence, Trump’s second-term White House has been leaning on big banks over supposed anti-right-wing bias, and he even signed an executive order banning "discriminatory debanking"—right as he’s suing Capital One and JPMorgan for cutting him off. This follows his earlier attempt, back in 2019, to stop Capital One and Deutsche Bank from sharing his financial records with Congress, after Deutsche’s own AML staff reportedly flagged suspicious Trump-related transactions that higher-ups helpfully ignored. Regulatory capture meets personal finance triage: the president is now using the power of the state to yell at banks for treating him like any other high-risk client.

Trump looked at the entire history of insider trading and said: why let the little guys risk prison when the president can just sell the cheat codes himself? Trump Media & Technology Group is now offering a premium "Truth API" that gives hedge funds and trading firms early access to the president’s Truth Social feed — the same feed he uses to blurt out market-moving policy and foreign affairs announcements — for up to $100,000 a month. Why leak when you can invoice?

Former SEC official Renée Jones politely notes that this looks a lot like an illegal insider-trading scheme based on misusing non-public information, while one anonymous Wall Street executive says that in any other administration, this would be considered criminal. But here in Trump’s America, we’ve streamlined the process: skip the shady tipster, just wire money directly to the president’s media company and get a front-row seat to real-time market manipulation. Regulation is for suckers; access is for sale.

Half a century after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace, we’ve finally answered the question: how low can the bar go? According to Vice President J.D. Vance, Watergate would now be a 12-hour story, which is a polite way of saying that compared to Trump’s second-term cash grab, Nixon looks like he got impeached for forgetting to return a library book. As Rep. Jamie Raskin puts it, Watergate was a Cub Scout prank; Trump’s Washington is the fully weaponized Ponzi scheme version of public service.

Watchdog groups have now tallied the highlights of America’s first openly pay-per-view presidency: a cozy settlement between Trump and his own government that just happens to keep the IRS from auditing the Trump family, well-timed stock trades in companies directly tied to administration policy, and outside crypto ventures that have mysteriously made his net worth explode. Trump’s explanation for making zero effort to limit his family’s business dealings this term? He told the New York Times he "found out that nobody cared" and complained he got no credit for not grifting quite as hard the first time. This is not a confession; it’s a programming note.

Into this smoldering ethics crater walk Democrats like Jamie Raskin and Jon Ossoff, trying to convince voters that maybe, just maybe, the president shouldn’t be allowed to sign a deal with his own IRS and day-trade off his own policies while his kids run global side hustles. Polling shows nearly everyone thinks corruption is a massive problem and that government is working for the ultra-wealthy and well-connected — which, to be fair, the Trump family has treated as more of a business plan than a criticism. The question isn’t whether Democrats can fix ethics rules; it’s whether voters will bother to demand rules at all in a system where the president openly says he kept cashing in because the public shrugged.

The Trump State Department has apparently decided that what struggling Americans really want is to send $12 million in taxpayer cash to Jacob Rees-Mogg, Toby Young, and assorted Brexit relics so they can "rediscover our ancient culture" and "end mass immigration" from the comfort of their paneled studies. The crown jewel is $7m for a brand-new outfit called 878, a "nonpartisan" think tank incorporated in March, with a website that went live this month, and whose name comes from the year King Alfred beat the "Great Heathen Army". Nothing says modern policy like LARPing the Viking invasions with a US government grant.

Not to be left out, Toby Young's Free Speech Union International is queued up for $5m to fight "digital overregulation"—which in practice means screaming "censorship" every time a platform notices that fascist memes aren't actually a human right. The FSU loudly proclaims it "takes no government money and has no political agenda" while simultaneously lining up for government money to fund its very political agenda. Bold strategy: just say the quiet part is nonpartisan, then cash the check.

All of this is being handed out as sole-source grants—no competition, no pretense—by a State Department bureau that former officials say has been quietly hijacked by Trump-aligned operatives to shovel cash at MAGA-adjacent groups across Europe. Germany's chancellor is already publicly warning the US not to meddle in their elections, while Britain's incoming Labour PM gets to start his term by asking why Washington is bankrolling Liz Truss’s CPAC cosplay circuit and a tiny "Jobs Foundation" run by Vote Leave alumni to "counter overregulation" with its fewer-than-10 staff.

The official line is that this all supports "fundamental freedoms" and "strategic priorities". The actual strategy appears to be: convert the State Department’s democracy-promotion budget into a transatlantic slush fund for nationalist cranks, Brexit nostalgics, and professional anti-woke grievance merchants. USAID used to fund vaccines and civil society; under Trump, it funds King Alfred fan fiction and Nigel Farage’s legal defense ecosystem. Truly, America is back.

Donald Trump, a man constitutionally incapable of minding his own business or the actual Constitution, spent the World Cup working the phones like a deranged season-ticket holder, calling FIFA president Gianni Infantino multiple times to lobby for the overturning of Folarin Balogun’s red card. FIFA insists those calls had nothing to do with the ban being suspended, which is adorable, because nothing says "totally normal process" like the president dialing up the global soccer boss to complain about a ref.

US Soccer CEO JT Batson, handed the chance to say "yeah, this was inappropriate," instead went with the classic authoritarian fan-club line: "The president is able to do what the president wants to do. The president is the president of the United States." That’s less a defense than a confession. Asked again whether they regretted Trump’s involvement, Batson abruptly ended the roundtable early — because when the topic is naked political meddling, the only yellow card anyone wants to talk about is for the press.

Balogun himself handled it with more maturity than anyone in government, calmly noting the controversy and the distraction it caused his teammates. The US then went out and got flattened 4–1 by Belgium, prompting speculation that the whole circus hurt the team. So the lasting legacy of this episode: Trump managed to turn a borderline refereeing decision into yet another test of whether American institutions will ever say, "No, actually, the president can’t just do whatever he wants." Spoiler: they’re still workshopping an answer.