reality tv president to decide fate of actual nuclear deal
Trump stares thoughtfully into the middle distance, presumably trying to remember which country the nuclear deal is with before deciding whether to blow it up.
Trump is teeing himself up to make a “final determination” on the Iran nuclear deal, because nothing reassures the world about nuclear nonproliferation like handing the detonator to a man whose foreign policy experience consists of yelling at TV and retweeting memes. The agreement that took years of multilateral diplomacy to craft is now being treated like an Apprentice contract he can rip up on camera for ratings.
All the usual hawks are circling, whispering about ‘strength’ and ‘maximum pressure,’ while the basic reality — that walking away from constraints on Iran’s nuclear program makes an actual bomb more likely — is politely escorted out of the conversation. Allies who helped negotiate and enforce the deal get to watch, again, as Washington signals that U.S. commitments last only until the next press gaggle.
So global security, oil markets, and the credibility of every future U.S. treaty are now props in Trump’s ongoing performance art piece about owning Obama. The White House calls it decisive leadership; the rest of the planet calls it gambling with a nuclear file like it’s a Trump Casino chip — which, historically, has ended badly for everyone involved.
#killing-democracy#national-security#imperialism
fox-ifying the white house: john solomon edition
John Solomon, seen here auditioning for the role of Official State Conspiracy Curator, gestures toward the part of the Constitution he hasn’t read.
The Trump White House is apparently so short on in-house conspiracy theorists that it’s now looking to import them. John Solomon, the journalist who made a second career out of casting doubt on the Russia investigation and spoon-feeding Trump-friendly narratives, proudly announced he’s being vetted to become a “special government employee” — Washington-speak for part-time loyalist with a laminated badge. Historically that status is for outside experts; in the Trump era it’s for anyone who can say “deep state” without laughing.
Rather than pretending this is about policy, an administration official says Solomon would likely lead a "transparency" task force, where he and a handpicked crew would decide which documents to "liberate" for public consumption. Translation: find anything they can rip out of context to smear investigators, rewrite the history of the Russia probe, and launder Trump’s grievances about 2020 and China through the seal of the Executive Branch. Some members of the task force will have security clearances; whether Solomon gets one is apparently still a question, which is adorable given that his brand is yelling on TV about classified material he wants dumped on the internet.
The White House, naturally, declined comment, but two officials confirm this has been in the works for weeks. Trump has been boosting Solomon’s work on his social media site, especially anything targeting James Comey and the Russia investigation that first made Trump so enamored with him. So the man who spent years undermining faith in federal law enforcement from the outside is now being invited inside to help decide what the public gets to see. Call it what it is: not "transparency," but a taxpayer-funded content operation for the guy who still thinks the real victim of 2016 is Donald J. Trump.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
judge to trump: you can’t just sharpie your name on the kennedy center
The Kennedy Center, briefly threatened with a full Mar-a-Lago makeover, moments before a federal judge reminded Trump that federal law is not a naming-rights contract.
Turns out there’s one building in Washington Donald Trump can’t just rebrand like a failing casino. US district judge Christopher Cooper ordered the administration to strip Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center, ruling that the performing arts venue cannot be renamed without an actual act of Congress – you know, that pesky lawmaking thing presidents are not supposed to cosplay.
The court gave Team Trump 14 days to yank every last "Trump Kennedy Center" sign and scrub the branding from official materials, presumably including whatever gold-plated mockups were already headed to Mar-a-Lago for approval. After Trump had already announced he’d close the place for two years of "reconstruction," a judge now has to remind the government that the Kennedy Center isn’t a family billboard, it’s a federally chartered institution. Authoritarian vibes, meet statutory reality check.
So on today’s episode of "The Trump Presidency Is Going Great": the president tries to rename a national cultural landmark after himself, and the judiciary has to gently explain that the United States is not the Trump Organization, and federal property isn’t just available for a branding upgrade and a licensing fee.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump picks fight with wildly popular chicago pope, loses the midwest catholic vote
Pope Leo XIV, Chicago’s most powerful export since the deep-dish pizza coma, listening politely as a US mayor explains that the president is threatening to send in the troops because he hates migrants and municipal autonomy.
Chicago’s progressive mayor Brandon Johnson flew to the Vatican to meet Pope Leo XIV, who, minor detail, is from Chicago and currently polling somewhere between "Taylor Swift" and "free healthcare" in American hearts. Johnson thanked him for his "courage" in calling out Trump’s Iran adventure, his immigration crackdowns, and the whole "delusion of omnipotence" thing powering the US‑Israel war on Iran. Apparently some people still think war and mass deportations are bad, even if the president yells "national security" loud enough.
Instead of kissing the imperial ring, Pope Leo is out here apologizing for the Catholic church’s role in slavery and backing reparations, which is awkward for an administration whose spiritual core is Stephen Miller’s RSS feed. Johnson is trying to leverage that moral cover for Chicago’s reparations task force and its effort to remain a sanctuary while Trump toys with "militarized immigration" raids and potential National Guard deployments like they’re just another campaign prop.
The pope, who asked "How’s Chicago?" like a neighbor checking on your lawn after a tornado, got briefed on the mass deportation push and ICE raids the city is resisting by executive order. Johnson brought him letters from detained families, a community ICE watch pin, and an "Immigrants Make America Greater" hat, which is about as subtle as you can get while still telling Trump to shove his red cap. Trump, naturally, responded by calling the pope "weak on crime" and "terrible for foreign policy", which is a bold critique from the guy who keeps losing arguments to NATO, Canada, and now the Bishop of Rome.
As Pope Leo releases encyclicals denouncing AI "slavery" and the normalization of war, he’s simultaneously becoming the de facto spiritual leader of the resistance to Trump’s deportation state. So on one side: a Chicago mayor, a Chicago pope, and most of the American public. On the other: a president trying to sic federal agents and maybe troops on cities while screaming about border caravans. Truly the stuff of stable democracies, and not at all the plot of a mid-tier dystopian streaming series.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#imperialism
trump discovers press freedom, immediately weaponizes it
Flags of two governments united in one shared belief: journalists are a problem to be managed, not a public to be informed.
China boots New York Times reporter Vivian Wang for the high crime of documenting censorship, COVID trauma, and the country’s expanding security state. Beijing’s official excuse? A video appearance by Taiwan’s president at a Times event in New York that Wang had absolutely nothing to do with. Authoritarian regimes usually at least pretend to be subtle; Xi’s government is now just stapling its insecurities to journalists’ passports.
The Trump administration, never one to miss an opportunity to turn principle into a prop, responds by revoking the visa of a Xinhua journalist in the U.S. — a neat little bit of diplomatic tit-for-tat that treats press freedom as a hostage exchange program. The Times notes it doesn’t ask any government to mess with reporters’ credentials, which is an adorable ethical standard to maintain while Trump and Marco Rubio cosplay as defenders of independent journalism. A president who calls the American press the "enemy of the people" is now selectively outraged that another authoritarian is roughing up a reporter. Truly, the axis of hypocrisy is thriving.
#killing-democracy#fascism
doj discovers its true calling: trump’s personal revenge squad
Pictured: The moment the Department of Justice realized its job was not enforcing federal law, but avenging Donald Trump’s hurt feelings.
The Department of Justice has apparently rebranded from "defending the Constitution" to "getting even for Donald." Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation tied to writer E. Jean Carroll’s civil suit — you know, the one where a jury found Trump sexually abused her and then defamed her repeatedly for sport. Having lost in civil court, the regime is now testing a bold new legal theory: if you can’t beat your accuser, criminally investigate your accuser.
This isn’t law enforcement, it’s a loyalty test. The message from Trump’s orbit is crystal clear: if you dare hold Dear Leader accountable and actually win, the full machinery of the federal government may arrive at your doorstep, subpoena in one hand and vendetta in the other. Survivors watching from home are getting a real-time civics lesson in how to weaponize the state against anyone who embarrasses the man in charge.
And while legal experts are busy politely debating the "norms" and "precedents" involved, the practical effect is simple: turn the DOJ into a publicly funded intimidation service for a twice-found-liable sexual abuser. It’s less a justice system and more a protection racket with letterhead — and the only crime that really matters is making Donald Trump look bad on the witness stand.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#retribution
new york discovers family separation works great north of the border too
New York’s child welfare agency, bravely protecting children from the terrifying danger of living with their own Black and Latino parents.
New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services apparently looked at Trump’s border-era family separation policy and thought, why let the feds have all the constitutional violations? Two families have filed a class-action lawsuit accusing ACS of turning a narrow “emergency removal” power into a routine shortcut to snatch kids from their parents without bothering with a judge. The kicker: over half of removals are now done this way, and about 90% of those hit Black and Latino families. White families get to play the home version of the game at a cozy 3%.
This isn’t just callous bureaucracy; it’s extrajudicial family separation dressed up as child protection. A recent Second Circuit ruling already spelled out that ripping kids away when there’s time to get judicial review is unconstitutional, and that caseworkers can be personally liable. Yet ACS allegedly kept leaning on fear, intimidation, and a racially skewed "emergency" stamp to bypass the courts like they’re some optional DLC. Now a coalition of legal groups is suing to force the city to stop treating Black and Latino parents as pre-suspect and their children as state property on standby.
One plaintiff says she went to ACS for help during a hard time and got an almost three-year state-sanctioned kidnapping saga instead. That’s the modern American safety net in a nutshell: ask for assistance, get your family dismantled by people who swear they’re here to help. The lawsuit aims to shut down this unconstitutional power grab, but until then, ACS seems to be operating on a simple principle: if you’re Black or Latino in New York and struggling, every day can be an "emergency"—just not one the courts are invited to review.
#killing-democracy#racism#lawlessness
veteran fights for the constitution, gets six years for the trouble
ICE agents bravely defend America from the existential threat of three protesters and a folding chair.
The Trump DOJ just convinced a federal jury that three people protesting ICE in Spokane are actually a felony "conspiracy" worthy of up to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Among the dangerous masterminds: Bajun Mavalwalla, an Afghanistan war veteran who naively thought the constitution he fought for still applied to people blocking a deportation van. Legal experts call it a frightening escalation against the First Amendment; the government calls it Thursday.
This legal circus is powered by a Civil War–era statute, 18 USC § 372, yanked out of storage like some antique bayonet and pointed at protesters who tried to stop ICE from deporting a Venezuelan man whose arrest a federal judge has since ruled unconstitutional. The jury never heard that part, though, because Judge Rebecca Pennell helpfully kept both the unconstitutional arrest and any actual First Amendment defense off their plate, while feeding them hours of bodycam footage and a steady procession of ICE agents talking about how "concerned" they were.
One ICE witness, Jeremy Burlingame, turned out to be a racist social media enthusiast who called Black politicians "lying ghetto garbage" and trans people "mentally ill" while cheering on ICE pointing guns at a pregnant woman. His posts were so bad the prosecutors had to drag him back to impeach their own witness. Still, that, the total lack of injuries, and no evidence the three defendants even coordinated beforehand somehow added up to "felony conspiracy" for a conservative Eastern Washington jury that apparently believes spontaneous protest is now organized sedition.
It was such a grotesque use of federal power that the acting US attorney for the region, Richard Barker, resigned rather than sign the indictment, and is now openly wondering whether justice was "truly served". Meanwhile, in Chicago, DOJ dropped similar conspiracy charges against ICE protesters and went with misdemeanors instead, proving that under Trump, your First Amendment rights depend less on the constitution and more on your zip code and the political lean of your jury pool.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
america’s healthiest secret
Donald Trump in the Oval Office, hand bruised, makeup caked, and officially the picture of ‘PERFECT’ health according to the only doctor that really matters: Donald Trump.
The White House promised Trump’s latest Walter Reed medical and dental results in “a day or so” and then, in a shocking twist absolutely no one saw coming, just… didn’t. Trump, barreling toward his 80th birthday while periodically dozing off in public and sporting mystery bruises on his hands, hopped on Truth Social to declare that “Everything checked out PERFECTLY,” which is definitely how people talk when there’s nothing to hide and not at all how a guy with a long history of fake doctor letters talks.
Previous checkups under Dr. Sean Barbabella came with at least some numbers: height, weight, meds, labs, the usual proof-of-life stuff every modern president from Reagan to Biden has released. This time? Silence. No vitals, no labs, no medications, no follow-up details — just vibes and an all-caps reassurance from a man who once confused his own CT scan with an MRI and then had to walk it back.
The official line is that Trump’s in “exceptional health,” even as the White House has already had to explain away visible bruising (too much aspirin, he says) and diagnose him with chronic venous insufficiency while pretending it’s all totally normal. The message to the public is clear: you don’t need information, you have Trump’s word. And if you were hoping for boring old medical transparency like we had under every other recent president, you’re in the wrong administration.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
ice discovers a bold new deportation strategy: drive them to suicide
ICE detention wing, where the posters say “suicide prevention” and the policies say “good luck with that.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that insists it’s definitely not running a network of slow-motion execution chambers, is seeing an unprecedented spike in suicides among detainees since Trump strutted back into office. At least 10 men have died by suicide in ICE custody since January 2025 – seven in just this fiscal year, more than any year on record – while DHS officials blandly assure everyone that such deaths are “extremely rare” and that detainees get “comprehensive healthcare.” Apparently, in Trump’s America, words are just vibes and bodies are a rounding error.
Public health experts say the surge is a screaming siren that the system is failing at the most basic level: identifying people in crisis and keeping them alive. Instead, people like 26-year-old Colombian detainee Brayan Rayo Garzon are thrown into isolation with Covid, denied mental health treatment, and barred from calling their mothers, then found dead after begging for help in handwritten notes. Across at least nine facilities – from county jails to the ever-present private prison darlings CoreCivic and GEO Group – staff ignored obvious distress, delayed care, failed to monitor at-risk detainees, and left them with the means to kill themselves. But don’t worry, the contractors are “deeply saddened” and fully “in compliance” with federal standards that clearly exist mostly on paper.
Trump keeps describing these people as the “worst of the worst,” yet seven of the 10 who died by suicide had no record of violent crime in the US; one was picked up after a misdemeanor scooter traffic stop. The suicides now make up nearly a fifth of 51 ICE deaths since January 2025, many of the others also likely preventable with timely medical care. Foreign leaders like Colombia’s Gustavo Petro are openly accusing US immigration policy of killing both Americans and Latin Americans, while DHS leadership tries to gaslight the statistics into submission. The message from the administration is clear: we’ll warehouse you, isolate you, neglect you – and when you die, we’ll call it rare, tragic, and absolutely not our fault.
So yes, the Trump deportation strategy is working beautifully – if the goal is to outsource cruelty to private prison companies, shred basic human rights, and treat immigrant lives as disposable line items in a security theater budget. The ICE motto might as well be: “You’re in our care now. Try not to die. But if you do, we have a press release ready.”
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#forever-grifting
turns out the framers did not speedrun ‘elect a monarch’
Artist’s rendering of the framers watching C-SPAN and collectively facepalming into the Federalist Papers.
The New York Times is here with the age-old question: is Donald Trump the exact nightmare scenario the framers were trying to avoid when they wrote "no kings, please" into the operating manual? The answer, generously summarized, is: the founders dreamed up a strong but constrained executive and then forgot to account for one tiny wrinkle — political parties that would treat their guy like a cult leader with nuclear codes.
The article walks through how impeachment was supposed to be the emergency brake and instead turned into a decorative hood ornament once parties decided that loyalty to the president matters more than loyalty to the Constitution. Foreign readers, meanwhile, are apparently baffled that Americans are still trying to run a 21st‑century autocracy-prevention patch on a late‑18th‑century beta release. So yes, Trump is pretty much the boss battle the framers warned about — they just didn’t code in a fix for when Congress decides to speedrun “let him get away with it” mode.
#killing-democracy#fascism
white house declares dead meme gorilla a 'true patriot'
Artist’s impression of the Trump White House communications team: a confused primate enclosure, but with less dignity and worse messaging discipline.
The Trump White House communications shop, having apparently run out of real governing to pretend to do, marked the 10th anniversary of Harambe’s death with a solemn, 123-word government-issued eulogy to a meme gorilla. From the official @WhiteHouse account, no less. Harambe, we are told, was a "symbol of loyalty, strength, chaos, unity" and somehow a "true patriot" whose death is a generational touchstone. Everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news, the post insists, as if the Cincinnati Zoo enclosure is now hallowed ground right next to Arlington.
This is the same White House that couldn’t find a single syllable when Dick Cheney – former vice-president, war criminal, and architect of half the disasters these people pretend to be mad about – died in 2025. No statement, no flag at half-staff, no tortured Notes App tribute. But Harambe? Full digital state funeral. The administration has basically turned official U.S. government messaging into a 4chan nostalgia account, using taxpayer-funded platforms to cosplay as Extremely Online patriots while the actual institutions they’re supposed to run crumble in the background.
It’s a perfect snapshot of Trump’s America: the presidency as content mill, the state as a meme page, and the line between governance and shitposting not so much blurred as euthanized. The White House won’t reliably honor public servants, won’t reliably tell the truth, but it will absolutely log on to post a dead gorilla thirst memorial. At this point, Harambe might actually be the most qualified and least dangerous patriot they’ve praised all year.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
trump judge greenlights test run for federal voter purge machine
President Trump proudly displays the latest executive order to "protect" elections by putting the Postal Service in charge of deciding which ballots are worthy of existing.
President Trump signed an executive order to "protect" elections the way a fox "protects" a henhouse: by demanding the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration build nationwide lists of adult U.S. citizens for each state, then having the Postal Service decide whose mail ballots actually get delivered. Because when the Constitution says state legislatures and Congress set the rules for federal elections, obviously it meant "also the guy who lost the popular vote twice and is mad about mailboxes."
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols — conveniently a Trump nominee — has now declined to temporarily block this little science experiment in federalized voter screening, saying the harms are too "speculative" until the government actually screws people over in practice. The court's basic position: come back after the damage is done, democracy, and then we’ll talk. Meanwhile, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche cheerfully told senators that DOJ is working to "make sure" the order’s goals are implemented, which is a fun way of saying the executive branch is busy stress-testing how far it can push past Article I before anyone in a robe panics.
Almost two dozen states, D.C., Democrats, and voting-rights groups are suing, pointing out that the president doesn't get to personally redesign election rules or conscript USPS into a de facto voter-eligibility gatekeeper. Trump, who of course mailed in his own ballot from Florida, insists this is all about stopping noncitizen voting — a problem that research keeps showing is vanishingly rare, but remains incredibly useful whenever Republicans need a pretext to make it harder for the wrong voters to vote. Consider this ruling a judicial shrug that gives the administration time to assemble its shiny new voter-suppression infrastructure before the midterms.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
coming up next: will the court delete the 14th amendment live on air?
Laura Jarrett prepares to calmly explain, like a nature documentary host, how the Supreme Court may or may not dismantle a 150-year-old understanding of citizenship on a Thursday afternoon livestream.
NBC is hosting a cheery little livestream where Laura Jarrett will answer your questions about the Supreme Court, because when the constitutional order is wobbling, what you really need is a Q&A format and good lighting. On deck: rulings in Trump v. Barbara, where the former guy is taking a swing at birthright citizenship, and Trump v. Lisa Cook, where he’s apparently testing how far a president can lean on the Federal Reserve before it just becomes another wing of the campaign.
The article itself is basically: "Send us your questions!" The questions the country actually needs answered are more like: Will the Court help Trump erase a chunk of the 14th Amendment with a vibes-based reading of the Constitution? And how many institutions can he drag into open partisan warfare before anyone admits we’re not in a civics textbook anymore? But sure, submit your queries about "past Supreme Court decisions" while we all wait to see whether the justices sign off on a menu of executive overreach that would make Viktor Orbán blush.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump doj bravely investigates 82-year-old woman who beat him in court
The Department of Justice, bravely training its fire on the gravest threat to the republic: an 82-year-old woman who won a defamation case against the president.
The Trump justice department has reportedly decided that the real threat to America is not the guy found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, but the 82-year-old advice columnist who sued him and won. Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into E Jean Carroll for supposed perjury in a 2022 deposition — a claim a three-judge federal appeals panel already threw in the trash in 2024. When you lose two civil cases, owe your accuser $88m, and get branded a sexual abuser by a jury, naturally the next step is to send the full weight of the federal government after her.
The alleged crime? Carroll originally said she wasn’t getting outside funding for her lawsuit, then her lawyers later disclosed that a nonprofit backed by LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman had helped cover some legal expenses. A judge let Alina Habba re-depose Carroll, an appeals court later ruled the perjury theory was bogus, and that should have been the end of this extremely boring non-scandal. Instead, Trump’s DOJ is now trying to resurrect it as a criminal case — a sort of legal Weekend at Bernie’s, but for authoritarian revenge fantasies.
Acting attorney general Todd Blanche has heroically recused himself, given that he used to represent Trump against Carroll. Don’t worry, though: the rest of DOJ is apparently free to keep functioning as Trump’s personal revenge concierge service. Carroll now joins a growing list of Trump enemies mysteriously attracting federal investigations: James Comey, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar — a veritable roll call of people whose main crime is not being sufficiently deferential to Dear Leader. No convictions so far, but that’s not really the point; the message is that if you cross Trump, the justice department might just come knocking.
This is what a captured justice system looks like: juries say Trump is liable for sexual abuse and defamation, and the governmental response is to criminally investigate the woman who told the truth. It’s less "law and order" and more "law as an order" — from one man, aimed squarely at anyone who dares to hold him accountable.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#fascism
two trump critics walk into costa rica, punchlines themselves
Pictured: two former Trumpworld darlings discovering that when you help build the cult, you don’t always get to keep your membership card — but at least you get a beach photo out of it.
Thomas Massie, freshly ejected from Congress after the most expensive House primary in recent years, has decided to recover from getting politically kneecapped by going fishing in Costa Rica with Marjorie Taylor Greene — who, reminder, already rage-quit Congress earlier. Nothing says "healthy democracy" like Trump critics in the GOP either getting primaried into oblivion or fleeing to their offshore birthday bunker.
Greene, now a part-time Central American homeowner and full-time MAGA apostate, invited Massie and his wife down for some beach time, boat rides, and what her fiancé Brian Glenn described as "spicy" political conversations. Translation: two Republicans who helped build the Trump circus are now standing outside the tent, wondering why the lion keeps eating everyone. They pose on the beach, grinning for Instagram, while Glenn proudly announces that Massie just needed a "break" from the brutal campaign Trump and his loyalists spent a fortune to end.
So here we are: Trump consolidates control of the GOP, internal dissenters get turned into vacation content, and the great defenders of constitutional conservatism are reduced to posting fishing videos while the movement they empowered finishes swallowing the party whole. Call it the soft-launch phase of American authoritarianism: less gulag, more beachfront exile with "spicy" chats.
#killing-democracy#leopards-ate-my-face
homeland security threatens to hold international flights hostage
Markwayne Mullin, proudly explaining that if cities won’t let ICE run wild, DHS might just take the entire international arrivals hall and go home.
Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin went on Fox News to announce that the Trump administration is "drawing up plans" to stop processing international flights in sanctuary cities, because nothing says "serious law enforcement" like hijacking the entire aviation system to own the libs. Mullin demanded to know why DHS should process arrivals at Newark Liberty while Democrats have the nerve to criticize the conditions at Delaney Hall ICE detention center, where immigrants are on hunger strike and officers are busy pepper-spraying protesters and, minor detail, a sitting U.S. senator.
This is not policy, it's protection racket logic with extra TSA lines. Cities that don't let ICE treat local cops as deputized immigration agents could see Customs and TSA services yanked, stranding travelers and hammering local economies because Markwayne got mad on cable news. Sanctuary policies don’t even stop ICE from operating; they just limit forced collaboration. But in the Trump DHS universe, if "radical left Democrats" won’t help arrest the "worst of the worst," then millions of ordinary passengers become leverage in a temper tantrum about oversight and basic human rights.
Meanwhile, inside Delaney Hall, detained immigrants are starving themselves to demand medical care and due process, while Congressman Adriano Espaillat reports overcrowding, awful food, and fundamental rights being trampled. The official response from DHS is not "fix the abuses" but "maybe we shut down your international airport until you stop complaining." It’s less homeland security, more airborne collective punishment for the crime of objecting to a private detention facility run like a bargain-bin gulag.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration
kennedy heir suggests maybe we try that whole ‘checks and balances’ thing again
Jack Schlossberg on set, gently suggesting that maybe the president repeatedly lighting the Constitution on fire should trigger something more than a sternly worded tweet.
Jack Schlossberg, John F. Kennedy’s grandson, went on Meet the Press to float the radical, fringe idea that if a president keeps treating the Constitution like a non‑binding NDA, Congress might want to consider impeachment. Yes, in 2026 we’ve arrived at the point where suggesting that serial lawbreaking and open contempt for democratic institutions should have consequences is treated like a bold, newsworthy stance.
Instead of the usual Beltway fan fiction about “normalizing” Trump with one more unity brunch, Schlossberg said impeachment has to be "on the table" for House Democrats as Trump barrels through norms, ethics, and the basic concept of the rule of law. Washington’s political class, which has spent years insisting that voters will magically fix everything while Trump tests the structural integrity of every democratic guardrail, now gets to ponder whether the branch that’s supposed to check executive abuse should actually, you know, check it.
So while Republicans keep treating Trump’s legal exposure as a loyalty test and Democrats debate whether accountability is too "divisive," a Kennedy scion is on TV reminding everyone that the Constitution does, in fact, contain instructions for what to do when the presidency turns into a personal crime shelter. The real suspense isn’t whether impeachment is warranted; it’s whether anyone in Congress remembers they’re employees of a republic, not extras in the Trump Show.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
america watched a medical emergency, called it a debate
Jill Biden watching the 2024 debate like a concerned spouse, the Democratic Party watching it like a focus group, and Donald Trump watching it like a man being personally handed the nuclear codes again.
Jill Biden has now confirmed what 70 million viewers already suspected during the 2024 "debate": she thought Joe Biden was having a stroke on national television while trying to stop Donald Trump from reclaiming the presidency. The president’s own wife watched him freeze, rasp and lose his train of thought and her first reaction was medical crisis, not "strong close on kitchen-table issues." Totally normal, very stable democracy stuff.
The Biden campaign, of course, responded to this apparent neurological alarm bell by telling everyone he was fine, he was sick-but-fine, he would definitely debate Trump again, and absolutely no one should question whether an 81-year-old who just scared his spouse "to death" was the best possible human being to stand between the country and a second Trump term. Months of denial, NATO gaffes, and a post-Covid frailty tour later, Biden finally dropped out and handed the nomination to Kamala Harris with all the grace of a controlled demolition done by interns.
Harris, who inherited the smoking crater of the campaign three months before Election Day and then lost to Trump, has since looked back and labeled Biden’s decision to run again not as noble duty but as "recklessness." Democrats, she says, had been repeating "It’s Joe and Jill’s decision" like a cult mantra while the stakes were the future of the republic, not which brunch place to pick. So yes, Donald Trump got back to the White House because the party that brands itself as the last line of defense against authoritarianism decided step one should be ignoring the possibility that their nominee was having a stroke onstage.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
trump discovers hostage diplomacy, calls it ‘art of the deal’
Crowd in Tehran holds up a portrait of Mojtaba Khamenei while Washington debates how much of Iran’s own money it’s allowed to see, because freedom apparently comes with a service fee.
The Trump administration’s latest entry in foreign policy fan fiction features Iran, $24 billion in frozen assets, and a president who now calls highly enriched uranium "nuclear dust" like he’s naming a new flavor of Cheetos. Tehran is demanding access to $12 billion of its own money before it even pretends to negotiate, while a "senior U.S. official" insists Iran must first give up the "dust" to even get near the vault. So yes, U.S. policy has officially been downgraded to a cash-for-compliance game show run by a man who thinks sanctions are a personality trait.
Iran, economically wrecked by decades of Western sanctions and the latest round of U.S.-Israel wars, is trying to get back a fraction of what’s been locked up in foreign banks, with Qatar playing mediator and part-time safety deposit box. Washington, meanwhile, is signaling that the money might be part of a deal eventually, if Iran first disarms to Trump’s satisfaction — a setup that looks less like diplomacy and more like a mob shakedown conducted with Treasury Department letterhead. Call it what you want, but when a president wields billions in seized foreign funds as his personal leverage kit while improvising nuclear policy on the fly, that’s not strategy; that’s killing-democracy-by-sanctions roulette.
#killing-democracy#imperialism
