The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Documenting the chaos since day one — one awful day at a time.

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Category: forever grifting

Saturday, March 21, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 21, 5:05 PM UTC

black nazi on nude africa heroically lies for trump

Mark Robinson, explaining that lying about being a pro-slavery Nazi on a porn site is fine as long as it’s for Trump, which is definitely a totally normal sentence in a functioning democracy.

North Carolina’s former Republican lieutenant governor Mark Robinson has now helpfully confirmed what everyone with a functioning Wi‑Fi connection already knew: he lied about being the guy posting pro‑slavery, antisemitic, homophobic, and "I’m a black NAZI!" comments on a porn forum called Nude Africa. The posts also praised Mein Kampf as a "good read" and a "real eye-opener," which is generally not the book review you want from someone running to be governor of an actual U.S. state. Robinson spent the 2024 campaign insisting, "those are not the words of Mark Robinson" while they were, in fact, extremely the words of Mark Robinson. Now he says he misled voters because it was "the most expedient thing to do" to protect Donald Trump’s comeback bid and other Republicans, explaining that if he had to "ignore the truth" for their benefit, that was the "right thing to do." Honesty, family values, and personal responsibility have officially been replaced with strategic lying to safeguard the Dear Leader’s electoral prospects. Trump once called Robinson "one of the great stars" of the GOP before suddenly discovering that the "black NAZI" porn‑forum superfan was maybe not ideal campaign decor. Robinson’s staff bailed, his gubernatorial run cratered by 14 points, and now he’s on a podcast with a pastor retrofitting his porn "obsession" and Nazi book club phase into a redemption arc. Asked if he’d lie again for the cause, he proudly says yes. The Republican Party’s moral message in the Trump era remains consistent: sin all you want, just make sure you’re doing it for the president.

theguardian.comSource Article

#forever-grifting#trumps-america

Friday, March 20, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 20, 9:59 PM UTC

white house expands trump-branded coupon site, still not a health care plan

Stock photo of pills and a laptop, bravely standing in for a functioning health care system while TrumpRx offers coupons and vibes.

The White House is proudly announcing that TrumpRx — the president’s very normal, totally-not-a-marketing-gimmick drug discount website — now has three more drugs, bringing the grand total to "still basically nothing." They’ve added two Type 2 diabetes meds and a COPD drug from Boehringer Ingelheim, with steep-looking discounts that sound impressive until you notice pesky details like: one already has a cheaper generic and sites like GoodRx often have similar or better deals. Critics point out that TrumpRx covers fewer than 60 drugs, doesn’t work with insurance, and doesn’t count toward deductibles — which is a fun way of saying it’s useless for most people who are drowning in medical bills. The administration, in turn, has bravely responded by refusing to say how many people have even used it and then retroactively redefining success: an HHS official now insists the "goal was not actually some massive reach," which is a convenient standard when hardly anyone has heard of your program. Meanwhile, about a third of Americans say they’re rationing meds or skipping care to afford health expenses, but sure, let’s roll out a tiny, opaque cash-pay coupon site with the president’s name slapped on it and call that "addressing soaring health care costs." Nine drugmakers are now on the platform, which is starting to look less like policy and more like a lightly regulated Trump-branded discount aisle for pharma, while the real structural fixes to drug pricing remain safely untouched.

nbcnews.comSource Article

#forever-grifting#healthcare

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 18, 10:01 PM UTC

nancy mace runs her own shadow state department, what could go wrong

Nancy Mace, freshly returned from her unpaid internship as Secretary of State, explains that real diplomacy is when you book a Saudi jet on vibes and send Rubio the invoice.

The Trump White House is reportedly furious that Rep. Nancy Mace has decided to cosplay as Secretary of State, personally flying into a war-adjacent region to run her own evacuation missions for Americans stranded in the Middle East. Instead of, say, coordinating with the actual State Department, Mace freelanced diplomatic outreach to Saudi officials, then fired off a demand letter to Secretary Marco Rubio insisting he immediately authorize a Saudi commercial jet she’d lined up to move 300 people. Because if there’s one thing foreign governments love, it’s random US backbenchers wandering in and announcing they’ve done the diplomacy already. Her side quest didn’t stop there. While running for South Carolina governor, Mace apparently encouraged a group of Americans to relocate from a high-risk area to Jordan without a plan for what happened next, leaving the actual US government to scramble a plane to bail them out once they were stranded. The White House, already under fire for being slow to evacuate citizens and initially telling callers the government couldn’t help them, is now scolding Mace for "exploiting the situation for political gain"—a line so unintentionally self-aware it should come with a laugh track. For extra flavor, Mace’s heroic operation has been tied to a third-party outfit called Grey Bull Rescue, which just suspended operations after an American mother accused it of trying to shake her down for $1 million to get back to the US. So while the State Department quietly runs 60 charter flights helping 42,000 people, many of them now half-empty, we’ve got a sitting member of Congress doing rogue diplomacy with the Saudis and outsourcing crisis evacuations to what sounds like a Blackwater-themed Kickstarter. America: now with multiple, competing foreign policies, some of them subscription-based.

theguardian.comSource Article

#forever-grifting#killing-democracy

forever grifting

Mar 18, 9:00 AM UTC

trumprx: because what americans really needed was another coupon site

TrumpRx.gov, proudly offering a handful of discounts on drugs you could already get cheaper elsewhere — now with extra presidential branding at no additional savings.

Americans are skipping doses and rationing meds, so naturally the Trump administration has rolled out its bold solution to Big Pharma greed: a sad little coupon website with 54 drugs and a logo. TrumpRx.gov is being sold as a revolutionary cost-cutting tool, but it can’t be used with insurance, doesn’t count toward deductibles, and mostly features drugs that already have generics or other discounts elsewhere. So it’s less "healthcare reform" and more "promo code, but make it presidential." Instead of building real negotiating power or structural reform, the White House quietly outsourced the guts of TrumpRx to GoodRx’s existing system — same network, same processing codes, just with extra Trump branding slapped on top like a gold decal on a rental car. Experts politely note that the site is "of limited use" and would drop to around 22 drugs if they removed the ones with cheaper generics, but the administration is already fantasizing about Congress "codifying" its Most Favored Nation deals into law, a thing Congress has shown precisely zero interest in doing. Meanwhile, the uninsured — the people "getting screwed the most," as one expert puts it — get a glorified search page that doesn’t let them buy anything directly, doesn’t fix pharmacy benefit manager games, and doesn’t touch the rebate-driven racket that keeps prices high. The administration is calling this part of a "Great Healthcare Plan" that somehow always exists just over the next hill, once they pass some legislation that doesn’t exist, for a program that barely functions. It’s the same Trump-era formula every time: maximum branding, minimal policy, and a lingering question of who, exactly, is actually getting the discount here.

nbcnews.comSource Article

#forever-grifting#healthcare

Monday, March 16, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 16, 12:00 PM UTC

aipac discovers its money is radioactive, keeps spending anyway

Aipac’s latest innovation: influence-peddling so unpopular it has to show up wearing a fake mustache and calling itself “Affordable Chicago Now.”

Aipac, the lobby that spent decades insisting it was just the voice of bipartisan common sense, is now shoveling at least $13.7 million through Super PACs with names like "Elect Chicago Women" and "Affordable Chicago Now"—which is a bold rebrand for "We Definitely Don’t Want You to Know This Is About Israel." The ads never mention Israel, Gaza, or even foreign policy, because nothing says "confident in our cause" like hiding behind generic civic virtue and a P.O. box. The donor patterns look like they were generated by a bored intern with an Excel macro: the same Aipac-aligned donors cutting identical checks to three different House candidates, sometimes on the same day, while the Super PACs conveniently won’t reveal their funders until on or around election day. Meanwhile, Democratic voters have moved sharply toward sympathy with Palestinians and against endless war, so the Aipac brand has become so toxic that even its own beneficiaries are now denouncing Trump’s Iran strikes as "dangerous," "unconstitutional," and evidence he has "lost his mind"—while still quietly courting the same money they claim to find appalling. The result is a farce where Aipac praises Trump’s bombing of Iran, but its chosen Democrats in Illinois sprint away from the war like it’s on fire, and some of them publicly beg their shadowy backers to reveal their donors and "hit a wall." In one heavily Jewish district, the Aipac-aligned hit jobs on a mildly critical, pro-Israel mayor may well boost a Palestinian American progressive to Congress instead. It’s a masterclass in how to spend tens of millions of dollars to prove that your influence is still enormous, your judgment is terrible, and your political touch is about as subtle as Trump’s foreign policy.

theguardian.comSource Article

#forever-grifting#killing-democracy

Saturday, March 14, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 14, 6:15 PM UTC

trump pardon whisperer allegedly upgrades to full mob movie

Artist’s impression of the modern Trump-era clemency process: a briefcase of cash, a pardon application, and someone being encouraged to get into a car with masked men.

The MAGA legal ecosystem has really gone prestige TV. New York lobbyist and attorney Joshua Nass — who proudly cashed $100,000 to lobby Donald Trump for a presidential pardon and “executive clemency” for nursing-home tax scofflaw Joseph Schwartz — has now been charged with attempted Hobbs Act extortion of a former client and the client’s son over an alleged $500,000 debt. Prosecutors say Nass handed over phone numbers and home addresses to an enforcer and told him to “do anything and everything” to force payment, including physically assaulting the client’s son or stuffing him into a car with masked men to terrify the family into coughing up cash. You know, the classic "client relations" module from law school. Prosecutors allege Nass agreed to pay his would‑be legbreaker at least $15,000 for the intimidation services, because if you’re going to shake down your own client, you might as well itemize it. This is the same guy who, in public filings, boasted of being paid $100,000 in late 2025 “for advocacy concerning executive clemency and post-conviction relief, including federal presidential pardon advocacy” — work that coincided nicely with Trump’s November 14, 2025 pardon of Schwartz, whose nursing-home empire somehow forgot to pay nearly $40m in taxes and faced Medicaid fraud charges. Truly the poster child for “deserving individuals” in need of a second chance. Nass recently told the New York Times that clemency “reflects the belief that people are capable of redemption” and that Trump “should be commended” for his generosity with pardons during his second term. Meanwhile, the justice department is accusing this apostle of redemption of running a low-rent extortion plot against his own client. All of this unfolds as reports pile up that Trump’s clemency system is shaped by lobbyists and moneyed fixers, a claim the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismisses with a straight face, insisting that anyone spending money to lobby for pardons is just wasting it and that Trump doesn’t even know who these lobbyists are. Sure — the checks clear themselves, the pardons sign themselves, and the lawyers allegedly threaten to kidnap people out of pure constitutional passion. So on one side, you have a president whose pardon pen mysteriously tracks six‑figure payments and evangelical connections; on the other, a pardon middleman now facing up to 20 years in prison for allegedly trying to collect his fees like a discount movie mobster. What an inspiring model of justice: redemption for the well-connected, prosecution for the hired help that says the quiet part out loud.

theguardian.comSource Article Also: nbcnews.com

#forever-grifting#corruption

Thursday, March 12, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 12, 11:00 AM UTC

trump frees wall street, wall street frees seniors from their retirements

A friendly financial adviser explains how your "dignified retirement" is now indexed to his bonus and a basket of derivatives you’ll never understand.

Thirteen Florida seniors just did the unthinkable: they actually won against Wall Street in Finra arbitration, securing a $3.8m award after their adviser allegedly turned their retirement savings into structured-product confetti. These were the "mom and pop" investors the Trump administration insists need more access to exotic derivatives, because nothing says "dignified, comfortable retirement" like explaining options-linked bond products to a 70-year-old who just wanted a CD.

This comes as Donald Trump’s August executive order proudly promises to "smooth the path" for Americans to stuff their 401(k)s with higher-risk alternative investments, while also trying to make it harder to sue the people steering those plans. So the policy is basically: open the casino, lock the exits. Brokerage firms like Schwab, meanwhile, claim they were just innocent "custodians" while their platform was used to funnel retirees into products regulators say require "heightened supervision"—which, in Trump-era finance, apparently means looking the other way and sending a quarterly statement.

The arbitrators in this case did something rare: they pretended we still live in a world where financial firms can be held responsible for the mess created on their own systems. Most investors who challenge Wall Street in Finra arbitration lose; these seniors are the exception that proves the rule. As Trump’s team keeps pushing to supercharge the sale of complex alts to everyday investors, this award reads less like justice and more like a warning flare: this is what it takes to claw back a fraction of your life savings in an administration that treats retirees like liquidity for the derivatives market.

theguardian.comSource Article

#forever-grifting#killing-democracy

Wednesday, March 11, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 11, 9:00 AM UTC

octagon on the south lawn, brain cells not included

Live look at the South Lawn, where the People’s House has been rebranded as the Octagon so Trump can celebrate his 80th birthday with a taxpayer-subsidized hype reel.

Trump promised the White House UFC gala would be the most historic fight card in human history – eight or nine title fights, all "legendary". What America is actually getting for its 250th birthday (and Trump’s 80th) is two real title bouts, a bunch of mid-tier matchups, and a lineup mysteriously stacked with vocal Trump superfans. So it’s less "UFC Freedom 250" and more "Make Pay-Per-View Great Again" fan-cam, live from the South Lawn. Instead of a once-in-history sports spectacle, the UFC and Dana White delivered something that looks exactly like their regular content mill, just with better bunting and more fascist cosplay. The company that spent a decade laundering Trump as the ultimate tough-guy outsider is now helping him turn the literal White House into a branded cage-fighting set piece, timed to his birthday and wrapped in patriotic marketing copy. The fighters? Cheaper Trump loyalists. The politics? Soft-focus authoritarian pageantry with sponsorship logos. The kicker: this "one-of-one" extravaganza reportedly costs around $60m, which the UFC hopes to claw back from sponsors while the president gets priceless propaganda footage of himself bathed in fireworks and adulation. The United States’ 250th anniversary could have been a sober reflection on democracy; instead, it’s being celebrated by turning the people’s house into a PPV backdrop for an aging strongman LARPing as the main event.

theguardian.comSource Article

#forever-grifting#killing-democracy

Tuesday, March 10, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 10, 3:08 PM UTC

trump suddenly worried his grifter might be grifting

Corey Lewandowski and Donald Trump, seen here plotting how to turn Homeland Security into Homeland Sales & Marketing, LLC.

Donald Trump has reportedly started asking aides the most shocking question of his political career: did one of his guys personally profit off a government contract? The guy in question is Corey Lewandowski, officially a "special government employee" at DHS and unofficially Kristi Noem’s shadow chief of staff, who seems to have had remarkable sway over a $220 million ad campaign starring Noem on horseback doing MAGA cosplay about the "American dream" and cracking down on undocumented immigrants.

Trump, who now insists he "didn’t know anything" about the ad blitz Noem testified he approved, has been telling advisers that "Corey made out on that one"—while Corey tells NBC News he made "zero, not one penny" from any DHS contracts he helped steer. The White House, naturally, declined to comment on Corey’s bold new entry in the "trust me, bro" genre of government ethics.

Noem, already drowning in scandals over a luxury deportation jet, Coast Guard resource abuse, and handpicked contractors for a $100 million ICE recruitment push, got kicked out of DHS and reassigned as "special envoy" to Trump’s newly invented "Shield of the Americas"—which sounds less like a serious diplomatic portfolio and more like a Marvel knockoff written by Stephen Miller. Meanwhile, Democrats are now probing the trio of firms that scored the ad money, because nothing says "law and order" like turning Homeland Security into a $220 million campaign reel for your friends and their vendors.

So Trump’s DHS currently features: a fired secretary turned cosplay envoy, a "special" adviser allegedly playing contract fairy godfather, and a president who only discovers ethics when he suspects someone else may have skimmed off his grift. Government by resentful middleman is going extremely well.

nbcnews.comSource Article

#forever-grifting#corruption#killing-democracy

Monday, March 9, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 9, 12:00 PM UTC

trump’s illegal tariffs were the friends we overbilled along the way

Small business owners stare at spreadsheets of illegal Trump tariffs, trying to decide whether to hire a lawyer or just frame the numbers as modern art titled ‘American Trade Policy’.

The supreme court has now confirmed what every small business owner’s bank account figured out years ago: Trump’s big, beautiful tariffs were illegal, and the government may owe up to $175bn in refunds. In theory, that’s justice. In practice, it’s a Kafkaesque scavenger hunt where the prize is maybe getting back a fraction of the money the administration shook out of you—after a few years of litigation and an invoice from your lawyer that looks like a ransom note. Across the country, small businesses are describing the Trump tariff era like a slow-motion robbery. A lighting shop in LA watched all its brands hike prices 12% while their showroom renovation money was quietly repurposed to pay surprise five‑figure “America First” tariffs. A Texas furniture maker got hammered by higher prices on imported lumber and hardware that literally don’t exist in the US, while a Minnesota outdoor gear company saw duty fees rocket from 18% to 46% and had to raise prices up to 20% just to stay alive. One livestock health company ate a million dollars in extra costs in a year before finally giving up and raising prices. Now that courts have ruled the tariffs were collected illegally and ordered refunds, you might think the government would just…pay them. Adorable. Instead, small business owners are tracking years of illegal tariffs in spreadsheets and openly admitting they’ll probably never see a dime, because the legal process is too complex, too expensive, and this administration has been "duplicitous" enough that they assume any refund effort will be a time‑wasting trap. Trump casually predicting this will be tied up in court for "the next five years" is less a warning than a confession: the grift never ends, it just compounds interest.

theguardian.comSource Article Also: theguardian.com

#forever-grifting#lawlessness

Sunday, March 8, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 8, 1:00 PM UTC

trump epa repeals climate reality, accidentally helps states sue big oil

Trump’s EPA carefully explaining that greenhouse gases aren’t dangerous while the background slowly catches fire.

The Trump EPA has officially decided that greenhouse gases are no longer legally "endangering" anyone, which is a bold position for an administration whose main climate policy is "good luck out there." By repealing the endangerment finding that gave the federal government authority to regulate planet-heating pollution, they tried to kneecap climate rules and hand big oil a regulatory hall pass. Unfortunately for them, Trump’s DOJ is also in court insisting that only the federal government can regulate these emissions, not states like Vermont and New York that passed "climate superfund" laws to make fossil fuel companies pay for the damage they caused.

Legal advocates are now politely pointing out that the administration can’t simultaneously claim "we alone control greenhouse gas regulation" and "actually we have no authority to regulate greenhouse gases at all" without sounding like a drunk constitutional law exam. Vermont, New York, and a growing list of states are using Trump’s own rollback as a crowbar to pry open the courthouse doors and keep their climate superfund laws alive, while cities and states suing oil companies for decades of climate deception are eyeing the hypocrisy like it’s Exhibit A.

EPA insists the Clean Air Act still magically preempts state laws even after it torched its own authority, which is a fascinating theory of federal supremacy: the power to do nothing, forever, and stop anyone else from doing something. Meanwhile, farmers and communities are eating the costs of extreme weather while the administration scrambles to protect Exxon’s feelings. If this is what "energy dominance" looks like, it’s mostly the federal government dominating itself in court.

theguardian.comSource Article

#forever-grifting#killing-democracy

Friday, March 6, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 6, 4:35 PM UTC

white house justice promo stars corrupt lawyer, meth kingpin, foreign freedom fighter

The White House communications team, moments before discovering that Breaking Bad is not actually a documentary about responsible governance.

The Trump White House has released a 42-second Hollywood-themed "justice the American way" hype reel for its Iran policy, and it’s basically a fan cam made by a 14-year-old who just discovered torrenting. The official @WhiteHouse account stitched together clips of Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man, Russell Crowe’s Gladiator, Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, Tom Cruise’s Top Gun fighter jock, Keanu Reeves’ John Wick, and—why not—Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman, the corrupt lawyer who helps a meth manufacturer build an empire. Nothing says "rule of law" like centering your justice message around a cocaine buffet of war movies and a guy who launders drug money. It keeps getting more on-brand. The video also features Bryan Cranston’s Walter White growling "I AM the danger!"—a line from a series about a suburban dad who becomes a mass-murdering meth kingpin—and then caps it all off with a "flawless victory" from Mortal Kombat stamped over "The White House." So the administration’s official messaging on Iran is: we’re a vengeful video game boss, advised by a crooked lawyer, spiritually guided by a Canadian assassin, and visually curated with footage from actors who publicly despise Trump. It’s less "American justice" and more "Discord mod gets access to the nuclear codes." As a bonus, the whole thing may be built on yet another round of copyright roulette. The White House won’t say whether it cleared any of these clips, which would track with its long tradition of using songs and images from artists like Beyoncé, Springsteen, ABBA, and the Rolling Stones until the lawyers show up with cease-and-desist letters. This is the same operation that digitally altered a protest photo to make a woman look like she was crying, and that proudly embraces AI "slopaganda"—including a video of Trump literally dumping feces on protesters. The message is clear: the law is something you broadcast about in Marvel fonts, not something you follow.

theguardian.comSource Article Also: theguardian.com Also: today.com

#forever-grifting#killing-democracy

forever grifting

Mar 6, 1:38 PM UTC

trump breaks the job market, hasn’t even finished breaking iran yet

A lonely "Now Hiring" sign, patiently waiting for the part of the Trump war cycle where the economy magically improves through sheer presidential yelling at the Fed.

The US shed 92,000 jobs in February, right before Donald Trump decided the global economy needed an extra thrill ride via a US-Israel conflict with Iran. Unemployment ticked up to 4.4%, economists were expecting gains, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics quietly confirmed that 2025 was the weakest year for job growth since Covid. So yes, we’ve now reached the "Make America 2020 Again" phase of the Trump sequel. Job growth in 2025 was basically a first-half-only special, with the back half of the year losing 45,000 jobs even before the new war cosplay. Now the Fed has to decide in mid-March whether to keep rates steady while inflation still lurks, or cave to Trump, who has been aggressively pushing for cuts so the economy looks less like his Twitter feed and more like a campaign ad. Federal Reserve officials, like Cleveland Fed president Beth Hammack, are signaling an extended pause, which is adorable given that the president treats independent monetary policy like a customer service line he can yell at until a manager appears. The February report doesn’t yet capture the "fun" knock-on effects of Trump escalating in Iran, but it’s already clear the labor market was wobbling before the bombs. So naturally, instead of focusing on stabilizing jobs, the White House is busy shaking the global economy like a vending machine and demanding cheaper money on top. Who could have guessed that permanent crisis governance isn’t great for employment?

theguardian.comSource Article Also: nbcnews.com Also: theguardian.com

#money#forever-grifting#killing-democracy

Thursday, March 5, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 5, 9:11 PM UTC

trump-pardoned jan. 6 'patriot' gets life for child sex crimes

Andrew Johnson at the Capitol on Jan. 6, auditioning for a presidential pardon and, apparently, a future life sentence.

Donald Trump’s great patriotic prison-reform experiment continues to pay dividends. Andrew Paul Johnson, a Jan. 6 rioter whom Trump personally helped spring with his blanket insurrection amnesty, just got sentenced to life in prison for molesting children. Truly the best people, handpicked from the country’s finest pool of cop-beaters and would‑be coup participants. Johnson wasn’t just a child predator; he allegedly tried to keep one of his victims quiet by promising them a cut of the taxpayer-funded windfall he expected to get from the Justice Department after his pardon. That’s right: he weaponized Trump-world’s fantasy of government payouts for Jan. 6 defendants as a hush-money pitch to a child. When the MAGA martyrdom industry meets garden‑variety depravity, this is what crawls out. Trump has openly mused about compensating Jan. 6 defendants with public money, and the DOJ under his administration already handed almost $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot while climbing through a smashed Capitol window. Meanwhile, other pardoned or prosecuted Jan. 6 heroes keep racking up fresh charges — one for assault and battery on a Metro train, another for allegedly threatening a Capitol Police officer. The "law and order" movement sure produces a lot of repeat customers for the justice system. So the Trump legacy on criminal justice reform is crystal clear: turn insurrectionists into a protected class, float taxpayer cash for their troubles, and act shocked when some of them turn out to be violent predators who treat pardons like a loyalty badge and a business opportunity. Back the blue, unless they’re in your way — or investigating you.

nbcnews.comSource Article Also: theguardian.com

#forever-grifting#lawlessness#killing-democracy

forever grifting

Mar 5, 10:00 AM UTC

golden dome, golden grift

Steve Feinberg proudly presents the Golden Dome for America, a state-of-the-art missile shield designed to intercept threats and redirect them into his old portfolio.

The Pentagon’s number two, billionaire Steve Feinberg, has discovered a bold new innovation in defense contracting: just have your old firm win. Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity shop he founded and ran until very recently, now owns at least four companies getting slices of Trump’s $151 billion "Golden Dome for America" missile shield — a project Feinberg conveniently oversees. He supposedly "divested," but ethics records show he keeps a cozy, open-ended financial relationship with Cerberus for tax, accounting, and health care. Truly inspiring to see continuity of care extended to conflict of interest. This is all laid out in nearly 3,200 newly released financial disclosures showing Trump officials are financially entangled with the very industries they regulate. That includes Attorney General Pam Bondi and other senior officials making perfectly timed stock trades right before Trump’s tariff announcements cratered markets, EPA scientists who used to literally work for the chemical lobby now downplaying formaldehyde risks, and a Justice Department number two, Todd Blanche, who owned at least $159,000 in crypto assets while helpfully shutting down investigations into crypto companies. A DOJ spokesperson swears it was all properly "cleared" — by whom, they decline to say, presumably out of respect for the integrity of the rubber stamp. Trump didn’t stumble into this; he bulldozed the guardrails on day one. He scrapped Biden’s ethics pledge, fired 17 inspectors general, decapitated the Office of Government Ethics, and left it leaderless. Then he openly bragged that he realized nobody cared he was profiting in office, while raking in foreign-flavored crypto money and accepting a $400 million Boeing 747 from Qatar, plus nearly $1 billion in U.S. nuclear program funds to retrofit his new toy. A longtime government ethics lawyer sums it up: "Ethics is in the toilet." The White House insists this is the "most transparent administration in history" — and to be fair, they’re extremely transparent about not giving a damn. So the Golden Dome is less a missile shield and more a giant, shimmering paywall over American democracy: defense contractors, crypto whales, foreign governments, and Trump’s friends on the inside all getting a turn at the slot machine. The only thing being intercepted and destroyed here is the concept of public service.

propublica.orgSource Article Also: projects.propublica.org

#corruption#forever-grifting#killing-democracy#pro-publica-is-a-national-treasure

forever grifting

Mar 5, 12:00 AM UTC

propublica builds a pokédex for trump’s billionaires

Artist’s rendering of what it looks like when you print out $48 billion in conflicts of interest and call it ‘public service.’

ProPublica has kindly released what is essentially a field guide to the ruling class: a searchable database of financial disclosures for Donald Trump and more than 1,500 of his carefully selected oligarchs, donors, and miscellaneous yacht owners. It tallies 117,000 assets worth somewhere between $19 billion and $48 billion, because when you’re running a “populist” government, you obviously staff it like a private equity retreat in Davos.

Instead of hiding the grift, the Trump crew has simply decided to bury it in paperwork: 3,196 documents detailing who owns what, who owes what, and which ambassador to the UK just happens to be a billionaire investment guy (hi, Warren Stephens) while the Secretary of the Navy shows up with a casual $791 million. Toss in Trump at $1.4 billion, Charles Kushner sitting on half a billion, and a parade of nine-figure “public servants,” and you’ve got a government that looks less like a democracy and more like a board meeting of people deciding which country to buy next.

This database doesn’t merely show conflicts of interest; it functionally maps the ecosystem of self-dealing. Ambassadors, regulators, and cabinet officials are all perched atop investment stacks that could be directly affected by the policies they write, the contracts they award, and the regulations they dismantle. It’s like someone asked, “What if we turned the Emoluments Clause into a suggestion box?” and then Trump staffed the government with everyone who dropped a check in.

So yes, thanks to ProPublica, you too can now explore Trump’s America the way lobbyists and foreign governments do: by clicking through which billionaire is in charge of which lever of power, and how much they personally stand to gain when policy magically aligns with their portfolios. Drain the swamp apparently meant ‘post the water quality report online and then sell the swamp to your friends.’

projects.propublica.orgSource Article

#forever-grifting#corruption#pro-publica-is-a-national-treasure

Wednesday, March 4, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 4, 10:39 PM UTC

trump solves energy crisis with a vibes-based ai pledge

Behold: a giant energy-sucking data center pretending to be a cost-of-living policy.

The White House hauled in Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI for a ceremonial signing of the "ratepayer protection pledge," a document that appears to be legally binding only in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The companies solemnly promised to "build, bring or buy" new power generation for their AI data centers, pay for some infrastructure, and negotiate rates with utilities — all the things they were largely doing anyway, now rebranded as a bold Trump initiative to save your electric bill. Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are insisting the US will lead the AI boom and not raise electricity prices, which is a brave claim given that residential prices already went up 6% in 2025, the grid is being chewed up by data centers, and there's a shooting war with Iran rattling global energy markets. But don't worry, the administration says, Big Tech will cover it — somehow — through a pledge that state regulators, grid operators, and basic reality have not agreed to participate in. Even energy policy experts are politely screaming that this looks like a stunt, noting the multiple layers of government and regulation that make enforcement a fantasy. Trump, for his part, admits the tech giants "need some PR help" as local communities revolt against their power-hungry server farms. So the administration has graciously provided them with a taxpayer-funded PR backdrop, a fake solution to a real cost-of-living crisis, and a talking point for rallies where he can still claim he'll cut energy bills in half while the numbers on everyone’s utility statement do the exact opposite.

bbc.comSource Article Also: theguardian.com

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Monday, March 2, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 2, 10:10 PM UTC

florida spends $1.2m a day on everglades gitmo and might never get the grift refund

Artist’s rendering of fiscal conservatism: a half-submerged gulag in the Everglades slowly sinking under $1.2 million a day in "law and order" receipts.

Ron DeSantis decided the Everglades needed fewer panthers and more prison camps, so he burned through $1.2 million of taxpayer money per day to open and run "Alligator Alcatraz"—a remote immigration jail planned, built, and operated in near-total secrecy. The state grabbed a barely used airport on ancestral Indigenous land via executive order and "emergency" powers, then started quietly flying in preferred contractors like it was a friends-and-donors clearance sale. This masterclass in cruelty somehow managed to be financially incompetent too. DeSantis bragged on X that Florida would be reimbursed by the feds, only for his own former chief of staff–turned–unelected attorney general James Uthmeier to now admit in court that the supposed FEMA money was always just "likely"—translation: they took a verbal promise from the Trump administration and treated it like a signed check. The Justice Department has since pointed out minor details like "grant rules" and "you can’t bill FEMA for your secret gulag construction," meaning Florida could be stuck with at least $608 million in costs for its Everglades deportation fantasy camp. When environmental and civil rights groups sued, a federal judge ordered the jail shut down on the grounds that DeSantis’s own claim of federal funding triggered stricter environmental laws. That victory lasted about five minutes, until an appeals panel—featuring a judge whose husband’s company does extensive business with the DeSantis administration—stepped in to rescue the project by agreeing it was all state-funded, therefore less regulated. Meanwhile, reporting has exposed murky finances and tens of millions in no-bid, quietly awarded contracts to the governor’s political allies, while advocates describe the whole operation as a stew of lawlessness, abductions, and deportations that’s "corroded trust in our government." DeSantis promised competence and hard-nosed leadership; what Florida got was Alligator Alcatraz: an eco-disaster, a human rights embarrassment, and a very expensive campaign ad that can’t be refunded.

theguardian.comSource Article

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Sunday, March 1, 2026

forever grifting

Mar 1, 11:00 AM UTC

trump’s clown car cabinet keeps all four wheels off the ground

The Trump cabinet gathers in prayer, presumably asking God to cover what the inspectors general are about to uncover.

Trump’s second-term cabinet has apparently decided to speedrun every previous administration’s scandals in one go, but with less competence and more cocaine. The State of the Union opened with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard leading a prayer circle, because when your national security team is a vibes-based faith healing operation, you really do need divine intervention.

From there, it’s straight downhill into the grease fire. Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr brags on tape about snorting cocaine off toilet seats while running federal health policy. Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem is busy turning anti-immigration crackdowns into a body count in Minneapolis, and allegedly getting a Coast Guard pilot fired because her personal blanket was left on a government plane. Over at Justice, attorney general Pam Bondi responds to questions about Trump’s name in the Epstein files by calling him “the greatest president in American history” and demanding everyone talk about the stock market instead, which is definitely how innocent people behave.

National security is in excellent hands too: defense secretary Pete Hegseth shared exact warplane launch times and bombing schedules for Yemen over Signal, accidentally including journalist Jeffrey Goldberg on the group chat. Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick swore he’d never be in a room with Epstein again, then popped over to Epstein’s private island for lunch – and now even Trump is annoyed that the Lutnick clan is profiteering so nakedly off the presidential brand, which is like Bernie Madoff telling you to tone down the Ponzi. Labor secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is under inspector general investigation for allegedly sleeping with a subordinate on her security detail, drinking on the job, and using department funds as her personal travel card, while her husband has been banned from the building over sexual assault allegations from staff.

Veteran observers note that Trump’s first-term cabinet at least had a few semi-functional adults; this time it’s pure loyalty cult. The result is a government that looks less like an administration and more like a rejected "Veep" script where every subplot involves corruption, incompetence, or both. As one critic put it: if you elect a clown, you get the circus. Trump just skipped the part where you pretend the ringmaster knows what he’s doing.

theguardian.comSource Article

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Friday, February 27, 2026

forever grifting

Feb 27, 2:00 PM UTC

trump epa to americans: have you tried not living near explosions?

Firefighters bravely responding to yet another preventable inferno, brought to you by the Free Market and friends at the Trump EPA.

The Trump administration is lovingly taking a sledgehammer to the federal system designed to stop chemical plants from turning neighborhoods into real-time disaster movies. The EPA’s Risk Management Program, which covers over 12,500 high-risk facilities and was supposed to protect workers, first responders, and the people who had the bad luck to be born near a refinery, is being "streamlined" in the same way a building is "remodeled" by arson.

Industry whined in 2025 that Biden’s 2024 strengthened rules were too expensive, and the Trump EPA — stacked with former industry lobbyists, because of course it is — is now racing to kill most of those protections. They already shut down the public website that let communities and first responders know which toxic chemicals are stored nearby, because if there’s one thing this crowd hates, it’s people having information that might keep them alive. The White House is also targeting the Chemical Safety Board, the tiny agency that investigates disasters and suggests ways not to blow up the same town twice. Too effective, clearly.

This is all happening in a country that’s had a chemical accident harming humans or the environment about every other day for two decades, featuring fun highlights like a steel plant explosion in Clairton, Pennsylvania, and an oil facility blast in Louisiana that redecorated homes with crude oil from 20 miles away. Biden’s rules would have required basic stuff like leak-detection tech, fire suppression, accessible kill switches, automatic shutoffs, safer chemicals, and plans for when hurricanes hit chemical plants — you know, the thing that actually already happened at Arkema during Hurricane Harvey, when first responders were doused in toxic fumes they weren’t warned about.

The Trump EPA insists it’s "strengthening" the law by making it more "workable" for industry, keeping "core protections" while cutting "duplicative" and "unproven" requirements — which is a poetic way of saying: we’re keeping the press release and throwing out the safety measures. About 180 million people live within a few miles of these facilities, but the administration has done the math and decided that explosions are cheaper than prevention, as long as the people breathing the smoke aren’t donors.

theguardian.comSource Article Also: theguardian.com Also: theguardian.com

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