The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

The Kennedy Center, a “living memorial” to John F. Kennedy, briefly moonlighted as a Trump property after the president’s name was bolted onto its facade in December 2025 — because if there’s one thing American democracy was missing, it was the aesthetic of a mid-range Atlantic City casino slapped on its cultural institutions.

Less than six months later, a federal judge did the radical, extremist thing of reading the law and ruled that only Congress can change the name, sending workers up the scaffolding to un-Trump the building. Trump, naturally, responded like a normal, totally-not-authoritarian leader by threatening the Kennedy Center’s existence: if his name didn’t stay up, it would “close” and “end up being ripped down.” Nothing says “public servant” quite like holding a national arts institution hostage for exterior branding rights.

NPR politely notes that presidents almost never stamp their own names on public assets while in office, because most of them understood they were not Roman emperors auditioning for a coliseum. Trump and his fans, however, have been shopping the brand for everything from naval battleships to airports, apparently determined to turn the federal government into one long, depressing highway of Trump-branded rest stops. The founders worried about monarchs; they didn’t foresee having to write, “No, you can’t rename the Kennedy Center after yourself while you’re still under multiple indictments.”

Russ Vought, Trump’s budget arsonist-in-chief, has spent the last year and a half treating Congress’s constitutional power of the purse like a suggestion box at Mar-a-Lago. He’s pushed illegal pocket rescissions, repeated impoundments of funds Congress actually passed, and even cooked up a scheme to run NIH grants through a political "anti-woke" loyalty committee. The Government Accountability Office keeps stamping this stuff illegal, and the Trump White House keeps replying, "Cool story, we disagree with the Constitution."

Enter Sen. Susan Collins, Chair of Appropriations and lifelong patron saint of performative concern. After voting to confirm Vought in 2025 after he testified that he thinks the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional and that presidents can just not spend money Congress appropriates, she is now clutching her pearls on social media about OMB "undermining Congress’s Constitutional power of the purse." The same power Vought explicitly promised to undermine. In public. On camera. At his confirmation hearing. Which she watched. Before voting yes.

Democrats in Maine are politely dropping the act. Troy Jackson notes that Collins is shocked Vought is doing exactly what he said he’d do, while the Maine Democratic Party points out she has "utterly failed" to use her gavel to stop Trump’s illegal impoundments and funding freezes. Collins’ office, asked if she has any regrets, responded with the legislative equivalent of "we passed some bills though," as if a few bipartisan appropriations somehow cancel out systematically helping the executive branch steal Congress’s wallet.

So Trump gets an OMB director who thinks laws don’t apply to him, Congress’s watchdog keeps screaming "this is illegal," and Susan Collins once again discovers her spine only after the damage is done. It’s a master class in how you kill a constitutional check: first you vote for the wrecking crew, then you issue a strongly worded tweet while they bulldoze the place.

The Commander-in-Chief went to Nebraska and workshopped a new foreign policy doctrine: Let Iran nuke California. Donald Trump told a cheering rally that Iran should be allowed to "take out" Los Angeles and San Diego, calling the destruction of two of America’s largest cities a "small price to pay" to keep the country safe. Bold strategy: defending America by offering up 7+ million Americans and multiple major military installations as a human sacrifice.

Gavin Newsom, whose crime is governing the state Trump keeps fantasizing about occupying, reminded everyone that the president has already sent National Guard and Marines into California, and is now openly musing that a foreign adversary should finish the job. LA’s Mayor Karen Bass had to clarify the part that used to be implied in Civics 101: the role of a president is to protect Americans, not encourage attacks on them. San Diego’s Mayor Todd Gloria, whose city hosts the Pacific Fleet, Camp Pendleton, and SEAL training, helpfully noted that San Diego is not "collateral damage" or a "small price to pay"—which is where we are now: big-city mayors having to publicly ask the U.S. president to stop inviting Iran to blow them up.

So the crowd roared, the president fantasized about foreign strikes on U.S. soil, and the party that once branded itself as the home of "national security" is now workshopping which blue cities are most expendable. The message from Trump’s America is crystal clear: if you didn’t vote for him, your city is negotiable.

The Trump administration would like you to know that “DHS is NOT arresting U.S. citizens by mistake,” there are no “indiscriminate stops,” and racial profiling is “categorically FALSE.” ProPublica, being extremely rude, responded by counting more than 500 U.S. citizens who’ve been detained anyway — many at gunpoint, handcuffed, or disappeared for days — and then posting the receipts. Among the lucky winners: over 100 citizens stopped after agents questioned their citizenship (nearly all people of color), at least 70 kids and teens, 36 people held at least a day without contact with a lawyer or family, dozens detained for the crime of recording agents, and even citizen children deported because nothing says constitutional republic like shipping your own nationals out of the country.

The timeline reads like a greatest hits album of civil rights violations: a citizen worker at a Philly car wash held at gunpoint, a dual national in California held four days with no lawyer or family contact, a Chicago “Operation Midway Blitz” that DHS swore had zero citizen arrests while ProPublica found more than 120, an 18-year-old dumped in the woods, a Baltimore mother held 25 days over Christmas away from her 5-year-old, and a Texas man who said “I’m a citizen, it’s fine” before being deported four days later. Former DHS and ICE officials are on record calling it “terrible” and “an embarrassment,” which is polite government-speak for what the hell are you people doing?

DHS’ official line, delivered with the deadpan confidence of a guy holding a smoking gun over a bullet-riddled Constitution, is that operations are “highly targeted,” they “do our due diligence,” and anyone who “obstructs” will “of course face consequences,” a phrase doing an incredible amount of fascism-flavored heavy lifting. Meanwhile, ProPublica is left doing the basic oversight work the government won’t: scouring social media, local news, and court records to map every citizen dragged into the immigration maw — and that’s not even counting the ones who were just shot rather than detained. Welcome to Trump’s immigration state: you’re presumed deportable, your rights are optional, and your passport is only as good as the agent’s mood.

Cornell students smashed a glass door and painted "SMASH THE PATRIARCHY" and "AT CORNELL RAPISTS ARE PROTECTED PROTESTORS ARE EXPELLED" on an administration building at 3am, which, according to the university, is finally a level of misconduct worth taking seriously. The alleged gang rape at a fraternity house? That got the classic American elite justice package: a couple of expulsions, some essays, a workshop or two, and absolutely no arrests. Nothing says "we value your safety" like giving alleged perpetrators homework.

The activists, in a manifesto, politely noted that maybe, just maybe, property damage isn't "violent" in the same way as rape, a distinction that appears to have eluded multiple university administrations, half of Congress, and most Title IX offices for the last several decades. Cornell's spokesperson responded with the usual word salad about "hearing concerns" while promising a hard look at the real menace here: paint and broken glass.

Under public pressure, the DA is now reopening the case, Governor Kathy Hochul has tapped Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor, and Cornell's president has bravely pledged to "take a serious look" at fraternities — a phrase that in higher-ed speak usually translates to "form a task force and wait for everyone to graduate." Meanwhile, students who are furious that alleged rapists got restorative journaling while they get disciplinary investigations for graffiti are discovering how American institutions actually work: harm people, get process; embarrass power, get consequences.

Chuck Schumer has announced that if Democrats take the Senate, they are not planning to rubber-stamp any more of Trump’s “MAGA justices” — a phrase that here means “political operatives in robes who pretend not to have heard of the 2020 election.” After nearly six years of Trump judges being shot out of a GOP Senate like a T-shirt cannon at an authoritarian pep rally, Democrats are daring to suggest that maybe, just maybe, the guy who tried to overturn an election doesn’t get automatic lifetime control over the courts too.

Richard Blumenthal politely notes the odds of confirming a Trump Supreme Court pick under a Democratic majority are “slim to none,” which is Washington-speak for “absolutely not, have you seen these people?” Ruben Gallego goes a step further and says the quiet part out loud: they should do to Trump what Mitch McConnell did to Obama — sit on a vacancy and wait for a president who isn’t actively trying to burn down democracy. Republicans, naturally, are outraged that Democrats might use the exact power Republicans lovingly sharpened for a decade.

Sen. Darline Graham warns that if Democrats win the Senate, they’ll block Trump’s nominee “regardless of their qualifications,” which is rich coming from the party that treated ‘thinks the president is above the law’ as a résumé booster. Meanwhile, Blumenthal suggests a wild new litmus test for judicial nominees: correctly answering who won the 2020 election — a question that has already turned multiple Trump picks into constitutional deer in headlights. Mazie Hirono, for her part, just laughs and endorses term limits, because if we’re going to have a captured court, it should at least rotate the captors.

So the stakes of 2026 are clear: a Republican Senate means Trump keeps stacking the judiciary with loyalists who think Article II lets him do whatever he wants; a Democratic Senate means the judicial conveyor belt finally jams. Call it gridlock, call it payback — but after McConnell’s decade-long project to turn the courts into a Federalist Society fanfic, this is less a “judicial war” than Democrats belatedly showing up to a knife fight where the other side has already been swinging chainsaws.

The Trump White House has decided that if you're going to destroy the concept of an independent press, you might as well do it with some festive gun cosplay. Enter Beni Rae Harmony, the brand-new assistant White House press secretary, previously best known for posing with a rifle in front of Christmas decorations while wearing a "Fuck Joe Biden" T-shirt. Because nothing says "professional communicator for the presidency" like a holiday card that doubles as a Proud Boys recruitment flyer.

Harmony’s résumé reads like a casting call for a Steve Bannon cinematic universe: producer for Turning Point USA’s Jack Posobiec, crisis comms flack for Paul "anime snuff film" Gosar and Matt "under federal investigation" Gaetz, and campaign aide to a far-right House candidate who proudly posted her rifle glamour shot. She also loudly defended Gosar after he was censured for a video depicting him murdering Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Biden, which in this administration is apparently not a red flag but an HR recommendation letter.

The White House, via deputy press secretary Anna Kelly, praised Harmony as a "trusted voice for the MAGA movement" who was ostensibly a "White House correspondent" for Steve Bannon’s propaganda outlet Real America’s Voice right up until Trump seems to have been literally holding her résumé on Air Force One while she lobbed him pre-scripted softball questions. So yes, the person now paid by taxpayers to brief the press was just pretending to be press while auditioning for state media.

This all slots neatly into Trump’s broader project of turning the briefing room into a loyalty pageant. CNN, Politico, and MS Now are being shoved toward the exit for insufficient worship, while carefully curated sycophants get called on to ask questions like why Volodymyr Zelenskyy doesn’t dress fancy enough for Dear Leader’s office. The message is clear: real journalists get banned, rifle-in-a-"Fuck Joe Biden"-shirt influencers get badges and a White House email. Freedom of the press, now available exclusively to people who would happily end it.