dear leader discovers the money printer
Pictured: early concept art for the "In Trump We Trust" note, legal tender in Mar-a-Lago and certain friendly oligarch yachts.
The Trump administration is reportedly gearing up to slap Trump's face on a brand-new $250 bill, because when you’re running a soft autocracy, why wait for history to judge you when you can just mint the verdict yourself? Minor hiccup: federal law explicitly bars putting living people on U.S. currency. So naturally, the White House is treating that as more of a whimsical suggestion than a statute.
Officials are said to be exploring ways to "reinterpret" the law so Dear Leader can stare back at you every time you buy groceries, assuming groceries still exist by the time they’re done with the economy. Think of it as a commemorative note honoring the moment America decided that personality cults and legal compliance are mutually exclusive concepts.
This isn’t just tacky, it’s textbook strongman behavior: use the apparatus of the state to brand the nation with your own face, then dare the courts and Congress to stop you. If they pull this off, the $250 Trump note will be the perfect currency for this administration: legally dubious, inflationary, and backed by nothing but ego and vibes.
#fascism#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump discovers the real terrorists: people who disagree with him
Pictured: the moment the "war on terror" was quietly repurposed into the "war on whoever Trump is mad at this week."
The White House has rolled out its shiny new "counterterrorism" strategy, and surprise: the top threat isn’t the heavily armed far-right militias who keep showing up in FBI indictments, it’s "violent left-wing extremists." Also on the list: narcoterrorists and Islamic terror groups, presumably added so the PowerPoint didn’t look too obviously like a war on Trump’s political enemies.
Instead of focusing on the movements that actually carried out most recent domestic terror attacks, Trump’s team has helpfully rebranded protest, organizing, and left-leaning activism as a national security issue. Because why just demonize your critics on Truth Social when you can feed them into the federal counterterror apparatus? Turning the machinery built for Al Qaeda onto climate activists and anti-fascists is a hallmark of every strong democracy, if by strong democracy you mean "soft-launching authoritarianism."
This is sold as sober policy, explained with straight faces by officials who know perfectly well that "violent left-wing extremists" is an infinitely stretchable label. The message is clear: if you’re on the left, you’re now somewhere on the same spectrum as ISIS in the eyes of the U.S. government. Welcome to the Trump era, where the war on terror finally comes home — and it’s pointed at you.
#fascism#killing-democracy
memphis gets 'law and order,' loses the constitution
Trump’s Memphis taskforce demonstrating the latest innovation in policing: the mobile 25-foot Constitution-free zone.
Trump and Tennessee governor Bill Lee decided the best way to fight crime in Memphis was to drop more than 2,000 state and federal officers into the city and then turn them loose on the people watching them. The ACLU of Louisiana says this "anti-crime" taskforce has been busy tailing cars, surveilling homes, sitting outside activists’ houses, and even allegedly trying to run one observer off the road with a masked agent in an unmarked black SUV. You know, the classic "community policing" technique where the community is supposed to shut up and stay indoors.
Another observer, Jessica Chodor, tried the radical act of filming officers in public. According to her lawsuit — and the cop’s own bodycam — a trooper responded by tackling her to the ground with "immense force," pinning her face-down, arresting her without telling her why, and parking her in an overcrowded cell with a broken toilet for 27 hours. The state later dropped the charge, because of course they did; the point wasn’t prosecution, it was punishment. Meanwhile, a retired anesthesiologist who dared photograph the taskforce suddenly lost his Global Entry status because he might be under investigation for something terrorism-adjacent. Apparently the new terror threat is “guy with a camera who can read the Bill of Rights.”
All of this is conveniently wrapped in Tennessee’s 2025 "Halo" law, which basically lets cops declare a magical 25ft force field wherever they feel like it. Observers say officers are using it as a mobile bubble of unaccountability: walking directly at them to push them blocks away, refusing to define where the line is, and announcing that 25ft is "where I say it is" or "back to where I want you." The ACLU calls it unconstitutional retaliation. The taskforce calls it Tuesday.
Naturally, Trump and Lee are on tour bragging that crime in Memphis is down more than 43%, with thousands of arrests and over a thousand guns seized. They somehow forget to mention that violent crime was already dropping sharply in Memphis — and across the country — long before this cosplay occupation rolled in. But why let boring national crime trends get in the way of a good strongman narrative? Trump gushes that "they’re looking at this all over the country," which is less comforting when you realize what they’re studying is how to turn "law and order" into a federally backed intimidation campaign against anyone who dares to watch the watchers.
#fascism#killing-democracy
trump moves from printing lies to printing himself on money
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing, formerly known for producing US currency, now pivoting to Limited Edition Supreme Leader collectibles.
The Trump administration is "conducting appropriate planning and due diligence" to do what every totally normal democracy does for its 250th birthday: scrap a law that bans living people on money so they can slap the current Dear Leader’s face on a brand new $250 bill. Representative Joe Wilson is leading the charge to invent both a new denomination and a legal exception so Trump can literally look back at you while inflation eats your paycheck. The Treasury and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing are already quietly sketching out designs, because when Trump’s ego collides with federal statute, guess which one gets revised.
While Americans are trying to figure out if they can afford gas, rent, and insulin in the same month, Senator Mark Warner points out that the White House is instead focused on commemorative monarchy cosplay. Federal law currently specifies which denominations can exist and bans living people from appearing on currency, but Trump-world’s solution is simple: just change the law until it matches the cult. This is only the latest entry in the Great Leader Branding Project, which has already slapped Trump’s name onto the Kennedy Center, jammed his portrait onto US passports, and ordered up a new Air Force One paint job to match his aesthetic. At this rate, the only thing not being redesigned around his image is the Constitution—oh wait, they’re working on that too.
#fascism#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
octagon of democracy (tap out to the king)
The White House south lawn, now doubling as a UFC arena and soft-launch for the ‘President for Life’ aesthetic, because why just host state dinners when you can host head trauma?
Trump is celebrating his 80th birthday the way every totally normal, definitely-not-authoritarian leader does: by turning the White House south lawn into a UFC cage match and branding it “UFC Freedom 250,” because nothing says “republic” like a state-sponsored punch-fest on the executive front lawn. The weigh-ins are reportedly at the Lincoln Memorial, which is a fun new way to say, “What if we used our most solemn national shrine as a hype stage for brain trauma?” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle dutifully declared it “one of the greatest and most historic sports events in history,” which is how you know the bar is now somewhere under the octagon.
While Trump is busy LARPing as a combo of Vince McMahon and a mid-tier Balkan strongman, the No Kings movement is throwing a nationwide counter-program: a free 90-minute concert called Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment, featuring Bette Midler, Patti Smith, Jane Fonda, Rufus Wainwright, and Joy Reid. Instead of watching the president cosplay emperor surrounded by 4,000 VIPs and 100,000 fans on the Ellipse, millions of people are expected to gather for music, art-making, and civic action, which is apparently what you do when you’re not worshiping an octogenarian autocrat-in-training.
No Kings has already pulled crowds in the 5–8 million range for previous mobilizations, explicitly framing Trump’s birthday and the US’s 250th anniversary as a test of whether we’re a democracy or just a reality show with nukes. Their message: we can either let “strongman politics and corruption” define the moment, or we can make it about people power and shared rights. Trump’s message: buy tickets to my cage fight on the taxpayer’s lawn and call it patriotism. Two competing visions of America: one is community, protest, and the First Amendment; the other is a geriatric would-be monarch selling pay-per-view nationalism from the People’s House.
#fascism#forever-grifting
trump slaps ndas on the entire federal government
The Trump administration carefully explaining that you still have free speech, you just can’t use it without written permission and a loyalty oath.
The Trump White House has decided the real problem with American government isn't corruption, incompetence, or rampant grifting – it's that people keep finding out about it. So OPM has rolled out a draft NDA for federal workers that lets the administration chase them for civil and criminal penalties if they talk to journalists about anything Team Trump later waves a "confidential" wand over. As a bonus, the government claims rights to any "royalties" from those disclosures, because if you're going to criminalize whistleblowing, you might as well turn it into a revenue stream.
This isn't just for current workers either; former employees would need written permission from an "authorized agency official" to speak to the press about information the administration deems confidential after the fact. So your First Amendment rights now come stapled to a permission slip from the people you might be exposing. Totally normal democracy stuff. The NDA technically says it doesn't override whistleblower protections, but when the same crew is also banning AP from the press pool, restricting Pentagon access, suing news outlets, and demanding reporters pledge to only print officially released information, the message is pretty clear: accountability is for losers.
Union leaders like Steve Lenkart from NFFE point out this is part of the broader campaign to kneecap federal employee unions – the pesky "eyes and ears" that notice when the government is being used as a personal loyalty cult and PR machine. Legal experts note that NDAs can't override the Constitution or federal law, which makes large chunks of this scheme "legally suspect" – a phrase that could be safely tattooed on the entire Trump administrative state at this point. Still, the chilling effect is the point: if you scare enough people into silence, you don't need the law to be on your side, just the threat of it.
#fascism#killing-democracy
alabama gop holds runoff to decide which trump guy hates freedom most
Alabama AG Steve Marshall, seen here auditioning for the role of 'most serious man alive' while campaigning on turning fetuses into criminal code and civil rights into a fond memory.
Alabama Republicans are holding a Senate primary runoff to determine which man can scream "America First" the loudest while making the Constitution cry. Rep. Barry Moore, proudly endorsed on Truth Social as an "America First Patriot," is leading the pack after running on such bold policy ideas as: arresting elected officials in "lawless Democrat sanctuary" cities and prosecuting them for not worshipping ICE hard enough. He also wants to strip federal funding from anyone who doesn't join his crusade against trans people and tried to crown the AR-15 as the official "National Gun of the United States." Because nothing says stable democracy like a government-mandated murder mascot.
Trying to catch him is Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, who’s built his brand on being aggressively anti-abortion, helping push the Brody Act to criminalize acts that "kill or injure" a fetus, and promising to fix gas and grocery prices through the time‑honored method of yelling about trans athletes. Also in the mix is former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson, who calls himself a "warrior" ready to "stand with President Trump" and runs a firearms training organization, just in case you were worried this ballot didn't have enough guns already. The winner will be heavily favored to replace Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is leaving the Senate — presumably after proving that one man can personally sabotage military readiness for months and still be considered a rising star in this party.
So the choice for Alabama Republicans is clear: do you want the guy who wants to arrest other elected officials for insufficient border fascism, the guy who wants to imprison people over fetal personhood while pretending he controls inflation, or the guy who promises to bring tactical cosplay and more guns to the world’s least deliberative body? No matter who wins, Trump gets another loyal soldier, democracy gets another headache, and the AR-15 gets closer to beating the bald eagle in the GOP’s national totem poll.
#fascism#trumps-america
georgia’s mike collins auditions for senate fascist caucus
Rep. Mike Collins explains how deportation lists now apparently include bishops who hurt Donald Trump’s feelings.
Mike Collins, a second-term backbencher from rural Georgia, is trying to fail upward into the U.S. Senate by running as a “constant” Trump rally prop and human Facebook comment section. His big claim to fame: sponsoring the very first bill Trump signed after clawing his way back into office, the Laken Riley Act, which uses a horrific murder as a branding opportunity to crank the deportation machine up to 11 against undocumented immigrants charged with nonviolent crimes. Policy by Fox chyron, with legislative text attached.
The heart of Collins’s campaign is simple: scream "border" loudly enough that no one notices there’s nothing else there. He’s wrapped himself in the backing of the Border Patrol union and the grieving family whose tragedy he’s now turned into a permanent campaign prop. When the Episcopal bishop of Washington, Mariann Edgar Budde, dared to ask Trump to show mercy toward immigrants, Collins responded by saying she “should be added to the deportation list.” So yes, we’ve now reached the part of the movie where a sitting congressman is publicly fantasizing about deporting a U.S. citizen bishop for insufficient loyalty. The GOP used to rail about "Sharia law"; now they’re workshopping their own blasphemy code on X.
What the Times politely calls “incendiary” social media posts are really just the usual Trump-era authoritarian fan fiction: weaponize the state against critics, criminalize immigration as a category, and treat basic compassion as a national security threat. Collins is running not just as a Trump loyalist, but as proof that the party’s bench is fully stocked with people who saw January 6, family separation, and Muslim bans and thought, needs more gas pedal. If this is what passes for a mainstream Senate candidate in Georgia, the bar isn’t low anymore; it’s a chalk line on the floor.
#fascism#anti-immigration#killing-democracy
trump discovers indentured servitude for lawyers
Perkins Coie: now apparently requiring a spine of steel and a constitutional law refresher just to keep the lights on under President Retribution.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that if you can’t win in court, you can just threaten the lawyers. Months after taking office, Trump signed a series of executive orders targeting major law firms that committed the unforgivable sin of representing his political opponents. The orders ripped up their federal contracts, stripped their lawyers of security clearances, and barred their staff from federal buildings – unless, of course, they agreed to do free legal work to advance the president’s pet projects. Because nothing screams "rule of law" like compelled loyalty oaths disguised as pro bono.
Some firms, facing the business equivalent of a mob shakedown, quietly cut deals with the administration. Others – Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Susman Godfrey, Jenner & Block, and whistle-blower lawyer Mark Zaid – declined to kiss the ring and sued instead. Now a three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit is looking at this little authoritarian science experiment and, judging by their reaction, wondering if anyone at the White House has actually read the Constitution. As Paul Clement, a very conservative former solicitor general, politely explained, these orders "run afoul of the better part of the Bill of Rights," which is lawyer-speak for "this is banana-republic garbage."
The Justice Department briefly tried to slink away from the appeal when Trump got distracted by newer, shinier vendettas and political prosecutions, then reversed course because this administration treats the court system like a content pipeline for Truth Social. The upshot: the president of the United States is in federal court arguing that he can financially kneecap and blacklist private law firms unless they agree to serve his political interests. Totally normal democracy behavior, if your benchmark is Viktor Orbán with worse lawyers.
#fascism#killing-democracy
trump and rubio sanction free speech, lose to the first amendment
Marco Rubio, America’s top diplomat by Reddit mod standards, furrows his brow while discovering that "I don’t like your opinion" is not actually a legal basis for sanctions.
The Trump administration tried a bold new legal theory: if you don’t like what a UN human rights expert says about possible Israeli and U.S. war crimes in Gaza, you just sanction her and hope the constitution is too tired to notice. Marco Rubio, now cosplaying as secretary of state, slapped sanctions on UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese in 2025 under a Trump executive order targeting people involved with the ICC’s investigation of Israel’s actions. The punishment? No entry to the U.S., no banking in the U.S., and a nice little attempt to financially strangle her life because she had the audacity to recommend war crimes prosecutions.
A federal judge in DC, Richard Leon, has now stepped in to remind the White House that the first amendment still exists, even for foreigners who live abroad and say things the president doesn’t like. Leon pointed out that Albanese’s ICC recommendations are literally just that—non-binding opinions—and that the administration’s move was nakedly aimed at suppressing her speech "because of the idea or message expressed". Albanese’s husband and daughter (who is a U.S. citizen) sued, describing how the sanctions have "effectively debanked" her and made daily life nearly impossible, which is a quaint euphemism for "the government tried to wreck our finances because Mom criticized a war".
So we now have the United States, longtime self-appointed Defender of Freedom™, using financial warfare and travel bans to punish a UN expert for talking about international law, and a federal court having to say: no, you can’t blacklist people from the global financial system just because they made you mad at the ICC. Albanese calls it part of a broader U.S. effort to weaken international accountability mechanisms. The administration calls it "sanctioning lawfare". Everyone else calls it what it is: an authoritarian tantrum that just ran face-first into the First Amendment.
#fascism#killing-democracy
defense secretary moonlights as crusader-in-chief on the national mall
Pete Hegseth on the National Mall, presumably checking whether the Constitution has finished dissolving in holy water yet.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that if you’re going to shred the wall between church and state, you might as well bulldoze it on live TV. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth is headlining “Rededicate 250” on the National Mall, a supposedly patriotic semiquincentennial faith rally that somehow managed to invite zero Muslims, zero historically Black church leaders, zero Indigenous faith voices, and no mainline Protestants. What it does have: Christian nationalists, extremists, and a rabbi who literally wrote an essay called “The Virtue of Hate.” Truly a big-tent event, assuming the tent is a crusader encampment.
Hegseth – the guy with “deus vult” tattooed on his arm and a book fantasizing about the US military “taking sides” in an American civil war – is sharing the stage with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Speaker Mike Johnson, because nothing says “constitutional republic” like your top civilian military official headlining a sectarian rally run by a White House partner organization. That group, Freedom 250, was launched by the White House to piggyback on the official semiquincentennial commission and is now under congressional investigation for redirecting federal money and selling millionaire donors VIP access to Trump. So yes, we’ve reached the part of the story where the theocracy comes with a VIP package and a donor lounge.
Hegseth’s spiritual home, the CREC world of Douglas Wilson, openly embraces the “Christian nationalist” label and features pastors who want to restrict the vote to heads of households, overturn Obergefell, bring back sodomy laws, outlaw mosques, and apply biblical law through the courts. Meanwhile Hegseth has been running monthly Christian prayer services inside the Pentagon, including one led by Wilson himself just days before the Iran strikes, where the defense secretary helpfully prayed that God would “break the teeth” of America’s enemies. Totally normal civil-military relations stuff, if your benchmark is 11th-century Europe.
Layered on top of this is Trump’s “religious liberty commission,” a heavily Christian, Christian-Zionist advisory structure with almost no non-Christian representation, whose members and advisers conveniently overlap with the rally’s speaker list. These are folks who call the Democratic platform “demonic,” say they’d die to stop Joe Biden, describe homosexuality as a “demonic sexual addiction,” and lump Islam, Buddhism, Scientology and evolution together as “false” and “wasted lives.” So the administration’s big 250th birthday message for America is clear: we’re a Christian nation now, run by a defense secretary with a crusader tattoo, a White House-adjacent slush fund, and a prayer circle that doubles as war-prep. Happy semiquincentennial, hope you like theocracy.
#fascism#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
seb gorka writes fanfic, calls it counterterrorism strategy
Sebastian Gorka unveils the new counterterrorism strategy, seen here in its original form: a Red Scare meme taped to a dartboard.
Sebastian Gorka, the cosplay general who somehow keeps failing upward, has produced a 16-page counterterrorism "strategy" that reads like a Telegram rant with a letterhead. On a press call, Trump’s counterterrorism czar helpfully clarified the intellectual rigor behind the document by calling critics of the Iran war "testicularly challenged", because nothing says serious national security planning like middle school locker-room taunts.
The memo itself is, as one analyst put it, "largely slop": it declares three big bads—"narcoterrorists and transnational gangs", "legacy Islamist terrorists", and "violent left-wing extremists"—then somehow forgets that far-right and white supremacist groups are the ones actually killing people at home. Instead, it demands the "neutralization" of "radically pro-transgender" and "anti-American" ideologies, insists immigration has turned Europe into an "incubator of terror", and promises to "map" and cripple left-wing groups using every "constitutionally available" tool. The fact that the Constitution does not, in fact, authorize turning your political enemies into a domestic al-Qaeda seems to have been redacted for vibes.
To really sell the gag, the memo accuses past administrations of "weaponizing" intelligence against innocent Americans while laying out a plan to do exactly that: expanded surveillance, renditions, illegal strikes, and deploying the military and immigration cops as a roving repression squad. Civil liberties advocates point out that this is not a bug but the feature: the strategy openly embraces state violence, dehumanizes Muslims, migrants, and trans people, and recasts dissent from the right’s agenda as an "existential terror threat" to be stamped out. It’s a blueprint for using the war-on-terror machinery to crush democracy, wrapped in patriotic clip art and Gorka’s thesaurus abuse.
The bleak punchline is that Trump and Gorka didn’t invent this toolbox; they’re just the first to wave it around while bragging about how fun it’ll be to use. As rights groups note, decades of bipartisan counterterrorism overreach built the surveillance, detention, and militarized policing infrastructure now being openly repurposed to target the left. Trump’s contribution is the honesty: no more pretending this is about "security" when it’s obviously about power, punishment, and a presidency that views the law as something to step over on the way to the next press conference.
#fascism#killing-democracy
state-run trump™: now with 30% more personality cult
The U.S. Institute of Peace, now featuring DONALD J. TRUMP carved into its facade, just in case anyone forgot who bombs the Middle East and then names the peace buildings after himself.
The federal government is now basically a Trump Organization franchise, except with nukes and a navy. From the Donald J. Trump U.S. Institute of Peace (because nothing says “peace” like drone strikes and war crime fan fiction) to stapling his name onto the Kennedy Center, the administration is speed‑running the dictator starter pack: turn every neutral public institution into a billboard for the Dear Leader.
Congress created the U.S. Institute of Peace as an independent agency; the Trump State Department just went ahead and rebranded it for their "President of Peace" marketing campaign anyway. Then his handpicked Kennedy Center board decided John F. Kennedy needed a roommate on the marquee, voting to rename it the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Democrats and the Kennedy family say that's illegal, there’s a lawsuit, and the administration’s position is effectively: "Come and stop us." Rule of law is now a suggestion, like mask guidance or conflict-of-interest rules.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is rolling out "Trump‑class" battleships, announced — where else — at Mar‑a‑Lago, because of course military procurement is now a cross‑promotion with the president’s private club. On top of that, Trump’s signature is being added to U.S. paper currency while he’s still in office, a vanity move dressed up as patriotism. What used to be public infrastructure and shared symbols are being converted, one plaque at a time, into a taxpayer‑funded shrine to a guy who once insisted a hurricane would hit Alabama because he Sharpied it that way.
This isn’t random kitsch; it’s the slow conversion of a republic into a branding exercise. When the president’s name is on your peace institute, your arts center, your warships, your airport, and your money, you don’t have a government anymore — you have a logo with a security apparatus.
#fascism#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump discovers monarchy, demands merch
Artist’s rendering of the new US passport: the Declaration of Independence, mostly covered by Trump’s face and a giant ™ symbol.
Donald Trump has finally solved the age-old American question: why have a republic when you can have a limited-edition collectibles monarchy? As King Charles shows up to admire the White House’s new bee-themed architecture – yes, there is now a beehive shaped like a mini-White House, because of course there is – Trump uses the visit to lean even harder into his favorite project: replacing American civic identity with his own face.
The State Department is rolling out "commemorative" passports for the 250th anniversary of the country, featuring Trump’s head looming over and literally obscuring the Declaration of Independence, like a limited-time offer on dictatorship. This follows his push for a "Trump coin" – because if the UK can have the king’s face on everything, America can have its own royal mascot too, just with more gold plating and less literacy. The article frames it as cultural comparison, but under the jokes is the serious point: Britain’s monarchy is a constitutional relic; Trump is trying to invent one around himself, using passports and currency as starter merch.
So while the author muses about British brown sauce and American Doritos monstrosities, the real delicacy is the emerging personality cult: a head of state who wants his image stamped on every official document a citizen uses to cross a border. Forget "We the People" – it’s now "We the Branding Opportunity," brought to you by a man who treats the founding documents like background art for his promotional poster.
#fascism#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
the doj vs. the seashell menace
James Comey arrives at federal court to answer for the most dangerous weapon in American politics: an Instagram of seashells that hurt Donald Trump’s feelings.
James Comey, former FBI director and current full-time Trump villain-of-convenience, has now twice been indicted by the Department of Justice — this time for the high crime of posting seashells on social media. The offending image: shells arranged as “86 47”, which the Trump DOJ claims is a coded threat to Donald Trump, the 47th president, because "86" can mean "get rid of." America, land of the free, home of the felony seashell collage.
Comey deleted the post and apologized, saying he didn’t realize the numbers were associated with violence and explicitly reaffirming that he opposes violence of any kind. Naturally, this heartfelt clarification was met with the calm, proportionate response of a federal indictment. Why just ignore a deleted Instagram when you can weaponize the justice system against a long-time Trump antagonist and send a nice little message to every other critic: we’re watching your posts, and also your beach souvenirs.
While actual violent extremists and coup-curious officials continue to orbit the Trump universe like it’s a loyalty solar system, DOJ resources are apparently best spent on numerology and shell art. Forget mob prosecutions or public corruption — the real threat to the republic is a boomer with an Instagram account and access to a shoreline. This is what happens when the state’s prosecutorial power gets turned into a presidential feelings-protection service.
#fascism#killing-democracy
coming soon: the united states of trump, now in passport form
Artist’s rendering of the new U.S. passport: the Declaration of Independence, an American flag, and a helpful reminder that your freedoms now come with a giant Trump watermark.
The State Department has announced a "special" 250th anniversary U.S. passport that features a large image of Donald Trump superimposed over the Declaration of Independence and an American flag, plus his signature in gold lettering. Because nothing says "of the people, by the people" like turning your travel documents into a devotional poster for the sitting president. These vanity passports will be the default at the Washington Passport Agency, just in case you forgot who you're supposed to be loyal to when you leave the country.
This is not an isolated bout of tackiness; it's the latest installment in the ongoing Trump-branding of the federal government. His image and signature are being slapped onto U.S. dollars and coins, courtesy of a federal commission made up entirely of Trump appointees that also approved a 24-carat commemorative gold coin featuring his face. Treasury is putting his signature on paper currency for the first time in U.S. history, elbowing aside the long-standing practice of featuring the treasury secretary and treasurer instead of the guy running for re-election.
Meanwhile, the Trump name is being welded onto everything that doesn't move fast enough: the U.S. Institute of Peace, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Justice, Agriculture, and Labor Department buildings draped with giant Trump banners, and a grab bag of TrumpRx drug programs, Trump-branded savings accounts, and even proposed "Trump-class" warships. Founders on the page, Dear Leader on the cover is a pretty tidy summary of the project: wrap the cult of personality in sepia-toned patriotism and hope no one notices the republic quietly being rebranded.
#fascism#killing-democracy
maga justice department brings back the firing squad, because of course it does
The Trump Justice Department, bravely innovating by reinventing 19th-century execution methods while calling it modernization.
The Trump Justice Department has decided the real problem with the federal death penalty is that it just wasn’t festive enough, so they’re bringing back firing squads and dusting off the same lethal injection protocol that made Trump’s first-term execution spree such a humanitarian triumph. Acting AG Todd Blanche — yes, Trump’s personal defense lawyer turned America’s top law enforcement official, what could go wrong — has already greenlit seeking death sentences for nine people, with 44 in the pipeline, because nothing says “law and order” like a state-sanctioned bullet team.
Not content with just rebooting the killing machinery, DOJ is also "streamlining" internal processes to speed up executions, planning to let states short-circuit federal habeas review, and even moving to ban capital inmates from submitting clemency petitions. Appeals? Clemency? Due process? Sounds suspiciously like rights, and this administration has been very clear on how it feels about those. All this is happening while public support for the death penalty keeps dropping, but elected officials are apparently still convinced that lining people up in front of a wall is a solid 2026 campaign strategy.
Federal executions had been on hold since 2021 under a Biden-era moratorium, but Trump already signed an execution order last year instructing DOJ to make sure states have enough lethal drugs on hand, like he’s restocking a particularly grim Costco. Now the department proudly announces it has been working to "reverse" those pesky prior efforts to scrutinize the death penalty. The message is unmistakable: in Trump’s America, the government can’t manage basic healthcare or disaster relief, but it will move heaven and earth to make sure the one thing that runs on time is the firing squad.
#fascism#killing-democracy
arc de trump: because democracy needed a boss battle gate
Artist’s rendering of the Arc de Trump, seen here heroically blocking the view of actual history.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that the real problem with American democracy is insufficiently gigantic golden arches. Not the McDonald's kind—those at least come with fries—but a 250-foot "triumphal arch" celebrating... the United States, technically, but very much not coincidentally nicknamed the "Arc de Trump." One foot for each year since independence, which is an elegant way of saying, "What if we turned the entire history of the republic into a scale model for my ego?"
Placed to loom across from the Lincoln Memorial, this thing would be more than twice as tall, because of course it would. Why honor the president who saved the Union when you can build the world's tallest victory arch to the guy who tried to overturn an election? It's less a monument and more a gold-plated subtweet at every existing symbol of shared national history. Authoritarians usually wait a bit before they start designing their own triumphal architecture; Trump just skipped to the "build me a pharaoh-sized souvenir" phase.
The BBC politely calls the plan "controversial." That’s one way to describe an administration floating a mega-arch of personal glorification in the capital of a supposed constitutional republic. Another is: ah yes, the classic strongman starter pack—giant gold thing, visible from everywhere, dedicated to "the nation" but mysteriously shaped like one guy’s brand.
#fascism#killing-democracy
world cup 2026: now with 30% more trump cult of personality
Donald Trump beams as the World Cup trophy does what most American institutions have already done: stand quietly next to him while he hijacks the spotlight.
Apparently the 2018 World Cup in Russia was just the soft launch for authoritarian sportswashing. According to Leander Schaerlaeckens, this summer’s edition has evolved into a full-blown monument to Donald Trump – because nothing says "global unity" like draping the world’s biggest sporting event in the branding of a guy who tried to overturn his own election.
Rather than keep handing the tournament to whichever strongman needs a PR rinse – Putin, Mohammed bin Salman, and now Trump basking in the glow of 2026 – Schaerlaeckens suggests the radical idea of breaking the whole thing up. Scatter groups and knockout games across cities worldwide so no single aspiring caudillo can hog the cameras and use FIFA’s traveling circus as a campaign ad. You’d still get the money, the spectacle, and the $2,000 tickets, just without the built‑in personality cult package.
FIFA, of course, insists it has a "fiduciary duty" to squeeze every last dollar out of the event, which conveniently justifies mortgage‑payment ticket prices and sponsorships from mysterious prediction markets that don’t seem to be legal anywhere that has laws. But decentralizing the competition would make it harder for one leader – say, Trump, Putin, or MBS – to turn the World Cup into their personal coronation ceremony. Which is precisely why it’s a good idea, and precisely why the current global ruling class of wannabe autocrats will hate it.
#fascism#oligarchy
trump’s favorite mini‑autocrat discovers elections can go both ways
Viktor Orbán, patron saint of Fox News autocracy tourism, practicing a dark foreign ritual unknown to Trump: admitting he lost.
Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian strongman who turned “illiberal democracy” into a lifestyle brand for Fox News, has actually had to do something Donald Trump still treats as a deep-state psyop: concede an election. The Trump-endorsed, CPAC-beloved, Tucker-carried-his-bags EU autocracy cosplay project just ran into the one thing it couldn’t completely rig—voters who’ve had enough.
For years, Orbán has been the MAGA movement’s vision board: capture the courts, kneecap the press, gerrymander reality itself, and then brag about how you’ve saved “Christian civilization” while your oligarch buddies buy half the country. Trump, J.D. Vance, and the Heritage Foundation practically put Hungary on the brochure for Project 2025. Now their poster boy is standing in front of cameras admitting defeat like some kind of person who still believes elections are real.
This is awkward for the American right, which has spent a decade pointing to Budapest as proof that you can strangle democracy slowly and still get invited to think-tank luncheons. If Orbán can lose after capturing that much of the state, what does that say about Trump’s dream of permanent minority rule in a country that hasn’t even finished dismantling its institutions yet? Expect a new round of GOP speeches explaining that when Orbán wins it’s a triumph of the people, and when Orbán loses it’s obviously a globalist Soros psywar. The brand must be protected, even if the mascot just got voted off the stage.
Somewhere in Mar-a-Lago, you can practically hear the gears grinding: if conceding is back in fashion among your favorite foreign autocrats, does that mean you’re supposed to ever stop fundraising off “stolen” elections? Don’t worry—that part of the Orbán playbook won’t be making the trip across the Atlantic.
#fascism#killing-democracy#oligarchy
