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The Trump Presidency Timeline

Documenting the chaos since day one. 795 entries and counting.

Category: killing democracy
killing democracy

trump tries to perp-walk monetary policy

Jerome Powell, apparently moments away from being charged with aggravated renovation for not cutting interest rates fast enough.

Jerome Powell, apparently moments away from being charged with aggravated renovation for not cutting interest rates fast enough.

The Justice Department’s latest cosplay as a mob collections agency just hit a wall. A federal judge blocked Trump’s DOJ from subpoenaing Fed chair Jerome Powell over some allegedly scandalous building renovations, noting there was a “mountain of evidence” that the whole thing was just a pressure campaign to make Powell slash interest rates or resign. The court helpfully observed that DOJ had produced “essentially zero evidence” of any crime, which is a pretty bold way of saying: this isn’t law enforcement, it’s a shakedown.

Trump has spent the past year publicly calling the guy he appointed in 2018 “stupid” and “too slow” for not tanking rates on command, and now—what a coincidence!—his administration is trying to criminalize cost overruns on a construction project. Meanwhile, GOP senator Thom Tillis briefly remembered what a spine is, warning that appealing the ruling will just delay confirming Trump’s preferred replacement, Kevin Warsh, who just happens to be more eager to do the president’s bidding on cheap money.

As a bonus authoritarian side quest, the Supreme Court is weighing Trump’s attempt to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook over mortgage-fraud allegations that look suspiciously selective, given that even his own Treasury secretary Scott Bessent allegedly played similar games on his paperwork. So the Trump White House is now trying to purge and intimidate central bankers with criminal probes and loyalty tests, then insisting this is all about good governance and not, say, turning the Federal Reserve into Mar-a-Lago’s in-house ATM.

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

tsa now accepting donations, dignity not included

Proud superpower asks passengers to remove shoes, belts, and spare change for the TSA relief fund.

Proud superpower asks passengers to remove shoes, belts, and spare change for the TSA relief fund.

America’s latest innovation in public safety: your airport security is now partially crowdfunded. With Trump’s second-term shutdown grinding on for months while Republicans demand harder, faster mass deportations, TSA agents are still working without pay and airports around the country are putting out the tip jar. Denver, Seattle, Vegas, Reno, Cleveland, Orlando, New York, New Jersey – all passing the hat so the people guarding the planes can afford baby formula and gas. This isn’t just humiliating, it’s bureaucratically humiliating. Federal ethics rules say agents can’t accept cash or Visa gift cards and every donation has to be under $20, so we’ve reached the stage of late‑empire collapse where the government both refuses to pay its workers and micromanages the value of the grocery cards strangers are allowed to give them. Las Vegas literally had to reopen the food pantry it first launched during Trump’s last record-breaking shutdown, because nothing says “strong economy” like your essential workforce lining up for canned beans. Meanwhile, Democrats are trying to pass narrow bills to fund TSA, FEMA, and other non-ICE bits of DHS, and Senate Republicans are blocking them so ICE and CBP – the beloved shock troops of Trump’s mass deportation campaign – don’t miss out. Security lines are stretching to the parking lot, agents are openly saying “nothing happens until the public feels some pain,” and the administration has basically turned air travel into a live demonstration of what hostage governance looks like. Welcome to Trump’s America: where the planes still fly, but only because the people keeping them safe are too broke to quit.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy

king trump gets his very own forever war

Artist’s rendering of the American experiment: a gold-plated crown duct-taped to a cruise missile headed for Tehran.

Artist’s rendering of the American experiment: a gold-plated crown duct-taped to a cruise missile headed for Tehran.

Donald Trump has finally achieved his life’s dream: not just being president, but being king of an empire with his very own open-ended war in Iran. After spending his second term LARPing as a monarch – posting AI videos of himself in a crown dumping sludge on protesters, slapping his name on the Kennedy Center and the US Institute of Peace, demolishing the East Wing to build a ballroom, and getting his face on a semiq-dollar coin – he’s now upgraded from petty authoritarian cosplay to the real thing: a unilateral war built on zero accountability and a Supreme Court permission slip.

The road to this mess was paved with shredded safeguards. Trump gutted post-Watergate anti-corruption rules, fired 17 inspectors general, and bypassed the Senate to install loyalist prosecutors. Then he handed the keys of law enforcement to Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, turning DOJ and the FBI into his personal revenge squad. They dutifully tried to prosecute Letitia James and James Comey in what his own chief of staff Susie Wiles cheerfully admitted was just “score settling” – a phrase that used to be a red flag and is now apparently official White House policy branding.

Unlike Nixon, who at least had the decency to be stopped by a functioning Congress and a Supreme Court that still believed presidents weren’t literal sun gods, Trump enjoys a 6-3 court that blessed him with sweeping immunity for “official acts.” Sonia Sotomayor warned this could let a president order assassinations or deploy the military against political enemies; Trump heard that as a to-do list. He’s already sent troops into US cities, ordered illegal strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean, and used federal agencies as tools of retribution. The Iran war is just the logical next step of an imperial presidency that stopped pretending to be constrained by law.

So here we are: Congress sidelined on war and spending, watchdogs fired, prosecutors handpicked, the courts rubber-stamping “King Trump,” and the executive branch rebranded as one man’s stage show with live ammunition. The old fear was that the presidency might become too powerful. Trump and his enablers solved that debate by skipping straight to the sequel: what if we just don’t have a democracy anymore?

#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
killing democracy

trump’s big-shoe loyalty program

America’s top diplomat, bravely representing the free world while dressed like he stole his dad’s shoes for picture day.

America’s top diplomat, bravely representing the free world while dressed like he stole his dad’s shoes for picture day.

Donald Trump has apparently decided that the best way to keep his would-be successors in line is to turn them into background characters from a cursed circus. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice-President JD Vance, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are all reportedly trudging around in Trump-gifted Florsheim shoes that don’t fit, because the president demands to know – or guess – their shoe size as a proxy for, yes, penis size. The supposed leaders of American foreign policy are literally clomping through geopolitics in clown shoes to avoid offending a man with famously tiny hands.

Rubio, angling for the Oval Office, is now the nation’s top diplomat while visibly dressed like a child playing dress-up in Daddy’s wardrobe, trying to “grow into” the big shoes of John Quincy Adams and James Baker by way of discount Oxfords. Hegseth, meanwhile, is so fragile about his image that he banned independent press photographers from the Pentagon briefing room after some unflattering shots, ensuring only state-approved images of his Very Serious Man cosplay will emerge – ideally none that include the humiliating footwear. This is happening as reporting confirms the US was responsible for a Tomahawk strike on an Iranian elementary school on day one of the war, and the Pentagon’s chief tough guy still can’t summon the decency to publicly own the atrocity.

Vance may be the saddest of the shoe models: a vice-president who sold himself as anti–“stupid wars” now spectating from the sidelines of a very stupid war, iced out of both strategy and the meme wars by the White House accounts. Having built a career as the big guy’s guy, he’s now discovering that when the big guy hands you size-13 loyalty loafers, they can start to look a lot like dead men’s shoes. The Trump administration’s governing philosophy remains consistent: maximum vanity, mandatory humiliation, zero accountability – and absolutely no one in the room wearing shoes that actually fit the job.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#national-security
killing democracy

trump administration launches bold new plan to let americans breathe money instead of air

Trump surveys a smog-choked skyline and calls it "beautiful American energy" while someone in the background quietly develops asthma.

Trump surveys a smog-choked skyline and calls it "beautiful American energy" while someone in the background quietly develops asthma.

Harvard pulmonary specialists have crunched the numbers and come to a shocking conclusion: if you defund healthcare, deregulate pollution, stall clean energy, undercut workplace protections, and let Robert F Kennedy Jr run around poisoning the vaccine well, people’s lungs do not, in fact, thrive. The study describes Trump’s second-term agenda across 10 policy areas as an "attack on Americans’ lungs" that will cause millions to "die needlessly" – which, if you’ve been following the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, appears to be the feature, not a bug.

The OBBBA rips more than $1tn out of health programs, threatening Medicaid coverage, vaccines, emergency care, and basic meds. The White House, via spokesperson Kush Desai, insists this is just "commonsense" reform to fight waste, fraud, and abuse – a bold rebranding of "we took away your inhaler so Exxon could have a slightly nicer quarter." Meanwhile, the administration is busy shredding air pollution rules on soot, mercury, and tailpipe emissions, forcing fossil fuel plants to keep belching poison, and trying to kneecap California’s EV mandates. Corporations get cleaner balance sheets; everyone else gets a lifetime subscription to pulmonary clinics they can no longer afford.

It doesn’t stop there. Workplace protections for coal miners are delayed, CDC and FDA budgets are slashed, and under Health Secretary RFK Jr, vaccine uptake is tanking as federal officials mainline conspiracy theories straight into the public bloodstream. The study sketches a composite patient with COPD who loses coverage, breathes more soot, gets less help to quit smoking, and skips Covid and flu shots because the government told them science is optional now. Toss in climate-fueled wildfires supercharged by environmental rollbacks, and you’ve basically built a national respiratory death trap with a gold-plated Trump logo on the entrance.

Experts warn that children, poor and working-class communities, Black communities with already sky-high asthma rates, and coal miners in red states will be hit the hardest, because of course they will. Federal agencies, once vaguely dedicated to public health, have been repurposed as a sacrifice zone for industry profits and culture-war cosplay. As one lung specialist notes, the scale of harmful policy is "unprecedented" and requires more than just rolling it back – but for now, the Trump administration’s healthcare vision is clear: if you can’t afford to breathe, maybe the free market decided you didn’t deserve lungs.

#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy

trump doj decides breonna taylor was more of a suggestion

The Justice Department, seen here carefully weighing the Fourth Amendment against the urgent national need to kick down more Black people’s doors at 2am.

The Justice Department, seen here carefully weighing the Fourth Amendment against the urgent national need to kick down more Black people’s doors at 2am.

Six years after police gunned down Breonna Taylor in her own hallway during a botched late-night raid that found exactly zero of the drugs they were supposedly so terrified of, the Trump administration has decided the real problem here was too many rules. Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche quietly shredded a nearly five-year-old Justice Department policy that restricted federal no-knock warrants, declaring that "brave" law enforcement must be allowed to kick in doors "to the fullest extent permitted by law"—which, translated from Cop Worship, means: if it moves, we can shoot it, and if it doesn’t, we can still try. Instead of learning anything from a killing that sparked nationwide protests, Louisville reforms, and tighter federal guidelines, Trump’s DOJ has chosen the "what if we just pretend that never happened" approach to public policy. No public explanation, no hearings, just a memo and a hope that everyone has protest fatigue. The message is unmistakable: the brief, fragile consensus that maybe the government shouldn’t be staging paramilitary home invasions over low-level drug cases has been replaced with the old favorite—state violence first, constitutional rights later, if ever. Researchers have been screaming for years that SWAT-style raids are overwhelmingly used not for hostage rescues or terrorism, but to terrorize largely Black neighborhoods over drugs, frequently producing little or no evidence but reliably producing dead and traumatized civilians. Breonna Taylor was not a fluke; she was the logical outcome of a system that treats the Fourth Amendment like a suggestion and Black homes like live-fire training ranges. By scrapping these limits, the Trump administration is announcing that the "lesson" of her death is that law enforcement should be less constrained, not more. The home is supposed to be where the Constitution draws a hard line against sudden state intrusion. No-knock raids erase that line and replace it with a battering ram. Trump’s DOJ just put its official stamp on the idea that your front door is not a barrier, but an obstacle—one they’re now once again free to blow past in the dark, guns drawn, and accountability optional. What could possibly go wrong that hasn’t already been splashed across a coroner’s report?

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#lawlessness#racism
killing democracy

trump loses in court, responds by handing the mic to the racist troll lawyer

Voice of America headquarters, soon to be rebranded as the Department of State-Approved Opinions and Barbarian Horde Discourse.

Voice of America headquarters, soon to be rebranded as the Department of State-Approved Opinions and Barbarian Horde Discourse.

Trump’s attempt to turn U.S. international broadcasting into MAGA TV hit a minor snag when a federal judge ruled that Kari Lake’s stint as acting CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media was, legally speaking, trash. Judge Royce Lamberth voided everything she did from July 31 to Nov. 19 — including a mass firing of 500+ Voice of America and USAGM staff — because it violated federal law. Lake responded with the dignity befitting a top public official: by mocking the judge’s appearance and announcing she’ll just hang around as deputy CEO anyway, while Trump parachutes in another loyalist to keep the wrecking ball swinging.

The new nominee, Sarah Rogers, is currently undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and, conveniently, a former First Amendment lawyer for the NRA who now spends her days waging holy war against European efforts to regulate hate speech and disinformation. Rogers will, if confirmed, simultaneously run State’s propaganda shop and USAGM, just as the Trump administration openly talks about folding Voice of America’s "function" into her State Department bureau so it stops being "semi-independent" and starts being fully obedient. Nothing says "free press" like putting a government PR official in charge of the newsroom.

Rogers brings quite the résumé: she’s defended Charlie Kirk from “social media censorship,” cheered U.S. sanctions on European officials over online speech rules, and gone on X to diagnose Europe with a "civilizational death drive" for things like not loving nuclear plants enough and accepting "hostile low-human-capital migrants." She then upgraded the mask-off rhetoric by declaring that Germany "retains very few Jews, yet imported barbarian rapist hordes" — a phrase she defended as debate-provoking and, naturally, an example of free expression being oppressed by European law. This is the person Trump wants running America’s flagship international broadcaster, which is supposed to model independent journalism, not 4chan.

While Voice of America Director Michael Abramowitz gamely congratulated Rogers and talked about rebuilding VOA’s "vital mission," the actual mission from the White House is pretty clear: punish an agency whose job is to report news, stuff it inside State’s messaging operation, and put it under the control of someone who thinks Europe is dying because it doesn’t platform enough racist invective. The court said Kari Lake’s power grab was illegal; Trump’s answer is to make the power grab official and wrap it in Senate confirmation. The authoritarian learning curve is steep, but they’re studying.

Source: nbcnews.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

save america from voting, apparently

Speaker Mike Johnson bravely explains how the best way to 'save America' is to make sure fewer Americans are allowed to vote.

Speaker Mike Johnson bravely explains how the best way to 'save America' is to make sure fewer Americans are allowed to vote.

Congress is dragging its feet on Trump's beloved SAVE America Act, so the GOP has decided to roll out the beta version directly to the states. While the bill to federally supercharge voter suppression sits in the Senate without the 60 votes it needs, Republican legislatures in places like Florida, South Dakota, Utah, Mississippi, Iowa, and Kansas are racing to make it harder to register and harder to vote, especially if you’re poor, elderly, or the kind of person who doesn’t keep a neatly laminated archive of every name-change document since 1953. Florida, ever eager to impress Dear Leader, is going full cosplay of the national bill: forcing "proof of citizenship" checks through government databases, threatening over a million voters with purge letters if they can’t dig up decades-old paperwork, and helpfully banning IDs like student cards, public assistance cards, and retirement home IDs. So if you’re a college kid, broke, or in a nursing home, the state has a clear message: democracy is for other people. Lawmakers even floated the specter of homeowners association ID forgery as a serious threat to the republic, because apparently the real danger is suburban dads printing fake pool-access cards and then voting. Meanwhile, Trump is doing his best impression of a toddler holding his breath until he turns red, announcing he won't sign any other legislation until SAVE America passes, and demanding the bill also attack gender-affirming care and trans athletes just to round out the authoritarian wish list. Voter impersonation and noncitizen voting remain vanishingly rare and already illegal, but why let facts get in the way when you can engineer a system where 9% of voting-age citizens lack the required documents and can be quietly scrubbed from the rolls? The branding says "SAVE America"; the fine print says "killing democracy, one ID restriction at a time."
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration
killing democracy

trump to homeless americans: vote suppression first, roofs later

Donald Trump pondering whether Americans deserve housing before or after they give up mail-in ballots and basic voting rights.

Donald Trump pondering whether Americans deserve housing before or after they give up mail-in ballots and basic voting rights.

The Senate just did something almost unheard of in this era of brainworm politics: it passed a broadly bipartisan housing bill, 89-10, to make homes slightly less imaginary for millions of people. The bill loosens some regs, reins in corporate landlords a bit, lets more Section 8 money touch reality, and even tells institutional investors to stop vacuuming up single-family homes like Blackstone is playing Monopoly on god mode. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott teamed up, local governments get more tools, manufactured housing gets less stupid rules, and everyone pretends this is “ambitious” instead of “the bare minimum Congress could agree to without bursting into flames.” Naturally, Donald Trump has stepped in to explain that no, you may not have marginally more affordable housing unless he gets his real priority: a federal voter-suppression package requiring proof of citizenship and killing most mail-in voting. He’s spent weeks backing the housing bill, then suddenly announced he won’t sign anything unless Congress helps him sandblast democracy, because nothing says "I care about working families" like holding their rent relief hostage for an authoritarian side quest. Democrats oppose the voting bill, the House wants to slow-walk the housing bill into conference talks, and midterms are looming, so the most likely outcome is millions of renters and would-be homeowners getting a front-row seat to the same old show: bipartisan policy progress strangled so Trump can chase his dream of fewer voters and more power. Buried in the fine print: one of Trump’s "top priorities" here is blocking institutional investors from hoarding single-family homes, which would be a nice populist twist if he weren’t simultaneously threatening to kill the whole thing unless he gets to rig the electorate. It’s the Trump-era special: mildly useful economic reform stapled to a flaming pile of democratic backsliding. The question isn’t whether people will be able to afford a place to live – it’s whether they’ll have to give up a functioning election system to get it.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy

trump discovers cancel culture, applies it to the entire federal government

Bezos, Pichai, and Musk at Trump’s inauguration, presumably discussing the long-term business risks of building tools for a guy who thinks "supply chain risk" means "they hurt my feelings on TV."

Bezos, Pichai, and Musk at Trump’s inauguration, presumably discussing the long-term business risks of building tools for a guy who thinks "supply chain risk" means "they hurt my feelings on TV."

The Trump administration has reportedly decided that if you won't build them a panopticon and a robot war machine, you don't get to do business with the United States government. Anthropic refused to strip contract language banning domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons from its AI tools, so Trump went on Truth Social, had a tantrum, and announced Claude would be purged from the entire federal government. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth then slapped Anthropic with a "supply chain risk" label — something never before used against an American company — while the Pentagon allegedly called Anthropic’s customers to quietly suggest they drop the company. Free market capitalism, but make it retaliatory blacklist. This escalation was so nakedly punitive that even Big Tech, which has been shoveling money and support at Trump since his comeback tour, briefly remembered it has lawyers. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia and friends filed amicus briefs warning that the administration’s behavior is basically a government-run protection racket: nice AI business you’ve got there, shame if the president called you "woke" and the DoD destroyed your customer base. They explicitly spell it out: labelling Anthropic a "risk" looks like a political temper tantrum with "potentially ruinous" consequences, and if it stands, it creates a "culture of coercion, complicity, and silence" where companies are punished for daring to disagree. Former top military officials are also chiming in to say, in polite lawyer-speak, that this is how you scare serious companies away from working on national security at all, because any policy disagreement can now trigger "capricious retaliation." Meanwhile, a free-speech group notes that this is exactly what it looks like when the government uses its power to crush disfavored speech and force compliance. The tech sector isn't suddenly noble here — they’re just realizing that once you let an administration weaponize national security labels and procurement power to smash one "disobedient" vendor, every other CEO is one public disagreement away from being declared an enemy of the supply chain. Authoritarianism meets enterprise SaaS.

Source: bbc.com

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

republicans debate which flavor of minority rule they prefer

Sen. Kevin Cramer explains that democracy is great, as long as it has a 60‑vote handicap and only counts when his party wins.

Sen. Kevin Cramer explains that democracy is great, as long as it has a 60‑vote handicap and only counts when his party wins.

Sen. Kevin Cramer popped up on Meet the Press to bravely defend the filibuster, that cherished Senate tradition where nothing happens and democracy goes to nap, after fellow Republican Sen. John Cornyn suggested maybe it’s time to put the 60‑vote requirement out of its misery. Cornyn, suddenly discovering that majority rule might be useful when your party is busy backing a president playing nuclear footsie with Iran, wants to clear the procedural underbrush. Cramer, ever the institutionalist when it’s convenient, insists the filibuster is vital — translation: Republicans want to keep their obstruction tool handy for whenever voters briefly wrest control away from them again. This isn’t a lofty constitutional debate so much as an argument over which weapon they’d like to keep pointed at representative government. On one side, Cornyn & Co. fantasize about a world where Trump can get judges, appointees, and war authorizations approved with fewer annoying questions. On the other, Cramer clings to the filibuster as a backup generator for minority veto power once the electorate tires of endless Iran escalation and economic chaos. Both factions agree on the core principle: actual majority will is something to be managed, not respected — they’re just haggling over the most efficient way to keep it throttled.
#killing-democracy#oligarchy
killing democracy

florida man tries to outdo trump’s timeline with all‑you‑can‑threaten terror menu

Artist’s impression of American political discourse: a Florida man, an X account, and a death threat for every branch of government.

Artist’s impression of American political discourse: a Florida man, an X account, and a death threat for every branch of government.

America’s favorite export — unhinged political violence — is thriving. Florida man Diego Villavicencio has been indicted for allegedly threatening to kill Rep. Eric Swalwell, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, and President Donald Trump, apparently deciding that the best way to express his views on capitalism was to cosplay as a one-man terror cell in a comments section. Among the hits: “I’ll kill you and your family,” “Jerome is next,” and a promise to drive over and “take a couple of shots at trump and some other corrupt plutocrats.” Truly a bipartisan assassination fantasy — at last, something that crosses the aisle.

Swalwell, who has basically become a recurring character in the “people who get death threats for doing oversight” cinematic universe, notes that previous threats against him and his family somehow didn’t result in charges. But now, under Attorney General Pam Bondi — who recently told Congress that no one should be threatened, which is a bold stance in Trump’s America — DOJ is finally moving on at least this case. The FBI affidavit says the X account tied to Villavicencio had been calling for terrorist acts against government officials and CEOs, culminating in a neat little manifesto: “Death to America… Bomb the federal reserve… Kill politicians… Shoot Joe Biden… Shoot Donald Trump… END CAPITALISM FREE THE PEOPLE.”

X eventually suspended the account, apparently deciding that open calls for mass political violence were just a smidge over the line — somewhere between “slur-filled rant” and “buy my crypto scam.” Meanwhile, a federal judge has ordered Villavicencio held pending trial, and we’re all left pretending this is some isolated outburst instead of the logical end stage of a political culture that’s spent years telling supporters that opponents are traitors, pedophiles, communists, or all three. But sure, let’s keep asking why members of Congress need extra security.

#killing-democracy#lawlessness
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