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The Trump Presidency Timeline

Documenting the chaos since day one. 783 entries and counting.

Category: killing democracy
killing democracy

trump finally unites america: in not paying him

Woman with megaphone seen committing the gravest sin in Trump’s America: demanding that her taxes stop funding cages and bombs instead of more golden drapes for the Oval Office.

Woman with megaphone seen committing the gravest sin in Trump’s America: demanding that her taxes stop funding cages and bombs instead of more golden drapes for the Oval Office.

Turns out when you use the federal treasury as your personal war-and-deportation slush fund, people eventually notice the direct debit from their conscience. Rachel Cohen, a 31-year-old Chicago lawyer, has helpfully gone on Instagram to announce she’s parking her $8,800 tax bill in a high-yield account instead of funding Trump’s adventures in Iran, Gaza, and ICE’s neighborhood kidnapping service. She’s getting the usual replies – "this is illegal" – to which she responds, essentially: yes, that’s the point. The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, which used to be a niche concern for pacifists and people who read footnotes for fun, just held its biggest training ever: from a dozen attendees to nearly 500, with 110,000 people poking around their website to see how far they can tell the IRS to get bent. They’re pretty upfront that some of this is illegal and can end with wage garnishment or even home seizure – and yet, under Trump’s second-term war-and-police state budget, more people are deciding they’d rather risk a lien than bankroll what Cohen bluntly calls "concentration camps". Tax resistance has a long American pedigree – Boston Tea Party, Depression-era strikes that almost bankrupted Chicago, Vietnam-era refusers who wouldn’t pay the phone tax funding the war. What’s new is that after two decades where "tax protest" mostly meant rich guys whining about capital gains, the spotlight is swinging back to people who don’t want their paychecks underwriting drone strikes and ICE raids. Trump promised to "run America like a business"; he just forgot that when customers hate the product, they sometimes stop paying the invoice.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#imperialism#anti-immigration
killing democracy

half the country is cool with troops at the ballot box, what could go wrong

Voters in Queens bravely exercise their rights in one of the few remaining elections not yet supervised by guys in camo and rifles.

Voters in Queens bravely exercise their rights in one of the few remaining elections not yet supervised by guys in camo and rifles.

America has reached the "sure, let's put soldiers at the polls" stage of democratic decline. A new NPR/PBS/Marist poll finds 46% of Americans support the National Guard monitoring polling places this November — a thing that would be illegal if ordered by the federal government, which is, of course, exactly the kind of thing President Trump keeps fantasizing about while talking about "nationalizing" elections and wishing he'd sent troops to seize voting machines in 2020.

This isn't some abstract civics seminar: about three-quarters of Republicans say they want the Guard at polling places, while three-quarters of Democrats say absolutely not, please stop speedrunning Weimar. Experts gently note that the Guard can be used by governors for limited support roles, like cybersecurity, but that whole "federal troops policing voting" thing is a giant legal and constitutional no-no — which naturally makes it a top item on Trump's wish list as he urges the GOP to "take over" voting in certain places.

War with Iran and a recent bombing attempt in New York are now the convenient backdrop for normalizing military presence at the ballot box, as some voters say they're more afraid of terrorists than of soldiers guarding their right to vote. State and local election officials, meanwhile, are quietly freaking out after last year's Guard deployments to U.S. cities and Trump's open regret that he didn't use them to snatch voting equipment. So yes, nearly half the country is now pre-gaming for an election system where you cast your ballot under the watchful eye of people with guns — but don't worry, it's all in the name of "security." What could possibly go wrong.

Source: npr.org

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump doj to america: felons and fake electors need guns too

Nothing says "We the People" like a government that hands guns back to felons and fake electors, then calls it constitutional patriotism.

Nothing says "We the People" like a government that hands guns back to felons and fake electors, then calls it constitutional patriotism.

The Trump Justice Department quietly dug up a 30‑year‑dormant program, dusted it off, and started handing federal gun rights back to felons like it's a loyalty rewards card. Buried in a Federal Register notice: 22 people whose firearms "disability" has now been cured by the healing power of Trump’s DOJ. Most have old nonviolent felonies; one of them, however, is Arizona GOP state senator Jake Hoffman — better known as one of the indicted fake electors from 2020 and a proud recipient of a Trump pardon. This renaissance in Second Amendment charity work is being sold as a noble effort to help reformed offenders, blessed by the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision and wrapped in talk of "no longer a threat to public safety." Yet somehow, amid all the carefully vetted 20‑ and 40‑year‑old cases, the department just happened to slip in a freshly indicted Trump ally who still faces state felony charges. So while DOJ insists it's just following the law and precedent, the practical message is clear: if you help overturn an election, this administration will help you get your guns back. Law and order, Trump-style — where the law is optional and the order is: protect the loyalists first. Meanwhile, states can still block some of these people from owning guns, which means the only thing standing between a fake elector and a federally blessed firearm might be a state law that hasn’t yet been kneecapped. The federal government is out here treating democratic sabotage like a paperwork hiccup, and the gun lobby gets a bonus prize: a Justice Department that sees no conflict between "defending democracy" and rearming the people who tried to help steal it.

Source: npr.org

#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
killing democracy

trump puts texas senate race on layaway until voter suppression clears

John Cornyn bravely campaigns for the Senate seat he already holds, while waiting to find out whether his political future will be decided by Texas voters or one man’s tantrum on Truth Social.

John Cornyn bravely campaigns for the Senate seat he already holds, while waiting to find out whether his political future will be decided by Texas voters or one man’s tantrum on Truth Social.

Donald Trump has discovered a fun new use for his endorsement: hostage-taking. What was supposed to be a routine nod to Sen. John Cornyn in the Texas GOP Senate runoff is now stuck in a "holding pattern" because Trump wants something first — passage of the SAVE America Act, a bill that "saves" America by making it harder to vote and easier to discriminate. He’s explicitly telling Republicans that nothing moves in Texas until his voter-suppression wishlist moves in the Senate.

Both Cornyn and his runoff opponent, walking ethics violation Ken Paxton, are dutifully backing the bill, which would require photo ID to vote in federal elections and documentary proof of citizenship to register. Trump, never one to leave cruelty on the table, also wants to bolt on unrelated culture-war goodies: a ban on transgender athletes in women’s sports and new restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors. Voting rights, trans kids, and a Texas Senate seat are now all chips in the same Trump casino.

Republican leaders like John Thune are nervously admitting this "linkage" is probably bad, which is GOP for "this is wildly corrupt but we’re too scared to stop it." Paxton, fresh off an impeachment on bribery and corruption charges and a divorce on "biblical grounds," is openly offering to drop out of the race if leadership kills the filibuster to ram through Trump’s bill. Cornyn’s allies warn that if Trump endorses Paxton, they could lose the seat to Democrat James Talarico — but Trump’s base loves Paxton, and Trump loves leverage. So U.S. election rules and civil rights are being rewritten in real time to solve one man’s Texas primary drama.

Democrats need four seats to flip the Senate. Trump is apparently willing to trade away the GOP’s best chance to hold Texas unless he gets a national voter-suppression law and some bonus anti-trans persecution. Call it the SAVE America Act: Saving America from democracy, one extorted endorsement at a time.
#killing-democracy#fascism#anti-immigration
killing democracy

sen. marshall assures us trump’s totally following the war powers act, pinky promise

Sen. Roger Marshall explains that when Trump ignores constraints on presidential war powers, he’s actually respecting them really hard.

Sen. Roger Marshall explains that when Trump ignores constraints on presidential war powers, he’s actually respecting them really hard.

Sen. Roger Marshall popped up on Meet the Press to reassure America that Donald Trump, a man who treats the Constitution like a user agreement he definitely didn’t read, has followed the War Powers Act "to the letter" in his war with Iran. Yes, war – not a "limited kinetic action," not a "police action," but an actual shooting conflict – and the Kansas senator’s main concern is making sure Grandpa Coup looks like a meticulous law student. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the same broadcast universe, we learn that Trump is "shopping messages" on the Iran war to see what polls best, and the White House is busy retrofitting his demand for Iran’s "unconditional surrender" into something that sounds slightly less like a World War II fanfic. Congress, whose job is to declare war, appears to have outsourced that whole constitutional duty to a man testing slogans like he’s A/B testing email subject lines. So we have Trump escalating with Iran, floating unconditional surrender, and improvising his war branding in real time, while Senate Republicans run around solemnly insisting that this is all perfectly compliant with the War Powers Act. It’s a neat trick: turn a law designed to restrain presidents into a prop that justifies whatever the president already decided to do. Killing democracy and calling it "by the book" is the closest this administration gets to performance art.
#killing-democracy#imperialism#lawlessness
killing democracy

trump explains democracy: heads i win, tails you cheated

A Pennsylvania voter tries to remember when "we're going to stop it" stopped being about potholes and started being about elections.

A Pennsylvania voter tries to remember when "we're going to stop it" stopped being about potholes and started being about elections.

President Trump has helpfully clarified the rules of American democracy: if Republicans win, it's the sacred will of the people; if Democrats win, it's cheating and must be "stopped." NPR then takes a road trip through Pennsylvania swing districts to ask voters how they feel about the president announcing, out loud, that elections are only legitimate when they produce him. Some Pennsylvanians roll their eyes at the idea that every Democratic victory is a heist, while others nod along like they're reviewing terms and conditions for a coup. The man who spent years screaming about a "rigged" system he somehow won is now pre-loading the excuses for any future loss, normalizing the idea that the solution to electoral disappointment is to just declare the other side criminals and let "we're going to stop it" do the authoritarian heavy lifting. Ballots in, democracy out.
#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

turning point usa takes the air force academy on a date

US Air Force Academy board of visitors, now with 30% more culture war and 0% additional qualifications.

US Air Force Academy board of visitors, now with 30% more culture war and 0% additional qualifications.

The Trump White House has decided the US Air Force Academy doesn’t have nearly enough Turning Point USA in its diet, so the president quietly swapped in Erika Kirk — widow of slain rightwing activist Charlie Kirk — to a key advisory board overseeing the school’s morale, curriculum, and, you know, how future officers are trained. No press release, no hearing, just poof, her name appears on the official site like a new app icon you didn’t ask for.

Erika, a former Miss Arizona who now runs Charlie’s TPUSA empire, joins a board already stacked with MAGA loyalists: Senator Tommy Tuberville (famous for blocking military promotions and not knowing what the three branches of government are), Dina Powell from Trump’s first-term foreign policy clown car, and assorted GOP senators handpicked by John Thune. The Air Force Academy’s board of visitors is supposed to oversee discipline, academics, and fiscal affairs; Trump is treating it like a donor rewards program for the culture war.

The White House insists she’s a “perfect choice” to “continue his legacy,” which is a poetic way of saying the Air Force Academy is now being used as another stage for TPUSA’s brand of Christian nationalist grievance politics. Meanwhile, Erika is out promoting a Turning Point project to plant a chapter in every public high school in Arkansas, because nothing says civil-military neutrality like fusing the officer pipeline with a partisan youth organization. America’s future pilots are apparently one step closer to getting their ethics lessons from the same people who do viral campus meltdown compilations.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#fascism#forever-grifting
killing democracy

commander in cleats hands out loyalty loafers

The leader of the free world, moments before asking a U.S. senator to take off his shoe so he can check the label.

The leader of the free world, moments before asking a U.S. senator to take off his shoe so he can check the label.

The president of the United States is reportedly spending his golden years as the nation's oldest Florsheim brand ambassador, sitting behind the Resolute desk like a discount Al Bundy and critiquing his cabinet's footwear. Donald Trump has turned Oval Office meetings with JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Howard Lutnick and the rest of the right-wing fan club into a traveling shoe party, complete with size-guessing parlor tricks and follow-up shipments of $145 dress shoes. Policy? Democracy? No time. He's busy running a mid-range men's shoe store out of the West Wing.

Staff say "all the boys" have the presidential loafers now, and they're "afraid not to wear them" – because nothing says healthy workplace culture like your boss forcing you into matching shoes as a visible symbol of loyalty. One cabinet member even had to mothball his Louis Vuitton collection so Dear Leader wouldn't pout. Meanwhile, the Brookings numbers quietly remind us this is the least diverse administration of the century, but sure, let’s focus on the important part: the 79-year-old president presiding over a taxpayer-funded boys' club where Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Lindsey Graham all get their matching autographed kicks.

The White House insists Trump pays for the shoes personally, which is adorable, as though the ethical bar for the presidency is now "doesn't directly bill the government for his weird dominance-fetish swag." Still, it's fitting: a man who built his brand on cheap symbolism and ill-fitting power fantasies has literally reduced the job to handing out identical footwear while measuring his allies by their shoe size. American democracy isn't exactly dead, but it is being slowly replaced by a loyalty program with punch cards and wingtips.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy

trump’s ‘weaponization’ guy gets dinged for actually weaponizing the government

Ed Martin, seen here trying to remember which amendment lets you threaten universities and pressure judges because they hurt your feelings about DEI.

Ed Martin, seen here trying to remember which amendment lets you threaten universities and pressure judges because they hurt your feelings about DEI.

Ed Martin, Trump’s pardon attorney and former head of the administration’s so-called "weaponization working group," is now being formally disciplined for doing exactly what the job title promised: allegedly using his government perch to punish speech he doesn’t like. While serving as interim U.S. attorney for D.C., Martin wrote Georgetown Law’s dean to rage about the school’s DEI policies and announced he’d discriminate against applicants from Georgetown — while explicitly speaking in his official capacity. According to D.C. Disciplinary Counsel Hamilton P. Fox III, that’s not just tacky; it’s a First and Fifth Amendment violation, because you’re not allowed to condition government benefits on a school abandoning its own views.

Georgetown’s then-dean William Treanor had to explain to the chief federal prosecutor for D.C. that the First Amendment means the government doesn’t get to dictate a university’s curriculum — a civics lesson that really should have been covered before they handed him prosecutorial power. Rather than quietly Googling "basic constitutional law," Martin allegedly doubled down, firing off letters to the chief judge and senior judges of the D.C. Court of Appeals demanding they sideline Fox, and copying the White House counsel like a kid CC’ing mom on a playground dispute. The chief judge politely told him to stop trying to have an ex parte tantrum and follow actual procedures, which, to be fair, is not this administration’s core competency.

The Justice Department’s response was to accuse the D.C. Bar of being a partisan hit squad targeting Trump loyalists, while Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche logged on to X to declare the bar a "Democrat-run political organization" and brag that he’s not a member. Bold move for a regime screaming about "weaponization" while its own weaponization czar is under fire for, per the complaint, coercively punishing disfavored viewpoints and trying to pressure judges into firing the ethics watchdog. Trump’s DOJ: still insisting they’re the victims as they swing the hammer at the Constitution.

Source: nbcnews.com

#killing-democracy#lawlessness
killing democracy

rip to the guy who proved presidents really will record their own crimes

Alexander Butterfield, the man who proved that if you give a corrupt president a tape recorder, he’ll impeach himself.

Alexander Butterfield, the man who proved that if you give a corrupt president a tape recorder, he’ll impeach himself.

Alexander Butterfield, the Nixon aide who casually mentioned to Congress that the president had wired the Oval Office like a Mafia social club, has died at 99. His small contribution to history was accidentally confirming a secret taping system that captured Richard Nixon committing crimes, raging, swearing, and being loudly racist — so, basically the 1970s version of a presidential Twitter feed, but on analog.

Butterfield oversaw the voice-activated taping setup that only a handful of people knew existed. When Senate investigators in 1973 tossed out a routine question about whether conversations might have been recorded, he said yes, and Washington promptly realized the president had been running a full-service evidence factory. The resulting legal fight ended with a unanimous supreme court order forcing Nixon to cough up the tapes, which in turn forced him out of office rather than face impeachment.

For his trouble, Butterfield says he was quietly purged from his later job running the FAA under Gerald Ford — because in American politics, telling the truth about presidential crimes is patriotic in theory and a firing offense in practice. He spent the rest of his life calling Nixon what Nixon was — “not an honest man” and “a crook” — and admitted he’d been “cheering” when the resignation finally landed. Imagine: a Republican aide who exposes presidential criminality, helps end a corrupt administration, and then lives long enough to see a future GOP decide that the real lesson of Watergate is that the tapes should have been deleted faster.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#lawlessness#corruption
killing democracy

georgia voters pick which maga avatar gets to cosplay 'representative'

Crowd cheers as Trump’s motorcade passes, celebrating the sacred American tradition of letting one guy in a limo pick their member of Congress.

Crowd cheers as Trump’s motorcade passes, celebrating the sacred American tradition of letting one guy in a limo pick their member of Congress.

Northwest Georgia is holding a special election to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned after a totally normal public breakup with Donald Trump over things like releasing Jeffrey Epstein documents and Trump’s sudden fascination with starting wars instead of just tweeting about them. The 14th District has been without representation in Congress, but don’t worry — the real emergency, according to everyone involved, is whether Trump’s endorsement still functions as a golden ticket in the MAGA Hunger Games.

Trump is backing Clay Fuller, a local DA who proudly branded himself a "MAGA warrior" at a Rome, Georgia rally, because nothing says serious governance like pledging fealty to a man who rage-posts foreign policy between golf rounds. Other Republicans are trying the daring line of "I’ll support Trump’s priorities but maybe not turn myself into a full-time Fox News prop," which in this party counts as radical independence. Greene, now out of office and out of the inner Trump circle, is discovering that when you build your entire career on a personality cult, the personality gets to decide when you stop existing.

So voters aren’t really choosing a representative; they’re choosing which flavor of Trumpism they want stamped on their ballot: the officially licensed "endorsed by Trump" brand or the off-label MAGA that dares to suggest the Dear Leader is not the sole owner of the "America First" trademark. Meanwhile, the district’s lack of actual representation in Congress is treated as a minor subplot to the only story that matters in the GOP: will the emperor’s thumbs-up still rule the kingdom, or is the base finally noticing he’s been winging it on tariffs, immigration, and now a war with Iran?

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump frees credit bureaus from the tyranny of being wrong

Experian and TransUnion heroically defend their right to be wrong while the Trump CFPB stands guard to make sure no consumer accidentally gets help.

Experian and TransUnion heroically defend their right to be wrong while the Trump CFPB stands guard to make sure no consumer accidentally gets help.

The Trump administration looked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — the agency that forced credit bureaus to fix life-ruining errors — and decided the real problem in America was too much consumer protection. Enter Russell Vought, professional wrecking ball, who took over as acting CFPB director in 2025 and promptly slammed the brakes on nearly all agency work, tried to fire most of the staff, froze investigations, and helpfully dropped enforcement actions against, among others, TransUnion. One of the new lawyers leading this regulatory bonfire? A former Experian attorney. Regulatory capture isn’t a bug, it’s the onboarding process.

With the cop taken off the beat, Experian and TransUnion did what any responsible corporate citizen would do under Trump: they stopped fixing problems. Experian went from resolving nearly 20% of complaints in consumers’ favor in 2024 to under 1% the next year, while TransUnion’s relief rate fell by about half. Meanwhile, over 2.7 million credit reporting complaints have gone unanswered since Trump’s 2025 inauguration, leaving people unable to get housing, jobs, or loans because some algorithm decided they owe someone else’s $240,000 student loan. The administration’s solution was to help the bureaus lobby for shunting people away from the transparent CFPB complaint system into the companies’ own black box processes, where outcomes aren’t public at all. Truly a golden age for anyone who thinks the Constitution guarantees life, liberty, and the right of Experian to never admit a mistake.

Source: propublica.org

#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy

supreme court speed-runs trumpism on the shadow docket

Ketanji Brown Jackson and Brett Kavanaugh politely debating whether the Supreme Court should be a court of law or Trump’s after-hours wish fulfillment service.

Ketanji Brown Jackson and Brett Kavanaugh politely debating whether the Supreme Court should be a court of law or Trump’s after-hours wish fulfillment service.

At a cozy little gathering of judges and lawyers in D.C., Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson politely pointed out that the Supreme Court has basically turned its emergency docket into a 24/7 concierge service for Donald Trump's most authoritarian impulses. You know, just the usual "let him fire thousands of federal workers, seize control of supposedly independent agencies, and ram through hard-line immigration policies" — all via unsigned, barely explained orders while the lower courts are still doing that quaint thing called "fact-finding." Jackson called the surge in these cases a "real unfortunate problem" that warps lower court proceedings and, minor detail, is "not serving the court or this country well." Understatement of the decade. Across the stage, Brett "Shadow Docket Is My Love Language" Kavanaugh dutifully defended the setup, insisting the Court has to do something when presidents show up demanding emergency relief — and hey, Biden's used it too, just at a much lower success rate. He blamed the rise of executive orders and congressional dysfunction, which is a neat way of saying, "We broke the system, so now we have to keep breaking it faster." Kavanaugh also insisted the Court has the same position no matter who is president, a line Jackson agreed with in theory, while the real-world data is in the corner quietly screaming. Both justices then shifted to the growing wave of violent threats against judges, especially those who rule against Trump, as if the Court's own habit of granting him special fast-track treatment hasn't helped train his followers to see the judiciary as just another political prize to be punished or rewarded. Kavanaugh praised John Roberts for "picking his spots" to push back on impeachment threats against judges, which is one way to describe the chief justice occasionally clearing his throat while the institution he leads is used as an emergency brake on democracy every time Trump stomps the gas.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
killing democracy

trump cheers as fbi chases cyber ninjas fan fiction

Trump celebrates as the FBI is repurposed from fighting crime to chasing down the ghost of Cyber Ninjas past.

Trump celebrates as the FBI is repurposed from fighting crime to chasing down the ghost of Cyber Ninjas past.

Donald Trump saw the FBI and a federal grand jury poking around Arizona’s infamous Cyber Ninjas "audit" and his response was deep constitutional reflection and respect for the rule of law. Just kidding, he posted the story from a Trumpist outlet and yelled "Great!!!" like a guy who thinks subpoenas are just loyalty badges. Arizona senate president Warren Petersen, a man who has been wrong about the 2020 election for so long it’s basically his brand, confirmed the legislature got hit with a subpoena for records from the Maricopa clown audit and casually added that "the FBI has the records".

The same crew of election denial all-stars who tried to help Kari Lake overturn her loss — Kurt Olsen and Clay Parikh — are now tied to the Trump administration’s Fulton County, Georgia adventure, where the FBI raided an election office based on what a judge later described as specious claims. So now we’ve got the federal government chasing after a 2021 Arizona review run by Cyber Ninjas, a company with zero election experience that still managed to spend millions of donor dollars to confirm Joe Biden actually did a bit better than originally reported, then padded the report with debunked conspiracy filler.

Arizona AG Kris Mayes, apparently the last adult left in the building, notes that the 2020 results were "certified, litigated, and affirmed" and reminds everyone that Petersen has known this for years while happily mainlining fraud fantasies anyway. Her diagnosis of the Trump administration’s latest stunt is blunt: this isn’t law enforcement, it’s the weaponization of federal power to serve crackpots and lies. So yes, the guy who’s spent years screaming that the FBI is corrupt is now applauding as his own administration uses it as a delivery service for election denial fan fiction.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump’s ice discovers the first amendment has a palestine exception

Police face down students at Columbia while the free-speech warriors in Washington cheer on the riot gear and call it ‘protecting the marketplace of ideas.’

Police face down students at Columbia while the free-speech warriors in Washington cheer on the riot gear and call it ‘protecting the marketplace of ideas.’

The Trump administration has apparently discovered a new constitutional doctrine: the Palestine Exception, where the First Amendment, due process, and basic human decency all mysteriously time out the second a Palestinian opens their mouth in public. Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and Columbia grad, was arrested by ICE for the high crime of political advocacy, held for months, released, and is still being targeted for deportation. His friend Leqaa Kordia, another Palestinian activist, has spent nearly a year in ICE detention in Texas, including her second Ramadan behind bars, where the government that won’t shut up about “religious freedom” can’t even manage to provide halal food.

This isn’t immigration enforcement; it’s a speech-policing side hustle for an administration that treats Palestinians as a legal glitch to be patched out of the system. Khalil lays it out: when the subject is Palestine, due process is suspended, academic freedom is smashed, and constitutional protections evaporate like they were written in disappearing ink. The message from Trump’s DHS is simple: protest genocide, name U.S.-backed Israeli atrocities out loud, and you too can experience America’s proud tradition of indefinite detention in a fluorescent-lit warehouse.

The article sketches the full architecture of punishment: refugees whose families have already survived dispossession, occupation, and mass killing are now caged in Louisiana and Texas for daring to remember out loud. Their existence – educated, visible, ungrateful for “aid corridors” and “fragile ceasefires” – is treated as a national security threat. While the administration preaches about “campus antisemitism” and “law and order,” it’s quietly building a parallel system where the Constitution is optional and the only speech that’s truly free is the kind that flatters U.S. foreign policy.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
killing democracy

shut up or ship out

America’s new free-speech council: Pam Bondi, Marco Rubio, and Kristi Noem, seen here contemplating which researchers to deport for the crime of reading the First Amendment too literally.

America’s new free-speech council: Pam Bondi, Marco Rubio, and Kristi Noem, seen here contemplating which researchers to deport for the crime of reading the First Amendment too literally.

The Trump administration has apparently discovered a bold new interpretation of the First Amendment: it only applies to people we like. A new lawsuit from Columbia’s Knight First Amendment Institute and Protect Democracy alleges that Trump, Marco Rubio’s State Department, Pam Bondi’s Justice Department, and Kristi Noem’s DHS are running an official policy to deny visas to – or deport – noncitizen researchers who study social media, fact-checking, or so-called “censorship” online. Translation: if your work exposes disinformation or platform abuse, congratulations, you’re now a national security threat.

Researchers on H-1Bs, green cards, and other visas are reportedly canceling travel, scrubbing op-eds, and shelving books because they’re afraid that one peer-reviewed article on disinformation might get them tossed into detention and then onto a one-way flight out of the country. Meanwhile a State Department spokesperson, bravely anonymous, explains that “a visa is a privilege, not a right,” and that the U.S. doesn’t have to “suffer the presence” of people who allegedly “deny our citizens their Constitutional rights” – by studying how lies spread online. So the government screams about Big Tech “censorship,” then uses immigration law to censor the people studying it. Freedom, but make it deportable.

Source: npr.org

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

operation buckeye: now with extra racism and free deportation to a war zone

ICE and rightwing influencers bravely defending America from the existential threat of Somali-owned daycares in Ohio.

ICE and rightwing influencers bravely defending America from the existential threat of Somali-owned daycares in Ohio.

Donald Trump spent December ranting that Somali immigrants are "ripping off the country," and, like clockwork, ICE rolled out "Operation Buckeye" to show the boss they can turn a racist soundbite into a full-blown terror campaign. Somali-owned daycares and businesses in Columbus now get daily drive-bys from federal agents and rightwing clout-chasers who sit in their cars telling U.S. residents they’re "all going back" while filming content for the world’s bleakest YouTube channel. One Somali-owned daycare passed state inspections, then got rewarded with harassment, a break-in, and customers too scared to show up.

Because nothing says "limited government" like turning child care into a surveillance state pilot project, Ohio Republicans are pushing a bill to put cameras in every publicly funded daycare, while also trying to force local cops into ICE’s dragnet. Columbus’s city council, run by people who’ve apparently met the Constitution, responded by banning local involvement in federal immigration enforcement without approval. Meanwhile, rightwing influencers loiter outside Somali community offices taking photos like low-budget secret police, and community leaders are getting death threats for the crime of helping refugees navigate American bureaucracy.

The Trump administration is also thoughtfully ending Temporary Protected Status for about 2,500 Somalis who’ve lived here for decades, so they can be shipped back to a country the U.S. State Department literally labels "do not travel" due to terrorism, civil unrest, and famine. Somalia is one of the poorest countries on Earth, 6.5 million people there face acute hunger, and the U.S. is still conducting airstrikes against al-Shabaab — but sure, let’s pretend deporting daycare owners and health workers into that is just "enforcing the law" and not state-sanctioned cruelty with a paperwork trail.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#racism
killing democracy

trump dumps 'unsafe' anthropic for refusing to build skynet for ice

Artist’s rendering of the Trump Pentagon’s dream product: an AI that can violate the Fourth Amendment 10,000 times a second, but efficiently.

Artist’s rendering of the Trump Pentagon’s dream product: an AI that can violate the Fourth Amendment 10,000 times a second, but efficiently.

The Pentagon, under Trump’s guiding hand, has decided that the real "security threat" to America isn’t mass domestic surveillance — it’s Anthropic saying no to mass domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons. So the administration slapped a "supply chain risk" label on the company for the unforgivable crime of not wanting to help the government build an AI-powered panopticon that hoovers up your location, browsing history, and political associations.

Instead of updating the law to match technology, the Trump crew is doing what it does best: declaring anything it wants to do "lawful" by sheer executive vibes and then throwing AI at bulk-purchased commercial data to create the largest set of domestic dossiers this side of a dystopian sci‑fi novel. ICE and DHS are already buying cellphone location data, license plate records, and faceprints, and now the plan is to supercharge all that with AI so they can track immigrants, protesters, and anyone inconvenient at scale — but don’t worry, it’s "just" unclassified commercial data.

OpenAI, briefly auditioning for the role of "slightly less evil contractor," rushed in to take Anthropic’s place, then hastily patched its Pentagon deal with some civil-liberties language full of holes big enough to drive a fusion center through. The article’s quaint suggestion is that maybe, just maybe, our privacy and Fourth Amendment rights shouldn’t depend on which tech CEO got yelled at on Fox News last night, and that Congress should pass things like the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act. Bold concept: rights set by law instead of by Trump, the Pentagon, and a rotating cast of AI billionaires.
#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

fox news deepfakes basic reality to protect trump’s golf merch

Fox News bravely shields viewers from the unspeakable horror of seeing the commander-in-chief salute war dead in his own golf hat by replacing reality with a rerun.

Fox News bravely shields viewers from the unspeakable horror of seeing the commander-in-chief salute war dead in his own golf hat by replacing reality with a rerun.

Fox News briefly committed journalism on Saturday by airing footage of Donald Trump saluting six flag-draped coffins at Dover while wearing a Trump-brand golf hat – then apparently realized it had violated network policy against making Dear Leader look bad. Less than an hour later, the honest video vanished and was replaced with old December footage of bare-headed Trump at a different dignified transfer, slapped with a fresh "recorded Saturday" label like expired meat getting a new sell-by date. The weekend then turned into a B-roll laundering operation. Fox & Friends hosts somberly intoned about the six soldiers killed in Kuwait while playing the Syria ceremony tape, complete with an on-screen chyron falsely dating it to Saturday and magically erasing Melania and the Vances, who hadn’t even been at the original event. After critics and "Bad Fox Graphics" accounts pointed out that the network was literally lying about what viewers were seeing, Fox issued a dainty "we deeply regret the error" and… kept the mislabeled video on its website. By Sunday afternoon, the solution was pure state-TV genius: use actual Saturday footage, but crop it so you only see the flag-draped coffins and not the president treating a dignified transfer like a product-placement opportunity for his 45/47 golf merch, which he then wore to golf the next day. This is the same network that looped Joe Biden glancing at his watch in 2021 like it was the Zapruder film. Respect for the troops, it turns out, is sacred – unless it conflicts with the needs of the Trump retail brand and the propaganda department assigned to protect it.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy

trump threatens national tantrum until congress makes voting harder

President Trump, shown here mid-air and mid-tantrum, explains that democracy will continue just as soon as it stops letting the wrong people vote.

President Trump, shown here mid-air and mid-tantrum, explains that democracy will continue just as soon as it stops letting the wrong people vote.

Donald Trump, currently cosplaying as a constitutional scholar from the back of Air Force One, has announced he will simply stop signing bills until Congress passes his latest voter suppression fever dream, the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act. The bill would radically overhaul voter registration by forcing eligible voters to cough up passports, birth certificates, and photo IDs — to solve the very real and urgent problem of a crime that is already illegal and statistically negligible, but tragically insufficient at keeping Democrats from winning elections.

On Truth Social, Trump declared, "I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed," essentially threatening a one-man legislative strike unless Congress agrees to help him kneecap the electorate before the 2026 midterms. He also cheered on Fox News calls to nuke the Senate filibuster — something he loves when it helps him entrench minority rule, and hates when Democrats suggest using it for, say, health care or voting rights. Senate Majority Leader John Thune is still pretending the filibuster is sacred, while Chuck Schumer has responded with a polite version of "enjoy your shutdown, buddy," promising Democrats won't touch the SAVE Act.

The fun twist: if Congress stays in session, bills become law after 10 days without Trump’s signature anyway, which means the big strong authoritarian move here might amount to the legislative equivalent of holding his breath until he turns orange-er. Meanwhile, no one at the White House will say whether this little extortion gambit applies to funding DHS or the Iran war supplemental — because nothing says responsible governance like threatening to jam the entire federal government until you can make it harder for people to vote you out.

#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness