The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

America has finally looked at the gold-plated elephant in the room and said: yeah, this guy’s just here for the cash. A new Washington Post-ABC poll finds 66% of Americans think Donald Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself — including a third of Republicans, who appear to have noticed that their “new golden age” mostly involves Trump getting the gold and everyone else getting the age. His approval rating has sunk to 33%, which is what happens when you promise prosperity and then deliver vibes and legal bills.

The public mood is so bleak that 48% say they’re financially worse off than when Trump clawed his way back into office in 2025, the worst reading in this polling series since 1986. Meanwhile, 67% say he’s not committed to protecting freedom of the press, following his attempt to ban CNN, MS Now, and Politico from the White House grounds until a federal judge explained that the First Amendment is not, in fact, optional. Another 61% say he’s not committed to free and fair elections, which is what you get when the DOJ sues California for not handing over citizenship data on 20,000 alleged non-citizens while refusing to explain how they even made the list.

So as Trump jets off to Kansas and a parade of other states to campaign for embattled Republicans, he’s basically touring the country to ask voters: Sure, you’re poorer, democracy’s shakier, and the press is under siege — but have you considered how much richer he feels?

Donald Trump has signed an executive order suspending federal diesel taxes to "help farmers," because nothing says serious economic policy like turning the federal tax code into a campaign raffle. The catch: states are already warning drivers they may still owe those taxes later, meaning this "tax cut" is more like a tax time bomb with a MAGA sticker on it.

So for now, truckers and farmers get to guess whether they're enjoying a real break or just a delayed bill from the IRS and state revenue offices, while federal highway funding and infrastructure budgets hold a quiet funeral offstage. The administration gets a talking point on Fox about how Trump "cut diesel taxes for the forgotten American farmer," and the part where people might be stuck with a surprise tax tab down the road can be safely ignored until after the election. Governance by stunt, consequences by fine print.

The Trump administration has finally solved airport security: not by fixing screening, staffing, or pay, but by confiscating every chair from TSA travel document stations. The official line is that “maintaining a standing posture” reinforces professionalism and hospitality, because nothing says "welcome to America" like watching underpaid workers slowly develop joint problems while you take off your shoes.

Curiously, Border Patrol and Customs officers still get to sit, probably because their job description has more "menacing" and less "hospitality" in it. Meanwhile, the US continues its grand tradition of forcing low-wage workers—TSA agents, supermarket cashiers, anyone not rich enough to own a PAC—to stand all day, backed by a toxic cocktail of Protestant work ethic cosplay and nonexistent labor protections. Aldi lets cashiers sit because it’s more efficient, which in the American context qualifies as radical leftism.

While everyone else is ordered to “maintain a standing posture,” the president is frequently photographed looking like he’s about to fall asleep at the Resolute desk, presumably recovering from another all-night meme bender. TSA agents, on the other hand, have enjoyed the privilege of working without pay during Trump-era shutdowns, because in this system, the people guarding airports are essentially volunteers, while members of Congress kept drawing their salaries unless they made a special show of declining them. The message from the ruling class is clear: the only ones allowed to sit down are the people sitting on everyone else.

The Trump administration decided Washington, D.C. didn’t have enough concrete, so the National Park Service spent Saturday turning East Potomac Golf Links into a giant stump museum — felling hundreds of trees on a historic public course as part of Trump’s grand plan to remodel it to his liking. They called it a “tree management and cultural landscape rehabilitation project,” which is a very elegant way of saying “we clear-cut the place so the guy in charge can have nicer fairways.”

There was one tiny problem: U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes had already told them, repeatedly, to give the court and preservation groups advance notice before doing anything drastic. So DOJ helpfully filed notice late Friday, then sent in the chainsaws Saturday. By Monday, Reyes spent nearly four hours roasting Justice Department lawyer Marissa Piropato for this stunt, telling her, “You did not do your best. You did your absolute worst,” and flatly declaring that the government had “lost credibility.” When a federal judge is talking to DOJ like a disappointed middle-school principal, things are going amazing.

Reyes has now ordered a two-week halt on any further tree removals and demanded that Interior and NPS brass — including the superintendent of the National Mall, the NPS acting director, and a deputy chief of staff at Interior — show up and explain who greenlit turning 430 trees into mulch over a weekend. So the administration managed to convert a public park, a federal agency, and the Justice Department into accessories for Trump’s golf vanity — and still couldn’t follow the basic rule of “tell the judge before you start swinging the axe.” Government by golf cart continues to deliver.