trump deletes consumer protection, starts with the receipts
Russell Vought, seen here auditioning for the role of "acting director of the shredder" at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau just quietly nuked at least 2,200 webpages from existence, because if there’s one thing the Trump administration hates more than regulations, it’s evidence those regulations helped anyone. Gone: years of press releases, consumer advisories, congressional testimony, and speeches dating back to 2010 — basically the entire paper trail showing the CFPB worked and that Wall Street hated it for that exact reason.
Instead of protecting consumers, Trump’s handpicked hatchet man Russell Vought — the Project 2025 guy who literally wanted the agency abolished in writing — is running the bureau like a foreclosure mill. He’s ordered staff to stop all work, tried to fire most of them (blocked by a judge, inconveniently), dropped enforcement cases, and now is busy erasing the historical record. The agency that returned over $21 billion to consumers is being turned into a ghost office with a website that mostly says: "We used to do stuff. We don’t anymore. Please hold while your bank robs you."
Among the deleted material: advisories on what to do when your home insurance costs explode, know-your-rights pages for servicemembers, and testimony that CFPB directors are legally supposed to give to Congress — which Vought appears to have just skipped, because law is for the little people. Also scrubbed: Elizabeth Warren’s early CFPB speeches, so the agency’s founding story can be replaced with a new narrative where protecting people from junk fees is "anti-innovation" and letting JPMorgan and Wells Fargo look the other way on Zelle fraud is the bold future of American finance. The Trump administration isn’t listening to consumers; it’s hitting backspace on them.
#killing-democracy#corruption#forever-grifting
treasury guy explains how cutting treasury will totally fix war inflation
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Scott Bessent explains that if you squint hard enough, gutting Treasury during a war somehow looks like a responsible economic plan and not a slow-motion demolition of competent government.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent shuffled up to the House Ways and Means Committee to defend Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget, where the big, bold economic vision is: slash Treasury’s domestic programs by 12 percent while inflation and affordability concerns are spiking during an Iran war. Because when a conflict is driving up prices, what you really want is fewer tools, less capacity, and a weaker department in charge of the country’s finances. Very "tighten your belts, peasants, the donors are thirsty" energy.
Lawmakers also revisited Bessent’s adorable past beef with Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte — a man Trump just decided should be acting Director of National Intelligence, because who better to oversee America’s spy agencies than a housing guy with Twitter drama and a direct line to the president’s ego. The appointment has sparked backlash from people who still vaguely remember the concept of "qualifications," but the White House appears focused on its real priority: consolidating power in loyalists while pretending austerity is fiscal responsibility, not just another way to make ordinary people pay for Trump’s forever-war cosplay.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump declares congress unpatriotic for reading the constitution
Trump, outraged that Congress tried to use war powers like it’s still in the Constitution, furiously explaining that patriotism now means never saying no to him starting a war.
Trump is once again furious that the legislative branch insists on existing. After the House passed a war powers resolution 215–208 to make him either withdraw U.S. forces from the war in Iran or, radical thought, get congressional approval, he ran to Truth Social to denounce the vote as "meaningless" and the lawmakers as "unpatriotic". Because nothing says I deeply respect America like attacking Congress for trying to follow Article I.
The White House, never one to miss an opportunity to get the Constitution backward, is calling this an "unconstitutional" attempt to restrict presidential power, which is a bold take on a document that literally hands war-declaring authority to Congress. This is the fourth time the House has tried to rein in Trump’s war powers, while the Senate Republicans sit on their hands and occasionally pretend to remember checks and balances between fundraisers.
Four Republicans — Thomas Massie, Brian Fitzpatrick, Tom Barrett, and Warren Davidson — briefly escaped the cult and voted with Democrats, earning themselves the coveted "GRANDSTANDERS!" label from Dear Leader. Barrett even said, "Congress alone declares war" on camera, like he’d just discovered a forbidden text. Public opposition to the Iran war is growing, gas prices are spiking, and Trump’s response is to demand more blank checks for endless conflict and fewer questions from that annoying co-equal branch of government that keeps harshing his commander-in-chief cosplay.
#killing-democracy#imperialism
cbs discovers the real enemy is… journalism
Scott Pelley, moments before discovering that at CBS the only unacceptable bias is toward the truth.
America’s most famous ticking stopwatch just got tossed in the trash because Scott Pelley made the mistake of treating CBS like it was still a news organization and not a subsidiary of the Trump 2028 Brand Management Committee. After three decades at the network and years as the public face of 60 Minutes, Pelley told management what everyone in the building already knew: Bari Weiss, handpicked by tech heir and Trump-praised owner David Ellison, is “murdering 60 Minutes” by demanding falsehoods and partisan spin in politically sensitive stories. Management responded to this bold act of honesty the way any healthy democracy-adjacent media conglomerate would: they fired him “for cause.”
This slow-motion execution of a storied newsroom didn’t start with Pelley. Weiss — whose broadcast experience could fit on a Post-it — has been busy purging respected reporters, yanking an investigation into brutal conditions at an El Salvador prison holding Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration (while CBS’s parent company had business before that same administration), and generally turning the show rightward until Donald Trump started praising the new ownership. When you’re getting rave reviews from the guy whose allies benefit from your corporate censorship, you’re not doing journalism; you’re running PR.
The staff literally stood up and applauded when Pelley called out Weiss and the new executive producer to their faces, which tells you how bad it’s gotten inside the building. Leadership’s takeaway from that moment of collective conscience was not “maybe we’re destroying an institution,” but “time to make an example of the guy with integrity.” So Pelley walks out as a symbol of what journalism used to be, while CBS News settles comfortably into its new role as a glossy, ad-supported reminder that when corporations and presidents need protection, truth is always the first budget cut.
#killing-democracy#oligarchy#forever-grifting
trump’s war on boats continues to not find the drugs
US military vessel enforcing Trump’s new maritime policy: shoot first, never ask questions.
The Trump administration’s months‑long hobby of blowing up boats in the eastern Pacific racked up two more dead men, bringing the body count from these floating execution demos to at least 207. US Southern Command once again insisted the vessel was part of a drug smuggling route, and once again declined to provide any actual evidence of drugs, trafficking, or anything beyond "trust us, that speedboat looked sketchy." A video posted on X shows a boat, some water, and then a fireball – which, in the Trump era, apparently doubles as both probable cause and judicial review.
Trump has helpfully announced that the US is in "armed conflict" with Latin American cartels, a phrase that conveniently lets him treat the high seas like his personal Call of Duty server. The problem? The fentanyl crisis he claims to be stopping is largely driven by drugs crossing over land from Mexico, made with chemicals from China and India. So the administration’s grand strategy is: ignore the real supply chain, and instead vaporize random boats and call the dead "narcoterrorists" after the fact.
Legal scholars and some Democrats, still clinging to the quaint notion that laws matter, are pointing out that this might be wildly illegal. They were especially alarmed by the first strike back in September, when two survivors clinging to wreckage were killed in a second strike that the White House claimed was done "in self-defense" – from what, exactly, floating? Even military law experts say that would be illegal under basically any framework, armed conflict or not. The Pentagon’s inspector general has bravely stepped up to announce an evaluation of whether the military followed the proper six-phase targeting cycle – not whether the entire campaign is an extrajudicial, unconstitutional kill program run on vibes and presidential catchphrases.
So to recap: Trump unilaterally declares a new "armed conflict," the US starts killing people at sea with zero public evidence, survivors get bombed again, and the oversight mechanism is checking the PowerPoint process, not the war crimes question. American rule of law remains safely locked in the trunk while the commander-in-chief plays pirate.
#killing-democracy#imperialism#lawlessness
gop discovers there’s a limit to how much ballroom you can cram into a deportation bill
Artist’s rendering of Trump’s $400m East Wing ballroom: half Versailles, half ICE field office, all taxpayer-funded security perimeter.
Republicans have reluctantly abandoned their plan to stuff $1bn in "security upgrades" for Trump’s brand-new White House ballroom into a reconciliation bill that already shovels $70bn at his mass deportation machine. The Senate parliamentarian pointed out that maybe, just maybe, turning the East Wing into Trump Tower: DC Edition doesn’t quite fit in a budget maneuver meant for, you know, actual governance. So the ballroom cash quietly vanished from the revised text, like a hush payment on a different set of Trump books.
Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer, are taking a victory lap for killing the ballroom slush fund while correctly noting that the rest of the bill is still rotten: $13bn for Customs and Border Protection, $31bn for ICE, and $2.5bn for DHS, all ring-fenced for immigration enforcement. This is the GOP’s response to Democrats briefly cutting ICE’s allowance after federal agents killed two US citizens in Minneapolis: lock in a long-term pile of money so future Congresses can’t yank the plug on the deportation-industrial complex again. Accountability is for poor people and immigrants; ICE gets a multi-year trust fund.
The White House, naturally, insists this isn’t a retreat, just a technicality forced by the parliamentarian, while Trump still claims the $400m construction tab for his ballroom is covered by "private donors"—a phrase that in Trumpworld tends to mean oligarchs, dark-money groups, and whoever’s currently auditioning for a pardon. Meanwhile, Republicans started to notice that voting to bankroll Trump’s party palace while voters choke on high gas prices from his Iran war might not be the campaign ad of their dreams. So the ballroom goes on the back burner, and the deportation spree stays front and center. The grift can wait; the crackdown cannot.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#forever-grifting
trump admin discovers new ebola protocol: vibes
Health workers in full protective gear doing the job; somewhere far away, the Trump administration is doing the opposite of that.
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is on track to become the largest on record, so naturally the Trump administration has responded by… shrugging aggressively and announcing that it will "not allow" Ebola into the United States, as if viruses are stopped by Marco Rubio yelling at a press conference. For decades, the plan for exposed Americans has been clear: fly them home to one of 13 specialized U.S. facilities built specifically for this situation. Instead, Trump’s team is pretending they can just magic away constitutional rights and international law by declaring Americans can’t come home if they’ve been near the wrong germs.
Public health experts point out a small problem with this tough-guy cosplay: the U.S. government cannot legally quarantine its own citizens in other countries and cannot bar them from reentering. So the administration is improvising a workaround where sick or exposed Americans get shipped to Germany and the Czech Republic like defective products, while the White House insists it’s being "strong" on disease. The grand plan was to build a 50-bed quarantine unit in Kenya for future cases, but a Kenyan court just slammed the brakes on that, leaving everyone to wonder what happens to the next aid worker or journalist who gets exposed.
So we have: an escalating Ebola outbreak, hundreds of Americans in the danger zone, a fully stocked domestic infrastructure ready to handle this, and a president whose administration is choosing optics over medicine and constitutional rights. Instead of using the existing system, Trump and Rubio are busy LARPing as border warriors against a virus, outsourcing our responsibilities to European hospitals and hoping no one notices that the "plan" is just don’t bring them here and pray. Public health, meet Trump-era governance: if it can’t be turned into a xenophobic talking point, it doesn’t exist.
#killing-democracy#anti-science
hegseth builds his very own frat house fleet
Pete Hegseth, hard at work transforming the U.S. military from a fighting force into a live-action PragerU recruitment poster.
Pete Hegseth, self-branded "secretary of war" and actual secretary of defense, personally scrubbed nine officers – including every woman and several Black service members – from a Navy promotion list so that the one-star admiral slate could better reflect his core values: male, white, and Trump-adjacent. The original list, drawn up by a board of admirals, had the radical flaw of resembling the actual Navy, where more than 21% are women and almost 40% are people of color. Hegseth fixed that problem by turning it into an all-male, overwhelmingly white lineup that looks less like a modern military and more like a Heritage Foundation happy hour.
Naturally, the Pentagon insists this has nothing to do with race or gender. Spokesman Sean Parnell straight-facedly declared that "meritocracy reigns supreme at the war department" under Trump and Hegseth, which is a bold statement in a world where Trump’s White House doctor, Sean Barbabella – who just pronounced the visibly unwell almost-80-year-old president in "excellent health" – somehow lands on the promotion list while multiple highly qualified women and Black officers mysteriously vanish. Meritocracy, it seems, now means "loyalty first, demographics later."
This isn’t a one-off tantrum; it’s a pattern. Hegseth already meddled in an Army promotion slate to knock off women and Black officers, has fired or sidelined nearly three dozen senior officers (a majority of them women or Black), and has systematically removed high-ranking women like Adm Lisa Franchetti, V Adm Yvette Davids, Shoshana Chatfield, and Coast Guard commandant Linda Fagan. A former military official notes that the defense secretary is supposed to give a simple up-or-down on promotion lists, not play segregationist HR manager from his Fox News fever dream. But Hegseth is stripping autonomy from the services the same way this administration strips rights from anyone who isn’t a straight white man in a campaign hat.
Meanwhile, a federal appeals court just ruled that the administration acted illegally in trying to boot transgender troops, a small speed bump on the regime’s highway to a 1950s cosplay military. The Navy is left with a leadership slate that looks nothing like the force it commands, the courts are busy cleaning up the illegal orders, and Trump’s team is still shouting "woke" at anyone who can find Ukraine on a map. Outstanding work all around.
#killing-democracy#racism#fascism
se250quincentennial: bread, circuses, and a blue reflecting pool
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, now apparently sponsored by Blue Gatorade and executive ego, awaits its 250th birthday cage match and fireworks world record attempt.
For America’s 250th birthday, Congress created America250 to plan nonpartisan events, and Donald Trump responded by creating his own shadow party-planning state, Freedom 250 — a "public-private partnership," which is Washington-speak for "we stapled a flag to a branding exercise and pointed it at the Treasury." While America250 does things like time capsules and concerts, Freedom 250 is busy turning the National Mall into a 16‑day state fair and the South Lawn into a UFC octagon, because nothing says "constitutional republic" like a cage fight outside the Oval Office scheduled to coincide with the president’s 80th birthday.
The music lineup is going great: once artists realized the fair was tied to Freedom 250 and the White House, a bunch of them bailed, prompting Trump to threaten on social media to cancel the whole thing and replace it with a giant MAGA rally. So the 250th anniversary of American independence is now held together by Vanilla Ice and Flo Rida, which feels less like a celebration of liberty and more like a county fair booked by a YouTube algorithm. Meanwhile, Freedom 250 hijacked the traditional National Park Service 4 July fireworks to stage an 860,000‑shell record attempt, because the only thing bigger than the explosions must be the president’s need for a Guinness entry.
Out in the rest of the country, America250 is trying to act like adults — Times Square ball drops in every time zone, a time capsule in Philadelphia, block parties in Milwaukee — while Trump focuses on "beautification" projects in DC that range from tacky to potentially illegal. Workers have started painting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue, with Trump promising the paint will last "40 or 50 years" and fix leaks, which is exactly how you talk about a 620‑meter historic landmark when you think it’s a hotel fountain. A nonprofit has sued, arguing he blew past laws protecting historic sites, so the semiquincentennial now includes a side quest where the president tries to legally rebrand the nation’s most famous reflecting pool as the world’s classiest above‑ground swimming pool. Happy birthday, America — you made it 250 years, and your reward is a cage match and a can of Sherwin‑Williams.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
trump hosts 'the apprentice: successor edition'
JD Vance and Marco Rubio practice sitting obediently on a couch while awaiting further instructions from the guy who "studies" them like show ponies.
Trump went on the New York Post’s "Pod Force One" — because of course that’s the name — to publicly workshop his favorite parlor game: who gets to inherit the cult. He floated a JD Vance–Marco Rubio 2028 ticket, carefully refusing to say who should be on top, like a bored monarch teasing which courtier he’ll let hold the scepter when he’s done playing with it.
Rather than backing his own vice president as the obvious heir, Trump is keeping the endorsement as an open question, on purpose, repeatedly polling his hangers-on about whether they prefer Vance or Rubio. The result is a permanent loyalty audition where the sitting VP and Secretary of State are reduced to contestants scrambling for the golden MAGA rose.
Trump bragged that he “watches them all the time” and “studies them as they’re with each other,” which is a totally normal thing for a president to say about his would-be successors and not at all the language of a guy running a personality cult. He insists they’re “very talented” and “similar,” which tracks: both have completed the full spine-removal surgery required to go from Trump critic to Trump understudy. American democracy, meanwhile, is stuck as the background extra on Trump’s never-ending casting couch of power.
#killing-democracy#oligarchy
homebuilder heir put in charge of spying on the country, what could go wrong
Bill Pulte, freshly promoted from regulating mortgages to regulating who gets spied on, presumably checking if the Constitution has a demolition clause.
Trump has decided that the perfect person to run America’s spy agencies at a critical surveillance crossroads is… Bill Pulte, a homebuilding heir and housing finance bureaucrat whose main qualification is being a major donor and Trump loyalist. Intelligence background? None. Proven willingness to do "anything that President Trump wants, legal or otherwise" according to Sen. Mark Warner? Absolutely. Naturally, this surprise appointment lands just days before Congress has to decide whether to renew Section 702, the warrantless surveillance program that hoovers up foreign communications and plenty of Americans’ messages along the way.
Lawmakers were already trying to duct-tape together a fragile bipartisan deal to extend 702 through 2029 with a few cosmetic restraints. Then Trump tossed Pulte into the DNI chair, prompting Warner to admit his confidence in the deal "evaporated overnight" and warning that someone with "a history of misusing private information" is about to inherit one of the most powerful surveillance toys on Earth. Even Senate majority leader John Thune, who usually rolls over on command, is suddenly discovering the concept of "professionals" in top intelligence jobs and gently hinting that turning the DNI into a political hitman might be bad.
Pulte, for his part, comes with a fun little track record: at the Federal Housing Finance Agency he allegedly used his perch to launch unproven fraud accusations at Trump critics like Fed governor Lisa Cook, which Trump then tried to use as a pretext to kick her off the Fed board. Cook refused to go, and now the Supreme Court gets to decide how far the president can go in purging independent regulators who displease him. So Congress is being asked to hand a sweeping surveillance program to a man who already weaponized financial oversight against political enemies, while the courts simultaneously debate how much unchecked power Trump gets over independent institutions. Sure, what could possibly go sideways here.
To sweeten the pot, the "compromise" 702 renewal bill from Tom Cotton and Chuck Grassley tosses in a three-year ban on a Fed digital currency as a treat for the House conspiracy caucus, because when you’re rewriting national surveillance authorities, why not also legislate around whatever YouTube video the Freedom Caucus watched last week. The bottom line: Trump is trying to bolt a loyalist with no intel experience onto the top of the spy apparatus right as Congress decides whether that apparatus can keep vacuuming up everyone’s communications. It’s less "checks and balances" and more "hand the arsonist a bigger gas can".
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump civil-rights enforcement: now with 80% more thought-policing
Professor tries to defend his students’ rights; NYPD and the Trump-era civil-rights cosplay squad respond by turning the quad into a free-speech demolition zone.
Columbia University coughed up a $21m "antisemitism" fund to settle with Trump’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which bravely reimagined Title VII as a tool for punishing exposure to "antisemitic or anti-Israeli protests" – because nothing says civil-rights enforcement like making political dissent a workplace hazard. The deal came bundled with a $200m fine and assorted loyalty-oath style measures to end a months-long standoff with the administration, after which everyone was supposed to clap for law and order and stop asking why the White House is micromanaging campus protest policy.
The punchline: a group of Jewish faculty are now filing claims to say yes, Columbia did create a hostile environment for Jews – by targeting and investigating Jewish pro-Palestinian professors, doxing them in official reports, misrepresenting their views as calls to abolish Israel, and helping sic mobs on them for being the wrong kind of Jew. They describe being spat on, followed, threatened, and disciplined, all while Columbia and Trump’s EEOC framed this as protecting Jewish safety. Turns out when you fuse donor panic, campus cowardice, and a Trump administration eager to "reinterpret" civil-rights law around its foreign-policy propaganda, you don’t get safety; you get a state-backed speech-policing machine that uses Jews as props and then shoves them under the bus the moment they refuse the script.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
pentagon hires january 6 guy to fight terrorism, what could go wrong
Future counter-terrorism expert auditions by assisting a terrorist attack on Congress, Pentagon apparently impressed by his résumé.
American democracy had another banner day: while California slowly counts its way through a governor’s race featuring Steve Hilton and two Democrats trying to remember what a functional party looks like, the real action is in Washington, where the Pentagon has apparently decided the best way to fight terrorism is to hire someone who joined a terrorist attack on Congress.
The Department of Defense tapped Elias Irizarry – who literally pleaded guilty for his role in the January 6 insurrection – for a sensitive counter-terrorism and irregular warfare team that handles highly classified operations. Because when you’re looking for someone to help safeguard the republic, why not pick the guy photographed in a red Maga cap helping a mob try to overturn an election? That’s not a conflict of interest, that’s just lived experience.
Joel Valdez, the acting Pentagon press secretary, gamely defended the appointment while lashing out at the Washington Post for the crime of reporting it, helpfully signaling that the real threat isn’t the insurrectionist inside the building, it’s the journalists outside it. The message from the Trump-era security state couldn’t be clearer: attempt to overthrow the government, and a few years later you too can help decide who counts as a terrorist. America’s counter-terrorism policy has officially become: if you can’t beat the extremists, put them on the payroll.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump wants his defense lawyer to run the doj permanently, because of course he does
Todd Blanche, currently Trump’s defense attorney and acting AG, practices the time‑honored Trump-era legal doctrine: if your client owns the Justice Department, is anything really a crime?
Donald Trump has apparently decided to cut out the middleman and just hand the Department of Justice to his personal criminal defense attorney. Asked on a podcast if acting attorney general Todd Blanche would become the permanent AG, Trump replied: “I think he will” – which is a fun way of saying why have an independent justice system when you can have your own guy in charge of the people trying to prosecute you?
Blanche, who has been defending Trump in his various legal escapades, is now being floated as the nation’s top law enforcement officer, because this administration’s concept of ethics is basically what if the mob movie was real. The president under indictment wants his lawyer running the prosecutors, and we’re all supposed to pretend this is just another normal Wednesday in American democracy.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
russ vought’s loyalty grants program
Russell Vought reviews a stack of grant applications to see which ones adequately cite the Federalist Papers, Lee Greenwood lyrics, and Donald Trump’s Truth Social feed.
The White House has quietly dropped a 400-page rulebook that turns every federal grant into a political loyalty test, because nothing says "small government" like Russell Vought personally sitting on top of the entire research and nonprofit ecosystem. Under the proposed OMB rules, all grants must "demonstrably advance the president’s policy priorities" and reflect "American values"—helpfully defined by Donald Trump, a man whose chief scientific achievement is not drinking bleach on camera. Peer review by subject-matter experts gets replaced by ideological sniff tests from political appointees who think "woke" is a budget line item.
Scientists are pointing out that letting political hacks cancel grants "at any time, for any reason" and banning funds for publishing, conferences, or collaboration is a great way to kneecap American science and hand the future to China on a silver platter. Meanwhile, OMB is formalizing the Musk-flavored DOGE chaos: interns reportedly ran Ctrl‑F on NIH grants for words like "equality", "diversity", "sex" and "gender identity" and just yanked the money. If you had the right political or business connections, you could get it back—which is less a research policy and more a protection racket with PowerPoints.
The proposal also bans using federal funds to support anything involving "disparate-impact" liability, because measuring whether policies disproportionately hurt people of color is apparently un-American now. Researchers would have to predict every conference they’ll attend over a five-year grant, foreign collaboration is throttled, and OMB—not the agencies with actual expertise—locks in binding rules by October. As one scientist notes, the new system looks less like a democracy funding open inquiry and more like Soviet central planning, except with fewer five-year plans and more culture-war podcasts. Academic freedom, meet the loyalty oath.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump cures the deep state by giving it ptsd
Trump-era officials explain that illegally firing thousands of civil servants is just ‘draining the swamp,’ while the swamp’s actual wildlife and scientists quietly leave the country.
The Trump administration’s war on the so‑called “deep state” has reached its logical conclusion: federal workers are reporting PTSD-like symptoms from being illegally fired, while the people who did it are still cashing government paychecks. A new survey of more than 300 probationary employees tossed overboard during Trump’s second term found 95% have ongoing mental health issues, nearly half report PTSD‑like symptoms, and a quarter are now on new medications. You’d think that might give the White House pause, but the only thing they’re pausing is email replies: the Office of Personnel Management simply stopped responding to questions like a teenager ignoring their report card.
A federal judge already ruled these mass terminations unlawful, but conveniently declined to order reinstatement, openly worrying that the supreme court would just swoop in and rescue Trump’s purge. So the precedent is set: presidents can break the law, terrorize career staff, and the courts will issue a strongly worded shrug. Meanwhile, architect of this genius plan Russell Vought was out here privately admitting the goal: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected.” Stellar governing philosophy—less ‘public service,’ more ‘psychological warfare against your own workforce.’
The human fallout is exactly what you’d expect from a regime that treats scientists and rangers as enemy combatants. One in five fired workers is still unemployed; nearly half of those who found new jobs are earning significantly less. Trump brags they’re getting “twice as much money, three times as much money,” while the data says they’re getting pay cuts, anxiety, and a crash course in how fragile civil service protections really are. More than 10,000 PhD‑level experts have fled the country since Trump’s second term began, because nothing says ‘America First’ like driving your scientists to the UK while species go extinct and taxpayer‑funded projects rot in bureaucratic limbo.
What’s left is a gutted federal workforce, a traumatized class of ex‑public servants, and a template for future presidents who’d like to swap neutral expertise for obedient loyalists. The message is clear: devote your career to serving the public, and this government might reward you with unemployment, PTSD, and a cautionary tale about how easy it is for one administration to steal not just your job, but the functioning of the state itself. Democracy doesn’t die in darkness; it dies in mass termination memos and carefully calibrated indifference.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
white house discovers poverty is a mindset issue
Kevin Hassett bravely explains that if you can’t afford groceries, you’re just not appreciating how optimistic your suffering really is.
Trump’s chief economic adviser Kevin Hassett went on Fox News to unveil the bold new White House economic theory: if you’re maxing out your credit cards on groceries and gas, that’s not desperation, that’s confidence. Americans watching their paychecks dissolve at the supermarket are, according to Hassett, just expressing deep optimism about the future, like a nation of involuntary venture capitalists betting big on eggs and rent.
To explain away the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index dropping to its lowest level since 1952, Hassett helpfully announced that the survey has “nothing to do with the economy” and is merely a place for Democrats to be mean to Donald Trump. The fact that people across parties are miserable about prices is, inconveniently, in the data – so the solution is to declare the data fake and blame vibes. Classic Trump-era science: when reality conflicts with the narrative, fire reality.
Trump, for his part, has streamlined the administration’s messaging by admitting he doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation – or, as he added, “I don’t think about anybody.” Meanwhile Secretary of State Marco Rubio, already auditioning for 2028, tells Americans to feel “very fortunate” as fuel prices soar, like a landlord explaining that your rent hike is actually a growth opportunity. The ruling class sets your money on fire, then insists the smell of burning cash is the aroma of prosperity. Groceries may be unaffordable, but at least you’re getting a masterclass in authoritarian gaslighting for free.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
ashley hinson wins primary, rushes to thank the real senator from mar-a-lago
Ashley Hinson celebrates her primary win by thanking the man who thinks every Republican seat is just an off-site branch of Trump Organization, Legislative Division.
Ashley Hinson, having just been projected the GOP Senate primary winner in Iowa, used her big democracy moment to thank... Donald Trump, naturally. Voters showed up, ballots were cast, numbers were tallied, and the first person she credits is the twice‑impeached, multiply indicted coup enthusiast who still functions as the Republican Party’s HR department.
This is where we are: every Republican primary night now doubles as a loyalty pledge ceremony. The message isn’t subtle—policy, governance, constituents all take a back seat to flattering the man who tried to overturn an election and still demands fealty as the price of admission to higher office. The Senate campaign is ostensibly about representing Iowa, but the first audience is Mar‑a‑Lago, and the first job requirement is public gratitude to Dear Leader.
It’s not illegal, it’s just the slow, grinding normalization of a party where the ballot box matters less than the blessing of one chronically online Florida retiree. Representative democracy is technically still here; it’s just been rebranded as a fan club.
#killing-democracy#fascism
montana’s senate seat, now available by personal referral only
Steve Daines hands Kurt Alme a Senate bid like he’s passing along the company car keys, while Trump signs off from the Mar-a-Lago HR department.
Montana Republicans have discovered an exciting new form of democracy: senate by handoff. Retiring Sen. Steve Daines waited until minutes before the filing deadline to yank his own name off the ballot and slot in his handpicked successor, former U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme. Then he ran to Semafor to explain that this totally normal, extremely transparent maneuver was just to avoid an expensive race and keep Democrats from noticing there might be an election happening.
Trump, naturally, endorsed Alme "based on Steve’s strongest recommendation," because nothing screams populism like a Senate seat changing hands via personal reference from the party boss to the guy in Mar-a-Lago. Some Montana Republicans are mildly upset that this closed‑door shuffle "deprived other potential candidates" of a chance to run, but don’t worry, the important thing is the donors are spared the horror of a competitive primary and voters get to pretend this was their choice all along.
Meanwhile, the most interesting threat to Alme isn’t a Democrat but Seth Bodnar, a well‑funded independent former Green Beret and university president promising not to caucus with either party and reminding Montanans that the government has "no business in your bedroom, your doctor’s office, or your gun cabinet." So the fall matchup may be less "red vs. blue" and more "Trump‑blessed party machine vs. guy who didn’t need a secret filing‑deadline heist to get on the ballot." Democracy: still technically present, now with 30% more gatekeeping.
#killing-democracy#oligarchy
trump slaps 25% tariffs on brazil to protect fragile bolsonaro feelings
Trump grins in the Oval Office with the Bolsonaros, helpfully illustrating why US trade policy now comes with a family loyalty punch card.
The Trump administration is proposing another round of tariffs on Brazil — 25% this time — despite the awkward little detail that the US actually runs a hefty trade surplus with Brazil. The official line is that Brazil’s trade practices are "unreasonable" and "burden or restrict US commerce". The unofficial line is written in crayon: Jair Bolsonaro is in legal trouble at home for trying to overturn his 2022 election loss, and Donald Trump is once again using US trade policy as a loyalty rewards program for failed coup enthusiasts.
Lula, who has the misfortune of being both Brazil’s president and not a fascist, points out that the whole thing seems suspiciously tied to the Bolsonaros’ little family lobbying trip to Washington. While the US Trade Representative talks about "constructive" meetings and "substantial differences," Trump is busy posting Oval Office glamour shots with Bolsonaro’s sons — the same guys Lula calls "traitors" for asking a foreign power to meddle in Brazil’s internal politics. Democracy promotion, Trump-style: sanction the country that prosecutes an attempted coup, reward the guys who helped try it.
After the Supreme Court already ruled in February that Trump overstepped his authority by abusing the International Emergency Economic Powers Act for his last tariff joyride, the administration has simply pivoted to Section 301 of the Trade Act like a tax-collecting hydra. The goal now: slap Brazil with new tariffs under a legally sturdier pretext and use them to backfill the revenue hole created when the Court told him, again, that the presidency is not a monarchy. Bonus farce: US data shows a $14bn goods surplus and an even bigger services surplus with Brazil, but the White House is pretending it’s under siege by Brazilian soybeans.
So we end up with US foreign economic policy being driven by three forces: Trump’s obsession with tariffs as a magic nationalist totem, Marco Rubio’s cartoon-villain hostility to Latin America, and the Bolsonaros’ attempt to launder their scandals in Washington. The administration calls it "trade enforcement"; everyone else can see it for what it is: a president using the US economy as a blunt instrument to help a foreign mini-Trump and punish a democratic government that had the audacity to prosecute a would-be autocrat.
#killing-democracy#trade-war#forever-grifting
