congress renews spy buffet, tells fourth amendment to try again later
Speaker Mike Johnson poses in front of a giant flag, moments before helping extend the government’s favorite warrant-optional eavesdropping program. Freedom imagery sold separately.
The House just voted 235-191 to keep Section 702 of FISA humming along for another three years, because why wouldn't you preserve a system that lets the government vacuum up Americans' communications as "incidental" souvenirs? After weeks of melodrama from "privacy hawks" in the GOP, Speaker Mike Johnson finally found the magic formula: keep the warrantless spying, toss in some paperwork, and slap on a maximum 5-year penalty for abuse that almost no one will ever see enforced. Constitutional rights, now with extra compliance forms.
For nearly two decades, a bipartisan group has begged for a simple thing called a warrant before law enforcement can rummage through Americans' data in the 702 database. They failed again. Intelligence officials and their alumni chorus, like former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker, warned that requiring a warrant to look at information the government already grabbed might endanger national security — a fascinating way of admitting the danger comes from letting courts do their jobs. Instead of real reform, Congress settled on "ask an attorney first" and "write down why you're doing it" as if the Fourth Amendment were just a particularly needy HR policy.
And because no modern surveillance bill is complete without a dash of culture-war cosplay, Johnson stapled on a ban on a hypothetical Central Bank Digital Currency to win over the hardliners. So the same crowd screaming about a dystopian digital dollar just voted to preserve a very real, very current system that lets the government sift through Americans' calls, texts, and emails without a judge. Big Brother remains fully funded; the Bill of Rights will be considered in a future markup, time permitting.
#killing-democracy#fascism
washington's premier nerd prom adds live ammo
Secret Service recruitment poster, but make it influencer-core: armed to the teeth, hotel mirror, zero functioning institutions in sight.
America’s most self-satisfied costume party, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, just got an unscheduled new segment: "Shooter Selfies and Security Theater." Prosecutors have released images of Cole Tomas Allen, the 31-year-old accused of trying to assassinate President Donald Trump, posing in his hotel room with a semi-automatic handgun, a pump-action shotgun, multiple knives, and enough ammo to remind everyone that the only thing thinner than DC’s jokes is its security perimeter.
According to the government, Allen spent the half hour before the attack doing what every great patriot-assassin apparently does now: checking live streams of the event and taking mirror selfies with his weapons. He allegedly ditched a long black coat concealing the shotgun, then sprinted through a metal detector with the gun raised, while Trump, JD Vance, cabinet officials, and the rest of the Beltway cosplay press corps were whisked away. A Secret Service agent was shot but not seriously injured, which is about the only part of this that doesn’t read like a rejected script from a terrible prestige drama.
The filing says Allen traveled cross-country from California by train, kept poetic notes about the desert on his phone, and allegedly emailed his family that "administration officials… are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest" and that he’d go through "most everyone" to get to them. So yes, we’ve now reached the part of the American experiment where assassination attempts come with both a weapons loadout and a moody travel diary. But by all means, let’s keep pretending that escalating political violence is just another news cycle and not a sign that the wheels are coming off the democracy ride in real time.
#killing-democracy#national-security
trump breaks nato so europe has to read the fine print
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas arrives at the summit where Europe’s new security strategy is: hope Trump forgets the nuclear codes and focus on writing a handbook.
After 77 years of U.S. security guarantees, Europe has discovered a terrifying new reality: Donald Trump reads NATO like he reads contracts – as something to ignore, shred, or use as a coaster. He’s "absolutely" considering pulling the U.S. out of NATO, called it a "paper tiger," attacked Iran without warning his supposed allies, demanded they help anyway, and then branded them "cowards" when they declined to clean up his mess. Also on this season of American World Leadership: he literally threatened to invade Greenland, prompting Denmark to quietly prep for war and send explosives and blood bags to the island, which is not normally how you treat your closest ally.
So now EU leaders are frantically dusting off Article 42.7 of the EU treaty – their own mutual defence clause – the way you rummage through a junk drawer for a warranty after your house burns down. It technically says EU states must help each other "by all the means in their power," which on paper sounds stronger than NATO’s Article 5. In practice, as Ursula von der Leyen helpfully notes, no one has the faintest idea who does what, when, or how. The bloc is urgently writing a "blueprint" and a "handbook" for what to do if someone actually invokes it, because nothing inspires confidence like discovering your emergency plan is currently a group Google Doc labeled "DRAFTv3final_FINAL".
Cyprus – helpfully not even in NATO – got buzzed by suspected Hezbollah drones, one of which hit the UK’s RAF Akrotiri base, and still didn’t dare pull the 42.7 fire alarm because it’s so vaguely defined that it might just summon a sternly worded press release. France is the only country that’s ever triggered it, after the 2015 terror attacks, and even then what they mostly got was some troop-rotation help and extra intelligence sharing. Now Emmanuel Macron and other EU leaders are saying this clause has to become "more than words" because the doubt hanging over NATO’s Article 5 wasn’t created by Russia – it was gift-wrapped and hand-delivered by the sitting U.S. president.
Poland’s Donald Tusk, historically one of Washington’s biggest fans, is now openly asking whether the U.S. would actually honor its NATO pledge if Russia attacked – which is the diplomatic equivalent of saying: "Look, we love you, but would you push the button or just tweet about it?" Europe is belatedly realizing that when you hand your security to a country currently run by a man who treats alliances like ex-wives and golf club members, you might want a backup plan. So Brussels is scrambling to turn an obscure treaty clause into a real defense framework, while Trump and Marco Rubio wonder aloud why the U.S. even keeps bases there. American leadership: now with 100% more existential dread for our allies.
#killing-democracy#national-security
trump moves from 'audit the fed' to 'own the fed'
Kevin Warsh at the Fed, preparing for his new role as chair of the Trump 2026 campaign’s interest-rate division.
Kevin Warsh, a man who looked at the phrase "independent central bank" and apparently read it as a suggestion, is gliding through a key Senate hurdle to replace Jerome Powell as Fed chair. All 13 Republicans on the banking committee are ready to rubber-stamp him after Thom Tillis suddenly rediscovered his spine was optional, coincidentally right after the Trump DOJ decided to drop its criminal investigation into Powell’s office renovations. Nothing says "respect for Fed independence" like dangling prosecution over the current chair while fast-tracking the guy who’s promised "regime change" and Trump-approved rate cuts.
Democrats on the panel are united in opposing Warsh, mostly because he keeps loudly advertising that he’ll give Trump the monetary policy he wants, which is usually the part nominees pretend not to say out loud. Meanwhile, Powell is finishing what may or may not be his last meeting as Fed chief, holding rates steady while inflation and a war-driven oil shock rage on. He’s also weighing whether to stay on the board and dare Trump to try to fire him — again — just like the White House already tried with Lisa Cook. Jeanine Pirro, now somehow a U.S. attorney and not just the world’s angriest wine commercial, has oh-so-graciously closed the Powell probe but made sure to threaten "future" investigations if anyone at the Fed forgets who’s really in charge.
So the Trump administration has arrived at its ideal setup: a handpicked Fed chair who promises political obedience, a DOJ that can flip the "criminal investigation" switch on and off like a light dimmer, and a president who openly demands rate cuts before an election. Independent monetary policy, meet the same treatment the Justice Department, the courts, and every other remaining institution are getting: captured, threatened, and turned into a campaign accessory.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
history, but make it fascist tailgate merch
AI George Washington, resurrected against his will to endorse PragerU’s Freedom Truck, stares into the middle distance wondering at what point in the Constitution he accidentally authorized this.
Trump’s America is now learning its history from six double-wide propaganda rigs, where AI George Washington pops out of a painting like a cursed Cameo to ask if you’ll pledge your life and sacred honor — presumably to the guy who tried to overturn an election and now celebrates the Revolution from the back of a PragerU-branded semi. This "Freedom Truck 250 mobile museum" is less about civic education and more about turning the founding era into a glossy prequel to Trumpism, with a "wall of American heroes" that somehow manages to jam Ronald Reagan, Billy Graham and Aretha Franklin into the same pantheon like a drunk Mount Rushmore redesign committee.
Instead of investing in actual museums or schools, the White House semiquincentennial plan is UFC cage fights outside the mansion, an IndyCar race around the capital, and a 250-foot "Arc de Trump" by the Potomac — because nothing honors the overthrow of monarchy like building a giant arch to the guy who openly flirts with being king. The trucks race across the country on diesel fumes and revisionism, giving kids a crash course in a past where the British tyrant is bad, but the homegrown one with the cult-branded 18-wheelers is apparently the natural heir to Washington’s legacy. This isn’t commemoration; it’s a rolling test run for how much propaganda you can bolt to a chassis and still call it a museum.
#killing-democracy#fascism#full-stupid
musk starts a maga franchise in westminster, pays influencers in pounds and brainworms
Rupert Lowe, proudly demonstrating that in the age of Musk, you don’t need Russian bots when you can just get a direct debit from the algorithm.
British politics has discovered a bold new innovation in foreign interference: cutting out the shady cut‑outs and just letting Elon Musk pay MPs directly. Under X’s engagement scheme, Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, Lee Anderson and far-right spinoff artist Rupert Lowe have all been hoovering up cash from Musk’s American company for posting extremely normal hard-right content that the platform’s algorithm just happens to shove in everyone’s face. It’s not dark money if you scream it on a website, apparently.
Ed Davey and the Lib Dems are proposing a ban on MPs taking X payments and on anyone who has served in a foreign administration donating to UK parties or thinktanks, pointing out that this is a pretty convenient firehose for Trump’s US, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary and other authoritarian fanboys to bankroll Europe’s far-right cosplay brigades. Davey calls Reform a "franchise of Maga politics" and notes that Musk – who has been busy amplifying white supremacists and far-right talking points – is effectively paying a British political faction to help import Trump’s project into the UK through the algorithmic side door.
So you’ve got Trump’s State Department promising to fund hard-right allies abroad, Orbán’s old government already having pumped cash into UK thinktanks, and Musk’s X literally writing cheques to sitting MPs whose job is supposedly to represent British voters, not the whims of a billionaire meme addict. But sure, tell us again how the real threat to democracy is students shouting on campuses.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
democracy under the knife: mid-decade gerrymander-palooza
A tasteful infographic of democracy being sliced into safe seats, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood state legislature.
Donald Trump wanted more safe Republican seats, so naturally the country responded by turning redistricting into a year-round sport. Instead of that boring old "once a decade after the census" thing, we now have mid-decade map surgery, with state lawmakers carving up representation like it's a Black Friday doorbuster. The Guardian walks through how Trump's demand for more GOP-leaning districts, plus a Supreme Court that treats partisan gerrymandering like a fun hobby, has triggered a wave of map-rigging before a single 2026 ballot is cast.
Texas Republicans rammed through a mid-decade redraw over open Democratic revolt, inflating their 25-13 edge to 30-8 while civil rights groups scream "racial gerrymander" into the void. California Democrats, inspired by this shining example of constitutional vandalism, responded by abolishing their own independent commission and grabbing themselves a 48-4 map — because if one side is torching norms, the other might as well bring gasoline. Missouri and North Carolina Republicans are busy turning competitive or Black-held districts into safe GOP fortresses, while judges and voters are politely informed that their role in this process is strictly decorative.
Meanwhile, Virginia voters were persuaded to hand the keys back to their legislature, which promptly converted a 6-5 Democratic edge into a 10-1 blowout, and Ohio's "compromise" map mostly just reassigns which Democrats get shoved into the woodchipper. A federal judge in Utah briefly remembers voters exist and imposes a fair map, creating a real Democratic seat, while Ron DeSantis in Florida is trying to stretch a 20-8 advantage into 24-4 despite state constitutional bans on partisan gerrymanders. The throughline: voters pass anti-gerrymandering reforms, and politicians respond, "That's adorable," then redraw the lines anyway.
The net effect? Both parties claw for a handful of extra seats by rewriting the rules mid-game, while Trump’s original demand to lock in GOP power echoes over the whole mess. The House majority will likely be decided not by persuasion or policy, but by who hired the more creative cartographer and found the friendliest judge. Representative democracy remains technically present, but only after it’s been pre-filtered, pre-sorted, and pre-rigged by whoever controls the pens.
#killing-democracy#corruption
trump cures disease by firing the people who detect it
The CDC, bravely fighting infectious disease with Excel deletions and politically edited PDFs.
Back in 1981, a dry little CDC bulletin called the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report quietly spotted the first AIDS cases and helped launch a global public health response. Forty-odd years later, the Trump brain trust has solved that pesky "early warning" problem by taking a sledgehammer to the very systems that made that detection possible. Why have independent science when you can have Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a Telegram group thread?
The administration has axed the entire National Science Board — the congressionally created, stagger-term body specifically designed so no single president could hijack basic research funding. They did it by email, of course, like firing a barista who kept over-pouring the cold brew. At the same time, they nuked the long-standing vaccine advisory committee, stacked it with people who barely know which end of the syringe is which, slashed the childhood vaccine schedule from 17 diseases to 11, and then hastily rewrote its charter to focus on vaccine "harm" once a federal judge pointed out that maybe your national immunization policy shouldn’t be run like a Facebook comments section.
Meanwhile, the CDC has quietly stopped publishing nearly half of its routine surveillance databases — and, what do you know, almost all of the missing ones are about vaccination. MMWR itself killed a peer-reviewed Covid vaccine effectiveness paper after it cleared scientific review, because the acting CDC director suddenly discovered a problem with a study design the journal literally used the week before. The agencies still exist on paper, like a Potemkin village of public health, but the insulation between science and politics has been stripped out so thoroughly you can see the wires sparking.
The result: doctors are now making life-or-death decisions with less data than they had a decade ago, while the White House congratulates itself for bravely standing up to the tyranny of numbers. The message is clear: if reality conflicts with Trump’s politics, reality gets defunded, fired, or edited out of the journal. The buildings will still say CDC and NSF on the front door, but what’s happening inside is just another branch of the campaign’s PR shop. Who needs an early warning system when you can just declare victory over disease and move on?
#killing-democracy#anti-science#forever-grifting
president for life, but make it a primary
Thomas Massie, apparently under the mistaken impression that Congress is supposed to be independent of the guy rage-posting from the Oval Office.
The White House has apparently merged with the RNC to launch the 2026 "Revenge Tour," where President Donald Trump spends his time not governing but hunting down Republicans whose crime was momentary independent thought. Kentucky, Indiana, and Louisiana are the first stops on this rolling purge, with Trump trying to kneecap anyone who crossed him on redistricting, impeachment, or the unforgivable sin of wanting Jeffrey Epstein files released. Policy differences? No, this is about loyalty, tribute, and making sure everyone knows who owns the party.
Trump advisers are remarkably candid: they don't love the "revenge tour" branding, but they’re very clear that Republicans who don’t "stand up for his agenda" get politically executed. Rep. Thomas Massie, who dared oppose Trump’s "big, beautiful" deficit explosion and pushed for Epstein transparency, is now the main target, with a Trump-built political machine recruiting a Navy SEAL just so the president can settle a personal score. Massie openly says colleagues are afraid to vote against Trump because they don’t want to be next, but sure, we definitely still have three branches of government and not one man and his fan club.
In Indiana, Trump is backing primary challengers against state senators who wouldn’t rig redistricting hard enough for his taste. In Louisiana, he’s trying to oust Sen. Bill Cassidy for the high crime of voting to convict him after January 6. Outside groups, super PACs like MAGA KY, and Republican Jewish Coalition money are all being marshaled to send a nice clear message: cross the Dear Leader, lose your job. Massie, hilariously, frames his own survival as the test of whether we still have a functioning legislative branch. When that’s the bar for American democracy in 2026, things are going spectacularly well.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump’s deportation circus spawns a booming scam economy
Artist’s rendering of Trump’s immigration system: a guy in a knockoff uniform on WhatsApp takes your money, and the real government shows up just in time to put you on a plane.
The Trump administration’s latest contribution to American entrepreneurship: a thriving cottage industry of immigration scams built on fear, confusion, and WhatsApp. As Trump floods cities like New Orleans with federal agents for things like "Operation Swamp Sweep" — because subtlety is for democracies — asylum seekers like Jasmir Urbina are panicked, desperate, and looking for help. What they’re getting instead is fake Catholic Charities lawyers on Facebook, bogus virtual hearings with costume-store "federal officers" in front of American flags, and bills totaling nearly $10,000 — their life savings — wired away on Zelle.
Urbina did what the system tells people to do: fled persecution, checked in with ICE, waited for her court date, and sought what she thought was legal help. For her trouble, she was scammed out of her money, falsely told she’d "won residency," instructed to skip court, and then arrested at her ICE check-in and deported to Nicaragua in shackles. Scammed, then deported — the Trump-era version of "customer service." Meanwhile, DHS won’t answer questions about her case, New Orleans police go radio silent, and the official line is that impersonators "will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." Sure. Any day now.
Federal Trade Commission complaints about immigration scams have doubled since Trump’s election, with at least $94.4 million reported stolen over five years — almost certainly an undercount, because nothing encourages crime reporting like a government promising mass deportations. State AGs, the ABA, and even AARP are frantically warning people not to trust WhatsApp lawyers, while USCIS sagely notes that it does not, in fact, grant residency over encrypted chat apps. But Trump’s crackdown has done what it was designed to do: create a lawless, terrorized environment where immigrants are too scared to seek help, predators cash in, and the only people the government reliably manages to locate are the victims it can deport.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#forever-grifting
trump announces king charles is now his iran hype man
Four people in white tie walk into a state dinner: two trying to stabilize a 70-year-old alliance, two trying not to trip over the diplomatic wreckage on the carpet.
Trump used a White House state dinner to announce that King Charles "agrees with me even more than I do" that Iran should never get a nuclear weapon, casually conscripting the British monarch into his personal foreign-policy fan club. The minor problem: Charles is constitutionally supposed to be politically neutral, but Trump treats diplomatic norms like he treats security briefings—optional reading at best.
Trump bragged that the US had "militarily defeated" its Middle East opponent and that "they’ve known it right now, very powerfully"—a sentence structure that suggests the real WMD was grammar. Buckingham Palace then scrambled out a statement reminding everyone that the king is merely "mindful" of the UK government’s anti-proliferation stance, which is royal-speak for please stop quoting him like he’s your Fox & Friends co-host.
While Charles gamely tried to revive the "special relationship" with a history lesson about Suez and a gentle warning against US isolationism in Congress, Trump focused on publicly insulting Prime Minister Keir Starmer over Iran and declaring him "no Winston Churchill"—a bold line from the guy who thinks diplomacy is yelling at NATO and then sending a fundraising email. The result: a state visit that was supposed to repair alliances instead became another episode of The President Will Now Ad-Lib Nuclear Policy Into A Microphone.
Guests like Jeff Bezos and Rory McIlroy looked on as the US and UK tried to reenact 1957-style damage control, except this time the crisis is not a canal in Egypt, it’s one man with a podium and zero impulse control. Nearly 70 years later, Charles joked that it’s hard to imagine such a crisis happening again. The punchline is that it was happening in real time, over canapés.
#killing-democracy#national-security
trump turns skynet into a protection racket
King Charles arrives in Washington to reassure Britain that everything is fine while Trump and a pack of tech billionaires quietly auction off the future of UK sovereignty to the highest surveillance bidder.
Donald Trump is annoyed that Europe won’t clap loudly enough for his Iran disaster, so the White House has moved on to its favorite foreign policy tool: the shakedown. Britain is being reminded that under Trumpism, the "special relationship" is less NATO ally and more strip-mall protection racket. Use your bases, kill your regulations, hand over Greenland, and don’t you dare tell the guy with the nuclear codes "no"—or suddenly Washington might discover a deep concern for Argentine sovereignty over the Falklands.
Meanwhile, the real leverage isn’t just tariffs and tantrums; it’s code and compute. As US tech giants race China, Europe and the UK risk becoming glorified app stores running on infrastructure owned by a handful of US oligarchs. The Trump administration has even blacklisted Anthropic as a "national security risk" for the high crime of refusing to strap its Claude model onto autonomous lethal weapons and domestic surveillance systems. Say no to building robo-cops and AI killbots, and congratulations: you’re now a threat to America.
Hovering over all this are the usual suspects: Sam Altman portrayed as a ruthlessly ambitious would-be AI overlord, Alex Karp of Palantir proudly declaring his mission is to serve US supremacy while his software burrows into UK government systems, and Elon Musk—whose satellite network can decide how much Ukraine gets to communicate—playing edgelord on X while his chatbot once happily branded itself "MechaHitler". Britain is being told to pick a side in the AI future: captured by authoritarian Beijing, or captured by unaccountable US billionaires operating with Trump’s blessing and zero democratic oversight. Sovereignty, but make it SaaS.
Liz Kendall dares to suggest that "middle powers" band together so they’re not all living at the mercy of whichever American tech bro is currently whispering in Trump’s ear about surveillance, weapons, and market dominance. Which is adorable, given that Britain is still busy arguing about Peter Mandelson’s vetting drama while the White House toys with their trade deals and territorial claims. The AI panic isn’t just about robots taking jobs; it’s about whether democratic governments will be allowed to exist as anything more than customer service departments for US tech empires and a president who thinks foreign policy is just The Apprentice with drones.
#killing-democracy#national-security#oligarchy
trump doj blocked from building its national voter snitch database (for now)
The Trump DOJ staring at a map of voter rolls like it’s a DoorDash menu for democracy: everything must go.
The Trump administration’s Justice Department took another swing at building its dream all‑you‑can‑purge voter database and, once again, the courts told them to go entertain themselves elsewhere. A federal judge in Arizona — a Trump appointee, because irony still works overtime — dismissed DOJ’s lawsuit demanding the state’s detailed voter rolls, ruling that the National Voter Registration Act doesn’t magically authorize the attorney general to collect everyone’s birthdays, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers like some creepy authoritarian Costco membership list.
Arizona joins Rhode Island, California, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Oregon on the “absolutely not” side of this nationwide data grab, while at least 13 very brave states have already handed their voters’ personal information to Trump’s DOJ, which has been sharing it with DHS’s "Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements" program. That system is so accurate it regularly flags legal voters based on outdated records — the perfect tool if your goal is "oops, mass disenfranchisement" dressed up as "election integrity." Experts note that voter fraud is exceedingly rare, but the administration’s appetite for sensitive data is not, and the real point here seems to be stockpiling ammunition for future conspiracy theories about elections Republicans might lose.
Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes has been publicly telling DOJ to, quote, "pound sand," which is apparently now the official legal term for "stop trying to build a federal voter surveillance regime the Constitution doesn’t allow." Six federal courts have agreed that this scheme is legally baseless, but the Trump administration keeps filing, refiling, and forum‑shopping like a desperate lawyer trying to find the one judge who thinks the Voting Rights Act is a suggestion and privacy is for suckers. The Department of Justice, naturally, had no comment — hard to issue a press release that honestly says, "we’d like your data so we can scare you out of voting next time."
#killing-democracy#fascism
republicans furious that democrats won’t clap for their fake king
Pictured: one constitutional monarch and one guy whose staff keeps accidentally tweeting out the job description he really wants.
Congress spent the day giving a warm bipartisan welcome to an actual hereditary monarch, and Republicans promptly had a meltdown that Democrats didn’t show the same reverence to their aspiring one. Sen. Ashley Moody took to X to demand why every Democrat stood and applauded King Charles III, apparently confused by the radical concept that you can oppose a president trying to govern like a king while still being polite to…a literal foreign head of state.
Not to be outdone in the race to miss the point, the RNC posted a screengrab sneering “So, what happened to ‘No Kings’,” while Rep. Wesley Hunt helpfully edited together Democrats not standing for Trump’s State of the Union with them standing for Charles acknowledging the Declaration of Independence. The message: if you don’t rise for Donald Trump, you’re a hypocrite for not also rejecting the British monarchy, because the problem was never about abuse of power, just about insufficient fealty to Dear Leader.
Abe Hamadeh’s office called it a “confusing scene” that Democrats who’ve joined “No Kings” protests applauded a king, somehow skipping the part where those protests are about the American president acting like an unelected sovereign. Meanwhile, Republicans were also on their feet cheering Charles, then turned around and attacked Democrats for doing the same. The White House finished the day by posting a photo of Trump and Charles labeled “TWO KINGS,” which is definitely something you do in a healthy republic and not at all a giant flashing sign that the guy who keeps insisting “I’m not a king” would very much like to be treated as one.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump’s doj indicts seashells for thoughtcrime
James Comey, moments before learning that seashell numerology is now a federal offense in Trump’s America.
The Trump Justice department has filed new criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey for the high crime of … an Instagram seashell arrangement. Comey posted shells spelling out “86 47”, which the government has now decided is basically a murder plot against Donald Trump. He deleted the post, apologized, and said he didn’t realize the numbers were linked to violence. Trump’s DOJ response: perfect, let’s indict him.
This is Comey’s second trip through the Trump justice funhouse; the first case for allegedly lying to Congress collapsed when a judge ruled the prosecutor was illegally appointed. That same tiny legal speed bump also wiped out the DOJ’s paper-thin mortgage fraud case against New York AG Letitia James. Rather than taking the hint that these prosecutions look like political hit jobs, acting attorney general Todd Blanche — who really wants the job permanently — has decided to speedrun the purge, greenlighting flimsy cases against Trump critics like the Southern Poverty Law Center and even cranking up an inquiry into former CIA director John Brennan.
All of this is happening days after a California man was arrested with weapons at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and charged with trying to assassinate the president. Faced with an actual violent threat, Trump’s DOJ has chosen to focus its firepower on … a seashell post and the career of Comey’s daughter, Maurene, who just won the right to sue over her own allegedly political firing. The message from Trump’s America is clear: if you investigate Trump, criticize Trump, or are related to someone who did, the state will come for you — but don’t worry, it’ll be under the very solemn banner of “law and order.”
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
trump discovers a new form of permanent residence: indefinite detention
Delaney Hall ICE detention center in Newark, where the Trump administration briefly experimented with the legal theory that time, due process, and basic humanity are all optional.
The Trump administration’s latest legal theory is that if you once crossed the border illegally, you are forever “seeking admission” — like an eternal DMV line, but with handcuffs. A unanimous Second Circuit panel, led by Judge Joseph F. Bianco (yes, one of Trump’s own first-term appointees, awkward), just shredded that idea, ruling that the policy of locking up people who crossed years ago and denying them bond hearings is unlawful. Bianco politely translated the government’s argument as an “attempt to muddy these textually clear waters,” which is judge-speak for: are you kidding me?
The administration’s position would let ICE treat anyone who ever crossed illegally as a permanent target for near-indefinite detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225 — even if they’ve been living and working here for years. Two other appeals courts already nodded along with this, because why not toss due process on the bonfire one more time, but now there’s a circuit split and the whole mess is headed to the Supreme Court, where the Federalist Society fan club will decide how long “seeking admission” can last. (Current Trump theory: until death, and possibly beyond.)
Meanwhile, thousands of migrants have already been jailed for months under this scheme, flooding federal courts with habeas petitions and overwhelming both judges and the Justice Department, which keeps getting yelled at for not releasing people it had no legal basis to cage in the first place. Even another Trump appointee, Judge Ralph Erickson on the Eighth Circuit, has been waving a red flag about this policy in dissent. When your own handpicked judges are telling you your detention regime “defies” the statute’s text, history, structure, and purpose, you might just be running an authoritarian fantasy rather than an immigration system.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#lawlessness
trump’s illegal tariffs now available in refund form
Mary Barra smiles through gritted teeth while explaining how GM’s earnings now depend on whether Donald Trump’s illegal tariffs get refunded before his next tantrum.
General Motors is expecting a cool $500m refund because the US supreme court finally noticed that Donald Trump’s "national emergency" tariff cosplay under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act was, legally speaking, hot garbage. GM’s 2026 earnings outlook jumps on the news, because nothing says "stable rule of law" like corporate balance sheets yo-yoing with every unconstitutional stunt the president dreams up between cable hits.
The court torched Trump’s IEEPA-based "reciprocal" tariffs and his "trafficking tariffs" on Mexico, Canada, China, Brazil, India and basically anyone else who looked at him funny. Customs and Border Protection now has an online portal so more than 330,000 importers who paid about $166bn under this illegal scheme can line up for their refunds, like a very depressing Black Friday sale on authoritarian overreach. Meanwhile, the still-legal Section 232 tariffs keep bleeding companies like GM, and the administration is promising even more duties, because the lesson they took from having a giant chunk of their trade agenda ruled unlawful was apparently: "Do it again, but harder."
Trump, naturally, is publicly pressuring companies not to seek refunds for the illegal tariffs and openly threatening to "remember" those that do, turning corporate tax treatment into a loyalty test. He calls it "brilliant" if firms just eat the costs of his unlawful trade war for him, which is one way to describe being shaken down by a government that first breaks the law, then dares you to ask for your money back. The message from Trump’s America is clear: pay for the president’s illegal economic experiments, and if you want your refund, be prepared to get on his enemies list.
#killing-democracy#trade-war#lawlessness
trump’s fraud czar discovers minnesota, declares war on daycares
Federal agents descend on a Minneapolis daycare to bravely defend America from toddlers, snacks, and Democratic governors.
The Trump administration has once again parachuted into Minnesota, this time with 22 federal search warrants and a new branding exercise: daycare fraud panic. The DOJ insists this has nothing to do with immigration, which is a comforting claim from the same federal machinery that just finished an ICE surge so aggressive it left two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, dead and thousands more living under occupation by 3,000 federal agents.
Now the show has a new ringmaster: JD Vance, freshly anointed "fraud czar" by Donald Trump, because if there’s one thing this White House knows, it’s how to identify fraud (call it professional courtesy). Vance vows to be "relentless" in chasing down scammers in Democratic-led states, while Trump confidently asserts that cracking down on alleged blue-state fraud could "literally" balance the entire US budget. Economists call this deranged; the administration calls it policy.
Minnesota Republicans like House majority whip Tom Emmer are dutifully applauding the raids and thanking Trump for defending taxpayers, as federal agents systematically target Medicaid and childcare providers, disproportionately in Somali American communities. This all follows Trump unilaterally freezing Minnesota’s childcare funding over alleged fraud, helpfully turning social services for kids into a hostage in his culture war. The underlying fraud investigation actually started under Biden and has already produced more than 60 convictions, but the current White House has upgraded it into a convenient excuse to punish a Democratic governor, intimidate immigrants, and send a clear message: federal law enforcement is now a partisan blunt instrument with a siren on top.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration
civil rights? we’re doing vibes now
Linda McMahon, preparing to explain how cutting half the civil rights staff will somehow help twice as many kids, using only the power of corporate buzzwords.
The Trump Education Department, now helmed by WWE alumna and noted civil-rights visionary Linda McMahon, managed to resolve 30 percent fewer discrimination complaints in 2025 than in 2024 — during a year when a record number of students begged Washington for help with prejudice, bias and outright bigotry in their schools. So yes, more kids are being harassed, and the federal government’s answer is: "have you tried waiting quietly in the corner?" Roughly 20,000 students are now stuck in bureaucratic limbo, which is a fun way of saying their civil rights complaints are sitting in a digital junk drawer while the administration workshopped new ways to blame Joe Biden.
Officials are pointing at a supposed "backlog" from the Biden years and a 43-day government shutdown, as though the real mystery here is how time works, not how you enforce laws. Meanwhile, the White House is pushing a 35 percent budget cut for the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights and a 49 percent staff reduction — from 530 people to 271 — while McMahon insists a "more efficient" skeleton crew can magically handle the same statutory duties. It’s the classic Trump formula: break the thing, starve the thing, then swear the thing is failing because government just doesn’t work.
To really turbocharge this efficiency miracle, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly M. Richey has "restructured" the office, creating special teams for disability- and race-based complaints. On paper, that sounds like focus; in practice, it looks a lot like rearranging the deck chairs on a ship you’re actively scuttling. The result is an Education Department that treats civil rights enforcement as optional paperwork rather than, you know, the law — a quiet, grinding way to tell the most vulnerable kids in America that under Trump, their rights are just another line item to be cut.
#killing-democracy#racism
the demon-possessed heir to maga?
Tucker Carlson, fresh off being allegedly mauled by demons, auditions to be the next one haunting American democracy.
Tucker Carlson says a demon once physically mauled him in bed, which is honestly the most relatable thing about his biography so far. Now he claims he’s being haunted by a different kind of evil spirit: the memory of having spent years mainlining Trumpism into America’s frontal lobe while privately texting that he hated Trump’s guts. After helping build the MAGA cult, he’s suddenly on a very public "journey of conscience" where he apologizes for misleading people and insists he’s tormented by his past support for Dear Leader.
This bout of soul-searching happens to coincide perfectly with growing chatter that Carlson is gearing up for a 2028 presidential run as the “true heir to MAGA” once Trump, JD Vance, and Marco Rubio are all covered in Iran-war shrapnel and the fallout from Trump’s "big beautiful bill" that guts services for poor people to hand cash to billionaires. Prediction markets, biographers, and podcast guys are all reading the same tea leaves: Tucker is rebranding from propagandist to "movement leader" who can say he opposed the disastrous war and is totally different from the monsters he helped elect.
Naturally, Carlson tells outlets like The Economist and Piers Morgan that politics is "disgusting" and he’s not really interested, which is exactly what you say when you’re building a donor list and test-marketing your redemption arc. As Trumpism’s economic pain lands in 2027 and Americans get more furious about the cost of living, Tucker is perfectly positioned to run as the guy who set the house on fire, filmed it for ratings, and now wants the keys to the fire department. The demons may be metaphorical this time, but the nightmare for democracy is very real.
#killing-democracy#fascism
