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The Trump Presidency Timeline

Documenting the chaos since day one. 536 entries and counting.

Category: killing democracy
killing democracy

democrats host the 'real' state of the union while trump cosplays president on tv

Democrats hold a pop-up democracy clinic on the National Mall while Trump delivers his fan fiction version of America down the street.

Democrats hold a pop-up democracy clinic on the National Mall while Trump delivers his fan fiction version of America down the street.

While Donald Trump delivers his carefully focus-grouped fantasy novel to Congress, Democrats and activists are a few blocks away holding the "People’s State of the Union" and describing what’s actually on fire. Lawmakers boycott the official spectacle as protesters wave signs like "No Money for ICE" and "Healthcare Not Warfare", plus a giant poster of more than 30 people killed in encounters with ICE since Trump’s glorious return to power. Senator Chris Murphy sums it up: "these are not normal times, and Democrats have to stop behaving normally"—which, translated, means maybe don’t clap politely for authoritarianism on live television.

Because it’s Trump’s America, a MAGA guy of course tries to rush the stage, gets peeled off by organizers, and Joy Reid has to remind the faithful that "Your bullshit is not welcome here"—a standard that, if applied on Capitol Hill, would leave about twelve people in the chamber. Representative Summer Lee leads chants of "Release the files!" and announces she’s introducing articles of impeachment against Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose big legal innovation is refusing to comply with a subpoena for the full unredacted Epstein files. The crowd points out the obvious: the government seems much more interested in protecting powerful men named in those documents than the women and girls they abused.

Across town at "State of the Swamp"—because subtlety is dead—politicians, activists, and Robert De Niro gather to list all the ways the Constitution is now treated as a suggestion: abortion rights gutted, foreign policy as temper tantrum, environmental protections as corporate party favors. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey calls it a room full of people "trying to stand up for democracy" and "frustrated by the lack of abiding to the United States constitution"—which is a very polite way of saying the president is busy shredding norms while Pam Bondi sits on subpoenaed files and ICE racks up a body count. Trump gets the cameras; the opposition gets YouTube. One of these feeds is describing the actual state of the union, and it’s not the one with the fancy seal.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
killing democracy

trump demands loyalty oath from the supreme court

Trump, moments before demanding the Supreme Court change its name to the Supreme Loyalty Committee.

Trump, moments before demanding the Supreme Court change its name to the Supreme Loyalty Committee.

Trump is heading into the State of the Union like a guy walking into HR after calling everyone there traitors on Facebook. Days after the Supreme Court ruled that most of his tariffs were unlawful in a 6-3 decision, he’ll be staring down Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and Justice Elena Kagan — three of the justices he just branded a “disgrace to our nation” and “very unpatriotic and disloyal to the Constitution.” Unlike Barack Obama, who criticized a decision and not the justices themselves, Trump went full strongman fanfic, accusing the Court majority of being swayed by “foreign interests” because they dared suggest that the president can’t just slap tariffs on everything like he’s rage-clicking Amazon Prime. Awkward twist: two of the justices in that majority, Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, are his appointees, which means even the handpicked judges are failing the Dear Leader loyalty test. Naturally, the justices who did vote to let him keep his legally-flimsy tariffs — Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas — got a presidential gold star and public praise. So the message from the podium this year is clear: judicial independence is for losers, and the Supreme Court’s job is to be a fan section that never claps but always rules his way.
#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump doj forgets there’s a first amendment, gets bench-slapped

Trump’s Justice Department, seen here trying to remember what the Privacy Protection Act is while clutching a hard drive full of a reporter’s sources.

Trump’s Justice Department, seen here trying to remember what the Privacy Protection Act is while clutching a hard drive full of a reporter’s sources.

A federal magistrate judge just yanked the Trump administration’s permission slip to rummage through a Washington Post reporter’s seized data, and you can practically hear the DOJ’s sad trombone from here. Judge William B. Porter said he’ll do an independent judicial review of the material taken from reporter Hannah Natanson, because when the government raids a journalist’s home and walks off with all her devices, someone should probably make sure we’re still pretending to have a free press. The judge very politely wrote that it’s his “genuine hope” the Trump DOJ was really just trying to investigate a single national defense information case and not fishing for confidential sources from a reporter who wrote critical stories about the administration. He then added that he “further hopes” the evidence will support those claims, which is federal judge-speak for: I don’t believe you, but I’m giving you one last chance not to perjure yourselves. Porter also discovered that the Justice Department somehow “forgot” to mention the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 — a law that explicitly limits the government’s ability to search or seize journalists’ work product. Multiple DOJ lawyers, including people “from the highest levels” (hi, Attorney General Pam Bondi), had chances to bring it up. None did. The judge said this “seriously undermined” his confidence in the government’s honesty and “disturbed” his usual deference to prosecutors, which is about as close as a magistrate gets to screaming, Are you kidding me? in open court. While he stopped short of ordering everything immediately returned, Porter noted that Natanson’s rights were “restrained” when the Trump DOJ seized all her work product and devices, cutting her off from her confidential sources and the basic tools of her job. The government’s suggestion that she just “start from scratch” as a journalist earned a judicial eye-roll in writing, with Porter pointing out that this is not how either journalism or the First Amendment works. The bottom line: the court will sift out anything legitimately responsive to the warrant and the rest of the data hoard goes back, leaving Trump’s DOJ with a lot less surveillance loot and a lot more explaining to do.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
killing democracy

trump shuts down dhs, but relax, ice still gets to shoot people

Artist’s impression of DHS during a World Cup security briefing: the lights are off, FEMA’s missing, and ICE is the only one still getting paid.

Artist’s impression of DHS during a World Cup security briefing: the lights are off, FEMA’s missing, and ICE is the only one still getting paid.

The Trump administration’s latest DHS-only shutdown is doing what it was clearly designed to do: starve everything that vaguely resembles public safety or competent governance, while carefully bubble-wrapping ICE so it can keep doing whatever it wants. Congress already appropriated $625m for World Cup security through Trump’s "big beautiful" slush-bucket of a bill, but because DHS funding has been shut off in a standoff over immigration abuses — specifically, ICE agents killing Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis — the money is stuck in FEMA limbo. TSA, Coast Guard, Secret Service, local cops trying to secure five million visiting fans? On hold. ICE? Fully funded, essential, and untouched. Of course. Host cities like Miami, Kansas City, and New Jersey are 100 days from kickoff and still waiting for the checks Trump already bragged about. Miami says losing the funding would be "catastrophic" for planning, Kansas City cops are warning that decisions will be made based on budget instead of threat, and New Jersey already had to kill a major Liberty State Park fan festival. Foxborough, population 18,000, is staring at a $7.8m security hole big enough to drive a FIFA motorcade through, and is now threatening to withhold the entertainment license for matches featuring England and France unless someone finds the money. The town is literally shaking down the Kraft family to cover the gap while DHS sits in the dark. So the United States is hosting a global mega-event with millions of visitors, multiple high-value targets, and four national teams training in Kansas City alone — and the federal government’s message is: we can’t fund your security, but we made absolutely sure the agency that just shot two people in Minneapolis has cash for days. It’s a perfect Trump-era tableau: international spectacle, local governments begging for basic safety resources, Congress using the homeland security budget as a hostage, and the only part of DHS that never, ever misses a meal is the one that keeps leaving bodies on the ground.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
killing democracy

trump’s fcc discovers late-night comedy is a national security threat

Stephen Colbert, apparently now a national security risk, prepares to say something the Trump FCC thinks should only be available on YouTube and in FBI files.

Stephen Colbert, apparently now a national security risk, prepares to say something the Trump FCC thinks should only be available on YouTube and in FBI files.

Senate Democrats are poking around CBS and the Trump-stacked FCC after Stephen Colbert revealed that his network’s lawyers blocked an interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. Richard Blumenthal wants to know whether FCC chair Brendan Carr – a man who treats the First Amendment like a speed bump – and Paramount Skydance leaned on Colbert to keep anything critical of Donald Trump off the air. He’s asking for all the receipts, including any cozy backchannel chatter with Trump’s White House.

Paramount, now run by David Ellison – son of Trump pal and Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison – is trying to swallow Warner Bros Discovery in a $108bn merger that needs federal approval, so the timing of this sudden concern about "equal-time" rules is extremely convenient. CBS swears it’s just following new Trump FCC “guidance” that magically extends equal-time rules to late-night comedy, something nobody thought applied before. Meanwhile, Ellison has installed Bari Weiss to run CBS News, where she’s already killed a 60 Minutes piece on the brutal Salvadoran prison Trump’s been deporting people to. Colbert’s show is being shut down in May after more than three decades, but sure, tell us again how the real censorship is people saying "Happy Holidays."

So to recap: the Trump administration rewrites media rules to muzzle critics, a Trump-friendly media CEO allegedly censors satire while chasing a mega-merger, the FCC chair runs what Blumenthal calls a "partisan censorship scheme," and one of the last big broadcast platforms for mocking the president is being quietly taken off the board. Authoritarianism usually starts with jokes that suddenly aren’t allowed to air; the punchline this time is a corporate merger application.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#corruption#fascism
killing democracy

trump heroically defends stonewall from the terrifying threat of a rainbow

Stonewall National Monument, now proudly commemorating the 1969 uprising by pretending the people who led it never existed.

Stonewall National Monument, now proudly commemorating the 1969 uprising by pretending the people who led it never existed.

The Trump administration looked at Stonewall – the site of a historic queer uprising led by Black and brown trans women – and decided the real emergency was… a Pride flag. So the National Park Service quietly yanked the rainbow flag, shoved an American flag up the pole, and waved a decades-old “policy clarification” memo like it wasn’t just state-sanctioned homophobia with letterhead. This follows their earlier downgrade from the inclusive Progress Pride flag back to the old-school rainbow, plus scrubbing references to trans people from the monument’s website, because why preserve history when you can whitewash it and call it "interpretation"? While Trump signs executive orders declaring the government will only recognize sex assigned at birth, thousands of people are freezing outside Stonewall to re-raise a flag that their own government keeps trying to erase. Democratic lawmakers show up for the photo op, restore the less inclusive flag, and call it a win, while trans activists point out that maybe the people who were actually shot at and beaten in 1969 should be visible in the monument that allegedly honors them. Nonprofits are now suing the administration over the flag removal, because apparently we need federal litigation to let a national monument to a queer riot fly a queer flag. Trans organizers are very clear this isn’t some petty “flag war” – it’s about survival and visibility while Black and brown trans women are being murdered and the federal government pretends they don’t exist. Meanwhile, Interior insists everything is fine, the policy is neutral, and Stonewall’s history is still being "preserved" – just without the people who started it, the flag that represents them, or any acknowledgment that the current administration’s agenda is to erase them from public life entirely. American greatness, now with fewer colors.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#full-stupid
killing democracy

dems pick ex-cia governor to subtweet trump on live tv

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger prepares to explain that no, actually, the country is not supposed to be run like a reality show with nuclear codes.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger prepares to explain that no, actually, the country is not supposed to be run like a reality show with nuclear codes.

Democrats have tapped newly sworn-in Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer and six-term House member, to deliver the official response to President Trump’s State of the Union — because when the president keeps flirting with authoritarianism, you send someone whose old job was literally monitoring unstable regimes.

Spanberger, the first woman elected governor of Virginia after flipping the office from red to blue, is expected to talk about “rising costs, chaos in their communities, and a real fear of what each day might bring,” which is a polite, NPR-ready way of saying: this second Trump administration is going great, thanks for asking. Chuck Schumer framed her as someone who “puts service over politics,” a sharp contrast to a president who puts self-pity over everything, including the Constitution.

The party clearly hopes her purple-state, moderate-turned-"maybe-too-liberal" profile will sell a message of normal governance to a country currently being governed by Truth Social posts and revenge fantasies. Of course, history suggests her speech will be remembered less for its content and more for whether she sips water like Marco Rubio or accidentally recreates Katie Britt’s hostage-video-in-a-kitchen aesthetic. Still, if you’re going to answer Trump’s made-for-TV strongman monologue, a calm ex-spy talking into an empty room is probably the healthiest thing American democracy can hope for right now.

#killing-democracy#trumps-america#losses
killing democracy

trump discovers statistics, immediately lies about them

Trump poses with law enforcement in the Oval Office, bravely taking credit for global crime trends and public health data he’s never read.

Trump poses with law enforcement in the Oval Office, bravely taking credit for global crime trends and public health data he’s never read.

Donald Trump is standing in the Oval Office declaring that US crime is at its lowest level in 125 years, personally brought to heel by his "unwavering commitment to restoring law and order" — a bold claim, especially given the minor complication that reliable federal crime stats don’t actually exist going back that far. Homicides probably are heading toward a 125-year low, according to serious researchers who use actual data, but violent crime overall is merely at its lowest level in decades, not since the McKinley administration. Small distinction, unless you’re using it as a campaign slogan and substitute for governance. The White House, never one to let facts interrupt a good culture-war press release, insists the drop is the "direct result" of Trump’s genius policies: flooding "Democrat-run war zones" with federal resources, deporting "savage criminal illegals," and cheering on cops and prosecutors. Crime experts, meanwhile, gently point out that the decline started before Trump’s second term, follows a post-pandemic normalization after the 2020 spike, and is also happening in other Western countries that somehow manage it without Trump, ICE cosplay, or daily fascist rallies. Researchers talk about things like renewed violence-prevention programs, focused policing, social skills training, CBT, schools and institutions stabilizing after Covid, and even less drinking leading to fewer assaults. The administration hears all that and translates it to: "Trump fixed crime with vibes and deportations." So yes, homicides might soon hit a historic low. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the level of shameless propaganda coming out of the Oval Office lectern, where every positive trend is retroactively turned into proof that the dear leader’s iron-fisted "law and order" crusade is working — and therefore must be expanded.
#killing-democracy#fascism#full-stupid
killing democracy

majority of americans notice raging dumpster fire, remain unconvinced it’s fine actually

Trump preparing for the State of the Union by practicing his favorite line: “Checks and balances are for losers.”

Trump preparing for the State of the Union by practicing his favorite line: “Checks and balances are for losers.”

Turns out when you re‑elect the guy who tried to overturn an election, people don’t feel super bullish about the direction of the country. A new NPR/PBS/Marist poll finds 55% of US adults think Trump is changing the country for the worse — a 13‑point jump from his first go-round in the Oval Office Reality Show. So yes, he’s technically delivering on his promise of “more” Trump; it’s just that most people have decided that’s bad. The vibes are so off that Americans are starting to notice the Constitution bleeding out in the corner. Only 32% now say the system of checks and balances is “working well,” down from 43% at the start of Trump 2: The Indictening. When you spend a year screaming at judges, treating Congress like a suggestion box, and governing via revenge cosplay, people begin to suspect the whole “coequal branches” thing is more marketing slogan than reality. Even inside the cult, the gold paint is chipping. Support for Trump’s policies sits at 27%, and among Republicans, belief that he’s mentally fit dropped from 75% to 66%, while the share who say he acts ethically slid from 55% to 42%. So we’ve reached the stage where a meaningful chunk of his own party thinks he’s unethical and maybe not all there but still perfectly acceptable as the guy with the nuclear codes. American democracy isn’t just under strain; it’s the passenger in the car quietly realizing the driver thinks the guardrails are a suggestion.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
killing democracy

stephen miller, assistant deputy undersecretary of fountains and fascism

Anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis, shortly before the administration decided the First Amendment is optional if Stephen Miller disapproves of your existence.

Anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis, shortly before the administration decided the First Amendment is optional if Stephen Miller disapproves of your existence.

America’s least favorite immigration ghoul has expanded his portfolio. Stephen Miller is no longer just the face of deportation cruelty; he’s now Trump’s Homeland Security Adviser and policy czar, a combo role that basically lets him stick his clammy fingers into anything from "fixing" D.C. fountains to orchestrating federal crackdowns. At 10 a.m. he’s running meetings about sinking suspicious boats in the Caribbean and breaking up cartels; by lunch he’s plotting how to purge ‘embedded liberal culture’ from universities, because nothing says limited government like the White House micromanaging campus ideology. The part where federal agents killed two Americans protesting Miller’s immigration agenda in Minnesota? Just a speed bump on his career path. After Renee Good was shot, Miller went on Fox to reassure ICE agents they had “federal immunity.” When Alex Pretti was killed days later, Miller jumped on X to label him a “domestic terrorist” and “would-be assassin,” despite a DHS preliminary report to Congress that somehow forgot to include any evidence he attacked officers or even had a gun. Those posts are still up, reality be damned, because propaganda ages better than facts in MAGA-land. Even some Republicans have noticed the vibe is less ‘public servant’ and more ‘authoritarian fanfic.’ Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis compared Miller to Wormtongue from Tolkien, which is generous to Wormtongue. The White House response was to roll out a parade of GOP praise, with Ted Cruz calling Miller “a great American” and blaming “haters” for a “deadly invasion” of the country, because when federal agents kill protesters, the real problem is still… the protesters. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt bragged that Miller “brings together all corners of the government” to implement Trump’s agenda at “record speed,” which is a poetic way of saying the guy who helped design the immigration crackdown is now effectively running a good chunk of the security state and culture war machine, answerable mainly to Trump and his own worst instincts. So yes, Stephen Miller is fixing fountains and cameras in D.C. — presumably so the surveillance works better the next time federal agents need to shoot someone and then call them a terrorist online.

Source: nbcnews.com

#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
killing democracy

aileen cannon, chief archivist of the trump crime files

Judge Aileen Cannon, bravely protecting America from the grave threat of knowing what Donald Trump did with the classified files in his ballroom bathroom.

Judge Aileen Cannon, bravely protecting America from the grave threat of knowing what Donald Trump did with the classified files in his ballroom bathroom.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — the Mar-a-Lago HOA’s favorite federal employee — has now formally declared that the American public is not allowed to see what former Special Counsel Jack Smith dug up about Donald Trump hoarding classified documents in his country club bathroom. Cannon blocked the release of Smith’s report, arguing it can’t leave the Justice Department because, according to her, Smith’s appointment was unlawful and the AG’s internal deliberations are just too delicate for democracy.

Recall that Cannon already tossed the entire classified documents case in 2024 by deciding that the special counsel role suddenly violated the Constitution once it inconvenienced the guy who gave her the robe. An appeals court had previously smacked her down for “improperly” grabbing jurisdiction in the Mar-a-Lago search, but she’s back at it, now using a protective order to keep discovery materials — and the report built on them — locked away from both the public and Congress. Transparency is for losers; Trump gets judicial non-disclosure agreements.

Smith told lawmakers in a closed-door session that his team had “powerful evidence” Trump willfully kept highly classified documents after leaving office, stashing them among the golf tees and wedding centerpieces, and then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice when the FBI came calling. So naturally, Cannon ruled that it’s “not customary” to release a report with all that evidence after a case is dismissed — a dismissal she engineered by declaring the prosecutor himself illegitimate. It’s a neat little circle: Trump gets his judge, the judge kills the case, then uses the dead body as proof that no autopsy is allowed.

For extra protection, Cannon had already barred DOJ from even sending the report to select members of Congress in January 2025, just as Trump was sliding back into the Oval Office. The result: a sitting president accused of willfully retaining classified documents and obstructing justice, shielded from public scrutiny by a judge whose opinions are “extraordinarily deferential” to him. Checks and balances have been replaced by one simple standard: if it hurts Trump, it’s unconstitutional.

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

trump fires the cop, the cop runs for congress

David Sundberg, seen here applying for a new job after Trump decided the FBI should only employ people who think the rule of law is optional.

David Sundberg, seen here applying for a new job after Trump decided the FBI should only employ people who think the rule of law is optional.

Trump’s second-term FBI purge is apparently the gift that keeps on giving. David Sundberg, the former head of the FBI’s Washington field office who was dumped just days after Trump retook office, is now running for Congress in Maryland. His alleged crime? Doing his job and not letting MAGA politics rewrite federal investigations like they’re Truth Social posts.

Sundberg’s platform is basically: remember the Constitution? He says he was forced out for refusing to let politics corrupt justice, and now he’s running because he believes in the rule of law, not the rule of one man. Bold concept in 2026. He’s also calling out the White House for weaponizing the DOJ to go after Trump’s enemies list — James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton — while using the National Guard as a domestic intimidation squad. You know, the kind of stuff we used to point at in other countries and call authoritarian.

This is the guy who ran the Jan. 6 investigation, the pipe bomb probe, counterterrorism, SWAT, hostage rescue — basically the sort of résumé you’d want in government if you weren’t trying to turn it into a personal protection racket for Donald J. Trump. Now he’s trying to get into Congress to make it a co-equal branch of government again, which is a polite way of saying: maybe the legislature should stop acting like Trump’s HOA board and start acting like it read Article I.

Meanwhile, the race to replace Steny Hoyer features a retiring party leader’s chosen successor, a former Capitol Police officer who faced the mob Trump unleashed, and now the FBI official Trump fired after he investigated that same mob. The 5th District ballot is starting to look less like a primary and more like a support group for people who’ve personally experienced what happens when you let an aspiring autocrat treat federal power like a family business.

Source: nbcnews.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

fbi director now available for beer league celebrations

US captain Auston Matthews, seen here wondering if accepting a free ride on Air Obstruction of Justice with the FBI director on beer detail is really worth missing NHL practice.

US captain Auston Matthews, seen here wondering if accepting a free ride on Air Obstruction of Justice with the FBI director on beer detail is really worth missing NHL practice.

The men’s Olympic hockey team wins gold over Canada, and Trump immediately dials into the locker room like a divorced dad who just remembered visitation week. He offers them a military plane to attend his State of the Union — because why not use taxpayer-funded hardware as a VIP shuttle service — and promises a White House party and medals like he’s running a carnivals-for-autocrats rewards program. He even jokes he might be impeached if he doesn’t invite the women’s team, a punchline that hits a little differently when you’ve already treated impeachment like a loyalty test. The real star of this civics horror-comedy, though, is FBI director Kash Patel, whose job description apparently now includes "arrange presidential FaceTime," "hang in the hospitality suite," and "shotgun beers in the locker room while pounding his chest to Toby Keith." The nation’s top domestic law enforcement official is literally spraying beer around with the boys while serving as a glorified team liaison, because nothing says independent justice system like your FBI chief doubling as the president’s Olympic hype squad. Official Pentagon bio? Check. Lifetime hockey fan? Check. Guardian footage of him partying like a frat social chair while holding one of the most sensitive posts in the federal government? Also check. The line between public service and presidential fan club keeps getting erased, one locker-room celebration and military-plane photo op at a time.

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy

california prepares to rip trump’s head off, metaphor strictly optional

Adam Schiff, moments before promising that the California grizzly will handle what the Justice Department apparently won’t.

Adam Schiff, moments before promising that the California grizzly will handle what the Justice Department apparently won’t.

At the California Democratic convention, thousands of delegates gathered in San Francisco to announce that they are, in fact, not loving Trump 2.0’s combo platter of mass deportations, weaponized federal agencies, and National Guard cosplay in blue cities. Nancy Pelosi, on her farewell tour as “forever speaker,” summed it up with the subtlety of a brick: “Trump’s reign of terror must end.” Apparently a year of massive healthcare cuts, sprawling deportation raids, and using federal power to punish political opponents has a way of focusing the mind.

Adam Schiff helpfully updated the state flag’s grizzly bear into an explicit warning label, promising that when you poke the bear, it “rips your fucking head off” – which, given Trump’s habit of sending troops into Los Angeles and turning ICE into his personal goon squad, sounds less like rhetoric and more like a public safety announcement. California Democrats spent the weekend bragging about Proposition 50, their redistricting counterstrike to GOP gerrymandering in Texas, while casting the state as both blueprint and barricade against an administration that treats the Constitution like a suggestion and blue states like enemy territory.

In the resistance talent show, Gavin Newsom’s all-caps trolling has made him the would-be presidential frontrunner of the “I learned to tweet from Trump, but for good” school, while Adam Schiff and Robert Garcia work the accountability angle by digging into Trump-world corruption and the Epstein files. The whole scene is a reminder that when a president turns federal power into a retribution machine and sends troops into cities he doesn’t like, you don’t just get policy debates – you get a state-sized opposition party openly talking about a reckoning. Trump calls California a liberal hellscape; California seems increasingly interested in returning the favor, with subpoenas.
#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

america to world: good luck out there lol

Global order, as curated by Donald Trump: a world map broken into puzzle pieces and then kicked under the couch.

Global order, as curated by Donald Trump: a world map broken into puzzle pieces and then kicked under the couch.

The postwar order where the US pretended to care about rules while mostly benefiting from them has been officially upgraded to America Is Mad Now mode. Canadian prime minister Mark Carney shows up at Davos and basically tells the global elite, "Yeah, the US-led system is dead, Washington killed it, please clap." He points out that great powers – read: Trump’s White House cosplay of a protection racket – now use tariffs, finance, and supply chains as weapons, and the old story about mutual benefit is just that: a story.

European leaders, suddenly realizing the arsonist is also the former fire chief, are scrambling. Germany’s Friedrich Merz warns that the rules-based international order is being "destroyed" and that America’s leadership is "perhaps already lost", which is a polite diplomatic way of saying: the guy with the nuclear codes thinks NATO is a gym membership he can cancel. Macron, Starmer and friends are now talking about building up "hard power" and preparing to fight, because nothing says "trusted ally" like having to rearm in case your security guarantor has a tantrum.

The fantasy fix is a "third path": a new liberal, multilateral order that somehow stands up to both Trump’s America and China. Experts like Jorge Castañeda politely label this as "not viable", which translates to: nobody has the money, cohesion, or courage to decouple from Washington’s whims. Instead, the world is drifting into a chaotic marketplace of ad-hoc deals, flimsy coalitions, and hedging strategies – a kind of diplomatic gig economy where everyone’s main foreign policy objective is surviving the next American mood swing. Looming over it all: the prospect of a US that’s not just unreliable, but openly aggressive, weaponizing every tool it built after 1945 and then smashing the toolbox for good measure.

So the grand legacy of Trump’s foreign policy appears to be this: after decades of imperfect but functional global governance, the planet now gets a vibes-based security architecture held together with press conferences, side deals, and the hope that the world’s loudest reality TV star doesn’t wake up tomorrow and decide Article 5 is "for losers".

Source: theguardian.com

#killing-democracy#imperialism
killing democracy

president demands netflix fire democrat or 'face consequences', democracy shrugs

Trump, fresh off promising to stay out of the Netflix–Warner Bros deal, explaining how he’ll totally stay out of it unless they fire the Democrat he’s mad at this week.

Trump, fresh off promising to stay out of the Netflix–Warner Bros deal, explaining how he’ll totally stay out of it unless they fire the Democrat he’s mad at this week.

The President of the United States has now moved on from demanding loyalty oaths from cabinet officials to demanding them from Netflix. Donald Trump jumped onto Truth Social to order the company to dump former Obama national security adviser and current board member Susan Rice or "face the consequences" — a charming phrase when it comes from the man whose Justice Department and regulators are actively involved in approving Netflix's attempted takeover of Warner Bros Discovery.

Having literally promised a few weeks ago to stay out of the Netflix–Paramount Skydance fight over WBD, Trump has of course done the opposite, using his platform to blast Rice as a "political hack" with "no talent or skills" while amplifying Laura Loomer calling Netflix and Rice "anti-American" for the crime of saying that companies who enable Trumpism might one day be held accountable. So the president is now threatening a private corporation’s governance decisions in the middle of a massive merger review because he doesn’t like a Democrat on the board. Regulatory independence? Antitrust integrity? Adorable concepts from a bygone republic.

While Larry Ellison waves around a $40bn personal guarantee like a Bond villain with a cloud-computing hobby, Trump is busy turning federal approval of a $108bn media deal into his own loyalty test. If Netflix keeps Rice, it risks "consequences" from the same government that decides whether it gets to own Warner Bros, HBO, and about half the streaming market. If it caves, it proves that corporate America understands the new rules: cross Dear Leader and your business model gets it. Who needs authoritarian state TV when you can just threaten the platforms until they staff their boards to your liking?
#killing-democracy#fascism#corruption
killing democracy

trump discovers you can rig democracy without bothering to steal ballots

Behold: the House of Representatives, where the real contest isn’t elections, it’s who can draw the most creatively rigged squiggles on a map.

Behold: the House of Representatives, where the real contest isn’t elections, it’s who can draw the most creatively rigged squiggles on a map.

American democracy update: fewer than 5% of Americans now get anything resembling a real say in who controls the House, because President Trump decided the normal once-a-decade gerrymander just wasn’t quite undemocratic enough. So he leaned on Texas to redraw its map mid-decade for five extra GOP-friendly seats, California Democrats replied with their own ballot-measure power grab for five new Dem-favored seats, and suddenly 32 states don’t have a single competitive House race. Bipartisanship lives—both parties can agree voters are a nuisance.

Instead of elections, we now have a national cartography contest where politicians use precision software to carve the country into safe little fiefdoms, then call it representation. Experts say just 18 of 435 House races are true toss-ups, and even if you generously add the “lean” races, fewer than 10% of seats are actually in play. The rest will be decided in low-turnout primaries dominated by the most extreme partisans, producing what one analyst calls the least accountable Congress of our lifetimes. So no, your vote in November probably doesn’t matter much—but Trump’s mid-decade map-tweaking sure did.

Source: npr.org

#killing-democracy#oligarchy
killing democracy

project 2025: the fascist fanfic now running the country

Trump, wearing the world’s loudest hat, explains he’s never heard of Project 2025 while accidentally implementing chapter 7 on live TV.

Trump, wearing the world’s loudest hat, explains he’s never heard of Project 2025 while accidentally implementing chapter 7 on live TV.

Trump swore he had no idea what Project 2025 was, which is interesting given that his second term now reads like the audiobook version. The 900‑page Heritage Foundation fantasy novel about expanding presidential power, purging the federal workforce, and shoving an ultra‑conservative social order down everyone’s throats has apparently become the operations manual on his Resolute Desk. While Trump pretends this is all just vibes and instinct, outside trackers say the White House has already implemented over half of the Project 2025 agenda: halting billions in foreign aid, trying to erase federal DEI programs, turbo‑charging immigration enforcement, and defunding NPR and PBS for the crime of occasionally telling the truth. Meanwhile, the hilariously named Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been unleashed to fire thousands of civil servants and drag independent agencies under tighter political control. Nothing screams "limited government" like a centrally planned purge of anyone who might say "no". Heritage now insists that "all decisions are up to President Trump"—which is a cute way of saying "we just wrote the authoritarian cookbook, we can’t help it if the chef followed the recipe." The White House, for its part, responds with a word salad about making America "the hottest country in the world" by securing the border and cutting taxes, as if mass firings, institutional capture, and dismantling public broadcasting are just quirky side effects. Project 2025 was sold as a theoretical wish list; it’s now a status report on how far the administration has gotten in turning the federal government into a loyalty cult.

Source: bbc.com

#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump wants his own arch of triumph, veterans sue to keep arlington from becoming mar-a-mausoleum

Memorial Circle, currently a solemn historic vista, shown here before the proposed addition of a 250-foot presidential ego obelisk in arch form.

Memorial Circle, currently a solemn historic vista, shown here before the proposed addition of a 250-foot presidential ego obelisk in arch form.

Vietnam veterans and a retired architectural historian have gone to federal court to stop Donald Trump from plopping a 250-foot "Independence Arch" directly into one of the most sacred sightlines in the capital: the view from the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington House, designed after the Civil War to symbolize national unity. The lawsuit, filed in D.C. federal court and led by Public Citizen, politely translates to: no, you may not build a campaign billboard over our dead. The plaintiffs call it a "vanity project" that would desecrate a solemn vista they regularly visit and, as a bonus, potentially create an aviation hazard for planes using Reagan National. Nothing says "thank you for your service" like turning your cemetery into an obstacle course.

The suit names Trump, senior White House officials, and the National Park Service, accusing them of steamrolling multiple federal laws: the Commemorative Works Act (you’re supposed to get Congress’ approval before erecting mega-monuments on federal land), the National Environmental Policy Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act. Translation: you can’t just wake up, point at Memorial Circle, and say "build my arch there" because you saw something cool in Paris once. Meanwhile, the White House is out here insisting this will "enhance the visitor experience" and "give the greatest Nation on earth America the glory it deserves"—which is a very long way of saying Trump wants a giant patriotic selfie frame next to Arlington National Cemetery.

No one at the White House or NPS bothered to respond to NPR, presumably because they were busy measuring how tall a monument has to be for Trump to see it from his motorcade. This legal fight also comes on the heels of another lawsuit over Trump’s plan to replace the White House East Wing with a privately funded ballroom, because apparently every historic site in Washington now has to audition as a backdrop for his next fundraiser. The 250th anniversary of American independence was supposed to be about democracy and shared sacrifice; under Trump, it’s turning into a multi-year experiment in how far one man’s ego can stretch federal law, historic preservation rules, and basic decency before something finally snaps.

Source: npr.org

#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy

cia tradecraft now includes loyalty oaths

The CIA, seen here carefully separating intelligence analysis from politics by handing the red pen to Devin Nunes and Reince Priebus.

The CIA, seen here carefully separating intelligence analysis from politics by handing the red pen to Devin Nunes and Reince Priebus.

The CIA has announced it will retract or heavily edit 19 intelligence reports after a review by the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board — a body now stacked with Trump loyalists like Devin Nunes, Reince Priebus, Brad Wenstrup, and Katie Miller (yes, the Stephen Miller one). CIA Director and Trump appointee John Ratcliffe swears this is all about protecting the agency from bias, which is a bold claim from a crew that treats objective reality like a hostile foreign power.

The offending reports? Analyses on white supremacist women being radicalized, global contraceptive shortages harming economic development, and LGBT activists under pressure in the Middle East and North Africa. So the Trump-era standard for "tradecraft" appears to be: if it makes right-wing culture warriors uncomfortable, it clearly fails the analytic rigor test. The agency insists this purge is just about meeting "the President’s expectations" that the workforce remain independent of any agenda — by obeying his agenda.

Sen. Mark Warner politely called this what it is: politicization of intelligence. Sen. Tom Cotton, meanwhile, applauded the move, accusing Obama and Biden of mixing politics and intelligence, while cheering on a board of hyperpartisan Trump picks literally rewriting the historical record. The intelligence community is supposedly being rescued from bias by the same people who think climate change is a hoax and that the deep state lives under their bed. What could possibly go wrong when national security analysis is run through a MAGA vibes-check?

Source: nbcnews.com

#killing-democracy#national-security