welcome to president donald j. trump international, please lower your standards
Workers install a giant "President Donald J. Trump International Airport" sign, proving that even the highway now has to swear loyalty to the brand.
Palm Beach International Airport is dead; long live President Donald J. Trump International Airport, where your flight might be delayed but the cult of personality is running right on time. Thanks to legislation signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis back in March, workers are now swapping out highway signs and the Federal Aviation Administration is changing the airport code from the neutral "PBI" to the full-on fan merch version: DJT. Subtlety has clearly been grounded indefinitely.
Some travelers told the BBC the sitting president deserves to be honored this way, because nothing says "healthy democracy" like plastering a current leader’s name on public infrastructure while he’s still in office and actively campaigning. Others politely expressed that they liked the old name better, presumably because it didn’t scream "personality cult" every time they checked their boarding pass. Florida has essentially turned a normal airport into a rolling campaign ad and loyalty test, and we’re all just supposed to pretend this is a standard tourism branding decision rather than another step in the ongoing project of Trumpifying every public space that can’t run away.
#killing-democracy#fascism
les bleus hop a ride on the deportation express
French stars boarding an ICE Air workhorse, thoughtfully pre-tested on shackled migrants before being upgraded for business-class hypocrisy.
The French national team, led by far-right critic Kylian Mbappé, has apparently decided that if you can’t beat authoritarianism, you can at least charter its planes. Photos and flight data show Les Bleus shuttling between World Cup matches on jets from Global Crossing Airlines, the same outfit that runs more than half of ICE’s removal flights for Trump’s mass deportation program.
The aircraft that flew the team from Philly to Boston on 4 July? That same plane was used three days earlier to move detained immigrants from an Arizona detention center to Louisiana, one tiny leg in a network of nearly 1,000 deportation-related flights since 2022. Those flights have quietly ferried people to places like El Salvador’s Cecot mega-prison, with passengers shackled hand and foot and often kept in the dark about their destination — you know, the kind of "travel experience" that doesn’t make it onto Instagram Stories.
GlobalX and the French team both went with the classic "no comment" strategy, which is at least on-brand for a system that specializes in disappearing people through a logistics maze of secretive ICE charters. As Human Rights First’s ICE Flight Monitor notes, these carriers happily bounce between deporting asylum seekers and flying millionaire athletes in the same week, sometimes the same day. It’s a neat snapshot of Trump’s America: the deportation pipeline is so normalized it’s just another line item on a charter company’s booking calendar — sports, weddings, mass constitutional violations, corporate retreats.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump celebrates 250 years of freedom with a giant cult arch to robert e. lee
Nothing screams "Independence" like a 250-foot government-approved arch lovingly framing Robert E. Lee’s house in heroic marble cosplay.
The story of Trump's beloved 250-foot "Independence Arch" turns out to be less "national unity" and more "some guys on a right-wing think tank blog dared him." Design critic Catesby Leigh floated the idea in April 2025, literally writing that he hoped Trump would mandate an arch in D.C. to mark the country's 250th birthday. Because nothing says "republic" like a president personally ordering up a triumphal arch to himself, Caesar-style.
Leigh's piece came pre-loaded with sketches from two conveniently positioned friends: local architect Nicolas Charbonneau and an outfit led by developer Rodney Mims Cook Jr. — the same Cook Trump had nominated to chair the Commission of Fine Arts, the federal body that’s supposed to independently vet monuments. There was no open design competition, just a closed loop of Trump-adjacent enthusiasts pitching a 250-foot stone ego-trip that, in renderings, dramatically frames Robert E. Lee's house at Arlington. America’s 250th birthday, commemorated by a presidentially blessed arch literally spotlighting a Confederate general’s home. Truly, a subtle monument to the "heritage" these guys keep accidentally saying out loud.
#killing-democracy#fascism#forever-grifting
doj to election officials: nice democracy you got there
Harmeet Dhillon’s DOJ: now offering complimentary criminal threats with every request for your voter data.
The Trump Justice Department, now apparently moonlighting as the nation’s top voter suppression outfit, has fired off threat-o-grams to election officials in all 50 states and D.C., warning they could face criminal prosecution over the statistical Bigfoot of American politics: noncitizen voting, which data show is extremely rare. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, running the Civil Rights Division like it’s an anti-voting rights startup, is giving states five days to explain how they’ll keep “clean voter lists” and ensure only citizens vote in federal elections — or else.
This would be concerning enough if it stopped at fearmongering, but the letters go further, warning that election officers who supposedly “aid and abet” noncitizen voting — including by not purging their rolls to DOJ’s satisfaction — could be criminally liable. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson calls it “truly bizarre behavior,” noting that she and other officials are being targeted for following the law and refusing to hand over private voter data that courts have already said DOJ can’t have. Minor detail: at least 11 federal courts have tossed the department’s attempts to seize voter rolls, yet the Trump administration is still stomping around demanding names like an angry landlord with no lease.
So we now have the Civil Rights Division repurposed as the Voter Intimidation Division, dangling prosecution over the heads of state officials to strong-arm them into a federal takeover of election systems — all to combat a problem that barely exists outside of Trump’s rally speeches and Truth Social posts. It’s not about noncitizens voting; it’s about creating the pretext for purges, control, and chaos. Call it what it is: an authoritarian cosplay of “election integrity,” with the DOJ playing the heavy.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
trump holds dni nomination hostage for more spying and less voting
Bill Pulte, freshly promoted from mortgage guy to shadow spymaster, prepares to defend America from the grave threat of people who don’t like Donald Trump.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has bravely rescheduled Jay Clayton’s confirmation hearing for director of national intelligence, nearly a month after Donald Trump kicked over the calendar like a bored toddler with nuclear launch codes. The original June 17 hearing vanished hours before it began because Trump was mad that Congress hadn’t yet restored his beloved Section 702 warrantless surveillance powers and hadn’t lined up enough votes for his SAVE America Act — a voter ID bill designed to save America from the menace of people actually voting.
Trump’s public line was that the hearing had to stop until James McDonald was confirmed to replace Clayton as U.S. attorney for SDNY, a nomination the White House then somehow forgot to even send to the Senate. What did move forward was Trump’s handpicked acting DNI, Bill Pulte — a housing finance guy with no national security background but lots of experience helping the administration dig up dirt on Trump’s perceived enemies. Democrats (and a few Republicans who briefly remembered they’re supposed to care about this stuff) are now openly tying any FISA reauthorization to getting Clayton in the chair so Pulte can stop LARPing as America’s top spy.
So to recap: the president shut down a confirmation hearing for a broadly acceptable nominee, left a loyalist with zero intel credentials in charge of the entire intelligence community, and used the whole mess as leverage to get more domestic spying authority and a harder time voting. The only intelligence on display here is Trump’s ongoing realization that if you treat national security like a protection racket, Senate Republicans will mostly just ask what time to show up.
#killing-democracy#fascism
omb discovers science is easier when you just defund the parts you don’t like
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Russell Vought, bravely protecting America from the grave threat of peer-reviewed science and international collaboration.
The Trump OMB quietly rolled out a "grant reform" plan that translates to: science is fine as long as it worships Dear Leader. The proposed rule would sideline peer review, hand political appointees veto power over what gets funded, and let agencies terminate grants whenever they feel like it, so long as they mutter the magic words "national interest" or "agency priorities." Congressional intent? That’s adorable.
As a bonus, the rule would outright ban research tied to diversity, equity, inclusion, and gender as grant conditions, and slap a big, dumb "NO" on wide swaths of international scientific collaboration. Because nothing says "global competitiveness" like walling off U.S. researchers from the rest of the planet and purging any work that acknowledges marginalized humans exist.
Susan Collins, who usually responds to authoritarian overreach with a sternly worded sigh, actually wrote to OMB Director Russell Vought to object to the whole "we can kill your grant whenever we want" provision and the forced political review of awards already cleared by scientific peer review. Democrats led by Chuck Schumer are demanding the entire proposal be torched. Vought insists this is all about "waste, fraud and abuse" and aligning spending with the president’s agenda "on behalf of the entirety of the American people" — a poetic way of saying: if your research doesn’t serve Trump’s politics, it doesn’t get funded.
#killing-democracy#anti-science
state department goes full snitch for tehran
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, seen here preparing to explain why handing asylum files to a hostile regime is actually freedom or something.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that refuge is overrated, so now it's allegedly mailing asylum files of Iranian detainees straight to the Iranian government. According to a new lawsuit filed in D.C. by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and Public Citizen, U.S. officials have been "periodically" mailing or hand-delivering immigration files of Iranians in custody to Tehran's representatives since March 2025. You flee a repressive regime, beg the United States for protection, and the Marco Rubio State Department allegedly responds by forwarding your deepest fears to the people you’re hiding from. Bold strategy.
Federal law is extremely clear that asylum applications are confidential and especially not to be shared with the government persecuting you, but the complaint says ICE and the Iranian Interests Section have been holding cozy monthly meetings where deportation relief and asylum files were passed along like party favors. Those meetings reportedly stopped after the U.S. attacked Iran in February, but the document pipeline allegedly kept flowing, because why let a little thing like war interrupt your data-sharing program with an adversarial regime?
Lawyers say detainees report being summoned to meetings with senior Iranian officials who already know details from their asylum claims — details that could get them detained, imprisoned, or tortured, along with putting their families at risk back home. The lawsuit even cites confidential confirmation from an Iranian government official that this is policy. Homeland Security and the Iranian mission to the U.N. responded with the traditional Trump-era statement: absolute silence. Meanwhile, the regulations say asylum records must be protected; the administration’s apparent position is more along the lines of: what if we weaponized them instead.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
presidential historian confirms: trump wants mccarthyism, but make it fascist-chic
Presidential historian calmly explains that the president is flirting with McCarthyism 2.0 while everyone pretends this is just another normal Sunday show segment.
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley went on TV to deliver the kind of history lesson you don’t usually get outside a late-stage republic: Trump isn’t just fearmongering, he’s trying to build a ‘Red Scare on steroids’—a 1950s-style purge of political enemies, but updated for the age of Truth Social tantrums and weaponized grievance. Instead of Soviet infiltrators, today’s “subversives” are Democrats, journalists, civil servants, and anyone who thinks the Constitution is more binding than a Trump NDA.
Brinkley walks through the greatest hits of creeping authoritarianism: labeling opponents as existential threats to the nation, floating mass roundups and deportations, fantasizing about using the Justice Department as a personal hit squad, and treating loyalty to Trump as the only legitimate form of American identity. It’s McCarthyism, except this time the guy waving the blacklist also controls the nuclear codes and thinks ‘checks and balances’ is a reality show about his bank accounts.
The historian’s core point: Trump isn’t just running against a candidate, he’s running against the idea that opposition is allowed at all. The goal is to turn policy disagreement into suspected treason, elections into loyalty tests, and the federal government into a sprawling revenge machine. So yes, we’re doing the Red Scare again—only now the demagogue at the center of it already tried to overturn an election once and learned exactly how many institutions will shrug and call it ‘controversial’ instead of ‘authoritarian power grab.’
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
tennessee sends in the troops, kills a 20‑year‑old, calls it ‘safety’
Tyrin Johnson, who got to be an unwilling extra in Trump and Bill Lee’s "Democrat cities are war zones" propaganda film.
The Trump-backed “crime surge” cosplay in Democratic cities just claimed a life in Memphis. Tennessee National Guard troops, deployed by Republican governor Bill Lee to help the president prove blue cities are war zones, shot and killed 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson at 4am after a chase. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation says Johnson "turned and pulled a gun" and that two soldiers opened fire, but curiously, no one is volunteering names or details. The Guard won’t identify the shooters, the TBI is punting questions back to “the respective department,” and we’re all supposed to accept that as transparency.
Memphis mayor Paul Young opposed turning his city into a live-fire campaign ad, noting that crime was already falling before Lee rolled in the troops, but the governor and the courts overruled local control anyway. Now the same Trump-aligned “safe taskforce” has racked up at least four officer-involved shootings since October, and the body count is starting to look less like safety and more like a demonstration project in how to militarize domestic policing while shredding home rule. Johnson leaves behind a young child and a family business he was preparing to help lead, but hey, at least the governor and Trump got their tough-on-crime photo op without having to show the photos.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump’s fcc discovers the fairness doctrine, but only for enemies
Brendan Carr examines ABC’s licenses to see if they contain enough praise for Dear Leader; finds dangerous traces of Jimmy Kimmel instead.
Conservative legal mills are lining up at the FCC like it’s Black Friday at an authoritarian Best Buy, all demanding that Trump appointee Brendan Carr yank the licenses of ABC’s eight owned-and-operated stations. The pretext? That ABC is biased, woke, soft on China, mean to Melania, and insufficiently deferential to the delicate feelings of one very whiny ex-president. The FCC, which mysteriously found the time to force ABC into an early license renewal process after the White House threw a tantrum over a Jimmy Kimmel joke, swears this is just about a neutral "DEI investigation" and not, say, weaponizing federal power to smack a disfavored news outlet.
Petitions are flying in from the usual Trumpworld constellation of outrage factories. The Center for American Rights complains that ABC’s programming shows a "consistent and overt partisan bias" and is disrespectful to the Commission’s "integrity of the news" standards, which apparently now live somewhere between Newsmax and a Truth Social post. The Media Research Center accuses ABC of "electioneering", "misinformation", and "promotion of violence" — bold charges from a movement that watched January 6 on live TV and decided the real threat to democracy was Whoopi Goldberg. Mike Davis’s Article III Project insists Disney’s attempts to hire a diverse workforce are basically a crime spree, while Stephen Miller’s America First Legal helpfully explains that ABC lacks the "character qualifications" to use the public airwaves, unlike, say, a twice-impeached coup enthusiast.
While this circus rolls on, Carr’s FCC is also investigating The View for allegedly violating equal-time rules after a Democratic Senate candidate appeared on the show and had the nerve to poll well against Republican Ken Paxton, who is… Ken Paxton. The commission has set deadlines for responses, after which an administrative law judge may hold a full trial over whether ABC is sufficiently pro-MAGA to remain on the air, or the commissioners can just run the show themselves. As Carr put it, "If it’s short, great. If it’s long, great" — a wonderfully casual way to describe turning broadcast licensing into a loyalty test for media outlets that won’t kiss the ring.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump spends billions to stop wind, somehow still full of hot air
A nearly finished offshore wind farm, moments before the Trump administration tries to pay it to stop existing.
Donald Trump has finally found a kind of green energy he supports: shoveling $2.6 billion in taxpayer cash into the pockets of energy companies so they’ll cancel wind projects and kill union jobs. After courts repeatedly told him he can’t just freeze all wind leasing and slap stop-work orders on nearly finished projects because he’s mad about whales, birds, and that one time Scotland wouldn’t protect his golf course view, the administration pivoted to the classic Republican solution: just buy your way out of the law.
Union workers like Thomas Kilday and Will Gonzalez built their lives around long, dangerous offshore shifts to power hundreds of thousands of homes. In return, the Trump administration has given them chaos, court fights, and the constant fear that some guy in the White House with a personal vendetta against turbines will vaporize their next paycheck. Projects that are 90% done and already delivering power are being jerked around while Interior signs massive checks to Invenergy, Bluepoint Wind, and Garden State Wind for the privilege of not building clean energy.
Labor leaders in Rhode Island point out that they’re 5–0 against Trump in court on these stop-work orders, but the administration just keeps lighting money on fire to prove that owning the libs is more important than stable union jobs or a livable climate. The message from Trump’s America is crystal clear: if you’re a billionaire energy company, the government will pay you handsomely to do nothing. If you’re a trained worker ready to build the future, you can sit on your unused certifications and pray the next court ruling comes before your bills do.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
ncaa proudly complies with bigotry, calls it ‘clarity’
Woman holds signs saying “inclusion makes us stronger” and “let kids play!!!” while six justices and one ex–game show host respond, “Have you tried not being included?”
The NCAA’s Charlie Baker went on national TV to calmly explain that, no, the organization will absolutely not be rethinking its effective ban on trans women in college sports, especially now that Trump’s Supreme Court fan club has given states the green light to exclude them. Why reconsider discrimination when the federal government has helpfully turned it into a “national standard”?
Baker cheerfully reminded everyone that the NCAA rewrote its rules in 2025 to lock trans women out of women’s sports, all to “comply” with Trump’s second-term executive order about “men in women’s sports” – a policy crusade aimed at roughly ten trans athletes out of more than 500,000 NCAA competitors. When you’re running a multi-billion-dollar cartel built on unpaid labor, nothing screams courage like punching down at a microscopic minority to keep the base riled up.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling that bans on trans girls and women don’t violate Title IX gave West Virginia, Idaho, and at least 25 other states a judicial permission slip to keep kids off teams for the crime of existing. Baker’s response? Call men’s sports the “open network,” insist the current policy is “inclusive enough,” and assure everyone that schools are fine with it. When the government weaponizes civil rights law to narrow who counts as fully human, there’s always a line of institutions like the NCAA ready to call it "clarity" and move on to selling more March Madness ads.
#killing-democracy#trumps-america
uk debates how best to handle its unstable orange landlord
Keir Starmer, future former prime minister, rehearses the traditional role of UK leaders in the Trump era: human paperweight for the president’s half-baked trade deal props.
Britain is about to swap Keir Starmer for Andy Burnham, and the first item on Burnham’s to‑do list is apparently figuring out how to manage a US president who thinks foreign policy is a loyalty test and NATO is a cover band. Trump, whose mother was Scottish and whose ego is stateless, has already cycled through three UK prime ministers in five and a half years, trashing British troops, demanding help with his Iran adventure, and workshopping the line "this is not Winston Churchill we're dealing with" like it’s his new standup closer.
Starmer tried everything to keep the "special relationship" alive – second state visit, Oval Office grins, literal photo‑ops of him picking up Trump’s dropped trade papers like a particularly overqualified valet – and still ended up on the receiving end of public tantrums because he wouldn’t turn the UK into a forward operating base for whatever war Trump wanted next. Now Burnham, a guy Trump dismisses as "the mayor of a town" and "extremely liberal," gets to decide how much groveling is required to stop the world’s loudest landlord from rage‑tweeting about the North Sea.
Diplomats politely describe Trump as "erratic" and "transactional," which is a genteel way of saying the health of the transatlantic alliance depends on whether anyone has told him he looks presidential that morning. The great strategic question for Britain is no longer how to balance Europe, America, and global security – it’s how to navigate a US president who wants to be treated like royalty, minus the work, the dignity, or the reading. The "special relationship" has officially been downgraded to emotional support role for an aspiring autocrat.
#killing-democracy#fascism
pope leo vs the axis of amoral dunces
Pope Leo, lone adult in a world leaders’ daycare, gently explaining to Trump, Putin and Netanyahu that ‘thou shalt not commit war crimes’ is not a negotiable suggestion.
Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu walk into a century and somehow it’s our problem. Simon Tisdall lays out the obvious: these three aren’t just bad at ethics, they appear to have deleted the concept from their internal operating systems. From Putin’s missile roulette over Ukraine, to Netanyahu’s UN-flagged child-targeting genocide in Gaza, to Trump’s all-you-can-eat buffet of corruption, crypto scams and constitutional vandalism, we’re living through a masterclass in how to turn public office into a moral septic tank.
The Trump regime, now featuring Vice-President JD “Watergate Wasn’t That Deep Actually” Vance and Defense Secretary Pete “God Loves My Bombs” Hegseth, has upgraded immorality from scandal to standard operating procedure. We’ve got extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean, an unlawful US-Israel war on Iran that starts with the mass killing of primary school children in Minab, and a White House that treats international law like the terms of service on a sketchy crypto exchange. The cover-up isn’t even a cover-up any more; it’s just arrogant silence wrapped in flag pins and Bible quotes.
Into this swamp wades Pope Leo, apparently the last global figure who thinks “don’t kill children and lie about God wanting it” is a baseline, not a radical left agenda. He’s publicly calling out Trump, Putin and Netanyahu as tyrants, torching Vance and Hegseth for weaponising religion, and trying to slam shut the just-war loopholes politicians use to launder their bloodbaths as “proportional self-defence”. While far-right parties criminalise dissenters as terrorists and Western leaders normalize war crimes and kleptocracy, Leo is out here reminding everyone that war is “never blessed by God” and that dragging the sacred into “darkness and filth” is, shockingly, bad.
So on one side: billionaires, war criminals, crypto-grifters and arms dealers running a global morality Ponzi scheme under the brand of “strength” and “national security”. On the other: a pope, some impertinent Muslim and Jewish leaders, and a newly installed archbishop of Canterbury telling Israel to stop the occupation and the world to stop pretending this is fine. The fact that the Vatican is now the ethical high-water mark for the American presidency tells you everything about how thoroughly Trumpism has killed any remaining shame in public life.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
space cowboys and border patrol: fascism, but make it rodeo
Proud parents watch as their kids play rodeo games a few feet from a Border Patrol signup booth, proving that in Trump’s America, nothing says family fun like soft-launching your child’s future in paramilitary border enforcement.
Trump’s America has finally merged two great national traditions: rodeo culture and state power. At Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs, baby-faced recruits swear into the Air Force while bull riders in chaps prepare to get launched into the dirt, and somewhere in between, Space Force and US Border Patrol quietly turn the whole thing into a live-action recruitment ad. It’s billed as a celebration of America’s 250th birthday, but the real headliner is a booth where you can sign up to help enforce Trump’s immigration crackdown, right next to the kids’ games.
Border Patrol, freshly showered in $70 billion in border security funding, including $26 billion just for itself, is now dangling $60,000 signing bonuses like party favors while bragging it’s finally passed 21,000 agents. The agency that’s been at the center of Trump’s hardline immigration crusade is hoovering up applicants who can’t qualify for the actual military but are still very eager to carry a gun for the state. Asthma? Heart condition? No problem — you may not be fit for war, but you’re apparently fit to police migrants.
Meanwhile, Space Force – Trump’s vanity project turned permanent branch of the military – is out here co-sponsoring bull-riding events and competing with Silicon Valley for "top-tier talent" by promising to "tame… space" like it’s a particularly rowdy open range. The stadium rises to honor veterans while drones paint the Space Force logo in the sky, and the message is clear: patriotic entertainment and endless militarization are now a single product, sold as family fun with a Tim McGraw soundtrack. The line between "go watch some bull riding" and "sign up to enforce the border for a president obsessed with immigration crackdowns" has been replaced with a recruitment tent and a bouncy trampoline.
#killing-democracy#trumps-america
trump to celebrate independence day by attacking half the country again
Mount Rushmore prepares for the honor of being a background extra in Trump’s latest episode of ‘This Is About Me Now.’
Trump is reportedly "ramping up" his rhetoric just in time for his July Fourth speech, because nothing says national unity like using a patriotic address as a campaign rally with better fireworks and more flags. NBC's segment questions whether this White House, which treats political opponents as enemies of the state and the press as traitors, is capable of anything resembling a unifying tone that doesn’t involve compulsory flattery.
Instead of a normal civic celebration, we’re getting another taxpayer-funded grievance festival where the president stands in front of a national monument and explains that the real threat to America is… Americans who don’t like him. The line between a public, nonpartisan event and a campaign spectacle gets a little blurrier every year, as Trump happily converts national holidays into personality-cult programming.
So while past presidents used Independence Day to gesture vaguely toward shared values and democratic norms, this one is workshopping new insults and testing how much authoritarian chest-thumping he can cram into a "unifying" speech. The only thing truly bringing the country together at this point is bipartisan dread about what he’s going to say next.
#killing-democracy#fascism#trumps-america
trump deregulates your baby’s lunch
FDA HQ heroically fighting infant botulism with a single remaining inspector and a PowerPoint about "efficiency".
The Trump administration looked at the baby formula system that already poisoned infants in 2022 and said: "What if we fired the inspectors this time?" The FDA’s own former food safety chief says the agency is now "doing less with less" after Trump’s reorganization and staff cuts stripped away thousands of employees, especially the ones who actually go into factories and check whether the baby food is seasoned with botulism.
On paper, the FDA rolled out something adorably named Operation Stork Speed to "expand options" for safe infant formula. In reality, the expert brought in to help design the nutrition regulations says there’s been basically no movement since 2025, while the agency insists everything is "continuing as planned"—a chilling phrase when multiple brands are being recalled for bacterial contamination and infant botulism outbreaks. States are scrambling to fill the gap, doing nearly 2,000 recall checks in a week while the federal agency tasked with protecting the food supply managed a proud total of 21.
The chaos is so advanced that investigative reporters, not regulators, had to connect that two different formula brands behind botulism outbreaks were using the same organic milk supplier. The FDA only updated the public record on its inspections after reporters asked why there was no trace of a German plant linked to sick babies. Meanwhile, Trump’s people brag about doubling paper-pusher "infant formula staffing" while quietly starving the field investigators who actually keep bacteria out of bottles. It’s deregulation as performance art: fewer cops on the beat, more press releases about "accountability", and a baby formula market where parents have to hope their kid’s next bottle didn’t come with a side of neurotoxin.
#killing-democracy#anti-science#forever-grifting
hakeem jeffries reminds everyone the arsonist is still in charge of the fire department
Hakeem Jeffries patiently explaining that yes, Democrats are messy, but only one party currently has a president treating the FBI like his personal QAnon book club.
Hakeem Jeffries went on NPR to play the role of Responsible Adult™ and gently remind everyone that while Democrats are busy reenacting West Wing fan fiction about primaries, Donald Trump is still the guy with the nuclear codes, the Pentagon, and a large collection of unhinged House Republicans.
Pressed twice about how he’ll work with Democrats who beat his preferred candidates in New York, Jeffries basically replied: "I don’t care who wins the purity Olympics, we’ve got an actual authoritarian cosplay project to shut down." Instead of airing intra-party grievances, he pivoted back to Trump, the GOP agenda, and what he calls "MAGA extremism" — you know, the crowd that thinks elections are optional and laws are for other people.
Jeffries also slammed Trump’s decision to jump into the Middle East conflict — a "war of choice" that the White House apparently selected from the same menu where it orders culture-war outrage — and noted that House Democrats oppose it. At the same time, he’s cautiously optimistic Trump will sign a bipartisan housing affordability bill, presumably during one of the brief interludes when the president isn’t rage-watching cable news or threatening random prosecutors on social media.
And because this administration can never resist misusing law enforcement, Jeffries called out Trump’s team for wasting FBI resources to re-chase the already debunked 2020 election conspiracy fever dreams. While Trump tries to turn federal agents into his personal fan-fiction investigators, Jeffries is out here begging voters to focus on the guy abusing the machinery of the state — not just which Democrat gets to inherit the flaming wreckage later.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#national-security
trump discovers nato isn't his personal fight club, throws tantrum anyway
Trump studies a NATO spending chart and concludes the real enemy is math, alliances, and anyone who won’t bomb Iran on command.
Donald Trump took a brief break from rage-posting about his indictments to rage-post about NATO, declaring it "ridiculous" for the US to keep its supposedly "one sided" relationship with the alliance. On Truth Social, he shared a very serious chart (always a good sign) showing US defense spending next to a couple of cherry‑picked allies, then concluded that the entire post‑WWII security order is a bad deal because Europeans won’t let him use their bases as a launchpad for his Iran adventure.
Instead of admitting he’s mad Europe doesn’t want to co‑star in his Middle East sequel, Trump is pretending this is all about "fairness" and "reciprocity"—while his administration has already started scaling back US commitments and demanding that NATO countries jack up their defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. That’s not a security policy; that’s an arms‑industry wet dream in patriotic wrapping paper.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is out doing the clean‑up tour, politely explaining that the president is just "disappointed" Europe won’t be more "actively involved in attacking Iran"—a phrase that tells you everything you need to know about who’s the aggressor here. With a major summit in Ankara looming and 32 member states trying to keep the alliance from collapsing under the weight of Trump’s ego, NATO’s 77‑year mission has evolved from deterring Russia to surviving the American president.
#killing-democracy#national-security#imperialism
court reminds trump he’s not hr director of a banana republic
Trump officials stare at the Constitution like it’s malware while a judge gently explains they can’t just fire people for doing diversity work.
The Trump administration just got a civics lesson from a federal appeals court, which ruled that, yes, even intelligence officers have this pesky thing called due process. The CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence fired 19 career officers whose crime was… doing temporary diversity assignments they’d been ordered to do under the previous administration. The agencies then tried to pretend their own rules didn’t exist, like a teenager claiming they never saw the chore chart.
Government lawyers helpfully argued that then–CIA Director John Ratcliffe and the director of national intelligence had unfettered authority to fire people with or without cause, which is a bold thing to say out loud in a courtroom and not at a Heritage Foundation cosplay dictatorship summit. The judges, in a 2–1 ruling, replied that actually, when your own regulations say employees get a shot at reassignment and an appeal, you can’t just yeet them out the door for helping with diversity work that offended the current regime’s delicate culture-war sensibilities.
Attorney Kevin Carroll, representing the officers, noted that "intelligence officers have due process rights, too," which is apparently a controversial statement in Trump World, where loyalty oaths are in and civil service protections are out. The court ordered the CIA and acting DNI Bill Pulte to get these people back to work, though the administration is already eyeing an appeal, presumably on the grounds that the Constitution makes an exception whenever someone hurts Donald Trump’s feelings about DEI. The agencies, naturally, did not respond to requests for comment—possibly because it’s hard to email reporters while shredding your own HR manual.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#fascism
