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The Trump Presidency Timeline

Documenting the chaos since day one. 796 entries and counting.

Category: killing democracy
killing democracy

doj ‘oopsies’ its way into releasing trump-epstein interview files

Attorney General Pam Bondi explains that crucial Epstein-Trump interview files were hiding in the DOJ’s very tall, very classy, totally duplicative filing cabinet.

Attorney General Pam Bondi explains that crucial Epstein-Trump interview files were hiding in the DOJ’s very tall, very classy, totally duplicative filing cabinet.

The Justice Department has miraculously "discovered" 15 Epstein-related documents that were totally just mis-labeled as duplicates, among them FBI interview notes from a South Carolina woman who says Jeffrey Epstein abused her and that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her when she was between 13 and 15. For years, this material somehow failed to exist on the DOJ website, then popped back into reality once reporters compared the public releases to the evidence catalog from the Ghislaine Maxwell case. Government transparency, brought to you by Ctrl+Z. These newly posted summaries detail how the woman says Epstein blackmailed her mother, trafficked her to New York or New Jersey, and delivered her to a "very tall building with huge rooms" where she alleges Trump assaulted her. The FBI interviewed her multiple times in 2019, decided the claims were important enough to keep talking to her, and then — as far as the documents show — just kind of vibed from there. The files are silent on whether agents found her credible or bothered to verify anything, but DOJ is very loud about insisting such claims are "unfounded and false" and would have been "weaponized" already if they had even "a shred of credibility." Always reassuring when the nation's top law enforcement shop sounds like Trump's Truth Social account. Meanwhile, DOJ yanked 47,635 Epstein files offline for "victim concerns" and redactions, then swore on X that "ALL responsive documents" had been produced except for a few narrow categories. That statement aged like milk once NBC News and Rep. Robert Garcia noticed that some of the most politically sensitive files — including these Trump-related interviews — weren’t in the supposedly unredacted collection for Congress. Now, under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, DOJ is legally barred from hiding things just because they’re embarrassing to a "government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary," so the department has graciously agreed to let members of Congress read the "duplicates" in a special reading room, like a shame library for elite impunity. The Republican-led House Oversight Committee just voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi over the whole mess, while Garcia is out here promising to end the "White House cover-up." So we have a sex-trafficking scandal, a former president named by an alleged victim, a DOJ that keeps discovering its own missing files like they fell behind the couch, and a transparency law that has to explicitly say, "you are not allowed to hide this just because it’s politically awkward." Truly, the system is working flawlessly.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
killing democracy

house to constitution: we were on a break

The House of Representatives heroically defends America from the grave threat of having to follow its own Constitution.

The House of Representatives heroically defends America from the grave threat of having to follow its own Constitution.

The House just looked at an unauthorized air and naval war with Iran, shrugged, and said, "seems fine." By a 212–219 vote, Republicans (plus a helpful handful of Democrats) killed a bipartisan war powers resolution from Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna that would have forced Trump to stop playing commander-in-chief-by-impulse until Congress actually authorized the conflict. Six US troops and at least 1,230 Iranians are dead so far, but the real emergency, according to Speaker Mike Johnson, is that limiting Trump might "empower our enemies" — unlike, say, lurching into a region-wide war with no clear objective.

The Senate GOP already torpedoed a similar measure, and Republican leaders in both chambers have decided that Trump was magically "authorized" to start bombing Iran because… reasons. Marco Rubio, now cosplaying as secretary of state, can’t keep his story straight about why the US attacked or what the goal is, beyond "Israel was going to hit them first" and the always-reliable "trust us." Constitutional requirements? The 1973 War Powers Resolution? Massie and Warren Davidson politely pointed out that none of the legal triggers for war have been met, which is adorable, because Congress abandoned that standard somewhere between Vietnam and the Bush administration.

Hakeem Jeffries noted that the country is drowning in an affordability crisis Trump promised to fix on "day one," but instead we’re burning billions on a foreign war with undefined aims and undefined legal authority. A few members, like Jared Moskowitz, tried to resuscitate congressional relevance, warning that "Congress is on the verge of irrelevancy." The vote result suggests we’re well past "on the verge" and deep into "organ donor." The branch that’s supposed to declare war just took another step toward being a very expensive comment section on the president’s foreign policy livestream.

#killing-democracy#lawlessness
killing democracy

who is markwayne mullin and why is he in charge of civil liberties

Markwayne Mullin, moments before being handed control of one of the largest domestic security apparatuses on Earth, presumably after answering "Yes" to the interview question: "Will you do what I say, no matter how illegal?"

Markwayne Mullin, moments before being handed control of one of the largest domestic security apparatuses on Earth, presumably after answering "Yes" to the interview question: "Will you do what I say, no matter how illegal?"

Trump has decided that the Department of Homeland Security — the agency that runs immigration enforcement, border security, and a good chunk of the domestic surveillance funhouse — should now be overseen by Sen. Markwayne Mullin, whose main qualifications appear to be: (1) unwavering loyalty to Trump, (2) a flair for performative rage, and (3) a long record of treating "national security" as a magic spell that makes constitutional rights disappear.

Instead of picking someone who might see DHS as a serious, terrifyingly powerful institution that needs restraint, Trump has gone with a guy whose brand is basically "what if Fox News comments section, but with subpoena power." Mullin has backed Trump’s hardest-line immigration fantasies, cheered on crackdowns on migrants, and treated dissent as a security threat — exactly the temperament you want running an agency with its own armed forces and detention network.

So as war with Iran spreads, Americans are stranded abroad, and DHS’s mission should be "protect people, don’t shred the Constitution," Trump’s solution is to hand the keys to a reliable culture-war arsonist. If you were hoping for someone who sees civil liberties as more than an obstacle to be bulldozed, this administration would like to unsubscribe you from reality.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#fascism
killing democracy

texas gop tests new ‘what if voting just…didn’t work?’ blueprint

Texans waiting in line to vote while Republicans run stress tests on how much democracy you can delete with a signage change and three voting machines.

Texans waiting in line to vote while Republicans run stress tests on how much democracy you can delete with a signage change and three voting machines.

Texas Republicans just beta-tested a new feature of American democracy: now with extra disenfranchisement. After years of smooth countywide voting, the GOP parties in Dallas and Williamson counties suddenly refused to run joint primaries, blowing up a system that worked and replacing it with a choose-your-own-adventure maze of polling places, missing signs, and three voting machines for thirteen precincts. Shockingly, when you funnel hundreds of people into understaffed sites and send others ping-ponging between locations, some of them give up and go home. The Texas supreme court then helpfully waded in to clarify things by…ordering that votes from people not in line by 7pm be segregated, just to really underline that the point here is not "count every vote" but "find creative ways not to." Voting-rights advocates and the NAACP’s Derrick Johnson spelled out the obvious: this isn’t a glitch, it’s a blueprint – a live-fire test of how far partisan officials can go in sabotaging elections under the cover of "procedural changes" and "conspiracy theory" panic. The pattern is already familiar: gerrymander communities of color, then make election day such a bureaucratic obstacle course that young, working-class, and nonwhite voters are the ones falling through the cracks. Republicans get to claim they’re just making "local decisions" while the actual impact is that people who showed up, stood in line, and did everything right are told, functionally, "oops, democracy not available in your area today." And yet, as Texas Democrats keep pointing out, the sheer effort the establishment is putting into making voting miserable is also a tell: if your vote didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be working this hard to make sure you never cast it.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#racism
killing democracy

trump shuts one death camp, orders 24 more on amazon prime

Artist’s rendering of DHS “high standards”: a collapsing tent city, a measles quarantine sign, and a giant "NOW HIRING: PRIVATE PRISON CONTRACTORS" banner flapping proudly in the toxic wind.

Artist’s rendering of DHS “high standards”: a collapsing tent city, a measles quarantine sign, and a giant "NOW HIRING: PRIVATE PRISON CONTRACTORS" banner flapping proudly in the toxic wind.

The Trump administration is reportedly closing Camp East Montana, the Fort Bliss tent gulag where three detainees died and a measles outbreak has people in quarantine, which in ICE-speak apparently means the experiment was too on-the-nose. The $1.2bn contract with private profiteer Acquisition Logistics LLC is being quietly lined up for termination, no explanation offered, presumably because "our guards might have homicidally choked a man to death" doesn’t test well in the focus groups. DHS, naturally, is out here bragging about its "rigorous audits" and "high standards" at a facility where ICE’s own inspectors found dozens of violations and detainees report beatings, food deprivation, medical neglect, and 24/7 construction noise. One man’s death is now being investigated as a homicide after witnesses say five guards choked him; another detainee died after health complications; a third is labeled a "presumed suicide" in a system where people mysteriously keep dying and the agency’s story changes every news cycle. And since this is the Trump era, closing one plague-ridden death camp is just the prelude to the bigger, shinier horror: ICE’s "new detention model" of spending more than $38bn to buy and convert up to 24 warehouses into mass immigration camps. While officials dismiss abuse reports as "fake news" and federal officers are already shooting unarmed protesters in Minneapolis, the administration is scaling up the infrastructure for a national warehouse-gulag system. Camp East Montana isn’t an aberration; it’s the beta test.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#lawlessness
killing democracy

america’s bravest victims of mean looks and protest signs

Kristi Noem bravely testifies about the unprecedented danger of being yelled at in a blue city while armed, armored, and backed by the federal government.

Kristi Noem bravely testifies about the unprecedented danger of being yelled at in a blue city while armed, armored, and backed by the federal government.

The Trump–Vance White House has discovered a bold new frontier in law enforcement heroism: nobody dying. Despite DHS officials endlessly insisting that deportation officers face "unprecedented threats" and a "dangerous environment", the agency’s own records show that no ICE deportation officer has been violently killed in the line of duty since the agency was created in 2003. Of the 15 Enforcement and Removal Operations deaths, almost all were from Covid, with the remaining cases tied to a heart attack during a chase and heat stress in training. The last time someone in a comparable deportation role was killed by violence was 1949, back when Harry Truman was president and nobody had invented Fox News.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#anti-immigration
killing democracy

trump considers canceling elections, democrats argue about kamala again

Democracy, pictured here moments before being replaced by a national emergency and a strongly worded DNC memo.

Democracy, pictured here moments before being replaced by a national emergency and a strongly worded DNC memo.

Kamala Harris is quietly workshopping her 2028 "third time’s the charm" tour while the Democratic establishment performs its favorite ritual: ignoring why young voters hate them and pretending Gaza never happened. Harris has spent the post-2024 era selling a memoir nobody wanted, backing losing candidates, and still somehow failing to locate a single conviction that isn’t means-tested by her donor list. The party’s big insight from its own secret autopsy on her loss? Hide the report so no one has to admit that treating genocide like an inconvenient polling crosstab might have consequences. Meanwhile, on the other side of the smoldering republic, Trump and his fan club are workshopping a more direct approach to politics: just don’t have elections. Pro-Trump activists are reportedly urging the White House to declare a national emergency based on imaginary Chinese interference in 2020, then use it to ban mail ballots and voting machines because democracy is apparently a biohazard now. Trump has also repeatedly floated the idea of skipping elections altogether and running for an unconstitutional third term, which his press secretary assures us is just a hilarious joke — kind of like the Bill of Rights, but with fewer punchlines. So as the GOP openly toys with emergency rule and dismantling what’s left of free and fair elections, the Democratic response is to quietly hope Kamala Harris takes the hint and bows out so they can find a "winner" who might, someday, be willing to draw the line at genocide, let alone at autocracy. Ta-Nehisi Coates politely notes that if you can’t oppose mass slaughter, you probably can’t be trusted to defend democracy either. The 2028 plan thus appears to be: one party testing how far it can go toward canceling elections, and the other testing how many voters it can alienate while still calling itself the resistance.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

justice department rebrands as trump 2026 campaign headquarters

The Justice Department, now featuring a giant Trump banner, for those who were still confused about who the law really serves.

The Justice Department, now featuring a giant Trump banner, for those who were still confused about who the law really serves.

The Justice Department has finally dropped the pretense and gone full campaign office, complete with a giant banner of Donald Trump’s scowling face draped over Main Justice like it’s a mid-tier casino, not the nation’s top law enforcement agency. Under Attorney General Pam Bondi — whose main qualification appears to be never saying no to Dear Leader — DOJ is now busy chasing Trump’s conspiracy theories and enemies list, from Jerome Powell to Tim Walz, while real law takes a long, unpaid sabbatical.

Instead of prosecuting crimes, Bondi’s crew is raiding a Georgia election office in Fulton County to hunt for evidence of 2020 fraud that’s already been debunked more times than Trump has declared himself the “most persecuted man in history.” The raid was greenlit off a referral from Kurt Olsen, a 2020 election denier whom Trump has installed as “director of election security and integrity,” which is a bit like making George Santos head of the Office of Government Ethics. Meanwhile, Bondi is suing 30 states to hand over voter registration data, despite lacking clear legal authority, because nothing says “limited government” like a federal dragnet for everyone’s personal voting info.

On the side, DOJ is trying to criminalize policy disagreements. Jerome Powell is under investigation for the shocking offense of not setting interest rates to match Trump’s mood swings, and Minnesota governor Tim Walz is being probed for supposedly “obstructing” federal immigration enforcement by criticizing the administration’s lethal clown show at the border. When a grand jury refused to indict Democratic senator Mark Kelly and others for a video saying troops shouldn’t follow illegal orders, Trump responded by calling it “seditious behavior punishable by death,” because subtlety is for democracies that still work.

To really drive the point home, Bondi issued a memo telling DOJ employees they must “zealously advance, protect and defend” Trump’s interests, turning the department from the people’s lawyer into Trump’s personal goon squad — though as one former prosecutor dryly noted, even a normal law firm at least pretends to follow the law. Ex-prosecutors are calling it a “subversion of the justice system.” Trump calls it justice. Everyone else calls it what it is: the justice department being repurposed as the authoritarian cosplay division of the Trump White House.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
killing democracy

jd vance and dr. oz declare war on poor people, call it medicaid fraud

Tim Walz and Keith Ellison patiently explain to Congress that Minnesota can do math, unlike the Trump administration’s Medicaid cosplay task force.

Tim Walz and Keith Ellison patiently explain to Congress that Minnesota can do math, unlike the Trump administration’s Medicaid cosplay task force.

Minnesota has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of "weaponizing Medicaid" against the state as political payback, because of course the health insurance program for low-income people is now just another blunt object in Trump's grievance toolbox. The feds are sitting on roughly $250 million in Medicaid matching funds that Minnesota already spent last summer, citing a supposed "war on fraud" that just happened to be announced by Vice President JD Vance 24 hours earlier. Nothing says good-faith oversight like retroactively yanking healthcare money from a swing state while the cameras are rolling.

Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Dr. Mehmet Oz — yes, your aunt’s favorite daytime TV supplement salesman is now in charge of federal healthcare dollars — held a press conference to brag about "temporarily" halting Minnesota’s funds so the state would "take its obligations seriously." Minnesota’s Deputy Health Commissioner John Connolly responded with the bureaucratic version of "are you kidding me," pointing out that the state already submitted a corrective action plan and has a Medicaid error rate of 2%, way below the national 6%. Federal prosecutors floated a dramatic "billions in fraud" number; the state says the real figure is in the tens of millions, which is bad, but not exactly "shut down healthcare for poor people" bad.

The lawsuit argues this isn’t about fraud at all, it’s about punishment — using federal healthcare dollars as a political cattle prod. So now, low-income Minnesotans get to be extras in the administration’s latest performance of Strongman Theater: Medicaid Edition, starring JD Vance as the nation’s new moral accountant and Mehmet Oz as the guy who used to hawk raspberry ketones and now decides whether your state’s children get medical care.

#killing-democracy#healthcare
killing democracy

trump’s doj bravely investigates… a pen

Artist’s rendering of the Biden autopen, America’s deadliest threat since Hillary’s email server.

Artist’s rendering of the Biden autopen, America’s deadliest threat since Hillary’s email server.

The Trump Justice Department has quietly shelved its very serious, totally real investigation into Joe Biden’s alleged criminal use of an autopen — a device that’s been used by presidents for decades without anyone pretending it’s treason. The probe was launched by Ed Martin, the former "weaponization" czar (subtle), and wound down under current D.C. U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro, because apparently even Trump’s loyalists couldn’t find a statute that makes "being old and using a signing machine" a federal crime.

While Pirro’s office couldn’t sell a grand jury on indicting six members of Congress for a video telling the military not to follow unlawful orders, they did spend time trying to turn Biden’s robo-signature into a constitutional crisis. House Oversight Republicans even declared some autopen-signed executive actions "illegitimate" because Biden might not have fully understood them — a fascinating standard coming from a party currently taking legal advice from Donald "I’ll just cancel Biden’s autopen orders by fiat" Trump.

This little farce is just one episode in Trump’s broader hobby of turning the Justice Department into his personal revenge machine. DOJ has already tried and failed to criminally prosecute James Comey and New York AG Letitia James, and is still waving subpoenas at Minnesota officials over a legally laughable theory about "impeding" immigration enforcement. Legal experts say these cases are flimsy and chilling to free speech, which is a polite way of saying the administration is using federal law enforcement like a mob boss uses cousins with baseball bats.

So the autopen case dies not with a bang, but with a shrug and a "yeah, there’s no law for this." But the message from Trump’s DOJ is loud and clear: if you’re a political foe, they’ll try to criminalize anything — up to and including your stationery.

Source: nbcnews.com

#killing-democracy#lawlessness
killing democracy

trump declares war on the climate, democrats respond with strong letter to themselves

Trump officials pose triumphantly in front of a smokestack, holding a thesaurus opened to the page where they crossed out the words 'climate change.'

Trump officials pose triumphantly in front of a smokestack, holding a thesaurus opened to the page where they crossed out the words 'climate change.'

Donald Trump is methodically taking a sledgehammer to the legal and scientific machinery that lets the U.S. do anything about global warming, and the political class has responded with the collective energy of a dying Roomba. The administration has gutted the National Center for Atmospheric Research, kneecapped weather and climate research, and just repealed the 2009 EPA “endangerment finding” – the core legal basis for limiting greenhouse gas pollution from cars and power plants. In other words, they’re not just cooking the planet, they’re shredding the fire code and firing the fire department for good measure.

Over at the Department of Energy, Trump’s fossil-fuel fan club banned words like “climate change,” “green,” and “sustainability,” because if you don’t say it, the seas don’t rise, right? Climate denial lifer Marc Morano and the Heartland Institute are openly bragging that Trump has delivered their dream wishlist: kill climate science, erase the rules, and replace decades of research with vibes and oil royalties. Meanwhile, Democrats are busy debating whether they should talk about climate at all, despite voters saying they actually want clean energy, and tech billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are quietly backing away from their big climate promises as AI datacenters inhale electricity like it’s oxygen.

The result: the fossil-fuel lobby is running the government, the country’s premier climate research infrastructure is being dismantled in broad daylight, and the most forceful establishment response so far is a stern tweet and some focus-grouped “affordability” messaging. Trump’s people are busy erasing the very concept of climate risk from federal law and science, and the so-called opposition is arguing over whether it polls better to pretend the house isn’t on fire. Strong democracy, incredible oversight, five stars, would overheat again.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#anti-science#forever-grifting
killing democracy

trump’s magic endorsement loses to two guys in rockingham county

Phil Berger discovers that even with gerrymandering and a Trump endorsement, you still technically need actual voters.

Phil Berger discovers that even with gerrymandering and a Trump endorsement, you still technically need actual voters.

North Carolina’s “most powerful” state senator, Phil Berger — architect of the state’s creative-writing approach to district maps — is currently losing his primary by two votes to Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, despite having the sacred golden calf of modern Republican politics: a Donald Trump endorsement. Apparently, the omnipotent power of a Truth Social post now ranks somewhere between a yard sign and a Facebook rant in terms of electoral impact.

Trump tried to solve the problem the way he solves most things: with a job offer. He told Page he was “GREAT” and tried to lure him to Washington so he wouldn’t run against Berger, because nothing says “healthy democracy” like the cult leader trying to clear the field for his preferred loyalist. Page declined the gig, ran anyway, and is now two votes ahead, while both men spent the campaign aggressively cosplaying as Trump’s truest disciple.

Former Gov. Pat McCrory politely suggested this might be what happens when a powerful legislator spends years in Raleigh redrawing everyone else’s districts and forgets the people back home. Translation: you can gerrymander the whole state, but sometimes the voters still sneak through and remind you that power in Trump’s party is temporary, conditional, and occasionally overruled by the guy who shows up at the diner more often.

Source: nbcnews.com

#killing-democracy#oligarchy
killing democracy

trump tries to cancel new york, judge cancels trump instead

Trump Tower sitting in the congestion zone, heroically defended from the tyranny of slightly less traffic and cleaner air.

Trump Tower sitting in the congestion zone, heroically defended from the tyranny of slightly less traffic and cleaner air.

The Trump administration took a break from dismantling democracy at the federal level to see if it could also micromanage New York City traffic. Transportation secretary Sean Duffy tried to yank federal approval for NYC’s congestion pricing program — a law passed by the state legislature, signed by the governor, and already up and running — and then waved around threats to withhold federal funding if New York didn’t fall in line. Subtle stuff. Totally normal federalism.

US district judge Lewis Liman responded with a 149-page legal brick, ruling that DOT doesn’t actually have the power to unilaterally rescind that approval and calling the about-face "arbitrary and capricious" because the agency couldn’t be bothered to explain itself. He even wrote the line every authoritarian hates to read: “The democratic process worked.” Translation: you don’t get to rewrite state law just because your condo tower sits inside the congestion zone and you’re mad about a $9 toll.

Meanwhile, the program Trump is desperately trying to kill has cut 27 million vehicle trips into Manhattan, slashed air pollution by 22%, sped up commutes, and coughed up more than $550m for the city’s decrepit transit system. Businesses are doing better, tax revenues are up, and the sky has stubbornly refused to fall. So naturally, the White House position is: this must be stopped, by abusing federal power if necessary.

Governor Kathy Hochul, who originally wobbled on congestion pricing before lowering the fee and letting it launch, is now celebrating a "once-in-a-lifetime success story" and openly calling Trump’s effort "unlawful" trampling of New York’s self-governance. The judge just confirmed what everyone already knew: if there’s a functioning policy that helps millions of people and doesn’t personally enrich Donald Trump, this administration will try to smash it with a sledgehammer — and occasionally, the courts still remember they’re not supposed to hand him the tools.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#lawlessness
killing democracy

trump turns championship visits into loyalty oaths

Inter Miami players practice the delicate art of smiling politely while democracy burns just off-camera.

Inter Miami players practice the delicate art of smiling politely while democracy burns just off-camera.

Trump was nowhere near the actual White House when the military he allegedly commands started bombing Iran and kidnapping Venezuela’s president; he was at Mar-a-Lago, LARPing Commander-in-Chief behind some hospital-privacy curtains. But he will show up at 1600 Pennsylvania for the truly vital national-security priority: getting a photo op with Inter Miami’s MLS Cup, and maybe Lionel Messi if the optics gods are kind.

The article lays out the new normal: what used to be a boring, bipartisan sports photo line has become a public referendum on whether you’re willing to help launder the image of a ‘seemingly lawless presidency’. Show up, and you’re a prop for a guy who jokes that he only invited the women’s hockey team because of ‘woke’ pressure and happily turns every ceremony into a culture-war hostage situation. Don’t show up, and congratulations, you’re now an anti-Trump icon with a side order of death threats.

Team owners and executives, paragons of courage that they are, mostly dump this mess on the players, who get to decide if they want their Google Images page permanently watermarked with grinning-handshake shots next to a president who might segue from congratulating them on their win to ranting about transgender soccer or whatever Fox chyron he saw that morning. Either way, the visit means something now: you’re not just visiting the White House, you’re auditioning for a role in Trump’s ongoing attempt to turn every piece of American life into a loyalty test.

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump turns church into a protest-free worship zone for ice

Protesters outside a synagogue, still mistakenly believing the First Amendment applies even when the White House disapproves of their cause.

Protesters outside a synagogue, still mistakenly believing the First Amendment applies even when the White House disapproves of their cause.

The Trump Justice Department has discovered a bold new way to defend religious liberty: by felony-charging people who say things it doesn’t like in church. After protesters in St Paul disrupted a service to demand the resignation of a pastor who just happens to run a local ICE field office, the DOJ slapped 39 people – including Don Lemon, who was there as a reporter – with conspiracy charges under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (Face) Act. A law written in 1994 to stop violent attacks on abortion clinics is now the administration’s preferred bludgeon against anti-ICE and pro-Palestine protesters in houses of worship. Protecting prayer, or protecting power? Guess which one got the federal indictment. Historically, the Face Act was used to go after anti-abortion extremists who literally blockaded clinics; Trump’s crew has largely stopped using it for that, then turned around and expanded it against left-leaning protests at synagogues and churches. He even pardoned 10 anti-abortion activists convicted under the same statute before repurposing it as a “nuclear option” against people holding banners and chanting. Meanwhile, state lawmakers are racing to build protest-free bubble wraps around religious sites, conveniently shielding events that promote illegal West Bank settlements or ICE leadership from any uncomfortable reminders that other humans exist. So the new theology of Trumpism is simple: disrupting worship to harass women at clinics is pardonable Christian zeal; disrupting worship to criticize ICE or illegal settlements is a federal conspiracy. The First Amendment is still technically in the Constitution, but under this administration it now comes with an asterisk: valid only if your politics match the pastor and the president.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#lawlessness#fascism
killing democracy

trump discovers the uk, promptly gets everything wrong

Donald Trump, international law scholar and part-time windmill expert, explains Britain to the British with the confidence of a man who hasn’t read past the headline since 1987.

Donald Trump, international law scholar and part-time windmill expert, explains Britain to the British with the confidence of a man who hasn’t read past the headline since 1987.

Donald Trump has once again turned his foreign policy expertise (a Fox chyron and some vibes) toward the UK, declaring that Keir Starmer is "not Winston Churchill" and ranting about a "stupid island" the Brits "gave away" for a "100-year lease". He’s talking about the Chagos Islands and Diego Garcia, where the US has a major base. The actual deal is 99 years with Mauritius, and the "indigenous people" he dismisses as never having seen the island are the Chagos islanders Britain and the US forcibly exiled over 50 years ago. So yes, he’s mad about a colonial injustice being partially unwound because it mildly inconveniences his Iran-bombing daydreams. Empire nostalgia with a side of war planning, what could go wrong? Not content with mangling international law, he pivots to climate policy, complaining that the UK has "windmills all over the place" ruining the country and demanding they "open up the North Sea". The UK government, annoyingly tethered to reality, is prioritising green energy because relying on global gas markets keeps blowing up consumers’ bills. There’s no evidence more North Sea drilling would meaningfully change global prices, but why let economics interfere with the fossil-fuel fan fiction. He even complains that UK energy prices are "through the roof"—which is partly true, and also largely caused by that same dependence on gas he wants more of. It’s like watching someone complain their house is on fire while lobbying to pour more gasoline on it. Then we get to the racism portion of the program. Trump claims the UK has "sharia courts adjudicating law"—a favorite dog whistle in his one-sided feud with London mayor Sadiq Khan. Reality check: there are sharia councils, which are voluntary community arbitration bodies with no legal authority, about as binding as a church committee and functionally similar to Orthodox Jewish Beth Din courts. Those, naturally, never come up in his tirades. The point isn’t accuracy; it’s stoking fear that London is some Islamist no-go zone so he can pose as civilization’s last line of defense from a golf cart in Florida. So the leader of the world’s largest democracy is publicly misrepresenting allied policy, colonial history, energy economics, and the UK legal system in the span of a few days. It’s not just ignorance; it’s a constant stream of weaponized nonsense that normalizes bigotry, undermines allies, and sabotages fact-based policymaking. American foreign policy, now with 100% more Facebook comment section energy.
#killing-democracy#racism
killing democracy

trump doj puts antifa on trial for the crime of existing

Courtroom sketch of the Trump DOJ trying to squeeze an entire protest into a single, legally dubious 'antifa terror cell' indictment.

Courtroom sketch of the Trump DOJ trying to squeeze an entire protest into a single, legally dubious 'antifa terror cell' indictment.

The Trump administration has finally found the perfect use for the justice system: as a cosplay counterterrorism unit for Fox News storylines. In Fort Worth, prosecutors are running the first federal trial where left-wing demonstrators are being painted as a coordinated “antifa cell” and charged with terrorism, rioting, and attempted murder over a July 4 protest outside the Prairieland ICE detention center. One demonstrator did fire shots and a couple vandalized property, which is why we have, you know, actual criminal statutes. But that’s apparently not dramatic enough for an administration that already illegally declared “antifa” a domestic terror group, something it has precisely zero authority to do, and is now trying to retrofit reality to match the campaign merch. Prosecutors are arguing that a group of black-clad protesters, some of whom arrived late, some of whom left when guards told them to, and some of whom stayed in the car with legally purchased guns, are all part of a grand antifa “ambush” on law enforcement. The defense calls this “tunnel vision”; the government calls it Tuesday. The state’s star narrative hinges on encrypted messages about bringing rifles so cops might back off, while its own evidence keeps stepping on the script: guns bought legally, weapons staying in vehicles, clothing that looks more “Target clearance rack” than “urban guerrilla.” Even the Trump-appointed judge had to gently scold the lead prosecutor for repeatedly misgendering two trans defendants, which tells you how over-the-top the performance has become when Mark Pittman is the one asking for a little basic respect. The stakes are less about this one ugly night and more about whether the Trump DOJ can successfully alchemize protest into terrorism whenever opposition to ICE and administration policy gets loud and inconvenient. If the government wins this theory – that a loosely organized, ideologically aligned crowd can be branded a terror cell because one member escalated – it’s a blueprint for criminalizing dissent on demand. They’re not just prosecuting what happened at Prairieland; they’re beta-testing a legal framework where “political beliefs we don’t like” quietly morph into “material support for terrorism.” Welcome to the domestic war on terror, now with extra fascism and fewer rights.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump declares american ai company a national security threat for not building enough killer robots

Pentagon officials bravely defending freedom by insisting the robots be allowed to kill people without asking too many questions.

Pentagon officials bravely defending freedom by insisting the robots be allowed to kill people without asking too many questions.

The Trump administration has discovered a bold new definition of "national security": any tech company that refuses to help build mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons is now a "supply‑chain risk". Anthropic told the Pentagon it didn’t want its models used for stalking the entire planet or automating who lives and who dies, so Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called that "woke" – because nothing screams strength like needing your chatbot to pull the trigger.

Trump then ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic and, within hours, OpenAI happily slid into the vacant spot, ready to rake in hundreds of millions in classified government contracts while promising to uphold the same safety principles Anthropic just got publicly flogged for. The administration is also threatening to wield the Defense Production Act to force Anthropic to strip out its own safety guardrails – a law meant for wartime mobilization now repurposed into a tool to make sure your AI is sufficiently murder‑enabled. The message from Trump’s Pentagon is crystal clear: build tools for mass surveillance and automated killing, or we’ll treat you like Huawei with better English.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

kristi noem shuts down dhs, discovers killing citizens is bad optics

Kristi Noem poses with a still life of seized drugs to distract from the far more dangerous substance her department is trafficking: unchecked federal power.

Kristi Noem poses with a still life of seized drugs to distract from the far more dangerous substance her department is trafficking: unchecked federal power.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is heading to the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain two things: why DHS has been effectively off for almost a month, and why federal immigration officers keep killing U.S. citizens while the administration insists everything is going great. The agency in charge of keeping the country safe is unfunded, TSA workers are working for free like it's a patriotic internship, and Noem’s big assignment is to sell Trump’s second-term mass deportation fantasy as “law and order” instead of “constitutional bonfire with body count.”

Republicans demanded this hearing after CBP officers shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the second U.S. citizen killed by federal immigration officers there in a month, following the death of Renee Macklin Good at the hands of ICE. Chuck Grassley is bravely drawing a line in the sand by declaring that both officer safety and human dignity matter, while somehow glossing over the part where DHS is treating basic First Amendment activity—like filming and observing officers—as “obstruction.” Legal experts keep pointing out that this is, in fact, protected speech; DHS keeps acting like the Constitution is more of a loose suggestion.

Democrats, led by Dick Durbin, are wondering why it took five weeks and multiple deaths to drag Noem into a hearing while she simultaneously demands a record-breaking budget for the same agency that’s shut down and under fire for lethal mismanagement. So on one side: mass deportation, shuttered homeland security, citizens shot by federal officers, and constitutional rights rebranded as crimes. On the other: a hearing where senators pretend this is all just a spirited policy disagreement and not the federal government test-driving authoritarian policing on its own population.

#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
killing democracy

trumpworld floats ‘emergency’ to fix the problem of people voting

File photo of a polling place, soon to be rebranded as a federally supervised "Patriot Checkpoint" if Trump’s friends get their way.

File photo of a polling place, soon to be rebranded as a federally supervised "Patriot Checkpoint" if Trump’s friends get their way.

The Trump brain trust has discovered a bold new strategy for winning midterms: stop treating elections like elections. According to NPR, Trump allies are now publicly floating the idea that he should invoke "emergency powers" to rewrite voting rules and dispatch federal agents to "police" the polls. Because if there’s one thing that screams "free and fair democracy," it’s men with federal badges hovering over ballot boxes. This isn’t subtle. They’re basically workshopping martial law lite on live radio, dressing it up as concern for "election integrity" while fantasizing about turning Election Day into a Homeland Security cosplay convention. Instead of persuading voters, the plan is to intimidate them; instead of expanding participation, they want to declare democracy an emergency and then solve it. America asked for poll workers, Trumpworld offered federal agents. Totally normal republic things.
#killing-democracy#fascism