The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s anti-vax health secretary cosplay project, has discovered a bold new way to fight childhood tobacco use: stop the scientists from meeting. The administration has frozen the US Preventive Services Task Force since March 2025, blocking updated recommendations that would have highlighted encouraging new evidence on helping kids quit tobacco — along with delays on, you know, minor topics like cervical cancer screening, perinatal depression, and autism. Nothing says "pro-life" like kneecapping the board that decides which preventive services insurance actually has to cover.

Instead of letting experts talk to each other, Kennedy fired task force leaders, called them "lackadaisical and negligent for 20 years," and then somehow forgot to appoint replacements while HHS mumbles about an "unprecedented number of nominations" as if the inbox is the real public health crisis. Meanwhile, Trump’s second-term wrecking crew has shut down the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, killed a 14-year anti-smoking ad campaign, removed the FDA’s top tobacco regulator, and rolled out a new FDA policy greenlighting flavored vapes right after a Reynolds American subsidiary dropped $5 million into a Trump-aligned Super PAC. Pure coincidence, obviously — just a little minty-fresh democracy.

The supreme court helpfully clarified in 2025 that Kennedy can stack and purge the task force at will, a ruling born from right-wing groups arguing that HIV PrEP is a drug for "risky lifestyles" and therefore shouldn’t be guaranteed. Now that the guardrails are off, test and device makers are openly lobbying and petitioning for guidelines that would just happen to benefit their products, while outside health groups say they have no idea what is going on inside their own government. As one health policy expert put it, it’s “somewhat humorous, but also sad” that everyone has to guess what’s happening. Funny how "small government" always turns into "no government for public health, concierge service for donors."

Donald Trump just took his first joyride on the new Air Force One, also known as the “Qatar Frequent Briber Miles” program. The $400m Boeing 747-8, which Qatar couldn’t unload on the open market, has now been lovingly repurposed as the president’s personal sky-palace, courtesy of a foreign government that has been, in Trump’s words, “very good to us” – which is a fascinating way to describe a country that just gave the US head of state an aircraft the size of a small office park.

Trump bragged that the US “couldn’t build a plane like this” because we “wouldn’t be willing to spend the kind of money necessary” – a bold statement about a jet that required roughly $1bn in US taxpayer-funded upgrades to make it “appropriate for a president”. Apparently when a foreign monarchy buys the hull, every dollar of conversion costs magically stops counting as corruption and transforms into “very little” spending. The White House insists this is all perfectly legal and not at all the “definition of corruption”, as Democrats keep calling it, while critics point out that the conversion tab might cannibalize funding from the already-delayed Sentinel ICBM modernization program. Nuclear deterrence can wait; the president needs his leather seats.

The air force swears the upgrades focused on operational readiness and that the interior is only “minimally changed”, although Steven Cheung rushed to post glamour shots of the conference tables and plush seating on X like he was listing the thing on Zillow. Trump, naturally, declared it “maybe the greatest commercial plane ever built” and “really quite something”, which is one way to describe a flying monument to the Emoluments Clause being treated as a restaurant suggestion. America used to worry about foreign powers buying influence in Washington; now they can just buy the plane.

The Trump administration’s dream of an official “anti-weaponization fund” for MAGA martyrs hit a bipartisan wall, so naturally they’ve moved on to Plan B: quietly running January 6 rioters through the Federal Tort Claims Act like it’s a rewards program for assaulting cops. The same people who shoved, sprayed, and beat police officers at the Capitol — and then got pardoned by Trump — are now filing FTCA claims for millions because they say they were "unfairly" prosecuted. The Justice Department, conveniently under Trump’s control, has essentially unchecked discretion to settle these claims out of a perpetual pot of taxpayer cash known as the Judgment Fund. You know, the exact same bucket his $1.8 billion slush fund was going to drain.

We’ve already watched this movie with Michael Flynn and Carter Page, who each walked away with $1.25 million after the Trump DOJ decided, with shocking generosity, that they deserved it. Now a Trump pal, Florida lawyer Peter Ticktin, has fired off around 400 FTCA claims for January 6 defendants, while Mark McCloskey — the rifle-on-the-lawn guy from Missouri, naturally — is helpfully explaining that FTCA is better than the scrapped weaponization fund because there are fewer pesky competitors for the money. Among the aspiring beneficiaries: men convicted of assaulting police with their bodies, bear spray, and a whip-like weapon, all insisting they were victims of malicious prosecution despite grand jury indictments, guilty pleas, and judge-signed sentences.

Former DOJ officials are politely screaming that this risks turning the Judgment Fund into exactly the kind of political payoff pool Congress tried to stop, warning that as long as someone files a bogus claim and Treasury looks the other way, there’s no real limit on what Trump’s people can do. Meanwhile, the same crowd that chants "back the blue" is now arguing that the real injustice is what happened to the guys who maced and tackled the blue on Trump’s behalf. The administration is technically moving to dismiss at least one of these lawsuits on procedural grounds, but the bigger story is clear: under Trump, the federal government isn’t just forgiving insurrectionists — it’s workshopping ways to cut them checks for their trouble.

America turns 250, so naturally the president is celebrating the nation’s independence by hopping on a $400 million luxury jet gifted by Qatar and converted into a flying presidential palace on the U.S. taxpayer’s dime. The Pentagon graciously accepted the foreign donation last year despite bipartisan alarm bells about ethics and security, because if there’s one thing this administration loves more than authoritarian strongmen, it’s letting them pick up the tab for our symbols of state power.

The Boeing 747, now rebranded as the VC-25B "Bridge" like a Marvel character no one asked for, is being stuffed with top-secret systems that experts say could push the total cost north of $1 billion. Then, in a flourish of fiscal responsibility, the White House says the plane will be handed over to Trump’s presidential library foundation by January 2029—meaning we’re pouring classified tech and defense dollars into what is essentially a very fancy future museum piece for the Trump brand. All that sensitive gear will have to be ripped out again, of course, but who’s counting when it’s only public money?

To complete the spectacle, Trump is eyeing Mount Rushmore for the jet’s maiden presidential voyage, because nothing screams "republic of laws" like arriving at a carved mountain of presidents in a foreign-donated plane that doubles as a long-term in-kind contribution to your own foundation. The classic “Jackie Kennedy” livery has been swapped for a louder red, white, and blue paint job, presumably so it’s easier to spot the moment American soft power finishes auctioning itself off on the tarmac.

For the low, low price of $14.2 million in taxpayer money, Donald Trump has heroically transformed the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool — a site of civil rights history and national mourning — into something that looks like the shallow end at a mid-tier casino in Atlantic City. The pool is now "American flag blue" (per the specs), because when your presidency is built on vibes and fascist cosplay, you might as well turn a monument to democracy into a branded infinity pool for the regime.

The price tag, which Trump originally pitched as $1.8m before it ballooned past $14m, would be bad enough on its own. But naturally, he also steered a no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings Ltd, a Virginia outfit that worked on his golf resort and has no history of government work. The president explained this rigorous procurement process by saying, "I have a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools" — which is basically the Trump doctrine of governance: hand federal assets to whichever crony last called him "sir" on the phone.

As workers scraped algae off the bottom of the newly filled pool just days after completion, the Interior Department’s spokesperson insisted this was "part of the normal startup process" and bragged about a "state of the art" nanobubbler system, while also vomiting up long-debunked claims about Obama and Biden’s supposedly "failed and extremely costly" attempts at refurbishment. Meanwhile, Trump is on Truth Social promising that this is not a mere paint job but a "highly sophisticated" industrial coating that will last 100 years — which is about how long the inspector general will be untangling this latest episode of federally funded golf-club cronyism.

Trump’s $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” slush fund for MAGA martyrs is (temporarily) dead because even Senate Republicans flinched at openly cutting checks to January 6 convicts. But while everyone was gawking at the flaming pile of that idea, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche – who just happens to be Trump’s former personal lawyer – quietly handed his old client something much more valuable: a one-page deal that bars the IRS from continuing audits of Trump, his family, and their “affiliates.” Translation: the president of the United States just arranged retroactive tax immunity for himself, potentially worth more than $100m.

The path there is peak Trump. He literally sued the U.S. government he runs for $10bn over the leak of his tax returns, making himself both plaintiff and boss of the defendant. The Trump-controlled DOJ then “settled” by trying to create a taxpayer-funded MAGA restitution pool and, more quietly, by ordering the IRS to stop looking at his old returns and those of his family businesses. This is the presidential equivalent of robbing a bank, appointing your lawyer as sheriff, and having him issue a memo that says, actually, the money is yours now.

The fun doesn’t stop with Trump. The vague immunity covers Trump, his kids, and “related or affiliated individuals” and entities – which could conveniently sweep in the Trump Organization’s foreign-deal bonanza and Jared Kushner’s private equity fund, currently hoovering up billions from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE while he moonlights as an unofficial peace envoy. Post-Watergate laws explicitly bar presidents and their aides from meddling in IRS audits, with criminal penalties for IRS officials who cave to White House pressure. Blanche signed the immunity order anyway and buried it on DOJ’s website like a used NDA. Future administrations get to decide whether this was just wildly corrupt or also a crime. Trump, meanwhile, has achieved the dream of every tax cheat: he made himself too politically powerful to audit.

The Trump DOJ has discovered a bold new interpretation of the Clean Water Act: if you’re a loyal Trump ally drowning Appalachia in coal sludge, it’s more of a vibe than a law. Career prosecutors and EPA investigators built what they believed was a strong criminal case against Sen. Jim Justice’s Southern Coal — a company with tens of thousands of alleged Clean Water Act violations and a long, greasy history of ignoring environmental rules. The probe had even been greenlit by Trump’s own U.S. attorney in the Western District of Virginia.

Then the political appointees noticed they were accidentally doing law enforcement on a Republican senator, and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General swooped in and ordered everyone to go "pencils down." Todd Blanche’s shop shut the whole thing off while Justice’s lawyers were busy fighting subpoenas in court — and, miraculously, also convincing DOJ that there was "no evidence" for criminal charges. As a bonus, DOJ spokeswoman Emily Covington explained that any career prosecutor who thought the case was strong was just a "deep state" Biden stooge, which is an interesting way to describe people enforcing the law under a Trump administration.

This fits neatly into Trump’s second-term pattern: hammer enemies, protect friends, and treat environmental crimes like parking tickets in a lawless strip mall. Environmental enforcement has cratered, environmental attorneys were reassigned to work on Trump’s immigration crackdown, and Blanche personally told prosecutors to stand down on diesel emissions cheating cases. Meanwhile, Justice’s companies keep racking up violations, blowing off court hearings, and allegedly undercounting assets to dodge environmental penalties, but sure, the real problem is rogue prosecutors.

So to recap: a coal baron senator who switched to the GOP at a Trump rally, helped secure Trump a Senate majority, and runs what officials call a "routine bad actor" operation gets his potential criminal case killed from on high because it doesn’t match "Trump administration priorities." The priority, as always, appears to be: laws for the poor, deregulation for the rich, and a nice tall glass of arsenic-laced water for everyone downstream.