department of justice (for gas stoves)
Trump’s Justice Department, heroically standing between California families and the unspeakable horror of induction stoves.
The Trump administration has once again bravely leapt into action to defend the most vulnerable among us: gas hookups in new California buildings. The DOJ filed suit against Morgan Hill and Petaluma, arguing that their local ordinances limiting natural gas in new construction violate a 1975 federal law on energy use standards—because nothing says "limited government" like Washington, DC suing small cities for trying to keep the planet habitable.
According to Trump’s lawyers, these local gas restrictions "impose crushing costs" on residents. Translation: they mildly inconvenience gas companies and homebuilders who might have to install electric appliances instead of subsidized fossil fuel pipelines. In other words, the administration has decided that federal preemption is sacred when it protects methane, but purely optional when it comes to things like civil rights, voting, or reproductive healthcare.
The lawsuit is just the latest front in Trumpworld’s war on anyone who dares regulate fossil fuels or disagree on DEI, abortion, or immigration. Petaluma and Santa Clara County are already suing the administration over culture-war-based funding restrictions and sanctuary city crackdowns, so this is less a legal dispute and more an ongoing federal retribution tour. The message from Trump and friends is clear: align with Big Oil and the MAGA agenda, or the Justice Department will show up to make sure your residents keep burning gas in perpetuity—climate crisis and local democracy be damned.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
defunding sesame street to save democracy, obviously
A lonely TV antenna in a rural field, bravely attempting to broadcast "woke propaganda" like science shows and local school board meetings to a country that just defunded it on purpose.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the boring little nonprofit Congress created in 1967 to fund NPR, PBS, and 1,500 local stations, has decided to do the only responsible thing it can do in Trump’s America: kill itself before Republicans kill it more. After Trump and his Project 2025 fan club leaned on Congress to cut $1.1 billion from CPB, the board finally voted to dissolve the organization entirely, ending nearly 60 years of quietly supporting children’s education, civic literacy, and actual journalism — all the things this administration sincerely hates.
Trump’s memo to Congress ranted that taxpayers had been forced to subsidize “radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news’,” which is a bold claim from a guy whose primary news source is his own social media rage-posts. He then threatened that any Republican who didn’t vote to defund CPB would lose his endorsement — and, shockingly, the courage of the GOP vanished faster than local newspapers in a hedge fund buyout. The result: CPB shut down operations in August, and now the board is pulling the plug entirely, saying dissolution is their final act to protect public media from being left defunded and permanently vulnerable to further political attacks.
Meanwhile, the people who actually use public media — especially in rural America and news deserts — are left with fewer trusted sources of information and more Facebook conspiracy groups. Over half of CPB-funded stations were rural, giving 99% of Americans access to public media. Now, an analysis says 15% of local stations could close within three years. Donors have gone on a $70m "rage-giving" spree to keep things afloat, but you can’t permanently replace federal baseline funding with tote bags and guilt. In other words: the government just kneecapped one of the last broadly trusted news systems in the country, all to own Big Bird. But sure, tell us more about how this is about fiscal responsibility and not killing-democracy one institution at a time.
#killing-democracy#anti-science#full-stupid
trump fights medicaid fraud by punishing children, obviously
Tim Walz, apparently under the impression that governing in Trump’s America is something other than trying to keep programs alive while the White House cuts the power cord.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is tapping out of his re-election bid, citing a desire to "focus on the work" of governing, which in this timeline apparently means trying to patch a Medicaid and childcare fraud mess while the federal government kicks his state in the shins for sport.
Republicans have been hammering Walz over fraud in the state’s Medicaid programme and childcare funding. Walz says his administration is working to prevent future scams; the Trump administration’s contribution is to freeze federal childcare funds for Minnesota—because nothing says "we care about waste, fraud, and abuse" like cutting off services to low-income families and kids instead of, you know, prosecuting the fraudsters.
In other words, Trump saw a state-level scandal, smelled an opportunity for retribution cosplay, and responded by holding children’s care hostage. But sure, tell us again how this is about fiscal responsibility and not about using federal money as a political weapon.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
the voter files must flow
Trump’s DOJ helpfully explaining that to protect election integrity, it first needs everyone’s personal data and the power to delete you from the voter rolls. Very normal democracy stuff.
The 2026 midterms aren’t just about Congress or who gets to be the next governor yelling on Fox News. Buried further down the ballot are secretary of state races – you know, the people who actually run elections and certify results. In 2020, folks like Brad Raffensperger were the thin bureaucratic line between Trump and “just find me 11,780 votes.” In 2022, election deniers tried to capture these offices in Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan; voters said no, barely, and democracy got a temporary reprieve.
Now it’s 2026, Trump is back in the White House, and as Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes politely puts it, “the bad guys are inside the castle.” The Trump justice department is suing 22 states to force them to hand over their complete voter rolls – including sensitive personal data – so the administration can build a national voter file and push aggressive voter purges. Because nothing says “states’ rights” like Washington demanding your entire electorate’s private info and threatening them in court if they refuse.
Democratic secretaries of state in swing states are suddenly the last firewall against a federal “full court press” to rewrite election rules before 2028. Nevada’s Cisco Aguilar spells it out: stack conspiracy theorists in state offices on top of an election-denying president, and you don’t just have smoke – you’ve got a controlled burn of democratic norms. In other words, while everyone’s arguing about the presidential horse race, the real action is in the offices that decide who even gets to be on the racetrack – and who gets erased from the voter rolls first.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump’s europe: some of his worst ideas already live there
European leaders and Trump arguing loudly in public while quietly copy-pasting each other’s anti-migrant playbooks in private.
Trump rolled out a national security strategy that treats Europe like a woke, migrant-coddling antifa theme park—and the punchline is that half of Europe’s leaders basically agree with him. While the US president rants about “civilisational erasure” and parrots great-replacement conspiracies, EU leaders respond with the diplomatic equivalent of a shrug and a LinkedIn post about "European values". Because nothing says defence of human rights like quietly adopting the talking points of the guy boosting far-right parties across your continent.
Behind the scenes, the EU is busy building its own Trumpian playground: a shiny new migration pact that tightens asylum rules, speeds deportations, expands detention, and hands more power to Frontex, the border agency already accused of systemic human rights abuses and illegal pushbacks. Twenty-seven European states are even asking to water down the European convention on human rights so they can better "balance" migrant rights with white people’s feelings of "security" and "freedom". In other words: less law, more Fortress Europe.
Meanwhile, Trump whines that nationalists are being censored while it’s actually progressives—especially those showing solidarity with Palestinians—who are getting surveilled, banned, and beaten. UN experts are telling Germany to stop criminalising Palestine activism, France is kicking Palestine conferences out of elite institutions, and the Dutch parliament can’t even be bothered to discuss its own report showing structural anti-Muslim discrimination. But sure, tell us again how Europe is a woke dystopia.
The reality: Europe’s institutions are still "Brussels so white", far-right rhetoric has gone mainstream, and the EU has perfected a polite, technocratic form of exclusion wrapped in buzzwords like “values” and “security”. Trump’s fantasy of a white, Christian Europe isn’t some foreign contagion—it’s a joint transatlantic project. The only open question is whether anyone in power on either side of the Atlantic will admit that the people they’re demonising are the same ones keeping their ageing, labour-starved economies from collapsing.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration
president uses grieving family as b-roll for his conspiracy channel
The president of the United States, hard at work retweeting conspiracy videos about a murder case he doesn’t understand and doesn’t care about, as long as it hurts a Democrat.
President Donald Trump spent his weekend doing what any responsible head of state would do after a politically motivated double murder: sharing a conspiracy video on Truth Social that suggests Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz somehow had a hand in the killing of state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband. The video strings together zero evidence, some viral fraud allegations, and a lot of insinuation to imply Walz and state program fraud were linked to the murders. In other words, it’s the standard MAGA true-crime fanfic — except this one uses a real grieving family as content.
Walz, the 2024 Democratic VP nominee, called it “dangerous, depraved behavior from the sitting president of the United States” and warned that Trump “will get more innocent people killed.” But sure, let’s pretend this is just "asking questions" and not the commander in chief pouring gasoline on an already politically violent environment where a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband were murdered and another lawmaker and his wife were shot.
Hortman’s children, Colin and Sophie, are now forced to publicly beg the president to stop exploiting their parents’ deaths for a disinformation hit piece. Sophie calls it “a painful, false twisting of my mother’s final vote,” while Colin asks Trump to remove the video and apologize for using his mother’s own words to dishonor her memory. The Hoffman family — who were also attacked — backs them, saying the conspiracy reflects the same hateful lies that motivated the violence in the first place. Because nothing says "law and order" like echoing the worldview of the guy currently under federal indictment for the murders.
Meanwhile, the White House can’t seem to explain why the president is boosting a random conspiracy edit while his administration weaponizes viral fraud claims in Minnesota to justify federal action. Over 70 people have already been charged in a real DOJ fraud case, but Trump is more interested in the YouTube-ification of presidential power: take an ongoing tragedy, slap on some baseless accusations, and hit share. Responsibility and compassion, the families say, would start with taking the post down. Unfortunately, that’s not nearly as on-brand as turning political violence into campaign content.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
trump declares war on weather forecasting, americans lose
American homeowner practices cutting-edge Trump-era disaster planning technique: ‘stand on roof and hope the president stops firing scientists.’
Trump’s second-term brain trust has apparently decided that if you don’t measure disasters, they don’t count. So the administration spent year one going after the people who, tragically, know what they’re doing: gutting FEMA, kneecapping NOAA, firing experts, and slashing climate-resilience programs. Because nothing says great again like firing the folks who tell you when a Category 5 hurricane is about to park on your coastline.
The result: a hollowed‑out FEMA that rolled into hurricane season with no plan, weather-balloon networks in Alaska so shredded they couldn’t warn people before one of the worst storms in state history, and a federal government that took more than 72 hours to approve search-and-rescue teams after the Guadalupe River flooded a Texas summer camp and nearby communities, killing over 135 people. In other words, the “small government” crowd finally achieved their dream of shrinking the state so much it can’t even pull children out of floodwaters.
All this is happening in a year with three Category 5 hurricanes, record heat and humidity, and lethal fires and floods – precisely the moment you’d want more climate science and preparedness, not a presidential tantrum against data. But sure, keep canceling research contracts and ripping climate information offline, and then act shocked when the bill for preventable disasters comes due in lives and billions. It’s not incompetence at this point – it’s policy.
#killing-democracy#anti-science#trumps-america
trump eyes the fed, markets reach for the panic button
Wall Street tries to model the risk of an AI bubble, private credit blowups, and Donald Trump treating the Federal Reserve like another failed Trump-branded venture.
Global investors are apparently bullish on 2026, betting that stocks will keep climbing as long as Donald Trump doesn’t finish turning the Federal Reserve into his own personal campaign ATM. A Deutsche Bank survey of 440 investors found that the top risk to markets is an AI/tech bubble, but the second biggest fear is Trump appointing a new Fed chair who slashes interest rates "by a lot" – because nothing says "independent central bank" like a president openly shopping for a human rate-cut machine.
Markets are quietly gaming out the scenario where Trump picks a loyalist willing to blow up decades of Fed credibility for a few quarters of sugar-high growth and a nicer Dow Jones chart for his rallies. Investors are also worried about a crisis in private credit and the usual shadow-banking funhouse, but the fact that "loss of Fed independence" is now a standard risk-line in bank research notes tells you everything about where American institutions are. In other words: the global economy’s 2026 outlook is "pretty good" – unless the guy who once suggested defaulting on US debt decides the central bank should work like his casinos did.
#killing-democracy#money
wisconsin candidate promises the thing washington keeps chickening out on
Mandela Barnes, apparently unaware that in modern America you’re supposed to *talk* about accountability, not actually try it.
Mandela Barnes went on Meet the Press to commit the ultimate D.C. heresy: saying out loud that Donald Trump should actually be held accountable for the stuff he did, not just booked for another Sunday panel. The Wisconsin gubernatorial hopeful framed his race as part of a larger effort to make sure Trump and his enablers don’t just skate by on vibes, nostalgia, and whatever’s left of the Fox News legal defense fund.
Barnes talks about using state power to protect democracy and voting rights while Trump and his party keep trying to speedrun authoritarianism. In other words, he’s proposing that laws should apply to former presidents too, which in our current system counts as a radical leftist position. While national Republicans keep pretending January 6th was just an especially spirited tourist visit, Barnes is out here saying, "No actually, crime is crime, even if you had the nuclear codes once."
Because nothing says "healthy democracy" like the fact that a state-level candidate has to promise to do the accountability work Congress, DOJ, and half the political class have spent years slow-walking. But sure, let’s keep asking whether holding a coup-curious ex-president "to account" might be too divisive.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump saves tesla from success, hands ev crown to china
Journalists admire a Tesla in Mumbai, unaware that back in Washington, Trump is busy making sure America loses the EV race on purpose.
Elon Musk spent 2024 lighting money on fire to get Donald Trump back into the White House, and in a plot twist no one could have predicted except everyone who has ever met Donald Trump, the payoff was Trump kneecapping the very industry Musk depends on. The Trump White House yanked EV subsidies, scrapped emissions rules that nudged companies toward cleaner cars, and generally did everything possible to make sure the US lost the electric vehicle race to China—because nothing says "America First" like turbocharging Shenzhen.
The result: China’s BYD sold 2.26 million battery EVs in 2025, while Tesla limped in at 1.63 million, with deliveries down 9% year-on-year and a grim final quarter. BYD didn’t just beat Tesla in a one-off quarter; it pulled away for the year, while US policy under Trump loudly signaled: "If it helps the climate or the future, kill it." In other words, BYD got industrial strategy and scale, while Trump gave US automakers culture-war tweets and a regulatory bonfire.
This all comes after Musk briefly ran a performative "cut government costs" sideshow for Trump and posed in front of the White House in a Tesla like a rejected stock photo model. Then they fell out, and—shockingly—the guy famous for petty revenge and zero impulse control suddenly turned on EVs too. US climate policy, industrial competitiveness, and a once-dominant domestic EV champion all got dragged into the feud. But sure, tell us more about how this is 4D chess and not just full, weaponized stupidity masquerading as governance.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
trump declares war on wind, loses to danish lawyers
Artist’s impression of a deadly national security threat: wind turbines quietly making cheap electricity instead of oil barons obscene profits.
Ørsted, Europe’s biggest offshore wind developer, is dragging the Trump administration into court after the White House randomly decided that a nearly finished $5bn offshore wind farm is now a grave "national security" threat. The Department of the Interior froze leases for five major offshore wind projects with all the legal precision of a late-night Trump tweet, offering no actual details about the supposed risks—because nothing says "serious security review" like "we just made something up to help oil buddies".
The Revolution Wind project had already spent nine years in environmental and regulatory purgatory, secured every required federal and state permit in 2023, and is about 90% built—foundations in, 58 of 65 turbines installed, and scheduled to deliver "reliable, affordable power" in 2026. So naturally, Trump’s team slapped on a "stop-work order" in August, tanked Ørsted’s market value, got smacked down by a federal judge, waited a few months, and then tried again with a broader lease suspension. In other words, it’s not energy policy, it’s bureaucratic sabotage in service of Trump’s fossil fuel donors and his personal vendetta against tall white spinny things he finds "ugly".
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse politely translated the move as an effort to raise energy prices, kill American jobs, and supercharge climate chaos—so yes, from the administration’s perspective, it’s going great. Ørsted and partner Skyborn now say litigation is "necessary" to protect their rights and avoid "substantial harm" from the suspension, which is legalese for "this is blatantly unlawful garbage and we’re done pretending it’s not". But sure, tell us more about how this is all about "national security" and not just another front in Trump’s war on renewables and the rule of law.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
moonshot fascism: flags, billionaires, and a dead nasa
Jared Isaacman at the White House, auditioning for the role of ‘NASA Administrator Who Gets the Flag Shot Before the Budget Collapses.’
Donald Trump has decided that what his second term really needs is a photo-op on the moon, ordering “American space superiority” and demanding a flag-planting before he’s out of office. To make that happen, he’s put billionaire Jared Isaacman – SpaceX fanboy, private astronaut, and definitely not a space policy expert – in charge of NASA. Because nothing says serious national space strategy like handing the keys to the agency over to a guy whose main qualification is being friends with Elon Musk.
In the past year, Trump’s people tried to ram through an “extinction level” science-killing budget for NASA, slashed jobs, and let Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) run a chainsaw through the agency’s expertise. The result? A year of disruption, chaos, and lost institutional knowledge – all so they can now panic-rush a moon landing before China and get Trump his historic selfie. In other words, they deliberately kneecapped NASA, then yelled at it to run faster.
The Artemis program is limping forward on an over-budget, years-delayed Space Launch System that everyone admits is unsustainable, but they’ll keep using it anyway because it’s the quickest way to stage Trump’s lunar campaign ad. Long term, they’ll probably hand even more over to SpaceX and other friendly billionaires, further hollowing out the public agency while calling it “efficiency” and “innovation”. So yes, the US might get back to the moon – but only after turning NASA into a billionaire playground and a prop department for Trump’s great-power cosplay.
But sure, tell us again how this is about science and humanity’s future, and not about one president’s ego, a new space arms race with China, and a nice fat transfer of power and money from a public institution to a cluster of tech oligarchs.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
rubio invents ‘humanitarian aid, but make it extortion’
Marco Rubio explains that the UN can ‘adapt, shrink or die,’ which is also the unofficial mission statement of Trump-era diplomacy.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new innovation in humanitarian policy: pay-to-obey. Washington is loudly bragging about a “bold and ambitious” $2bn UN aid pledge, while quietly stapling a ransom note to it that says the UN must “adapt, shrink or die” and route everything through a single Ocha fund Washington can lean on. In other words, it’s not really a contribution, it’s a hostile takeover bid.
The money can only go to 17 countries personally blessed by the US, conveniently skipping inconvenient disasters like Afghanistan and Yemen, but including places where the US has nice, tidy political interests. Aid experts are pointing out the obvious: this isn’t humanitarianism, it’s a foreign policy slush fund with better branding. As analyst Ronny Patz notes, pre-announcing a handpicked list of countries just “solidifies a massively shrunk UN humanitarian system” that can’t even respond to the next crisis unless Marco Rubio signs off between Fox hits.
Also fun: the $2bn “landmark” pledge is actually less than what the US gave under Biden in 2025, and that’s on top of Trump already cutting $5bn in congressionally approved foreign aid as “woke, weaponised and wasteful” and trying to kill peacekeeping while still owing the UN $1.5bn. But sure, let’s all clap for this “generous” move while the UN bows and scrapes for a promise that, as Patz politely reminds us, is “$2bn promised, but not $2bn given”. Because nothing says “rules-based international order” like forcing the world’s humanitarian system to choose between obedience, irrelevance, or collapse.
#killing-democracy#imperialism
strongman cosplay enters the 'mission accomplished' phase
Trump explains that the troops will leave the cities now that he’s finished using them as extras in his ‘I Alone Can Police This’ reality show.
Donald Trump rang in 2026 by announcing he’ll be pulling National Guard troops out of major U.S. cities — you know, the troops he helped turn into background extras for his domestic strongman reboot. After weeks of using soldiers as set dressing for a president who thinks the Insurrection Act is a light switch, Trump is now declaring victory and promising to send them home, as if the whole thing was just a limited-time holiday fascism pop-up shop.
Because nothing says “law and order” like flooding blue cities with armed troops, stoking fear, and then bragging about your magnanimous decision to stop doing the thing you never should’ve done in the first place. The White House is spinning the withdrawal as proof that Trump “restored calm,” which is an interesting way to describe pouring gasoline on a fire and then demanding a medal for finally putting the gas can down.
In other words, the president spent weeks normalizing military presence in civilian streets, undermining local control, and treating the Guard like his personal campaign prop — and now wants applause for not escalating further. But sure, we’re supposed to be grateful that the constitutional crisis is being dialed back from an 8 to a 6 on the authoritarian cosplay scale.
#killing-democracy#fascism#national-security
new york elects an immigrant socialist just to personally annoy donald trump
Zohran Mamdani, immigrant Muslim socialist mayor of New York, preparing to personally ruin every Fox News chyron for the next four years.
New York City has elected Zohran Mamdani, a young Muslim democratic socialist immigrant who openly says he doesn’t think we should have billionaires – so naturally, somewhere in Florida, Donald Trump just felt a great disturbance in the Force and blamed it on the deep state. Mamdani used his victory speech to do what most Democratic politicians have spent a decade avoiding: calling Trump out by name and promising that if ICE wants to terrorize immigrant communities, they’ll have to go through the entire city first. Because nothing says “law and order” like having to fight all of New York before you can deport someone’s grandma.
Mamdani also committed the unforgivable sins of refusing to apologize for being Muslim, denouncing Islamophobia as a winning electoral strategy, and suggesting that maybe – just maybe – a handful of billionaires hoarding more wealth than entire countries is bad. In other words, he took the exact values Trumpism demonized for years and used them as the basis of a winning campaign in the city that produced Donald J. Golden Toilet himself. He even closed by telling Trump to “turn the volume up” while he explained how to dismantle the conditions that created him – a polite way of saying, “watch closely while we try to make sure your kind never happens again.”
Meanwhile, the right is stuck screaming “communist” at a guy who hops on a Citi Bike and corrects them with, “It’s pronounced ‘cyclist’.” Trump and his friends spent years trying to build a politics of fear around immigrants, Muslims, and socialists; New York just turned around and elected all three in one person and handed him City Hall. But sure, tell us more about how the country is crying out for more billionaires and fewer burrito-eating, bike-riding mayors who don’t want ICE prowling the subways.
#killing-democracy#trumps-america
uncle sam wants you (to raid trailer parks for trump)
ICE recruitment booth featuring Uncle Sam, an American flag, and a sign-up sheet for people who think ‘wartime’ should start in the nearest parking lot.
ICE is rolling out a $100m ‘wartime recruitment’ media blitz because nothing says ‘totally normal democracy’ like the federal government targeting the MAGA-verse with Call of Duty–style ads for real-life deportation squads. The agency is geofencing military bases, Nascar races, gun shows, and college campuses to find people whose dream job is "deport illegals with your absolute boys" — an actual ICE ad line, not a rejected Proud Boys slogan.
All of this is made possible by Trump’s big, beautiful HR 1, which shovels $45bn into cages and another $32bn into enforcement and manpower, so ICE can hire roughly 14,000 new agents and brag that arrests will “explode” in 2026. They’re dangling up to $50,000 signing bonuses and $60,000 in student loan payoff to fill the ranks, while a record 68,440 people sit in detention — the vast majority with no criminal conviction — and the administration grumbles that only about 300,000 people have been deported so far, well short of their dream of a tidy, round million removals in year one.
To sell this, ICE is slapping Uncle Sam, George Washington, and Lady Liberty onto recruitment ads that paint immigrants as ‘criminals and predators,’ and then farming out the message to fitness and ‘tactical lifestyle’ influencers for at least $8m, because why just have fash aesthetics when you can literally sponsor them? Marketing experts politely note that the campaign is aimed at people “with something to prove” who want power “under the guise of patriotism” — in other words, exactly the personality type you’d pick if your goal was maximum abuse potential with a flag on top. But sure, tell me again how this is about ‘guarding the homeland’ and not building a taxpayer-funded, ultra-jacked deportation militia.
#anti-immigration#killing-democracy#fascism
jack smith explains crime, trump explains 'i'm president again'
Jack Smith testifies on how he built airtight cases against Trump, only to learn the real legal strategy was "win back the presidency and delete everything."
Congress dropped the 255-page Jack Smith transcript on New Year’s Eve, because nothing says "fresh start" like a meticulous record of how the sitting president allegedly committed crimes and then just canceled the prosecutions by winning the Electoral College again. Smith calmly walks through how his team found proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election and hoarded highly classified documents at his country club — including in a ballroom and a bathroom, because when you think "national security," you obviously think "next to the guest towels."
Smith also notes that Trump "repeatedly tried to obstruct justice" and that there was enough evidence to charge him in both cases. So what happened? Trump got re-elected, took back control of the Justice Department, and his people helpfully made the criminal cases "go away" — not because he was innocent, but because he was in charge. In other words, the rule of law got replaced with the rule of "who’s holding the nuclear codes this week." Smith and his staff were then fired, because nothing screams "totally exonerated" like purging everyone who investigated you.
Now, from the safety of his restored throne, Trump is demanding investigations into the officials who charged him, and Smith openly says he has "no doubt" Trump wants retribution against him and that DOJ now wants payback on anyone who worked the Trump cases. House Republicans, led by Jim Jordan, are doing their part by hauling Smith in for an eight-hour deposition, just to make sure every future prosecutor in America understands the new precedent: if you follow the evidence to the president, enjoy the unemployment line and maybe an investigation. But sure, tell us again how this is all about "law and order."
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#retribution
trump’s anti-dei crusade comes for the newsroom
Trump’s America: the FCC hunts for “woke” programming while newsrooms mysteriously become even whiter, purely by coincidence and definitely not because the government declared diversity the new enemy.
Trump’s war on diversity isn’t just about making federal offices whiter – it’s coming for the people who tell you what’s happening. At CBS, when a show gets axed, five white producers magically find soft landings elsewhere, while the four producers of color discover that, oops, there are suddenly no other jobs available. One of them, Trey Sherman, walks out of his layoff meeting and immediately learns his white colleagues were reassigned. But sure, this is all about
merit.
This isn’t happening in a vacuum. Trump signs executive orders to
end DEI programs and
kill affirmative action in the federal government, and—what do you know—corporations start torching their own DEI efforts one by one. The new Trump-appointed FCC chair Brendan Carr helpfully announces he’s scrapping the FCC’s DEI work, then launches investigations into Comcast/NBC and Disney/ABC over their diversity initiatives. In other words, the government loudly signals that diversity is now suspicious, and media companies fall over themselves to comply.
Meanwhile, the merger crowd gets in on the fun. Skydance tells the FCC it will kill Paramount’s DEI programs, then CBS hands the keys to its newsroom to Bari Weiss, whose brand is basically
"end DEI for good". NBC lays off 150 people and guts teams dedicated to covering Black, Asian American, Latino, and LGBTQ+ communities, but insists those verticals will still "exist"—just without dedicated staff, like a ghost town with a nice logo. Teen Vogue, which somehow committed the crime of covering politics and marginalized communities, gets folded into Vogue as most of its (heavily women of color) staff allegedly disappear in a "restructuring."
Newsrooms were already overwhelmingly white, and they’d been missing their own diversity targets for decades. Now, under Trump’s anti-DEI regime, the remaining journalists of color are being quietly shown the door while executives and regulators repeat the magic words
"merit-based" like a legal force field. Because nothing says "free press in a vibrant democracy" like the government pressuring media conglomerates until they decide the safest story to tell is the one told by as few people of color as possible.
#killing-democracy#racism#fascism
trump doj discovers 5 million reasons to stall the epstein files
Artist’s rendering of the Trump DOJ document review: a shredder labeled “redactions,” a clock stuck on December 19, and a giant box marked “totally not hiding anything, promise.”
The Trump Justice Department has suddenly "discovered" that the Jeffrey Epstein case involves more than 5 million pages of documents, which is extremely convenient for an administration that’s already blown its congressionally mandated deadline to release the files. Deputy AG Todd Blanche is on X assuring everyone that DOJ lawyers are working "around the clock" through Christmas and New Year’s, because nothing says good faith transparency like missing your legal deadline by more than a month while roping in national security prosecutors to redact paperwork about a dead sex trafficker.
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s shop originally dribbled out under 40,000 pages—less than 0.01% of the total, as Chuck Schumer helpfully pointed out while accusing Bondi, Blanche, and friends of lying to the public "since day one." Meanwhile, DOJ keeps announcing they’ve found "more" documents like a teenager who just remembered another homework assignment, and insisting that the real problem is all the pesky laws requiring them to protect victims. That line took a hit when they briefly yanked an image that showed a desk drawer with photos, including at least one of Donald Trump, then quietly put it back after claiming it was about victim exposure. But sure, this is all just about privacy, not politics.
In between the redactions, we’ve already learned the FBI knew about Epstein’s abuse of minors at least a decade earlier than previously admitted, plus DOJ is shrugging off the release of fake letters and fake suicide videos with a casual "sometimes we release bogus stuff, it was just in the pile." In other words: the Trump DOJ is using victim protection and document volume as a very on-brand shield for maximum delay, minimum accountability in a case that touches the rich, the powerful, and at least one guy who used to host The Apprentice.
#killing-democracy#corruption
doj discovers 'top priority' crimes: embarrassing the trump administration
The Department of Justice, bravely protecting America from the real threat: people who win cases against the Trump administration.
Nothing says "rule of law" like turning your own screw-up into a felony. Newly unsealed court records show that Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadoran man who was wrongfully deported and then vindicated by the US supreme court, mysteriously became a "top priority" for the Trump justice department only after he won his case and embarrassed them.
Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche went on Fox News and basically said the quiet part out loud, implying DOJ went after Ábrego because he’d prevailed in his deportation fight. But don’t worry, former acting US attorney Rob McGuire swears he alone decided to prosecute and totally had no vendetta. Unfortunately for that story, Judge Waverly Crenshaw just unsealed an order noting that internal emails show McGuire “reported to others” at DOJ and that the decision to prosecute Ábrego "may have been a joint decision"—with Blanche’s office emailing that they wanted García "charged sooner rather than later" and labeling the case a "top priority" right after the supreme court ruled in his favor.
The supposed crime? A 2022 Tennessee traffic stop where Ábrego was pulled over for speeding, troopers chatted among themselves about human smuggling, then let him go with a warning and no charges. Homeland Security Investigations sat on it for years—until April 2025, days after the supreme court ruling, when suddenly the deputy AG’s office got very interested, demanded a quick indictment, and told prosecutors to hold the draft until they got political "clearance." In other words: win a wrongful deportation case against Trump’s machine, and that machine may come back with federal charges, because nothing screams “independent justice system” like punishing people for making you look incompetent in front of the supreme court.
A hearing on whether this is straight-up vindictive prosecution is set for 28 January. Place your bets on whether the judge decides this was just another totally routine instance of career prosecutors coincidentally aligning with Fox News talking points and the deputy attorney general’s wounded ego.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
