The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

The Trump administration has decided that what American democracy really needs is an imported thug with a fraud conviction and a fake passport habit, so naturally the State Department welcomed UK far-right activist Tommy Robinson (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) like he’s Václav Havel instead of a street-brawling bigot. Senior State adviser Joe Rittenhouse – self-branded architect of an "America First visa policy" – proudly paraded Robinson around Foggy Bottom, calling him a "free speech warrior" and declaring that "no one" has been more on the front lines for free expression. Bold claim for a guy whose CV reads like a Crown Prosecution Service greatest hits compilation: fraud, violence, drug possession, and an earlier attempt to sneak into the US on a false passport.

British MPs, who still remember what rule of law is supposed to look like, are calling this a "wake-up call" and want the US added to the UK’s inquiry into foreign interference. Meanwhile, the same State Department crew that bent rules to get Robinson in has been yanking visas from pro-Palestine students and people deemed insufficiently sad about Charlie Kirk’s assassination, all while "moving mountains" to bring back rightwing influencers whose media ventures were caught bathing in Russian money. So the message from Trump’s Washington is crystal clear: if you’re a violent far-right crank or Kremlin-adjacent propagandist, the door is open; if you’re a student protester, enjoy your deportation.

All of this unfolds against a Trump national security strategy that literally aligns US interests with European far-right politics, turning American foreign policy into a kind of international white grievance exchange program. Robinson, ever the opportunist, is using the trip to hit MAGA media, court donors, and scope out a potential relocation and asylum bid, because nothing says "persecuted truth-teller" like trying to cash in on the same country whose immigration system you once tried to scam with a fake passport. The State Department insists this was just an "unofficial" visit, which is a cute way of saying: we’re absolutely using the machinery of the US government to mainstream extremists, we’d just prefer not to file the paperwork honestly.

The Trump administration tried a bold new approach to American history: if the past makes you look bad, just rip it out of the ground. The National Park Service quietly dismantled a long-standing slavery exhibit at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park — the site of George Washington’s presidential residence — because Trump has decided that acknowledging slavery is "anti-American ideology." Naturally, the city of Philadelphia responded by doing the most un-Trump thing imaginable: using the law.

Federal judge Cynthia Rufe — a George W Bush appointee, because reality still has a sense of humor — opened her opinion by quoting 1984 and then directly likened Trump’s crew to the Ministry of Truth. She spelled out the administration’s claim: that the federal government can "dissemble and disassemble historical truths" whenever it controls the property. Her answer: "It does not." Translation: no, you cannot just memory-hole slavery because it’s messing up your campaign merch aesthetic.

Rufe ordered the National Park Service to restore the President’s House site to how it looked on January 21, 2026, i.e., before the Ministry of Truth cosplay. She also took the time to remind everyone why the exhibit exists: historians uncovered the first presidential residence and the stories of nine enslaved Africans owned by Washington, whose names are literally etched into the wall — Oney Judge, Austin, Christopher Sheels, Giles, Hercules Posey, Joe Richardson, Moll, Paris, and Richmond. Some, like Oney Judge and Hercules, escaped. The Trump administration’s big idea was to escape them from history.

So the courts are now in the position of having to explain to the federal government that you can’t legally erase slavery from a museum at Independence Hall to soothe the feelings of a man who thinks the real victims of American history are Confederate statues. The good news: the exhibit is coming back. The bad news: we now need federal injunctions to stop the president from editing the past like a Truth Social post.

The Trump White House briefly remembered there’s still such a thing as shame and deleted a Truth Social post from Trump’s account that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The official explanation: an aide did it. Of course. The president just accidentally keeps hiring staffers whose hobbies line up perfectly with Stormfront memes. Barack Obama called it "deeply troubling," which is a very polite way of saying, "this is straight-up racist garbage from the Oval Office."

The real fun, as civil rights experts point out, is that this wasn’t a one-off; it’s just the loudest part of a year-long pattern where federal agencies have been marinating their public messaging in the aesthetics of white nationalism. DHS, apparently bored with mere incompetence, has gone full propaganda lab, pumping out recruitment materials drenched in nostalgic white Americana and "defend the homeland" language that tracks almost word-for-word with decades of extremist, anti-immigrant screeds about a "migrant invasion" from the Global South.

Asked about all this, DHS and the White House responded with the subtlety of a Fox News chyron, accusing NPR of "manufacturing outrage" and calling questions about extremist themes "bizarre" and "leftwing advocacy." Scholars call it what it is: plausible deniability as policy. The government’s new communications strategy is simple — speak in the emotional language of white nationalism, then act shocked anyone noticed. Dog whistles are only for dogs, after all; why are the humans suddenly hearing them?

The Trump–Vance White House has bravely taken a stand against historical truth, deleting a post from Vice-President JD Vance’s official account that dared to call the Armenian genocide a genocide. The now-vanished message, posted during Vance’s trip to Armenia, said he was honoring the victims of the Armenian genocide — a phrase that apparently triggered the administration’s emergency "oops, our values were posted by mistake" protocol.

Once Ankara (and presumably Trump’s ego) were notified, an aide rushed out to explain that the word "genocide" was a staff error by people who weren’t even on the trip, as though the term had just randomly stumbled onto the vice-president’s account and hit send. By the time Vance spoke to reporters, he’d downgraded one of the 20th century’s most documented mass exterminations to "a very terrible thing that happened a little over 100 years ago," which is how you describe a fender bender, not a campaign of extermination.

Joe Biden formally recognized the Armenian genocide in 2021, but the Trump administration has eagerly scrambled back to the pre-recognition era, where Turkish government feelings count more than dead Armenians or basic historical accuracy. Armenian advocacy groups called Vance a coward and accused the administration of bowing to Turkish pressure, while Rep. Jim McGovern called the deletion "disgusting and pathetic" and pointed out the obvious: the Armenian genocide is a fact, and this White House is deleting facts to keep its authoritarian buddies happy. Freedom, truth, and moral clarity — all subject to deletion by the social media team.

Remember when "virtue-signalling" meant some liberal on Twitter reminding you to say chairperson? Adorable times. Trump looked at that and decided the real growth market was vice-signalling: performative racism and misogyny as a brand strategy. From his 2015 "they're rapists" campaign launch to posting a video of the Obamas depicted as apes, the man didn’t just dog-whistle, he brought an airhorn to a Klan rally and called it authenticity.

This is now an established rightwing business model: constantly violate basic norms, gorge on free media coverage, then claim you’re bravely "saying what everyone’s thinking" when you’re really just saying what the actual bigots are thinking. Trump’s Access Hollywood "pussy-grabbing" tape didn’t end his career; it opened the door for JD Vance’s "childless cat ladies" spiel and Tucker Carlson’s escalating misogynist cosplay. Each stunt makes the next one worse and more acceptable, a kind of hate-based multi-level marketing scheme where the product is social collapse.

The article walks through how this vice-signalling arms race has turned politics into a contest over who can be the most proudly cruel, with Trump as the trendsetter and Farage, Berlusconi & friends as the international franchisees. The point isn’t policy; it’s to show your base you’re willing to dehumanize the right targets and dare anyone to object. Call it the new conservative value system: family, flag, and publicly test-driving fascist rhetoric for clicks.

The Trump USDA has discovered a bold new frontier in national security: making crop scientists moonlight as FBI informants with a Google search bar. Under a new directive, researchers in the Agricultural Research Service are ordered to investigate every foreign co-author on their papers for signs of "subversive or criminal activity" and send the names of anyone "concerning" to the agency’s Office of Homeland Security. Because nothing says cutting-edge agricultural research like turning your co-authors into case files.

Supervisors literally called the policy "dystopic" in a meeting, which, in the Trump era, is less a warning and more a product requirement. The order doesn’t just blacklist scientists from the usual "countries of concern" like China, Iran, and Cuba; it also forces staff to vet collaborators from places like Canada and Germany and ship their names off to a homeland security unit that works with federal intelligence agencies. No one will say what they’re doing with those lists, but sure, this is just about "protecting research," not building a handy little registry of foreign scientists who dared to work with Americans.

Jennifer Jones of the Union of Concerned Scientists called it a "throwback to McCarthyism" and a "classic hallmark of authoritarianism"—which is polite academic-speak for this is some straight-up police-state garbage. USDA staff say they’re worried this will put foreign students and postdocs—people here on temporary visas—in the administration’s crosshairs. Meanwhile, the agency’s own website still brags that international collaboration is essential to stopping crop diseases and boosting yields. So naturally, Trump’s agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins rolled out a policy that bans co-authoring papers with scientists from entire countries and frames international research as a national security threat that only "America First" surveillance can fix.

All of this slots neatly into the broader Trump second-term project of criminalizing foreign brains: a French scientist detained over anti-Trump messages on his phone, Chinese and Russian researchers locked out of NIH databases, and new moves to shorten how long foreign students can stay in the U.S. The message is clear: if you’re a foreign scientist, the United States would love your talent, your data, and your breakthroughs—just not your presence, your rights, or your name on a paper that hasn’t been cleared by the Google Stasi at USDA Homeland Security.