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The Trump Presidency Timeline

Documenting the chaos since day one. 787 entries and counting.

Category: killing democracy
killing democracy

trump takes a chainsaw to the arts, accidentally invents a resistance festival

Live from New York: one last performance of free expression before the Ministry of Culture turns the lights off.

Live from New York: one last performance of free expression before the Ministry of Culture turns the lights off.

The Trump administration has discovered a bold new frontier in culture policy: if it looks like art, defunds like art, or might someday criticize Dear Leader, it gets the axe. Around $27m in arts grants have vanished, some 560 projects tossed into the trash, and the Kennedy Center — where Trump proudly bragged about cutting "woke programming" — is now conveniently "closed for renovations". The Smithsonian and other big institutions have been put on notice: stay safe, stay bland, and definitely don’t mention fascism unless you’re endorsing it. Artists, being historically bad at shutting up, are responding by turning the whole country into a low-budget Weimar reboot. In LA, Unquiet: A Night of Creative Resistance features poems like Antifa Tea Party and anti-fascist improv, while the nationwide Fall of Freedom series pulled off 700+ performances, from live remediations of ICE detentions to dance protests at the very Kennedy Center Trump is trying to neuter. Playwrights are staging dystopias about ICE raids and abortion, climate dramatists are bracing for death threats because the president is busy "gutting meteorology and science", and theaters serving immigrant and Palestinian communities are building safety protocols in case ICE decides the show needs a raid. So now just showing up to a play about climate change or state violence is a political act, and venues are quietly planning for what happens when law enforcement or federal goons decide art is terrorism. Trump gets his culture war; what he’s actually building is a shadow network of resistance theaters, poets, and performers who’ve realized that if the administration is going to treat them like enemies of the state, they might as well act like it — tickets on sale now.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

robert kraft kneels … to trump

Robert Kraft presents Donald Trump with a Patriots jersey, helpfully reminding everyone which team American oligarchy really plays for.

Robert Kraft presents Donald Trump with a Patriots jersey, helpfully reminding everyone which team American oligarchy really plays for.

Robert Kraft once cosplayed as the reasonable billionaire of the NFL – visiting Meek Mill in prison, nudging Devin and Jason McCourty into activism, and tut-tutting Trump after January 6 like a disappointed dad who just found the fascism stash under the bed. He even allegedly stopped talking to Trump for a while, which in oligarch terms is the equivalent of storming the Bastille. That brief outbreak of conscience has now been resolved, thanks to the healing power of Melania: The Documentary, a $40m Amazon MGM love letter to the woman who thought cyberbullying was bad unless her husband did it on live TV. Kraft shows up at the premiere and then on stage with Trump, happily dancing through the authoritarian afterparty while the country slides into "restorative whiteness" and the NFL quietly memory-holes its own fleeting flirtation with phrases like "End Racism" in the end zones. The league’s political energy hasn’t disappeared; it just changed jerseys. Black coaches are shut out again, the Harbaugh brothers are openly swooning for Trump, and the NFL’s military pageantry rolls on while the slogans get dialed back to the safest corporate gibberish imaginable. Kraft, once sold as a bridge between radicalized players and reactionary owners, is back where he started: standing next to a president who incited an attack on his own government and then used the Department of Justice to cut a $5m check to Ashli Babbitt’s family. The bread is more expensive, but the circuses are still free – especially if you own the tent.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#oligarchy
killing democracy

trump crowns himself king, discovers first amendment is inconvenient

Nancy Pelosi politely explaining that when the president arrests journalists, you’re not in a rom-com, you’re in the prequel to a junta.

Nancy Pelosi politely explaining that when the president arrests journalists, you’re not in a rom-com, you’re in the prequel to a junta.

Nancy Pelosi used a Washington Press Club dinner to deliver the kind of line you usually reserve for failed democracies: press freedom in the US is "under siege" thanks to the Trump administration arresting Don Lemon and sending the FBI to ransack Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home. Agents reportedly seized her electronic devices, because nothing screams "totally normal presidency" like treating reporters’ laptops as enemy combatants.

Pelosi called the arrest and raid "an affront to press freedom meant to scare, chill and silence" — which, to be fair, is probably the most honest mission statement this White House has ever had. At the same time, Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post laid off about a third of its staff, helpfully demonstrating that even when the government isn’t crushing journalism, corporate America is there to finish the job. "Democracy dies in darkness," the paper’s slogan says, while the owner switches off the newsroom lights to save on overhead.

Pelosi didn’t stop at the press. She described "a president who has crowned himself King, a Congress which has abolished itself, and a supreme court that has gone rogue" — a neat little summary of how checks and balances became more of a nostalgia brand than a functioning system. The First Amendment, she reminded everyone, is supposed to protect a free and independent press as the fourth estate. Under Trump, it’s more of a suggestion — one that can be ignored whenever the monarch-in-chief feels a little too criticized on TV.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

treasury bro discovers congressional oversight is not a podcast

Scott Bessent discovering, in real time, that a House hearing is not a Fox Business segment he can talk over.

Scott Bessent discovering, in real time, that a House hearing is not a Fox Business segment he can talk over.

The Trump Treasury’s new money man, Scott Bessent, went to the House Financial Services Committee to explain why the president’s economic agenda is definitely not just vibes and tax cuts for donors. Ranking Democrat Maxine Waters did the unthinkable in Trump’s America: she tried to get a straight answer on whether this administration is actually committed to lowering prices for normal humans and not just juicing the stock portfolios of everyone who has Mar-a-Lago on speed dial. The hearing quickly shifted from "routine oversight" to "family Thanksgiving with cameras" as Bessent dodged and deflected his way through questions until Waters finally asked the Republican chair to "shut him up" so she could actually do her job. Bessent, channeling the full wounded dignity of a man unused to consequences, responded by telling Waters to "maintain some level of dignity"—because nothing screams respect for institutions like a Trump official lecturing Congress about decorum while refusing to give clear answers on how their policies are squeezing Americans. So the economic plan remains the same: prices are high, accountability is low, and the administration treats congressional oversight like an annoying pop-up ad. Authoritarian vibes, zero customer service.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
killing democracy

trump discovers taiwan is worth exactly 8 million extra tonnes of soybeans

Two guys who definitely aren’t trading away anyone’s democracy for soybeans and photo ops, why do you ask?

Two guys who definitely aren’t trading away anyone’s democracy for soybeans and photo ops, why do you ask?

Xi Jinping picked up the phone to remind Donald Trump that Taiwan is "China's territory" and that the US should be very "prudent" about shipping weapons to the island. Trump, naturally, emerged from the call declaring it "excellent" and "long and thorough" — which is how he describes everything from peace talks to lunch — while Beijing's state media framed the chat as China patiently teaching the class dunce about "stability" and "responsibility".

The Trump team just greenlit an $11 billion arms sale to Taipei — rocket launchers, howitzers, missiles, the usual "please don't invade us" starter pack — and Xi gently suggested that maybe Washington dial it back unless everyone wants a live-fire sequel to the Taiwan Strait Crises. Trump, ever the master strategist, countered with his favorite foreign-policy doctrine: soybeans first. He bragged that China might buy 20 million tonnes of US soybeans instead of 12 million, as if the fate of a 23-million-strong democracy should be negotiated like a Costco bulk discount.

While Xi talks about "sovereignty" and "territorial integrity" and Trump posts about his "extremely good" personal relationship with Xi on Truth Social, Taiwan’s president is over here insisting ties with the US are still "rock solid" and all the defense cooperation is continuing. Translation: Taipei is desperately hoping the island’s security isn’t being quietly horse-traded for tariff rollbacks, TikTok deals, and a photo op in Beijing. But don’t worry — Chinese state media assures us China is a "stabilising force" and a "responsible major power". If there’s one thing this era keeps proving, it’s that when authoritarian leaders and Trump say "stability," they mostly mean their power, your risk.

Source: bbc.com

#killing-democracy#oligarchy#forever-grifting
killing democracy

trump fact-checks reality, reality loses

President Trump, mid-sentence, carefully explaining how 3% inflation is actually the worst in history if you close your eyes and really believe in yourself.

President Trump, mid-sentence, carefully explaining how 3% inflation is actually the worst in history if you close your eyes and really believe in yourself.

Donald Trump sat down with NBC and treated the Oval Office like his old reality show set, except now the lies come with ICE raids and tariff policy. He claimed he inherited "the worst inflation in the history of our country" — which is a bold statement for a guy whose own tariffs helped nudge prices back up from the relatively tame 3% he walked into. The actual record-holder is 1980 at over 14%, but why let the Federal Reserve’s data get in the way of a good self-pity monologue?

He bragged that there are more people working than ever, which is technically true in the same way that saying "I built the tallest sandcastle" is technically true when you showed up at low tide. Job growth has cratered since he took office again, wage growth is slowing, and his magical “$18 trillion” in investment shrinks to roughly half that when you look at his own website — and then shrinks again once you strip out pre-Trump announcements and fantasy pledges from sovereign funds and data-center fever dreams. It’s less an investment boom and more a PowerPoint boom.

On immigration, Trump repeated his favorite genre: horror fanfic presented as policy justification. He insisted his administration is "totally focused on criminals" even though more than a third of ICE arrests in his first nine months were people with no criminal record. He then tossed out a very precise 11,888 “murderers” supposedly “let in” by Biden, which turns out to be a decadeslong count of noncitizens convicted of homicide, many of whom arrived under multiple presidents and are already in state or federal prisons. He also inflated Biden-era illegal crossings from 7.4–10.2 million (depending on how you count) to 25 million, because if you’re going to demonize migrants, you might as well round up by a casual fifteen million.

And throughout, he waved around “record low crime” like a participation trophy, using real declines to launder his fantasy border numbers and justify broad, indiscriminate enforcement. The pattern is the same: cook the stats, scare the public, then claim a mandate for ever-harsher crackdowns. It’s not policy, it’s a vibes-based security state — with fact-checkers playing whack-a-mole while the administration quietly builds the machinery to treat entire categories of people as criminals first and human beings never.

#killing-democracy#anti-immigration
killing democracy

trump declares putin kept his promise, ukraine dodges 71 missiles in gratitude

Trump checks his watch and announces the ceasefire is over, right on schedule with the first missile impact.

Trump checks his watch and announces the ceasefire is over, right on schedule with the first missile impact.

Trump, statesman of the Chuck E. Cheese school of diplomacy, proudly announced that Vladimir Putin “kept his word” on a weeklong ceasefire — a ceasefire that, according to Ukraine and independent analysts, ended with Russia launching 71 missiles and 450 drones at civilian energy infrastructure in the middle of a brutal winter. But don’t worry, the president insists the promise was Sunday to Sunday, so when the bombs started falling again, Putin was just exercising his sacred right to mass-murder on a technicality.

While millions of Ukrainians sit in the dark with no heat because Russia is deliberately targeting power plants that have “no military value whatsoever”, Trump is out here grading Putin on a curve like a disappointed but loyal soccer dad: he “kept his word on that” and then “hit them hard last night.” The Institute for the Study of War gently notes that Russia never intended to de-escalate or seriously engage in U.S.-initiated peace talks, but the White House appears content so long as the dictator-in-chief took Trump’s personal weather request under brief consideration.

Zelensky, standing next to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in front of a bombed-out heating plant, has the audacity to suggest that maybe, just maybe, a regime that carpet-bombs power grids in subzero temperatures “broke its promise.” Trump, meanwhile, explains that “we’ll take anything, because it’s really, really cold over there” — as if the bar for American diplomacy is now: did the war criminal at least wait until after my arbitrary calendar cut-off to resume terrorizing civilians? Exceptional work all around.

Source: thehill.com

#killing-democracy#imperialism
killing democracy

trump pulls out of who, illinois tries to stay in reality

JB Pritzker attempts the radical new strategy of listening to scientists while the Trump administration rage-quits global health like it’s a bad golf club membership.

JB Pritzker attempts the radical new strategy of listening to scientists while the Trump administration rage-quits global health like it’s a bad golf club membership.

Donald Trump, still workshopping new ways to make pandemics great again, pulled the entire United States out of the World Health Organization in 2025, blowing a hole in its budget, nuking about 2,000 jobs, and kneecapping global outbreak detection because he didn’t like the invoices or the concept of multilateralism. The US had been the WHO’s largest donor; Trump looked at that and said: what if we just... didn’t care if we saw the next virus coming?

Illinois governor JB Pritzker, apparently tired of waiting for the federal government to stop LARPing as a failed state, announced that Illinois will join the WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) directly, so at least one chunk of America can still see global early-warning alerts instead of relying on Trump’s preferred system: vibes and cable news. The state gets access to outbreak intelligence, technical support, and training, while the White House gets access to a bottomless well of grievance monologues about "unfair" payments and sinister foreigners "ripping us off" by providing, checks notes, global disease surveillance.

After Trump’s withdrawal triggered mass layoffs at WHO and loud condemnation from basically every medical organization that has met a germ before, Illinois joined a coalition of governors trying to rebuild what the administration is gleefully smashing: America’s public health infrastructure. The feds are busy dismantling the fire department; the states are out back trying to borrow smoke alarms from Europe. America First, just not necessarily alive.

Source: theguardian.com

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

eeoc repurposed as department of white feelings

The EEOC, seen here cosplaying as a civil-rights agency while doing Trump’s anti-DEI housecleaning.

The EEOC, seen here cosplaying as a civil-rights agency while doing Trump’s anti-DEI housecleaning.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, historically known for fighting discrimination, has been lovingly repackaged by Donald Trump as the Equal Opportunity For White Grievance Commission. Its latest mission: investigating Nike for allegedly discriminating against white workers, while demanding internal DEI targets, race data, and details on 16 supposedly race-restricted programs. Somewhere, a Federalist Society lawyer just got chills.

EEOC chair Andrea Lucas — a Trump appointee who arrived right after he fired Biden-era chair Charlotte Burrows — is dutifully reciting the new party line, praising Trump’s “commitment” to civil rights as she uses civil-rights laws to kneecap diversity programs. She insists Title VII is “colorblind” while the administration simultaneously orders agencies to terminate all “equity-related” grants, forces federal contractors to swear off DEI, and threatens universities with loss of funding if they don’t torch their diversity initiatives. Truly a bold new era of protecting minorities by banning anything designed to help them.

Nike, for its part, is doing the corporate tightrope act: calling itself a “proud American company,” swearing it follows every law in sight, and noting that it has already handed over “thousands of pages” of documents to an agency now treating DEI like contraband. The message from Trump’s Washington is clear: you can track race data to discriminate, but if you use it to fix discrimination, expect a subpoena and a lecture on colorblindness from the people busy defunding equity across the entire federal government.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

supreme court briefly remembers democracy exists

The United States, now officially governed by the sacred constitutional principle of "whoever redraws the map last, wins."

The United States, now officially governed by the sacred constitutional principle of "whoever redraws the map last, wins."

For one shining, confusing moment, the US supreme court put down its "how can we help Republicans win more seats?" playbook and let California actually use the congressional map its voters approved. California Republicans, backed by the Trump administration, ran to the justices insisting that this map was an illegal racial gerrymander, unlike the perfectly wholesome Texas map that just happens to squeeze out up to five extra GOP seats and was blessed by the same court in December. The justices, in a brisk unsigned order with no dissents, basically shrugged and said: nah, you guys can use the map. This comes after Donald Trump personally leaned on the Texas legislature to mid‑cycle gerrymander the state so he could grab five more House seats he says he’s "entitled" to, because nothing screams respect for the will of the people like treating congressional districts as loyalty rewards. California responded with a voter‑approved ballot initiative, Prop 50, to counter Texas’s power grab, because apparently the new federal system is just competitive map rigging with extra steps. Even Samuel Alito, in a concurring opinion about the Texas case, admitted the obvious: all of this is "partisan advantage pure and simple"—which is a poetic way of saying both parties are now openly redrawing the electoral map mid‑decade like it’s fantasy football, while the court occasionally cosplays as neutral referee. Democrats, smelling blood thanks to Trump’s collapsing approval and an annoyed electorate, are hoping these dueling gerrymanders plus basic math will flip the House and finally let them investigate the corruption carnival running the executive branch. Trump wanted a House firewall; he may have built a very expensive political slip‑n‑slide instead.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#lawlessness
killing democracy

great news: trump discovers 'softer touch' after trying 'crush them all'

Trump explains that after Minneapolis, he’s learned you can threaten protesters with overwhelming force, then call it a ‘softer touch’ if the polls look bad.

Trump explains that after Minneapolis, he’s learned you can threaten protesters with overwhelming force, then call it a ‘softer touch’ if the polls look bad.

Donald Trump, the man who once treated Minneapolis like a live-action audition for authoritarian copaganda, now says he’s learned that "maybe we can use a little bit of a softer touch." This from the guy whose brand during unrest was tear gas, rubber bullets, and photo-op Bible walks. Apparently, after years of cheering on crackdowns, he’s decided the problem might not be that protesters exist, but that the optics of beating them on camera are bad.

The rebrand is almost sweet, in a "mob boss discovers PR" kind of way. Trump isn’t renouncing state violence; he’s just musing that perhaps the iron fist could use a slightly fluffier glove. The underlying message is the same: federal power as a tool to control dissent, only now with an added layer of "have we tried sounding reasonable on TV first?" If this is the new, gentler Trump doctrine, it’s still the same boot—just with a marketing department.

#killing-democracy#lawlessness#fascism
killing democracy

one shooting, zero shame: trump freezes asylum nationwide

Press conference visuals: two dead soldiers, one accused shooter, and an invisible asterisk that says ‘now watch us gut asylum policy.’

Press conference visuals: two dead soldiers, one accused shooter, and an invisible asterisk that says ‘now watch us gut asylum policy.’

One man is accused of a horrific crime near the White House, so naturally the Trump administration’s response is to punish… every asylum seeker in the country. Prosecutors say Rahmanullah Lakanwal ambushed National Guard members in November, killing 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom and seriously injuring 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe. He’s pleaded not guilty to nine federal charges while Attorney General Pam Bondi is already polishing her death penalty press release like it’s a campaign ad. Subtle policy response this is not. Rather than let the criminal justice system handle a single defendant, Trump’s team slammed the brakes on all asylum decisions and ordered a review of Afghan refugees nationwide. One accused shooter, thousands of unrelated people thrown under the bus. Lakanwal came to the US via Biden’s Operation Allies Welcome after working with American forces in Afghanistan, but the administration’s message is clear: your years of helping US troops matter less than your value as a political prop. Mental health red flags? Case workers had already documented that Lakanwal was spending weeks in a dark room and having "manic episodes" back in 2024. So instead of asking why the system failed on screening, support, and treatment, the White House skipped straight to collective punishment and fearmongering about refugees. It’s a familiar formula: take a tragedy, ignore the nuance, and use it to kneecap asylum and immigrant protections while pretending that’s what ‘law and order’ looks like.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration
killing democracy

hollywood can picture the explosions, not the coup paperwork

Two journalists in ‘Civil War’ bravely documenting a fictional strongman’s illegal third term, while the real one is busy weaponizing the bureaucracy off-screen.

Two journalists in ‘Civil War’ bravely documenting a fictional strongman’s illegal third term, while the real one is busy weaponizing the bureaucracy off-screen.

Hollywood is once again bravely confronting American authoritarianism by… turning it into a dumb Netflix thriller where democracy collapses because of a best-selling book of essays. Meanwhile, in the world outside Diane Lane’s Georgetown kitchen, Kash Patel’s FBI is quietly seizing voting records in Fulton County and the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page Project 2025 manifesto is being fed through the legislative shredder formerly known as Congress. One side has speedboats and drones; the other has subpoenas and rule changes. Guess which one gets greenlit.

Emma Brockes points out that the real Trump 2.0 horror show isn’t a cinematic civil war or sexy young fascist mastermind, it’s the boring grind: voter manipulation, federal meddling in elections, and language games that sell one-party rule as “unity” and “togetherness”. Autocracy, it turns out, looks less like Alex Garland’s illegal third term with explosions and more like Colonel Lockjaw hunting "illegals" while think-tank lawyers quietly rewire the republic. The movies keep giving us the bang; the regime is betting you’ll sleep through the paperwork.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump ends his own hostage crisis, reloads for dhs

Congress celebrates ending the shutdown they helped cause, like arsonists high-fiving in front of a slightly less-on-fire building.

Congress celebrates ending the shutdown they helped cause, like arsonists high-fiving in front of a slightly less-on-fire building.

The partial government shutdown is over, which is Washington-speak for "we stopped punching ourselves in the face for a minute." Congress slapped together a short-term funding patch, federal workers get to briefly remember what a paycheck looks like, and the White House pretends this was all a bold negotiating strategy instead of a tantrum that shuttered basic services. Of course, the next cliff is already built: DHS funding is now on a fresh countdown clock, because nothing says "stable democracy" like repeatedly threatening to defund the agency in charge of border security and disaster response. Trump and his allies get to keep using DHS as a political chew toy—either cough up more money and authority for their immigration crackdown or enjoy another round of chaos. This isn’t budgeting, it’s governing by extortion: create a crisis, blame everyone else, then graciously agree to stop breaking things for a few weeks while you line up the next hostage. The only consistent winners are the manufactured talking points and the permanent campaign; the losers are federal workers, basic planning, and any pretense that this is a serious administration.

Source: today.com

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

assassination attempt at the trump golf temple heads to sentencing

Trump International Golf Club’s famed fifth hole, where American democracy now includes bunkers, water hazards, and the occasional assassination plot.

Trump International Golf Club’s famed fifth hole, where American democracy now includes bunkers, water hazards, and the occasional assassination plot.

Ryan Routh, the guy who apparently thought the best way to save democracy was to crawl into the shrubbery at Trump International Golf Club with a gun, is back in federal court for sentencing. Prosecutors want life in prison, arguing he tried to stop American voters from electing Trump by just skipping to the murder part. Bold strategy: combat authoritarian drift with your own one-man armed coup on the fifth hole.

Judge Aileen Cannon — yes, that Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed legal speed bump who’s turned half of Trump’s federal cases into performance art — will decide how long Routh spends in prison. Routh, who represented himself at trial, delivered a closing argument that pinballed from Jan. 6 to Ukraine to Patrick Henry before Cannon finally hit the off switch, which is impressive given her usual tolerance for chaos when it benefits Trump. The jury took barely two hours to convict him on all counts.

Routh’s lawyer now says this wasn’t terrorism and is begging for a mere few decades behind bars, with mental health treatment attached, while prosecutors insist he’s unrepentant and dangerous. His family is writing heartbroken letters asking for a shot at rehabilitation, and at least a prison close enough to visit. Meanwhile, the larger message from the government is clear: political violence aimed at Trump will be crushed with maximum force, while political violence for Trump tends to get merch, GoFundMes, and sympathetic TV hits. Very stable country we’ve got here.

#killing-democracy#national-security
killing democracy

maga masculinity: cosplay knights, real bullets

Trump’s America: one man steps forward to shield a stranger; the government’s answer is to prove its manhood with a firing squad and a press release.

Trump’s America: one man steps forward to shield a stranger; the government’s answer is to prove its manhood with a firing squad and a press release.

On a frozen Minneapolis curb, Alex Pretti did the one thing the Trump-era tough-guy cosplay brigade cannot process: he used his body as a shield instead of a weapon. Federal immigration agents, marinating in the administration’s new theology that empathy is a civilization-ending disease, responded to this radical act of care by killing him. The White House then helpfully suggested that merely bringing a legal gun to a protest proves violent intent, which is a fascinating reinterpretation of the second amendment from people who usually think a fetus should be issued an AR-15 at 12 weeks.

The op-ed sketches the contrast nicely: on one side, Trump’s macho MAGA cult, mainlining medieval LARP aesthetics—QAnon shaman horns, Pete Hegseth’s crusader tattoo sleeve, and a general vibe of "Diet Templar"—while ignoring that actual chivalric codes frowned on profit-seeking, demanded mercy, and treated killing as a last resort. On the other side, Pretti, whose refusal to escalate and whose act of protection denied the administration its dream scenario: a clean excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and roll out the full repression package, with cable-news B-roll pre-approved.

While Elon Musk and the Christian right declare empathy "toxic" and "sinful", the piece points out what that propaganda campaign is really for: manufacturing a generation of atomized, angry young men who think "manhood" means doing whatever the state’s armored cosplay squad tells them, to whomever the state points at. Pretti’s version of masculinity—anchored in care and risk, not fear and domination—gets you a bullet from Trump’s federal agents. Theirs gets you a tactical vest, a crusader tattoo, and the moral depth of a Reddit thread.

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump’s fed puppet remembers he’s supposed to pretend to be independent

Stephen Miran, bravely stepping down from one Trump job so he can more efficiently serve Trump in the other one that runs the central bank.

Stephen Miran, bravely stepping down from one Trump job so he can more efficiently serve Trump in the other one that runs the central bank.

Stephen Miran, Trump’s handpicked rate-cut enthusiast, has finally resigned as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers so he can keep sitting on the Federal Reserve board without it being quite so obviously a conflict of interest. He’d been on unpaid leave from the CEA while serving on the Fed, a fun little arrangement that made Democrats point out the blindingly obvious: maybe the guy literally on Trump’s economic team shouldn’t also be setting “independent” monetary policy to match Trump’s public demands for cheaper money.

Miran insists lawyers told him it was totally fine to moonlight as both White House adviser and Fed governor for a few months, but now that his Fed stint is extending, he’s honoring his pledge to the Senate to formally quit the CEA. How noble. He’s been pushing for sharply lower interest rates at every Fed meeting since he arrived, which just happens to align perfectly with Trump’s stated litmus test for Fed officials: must love easy money and doing what Donald says.

Meanwhile, the broader backdrop is Trump’s ongoing hostile takeover bid for the Fed. Jerome Powell is under a criminal investigation from Trump’s DOJ over statements about building renovations — which Powell describes as part of a pressure campaign to bring the central bank to heel — and Fed governor Lisa Cook is also under DOJ investigation while she sues to stop Trump from firing her. A majority of the Senate banking committee, including one Republican who still remembers what separation of powers is, calls the Powell probe political intimidation and wants nothing to do with Trump’s new would-be Fed chair, Kevin Warsh. So yes, Miran technically kept his promise to resign one job. The bigger promise Trump is working on is turning an independent central bank into just another branch of the Trump Organization.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump admin discovers new infrastructure plan: don't build it

Artist’s rendering of a functional train tunnel, a fantasy project set in the distant, post-lawsuit future.

Artist’s rendering of a functional train tunnel, a fantasy project set in the distant, post-lawsuit future.

The Gateway tunnel — the massive, boring-but-crucial project meant to keep trains running between New York and New Jersey instead of, say, collapsing into the Hudson — is about to run out of cash by the end of the week. So the project leaders are doing what every responsible infrastructure planner dreams of: suing the federal government just to get the money that was supposed to be there in the first place.

The Trump administration is sitting on the funds like a cartoon dragon hoarding taxpayer gold, turning a bipartisan, economically vital rail link into yet another hostage in the endless campaign of political retribution and petty leverage. Forget "infrastructure week" — we’ve arrived at infrastructure lawyer up, where keeping the Northeast Corridor from falling apart requires litigation, not leadership.

Source: npr.org

#killing-democracy#money
killing democracy

president extremely mad that tv show used his own words

Donald Trump practicing his ‘defamed victim of the media’ face between court appearances and cable hits.

Donald Trump practicing his ‘defamed victim of the media’ face between court appearances and cable hits.

Donald Trump, currently juggling only several dozen legal problems, has decided the real threat to democracy is a BBC Panorama documentary that aired his 6 January 2021 speech in a way he didn’t like. He’s suing the BBC for multi-billion dollar defamation in Florida, because if there’s one thing the author of “find me 11,780 votes” hates, it’s people allegedly misrepresenting his words about elections.

The BBC has asked the Florida court to hit pause on discovery while it moves to get the case tossed, arguing the court doesn’t even have jurisdiction and that Trump hasn’t actually stated a valid claim. Trump’s lawyers responded that this defense is “untenable,” “misplaced,” and “unpersuasive,” which is bold talk from the legal team that keeps speedrunning sanctions hearings across America. They’re insisting discovery should barrel ahead, presumably so they can demand reams of internal BBC documents to send a very normal, very non-authoritarian message to other outlets: report critically on Trump’s role in January 6th, and you too can enjoy years of ruinously expensive litigation.

The BBC has already apologized for an edit but refused to hand over the cash or admit to defamation, and a trial date in 2027 is floated if this circus survives that long. So the president of the United States is now devoting years of federal-adjacent oxygen to trying to drag a foreign public broadcaster into a Florida courtroom over a documentary about his role in an attempted coup. Free press, meet the guy who thinks ‘accountability’ is what you file when a network’s chyron hurts his feelings.

Source: bbc.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump floats federal takeover of elections, gop pretends to clutch a constitution

John Thune bravely disagrees with Trump’s election power grab, moments before endorsing the rest of the voter suppression agenda.

John Thune bravely disagrees with Trump’s election power grab, moments before endorsing the rest of the voter suppression agenda.

Donald Trump went on Dan Bongino’s ragecast to suggest that Republicans should "take over" elections and "nationalize the voting" in at least 15 places, because nothing says "totally not a fascist" like demanding centralized partisan control of how votes are cast and counted. He wrapped it, of course, in his usual fan fiction about having actually won Georgia in 2020 and promised "interesting things" once the FBI finishes looking at Fulton County records — a man under perpetual investigation treating law enforcement like his personal spoiler alert service. Senate Majority Leader John Thune then emerged from the witness protection program to say he’s "not in favor" of federalizing elections, calling it a "constitutional issue" and praising decentralized systems because they’re harder to hack. Fun twist: this is the same party that’s been screaming for years that those very state-run systems somehow stole the election from Trump while simultaneously insisting they work great, actually. House Speaker Mike Johnson tried to square the circle by saying states should run elections, but blue states are suspicious, and then touted the SAVE Act — a voter-suppression-friendly "solution" to a problem (noncitizens voting) that’s already illegal and vanishingly rare. Meanwhile, Rep. Sanford Bishop said the quiet part out loud: this is an "attempt to intimidate and to try to take over the electoral system" and yet another sign of the administration’s authoritarian drift. Republicans are effectively arguing: states should control elections unless they elect Democrats, at which point Trump wants Washington Republicans to seize the machinery. It’s less a theory of federalism than a theory of power: the rules are "American elections" right up until they stop producing the right Americans.
#killing-democracy#fascism