The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Texas Republicans are having a very normal, healthy internal debate: should their Senate nominee be John Cornyn, who brags that he votes with Trump 99% of the time, or Ken Paxton, the state attorney general who was impeached on bribery and corruption charges, survived thanks to friendly senators, and is now being marketed as a persecuted MAGA folk hero? For variety, there’s also Rep. Wesley Hunt, who is pitching himself as a "bridge" to the next generation of Trumpism, because apparently what this country needs is more structurally unsound infrastructure.

Cornyn has spent nearly $70 million trying to convince primary voters that he’s sufficiently Trumpy, airing ads touting his border hawkery and his near-perfect record of obedience. His problem? He once briefly suggested that maybe Trump’s time had passed and that the classified documents charges were "very serious" — unforgivable sins in a party where the only crime is acknowledging crimes. Paxton, meanwhile, shrugs off his impeachment, divorce "on biblical grounds," and assorted scandals while his supporters insist he’s just like Trump, which, distressingly, is not meant as an indictment.

Trump, ever the chaos connoisseur, is staying "neutral" and says he supports all three, because why pick one when you can own the entire moral collapse? Cornyn warns that nominating Paxton could cost Republicans the seat and other Texas battlegrounds, while the base wonders why they should settle for a mere 99% loyalist when they can have a man whose defining qualification is being too ethically radioactive for even Texas Republicans to fully launder. The GOP’s transformation is complete: policy is background noise, and the real contest is who can crawl the farthest into Trump’s shadow while pretending it’s sunlight.

The Department of Homeland Security, traditionally tasked with things like "security" and "homeland", has decided its real priority is cutting a $250,000 check to a brand-new Trumpworld consultancy whose main qualification is being extremely MAGA on TV. The contract was posted, bids were due the next day, and the work description literally demanded that the winner have a “track record of promoting Trump administration policies in the media.” Federal procurement rules say contracts must be awarded with “complete impartiality and preferential treatment for none,” so DHS helpfully wrote the violation directly into the posting, just to save investigators some time.

Four days later, the money lands with American Made Media Company, a fresh-off-the-assembly-line Republican political consulting shop run by Trump campaign veterans Sean Dollman, Nick Trainer, and Justin Clark – the same Justin Clark who helped Trump fight Congress’s attempts to get January 6 records. The firm has no real history of government work, but it does have a deep history of getting paid by Trump; Dollman previously ran the shell company that quietly processed $782m in 2020 campaign spending. Now these guys will be paid with your tax dollars to provide “strategic counsel” to Kristi Noem, pick media outlets that are “aligned with DHS priorities,” and craft talking points for border crackdowns and immigration enforcement. So yes, the federal government is now openly financing the propaganda arm of Trump’s political machine.

Overseeing this very normal, not-at-all-corrupt arrangement: Corey Lewandowski, now Kristi Noem’s chief adviser and apparently the department’s unofficial contracts czar. According to FEMA and DHS officials, six-figure contracts now flow through the secretary’s office, where Noem and Lewandowski get a much bigger say than is standard. Watchdogs and procurement experts are practically blinking in Morse code for "this is corrupt as hell": a 31-hour bid window, an obviously preselected winner, and a written requirement that the contractor be pro-Trump. One expert called it a “blazing red flag” and said she’d never seen anything this brazen in 20 years. The DHS spokesperson, meanwhile, assures everyone that the process reflected “transparency” and “maximum competition,” which is an interesting way to describe a contest where the rules were basically: must love Trump, must be friends with Corey, must enjoy long walks on the beach and light violations of federal acquisition regulations.

Trump’s latest idea of a surgeon general is Dr. Casey Means, a wellness influencer whose medical license has taken the same path as Republican integrity: it expired and nobody bothered to renew it. She also never finished residency, which traditionally is a small, optional detail before you’re put in charge of issuing health advisories to 330 million people and overseeing a uniformed corps that literally requires active licenses. But don’t worry, she has a robust background in Instagram, supplements, and telling people birth control has "horrifying health risks" and that vaccines are overburdening children — claims that, unlike her, did not complete a residency in reality.

The nomination is brought to you by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine crusader who now runs federal health policy like it’s a Substack comment section. In just one year, RFK Jr. has fired top health officials, gutted the childhood vaccine schedule during a measles outbreak, and kneecapped mRNA research — and now he’s recommending his former campaign adviser and wellness co-architect to be "America’s Doctor." Meanwhile, Means previously sold teas, supplements, and other miracle trinkets online without consistently disclosing she might profit, and co-founded a glucose wearable company that stands to benefit from Kennedy’s official endorsement of wearables. She’s since signed an ethics agreement promising to stop monetizing her platform, because nothing screams "trustworthy" like having to swear under oath you’ll stop trying to cash in on your followers while running public health.

Democrats on the HELP Committee are expected to ask awkward questions, like whether the surgeon general should maybe believe in vaccines during an unprecedented measles outbreak, and whether the nation’s top doctor should have, say, an active medical license. The administration’s response so far: her "public life" and "research background" give her the right insights. Apparently, years of actual clinical practice and scientific consensus are for suckers, and the new standard for high office is "popular on wellness podcasts" and "once co-wrote a book saying doctors don’t know about sleep and vegetables." The Trump–RFK Jr. health strategy is clear: dismantle evidence-based medicine, replace it with vibes and wearables, and hope herd immunity can be achieved through brand engagement.

Donald Trump pardoned Binance founder and convicted money launderer Changpeng Zhao because, as he helpfully explained, "what he did was not even a crime" — unless you count the part where he pled guilty in federal court and agreed to pay $50m. Now internal Binance investigators say the exchange may have helped move billions to Iranian-linked entities, including Houthi militants, via more than 1,500 Iran-accessed accounts in 2024–2025. Two accounts alone allegedly shuffled $1.7bn to groups tied to a country the Trump administration is reportedly planning to strike. Truly a seamless integration of foreign policy and organized crime.

The Binance staffers who found this pesky "possible sanctions violation" problem say they dutifully reported it up the chain — and then found themselves disciplined, fired, or suspended for supposed "violations of company protocol" over how they handled client data. Binance, naturally, denies both violating sanctions and punishing whistleblowers, which should reassure everyone who also believes in honest crypto billionaires and the Tooth Fairy’s NFT collection.

Crucially, all this was allegedly discovered before Trump decided Zhao was an innocent victim of the Biden deep state and gifted him a pardon at the request of "a lot of very good people" — a category that apparently includes business partners. Trump’s family crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, has been working with Binance, and Zhao just recently swanned through a Mar-a-Lago conference like a VIP rewards member in the Money Launderers Club. The White House, shockingly, had no comment on why the president pardoned a guy whose platform may have been shoveling cash to militants his own administration might soon bomb.

The Department of Homeland Security has apparently decided that if you’re going to run a mass deportation machine, you might as well do it from a flying country club. DHS is eyeing a $70m Boeing 737-8 Max with a queen bed, showers, a kitchen, four big flat-screens, and a bar – officially for ICE deportation flights, but also, very coincidentally, for ferrying Trump administration VIPs to their Very Important Photo Ops in maximum comfort.

The problem? Normal ICE deportation flights move over 100 shackled detainees plus guards and medical staff. This jet maxes out at 18 passengers and sleeps 14, which is great if your mission is “flying cabinet slumber party,” less great if you’re pretending this is about operational efficiency. Even DHS officials are reportedly calling the dual-use fantasy “far-fetched,” which is bureaucrat-speak for “this is obviously a grift.”

A DHS spokesperson gamely insists they’re converting at least one bedroom into seating to meet the “deportation mission set” and that the plane is 40% cheaper than using military aircraft, which is a bold claim given that it currently has a bar. This airborne Ritz-Carlton is also being sold as part of secretary Kristi Noem’s crusade to “save taxpayer dollars,” a fascinating rebrand for the same Kristi Noem who was just censured by House Democrats for blowing $200m on a pair of Gulfstream jets for herself and her deputy during a government shutdown.

So yes, the administration is tightening its belt on waste and abuse – by consolidating deportations and luxury travel into one convenient forever-grifting package. Shackled migrants in the back, Trump officials up front with cocktails and flat-screens. Truly, a model of fiscal responsibility.

The internal memo for the newly rebranded Trump-Kennedy Center reveals that the grand "revitalization" of America's flagship arts institution is, shockingly, not a bold new cultural vision but mostly new carpets, marble armrests, and a paint job. The Concert Hall is getting replaced seating, marble armrests that Trump bragged were "unlike anything ever done or seen before!" on Truth Social, fresh carpeting, and "strategic painting" — because nothing says world-class art like casino-adjacent interior design.

While the PR shop swears the Center has been "completely transparent" and insists this is all about "saving the building" and "transforming America's cultural center into a world-class destination," the actual world-class artists have already left. Performers canceled in droves over Trump’s politicization of the arts, the Washington National Opera bailed over a "financially challenging relationship" with current leadership, and ticket sales have tanked since Trump took over as chairman — even before the board obediently stapled his name onto the building in December.

Meanwhile, the Grand Foyer, Hall of States, and Hall of Nations are ditching their classic red for "black with a gold pattern" — a bold new aesthetic best described as "Air Force One meets Vegas buffet." Those carpets and furnishings were already redone two years ago without shutting the place down, but now the Center is closed while Trumpworld pretends this is all about HVAC, safety upgrades, and "enhancing the patron experience." Whether these modest repairs are the whole plan or just the appetizer for a larger monument to one man’s ego? The Kennedy Center won’t say. But hey, at least the armrests will be fabulous.

Donald Trump has discovered a bold new frontier in "national defense": protecting Bayer’s right to sell a cancer-linked weedkiller without being annoyed by all those pesky dying people. By invoking the Defense Production Act, he’s declared domestic phosphorus mining and glyphosate herbicide production – yes, Roundup – to be critical national security infrastructure, and then helpfully attached a liability shield so producers get immunity for anything they do while complying with his order. The Pentagon gets nukes, farmers get carcinogens, and Bayer gets a get-out-of-court-free card. America First, tumor biopsies second.

The executive order reads like it was faxed directly from a Bayer conference room, then run through ChatGPT: Defense Edition. It never mentions that WHO cancer experts and multiple independent studies have linked glyphosate to cancer, nor that Bayer is currently drowning in tens of thousands of lawsuits and multi-billion dollar payouts over exactly that. Instead, the White House insists that the real threat to US security isn’t, say, climate chaos or pandemics, but the hypothetical scenario where a German agrochemical giant might have to stop selling one specific weedkiller because juries keep believing the people who got sick.

Even better, Trump is managing to betray his own cranks. The Make America Healthy Again coalition – the wellness-flavored wing of Trumpworld that hates glyphosate – is furious, accusing him of making a mockery of the voters who bought the whole "toxic food system is killing America" pitch. Robert F Kennedy Jr, now Trump’s HHS secretary and long-time Roundup critic, responded by dutifully reading the hostage note about how this all "puts America first" on defense and food supply. Apparently the new Maha diet is kale, supplements, and a federally protected dose of herbicide.

Buried in the order is the real gift: it "confers all immunity" under section 707 of the Defense Production Act, which literally says no one can be held liable for any act taken to comply with such an order. That’s not regulation; that’s a corporate sacrament. While families poisoned by pesticides ask what happens to them, Trump answers clearly: they’re not "national security". Bayer’s production line is. The state’s coercive power is now a legal force field around a weedkiller, because under Trump, the only thing more sacred than the military is the balance sheet of whoever last called him a genius on Fox Business.