The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security apparently rummaged around in the legal junk drawer and found an obscure customs law that they decided also works great as a do-it-yourself mass surveillance kit. Homeland Security Investigations used administrative summonses – meant for customs matters – to secretly grab six months of phone records from Minneapolis journalist Georgia Fort, and even went back to Google for YouTube data on Fort and Don Lemon after a judge twice said no and insisted they be allowed to contest it. Why respect the First Amendment when you’ve got a rubber-stamp form and a grudge?

It doesn’t stop with journalists. DHS has been using these summonses to scoop up financial info on labor unions, Venmo transactions from nonprofits, and to pressure Meta, X, and Reddit to unmask anonymous DHS critics. The cherry on top: they slapped on fake gag language telling companies not to notify users, even though privacy experts say that’s legally meaningless. Ron Wyden and Pramila Jayapal are now begging the Government Accountability Office to count how many times DHS and friends have done this, and to explain why a 2017 inspector general report warning of abuse was treated as more of a suggestion than a problem.

Meanwhile, DOJ and the DEA have apparently been running the same hustle, leaning on companies like AT&T and CVS with extra-legal “don’t tell anyone” language that isn’t actually required by law – but sure scares the hell out of heavily regulated industries. So yes, under Trump, we’ve reached the stage where the government quietly pressures corporations into helping it spy on journalists, unions, activists, and critics, then counts on fear and confusion to keep everyone quiet. Freedom, but make it secret subpoenas and vibes-based gag orders.

Turns out when you build a political movement on fear, lies, and Christian nationalism, you eventually need a rehab clinic. Enter Leaving Maga, a support group for people who woke up one day and realized their "patriot" community looked a lot less like a town hall and a lot more like a high-control religious cult with a merch table. Founder Rich Logis went from writing call scripts for Trump and doing the Fox News seal clap to posting a public apology after Uvalde, admitting he helped fuel conspiracy theories that brought "unnecessary death, suffering and trauma" – which is a very polite way of saying "I helped set the country on fire."

Former Quiverfull mom Stephania Messina describes her Maga years as a "religious psychosis" built on submission, household voting, and a pastor who called Covid lockdowns a "demonic deep-state attempt" to keep people from church – because nothing says "pro-life" like sabotaging pandemic response while worshiping a guy who suggested injecting bleach. Leaving Maga treats this not as a simple political pivot, but as an addiction recovery program: weekly support meetings, billboard campaigns that don’t scream at you in all caps, and media literacy training for people whose previous news diet was Facebook memes and whatever Tucker was mad about that night.

The movement’s core thesis is brutal in its simplicity: Maga wasn’t just about "economic nationalism" and "secure borders"; it was about a community glued together by rage, lies, and the thrill of having a permanent enemy. To really leave, you don’t just take off the red hat; you have to renounce the conspiracy universe where "they" are always coming for your guns, your kids, and your precious suburban cul-de-sac. The wildest part? Once they stop mainlining Fox and start listening to feminists, Black activists, and trans creators, their empathy mysteriously reappears – almost like the problem was never "wokeness" and always the authoritarian brainwashing.

The Trump administration has apparently decided that if you can’t win the argument, you can always try extraditing the guy who made you mad on TV. James “Fergie” Chambers, a 41‑year‑old heir to the Cox Communications fortune and self‑described communist, is sitting in a Spanish jail while Trump’s DOJ tries to yank him to New Hampshire over allegedly laundering $7.5m to support Hamas. The details of this world‑historic threat to national security are, naturally, sealed, but veteran human rights lawyer Baltasar Garzón calls the case “very strange” and the indictment “pretty weak and diffuse” – which is a polite way of saying, “this looks like political payback with some terrorism stickers slapped on.”

Not content with locking him up abroad, the FBI also raided Chambers’ Ibiza vacation rental and, according to Garzón, found exactly nothing – just the echoes of their own overreach. Meanwhile, the allegedly dirty money was used to buy and rescue Tunisian football club Club Africain, pay off its debts, rebuild facilities, and fund youth fields; the club then went on to win the Tunisian league. So yes, under Trump, bailing out a soccer team and bankrolling humanitarian projects in Gaza can apparently get you labeled a terrorist financier, while actual war criminals get invited to Mar‑a‑Lago for photo ops.

The US has 45 days from Chambers’ 10 July arrest to cough up real extradition paperwork or Spain lets him go. Spanish authorities also get to ask whether this is politically motivated persecution, which is awkward given that Chambers has loudly called Israel’s campaign in Gaza “genocide” and said “the most important thing for the prosperity of humanity is the destruction of the US.” In a normal democracy, that earns you a bunch of angry op‑eds and some very weird DMs. In Trump’s America, it earns you a sealed indictment, a foreign jail cell, and the full weight of the national security state thrown at your leftwing inheritance.

Garzón says humanitarian aid and human rights work are being criminalized and predicts they “won’t be able to find one cent” tied to violent acts. The first known US attempt to extradite a citizen over alleged Hamas support thus looks less like a triumph of counterterrorism and more like a test case for exporting Trump’s culture war into international law. Authoritarian regimes usually start by going after dissidents at home; Trump’s crew is apparently skipping ahead to the overseas DLC pack.

American civil rights lawyers have reached the "I’d like to speak to your supervisor" stage with U.S. democracy, and the supervisor is now the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. After decades of using U.S. courts to hold cops, presidents, and other assorted government thugs accountable, these attorneys are watching Trump kneecap the judiciary, weaponize the DOJ, and target the very lawyers who sue him. When your own legal system starts acting like a hostile witness, you pack your briefs and head to the international human rights system.

The IACHR, a body usually busy dealing with Latin American dictatorships, is now holding a special hearing on the United States’ violent crackdown on protests against Trump’s immigration pogroms. On the docket: the killing of Renee Good, shot in her car by an ICE agent during a Minneapolis demonstration and then posthumously smeared as a "domestic terrorist" by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and Rev David Black, shot in the head with a pepper ball by a federal agent while protesting in Chicago—an incident that Customs and Border Protection’s "commander-at-large" Gregory Bovino proudly declared was "absolutely in line with policy". When shooting clergy in the head is considered good policy, the policy might be the problem.

This is all part of Trump’s Day One fantasy of "Protecting the American People Against Invasion," which translated into federal agents running paramilitary raids across U.S. cities, tearing families apart, and abducting, beating, and shooting unarmed migrants. ICE has racked up multiple recent killings, while the U.N. human rights chief says he’s "astounded" by the routine abuse and racial profiling, and a U.N. anti-racism committee is openly calling out "racist hate speech" from political leaders, including the President. So yes, we’ve now reached the part of the American experiment where the international bodies we used to lecture are sending us strongly worded letters about acting like a police state.

The lawyers warn that today’s targets are anti-ICE protesters, but tomorrow it could be climate activists, gun rights people, abortion-rights marchers, or labor organizers. Once you normalize federal goons brutalizing dissenters and calling it "policy," the First Amendment becomes more of a suggestion than a right. The symbolism is almost too on the nose: a human rights commission that spent decades confronting juntas and strongmen is now holding a hearing two blocks from the White House about whether the United States is sliding into authoritarianism. America First, indeed—first to show the hemisphere how fast a democracy can backslide when you put a wannabe strongman in charge of the riot police.

The U.S. Mint is rolling out a new $1 coin featuring Donald Trump's face, because when you’re sliding into soft authoritarianism, you might as well put the Dear Leader on the money. Treasury Secretary and loyal courtier Scott Bessent unveiled the design for the "commemorative" 250th anniversary coin: bald eagle on one side, full Trump glamour shot on the other, ringed by "Liberty" and "1776–2026" like a parody written by a drunk Hamilton writer.

The only problem — aside from the aesthetic war crime — is that experts say it's probably illegal. Federal law bars the likeness of any living person on U.S. currency, which used to be the kind of norm we followed to avoid looking like a third-rate personality cult. The administration’s response? Claim that a 2020 law authorizing a 250th coin magically overrules all that, because if you squint hard enough, statutes become wishes. Constitutional law professor Jeremy Paul politely notes that this is both legally dubious and wildly inconsistent with American principles, but Trump just told Fox News, "It's very cute, they gave me a coin," which is a hell of a way to describe using the Treasury as your personal merch shop.

So we now have passports, national park passes, government building banners, and soon actual U.S. currency all doubling as Trump brand extensions. The point isn’t commemoration; it’s saturation — turn every neutral symbol of the state into a campaign poster. Whether or not courts smack this down, the message is clear: the line between the United States government and the Trump ego has been melted down and re-minted into legal tender.

Roughly 60 world leaders descended on Washington, D.C., so the Trump administration could host a grand strategy session on its favorite new bogeyman: "far left terrorism". Actual threats like climate collapse, rising authoritarianism, and billionaire-funded disinformation will apparently have to wait, because the real emergency is kids in black hoodies and anyone who’s ever shared a Chomsky quote.

This is less a security summit and more a branding workshop for global crackdowns. By slapping the word terrorism on left-wing political activity, Trump’s crew gets to launder old-fashioned repression through the language of safety and international cooperation. So congratulations to the administration: it finally built a coalition—just not against fascism, but against anyone who might object to it.

Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman have apparently spent 11 years living in the world’s worst immersive theater experience, otherwise known as the Trump presidency, and have now emerged with a book titled Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. Among the fun facts: during Trump’s second term — you know, the one featuring the disastrous Iran war and hobbyist regime change in Venezuela — he proudly showed them a document comparing himself to Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan. Not as a cautionary tale. As a vibe.

The list, Swan notes, had nothing to do with morality — just raw power projection. Trump, who already treats the Constitution like a nonbinding NDA, was delighted to see himself in the same league as history’s greatest butchers. Suddenly the forever war with Iran, the cosplay coup attempts abroad, and the gleeful shredding of democratic norms all snap into focus: he’s not failing at being a president of a republic; he’s succeeding at LARPing as a strongman.

Back in Washington, his "inner Louis XIV" is doing home makeover shows in the Oval Office, which he has apparently tried to turn into a mid-tier Macau casino lobby — gold slathered on everything that doesn’t move, and probably some things that do. The whole point of the traditional, modest Oval Office decor was to remind presidents that America is a republic, not a monarchy. Trump’s response has been to redecorate like he’s expecting Versailles to leave a Yelp review.

So yes, the sitting president, presiding over a grinding war and toppling foreign governments, is literally curating reading material that brackets him with Hitler and Stalin — and savoring it. The only thing standing between this guy and full dictator cosplay is the annoying persistence of elections, courts, and a press corps that keeps writing down the part where he says the quiet part into a microphone.