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.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
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.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
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.
#forever-grifting#corruption#killing-democracy
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.
#forever-grifting#lawlessness
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.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
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.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
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?
#money#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
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.
#forever-grifting#lawlessness#killing-democracy
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.
#corruption#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
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.’
Source: projects.propublica.org
#forever-grifting#corruption
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.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
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.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
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.
#forever-grifting#lawlessness
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.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
flavor flav offers what trump can’t: a celebration women actually want to attend
Flavor Flav at the Olympics, somehow doing more tangible good for US women athletes than the guy with the nuclear codes and a stage-managed State of the Union.
While Donald Trump is busy turning the State of the Union into a live studio audience for his reelection reel, the US women’s Olympic hockey team has done the unthinkable: they politely declined to be used as set dressing. USA Hockey cited “logistics and travel issues,” which is sports PR for: "we have better things to do than stand behind a podium while a guy rants about his own greatness."
Into that vacuum of dignity strolls Flavor Flav, who is somehow managing to do more for women’s sports than the entire federal government. He’s partnering with MGM Resorts to throw a "She Got Game" weekend in Las Vegas to honor the women’s gold medalists and other female Olympians and Paralympians, complete with a GoFundMe to actually support the athletes instead of just yelling "you’re tremendous" into a phone from the Oval Office. One side offers a late, half-joking invite Trump admits he’d be "probably impeached" for not making; the other offers dinners, shows, and real financial backing.
Trump tried to fold the women’s team into his men’s locker-room victory call, promising, "We’re going to have to bring the women’s team, you do know that," like they’re an afterthought he just remembered existed. Flavor Flav, by contrast, is out here putting his money, time, and extremely large clock where his mouth is, explicitly centering women’s achievements. When the choice is between a Vegas weekend designed to celebrate you and a primetime campaign prop cameo for a president who needed an impeachment joke to remember you, the decision writes itself.
#forever-grifting#trumps-america
texas gop chooses between 99% loyalist and alleged criminal, calls it a primary
Ken Paxton and John Cornyn competing to prove who loves Trump more, while Texas voters are asked to pick between "totally captured" and "possibly felon-adjacent."
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.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
trump’s ‘cheap energy’ plan: export the gas, jack the bills
Energy Secretary Chris Wright patiently explains that exporting your gas and raising your bills is actually a huge win—for his donors.
Democrats and progressives are politely pointing out that the Trump administration’s latest miracle of "America First" energy policy mostly puts Americans last on the billing list. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and seven other senators just sent Energy Secretary Chris Wright a letter explaining basic supply and demand to a government that prefers campaign checks to math: when you ship record amounts of liquefied natural gas overseas, there’s less left at home and—wild concept—people’s heating and power bills go up.
Under Biden, LNG exports boomed; under Trump 2.0, they strapped on a jetpack, jumping 26% in 2025 with another 8% hike expected this year. The US became the first country ever to export more than 100 million metric tons of LNG in a year, which the White House is bragging about like it’s a humanitarian accomplishment instead of a giant "we sold your gas to someone else" banner. Meanwhile, Americans’ electricity costs rose 6.7% in 2025, a funny outcome for a president who promised to cut bills in half. Turns out the only thing he slashed was the distance between your paycheck and your utility’s "past due" notice.
While households are choosing between heat and groceries, Cheniere Energy and Venture Global are having a fantastic time. The top LNG exporters posted big earnings, their executives donated to Trump’s re-election effort, attended a fundraiser where he reportedly asked the fossil fuel industry for a casual $1 billion, and in return the administration keeps promising to "double the natural gas exports." It’s less an energy policy than a loyalty program: you give Trump cash, he gives you the country’s fuel supply and sends the bill to everyone else.
The senators are now asking Wright to reconsider this little oligarch enrichment scheme and provide a written response on how he’ll reduce consumers’ utility bills. Given this administration’s track record, the reply will likely be a press release celebrating "historic energy dominance" and a fresh photo op of Trump hugging a pipeline while your thermostat stays at 62 degrees.
#forever-grifting#money
homeland security discovers bold new mission: paying trump’s campaign staff
Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski bravely defending the homeland from the grave threat of insufficiently subsidized Trump consultants.
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.
#forever-grifting#corruption
whirlpool loves trump’s tariffs so much it’s firing americans in two installments
Trump-era manufacturing policy in one photo: a "Buy American" banner hanging over a factory parking lot that’s mysteriously half-empty.
Whirlpool, once hailed by Trump as a "shining example" of buy American, hire American, is celebrating that legacy by firing American workers and hiring in Mexico. The company is axing 341 jobs at its Amana, Iowa plant — on top of 250 cuts last year — while quietly ramping up production at a shiny new Mexican facility it opened in 2025. The local workforce has been gutted from nearly 3,000 people to about 1,300, and union reps say more cuts are already scheduled. Seven small Iowa towns built around that plant? Collateral damage in the great MAGA manufacturing revival.
This is all happening as Whirlpool keeps praising Trump’s tariff policies on Fox News like a grateful infomercial host. The same tariffs it once called a win "for American workers" have helped the US shed 83,000 factory jobs since Trump took office in 2025, jacked up appliance prices by an estimated $1.5bn a year for consumers, and — chef’s kiss — cost Whirlpool itself about $300m in 2025. Naturally, CEO Marc Bitzer is "very thankful" for this masterclass in paying more to sell less while still offshoring jobs.
Meanwhile, Whirlpool has hoovered up millions in state subsidies and tax credits in Iowa, then thanked taxpayers by shipping their jobs south of the border under the very USMCA deal Trump sold as the improved, job-saving NAFTA. Workers losing their jobs get no severance, lose health insurance immediately, and face shorter unemployment benefits after Iowa helpfully slashed eligibility in 2022. Corporate welfare stays generous, worker welfare gets shredded, and Trump’s America First manufacturing miracle turns out to be the same old corporate abandonment — just wrapped in a red hat and a tariff press release.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
america’s top doctor, now with 0 years of residency and 100% more affiliate links
Trump’s surgeon general pick, bravely proving you don’t need a medical license when you’ve got a ring light and a supplement line.
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.
#forever-grifting#anti-science#killing-democracy
