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The Trump Presidency Timeline

Documenting the chaos since day one. 797 entries and counting.

Category: killing democracy
killing democracy

trump econ guy demands detention for bad thoughts about tariffs

Kevin Hassett explains that when the data contradicts Trump, the data goes to the re-education camp.

Kevin Hassett explains that when the data contradicts Trump, the data goes to the re-education camp.

Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council and full-time reality-denial specialist, has decided that Federal Reserve economists should be "disciplined" for the high crime of doing math. Their New York Fed paper found that about 90% of Trump's tariffs are being paid by US firms and consumers, which is awkward when the official White House line is "foreigners are paying, don't look at your grocery bill."

Hassett went on CNBC to declare the paper "an embarrassment" and "the worst" in Fed history, which is a bold statement from an administration that treats numbers the way Elon treats NDAs. He insisted consumers are actually better off because prices fell, inflation dropped, and "real wages" rose, a miraculous outcome where Americans somehow get richer by paying more for imports. The economists who pointed out this basic incidence-of-tariffs problem, he says, should be punished for producing analysis that "wouldn't be accepted in a first-semester econ class"—a fascinating critique from the political team that thinks the deficit is just a vibe.

This is all unfolding while Trump is already pressuring the Fed to slash interest rates, cheering on a criminal investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell over building renovations, and trying to push out Fed governor Lisa Cook. Meanwhile, every serious analysis—from the Kiel Institute to the National Bureau of Economic Research—confirms the same thing: the US is paying almost all the tariff costs. So naturally, instead of rethinking the policy, the White House is floating professional consequences for economists whose charts don't worship the Dear Tariff Leader. Independent central bank? Cute 20th-century concept.

Source: bbc.com

#killing-democracy#fascism#trade-war
killing democracy

trump tries to trade tunnel money for naming rights like a broke dictator

Artist’s rendering of a rail tunnel heroically surviving both Hurricane Sandy and four years of Trump trying to name it after himself.

Artist’s rendering of a rail tunnel heroically surviving both Hurricane Sandy and four years of Trump trying to name it after himself.

The Trump administration has finally released $127m in overdue federal funds for the New York–New Jersey Gateway rail tunnel, plus another $127m on top, after a federal judge basically reminded them that "president" is not a synonym for "ransom broker." Construction on the country’s largest infrastructure project can now restart, because the White House temporarily stopped treating a critical tunnel used by 200,000 daily commuters like a prop in a reality show.

This sudden burst of compliance comes after Trump spent months withholding $205m in reimbursements, running the project out of cash and forcing work to stop. During his little funding hostage situation, he allegedly demanded that Washington Dulles airport and New York’s Penn Station be renamed after him in exchange for unfreezing the money. So yes, the sitting president tried to swap essential infrastructure funding for personal branding opportunities, like a discount Mussolini with a merch store.

Governor Kathy Hochul and Chuck Schumer are calling it a huge win for workers, commuters, and the regional economy, because when the bar is on the floor, "the president obeyed a court order and stopped sabotaging a rail tunnel" now counts as a triumph. Trump, naturally, is still raging on Truth Social that Gateway is a future "boondoggle" and "financially catastrophic" — which is rich coming from the man who thinks the real emergency is that there aren’t enough buildings and airports named after him.

The bottom line: a century-old, Sandy-damaged tunnel finally gets repaired not because the administration cares about safety or transit, but because a judge and a political backlash briefly made it more painful to keep breaking things than to let one project proceed. Rule of law 1, petty autocrat 0 — at least until the next appeal.

#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy

board of peace, brought to you by the highest bidder

World leaders file into the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace, where peace is theoretical but the $1bn membership fee is extremely real.

World leaders file into the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace, where peace is theoretical but the $1bn membership fee is extremely real.

Donald Trump has discovered a bold new diplomatic innovation: a "Board of Peace" that looks suspiciously like a pay‑to‑play geopolitical country club with a minimum $1bn cover charge. The inaugural summit at the freshly rebranded Donald J Trump Institute of Peace is being sold as a Gaza reconstruction fundraiser, with Trump bragging about $5bn in pledges and "thousands" of promised stabilization troops. On the ground in Gaza, however, aid is still a trickle, the 100‑day Jared Kushner peace-and-recovery plan is face‑planting in real time, and the technocrats of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza are stuck in Cairo, wondering who they work for, what their budget is, and whether they’re supposed to be anything more than props. Europe took one look at this operation and collectively said: absolutely not. Ursula von der Leyen, plus the leaders of the UK, Germany, and France, all declined to join, while Trump yanked Canada’s Mark Carney’s invite after Justin Trudeau hurt his feelings in Davos. Even the Vatican bailed, with Pope Leo XIV’s team politely pointing out that international crises are kind of the UN’s job, not whatever this donor-tiered peace pyramid scheme is. Critics note the whole thing appears designed to sideline existing international institutions and maybe, just maybe, give Trump a personal global power platform he can chair even after he’s out of office. Instead of key allies, the guest list is stacked with Middle Eastern governments and a grab bag of states apparently hoping to curry favor with the Trump administration by buying themselves a “permanent seat” for a cool billion. Meanwhile, the "International Stabilization Force" exists mostly as an empty office door with ISF on it and an unused barracks for 8,000 Indonesian troops who haven’t actually been deployed. Diplomats quietly warn that without things like a plan for Hamas disarmament or IDF withdrawal, this whole security architecture is doomed. But don’t worry, Trump still has the optics: a glossy summit, big pledge numbers, and an ad hoc shadow peace board that does a lot of motion with very little movement—exactly the kind of foreign policy theater this administration specializes in.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy

trump throws a fascism telethon, democrats change the channel

Trump prepares to read the State of the Union while half the room practices the ancient democratic art of not dignifying a would-be strongman with applause.

Trump prepares to read the State of the Union while half the room practices the ancient democratic art of not dignifying a would-be strongman with applause.

Trump is gearing up for another State of the Union, also known as his annual "please clap for my authoritarian fan fiction" address, and at least a dozen Democratic lawmakers have decided their time is better spent anywhere else. Instead of sitting through an hour of campaign-rally cosplay in the House chamber, they’re heading to the National Mall for a “People’s State of the Union” rally, where the speakers are people actually harmed by Trump’s agenda, not the billionaires writing it.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen flatly says Trump is "marching America towards fascism" and refuses to help normalize it, while Sen. Chris Murphy notes that Trump has turned what’s supposed to be a moment of national reflection into a televised grievance spiral. Becca Balint politely translates this into Hill-speak: she’d rather stand with organizers and everyday Americans than sit quietly while the president mainlines misinformation into prime time and calls it governance.

The White House, represented by spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, bravely responds that Democrats are just mad they opposed tax cuts and Trump’s "border security"—which is a delicate way of saying they didn’t clap hard enough for cruelty. This all comes after years of escalating protest: boycotts, walkouts, Al Green being removed from the chamber for jeering, Democrats holding up signs calling Trump "king" and "liar," and Nancy Pelosi literally shredding his 2020 speech like it was a subpoena. Now, as Hakeem Jeffries dryly reminds everyone, Trump isn’t inviting Congress to his palace; he’s showing up at their house. Some of them are simply choosing to lock the good silver away and leave him yelling at the furniture.

Source: nbcnews.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump tries to kill unions, accidentally boosts them instead

Trump stares at a chart of rising union membership like it’s a personal betrayal from the working class he keeps trying to fire.

Trump stares at a chart of rising union membership like it’s a personal betrayal from the working class he keeps trying to fire.

The Trump administration spent 2025 trying to kneecap federal unions, and the American workforce responded by doing the political equivalent of leaving him on read and joining unions anyway. Union coverage hit 16.5 million workers, a 16-year high, with membership up to 14.7 million and density finally nudging back into double digits at 10%. Turns out when you openly try to strip workers of rights and job security, they don’t respond with gratitude and a MAGA hat; they call a union organizer. While Trump’s crew is busy pushing agencies to illegally cancel collective bargaining agreements for roughly 1 million federal workers—in defiance of court orders, because laws are for poor people—organizing has surged, particularly in the federal government. Researchers like Hayley Brown and Heidi Shierholz politely call it “unprecedented attacks”; normal people might call it a slow-motion union-busting tantrum. Yet decades of groundwork plus a president who treats workers like disposable props have combined into a small but significant labor rebound. So yes, the administration is still trying to wipe out contracts and gut public-sector unions, but the numbers show workers are looking at Trump’s assault on collective bargaining and concluding: actually, this is exactly why we need more of it. The war on unions is ongoing, but for once, the leopards are finding out the faces bite back.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy

trump turns potomac into open sewer, blames the guy who doesn’t run the pipe

Donald Trump gestures at the Potomac River as if he’s just discovered it, carefully avoiding mention that it’s his own federally regulated pipeline and shutdown government turning the capital’s waterway into an open-air toilet.

Donald Trump gestures at the Potomac River as if he’s just discovered it, carefully avoiding mention that it’s his own federally regulated pipeline and shutdown government turning the capital’s waterway into an open-air toilet.

The Potomac River is currently a 200-million-gallon monument to untreated sewage, which makes it the perfect metaphor for Trump’s social media feed. After a 1960s-era, federally regulated DC Water pipeline collapsed and started dumping waste into the river, Trump jumped online to accuse Maryland’s Democratic governor Wes Moore of “gross mismanagement” of infrastructure Moore doesn’t even control. The pipe is under federal oversight via the EPA, whose officials have been so on top of things they couldn’t be bothered to show up to legislative hearings about the cleanup.

Instead of accepting that the federal government he allegedly runs might bear some responsibility, Trump has decided to deploy FEMA — the same agency he’s spent years attacking — to coordinate the response. There’s just one minor complication: his own shutdown has left the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, unfunded. The White House’s position is now basically: Congress must fund the department we just kneecapped so we can pretend to competently manage the disaster we’re lying about.

The feud with Moore is pure bonus authoritarian theater. After initially inviting the governor to a White House dinner, Trump uninvited him, citing Moore’s supposed failures on the sewage spill and the reconstruction of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. He’s already threatened to send the National Guard into Baltimore, attacked the state’s DEI contracting, and is now using an environmental and public health crisis as a prop in his 2028 primary preview. Maryland says it’s ready to work with federal officials; Trump says Moore “can’t fix anything.” Coming from the guy who turned FEMA into a political blackmail tool while the Potomac becomes a literal biohazard, that’s less an insult than an accidental confession.

So as residents are told to avoid the river, keep pets away, and hope their drinking water stays safe, the president is busy using a federally regulated infrastructure failure to score points against a potential future opponent. The Potomac isn’t a talking point, as Moore’s office noted — but to Trump, every crisis is just another chance to sling blame, gut agencies, and see how much democratic governance he can flush downstream.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy

billionaire man utd boss discovers trumpism, thinks he invented it

Manchester United’s billionaire co-owner, bravely railing against immigrants while fielding a squad full of them and cashing every last global TV check.

Manchester United’s billionaire co-owner, bravely railing against immigrants while fielding a squad full of them and cashing every last global TV check.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Manchester United’s petrochemicals billionaire and part-time planet boiler, went on Sky News to announce that “the UK is being colonized by immigrants” – a bold statement from a man whose fortune literally depends on colonizing the atmosphere. After discovering that openly racist panic isn’t universally adored PR, he did the classic Trump-world half-apology: the "sorry if you were offended" non-apology that walks nothing back while winking to the base. Soccer, of course, will be fine with this. The same sport that happily hoovered up NFT scams, sportswashed for every oil regime with a checkbook, and lets Real Madrid TV cosplay as a QAnon YouTube channel is not about to grow a conscience over a billionaire vomiting up anti-immigrant talking points. Manchester United can issue their little distancing statements, but the real message is clear: if you’re rich enough, you can say the quiet part loud and the sponsors will just turn up the music. Gianni Infantino already did the groundwork by slobbering over Donald Trump to secure a more profitable World Cup, hitching global football to the Trump brand of grievance, nihilism, and performative cruelty. Now you’ve got club owners treating immigrant-bashing as just another form of "edgy" content. The Trump legacy isn’t just kids in red hats; it’s a whole class of billionaires across sports and politics who heard him say "be as awful as you want" and replied: finally, leadership.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#trumps-america
killing democracy

trump’s fcc discovers exciting new way to cancel colbert

The FCC brain trust, seen here workshopping new ways to make late-night comedy require a legal team and a safe word.

The FCC brain trust, seen here workshopping new ways to make late-night comedy require a legal team and a safe word.

CBS just gave a masterclass in how to be a media giant with the spine of a overcooked noodle. After Stephen Colbert taped an interview with Texas Democrat James Talarico, the network’s lawyers allegedly swooped in to say it couldn’t air on broadcast because it might trigger FCC equal-time rules. Then they reportedly told Colbert he couldn’t even talk about the decision on air. The interview ended up on YouTube, safely outside the FCC’s reach, because nothing screams "land of the free" like having to flee to a Google platform to escape your own government’s speech cops.

FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on a Trump-stacked commission, politely translated this mess for the public: this looks like “corporate capitulation” to an administration running a broader campaign to censor and control speech. She also reminded everyone that the FCC has no lawful authority to pressure broadcasters for political purposes, which is adorable given that the whole point of Trump-world is to blur the line between "lawful authority" and "things we can get away with if executives are scared enough." CBS, of course, insists it merely offered "legal guidance"—the corporate equivalent of saying you weren’t pushed, you just tripped over all that regulatory intimidation.

As a bonus subplot in the war on inconvenient speech, Trump is still pursuing his $10bn defamation suit against the BBC over a Panorama program, with a Florida judge now setting a 2027 trial date. So on one side, you’ve got a president weaponizing libel law to punish journalism; on the other, a major network preemptively muzzling its own star host over a Senate candidate interview. Call it the new First Amendment: you’re free to say whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t upset the guy who controls the regulators and the people who own the studios.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#fascism#forever-grifting
killing democracy

trump slaps terrorism sanctions on war crimes judges because feelings

the international criminal court, now officially classified by trumpworld somewhere between isis and a bad cable contract

the international criminal court, now officially classified by trumpworld somewhere between isis and a bad cable contract

Donald Trump has discovered a bold new frontier for US sanctions: not oligarchs, not terrorists, not cartel bosses – but international judges whose job is to prosecute war crimes and genocide. ICC judge Kimberly Prost woke up to find herself lumped in with terrorists on a US sanctions list, her credit cards dead, her Amazon and Google accounts cancelled, and her day-to-day life detonated because the court dared to investigate alleged crimes by the US and its favorite client state, Israel. Nothing says "confident innocent superpower" like financially kneecapping the people trying to enforce the laws of war.

This isn’t symbolic chest-thumping; it’s a coordinated attempt to turn the global financial system into Trump’s personal vengeance machine. Eleven ICC officials – including the chief prosecutor and eight judges – are now sanctioned, with US companies facing fines or even prison if they so much as sell them a plane ticket or let them use a cloud service. Judges like Peru’s Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza are now being targeted by both Russia and the United States for the same crime: participating in a court that issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and is willing to look at what US troops and allies have done. Seventy-nine countries have already condemned the sanctions as an attack on the international rule of law, which in Trump’s America is basically a five-star Yelp review.

The message from Washington is exquisitely clear: if you investigate us, we will try to digitally erase your life. Book an Uber? Denied. Reserve a hotel? Good luck. Access basic online tools? Hope you printed everything out in 1998. By weaponizing sanctions against independent judges, the administration isn’t just putting them on a terror-style list – it’s broadcasting that any institution that tries to hold powerful states accountable will be treated like Al-Qaida. The Hague is now learning what everyone from whistleblowers to election officials already knows: in Trump’s America, the real crime is doing your job.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump’s doj discovers the ‘3 million files’ exemption to transparency

Artist’s rendering of the Trump DOJ reviewing Epstein files: a large filing cabinet labeled “3,000,000+ documents” and one guy stamping ‘TOTALLY EXONERATED’ on anything with Trump’s name on it, without opening a single folder.

Artist’s rendering of the Trump DOJ reviewing Epstein files: a large filing cabinet labeled “3,000,000+ documents” and one guy stamping ‘TOTALLY EXONERATED’ on anything with Trump’s name on it, without opening a single folder.

Hillary Clinton is out in Munich politely asking the Trump justice department to maybe, possibly, at their earliest convenience, release the 3 million Epstein-related files Congress already told them to cough up. The DOJ, ever the loyal bouncer at Club Impunity, is allegedly “slow-walking” the whole thing, which is a very delicate way of saying: they’re sitting on a mountain of documents about a dead sex trafficker whose paperwork mentions Donald Trump thousands of times, and somehow the printer just keeps jamming. Meanwhile, House Republicans are hauling Hillary and Bill in for closed-door testimony, with the Clintons begging for public hearings like they’re the ones trying to get transparency out of the government and not the other way around. Trump, speaking from Air Force One—because of course he is—declares himself “totally exonerated” by files that the executive branch he controls is actively withholding. A cover-up so obvious it might as well show up to Congress in a trench coat and sunglasses. Around the edges of this carnival, the rest of Trump’s America keeps humming along: DHS’s top spin doctor for ICE raids is bailing out, ICE is getting cozier with Microsoft’s cloud to turbocharge deportations, a federal judge has to order the Park Service to put a slavery exhibit back because this administration keeps trying to memory-hole history, and another judge blocks them from deporting a Palestinian activist they grabbed at a citizenship interview. The pattern is clear: whether it’s Epstein files, immigrants, or basic historical truth, this White House treats law and transparency like optional in-app purchases.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
killing democracy

trump judge declares mistrial over shirt, not over weaponized 'antifa terrorism' charges

Trump-appointed judge heroically shields jurors from the subversive threat of Martin Luther King Jr on a T-shirt while letting "antifa terrorism" charges sail right through.

Trump-appointed judge heroically shields jurors from the subversive threat of Martin Luther King Jr on a T-shirt while letting "antifa terrorism" charges sail right through.

The Trump administration’s big test case for turning "antifa" into "terrorism" just hit a speed bump because a defense attorney wore a T-shirt with Martin Luther King Jr and Shirley Chisholm on it. US district judge Mark Pittman, a Trump appointee, stared at that shirt all day with no problem, then suddenly discovered it was an unbearable threat to judicial neutrality the moment jury questioning started. The result: instant mistrial, jury tossed, and the whole circus reset for Monday. Prosecutors are trying to turn a July 4 protest at an ICE detention center — fireworks, graffiti, slashed tires, and an alleged shooting by one protester — into a grand "coordinated terrorist attack" by a "North-Texas antifa cell". You know, antifa: the loosely defined catchall for "people who don’t like fascism" that Trump has been desperate to rebrand as Al-Qaeda in black hoodies. Legal experts say the case could set a precedent for slapping terrorism charges on anyone who protests ICE, which is exactly the point. Defense lawyers said a mistrial wasn’t remotely necessary and doubted jurors even saw the shirt; actual jurors then confirmed they either didn’t notice it or didn’t care. Pittman, however, bravely protected the republic from the dangerous radicalism of… civil rights imagery, while previously fining defense attorneys for filing too many discovery motions and nearly blocking one from the case altogether. After detonating the trial over a T-shirt, he then delivered a little sermon about being "absolutely disgusted" by partisan division and the need to "turn down the anger" — right after helping the Trump administration criminalize dissent and scrub MLK from the jury’s field of vision. So to recap: calling protesters "terrorists" for demonstrating against ICE? Totally fine. A shirt with Martin Luther King Jr in a terrorism show trial? Absolutely unacceptable. The justice system is doing great.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
killing democracy

trump admin tries to deport free speech, forgets you still need evidence

ICE agents clutching a blurry Marco Rubio memo like it’s the Constitution, then discovering a judge actually reads both.

ICE agents clutching a blurry Marco Rubio memo like it’s the Constitution, then discovering a judge actually reads both.

The Trump administration’s grand experiment in First Amendment optional immigration enforcement hit another wall after an immigration judge blocked the deportation of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian Columbia student and green card holder whose big crime was criticizing a genocide. Federal agents grabbed him at his citizenship interview like he was El Chapo, then spent the next year failing to produce anything resembling actual proof he was a “foreign policy threat.” Judge Nina Froes torched the government’s case for relying on evidence it couldn’t even properly authenticate — including a memo supposedly signed by secretary of state Marco Rubio. Turns out you can’t just wave around a half-baked document and yell “national security” forever; at some point a judge asks basic questions like “Is this real?” and “Do you people know how evidence works?” The ACLU noted that under Trump’s dream scenario — where federal courts don’t get to review this stuff — Mahdawi would still be rotting in detention over an unsubstantiated accusation. Mahdawi, who was never charged with a crime, was originally detained under an obscure foreign-policy provision of immigration law that the administration seems to think is a multipurpose bludgeon for pro-Palestinian students. His lawyers call it what it is: retaliation and a chilling campaign against campus activism. This follows another recent loss where the government also failed to deport Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk for the radical act of co-authoring a mildly critical article about Israel. The pattern is clear: the Trump team keeps trying to deport dissent, and the courts keep reminding them that “because we hate their politics” is not yet a valid legal standard.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
killing democracy

texas gop primary waits to see which candidate trump texts ‘u up?’

Steve Kornacki bravely attempts to quantify how many percentage points a thumbs-up from an aspiring autocrat is worth in a Texas Senate race.

Steve Kornacki bravely attempts to quantify how many percentage points a thumbs-up from an aspiring autocrat is worth in a Texas Senate race.

NBC’s Steve Kornacki helpfully explains that the ‘ultimate X factor’ in the Texas GOP Senate primary isn’t policy, competence, or basic attachment to reality — it’s whether Donald Trump decides to sprinkle his magical coup-dust on one of the candidates. Because nothing screams healthy democracy like a statewide race hinging on the whims of a guy still fantasizing about overturning the last one. Instead of voters evaluating records or ideas, the entire field is basically standing in a line outside Mar-a-Lago, hoping Dear Leader remembers their name and can pronounce it in one try. Consultants talk about turnout models, demographic shifts, and issue salience, but the real metric is simpler: who can grovel the most convincingly on Fox while promising to help Trump if he needs to "look into" another election. So the Texas GOP primary isn’t so much an election as it is a loyalty pageant, where the grand prize is a Senate seat and the talent portion consists of seeing who can say “the justice system is rigged against Trump” with the straightest face. Representative government: now with 100% more personality cult.

Source: nbcnews.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump invents floating death penalty, no trial required

US warship enforces Trump’s new maritime justice system: no judge, no jury, just a very confident press release.

US warship enforces Trump’s new maritime justice system: no judge, no jury, just a very confident press release.

The Trump administration’s latest innovation in law enforcement: trial-by-missile. US forces just hit three more “alleged” drug-smuggling boats, killing 11 people and bringing the total death toll from these boat strikes to 145 since September. The only thing we know for sure is that the Pentagon posted cool-looking videos to Instagram, because nothing says sober, lawful use of lethal force like social media highlight reels with zero verifiable evidence of who was on the receiving end.

US Southern Command insists intelligence confirmed they were narco-traffickers, which is convenient, because none of the people they killed will be appearing in court to dispute that. Legal experts are pointing out that these look a lot like extrajudicial executions—no imminent threat, no due process, just the president’s say-so that they’re “narco-terrorists” and suddenly the US military has an "apparently unlimited license to kill" at sea. So the constitutional standard is now: if Trump can pronounce it, he can bomb it.

This little murder-cruise program is happening alongside Trump’s commando grab of Nicolás Maduro—snatched in Caracas and hauled off to New York for a narco-terror show trial—while a dozen US warships loitered off Venezuela under the banner of stopping drugs and illegal oil. Now some of those ships are being shipped off toward Iran for the next episode of "Commander-in-Chief Plays Risk With Other People’s Lives." The administration keeps shouting "narco-terrorism"; the evidence of actual trafficking rings remains mostly theoretical, but the body count is extremely real.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#imperialism#lawlessness
killing democracy

trump’s save america act mostly saves republicans from voters

Trump calls for a national takeover of election rules, because nothing says 'save the republic' like making it harder for millions of actual citizens to vote.

Trump calls for a national takeover of election rules, because nothing says 'save the republic' like making it harder for millions of actual citizens to vote.

Trump’s latest democracy-remodeling project, the so-called SAVE America Act, now has 50 Republican senators on board, which is impressive for a bill whose central innovation is: make it way harder for millions of actual citizens to vote so Trump feels better about his election losses. The bill would force every state to demand proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote — including for mail ballots — even though noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal and vanishingly rare. The Brennan Center estimates it would knock more than 20 million eligible Americans, disproportionately poor and nonwhite, off the playing field. Very bold strategy: if you can’t win over the electorate, just shrink it.

Sen. Mike Lee is treating this as the last stand of the republic, declaring that passing the bill will "save" it and failing will mean we "roll the dice" — which is a poetic way of saying he doesn’t trust Americans to vote without a thick layer of bureaucratic hurdles. Susan Collins, after her ritual period of concern, signed on as the 50th GOP vote once the bill was tweaked so some people might, eventually, maybe, be allowed to register if they can navigate the paperwork maze. She then solemnly defended the filibuster as a sacred minority right — which is doing a lot of work here, given that Democrats are using that same tool to stop a federal voter-suppression package from being rammed through by a bare partisan majority.

Meanwhile, Republicans like Lisa Murkowski and Mitch McConnell are pretending to be shocked, simply shocked, that a party that’s been screaming about "election fraud" for years is now pushing a national voter ID and proof-of-citizenship regime from Washington. Murkowski calls it the kind of "one-size-fits-all mandate" Republicans usually complain about, and McConnell is quietly clutching his states’-rights pearls. But the broader project is obvious: Trump and JD Vance want to nationalize voting rules in a way the old Voting Rights Act never dreamed of — only this time the federal government swoops in to restrict the franchise instead of protecting it.

The only thing standing between this and Trump’s desk is the 60-vote filibuster rule, which Trump wants scrapped so he can sign his very own Jim Crow reboot — or as Chuck Schumer more politely calls it, "Jim Crow 2.0." So now we have the spectacle of Mike Lee fantasizing about a "talking filibuster" to exhaust Democrats into surrender, John Thune warning that would take a lot of work (so that’s out), and an 83% poll number on generic "photo ID" being waved around to justify a bill that goes far beyond that into paperwork purgatory. The message from the MAGA wing is crystal clear: if you’re poor, can’t easily access a birth certificate or passport, or just don’t have time to navigate a federal obstacle course to exercise your rights — this republic is not for you.

Source: nbcnews.com

#killing-democracy#racism#anti-immigration
killing democracy

fbi to minnesota: trust us, the secret shootings were totally fine

Local resident scans the street for federal agents, because under Trump that’s now just part of the neighborhood watch program.

Local resident scans the street for federal agents, because under Trump that’s now just part of the neighborhood watch program.

While the country mourns Rev Jesse Jackson – a man who spent his life trying to make America less racist and less violent – Trump’s immigration goon squad is out in Minneapolis allegedly treating city streets like a live-fire training exercise. Customs and Border Protection officers have shot and killed three people in about two weeks, including Alex Pretti, and now the FBI has decided that the public’s right to know is classified. Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension politely asked for evidence, and the feds responded with the transparency of a brick wall.

Instead of cooperating with state investigators, the FBI has formally told Minnesota that information and evidence about the Pretti shooting will not be shared. So we’ve arrived at the stage where Trump’s federal enforcers kill people in a U.S. city and then tell local authorities: you don’t get to see what we did, just trust the same system that keeps clearing itself. Governor Tim Walz summed it up: “Trump’s left hand cannot investigate his right hand” – though given this administration’s record, it’s less left vs right and more trigger finger vs everyone else.

All of this is happening under the nostalgic gaze of an America that once produced leaders like Jesse Jackson, who literally risked his life confronting state violence, while today’s White House treats unaccountable armed agents as a campaign accessory. The contrast is almost poetic: a civil rights icon dies at 84, and the federal government honors his legacy by making sure no one can even investigate why people keep getting shot by immigration cops in the middle of Minneapolis. Truly, the dream lives on – just heavily redacted.

#killing-democracy#lawlessness#fascism
killing democracy

trump quits the who again, still uses their homework

Trump announces America is done with the World Health Organization, shortly before staffers email the WHO asking for the latest H5N1 situation report like nothing happened.

Trump announces America is done with the World Health Organization, shortly before staffers email the WHO asking for the latest H5N1 situation report like nothing happened.

Donald Trump has officially yanked the U.S. out of the World Health Organization for the second time, because nothing says America First like sabotaging the very global health system your own government quietly keeps using. Publicly, Trump is ranting Farage-style about a tyrannical WHO that supposedly forced lockdowns and stole everyone’s freedoms; privately, his team is still on the phone with Geneva asking for disease intel like a teenager who "ran away from home" but keeps coming back to do laundry.

The supposed big scandal is that the WHO isn’t politically obedient enough. It refused to launder MAGA talking points about vaccines causing autism, paracetamol in pregnancy causing autism, and climate change being fake, and it also pushed back on pressure from Israel over Gaza and from Russia over Ukraine. So the Trump response is to punish the organization the U.S. literally helped build, after decades of bipartisan American leadership on smallpox, polio, HIV/Aids, Ebola, and child mortality. Now, U.S. academics are too scared to talk on the record about any of this because their funding and jobs are on the line. Freedom!

The punchline: the WHO has already reformed its financing and locked in about 85% of its budget for 2026–27, while the U.S. creates a leadership vacuum that the EU, China, and Russia are all rushing to fill. Trump gets his domestic propaganda win, Farage gets a talking point, and the rest of the world gets to watch the former global health leader cosplay as a sovereign loner while still sneaking back to the multilateral table for crucial data. Publicly screaming "we don’t need you" while privately begging for help is less a strategy than a cry for attention, but it does perfectly summarize Trump’s foreign policy.

Source: theguardian.com

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

trump calls obeying illegal orders 'patriotic', labels obeying the law 'sedition'

Mark Kelly, one of the last people in Washington who has literally been to space, contemplating a run for president because apparently someone has to explain to the commander-in-chief that 'illegal order' is not a suggestion.

Mark Kelly, one of the last people in Washington who has literally been to space, contemplating a run for president because apparently someone has to explain to the commander-in-chief that 'illegal order' is not a suggestion.

Senator Mark Kelly, former astronaut and current endangered species known as "engineer who can read," tells the BBC he’ll “seriously consider” running for president in 2028 — mostly because the Trump administration is currently trying to criminalize the radical idea that the military shouldn’t follow illegal orders. Kelly and five other lawmakers with military or intel backgrounds put out a 90-second video reminding troops they have a duty to refuse unlawful commands. The White House responded like any healthy democracy would: by branding it "seditious behaviour" and unleashing the government at them. Since Trump publicly targeted him over the video, Kelly and his wife Gabrielle Giffords now get death threats on a “weekly” basis and require 24/7 security. The senator says he expects Trump to keep pushing his legal crusade all the way to the Supreme Court, because nothing screams "law and order" like punishing people for telling soldiers to follow the law. Critics, also known as "people who’ve read the First Amendment," are calling the crackdown what it is: a frontal assault on free speech and another entry in Trump’s long-running series, “Using the State to Punish My Enemies.” Hovering over all this is the 2028 sequel casting call. On the Democratic side, Kelly joins Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom in the "maybe I’ll try to put the fire out" lane. Trump, meanwhile, is already workshopping heirs to the throne — JD Vance and Marco Rubio, whom he describes as "unstoppable," presumably in the same way a runaway train is unstoppable once someone’s ripped out the brakes. The message from this administration is clear: obeying illegal orders is patriotic, questioning them is sedition, and anyone who disagrees can see you in court or in the crosshairs of the president’s fan club.

Source: bbc.com

#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
killing democracy

trump heroically orders broke fema to fix the poop river

Raw sewage is diverted away from the Potomac River, which is also how Republicans describe their approach to FEMA funding.

Raw sewage is diverted away from the Potomac River, which is also how Republicans describe their approach to FEMA funding.

Donald Trump has boldly stepped up to the Potomac sewage disaster by ordering FEMA to take charge of the response — a touching gesture, given that FEMA currently has all the operational capacity of a maxed-out credit card. FEMA’s funding is frozen because DHS ran out of money last week, thanks to a Republican–Democratic standoff where Democrats want changes to ICE, and the GOP would apparently rather let millions of gallons of wastewater gush into a major river than touch their sacred deportation machine.

Trump blasted Democratic leaders for turning the Potomac into a "Disaster Zone" and accused Maryland Governor Wes Moore of "gross mismanagement," which is an interesting take considering the busted sewer line is managed by DC Water and thus falls under federal responsibility. The Maryland governor’s office gently noted that the president has his facts wrong again, and that the Trump administration has spent four weeks doing absolutely nothing while E. coli and MRSA levels spike and officials tell residents to stay away from the river.

So to recap: Trump waited a month, ignored the problem, helped preside over a funding freeze that kneecapped the very agency he’s now theatrically "putting in charge," and then blamed Democrats for the mess. It’s the Trump governance model in one neat package: cause crisis, defund response, scream on social media, demand credit — while the capital’s river turns into a bacteria smoothie.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
killing democracy

republicans discover ‘low-hanging fruit’ is just federal workers’ paychecks

Rep. Don Bacon explains that the easiest way to govern is to break the government first and negotiate over the wreckage.

Rep. Don Bacon explains that the easiest way to govern is to break the government first and negotiate over the wreckage.

Rep. Don Bacon pops up on Meet the Press to explain that the way out of the Trump-induced DHS shutdown is for Congress to find "low-hanging fruit" on DHS reforms — a bold way of saying, "what if we only partially dismantle the agency we just defunded?" While Trump demands sweeping immigration crackdowns and structural changes as ransom for reopening the government, Bacon is out here pitching starter authoritarianism: maybe just a few reforms, a little more border theater, and then we’ll consider letting DHS function again. The framing, of course, is that this is all normal negotiation, not the president and his party holding national security, federal workers’ paychecks, and basic governance hostage for campaign talking points. DHS isn’t being reformed through hearings, oversight, or legislation; it’s being reengineered at gunpoint via shutdown brinkmanship. That’s not policymaking, it’s governance-by-extortion. What Bacon sells as "low-hanging fruit" is really the bipartisan normalization of Trump’s strategy: shut it down, blame the other side, then demand structural concessions just to turn the lights back on. It’s a handy precedent for any future president who wants to bypass Congress and treat the federal workforce as disposable collateral. Democracy: now available only after you meet the president’s demands.

Source: nbcnews.com

#killing-democracy#lawlessness#trumps-america