trump invents ‘trump accounts,’ discovers debt doesn’t count if your name’s on it
Trump in a Georgia high school gym explaining that national debt is bad, except when it’s his, and that the solution to unaffordable living costs is a branded investment account for babies.
Donald Trump went to a Georgia high school – a fitting venue, given the maturity level of his economic pitch – to announce that "affordability" is just a Democrat word, like "reality" or "math". He mocked the idea that voters care about being able to pay their bills, then spent the rest of the rally bragging about all the affordable wonders of his economic policies. Gas is back over $4 a gallon thanks to his Iran war, but don’t worry, he says prices are "coming down very rapidly actually" – somewhere, in some dimension, probably one with unicorns and a functioning ethics office.
The big rollout was "Trump accounts": federally seeded, tax-free investment accounts for every baby born through 2028, stocked with $1,000 of public money and a lifetime supply of branding. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent called it the "triumph of capitalism over socialism", which is an interesting way to describe the federal government cutting everyone a check and shoving it into Wall Street. Georgia GOP gubernatorial candidate and billionaire Rick Jackson heroically promised to personally match the state’s $1,000 contribution if the legislature balks, because nothing says small government like a $3bn medical staffing mogul buying the state’s baby policy.
Trump, who added about $8tn to the national debt in his first term and is cheerfully on pace to keep the tab running, solemnly declared that for decades Washington gave kids "absolutely nothing but debt" – then used that line to justify another $17bn program named after himself. At the same time, his allies in Congress were busy voting to fund his Iran adventure, which is driving those same gas prices he insists are someone else’s fault. And just to round out the fantasy, he repeated his claim that his policies have drawn $19.2tn in investment pledges, a number so fake even the Cato Institute is begging him to stop lying. But sure, the real problem is that Democrats said the word "affordability" out loud.
#forever-grifting#money#killing-democracy
america’s first fully monetized presidency
Donald Trump, 45th and 47th President of the United States, seen here workshopping new ways to turn national security decisions into loyalty points for his personal balance sheet.
Democrats are being politely encouraged to maybe, possibly, mention that the sitting president has turned the Oval Office into a $2.2bn side hustle while everyone else is choosing between groceries and gas. Trump’s second term has been less a presidency and more a live‑action MasterClass in corruption, featuring everything from a $1.4bn crypto windfall to pardons handed out to families who just happen to shovel cash into his campaign.
The article walks through the highlight reel: Trump denounces crypto as a scam, then launches his own crypto empire with his sons, gets a secret $500m stake from a UAE royal, and promptly greenlights AI chip sales that national security officials hate. He mints $636m off $TRUMP meme coins while nearly a million of his own supporters lose $3.8bn as the token nukes 97% of its value. Meanwhile, his administration guts crypto oversight, shutters the enforcement unit, and drops fraud cases, because why regulate the casino when the house is the president? All this on top of foreign gifts that laugh in the face of the emoluments clause. Teapot Dome looks like a bake sale; this is full‑scale, pay‑to‑play government as personal enrichment fund.
The kicker: experts say it’s not just the most corrupt presidency in US history, it’s approaching world‑historical levels. But sure, let’s have another Very Serious Debate about whether it’s rude to call this what it is: a billionaire using state power to loot the country while his base buys his coins and his merch and watches their savings evaporate. Winning.
#forever-grifting#corruption#money
trump epa decides poison is fine if it’s mostly on farms
EPA officials bravely defending America’s right to eat PFAS-laced sewage, as long as the waste industry’s profits stay clean.
The Trump EPA looked at scientific research showing that PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge used as fertilizer is sickening farmers, killing livestock, poisoning water, and contaminating food, and decided the real problem was… the science. So they helpfully threw out their own draft health risk assessment that said anything above 1 part per billion raises cancer and other health risks, because that would have basically ended the sludge gravy train. Instead, the agency now claims sludge isn’t a "wide threat" since it’s mostly used on farms and only on a "small" percentage of cropland — a statistic they pulled from somewhere between "we don’t track this" and "the waste management lobby’s wish list".
Having decided that farmers’ lives are a rounding error, EPA’s new guidance tells the public to "research" sludge companies themselves if they’re worried about buying PFAS-laced home fertilizer. You read that right: the federal government is openly saying, "We’re not going to regulate this toxic mess, so good luck, Google it." Meanwhile, states like Maine and Michigan keep finding PFAS in every sludge sample, public health groups calculate that dozens of kids out of every 1,000 drinking milk from sludge-contaminated farms could get cancer, and organic farmers discover their "clean" soil has been quietly marinating in forever chemicals for decades. But the waste industry hates regulation, so the Trump administration is obligingly tossing science, farmers, and rural communities under the nearest sludge truck.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
qatar’s sky-palace gets sent to the chop shop
Trump’s Qatari sky-palace, seen here pretending to be an airplane and not a diplomatic bribe with wings.
Donald Trump’s Qatari-gifted sky-yacht — excuse me, temporary Air Force One — is apparently headed back to the shop to get “maxed out,” because nothing says serious national security planning like treating the presidential aircraft as a tuner car from a reality show. After weeks of questions about whether the foreign-royal-family freebie has actual missile-defense systems or just extra gold trim, Trump now says it’ll be gone for about a month for unspecified upgrades. Very reassuring that the commander in chief describes hardening against surface-to-air missiles the same way people talk about upgrading their Xbox.
The Secret Service already forced a reality check earlier this month, quietly telling him to ditch the Qatar jet and fly home from Turkey on the older, actually-battle-tested Air Force One once hostilities with Iran resumed. Publicly, Trump insisted there were no security issues, while also bragging that he’s “No. 1 on the kill list for Iran” — a sentence that really makes you want the plane to be more than a flying casino with wings.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department helpfully reminded everyone where this administration’s real priorities lie by subpoenaing four New York Times reporters who wrote about the plane’s security problems. Can’t have the public knowing their president is cruising around in a foreign-donated jumbo jet that might be long on chandeliers and short on countermeasures. The Qatar 747 was already being sold as a “flying White House at a level of luxury no one has ever seen before”; turns out the only thing getting maxed out isn’t security — it’s the corruption, the conflicts of interest, and the war on anyone who points that out.
#forever-grifting#national-security
trump airport rebrand stuck on the tarmac, still billing taxpayers
Artist’s rendering of Palm Beach airport’s new look: half "Donald Trump International," half "please don’t cut the safety budget for this."
Florida has decided that what an aging, storm-prone state really needs isn’t resilient infrastructure or functioning public services, but a gold-plated shrine to Donald Trump. Ron DeSantis signed a law forcing Palm Beach County to rename its airport after Trump, then generously tossed in only half the $5.5m needed for the makeover. The county, which never wanted this in the first place and voted 4–3 under clear political pressure to approve a trademark deal with the Trump Organization, is now being told to dig into its own airport budget to finish the job. You know, the same budget that’s supposed to fund safety and capital improvements across four airports.
The result is a perfectly Trumpian compromise: the highway signs scream "President Donald J Trump International Airport" and the website is fully MAGA-fied, but inside the terminals you still see the old Palm Beach International name clinging on like a stubborn fact in a Fox News segment. Officials are talking about a "phased approach" while everyone else hears: we’re going to quietly raid operations and capital funds later and pray nobody notices. Meanwhile, a retired pilot is suing over the safety risks of changing the long-established PBI code to DJT, and a trademark attorney is challenging the whole scheme. So the public gets confusion, legal bills, and degraded infrastructure, while Trump gets a branded runway for "Trump Force One" and a fresh revenue stream. Truly, the people’s airport.
This is not governance, it’s state-mandated product placement. DeSantis uses the power of the state to force a local government to promote the sitting president’s private brand, county officials openly admit they feared the consequences of saying no, and now critical funds might be diverted from actual aviation needs to pay for Trump’s ego therapy. It’s the perfect encapsulation of the Trump era: the runway might be safe, but the line between public service and personal enrichment has completely crashed and burned.
#forever-grifting#corruption
trump turns u.s. economy into a $trump casino
Trump proudly unveiling $Trump coin, the first currency backed entirely by vibes, lawsuits, and unsecured campaign debt.
Donald Trump apparently looked at the 2008 financial crisis and thought: needs more memes. During his first year back in office, he personally hauled in $2.2bn, with $1.2bn coming from crypto schemes that make subprime mortgages look like municipal bonds. He launched "World Liberty Financial" – a name that practically screams "definitely not a money-laundering vehicle" – and then sold 49% of it to a UAE-linked firm for $500m while calling it policy, not a payoff. His $Trump memecoin vaporized nearly $4bn from his own supporters and somehow left him up over $600m. MAGA means Make Accountants Grieve Again.
Regulators who might have objected were promptly shoved in a locker. Trump killed the SEC's crypto-enforcement program, shut down lawsuits and investigations, and got the DOJ to publicly holster its money-laundering probes of crypto platforms. Then, with campaign coffers stuffed full of digital monopoly money, Congress obligingly passed the Genius Act – yes, really – wiring inherently shaky "stablecoins" directly into the regular banking system where normal people keep their paychecks. No FDIC insurance, lots of Wall Street "innovation", and hundreds of private tokens all promising they're worth a dollar while quietly hunting for riskier, higher-yield assets like it's 2006 and no one has heard the phrase "systemic risk".
Now Mastercard, Citi, JPMorgan and every bored retailer with a legal department can roll out their own dollar-pegged casino chips, while Trump frantically pushes the so-called Clarity Act to give the rest of the crypto circus a regulatory hall pass. Economists are out here waving red flags, yelling that this is how you build the next financial collapse, and the administration is replying with "number go up" and a fresh NFT drop. The checks and balances that were supposed to stop a president from openly profiteering off money launderers and Gulf princes are standing in the corner, wondering if the supreme court will just label all of this an "official act" and call it a day.
#forever-grifting#money#killing-democracy
state department discovers human rights, decides they mostly belong to white conservatives in europe
A 27-year-old former "America First" fundraiser cosplaying as a senior diplomat, smiling like he just discovered you can launder culture-war politics through the human rights budget.
For decades, the State Department’s human rights shop funded groups documenting torture, rape, and political violence in actual authoritarian hellholes. Then the Trump administration looked at that mission and thought: what if we redirected this to culture‑war cosplay in rich countries instead? Political appointees handed staff a pre-cooked list of at least a dozen pet organizations and tried to funnel them taxpayer money through no-bid or limited-bid grants, neatly bypassing the boring "open competition" rules designed to prevent corruption. Because why have experts scoring proposals when you can have ideologues handing out checks to their friends?
Among the lucky would‑be recipients: a British “free speech” outfit fighting bans on gay conversion therapy, and an Afrikaner group led by a guy calling for self-governance for South Africa’s white minority. Also on the menu: a $4.9 million program to build "civilizational self-confidence in Europe"—a phrase that sounds less like human rights work and more like a focus group-tested slogan for the next great transatlantic identitarian meetup. A separate grant to a Judeo‑Christian "civilisational mission" think tank in the UK only died after Congress noticed and asked why U.S. human rights money was being used to underwrite someone’s theological vibes.
All this is being shepherded by 27-year-old deputy assistant secretary Samuel Samson, a former fundraiser for an "America First" pipeline-to-government group who now apparently runs foreign human rights policy like it’s a campus conservative conference. Instead of competitive, transparent grants to frontline NGOs in dangerous places, Samson & friends are trying to sole-source money into high-income Western countries—something so unusual it normally requires special waivers the department won’t say whether it even bothered to get. Lawmakers from both parties are alarmed, experts are saying this crosses a "Rubicon," and the State Department’s response is basically: don’t worry, the process is ongoing and we pinky swear everyone will meet "all requirements and standards."
So the bureau that once funded people documenting secret prisons and mass graves is now flirting with bankrolling culture-war projects for European right-wingers and white-ethnostate nostalgists, via opaque grant mechanisms and political litmus tests. It’s less "defending human rights" and more subsidizing the international MAGA movement with the foreign aid budget. But yes, tell us again how this is about "natural rights" and "civilizational struggle," and not about turning U.S. diplomacy into a Patreon for the global far right.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
even the teleprompter guy is insider trading now
A staffer lovingly polishes the official White House Money Printer, sometimes known as the teleprompter.
At long last, someone has figured out how to monetize Trump's word salad besides Fox News and the MyPillow guy. Federal regulators are in settlement talks with Gabriel Perez, Trump's longtime teleprompter operator, who allegedly turned his front-row seat to the president's prepared remarks into nearly $100,000 on prediction market site Kalshi. Perez is accused of using his advance access to Trump's speeches to bet on "mention markets" — yes, there is an entire financial ecosystem devoted to whether the president will say things like "Hormuz," "rigged election," or "fake news." American decline, but make it fintech.
This is reportedly the first time a White House insider has been probed for abusing their access for prediction-market profit, which is impressive considering this administration treats ethics memos like spam emails. Kalshi's surveillance system noticed that someone with a federal email address was oddly good at guessing which words Trump would say, froze about $90,000 of Perez's profits, and handed the case to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The White House, for its part, quietly sent staff a memo in March warning them not to use nonpublic information to bet on Kalshi or Polymarket — apparently the bare minimum reminder that "don't commit commodities fraud off the president's ad-libs" now has to be put in writing.
Regulators say this kind of thing can amount to wire fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering, though it's not clear if DOJ has decided to wake up and look at the case yet. Meanwhile, traders are still pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into guessing what random noun will fall out of Trump's mouth next, while the guy literally running the teleprompter allegedly tried to front-run them all. It's a perfect snapshot of the Trump era: a presidency so corrupt and unserious that even the person scrolling the words is allegedly turning it into a side hustle — and the real scandal is that he wasn't already running an official "America First Mentions PAC" to do it legally.
#forever-grifting#corruption#money
swing voters discover they’re fine with a $2.2 billion side hustle in the oval office
President Trump arrives in Carlisle, Pa., to give a speech and check on his favorite small business: the Trump Organization.
Donald Trump’s latest financial disclosure helpfully confirms what everyone already knew: the presidency is just the world’s most prestigious influencer deal. His family businesses pulled in about $2.2 billion last year, much of it from crypto, because nothing says “stable republican government” like your head of state moonlighting as a coin-flipping casino boss while sitting on top of state secrets.
The fun part? A Pennsylvania focus group of 12 swing voters looked at that number and collectively shrugged. Half said they were troubled; the other half basically went, "Eh, that’s just what rich guys and politicians do." One voter literally described Trump as a “known huckster” and then proceeded to treat that as an acceptable job qualification for president, like being bilingual or proficient in Excel.
Moderator Rich Thau politely called this "extremely cynical" and noted that these are voters with “remarkably low” expectations for ethics. That’s one way to describe people who hear "the president is running his private business empire and getting a crypto windfall while in office" and respond with "well at least it’s not insider trading—that we know of." The whole thing is a case study in how you normalize corruption: turn it into background noise until voters decide it’s just part of the scenery, like potholes or Marjorie Taylor Greene.
So yes, the sitting president openly runs his businesses, uses the presidency as a branding accelerator, and emerges billions richer, while voters who once cared about "draining the swamp" now calmly explain that everyone’s corrupt, so why not stick with the guy who’s already perfected the grift. American democracy isn’t being stolen; it’s being written off as a cost of doing business.
#forever-grifting#corruption#killing-democracy
the swamp is fine, but we nuked the reflecting pool
Lincoln gazes out over the drained, peeling, $16 million pothole and silently wonders if the nation can get a refund.
Trump promised the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool would get a "beautiful" new “American flag blue” liner that would last a century. A month later, it’s already faded toward institutional gray, the coating is peeling, algae had a brief but glorious career, and the whole thing had to be drained like a Trump casino’s last bank account. The $1.5m “simple fix” has somehow metastasized into a more than $16m faceplant on one of the country’s most iconic public spaces.
Two private contractors cashed in: Ohio-based Green Water Solutions scored $1.7m for a purification system, and Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings walked away with a $14.7m repaint-and-waterproof job whose durability apparently rivals a Wish.com patio set. As the coating disintegrated in real time, Trump and Interior secretary Doug Burgum did what this crew always does: loudly blame vandals, insist there was a mysterious "350-foot gash" no one can see, and surround the mess with a dark fence so the public can’t inspect the president’s very special version of infrastructure week.
On paper, there is an actual vandalism case: former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was charged after allegedly cutting the liner while, he says, examining the already peeling surface. Conveniently, this allows the administration to point at one guy with a knife instead of the entire procurement process, the quality of the work, or the wisdom of turning a historic reflecting pool into a garish campaign backdrop for the semiquincentennial. The result: taxpayers are out eight-figures, the reflecting pool looks like a neglected strip-mall fountain, and the only thing truly "American flag blue" is the language coming from Park Service staff who have to fix this fiasco again.
#forever-grifting#money
trump discovers new form of infrastructure: giant screaming server barns
Trump, furious that New York won’t immediately convert itself into one giant air‑conditioned server box, explains that real patriots prefer their water supply privatized and piped straight into AI cooling towers.
Donald Trump jumped on Truth Social to rage at New York governor Kathy Hochul for committing the unspeakable crime of… pausing construction of massive power‑sucking datacenters for a year while the state figures out how not to torch the grid or drain the water table. Hochul’s order tells regulators to set basic environmental rules; Trump’s response is that these hyperscale server barns are "Money Machines" and "LIQUID GOLD" that must be protected at all costs, like Mar‑a‑Lago classified documents but louder and thirstier.
While almost three-quarters of Americans say they don’t want a datacenter humming next to their homes, Trump is busy promising that red states will happily become sacrifice zones where AI bunkers guzzle cheap power and water in exchange for "tremendous WINS" and some highly theoretical jobs. He even manages the full set: accuse Democrats of playing politics, insist any attempt at guardrails will hand "Data Centers and AI" to China, and pretend his deregulatory agenda is about freedom, not about letting corporations rewrite zoning laws and utility policy. New York is trying to keep the lights on and the taps running; Trump’s priority is making sure the servers that generate his fan edits never have to throttle back.
#forever-grifting#anti-science
rapper discovers trump pardons are not covered by buyer protection
Jack Burkman, pictured here cosplaying as a serious operative at CPAC, later moved into his true calling: running a high-priced presidential pardon fan-fiction service.
American justice has truly entered its late-capitalism DLC phase: Louisiana rapper Boosie Badazz reportedly wired $600,000 to Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman’s lobbying outfit in 2025 for what amounts to the Deluxe MAGA Pardon Package, only to discover that the "product" never shipped. According to Notus, the firm told his lawyers that Trump had already signed the pardon and they were just waiting on the big White House reveal – a reveal that, minor detail, the White House says it never heard about.
The fight now is over whether Boosie gets $300,000 back, because apparently even in the pardon black market, there’s fine print. Burkman & Wohl insist there was no agreement to refund half the cash if the magical Trump blessing failed to materialize, while also reportedly claiming they’re basically broke. So the "clemency economy" Trump built – where millions sloshed around DC as lobbyists and fixers sold whispers of access to presidential mercy – has now spawned its own sub-genre: arbitration over non-delivered absolution.
This is all happening against the backdrop of Trump’s second-term habit of spraying out pardons to loyalists and white-collar criminals like party favors, turning a constitutional power into a VIP rewards program for the politically aligned and sufficiently liquid. You’ve got a nursing home fraudster, Joseph Schwartz, in the mix; a New York lawyer, Joshua Nass, charged in an extortion scheme tied to pardon money; and now Boosie trying to claw back six figures from two guys whose names are already shorthand for bottom-shelf political grift. The message of Trump’s America: crime might not pay, but selling proximity to presidential forgiveness sure does – at least until the arbitration filings hit.
#forever-grifting#corruption#killing-democracy
trump’s illegal tariffs just blew an $81bn hole in his ‘greatest economy’ cosplay
Donald Trump triumphantly announcing tariffs while an unseen Treasury intern quietly updates the line item labeled “refunds for illegal nonsense.”
The Trump administration’s galaxy-brain economic strategy has hit a small snag: the illegal part. After the Supreme Court shut down a big chunk of Trump’s extra tariffs in February, the US government has already had to refund a casual $81bn in tariff money this fiscal year, up from $5bn over the same period last year. Turns out when you run trade policy like a late-night infomercial – "just slap tariffs on everything, what could go wrong?" – the courts occasionally notice.
Trump had advertised his tariffs as the magic wrench that would fix everything: revive factories, strong-arm better trade deals, and, of course, shrink the deficit. Instead, the deficit is growing again, hitting $1.367tn in just the first nine months of the fiscal year, while over $1tn went to interest on the debt and the Pentagon got its usual raise. The tariffs that briefly papered over the fiscal mess are now boomeranging back as refunds, leaving taxpayers holding the bag for Trump’s illegal trade cosplay.
And because learning is for losers, the White House is already cooking up new duties to replace the temporary 10% global tariff that expires July 24, this time draped in the language of "anti-forced labor" and "excess industrial capacity." So yes, after being told by the highest court in the land that their last tariff stunt broke the law, the response is to go back to the tariff roulette wheel and spin again. Forever-grifting meets full-stupid, with the federal budget as collateral.
#forever-grifting#full-stupid
trump to small farmers: learn to code, but like, for corn
Future of American farming, moments before USDA decides her dreams are "wasteful spending" and cancels them by spreadsheet.
Donald Trump’s USDA has discovered a bold new way to help the struggling American farmer: yank away their funding mid-season and call it patriotism. In eastern Iowa, Lawrencia Rogers finally got a shot at her lifelong dream through a USDA-funded fellowship that paid a living wage, provided land, equipment, and training – so naturally the administration labeled it "wasteful" and killed the $2.5m grant because it allegedly violated their war on DEI. Nothing says "defending rural America" like canceling farmer training programs two and a half weeks after people start them.
A federal judge eventually ordered USDA to reinstate $127m in grants nationwide, but the damage was already baked into the soil: fellowships paused, curricula stalled, and small producers shoved back to square one while the agency bleeds staff and dismantles Biden-era initiatives. Meanwhile, Trump’s tariffs and his little Iran war adventure have already hammered agriculture, and small livestock and food producers say the pattern is obvious: big corporate farms get the real love, while independents get a lecture about "wasteful spending" and a boot to the face. Iowa Republicans may soon discover that when you run on being "the farmer’s best friend" and then burn down their support system, some of those farmers remember how to vote.
So yes, the self-styled champion of the heartland is presiding over a USDA that treats small farmers like a rounding error and DEI like a mortal sin. The administration’s message to young, diverse, and small-scale farmers is clear: if you wanted stability, you should’ve been a multinational agribusiness with a lobbyist instead of a person growing broccolini on an eighth of an acre.
#forever-grifting#money#trumps-america
president brands america by golfing england’s captain
Pictured: the leader of the free world conducting vital foreign relations between the 9th and 10th holes.
Harry Kane confirmed he played golf with U.S. President Donald Trump in Palm Beach about 18 months ago, describing the whole thing as "surreal" and, in what must have been the most politely diplomatic sentence of his career, praising Trump’s golf game. When the president of the United States invites you to his Florida money-laundering cosplay resort, you apparently say yes and hope the Secret Service doesn't tackle you in the bunker.
Trump, naturally, took to Truth Social to announce to the world that Kane is a "GREAT player!!!" and then immediately upgraded the relationship to "I played golf with him and I like him a lot"—the standard Trumpian path from total stranger to lifelong best friend in under 24 hours. Kane calls it a "unique experience"; for Trump it’s just another day turning the presidency into a cross between a fanboy meet-and-greet and a loyalty test conducted on a golf cart.
#forever-grifting#trumps-america
trump tries to var the world cup
Donald Trump, freshly self-appointed as assistant referee to the free world, prepares to review the World Cup on the only monitor that matters: Fox News.
With one week left in the World Cup, the planet wanted to argue about offsides, not authoritarian cosplay. Instead, Donald Trump apparently decided that the world’s biggest sporting event needed his signature blend of grievance, ego, and geopolitical chaos, parachuting into the tournament like a malfunctioning VAR system that only reviews calls affecting his brand.
Details are still emerging, but the reaction from the football world was described as "shocked" – which is impressive, because this is a sport where Sepp Blatter once ran the place and Qatar bought itself a winter World Cup. Yet Trump managed to lower the bar, reportedly turning what should have been a global celebration into another episode of What If Foreign Policy, But Petty? Whether it was leaning on hosts, inserting himself into ceremonies, or using the tournament as a campaign prop, the throughline is familiar: take a shared public institution, jam it through the Trump content mill, and leave everyone arguing about politics instead of penalties.
So while players chase the trophy, Trump chases airtime, proving once again that no stage is too international, too apolitical, or too beloved to be dragged into his never-ending need for attention. FIFA may be corrupt, but at least it usually pretends the game comes first; Trump’s contribution is to remind everyone that in his universe, everything is just another rally.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
texas rewrites the rules so elon musk can have your lunch money
Greg Abbott carefully studying broadband options before circling the one labeled “Give $110m to Elon Musk.”
Texas Republicans allegedly looked at $110m in broadband grants, saw eight fiber providers, and decided: actually, what if we just handed 99% of this to Elon Musk? State senator and Democratic AG nominee Nathan Johnson says the whole thing "sure looks" like corruption, which is a very polite way of describing a process where Greg Abbott’s office reportedly rewrote the rules to favor low-Earth-orbit satellites and, surprise, the world’s richest Trump fanboy just happened to be standing there with a collection plate.
The Texas Broadband Development Office admitted under questioning that the changes came at Abbott’s request, while eight fiber companies complained they were effectively cut out of the new scheme. Even the Republican committee chair, Charles Schwertner, had to concede that "favoritism and transparency" were, as the kids say, a thing. Meanwhile, Musk has previously donated to Abbott—purely coincidental, we are assured, in the same tone you use to insist you only read Playboy for the articles.
Johnson is running on an anti-corruption platform and promising that, if elected AG, he’ll team up with the state comptroller to audit how these contracts magically migrate from public need to billionaire wallet. His Republican opponent, Mayes Middleton, proudly advertises himself as a Trump loyalist, because nothing screams "independent watchdog" like pledging fealty to the guy who turned public office into a family side hustle. Abbott’s office defends the whole arrangement as the most "cost-effective" way to wire up rural Texans—provided you don’t count the long-term price of turning state policy into a concierge service for oligarchs.
#forever-grifting#corruption
nyc rudely interferes with corporations’ god-given right to scam you forever
Happy New Yorkers discover the radical new concept of ‘the price is the price,’ while landlords hold a candlelight vigil for their dearly departed boiler management fees.
New York City has decided that maybe, just maybe, capitalism doesn’t need to include a mandatory subscription trap mini-game every time you sign up for a gym, a streaming service, or a “wellness” app that just sends you push notifications and shame. Starting 1 October, companies that make it hard to cancel will face fines of $525 per user, plus back fees and more penalties, which is tragic news for every CEO whose business model is “what if nobody could find the cancel button ever again?”.
The city is also coming for “junk fees” – those delightful surprise charges for “boiler management”, “lifestyle amenities”, and whatever else landlords invent after realizing the rent is already at nosebleed altitude. Under the proposed rule, all mandatory fees have to be baked into the advertised price, which directly threatens America’s proud tradition of listing one price and then charging another. Industry groups, who have spent decades perfecting the art of hiding the real cost of things, are predictably furious that anyone would interfere with this sacred deception.
Samuel AA Levine, a former FTC consumer protection official, politely points out that 40 years of Reagan-brain deregulation and “the market will police itself” ideology has given us exactly what you’d expect: corporations competing not on price or quality, but on how cleverly they can lie about both. Nationally, business lobbyists already hacked Biden’s junk fee rule down to something real estate could live with, and a federal judge kneecapped the Biden “click-to-cancel” rule on procedural grounds. Now NYC’s Mamdani administration is trying to do locally what Washington keeps watering down, while Trump’s FTC allegedly plans a similar rule sometime soon, which surely won’t be riddled with enough loopholes to drive a private equity firm through.
The city is even eyeing a ban on “surveillance pricing” – algorithmic price discrimination based on your data – which is a shame for every tech bro who woke up one day and thought, “What if surge pricing, but for groceries and rent?” With Maryland already banning it and Colorado’s governor vetoing a ban, we’ve reached the stage of American governance where your right not to be algorithmically shaken down depends entirely on which state line you happen to be standing on when you open your wallet.
#forever-grifting#money
president airbnbs his way through air force one
President Trump descends from whichever plane had the best loyalty points that day, as security officials quietly scream into their headsets.
President Trump wrapped up his Turkish adventure by ditching the Qatar-donated Boeing 787 party plane and hopping onto an older Air Force One, because nothing says "stable leadership" like playing Which Plane Am I In? with the nuclear football. The move blindsided observers and immediately triggered questions about whether the older aircraft has the same communications, defense systems, and retrofits that, you know, keep the alleged leader of the free world from getting turned into in-flight confetti.
The Qatar jet, of course, is the diplomatic equivalent of a sponsored Instagram post: a "gift" from a foreign government that just happens to come with prestige, access, and a giant neon sign flashing CONFLICT OF INTEREST. Now we’re apparently alternating between the old U.S. government plane and the foreign-sugar-daddy jet like it’s a timeshare. Security protocols? Transparency? Any coherent explanation? Don’t be ridiculous — this is Trump’s America, where the president treats the presidential fleet like his personal Uber Black and the rest of us just hope the Secret Service is allowed to read the fine print.
#forever-grifting#national-security
jared kushner discovers a new nature reserve to bulldoze
Jared Kushner gazes upon a pristine Albanian wetland and sees what nature always intended: VIP cabanas and a golf course where the flamingos used to be.
In Albania, thousands of people have spent more than a month in the streets because Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump apparently looked at one of the last wild stretches of the Adriatic and thought, "You know what this flamingo habitat needs? A five-star monument to tax arbitrage." A 2024 law helpfully amended to allow luxury construction inside nature reserves paved the way for multibillion-dollar Kushner-backed resorts at Zvërnec and Sazan Island, because of course the answer to poverty is letting Trump’s son-in-law monetize your wetlands.
Prime minister Edi Rama, who won reelection on a 45% turnout and governs via what critics call "bulldozer democracy," swears the investment will not stop "as long as I am here"—which Albanians are now taking as a challenge rather than reassurance. He blames "anti-Trump sentiment" for the backlash, as if people are in the streets because they’re jealous of Jared’s inability to pass a basic security clearance, not because bulldozers are already chewing up beaches while the contracts remain conveniently opaque.
While young Albanians are literally flying back home to defend flamingos and the concept of a future, EU lawmakers are warning that this little Kushner eco-safari might torpedo Albania’s EU accession plans. So the country is being told: pick between a shot at European democracy or becoming Mar-a-Lago-on-the-Adriatic for the Trump family’s traveling grift circus. The protesters seem to have chosen door number one; Rama and Kushner are betting the flamingos can’t vote.
#forever-grifting#corruption#killing-democracy
