Trump leads Republicans in a cheerful pledge to ‘cheat like hell,’ proving once again that the quiet part died of neglect years ago.
Trump is back on his favorite hobby: trying to break elections and then whining that they’re broken. As Mother Jones’ new Stress Test podcast helpfully reminds us, the man who came disturbingly close to overturning 2020 is now warming up for 2026 by screaming “rigged,” pushing fake voter-fraud hysteria, trying to kneecap mail voting, and demanding voter-roll data he can weaponize to challenge and purge voters. At the GOP midterm convention, he even led the crowd in a cute little pledge to “cheat like hell”, because when you’re building an authoritarian movement, you might as well make it a call-and-response.
The good news: Trump’s goons keep face-planting in court. Ari Berman notes the Justice Department is 0–25 in federal cases trying to force states to cough up voter rolls, proving that sheer malice is not, technically, a legal argument. The bad news: the Supreme Court has already done a ton of the heavy lifting for him by blessing gerrymanders and gutting protections for Black voters, creating a system where you don’t have to steal the election when you can just pre-tilt the map and call it “orderly.”
And the real fun, as they point out, starts after Election Day. 2020 showed that the real chaos kicks in once votes are cast—during counting, challenges, and certification—exactly the zones where Trumpworld specializes in turning paperwork into a coup attempt. So no, everything is not fine, but also, as Berman warns, we don’t have to hand Trump more power in our heads than he actually has. He’s already got a Supreme Court, an army of election deniers, and a party chanting along to “cheat like hell.” That’s plenty. Let’s not add mind-control to the list.
Behold the "free speech zone": a small fenced area where you can legally stand still and quietly get tackled, zip-tied, and turned into ICE recruitment stock art.
Pro-Trump content mill Benny Johnson is being sued for defamation after he allegedly did what passes for journalism in MAGA world: point at peaceful ICE protesters in a designated "free speech zone" and confidently announce to millions of followers that they were "left-wing terrorists" who assaulted federal officers. Minor detail: they were zip-tied, arrested, released without charges, and one of them, Kyle Frankovich, was literally just filming ICE from the spot the government told him he was allowed to stand.
The administration then helpfully turned images of Frankovich — tattoos, zip-ties and all — into ICE recruiting material, because nothing says "join our agency" like advertising your casual disregard for the First Amendment. Frankovich, a Harvard data scientist, and co-plaintiff Maureen Foody, a court reporter, now get to live with being nationally branded as terrorists by a guy whose main credential is having lots of followers and no apparent fact-checking department.
Johnson filmed all this while embedded with then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino, illustrating the Trump administration’s favorite information strategy: federal officials enjoy immunity from defamation, so outsource the smears to loyal influencers and blast them on Fox. As Protect Democracy’s Rachel Goodman notes, this is not random chaos; it’s a deliberate effort to delegitimize political opposition and replace actual journalism with state-adjacent propaganda cosplay. The First Amendment gets a "free speech zone"; the administration’s narrative gets the whole country.
Stock photo of women at a rally, all of whom have personally been thanked by Donald Trump for ‘doing great things’ while they vote to end his political career.
Turns out that electing the "grab ’em" guy and then watching him get found liable for sexual abuse, help end Roe, and pack the court with Brett Kavanaugh was not, shockingly, the girlboss moment the GOP promised. A decade after the Access Hollywood tape was supposed to end his career, Trump is still here, but so is a generation of women who watched Republicans treat their bodily autonomy like a suggestion and their consent like a punchline.
College-educated white women bolted first, suburban women followed in 2018, and Gen Z women are now sprinting left while their male peers disappear into the MAGA manosphere and YouTube grievance rabbit holes. Meanwhile, Susan Collins is finally discovering that a solemn floor speech about how Kavanaugh would definitely respect precedent doesn’t go down great once that same court nukes federal abortion rights and women in Maine start doing the math on who put him there.
Now, 65% of women disapprove of Trump’s second term, including a chunk of the ones who voted for him the second time he lost the popular vote but still got to be president. He calls this “empowering women”; the polls call it "please make it stop". With women breaking hard for Democrats in key House and Senate races, Trump has helpfully reframed the midterms as a referendum on whether American women are done being governed by a guy who treats their rights like a PR problem.
The White House is reportedly about to name Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as the new AI — sorry, "super intelligence" — czar, because if you're going to concentrate power over a world-changing technology, why not hand it to the guy who already oversees the entire intelligence community? Nothing screams "thoughtful governance" like stapling a second job onto the DNI and calling it a strategy.
Trump, who thinks warnings about AI's existential risks are a "hoax," is now building an "AI Force" while insisting on a featherweight regulatory touch. Clayton, to his credit, has at least admitted AI is both "an opportunity and a threat" — right before ruling out anything so gauche as a development pause in the U.S. The plan appears to be: let the tech billionaires cook, have the spies watch, and hope the republic survives the beta test.
Clayton glided into the DNI job after Tulsi Gabbard bailed, winning bipartisan praise for his résumé but only Republican votes after doing the usual 2020-election tap dance at his confirmation. Now he’s poised to become the point man for a sprawling AI agenda that so far consists of a name, a lunch with tech moguls, and Trump’s gut feeling that this "super intelligence" thing is good for national security and probably, coincidentally, for his friends’ stock prices. Regulation, democracy, and transparency are not expected to be part of the rollout.
The Supreme Court is gearing up to decide whether states and cities are allowed to send Exxon and friends the bill for burning the planet, or whether federal law will swoop in to protect the poor, helpless multinational oil conglomerates from the terrifying prospect of consequences. Boulder’s case against Exxon and Suncor is the test dummy, but everyone knows the real target is dozens of state lawsuits that say "you lied about climate risk, now pay for the floods, fires, and infrastructure collapse."
Instead of just asking whether companies that spent decades burying climate science should chip in for the damage, the justices are pondering whether federal law magically preempts all this messy accountability. Extra fun twist: industry lawyers are leaning on Trump-era efforts to gut the Clean Air Act as proof that climate is a "federal" issue, while their opponents point out that when the feds deliberately set the house on fire, maybe the states get to call the fire department. Justice Alito has recused himself, which is mildly bad news for the oil companies, but the rest of the Court’s conservative bloc is still very much open for business.
If the Court sides with Exxon, it won’t just torpedo these lawsuits; it could also blow a hole in state "climate superfund" laws in places like New York and Vermont that try the radical experiment of making polluters pay for the damage they caused. So the stakes are simple: either states get to use long-standing state powers to claw back billions from fossil fuel companies, or the Supreme Court hands those companies a shiny new constitutional shield and tells taxpayers to keep picking up the tab for every flood, fire, and collapsing bridge. American federalism: states’ rights for banning books, federal supremacy for protecting oil profits.
Trump stares out at the crowd, wondering how many of them would help him overturn the *next* election if he asked nicely—and how many would do it without being asked.
Trump is launching a "major campaign trail blitz" ahead of the midterms, which is a very polite way of saying the presumptive GOP field commander is barnstorming the country to remind Republicans that their party now functions as his personal legal defense fund and vibes cult. Networks frame it as normal horse-race politics; the actual product on stage is a greatest-hits reel of 2020 denial, revenge fantasies, and promises to put more election deniers in charge of counting votes next time.
Reporters dutifully note his packed schedule and his role in energizing the base, delicately skipping over the part where that same base tried to beat police officers with flagpoles last time they got really "energized." The midterms are supposedly about inflation and crime, but the guy headlining the tour is laser-focused on one thing: building a Congress that will never again let something as trivial as votes get in the way of his power. Democracy gets a mention only as the thing his crowds are still mad at for not choosing him.
So yes, it’s a campaign blitz. Just not for policy, or ideas, or even coherent sentences. It’s a traveling loyalty test for a party that long ago decided the easiest way to win elections is to make sure elections don’t really matter. The press calls it momentum. History is going to have a shorter word: warning.
Supreme Court justices quietly pondering how to explain to Trump, for the 400th time, that their job is to interpret the Constitution, not his Truth Social feed.
Trump is starting the new Supreme Court term by publicly screaming at the justices he personally handpicked, because it turns out a lifetime appointment is not the same thing as a lifetime non-disclosure agreement. After the court blocked his tariffs, his attempt to gut birthright citizenship, his move to fire a Fed governor on a whim, and his plan to seize control of mail-in ballots before the next election, he went on Truth Social to declare that the Supreme Court has “let our country down” and that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett are now “a shell of their previous selves.” Translation: they occasionally remembered the Constitution isn’t a loyalty oath to Donald J. Trump.
Protesters gather to explain, very slowly, that Arlington is a cemetery, not an audition space for Trump’s future victory arch.
Trump is reportedly pushing for a grand new arch near Arlington National Cemetery, because when you think of a solemn resting place for America’s war dead, you naturally think, "this needs more Trump-branded architecture." Protesters, veterans, and people with functioning moral compasses are not thrilled about turning hallowed ground into a backdrop for the world’s tackiest strongman cosplay.
Instead of focusing on VA services or, say, not starting any more disasters that fill Arlington’s graves, the administration is spending time and political capital on a monument project that looks suspiciously like a starter kit for a future cult-of-leader complex. Authoritarian regimes build arches to glorify themselves; democracies usually manage with headstones and humility. Trump, of course, is going for the Arch of Self-Delusion option.
Local opposition, veterans’ groups, and civil society are pushing back, because defacing the landscape around Arlington with a giant political vanity project is a pretty on-the-nose metaphor for this administration’s relationship to sacrifice: other people bleed, Trump gets the photo op. The White House, meanwhile, seems baffled that anyone would object to yet another shrine to the guy who dodged Vietnam but never misses a chance to stand in front of a flag and talk about "our great warriors."
AI leaders leaving the White House after agreeing to "police themselves," presumably between counting stock options and training the panopticon.
The Trump White House is reportedly planning to make Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton the new "AI czar" — and, because this administration never met a conflict of interest it didn’t try to speedrun, keep him as DNI at the same time. Why separate the person who oversees America’s surveillance apparatus from the one who steers the country’s most powerful surveillance-enabling technology when you can just staple the jobs together and call it a day?
Trump teased the role on Truth Social with a job posting that boiled down to "only High I.Q. individuals need apply!" which is a bold thing to say for a guy who thinks windmills cause cancer. After a White House meeting where AI company CEOs graciously agreed to "voluntary safety standards" — tech’s favorite synonym for "we pinky swear not to destroy civilization on purpose" — Trump bragged he had someone "extraordinary" in mind. Translation: a loyalist willing to fuse intelligence, data collection, and algorithmic control into one tidy, unaccountable power center.
The White House, of course, called all this "baseless speculation" and insisted personnel news will come "directly from the President" — as if his public promise to name an AI czar and the conveniently placed leaks are just a fun coincidence. If this goes through, the guy in charge of spying on everyone will also be in charge of shaping how the machines learn, watch, and decide. What could possibly go wrong with merging the panopticon and the recommendation engine under Trump’s thumb?
Eugene police officers, seen here in a rare moment of not billing the public $2.5 million for daring to ask what they’re doing.
The Eugene, Oregon Police Department has discovered a bold new innovation in government transparency: pricing it out of existence. Local outlet Double Sided Media asked for misconduct records on officer Justin Peckels — the guy accused of punching a resident in the face during a traffic stop — and the city responded with a $2,484,599.04 invoice and a straight face. They claim it’ll take 44,816 staff hours because, supposedly, they must search every record of every city employee, past and present. Somewhere, a retired parks department intern is apparently sitting on the key to police accountability.
This isn’t record-keeping; it’s a paywall on democracy. For a small newsroom, a $2.5 million bill functions as an unofficial gag order — no judge, no hearing, just "nice request you’ve got there, shame if we priced it like a Pentagon weapons system." And while Eugene suddenly can’t figure out how to run a keyword search, the city somehow managed a $342,000 contract for nearly 60 AI-powered Flock license plate readers, complete with its own secrecy problems and an ACLU lawsuit. So the tech works fine when it’s aimed at the public — it just mysteriously breaks when the public aims it back.
Zoom out and it gets even dumber: this stunt slots neatly into a long federal tradition where agencies quote fantasy numbers — like the Pentagon’s famous $660 million FOIA estimate — to make sure inconvenient questions never get answered. Call it the new American model of "open government": everything is public, as long as you can afford the cover charge.
Stock photo of the Justice Department, currently moonlighting as a set piece in Trump’s ongoing attempt to turn federal prosecutors into personal defense counsel.
Roger Rogoff was sworn in as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington on July 15. Fifty minutes later, Donald Trump tried to fire him. Not because of misconduct, not because of performance—because the local federal judges had the nerve to use their statutory authority to appoint a U.S. attorney after Trump spent more than a year not bothering to nominate anyone the Senate could confirm. The president responded by attempting to yank Rogoff out of office and hand the job to his preferred guy via presidential fiat. Subtle.
U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian then did the unthinkable: he read the Constitution and the vacancy statute. Concluding that, no, the president cannot just vaporize a court-appointed U.S. attorney to avoid the Senate’s advice-and-consent role, Bastian restored Rogoff, barred the administration from pretending anyone else is U.S. attorney, and gently noted that allowing Trump’s scheme would "upend the framework" of checks and balances. Translation: you don’t get to turn federal prosecutors into Mar-a-Lago shift managers.
This isn’t a one-off. Trump has been trying to install handpicked loyalists as U.S. attorneys in Nevada, New York, Virginia, New Jersey—you know, all the places where federal prosecutions might someday become personally awkward. Courts have already smacked down several of these stunts as unlawful. Rogoff is just the first one to sue over being fired, and he’s now the test case for whether the Justice Department is a law enforcement agency or just another Trump property where management gets changed out whenever the boss gets annoyed.
The Justice Department says it will appeal, because of course it will; why stop now when you’re this far into the authoritarian cosplay? For the moment, though, a federal judge has reminded the president that U.S. attorneys are not disposable henchmen, the Senate is not optional, and the rule of law is not a reality show casting decision—no matter how badly Trump wants to run Main Justice like a family business.
Tennessee tried to kill Christa Pike twice with lethal injection and somehow only managed to prove that the "modern, humane" execution system is just a high-tech version of a medieval torture rack. After hours of legal ping-pong, the state strapped her down, pumped her full of death drugs—two rounds—and she survived, now needing "lifesaving care" from the same government that just tried to poison her to death. The governor has nobly responded by ordering a "comprehensive, third-party review," which is politician-speak for: "we'll investigate why the torture wasn’t more efficient."
This is all part of the great American innovation in killing people: lethal injection, sold in the 70s as a clean, clinical alternative to such barbaric methods as... the electric chair and firing squads, which several states have now politely brought back. The drugs themselves are a mess—pentobarbital and assorted chemical cocktails that the Trump DOJ eagerly reauthorized for federal use, despite evidence they can cause pulmonary edema, a fun little condition where your lungs fill with fluid so you can experience the sensation of drowning while the state calls it "painless." Autopsies, eyewitness reports of gasping and struggling, and a 7% historical botch rate suggest the real protocol is: strap, stab, guess, and hope the suffering stays off camera.
Doctors mostly refuse to participate because the AMA says "maybe don’t turn medicine into a murder service," so states outsource the killing to execution teams of prison staff and whoever they can train to push a plunger. When it all goes sideways—like Alabama failing to find a vein for Kenneth Smith before the death warrant expired, then killing him later with nitrogen hypoxia as a grim science experiment—officials treat it as a technical hiccup, not a moral catastrophe. The Supreme Court keeps insisting the death penalty is reserved for the "most heinous" crimes, but the real throughline is that the government reserves the right to torture you efficiently—and when it fails, the solution is never "stop doing this," it's "tweak the recipe and try again."
Asked what he’ll miss most when he finally shuffles out of the White House at the end of his second term, Trump announced that he bravely rejected a supposed Secret Service plan to demolish the Oval Office. Yes, according to the president of the United States, the people tasked with protecting him apparently pitched "what if we bulldozed the most iconic room in American government" and only his personal architectural genius stood between history and a pile of drywall.
This is where we are: the leader of the executive branch inventing a storyline where his own security detail turns into a rogue HGTV demolition crew, so he can cast himself as the lone guardian of tradition. No evidence, no documents, no actual plan — just Trump weaving yet another tall tale about the Deep State Menace, this time armed with sledgehammers and a floor plan. Authoritarian strongmen usually pretend to protect the nation from shadowy enemies; Trump’s version is protecting the furniture from his own staff.
Instead of respecting institutions, he rewrites them as props in his personal mythology: the Secret Service as would‑be wreckers, the Oval Office as his personal emotional support bunker, and history as something that only survives because he says so. It’s a small, ridiculous story, but it fits the pattern: Trump is forever the embattled savior, America is forever one imaginary step from ruin, and the federal government is just a stage set for his next made‑up crisis.
Trump staring at a fuel gauge labeled 'world economy' and cranking it to empty so U.S. pump prices drop 20 cents before November.
Donald Trump has discovered a fun new toy: the global diesel supply. With prices spiking thanks to the US-led war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the president is now threatening to slam an export ban on U.S. diesel so American drivers are happy just in time for the midterms. The rest of the world can, apparently, go siphon fumes. The UK, which relies on the U.S. for nearly a third of its diesel imports, is currently stress-calling Brussels like a teenager who just realized the group project partner is Trump.
Not content with holding the world’s fuel line hostage, Trump is also pressuring European countries to crack open their own strategic diesel reserves so he doesn’t have to choose between global stability and his poll numbers. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent chimed in on social media, insisting that U.S. farmers and truckers "should not be left carrying the burden"—translation: everyone else should. Experts politely point out that cutting off 1.2–1.5 million barrels per day of U.S. diesel exports would send international prices into orbit, but the administration seems focused on the truly strategic objective: cheaper fuel and a fresh batch of campaign ads.
Meanwhile, Europe is sitting on 109 million tons of emergency crude and fuel stocks and frantically organizing "lots of calls, lots of meetings" with Washington, which is exactly what you want to hear when the guy with his finger on the export ban is also running a multi-front war. Between Russia’s export games, China pulling back its own fuel shipments, and Trump waving the diesel ban like a reality show cliffhanger, the global energy system is being used as a campaign prop. Energy policy, but make it hostage-taking.
ICE agents in tactical gear stand around looking very brave after shooting an unarmed American mom and declaring her a terrorist.
The Trump administration’s anti-immigrant fever dream has now graduated from ripping families apart to shooting a U.S. citizen mother of three and calling it “domestic terrorism”. Renee Good, who went out in Minneapolis to protest the thousands of ICE agents Trump dumped on her city, was shot and killed in her car by ICE officer Jonathan Ross. He claimed self-defense, DHS screamed “terrorist”, and then multiple videos inconveniently showed her steering away from him as she tried to escape. Naturally, the only thing that faced immediate scrutiny was not the killer with the gun, but the dead woman’s partner.
Enter Todd Blanche, then deputy attorney general, who bravely announced there was no reason to open a civil rights investigation into an ICE agent shooting an American protester. Instead, DOJ opened an investigation into Renee’s partner, Becca Good, and her ties to protest groups, because nothing says “rule of law” like turning a civil rights division into a political Stasi. At least 10 prosecutors resigned after Renee and another American, nurse Alex Pretti, were killed by immigration agents during the Minneapolis protests, suggesting that even some Trump-era lawyers have a threshold for state-sanctioned horror.
Now, Renee’s family is suing. One lawsuit hits Ross and the feds for wrongful death and the “immense suffering” she endured as he fired three rounds into the couple’s car while Becca stood just feet away and watched her partner die. The other lawsuit kicks it upstairs, alleging a conspiracy to interfere with civil rights and naming Ross, former DHS secretary Kristi Noem, hardline immigration ghoul Stephen Miller, and former Border Patrol officer Gregory Bovino for their “roles in Renee Good’s death”. The complaint spells it out: the government took peaceful assembly and speech, rebranded them as violence against the republic, and unleashed unconstitutional force that keeps ending with Americans in body bags.
The backlash over the January killings forced Trump to yank his ICE surge out of Minnesota and avoid another big-city deployment, which the White House will probably spin as “strategic recalibration” instead of “people hated this and we looked like a third-rate junta”. Don’t worry, though – the deportation machine didn’t slow down, it just switched from open “siege” to “soft feet”, with ICE now arresting more people than ever while pretending to be subtle. The strategy seems to be: shoot the protesters, smear the dead as terrorists, investigate the survivors, and then quietly expand the crackdown anyway. Accountability, if it ever comes, will have to arrive via lawsuits like this one, dragging the architects of the carnage into court one subpoena at a time.
Former Olympian Davey Hearn leaving court after beating the rare D.C. felony of ‘making Donald Trump mad near a national monument.’
The D.C. Superior Court just did what the Department of Justice apparently cannot: it told Jeanine Pirro’s office to stop harassing an Olympic canoeist to make Donald Trump feel big and strong. Judge Todd Edelman dismissed the so-called Reflecting Pool case against Davey Hearn with prejudice, permanently banning Pirro’s shop from trying to resurrect their zombie felony. Tiny problem for the government: their own evidence shows the part of the Reflecting Pool Hearn allegedly touched was already damaged and they can’t prove even $1,000 in new damage — which is usually the point where normal prosecutors stop, say "never mind," and go do real crimes.
Instead, Pirro’s office tried to keep the option of a "theoretical" future case alive, like a law school exam question with a grudge. When the judge repeatedly asked the government’s lawyer for one plausible scenario where this turkey could walk again, he had nothing. No new facts, no pending investigation, just the vague hope that if they stare at the water long enough, a felony will appear.
Hovering over all this is Trump’s pressure campaign: he publicly demanded Hearn’s prosecution and explicitly tied it to Hearn’s and his lawyer Norm Eisen’s politics, while Pirro’s office rushed a bad case through a grand jury that somehow greenlit it anyway. Hearn’s attorney called it what it is: an abuse of prosecutorial discretion done to please the president, with the grand jury process turned into a rubber stamp for presidential tantrums. The government, with a straight face, insists it "acted in good faith" — which is a bold claim for an office trying to keep a discredited felony on life support after admitting it can’t be revived.
So the scorecard: the Reflecting Pool is fine, the evidence is garbage, the case is dead forever, and a judge had to slap down a U.S. Attorney’s Office because it tried to weaponize criminal charges for Trump’s political vendettas. American institutions are definitely not under strain when a court has to bar the government from ever trying this nonsense again.
Artist’s rendering of the USS Doris Miller, pending rebrand to USS Please Clap For Me, I’m Very Brave.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that actually honoring a Black enlisted war hero is less important than feeding Dear Leader’s branding addiction. The Navy had already planned to name a new aircraft carrier the USS Doris Miller, after the mess attendant who grabbed an anti-aircraft gun during Pearl Harbor, shot down Japanese planes without training, and dragged wounded sailors to safety while his own country’s racism kept him out of combat roles. Naturally, the new idea is to just chuck all that and rename the ship after Donald Trump, a man whose bravest military moment was surviving the Vietnam draft with bone spurs and a good lawyer.
Sen. Cory Booker is introducing three bills to stop this little act of historical vandalism, including one that bans federal funds from being used to rename the ship and another that blocks future presidents and vice presidents from naming warships after themselves while still in office. Because apparently we now need federal legislation to stop a sitting president from slapping his own name on a 100,000-ton warship like it’s a New Jersey casino. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao will make the final call, which means the fate of the first carrier named after a Black service member now depends on whether the MAGA Pentagon chooses actual heroism or full cult-of-personality cosplay.
Booker calls the plan what it is: an attempt to erase Doris Miller from history to make room for Trump’s ego. The Pentagon is reportedly even gaming out a way to "justify" the rename by upgrading Miller to a Medal of Honor so they can bump him down to a destroyer instead, because nothing says "we respect your service" like demoting your legacy so a historically illiterate TV landlord can park his name on the big ship. American exceptionalism now comes with a branding guide and a licensing agreement.
The Supreme Court has graciously agreed to decide whether the president can just lock people up indefinitely for the crime of existing in the wrong paperwork category. Trump’s team is arguing it can detain people without bond if they’re found to be in the country unlawfully, even if they’ve been living here for years — because nothing screams limited government like giving the executive branch a blank check to warehouse human beings.
Rather than focusing on, say, violent offenders, the policy treats long‑time residents like they’re auditioning for a reboot of Ellis Island, but with fewer rights and more fluorescent lighting. The justices will now get to decide whether due process still applies to immigrants or whether the administration can convert civil immigration violations into a sort of constitutional black hole. If the Court signs off, “land of the free” becomes more of a situational guideline than an actual promise.
Washington has finally rediscovered bipartisanship, and—shocker—it’s to make it easier for every energy interest under the sun (and deep under the shale) to build stuff while environmental safeguards get put on the Jenny Craig plan. A 417-page Senate permitting bill backed by top Republicans, Democrats, the White House, oil, gas, coal, and renewables is here to streamline things, which is D.C. code for: shorten lawsuits, shrink reviews under the Clean Water Act and NEPA, and hand more siting power to the feds so pesky locals and courts stop harshing the vibes.
Business groups are ecstatic, climate left groups are screaming "fossil fuel giveaway," and the big green outfits are doing their usual tortured "we like the transmission bits but this could also be a flaming rollback" dance. NRDC and Evergreen Action are out here writing book reports about how the transmission goodies might or might not outweigh the parts that quietly sandblast environmental law. Meanwhile, the bill bravely ensures utility ratepayers won’t foot the bill for grid upgrades needed for AI data centers—because if there’s one vulnerable population Congress must protect, it’s the companies training Skynet.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is trying to sell this as a reasonable starting point while acknowledging "unresolved" questions about whether Trump officials will ever treat wind and solar like something other than Antifa with turbines. House Democrat Jared Huffman is already promising they’ll totally fix it later, after the election, next Congress, cross their hearts. The odds of a big permitting deal are the best they’ve been in years, Axios notes—an exciting development if you’re a pipeline lawyer, a data center billionaire, or an administration that really prefers projects the public can’t slow down with lawsuits or full environmental reviews.
Congress, that famously overworked institution, has decided that actually passing laws can wait until after the election vibes settle. Majority Leader John Thune is marching the Senate out of Washington for a multiweek recess while casually leaving a fully loaded to-do list on the kitchen counter: the farm bill, FISA reauthorization, the annual defense bill, and all twelve appropriations bills. You know, the minor stuff like "how we spy on people," "how we feed people," and "whether the government has money."
Instead of doing their jobs before the midterms, the plan is to shove everything into a lame-duck crunch session, where accountability goes to die and lobbyists write half the text while everyone pretends this is normal. Trump, naturally, isn’t sticking around to demand competence; he’s off to Texas and Oklahoma to campaign like a man whose entire political project depends on chaos, manufactured crises, and a government that never quite works on purpose. Governing is postponed. Campaigning, though? Always right on schedule.
