The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Florida’s lovingly nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” turns out to have been less a detention center and more a DIY torture pop-up in the Everglades, according to a new report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general. Inspectors found that detainees were repeatedly locked in outdoor metal cages about the size of a phone booth — roughly 18 square feet, less than half of ICE’s own minimum standard — and then baked in Florida heat while mosquitoes did the rest. ICE rules say you can’t do that, which the Trump administration and Ron DeSantis’ crew apparently read as a suggestion, like putting your tray table up before landing.

The facility — which DeSantis ran for the federal government and bragged had processed more than 21,000 immigrants in a year — also featured overcrowding, limited recreation, filthy kitchens, broken phones that stopped detainees from calling lawyers or family, and reports of guards withholding food and clean water until people signed English-language documents they couldn’t read. So, a classic freedom-and-liberty operation. When Amnesty International first documented the cages, DeSantis’s spokesperson called it all “fabrications” and a “politically motivated attack.” The DHS watchdog has now confirmed the abuses still continued a month after those denials, proving once again that the only thing more durable than the Everglades ecosystem is Republican lying about immigrant abuse.

Staff at Alligator Alcatraz insisted to inspectors that these tiny metal boxes were just “calming areas” where detainees asked to go for some alone time, like a spa day but with shackles and heat stroke. Inspectors, spoilsports that they are, noted locking mechanisms, documented use of the cages as discipline for people who “failed to comply with a lawful command,” and politely observed that using miniature steel coffins on living humans is “unprecedented” in ICE facilities and a “significant risk” to health and wellbeing. They made 10 recommendations, including “stop the cages,” all of which are now moot because the camp closed in June — officially due to hurricane season, unofficially because spending $1.2 million a day to torture people in wetlands was becoming a political and legal sinkhole.

Now DHS, FEMA, and Florida are facing an amended lawsuit from environmental groups over the damage the camp did to the Everglades, while the human damage is cataloged in government PDFs and trauma. The Trump administration gets a rare rebuke from its own watchdog, DeSantis gets caught lying about human rights abuses he outsourced to private guards, and ICE gets yet another entry in its "we swear we have standards" scrapbook. The cages may be gone, but the blueprint for weaponizing disaster infrastructure as an ad hoc torture camp is still very much on the shelf.

Trump has discovered the ultimate AI safety framework: no guardrails, just a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT” — a description he helpfully provides of himself, in case anyone missed the last ten years of his posting. While AI researchers are out here saying things like “this might kill us all,” the White House strategy is basically, "Have you tried trusting my gut?"

Instead of independent oversight, Trump brags that his administration has already used its "tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power" to stop AI "people" like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei from doing "bad, or potentially bad, 'things.'" So no guardrails for the tech, just more threats for the humans who question it. He denounces concerns about AI and data centers as a "SICK conspiracy" and waves the usual magic word — China — to justify whatever he wants: WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!

Out in the real world, 70% of Americans say they’re more worried than excited about AI, including most Republicans, and local communities don’t want giant AI data centers dropped on their heads. AI researchers are resigning and publicly warning that companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are "gambling with our lives" and that AI could "kill all humans." The bipartisan political response is, broadly: maybe we should slow down and think. The Trump response is: people raising safety concerns are "Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers" who should “BEWARE!”

JD Vance tries a more polite version of the same thing, saying he’s "weirded out" that AI companies are asking for regulation and hinting it’s some kind of Trojan horse, while still insisting the administration wants to "regulate smartly" — which, in this context, seems to mean "no rules for the tech, endless discretionary punishment power for the president." So to recap: the people building AI say it might end civilization, the public doesn’t want it in their backyard, and Trump’s plan is to strap the whole thing to his ego, floor the gas, and threaten anyone who reaches for the brake.

Democrats are rolling out the "New Battlefield Project," which is a very dramatic name for what used to be called "basic election administration before one party went full coup-curious." Tens of thousands of volunteers in blue vests will fan out to about a quarter of the country’s 95,000 polling places to do wild, extremist things like: help people find the right location, explain provisional ballots, and write down when Trump’s goons try to scare voters away.

This whole operation exists because the Trump administration refuses to rule out sending federal agents to cities on election day and Trump-world voices keep fantasizing about immigration agents at the polls. Homeland security secretary Markwayne Mullin — whose job apparently now includes live-testing the boundaries of the Voting Rights Act — says ICE doesn’t normally patrol polling places, but hey, if they have a warrant or feel like there’s a "threat," who’s to say?

So Democrats are telling people to "bank their vote" early, before Trump wakes up one morning, declares a national emergency, and decides democracy is suspended until he feels properly adored again. Alongside that, they’re building a "democracy defense network" to track disinformation, dark money, AI manipulation, and old-school election subversion — basically a volunteer fire brigade trying to hold back a five-alarm authoritarian arson spree with clipboards and smiles.

Lonnie G. Bunch III, the first Black and first actual historian to run the Smithsonian, is stepping down just as the Trump administration is trying to convert the place from the nation’s attic into a taxpayer-funded MAGA scrapbook. The Department of the Interior helpfully sent a threatening letter warning that the National Museum of American History is infected with a "radical institutional ideology" — also known as accurate history — because it mentions awkward little details like Benjamin Franklin enslaving people and Europeans showing up as a colonizing force, not a tour group.

The White House has already rolled out an executive order charmingly titled "Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution," which translates to: museums must stop teaching history and start doing vibes. Under the new rules, the Smithsonian’s job is to produce "patriotic admiration" for "great men" and a "shared American identity" built on praising founders while quietly shoving slavery, genocide, disenfranchisement, and white supremacist terror off behind the gift shop. Fascist regimes have literally written this script before — Hitler complained Weimar history education didn’t generate enough "national enthusiasm" and demanded a cult of heroic leaders. The Trump crew apparently read that part and thought it was a how-to manual.

The same administration screaming about "indoctrination" in K–12 is simultaneously demanding that museums serve up state-approved propaganda and helping restore Confederate traitors to places of honor, because nothing says "patriotic education" like celebrating the guys who killed Americans to preserve slavery. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court keeps whittling down voting rights while the administration works overtime to erase the history of disenfranchisement that might make people notice. As Kimberlé Crenshaw and Jason Stanley point out, this isn’t just bad curriculum design; it’s the classic playbook Du Bois described — use feel-good lies about the past to justify rolling democracy backwards and reinstalling white rule.

So when the country’s flagship museum system is told its job is to make the powerful feel heroic and the oppressed invisible, and its historian-in-chief exits under that cloud, that’s not culture-war fluff. That’s the state seizing control of the story to make sure the next time we slide "back towards slavery," the official tours will say it’s freedom. Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it; those who refuse to teach it accurately are clearly planning the rerun.

James Talarico, the Democrat running for Senate in Texas, showed up in Dallas with an Epstein survivor and 3.5 million pages of DOJ files to ask a very unfair question: why is Ken Paxton, the state’s top law-enforcement officer, ghosting victims of a serial child predator? Survivors reportedly asked to meet with Paxton about using his office to help pursue justice; Paxton’s response was to demonstrate his famous “law and order” brand by doing absolutely nothing and hoping everyone gets distracted by the Trump convention across town.

The exhibit of Epstein files, which critics say both doxxes some victims and still manages to hide key material, has become a backdrop for Democrats pointing out the obvious: when allegations reach rich, connected men like Donald Trump and their political ecosystem, the justice system suddenly develops a chronic fear of stairs. Survivor Sharlene Rochard politely demanded that investigators follow the evidence all the way to powerful people, Republican or Democrat — which in MAGA country is tantamount to suggesting witchcraft.

While Talarico and others talked about accountability for sexual abuse, Trump was inside promising Americans a totally-not-a-bribe $5,000 “dividend” if Republicans win Congress, adding one more imaginary payout to the growing pile of fantasy checks he’s written on the full faith and credit of his ego. Democrats like Beto O’Rourke and Robert Garcia called it what it is — a desperate gimmick from a “known liar” whose previous tariff, Doge, and even Air Force One “dividends” all vanished on contact with reality. Meanwhile, Ken Paxton continues to demonstrate that in Trump’s America, justice isn’t blind — it just looks away when the predator has the right friends.