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The Trump Presidency Timeline

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

Category: killing democracy
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
killing democracy

homeland insecurity: everyone’s a terrorist now

Ah yes, the deadly threat of people holding signs while cops in body armor bravely defend America from the First Amendment.

Ah yes, the deadly threat of people holding signs while cops in body armor bravely defend America from the First Amendment.

The Trump administration’s second-term innovation in law enforcement is finally here: if you film ICE, question ICE, or are standing within 200 feet of ICE when they shoot someone, you’re a "domestic terrorist" now. Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem immediately smeared slain ICU nurse Alex Pretti as a terrorist, then tried to quietly walk it back once people noticed that facts were missing. Renee Nicole Good, also killed by ICE, and survivor Marimar Martinez got the same treatment, because why waste a good smear campaign when you can recycle it. Out on the streets, agents have skipped straight to the quiet-part-loud stage. One ICE officer in Portland, Maine helpfully informed a legal observer that by recording him, she’d earned a spot in their "nice little database" and is now considered a domestic terrorist. Meanwhile, a growing pattern in courtrooms looks like a fascist Mad Lib: federal agents shove or assault protesters – including a 70-year-old veteran in Chicago – and then the Department of Justice swoops in to charge the victims under Section 111 for "resisting" federal employees. Over a hundred such prosecutions popped up in the back half of 2025 alone. None of this is happening in a vacuum. Anti-protest bills have been multiplying since Trump first took office in 2017, and continued under Biden, steadily expanding what counts as a "riot" and punishing anyone who has the nerve to slow down a car with their human body. The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law has been tracking this slow-motion bonfire of the First Amendment, noting that lawmakers reliably panic-legislate whenever people actually use their right to assemble—especially after George Floyd’s murder. Now, with Trump back and DHS openly branding dissenters as terrorists, the long American tradition of criminalizing protest has finally found its perfect customer-service rep.
#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

democrats discover they actually own some levers of power

Democratic leaders stare at a stack of unused constitutional tools like it’s an IKEA manual written in Latin while Trump’s police-state fantasy gets fast-tracked by the Supreme Court’s shadow docket.

Democratic leaders stare at a stack of unused constitutional tools like it’s an IKEA manual written in Latin while Trump’s police-state fantasy gets fast-tracked by the Supreme Court’s shadow docket.

Democrats, we are told, are sitting on a dusty, 19th‑century constitutional flamethrower while Trump builds a police-state ICE apparatus and the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc cosplays as “neutral umpires” on the shadow docket. Sidney Blumenthal politely reminds Team Blue that state legislatures can pass formal instructions and resolutions to put members of Congress and local Republicans on record about Trump’s authoritarian immigration crackdown and his open hostility to free and fair elections. You know, actual structural pressure instead of another fundraising email about “democracy on the ballot.” Instead of just watching as Trump’s DOJ and ICE run wild and the Court quietly rubber‑stamps his power grabs in unsigned midnight orders, Democratic trifecta states could hold hearings, drag witnesses into the spotlight, force Republicans to vote on whether they’re cool with a budding police state, and then march those resolutions straight to Washington. The numbers are not small: hundreds of GOP state legislators and dozens of House members in blue or mixed states could be squeezed between the frothing MAGA base and a general electorate that’s increasingly horrified by Trump’s tactics. The article even walks through Pennsylvania, where Josh Shapiro is popular, the GOP holds the state senate by a thread, and several swing House seats depend on Hispanic voters who have turned sharply against Trump’s ICE cosplay. In other words, there is a blueprint for using state power to resist an administration that treats the Constitution like a nondisclosure agreement. Whether Democrats choose to wield it or just workshop another “Democracy Dies If You Don’t Donate $7” subject line is, tragically, still an open question.
#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump demands $1bn from harvard for the crime of not obeying trump

Harvard University, moments before being rebranded as Trump National Patriotic Real University & Casino.

Harvard University, moments before being rebranded as Trump National Patriotic Real University & Casino.

Trump has decided that the appropriate way to handle campus antisemitism concerns is not, say, funding education or security, but shaking down Harvard University for $1 billion in "damages" because it won’t let the federal government run its curriculum like a MAGA school board. After the New York Times reported that the administration had backed off an earlier $200m settlement demand, Trump hopped on Truth Social to declare that, actually, they now want five times more and "nothing further to do" with Harvard. Apart from the part where he keeps trying to control it, obviously. This comes after his administration already tried to cancel $2.2bn in research grants, threatened $9bn in federal funding, demanded the end of DEI programs, ordered the snitching of international students, and even moved to block Harvard from enrolling foreign students altogether. A federal judge has already ruled that one of those little tantrums was unlawful, which naturally prompted the White House to appeal and then escalate the ransom note from $500m to $1bn. Harvard, for its part, is suing to stop the administration from "gain[ing] control of academic decision-making"—a phrase that, in healthier democracies, would be a red flag, not official policy. So the sitting president is now openly treating a private university like a hostile takeover target, using the federal government as his litigation department and research budgets as the crowbar. But sure, tell us more about how this is all about protecting Jewish students and not about turning higher education into a loyalty test for Alan Dershowitz and Turning Point USA.
#killing-democracy
killing democracy

dni tulsi auditions to be trump’s election cop

DNI Tulsi Gabbard, seen here workshopping new ways to merge U.S. intelligence, local election offices, and presidential ego into one seamless constitutional migraine.

DNI Tulsi Gabbard, seen here workshopping new ways to merge U.S. intelligence, local election offices, and presidential ego into one seamless constitutional migraine.

Tulsi Gabbard, now somehow the director of national intelligence in this timeline, decided that the best use of the nation’s top spy chief was to physically hover around an FBI search of a Fulton County election hub looking at 2020 records. She then helpfully dialed up Donald Trump so he could personally chat with the agents doing the search, which we’re told was just so he could say thank you, like a totally normal president who definitely hasn’t been ranting about “getting into the votes.” Absolutely no pressure on law enforcement there at all. Gabbard insists this was all “well within” her authority, because when the law says the DNI can lead counterintelligence on election security, it obviously means “show up at local election raids and act as the president’s concierge.” She also refused to brief Congress beforehand, claiming she didn’t want to “irresponsibly share incomplete assessments,” which is a poetic way of saying: oversight is for suckers. Meanwhile, DOJ’s Todd Blanche is on TV trying to explain that she “wasn’t at the search, just in the area,” and that she’s not part of the investigation, except that Trump wants her on the team investigating election integrity. National security experts are pointing out that the DNI is legally barred from domestic law enforcement and that this sort of stunt is “highly unusual”, which is Washington code for “what the hell are you doing.” Fulton County is now planning to sue the Trump administration, because of course it is. So we’ve got the intelligence chief at a local election raid, the president calling agents on scene, a legal justification written in crayon by ODNI’s own lawyers, and a case about old 2020 ballots that Trump keeps publicly hyping. America’s elections are safe and secure — just as long as they survive the federal government’s attempts to ‘protect’ them.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
killing democracy

judge explains haitians are doctors and engineers, not trump’s racist fan fiction

Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary and part-time phrenologist, explaining that a neuroscientist and a registered nurse are actually "leeches" while a federal judge quietly reacquaints her with the concept of equal protection.

Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary and part-time phrenologist, explaining that a neuroscientist and a registered nurse are actually "leeches" while a federal judge quietly reacquaints her with the concept of equal protection.

The Trump administration’s latest attempt at mass human disposal hit a small snag called "the law" after Judge Ana Reyes blocked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from yanking Temporary Protected Status from up to 350,000 Haitians. Noem had apparently decided that people fleeing a collapsed state wracked by gangs and displacement were actually "killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies" – a description that, awkwardly, turned out to fit the administration’s moral compass better than the plaintiffs.

Reyes, in an 83-page opinion that sounded a lot like "have you people met the Constitution?", pointed out that the Haitian TPS holders in front of her were not Noem’s cartoon villains, but a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s, a software engineer at a national bank, a toxicology lab assistant, a college economics major, and a full-time registered nurse. She also noted it was "substantially likely" that Noem’s decision was preordained by "hostility to nonwhite immigrants" – legalese for "this was a racist stunt in search of a justification."

For now, the termination is "null, void, and of no legal effect," which is also a solid working description of this administration’s moral authority. Meanwhile, the same crew has been busy canceling protections for about 600,000 Venezuelans, 60,000 people from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal, more than 160,000 Ukrainians, and thousands from Afghanistan and Cameroon – all while insisting this is about "security" and not a mass deportation fantasy dreamed up by people who think the Statue of Liberty should carry an AR-15 and a homeowner’s association rulebook.

Attorneys for the Haitian TPS holders warned that if Noem’s termination stands, "people will almost certainly die" – from killing, disease, or starvation. The administration’s position, boiled down, is that this is an acceptable outcome so long as Fox & Friends gets a good segment out of it. The judiciary, for the moment, disagrees. Enjoy the stay of execution while it lasts.

Source: theguardian.com

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

arsonist urges firefighters to hurry up already

Trump, having discovered that shutdowns are unpopular outside his rally merch tent, bravely calls for an end to the crisis his own party keeps manufacturing.

Trump, having discovered that shutdowns are unpopular outside his rally merch tent, bravely calls for an end to the crisis his own party keeps manufacturing.

Trump is now publicly urging Congress to pass a deal to end the partial government shutdown "without delay," which is a bold message from the guy whose entire political brand is breaking the machinery of government and then demanding applause when he stops hitting it with a hammer. After spending years normalizing shutdowns as a bargaining chip and turning federal workers into unpaid extras in his political hostage drama, he’s suddenly discovered urgency.

Speaker Mike Johnson is out doing his best "don’t worry, dad’s got this" routine, saying he’s confident the shutdown will end by Tuesday, while Republicans simultaneously wage yet another performative fight over DHS funding. So we get the usual GOP two-step: use national security as a prop, shut down the government over it, then claim Democrats are the ones endangering Americans. Strong family values, if your family is a crime syndicate.

Meanwhile, Democrats like Ro Khanna are saying they’re a firm no on reopening the government under yet another bad DHS deal, because apparently someone in the building remembers that governing is not supposed to mean "sign whatever the hostage-takers demand." Trump gets to posture as the dealmaker begging for resolution, Republicans get to keep breaking things, and millions of Americans get to learn, again, that their paychecks and basic services are just background scenery in the MAGA cinematic universe.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy

trump loses another war against the scary windmills

Artist’s impression of the grave national security threat: some wind turbines standing 30 miles offshore, menacing radar screens and the delicate ego of one very loud golf enthusiast.

Artist’s impression of the grave national security threat: some wind turbines standing 30 miles offshore, menacing radar screens and the delicate ego of one very loud golf enthusiast.

The Trump administration’s crusade against offshore wind just took another legal faceplant. A federal judge cleared Ørsted’s Sunrise Wind project off New York to move forward, making it the fifth and final offshore wind farm to get court permission to ignore Trump’s December "national security" freeze. Apparently, when you arbitrarily halt multibillion‑dollar infrastructure because the ex-president thinks turbines are ugly, judges eventually notice.

Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that losing access to specialized installation vessels and delaying construction is "irreparable harm"—a concept that somehow eludes the people currently running the Interior Department, who are still hiding behind classified "radar interference" claims while refusing to explain anything in public. Ørsted, which has already sunk more than $7bn into Sunrise Wind, is resuming work immediately but keeping its lawsuit alive, because nothing says stable investment climate like having to sue the U.S. government every time Trump remembers he hates windmills.

Meanwhile, analysts warn that even with the construction freeze lifted, the project now faces a "very difficult and turbulent period" thanks to ongoing Trump obstruction. Sunrise Wind is already about 45% complete and is supposed to power nearly 600,000 homes starting as soon as October—assuming the administration doesn’t invent a new emergency about how offshore turbines might be sending secret love letters to Chinese weather balloons. American energy policy, once again, is being made at the intersection of personal vendetta and executive overreach.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#anti-science
killing democracy

trump’s weaponization czar quietly shuffled to the pardon factory

Ed Martin, seen here auditioning for the role of Chief Revenge Officer, before being reassigned to the presidential absolution punch card desk.

Ed Martin, seen here auditioning for the role of Chief Revenge Officer, before being reassigned to the presidential absolution punch card desk.

The man Trump put in charge of the Justice Department’s "Weaponization Working Group" — a special little revenge squad tasked with going after prosecutors who dared investigate Trump and his buddies — is suddenly not in that job anymore, NBC reports. Ed Martin, a Jan. 6 apologist who openly promised to "name" and "shame" people the DOJ couldn’t actually charge with crimes, is apparently no longer leading the group. Which is awkward, because publicly smearing non-charged individuals is a blatant violation of long-standing DOJ norms, but an excellent fit for Trump’s justice-by-Truth-Social model. Don’t worry, though: Martin hasn’t been exiled, he’s just been promoted to a different part of the loyalty rewards program. A DOJ spokesman says he "continues to do a great job" as pardon attorney — you know, the guy who helps decide which friends, allies, and useful political martyrs get official forgiveness from the same government they tried to overturn. Martin was already wearing both hats after Republicans balked at making him U.S. attorney for D.C., so Trump simply made him pardon attorney and director of the weaponization group by executive order, while handing the actual D.C. U.S. attorney job to former Fox host Jeanine Pirro. Because if you’re going to dismantle rule of law, you might as well let cable news alumni and activist cronies drive. The working group’s mission reads like Trump’s personal enemies list: former Special Counsel Jack Smith, any federal cooperation with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg over the hush money case, Jan. 6 prosecutions, and cases against anti-abortion activists. It’s a state-run grievance committee masquerading as oversight. Now the guy who wanted to run public shaming campaigns against people he couldn’t indict is parked in the pardon office, while no one will say who’s currently steering the weaponization ship. Fascism, but make it HR-compliant.

Source: nbcnews.com

#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
killing democracy

trump tests new idea: democracy without counting people

Census worker’s bag from 2020, back when the government still pretended counting everyone was the goal and not just the people Team Trump finds demographically convenient.

Census worker’s bag from 2020, back when the government still pretended counting everyone was the goal and not just the people Team Trump finds demographically convenient.

The Trump administration has discovered a bold new innovation in representative democracy: don’t actually test how to count people. The Census Bureau’s 2026 operational test for the 2030 census is being dramatically downsized from six states and a national sample to just two sites — Spartanburg, S.C., and Huntsville, Ala. Rural communities in western Texas and multiple tribal lands in Arizona and North Carolina have been quietly dropped, because why waste precious resources accurately counting people who aren’t big fans of authoritarian cosplay?

To really drive home the commitment to accuracy, the administration is also killing plans for Spanish- and Chinese-language online forms, leaving the test in English only. So the communities that are historically undercounted will now be scientifically under-tested as well. At the same time, the White House wants to experiment with replacing trained temporary census workers with already-overloaded USPS staff — because if there’s one institution Trump-world hasn’t finished kneecapping yet, it’s the Postal Service.

Meanwhile, the Census Bureau has refused to brief the members of Congress who are supposed to oversee it, and the administration has disbanded all of the bureau’s outside advisory committees, effectively pulling what one expert calls a “black-out shade” over 2030 planning. Translation: they’re messing with the machinery that decides political representation and hundreds of billions in federal funding, and they’d prefer you not watch while they do it. It’s less a census test and more a dry run for how far they can push voter dilution and structural minority rule before anyone manages to turn the lights back on.

Source: npr.org

#killing-democracy#racism#forever-grifting
killing democracy

trump doj releases half the epstein files, calls it transparency

Todd Blanche explaining that releasing half the Epstein files with 10,000 redactions is actually what "full transparency" looks like now.

Todd Blanche explaining that releasing half the Epstein files with 10,000 redactions is actually what "full transparency" looks like now.

The Trump justice department has announced, with a straight face, that the Epstein investigation is now "over" after dumping 3 million pages of documents and declaring victory, while quietly sitting on another 3 million. Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche insists "we have nothing to hide"—they're just refusing to release half the records, blacking out thousands of names, and ignoring both a congressional subpoena and a federal law that explicitly told them to hand everything over. Totally normal behavior for an administration that keeps insisting the whole Epstein thing is a "Democrat hoax" while Trump’s own name shows up in the files. Democrats like Jamie Raskin, Hakeem Jeffries, and Ro Khanna, plus Republican Thomas Massie (who apparently missed the memo that you’re not supposed to investigate rich predators in this country), are pointing out the obvious: this looks a lot less like transparency and a lot more like a state-sponsored damage control operation for the elite. Survivors are furious that their names were accidentally exposed while the powerful men they say abused them are still buried under redactions and missing documents. Lawyers for more than 200 victims are now in court asking DOJ to take down its document site because the department managed to produce what may be "the single most egregious violation of victim privacy in one day in US history"—but sure, tell us more about how this is all about justice. Meanwhile, Massie is being punished by his own party for the unforgivable sin of wanting "rich men perp walked in handcuffs"—a standard that, if ever actually applied, would turn half of Mar-a-Lago into a work-release program. As Republicans try to bounce him off the ballot for demanding Epstein transparency and Trump yells "hoax" into the void, the Trump administration is doing what it does best: weaponizing the federal government to protect friends, punish dissenters, and bury anything that might threaten the golden boys of America’s ruling class. Elite impunity remains undefeated; the rule of law, not so much.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness