trump discovers article ii means ‘do what i say or i end your career’
File photo of Republican senators bravely defending the Constitution, right up until Trump calls and they remember Article II now stands for ‘If It Irritates Donald, It’s Illegal.’
Trump spent his post–war powers vote evening doing what any totally normal, definitely-not-authoritarian president does: calling up Republican senators and threatening to destroy their careers because they dared to vote that maybe, just maybe, Congress should have a say before he starts a new war in Venezuela. Josh Hawley, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Susan Collins, and Todd Young all crossed the aisle on a procedural vote to advance a war powers resolution, so Trump responded like a calm, rational leader by promising them primary challengers and blasting on Truth Social that they "should never be elected to office again."
On Truth Social, he helpfully explained that the War Powers Act is "Unconstitutional" and totally violates Article II, which in Trump-ese means "I read somewhere that I’m a king now". He also claimed the vote "greatly hampers American Self Defense and National Security," because nothing says "self-defense" like giving one guy unlimited power to launch military action in another country without Congress getting in the way with all that pesky "law" and "oversight."
The best part: some of the targeted senators, like Hawley and Paul, praised him anyway. Hawley declared, "I love the president. I think he’s doing a great job," and floated changing his vote later—as if being personally threatened by your party leader is just a fun little performance review. In other words, Trump openly intimidates legislators for exercising constitutional war powers, calls their vote "stupidity," and the response from parts of the GOP is basically: thank you sir, may I have another.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump turns antitrust into a content moderation service
Trump watches CNN on mute, points at the screen, and tells America’s billionaires, “One of you will make this stop or your merger dies.”
Donald Trump has decided that antitrust law is just another content moderation tool, loudly insisting that CNN "should be sold" as a condition for any Warner Bros Discovery deal. In a stunning coincidence that is definitely not state pressure, one giant media company (Netflix) is trying to swallow Warner Bros Discovery for $82.7bn, while another (Paramount Skydance, run by David Ellison, son of Trump buddy Larry) is lunging in with a hostile $108bn bid and promising "sweeping changes" at CNN—aka giving Trump exactly what he wants. Because nothing says free press like the president personally shopping your news network to the highest sycophant.
Paramount has already run the playbook: it paid Trump $16m to settle a meritless lawsuit over a CBS interview, then installed Kenneth R Weinstein—Trump’s almost-ambassador to Japan—as a CBS "bias" monitor to soothe regulators. An FCC commissioner called this "never-before-seen" government control of newsroom decisions that violates the First Amendment, which is lawyer-speak for "this is straight-up authoritarian garbage". In the fallout, the 60 Minutes producer quit, the CBS News president quit, and Stephen Colbert’s show was cancelled just in time to smooth the path for a merger. In other words: corporate America has discovered that the easiest way to get your deal approved is to pre-cancel the jokes about the president.
Netflix, meanwhile, wants to pretend it’s the "benign" option while having its own track record of folding to political pressure—like yanking a Saudi-critical satire episode and shrugging that it’s "not in the truth-to-power business". Translation: we’ll do whatever the biggest market wants, up to and including memory-holing documentaries and political content that might upset a regime or a regulator. Handing that platform even more control over which stories exist, while Discovery’s news assets are spun into a separate corporate orphan, is how you get quiet, algorithmic censorship: fewer buyers, fewer distributors, and more executives deciding that anything "too political" just isn’t worth the regulatory headache.
The result of either deal is the same: more concentrated media power, fewer independent voices, and a president who has learned he can turn merger review into a protection racket for his ego. Give the Ellison family both CBS News and CNN, or let Netflix’s walled garden swallow another legacy studio, and you don’t just get fewer movies and higher prices—you get a media landscape where challenging journalism and dissenting stories are preemptively killed in the boardroom so they never have to be censored in public. But sure, tell us again how this is all about "consumer choice" and "efficiency" and not about killing democracy with mergers and vibes.
#killing-democracy#oligarchy
smithsonian launches new exhibit: 'donald trump, noted normal president'
The Smithsonian, bravely documenting history by pretending the ‘insurrection’ era was just Trump’s ‘standing near a desk’ phase.
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery has helpfully decided that history is more of a vibe than a record, swapping out Donald Trump’s portrait and quietly deleting any mention of his two impeachments and that minor incident where his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6. The old caption that accurately said “impeached twice” and “incitement of insurrection” has been replaced with a new label so short the outline of the old sign is still visible on the wall — like a ghost of accountability past the museum is desperately trying to exorcise.
This is not happening in a vacuum. After Trump publicly claimed he had fired National Portrait Gallery director Kim Sajet for being too into DEI (in other words: insufficiently devoted to his cult of personality), she resigned under pressure, and now the museum is suddenly “exploring” bland, minimalist “tombstone labels.” Because nothing says independent cultural institution like nervously sanding off the parts of history Dear Leader doesn’t like.
Trump already signed an executive order banning Smithsonian exhibits that “degrade shared American values” or “divide Americans based on race,” which is authoritarian code for: stop telling the truth if it makes my base mad. The National Museum of American History has already scrubbed references to his impeachments, and now the Portrait Gallery is following suit. Meanwhile, the man who added a “Presidential Walk of Fame” to the White House that literally erased Joe Biden is getting exactly what he wants: taxpayer-funded museums turning into a soft-focus propaganda reel where he’s just a regular president who scowled at a desk and not the guy who tried to overturn an election.
But sure, tell us again how this is about neutral “label policy” and not the president of the United States leaning on national museums to rewrite his biography in real time. It’s fine. Democracies don’t die in darkness; they die under new captions that simply note the years in office and politely forget the coup attempt.
#killing-democracy#fascism
america’s institutions saw a bully and chose to eat paste
Michael Steele, standing in front of the rubble of American institutions, politely noting that maybe letting the bully run the school was a bad idea.
Michael Steele, former RNC chair and current "Motel 6 Republican" (he’ll leave the lights on while the party burns down), says the most shocking part of Trump’s first year back isn’t the authoritarianism – everyone knew the guy was going to treat the Constitution like a used napkin – but how fast America’s elite institutions folded. Within six months, Trump had, in Steele’s words, "slapped the crap out of everything and everyone he could" and instead of fighting back, law firms, universities, and media companies basically curled up in the fetal position and asked if they could at least keep the logo.
Trump’s White House went with an everything-everywhere-all-at-once strategy: threaten law firms that opposed him or touched the 2016 investigations with revoked security clearances, locked doors at federal buildings, and shredded government contracts, then force them into "settlements" where they provide pro bono legal work aligned with Trump’s priorities. Because nothing says "rule of law" like making your legal critics work for you for free. Elite universities didn’t do much better: the administration froze more than $5bn in grants and contracts over weaponized investigations into antisemitism, DEI, and alleged liberal bias, and most schools promptly negotiated away funding, policies, and oversight rather than risk losing their federal allowance. Harvard was the notable holdout, which tells you how low the bar is when "didn’t immediately surrender to the autocrat" puts you in the hero column.
There were flickers of a spine: millions joined "No Kings" protests, and Disney backed down and reinstated Jimmy Kimmel after unions, free speech advocates, and hemorrhaging subscribers reminded them that groveling to Charlie Kirk isn’t a business model. But Steele warns that even if 79‑year‑old Trump eventually runs out of breath mid-rant, his entourage of professional autocracy enthusiasts – Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Kash Patel and friends – are more than happy to keep the machinery humming. They know what he wants, they share his diktats, and they fully expect to cash in, directly and indirectly, on the wreckage.
Steele’s sales pitch for the midterms is basically: Congress as accountability tribunal. He argues Democrats (plus whatever’s left of the non-feral Republicans) need to take back the House and make the Senate competitive not for yet another doomed impeachment, but to go after the secretaries, administrators, directors, and advisers who happily turned the federal government into a loyalty test and protection racket. In other words: Trump might eventually leave, but the people who helped him turn law firms into vassals and universities into hostages need to find out that "just following orders" is not a retirement plan.
#killing-democracy#fascism
from stealing pelosi’s lectern to asking for your vote
Florida man discovers that in today’s GOP, stealing the Speaker’s lectern is just the internship before you run for office.
In today’s episode of “The Consequences Were the Friends We Made Along the Way,” Adam Johnson — the grinning Florida man immortalized while strolling off with Nancy Pelosi’s lectern during the January 6 insurrection — is now running for an at-large seat on the Manatee County commission. He filed his paperwork on January 6, the fifth anniversary of the attack, and assures us that’s “not a coincidence” because nothing says solemn respect for democracy like using an attempted coup as your campaign launch party. His logo is literally an outline of the viral photo of him stealing the lectern, turning a federal crime scene into a branding asset.
Johnson, who pleaded guilty to entering and remaining in a restricted building, served 75 days in prison, and told a federal judge it was a “very stupid idea,” has since workshopped his material and now compares the whole thing to “jaywalking.” He insists he was just exercising his First Amendment rights by walking into a restricted building, grabbing government property, and helping a mob shut down the peaceful transfer of power. In other words, the new Republican resume: trespass, obstruct democracy, get a Trump pardon, run for office.
He’s not alone. Jake Lang — charged with assaulting an officer and civil disorder before also getting the Trump magic eraser — is now running for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Marco Rubio, because apparently the bar for federal office is now somewhere under the Capitol steps. The GOP, meanwhile, is slowly rolling out the welcome mat for its pardoned insurrectionists, signaling that January 6 wasn’t a shameful attack on democracy so much as a lightly rowdy networking event for future Republican candidates.
Johnson says he’ll be “more heavily scrutinized than any other candidate” and that this is a “positive” because voters will finally “know” their local politicians. And he’s right, in a way: when your campaign logo is you joyfully committing a federal crime during an attempted coup, the transparency is pretty hard to miss. Republicans used to pretend to back the blue and respect the rule of law; now they’re just cutting out the middleman and running the defendants directly.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump discovers welfare fraud, decides poor kids should starve just to be safe
Trump officials studying a welfare budget line item and asking, "But have we tried just… not feeding them?"
The Trump administration found alleged fraud in Minnesota and responded with the subtle, targeted precision we've come to expect: it froze $10 billion in welfare funding for low-income families and children across multiple states. Because nothing says "good-faith oversight" like using one state's scandal as an excuse to kneecap basic assistance for everyone else.
So now five Democratic-led states are suing Trump for yanking crucial aid, arguing that maybe, just maybe, you can't collectively punish millions of poor families because you discovered fraud in one program. The administration, of course, is selling this as fiscal responsibility — in other words, we found some thieves, so we're shutting down the food supply.
The message from Trumpworld is clear: if there's even a hint of mismanagement, the appropriate response isn't to fix it or prosecute the actual fraudsters — it's to freeze lifesaving funds and dare blue states to sue while kids and families twist in the wind. But sure, tell us more about how this is all about protecting taxpayers and not another round of cruelty-as-policy.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump solves backlog by firing the judges
Immigration court, now available in two modes: closed, or run by whoever Stephen Miller approves this week.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that the best way to handle immigration court backlogs is to just delete the courts. NPR reports that an immigration court in San Francisco is the latest to shut down after the administration fired nearly 100 immigration judges in 2025, as part of an explicit plan to "remake" the system that offers immigrants due process. Because nothing says "respect for the rule of law" like eliminating the people who apply the law.
Instead of hiring more judges or giving the system resources, Team Trump is just kneecapping it and calling it reform. Close the courts, fire the judges, then complain that the system is "broken" and needs more executive power to fix—it's the same old playbook: manufacture a crisis, then demand authoritarian solutions. In other words, they're not streamlining justice; they're suffocating it, one shuttered courtroom at a time.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration
trump’s second term playbook: threats, ice bullets, and ‘surprises’
NPR hosts gamely smiling through another week where ‘politics’ means ICE with guns and a president whose main policy tool is the open threat.
President Trump has apparently decided that his second term needs a brand, and he’s going with “threats, ICE shootings, and whatever else I can get away with before lunch.” NPR politely describes it as a “provocative playbook,” because nothing says stable constitutional democracy like federal immigration agents opening fire in Minnesota while the president escalates his public threats like he’s live-tweeting a mob movie.
The headline combo tells you everything: “ICE shooting in Minnesota; Trump threats and surprises.” In other words, state violence plus presidential menacing is now just a segment on Weekend Edition, slotted neatly between the book club and the weather. The normalization is the point: an armed deportation force, a president who governs by intimidation, and the press gamely calling it a “week in politics” instead of what it is – a slow-motion demolition of basic rule-of-law norms. But sure, let’s see what “surprises” he’s got planned for next week.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
trump ends 'enshittification' by turning tech into a weapon
Donald Trump, casually turning cloud infrastructure into a loyalty test while Microsoft swears the guillotine just "fell on its own."
Cory Doctorow helpfully explains that for decades the US bullied other countries into adopting "anti‑circumvention" laws so American tech giants could lock down their products, spy on users, and hoover up junk fees worldwide. The deal was simple: let Google, Apple, Meta, and friends enshittify your digital life, and in return, the US wouldn’t nuke your exports with tariffs. Then Trump showed up and proved that Washington will burn your house down even if you do everything it wants.
Trump’s tariffs and his "allies are for suckers" trade policy have blown up the old arrangement, and now other countries are finally noticing that letting US companies control their infrastructure means giving Donald Trump a remote kill switch. The International Criminal Court found this out the fun way: after Trump sanctioned ICC officials for daring to issue an arrest warrant for his favorite génocidaire Benjamin Netanyahu, the court’s Microsoft accounts suddenly went dark — email, documents, calendars, everything effectively bricked. Microsoft denies it, but between an international court and a US monopoly that lives off government contracts, we all know who’s more likely lying.
Doctorow’s point: as long as "anti‑circumvention" laws stay on the books, nobody can legally reverse‑engineer and replace the US code that lets presidents and CEOs flip off switches in tractors, courts, or entire governments. Trump has kindly demonstrated that America will absolutely weaponize that power — not just against enemies, but against supposed allies, judges, and whoever else gets in the way. In other words, the only thing worse than living in a world of enshittified tech monopolies is living in a world where those monopolies report directly to Donald J. Trump.
#killing-democracy#national-security#imperialism
trump turns kennedy center into mar-a-logo lobby, opera flees
The Kennedy Center, now doubling as a monument to American arts and one man’s untreated need for constant public worship.
The Washington National Opera is packing up and fleeing the Kennedy Center, because nothing says “national cultural treasure” like Donald Trump wandering in and declaring himself chairman of the board. After his little February coup—where he fired and replaced the entire board and leadership like it was another episode of The Apprentice: Democracy Edition—the opera has decided that maybe being artist-in-residence at Trump’s Ego Center for the Performing Arts isn’t the prestige gig they signed up for in 1971.
Artistic director Francesca Zambello politely calls it a “takeover.” Everyone else calls it what it is: Trump stapling his name to a public institution and watching it crater. Box office revenue has collapsed, with about 40% of seats now empty compared to pre-takeover days, and donors are noping out so fast you can probably hear the shredders from Arlington. Zambello says she’s getting a steady stream of protest messages: people mailing back season brochures in confetti form, swearing they’ll never set foot in the building while the “orange menace” is in charge, and helpfully reminding her that history already did the ‘cult-of-personality-claims-the-arts’ thing once.
In other words, Trump has managed to turn one of America’s premier arts institutions into a half-empty, boycott-riddled shrine to his own insecurity. But sure, tell us again how he’s a defender of Western civilization and high culture, while the actual opera company is literally evacuating the premises.
#killing-democracy#fascism
ice agent kills unarmed mom, trump white house posts the snuff film
ICE agents politely demonstrating that in Trump’s America, traffic disputes come with the death penalty and a White House media rollout.
Renee Nicole Good said "I'm not mad at you" and "that's fine, dude" moments before an ICE agent shot her dead in Minneapolis. So naturally, Trump's White House responded by blasting out the bodycam like a movie trailer, via right‑wing outlet Alpha News, to prove that the calm, unarmed American mom of three was actually a deadly threat. The video shows Good driving so slowly that the agent she "weaponized" her car against barely loses his balance, followed immediately by gunshots and someone calling her a "fucking bitch" as she dies. Truly the language of a terrified public servant in fear for his life.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin insisted that Good "weaponized her vehicle" and that the officer "was in fear of his own life", then helpfully told Americans to "watch this video" and "judge for themselves"—because nothing says we definitely didn’t execute someone for disrespecting us like distributing your own snuff film through a friendly propaganda shop. Vice‑president JD Vance chimed in to declare the shooting self‑defense, call coverage dishonest, and—without evidence—join the administration’s attempt to paint Good as some kind of "domestic terrorist". In other words: she annoyed armed federal agents during an immigration sweep, so clearly, terrorism.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey told ICE to "get the fuck out" of the city where George Floyd was murdered on camera five years ago, thousands of protesters hit the streets, and some Democrats started talking about cutting DHS funding. ICE shooter Jonathan E. Ross, a 10‑year veteran of their special response team (because of course there’s a paramilitary unit), had previously been dragged by a car in a totally different case—so now any moving vehicle, at any speed, is apparently a green light to kill. But sure, tell us again how this is about "law and order" and "Christian" values, as the administration smears a woman whose last words were basically: it’s fine, I’m not mad at you.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
global democracy taps out to trump’s birthday fight night
Dana White, Donald Trump, and Kid Rock walk into a cage fight—unfortunately, it’s not the start of them punching each other into retirement.
France has quietly moved the G7 summit back a day so world leaders don’t have to compete with Donald Trump’s birthday UFC extravaganza on the White House lawn, because nothing says stable democracy like the richest countries on Earth working around an 80-year-old president’s cage-fighting party. The summit in Evian will now run 15–17 June instead of 14–16, neatly dodging the date Trump reserved for his "big UFC fight" slash personal cult rally slash Flag Day cosplay.
The whole thing is basically a loyalty program reunion: Trump and UFC boss Dana White, whose political bromance goes back to the days when Trump gave the then-toxic UFC a home at his casino, are now using the White House as a 5,000-seat combat venue and campaign-stage hybrid. White swears he’s not part of the administration and is totally independent, which is why he keeps showing up at Trump conventions, arranging influencer outreach to young male voters, and turning UFC events into MAGA pep rallies with better lighting.
In his second term, Trump has leaned even harder into the blend of politics, sport, and bloodsport spectacle—dragging senior administration officials to fights, pitching the June 14 card as a centerpiece of America’s 250th anniversary, and using the UFC’s massive online footprint as a recruitment funnel. In other words, the United States is now such a functioning republic that the G7 has to plan around the emperor’s birthday cage match so no one has to choose between discussing global crises and watching the leader of the free world bask in the glow of choreographed violence on his front lawn.
#killing-democracy#fascism
secretary of smackdown suplexes public education
Linda McMahon explains that public schools are failing, moments before attempting to powerbomb the Department of Education through a flaming table labeled "civil rights".
Linda McMahon, Trump’s secretary of education and former WWE executive, has decided the real fake arena isn’t wrestling — it’s public school. She’s promised a "hard reset" of the system where more than 80% of American kids actually learn things, and by "reset" she means dismantling the Department of Education while shoveling taxpayer money into private, religious, charter, and homeschooling ventures. Because nothing says "educational renaissance" like defunding the only system that has to take every kid and replacing it with vibes, pastors, and grifters.
To get this done, McMahon imported at least 20 advisers from ultraconservative think tanks and advocacy groups who think public education is basically Marxism with lunch trays. Their dream? Shrink public schools down to a rump system for the kids with nowhere else to go, while the remaining schools get reprogrammed with a "patriotic" curriculum that offers an "uplifting portrayal of the nation’s founding ideals" — in other words, a Stars-and-Stripes sugar coat that downplays slavery, racism, and discrimination so no one’s feelings get hurt by history.
Meanwhile, the Office for Civil Rights — the place families turn when schools discriminate against their kids — got its own "hard reset": mass layoffs, gutted staff, and a new priority list that focuses on alleged discrimination against white and Jewish students and complaints about schools accommodating transgender kids. Students with disabilities, students of color, and anyone dealing with sex discrimination are being told, essentially, to take a number and then eat it. The department calls this "efficiency" and a rollback of "DEI"; everyone else calls it what it is: using federal power to strip protections from the most vulnerable students while turning public education into a taxpayer-funded church youth group.
But sure, this is all about "empowering states" to "carry the torch" of education. Just don’t look too closely at what they’re lighting on fire.
#killing-democracy#unconstitutional#forever-grifting
strongest economy ever adds 1/4 of biden’s jobs, says guy who shut down government
Graph of US job growth gently rolling over and dying while Trump insists it’s breaking the sound barrier.
Trump’s ‘rocket ship economy’ just posted its big finale for 2025: a mighty 50,000 jobs in December, capping the weakest year of job growth since the pandemic. That’s 584,000 jobs for Trump’s first full year back in office, compared with 2 million in Biden’s last year – but sure, the real jobs were the friends we made along the way.
In October, during the longest government shutdown in US history – a MAGA hostage situation dressed up as fiscal responsibility – the economy shed 173,000 jobs. Data collection at the Bureau of Labor Statistics was literally halted, because nothing says “rebuilding the economy” like turning off the people who count how bad you’re screwing it up.
Unemployment is at 4.4%, job growth is stuck in a “no hire, no fire” coma, and prices are still higher than Trump promised to magically fix. Meanwhile, Trump and his handpicked treasury secretary Scott Bessent are leaning on the Fed for more rate cuts, demanding cheaper money to juice the optics, even as Jerome Powell’s team worries about reigniting inflation. In other words: the White House wants the economic equivalent of Red Bull shots while the adults are quietly hiding the car keys.
Democrats like Elizabeth Warren are pointing out that 2025 was the weakest job growth in over a decade outside the pandemic, but Trump is still out there insisting the economy has “taken off” on his watch. And in a way, he’s right: it has taken off – straight into a wall of higher prices, weaker hiring, and a labor market that looks less like a booming Trumpian renaissance and more like a stalled engine waiting for the next manufactured crisis.
#killing-democracy#money#full-stupid
trump’s favorite hobby: suing the press into submission
Independent journalist stares into camera, somehow still believing in democracy while the president tries to sue the First Amendment for defamation.
Donald Trump retakes office and immediately remembers his first love: revenge against the media. Within a year, he’s barred the Associated Press from the White House press pool, defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, sicced FCC investigations on NBC, and sued the BBC for $10bn because nothing says "stable genius" like assigning Marvel movie budgets to your hurt feelings. ABC and CBS quietly cut multimillion-dollar settlement checks to the sitting president over defamation suits, which is definitely not chilling to every newsroom lawyer in the country, no sir.
Legacy outlets, already bathing in record-low trust, respond with the courage of a damp paper towel. CNN dismantles its race and equity team, NBC nukes the desks covering marginalized communities, and CBS hands the editorial keys to Bari Weiss, who promptly kills a 60 Minutes segment about a brutal Venezuelan prison holding Trump deportees. In other words: the big corporate newsrooms are discovering that when you build a business model on access to power, you eventually become its PR department.
Into this flaming dumpster strolls independent journalism. Marisa Kabas’s newsletter, The Handbasket, breaks the scoop that OMB quietly froze federal grants, then exposes Trump’s order banning trans women from US Tennis Association competition and the elevation of conspiracy nut Gregg Phillips to a top FEMA disaster role—because who better to manage national emergencies than a professional election denier. She sums up the moment: "I’m not answering to anyone." That, apparently, is now a radical stance in American journalism.
As national outlets "capitulate" to government demands about how to cover the administration, more than a third of journalists flee into independent work, trying to do basic accountability reporting while the White House and its billionaire media buddies work overtime to turn the free press into a loyalty program. The good news: independent reporters are building trust and audiences by actually confronting power. The bad news: they’re doing it while the government defunds public media, sues critics into oblivion, and turns regulatory agencies into Trump’s personal content-moderation squad. But sure, tell us again how the real threat to democracy is college kids protesting on TikTok.
#killing-democracy#fascism
doge saves taxpayers billions by wasting $10bn on not working
DOGE headquarters, where "efficiency" means paying thousands of people not to work while you dismantle every system that could possibly hold you accountable.
The "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) has discovered a bold new way to streamline government: spend $10bn paying people to stay home while you dismantle the agencies they work for. According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), the Trump administration parked more than 154,000 federal workers — about 7% of the civilian workforce — on extended paid leave in 2025, in what appears to be a massive, systemic violation of the Administrative Leave Act. In other words, Trump’s idea of efficiency is defund the work, keep the workers, bill the taxpayers.
Congress passed the Administrative Leave Act in 2016 to stop agencies from using indefinite paid leave to sideline whistleblowers and other inconvenient employees. The Trump team’s response? Simply refuse to implement the rules, then invent new flavors of paid leave that conveniently don’t count toward the law’s 10-day limit. As Stanford researcher Madeline Materna notes, these bespoke leave categories “totally gut the law” — because nothing says "constitutional governance" like rewriting statutes by memo and calling it compliance.
Meanwhile, the Anti-Deficiency Act says you can’t spend money on employees who shouldn’t be on leave, which makes this whole operation look a lot like a giant, slow-motion illegal expenditure. But accountability requires a GAO finding, a Merit Systems Protection Board that actually functions, and a Justice Department willing to prosecute its own political bosses. The Trump administration helpfully solved that problem by firing all the Democrats on the MSPB, leaving it without a quorum and creating what experts politely call an "accountability black hole" and what normal people might call a protection racket with HR paperwork.
Peer has gone to GAO and the Office of Special Counsel, but every potential path to justice runs through a broken or captured institution that Trump’s people already kneecapped. Managers can claim they were "just following the rules" — the same rules Trump’s crew rewrote to evade the law in the first place. So the federal government blew $10bn to keep environmental justice staff and thousands of others in legal limbo, understaffing agencies like the National Park Service, all while DOGE bragged about cutting waste. Government by Trump: turn the law into a suggestion, oversight into a farce, and taxpayer money into a slush fund for your war on the civil service, but sure, tell us more about "fiscal conservatism."
#killing-democracy#corruption
jd vance auditions to be trump’s mini-me fascist-in-chief
JD Vance, in full Trump cosplay, explains that the real threat isn’t an ICE officer killing a U.S. citizen—it’s journalists who have the nerve to report on it without clearing their copy with the vice-president’s fantasy terror network first.
JD Vance finally found a way to get Daddy Trump’s attention: not by helping run a military operation in Venezuela like Marco “Delta Force Cosplayer” Rubio, but by turning the White House briefing room into a one-man show trial for the press. An ICE officer kills Renee Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother in Minneapolis, video strongly suggests she was driving away, the investigation isn’t done, and Vance’s response is to declare it an “attack on law and order” and to smear her as part of a mysterious “leftwing domestic terror network” he can’t actually describe. But sure, tell us more about how you’re the sober, serious one.
Vance, in full Trumpy cosplay (blue suit, white shirt, red tie, dead-eyed rage), ranted that the media’s coverage is an “absolute disgrace,” accused reporters of helping incite violence against law enforcement, and promised that “part of our investigatory work” is going to be “getting to the bottom” of this supposed leftwing-media conspiracy. In other words: the vice-president just floated using state power to investigate journalists for the crime of not immediately endorsing an ICE shooting as heroic self-defense. Because nothing says “toning down the temperature” like hinting you’ll sic federal investigators on the press.
He repeatedly asserted, as fact, that Good tried to ram the officer with her car, despite video and an active investigation that say otherwise, then shamed reporters for “repeating the lie that this is some innocent woman who was out for a drive.” When asked who exactly is behind this grand leftwing terror network, Vance admitted they don’t know yet—but insisted it exists anyway and that the media is “participating in it.” So: no evidence, no names, no facts, just a ready-made pretext for crackdowns on dissent and a narrative where every dead civilian is either a terrorist or a prop for the “corporate media.”
Meanwhile, Trump—who supposedly wants to “tone down the temperature”—went online within hours to call Good “very disorderly” and accuse her of “violently, willfully, and viciously” trying to run over the ICE officer. This is the same guy who responded to George Floyd protests with rubber bullets and teargas, but now we’re all supposed to pretend this administration is worried about responsible rhetoric. Vance’s performance was less a press briefing and more a 2028 campaign ad: a younger, smoother, more disciplined Trumpism that skips the clown show and goes straight to the menace. Rubio may have the coup cosplay in Venezuela, but Vance just showed he’s ready to run the domestic propaganda and repression desk back home.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump discovers infrastructure, immediately vetoes it out of spite
House Republicans bravely attempt to stand up to Trump, then remember retribution is bad for their primary and sit right back down.
House Republicans just discovered there are limits to their love for infrastructure: specifically, when Donald Trump gets mad. The GOP-controlled House failed to override Trump’s first two vetoes of his second term—both of them on Republican bills that had sailed through Congress by voice vote, because nothing says "stable governing party" like unanimously backing a bill and then crumpling the minute Dear Leader gets jealous.
The first bill would have helped rural southeast Colorado communities actually get clean water by finishing a long-delayed federal pipeline. Trump killed it with a veto message about "massive" costs and "fiscal sanity"—a touching concern from the guy who ran trillion‑dollar deficits and hands billionaires tax cuts like party favors. Rep. Lauren Boebert, whose district needs the water, gently suggested this might actually be retaliation because she was one of four Republicans who forced a vote to release the Epstein files. In other words, Trump is allegedly blocking drinking water for his own voters because she hurt his feelings—but sure, it’s about the deficit.
The second veto was aimed at the Miccosukee Tribe’s effort to expand the lands it manages in the Everglades. Trump, who is furious they opposed his "Alligator Alcatraz" migrant detention camp, framed it as refusing to fund "special interests" that aren’t aligned with his immigration policies. Translation: if a tribe objects to your swamp gulag, no land for you. The House, which had supported the bill unanimously before, suddenly couldn’t find two-thirds of its spine to override. So the lesson of the day: clean water and tribal land are optional, but absolute loyalty to Trump’s grudge list is mandatory.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump bombs venezuela, grand rapids cops arrest the preschool teacher
Local police bravely neutralize the threat of a preschool teacher with opinions while the administration bombs another country for its oil.
The Trump administration helps kill around 100 people in an attack to snatch Nicolás Maduro, and back home the big security threat turns out to be… a 22-year-old preschool teacher with a microphone. Jessica Plichta joins a Grand Rapids protest against Trump's Venezuela adventure, gives a live TV interview, and—what do you know—out of roughly 200 protesters, she’s the one immediately grabbed and cuffed on camera. Because nothing says "land of the free" like arresting the person criticizing your war in real time.
Plichta had just returned from Caracas, where she visited communes, met activists, and claims she even spoke with Maduro, after Trump ordered Venezuelan airspace "closed in its entirety" to choke the country. She comes home, does report-backs, helps found Grand Rapids Opponents of War, then dares to speak against a rich man’s war for oil—and suddenly she’s hit with the usual protester starter pack: “obstructing a roadway” and “failure to obey a lawful command.” In other words: we couldn’t charge you with treason, so here’s a traffic ticket with handcuffs.
Local organizer Emerson Wolf points out this isn’t a one-off; Grand Rapids police have a charming habit of either arresting prominent activists during actions or dropping citations months later to criminalize dissent, all while pretending it’s about "safety." Meanwhile, ICE just killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, and protesters across the country are in the streets being told their "sacred free speech" comes with a side of bullets and misdemeanors. But sure, tell us again how this isn’t about crushing opposition to Trump’s foreign policy.
Plichta and Wolf both see Venezuela as a five-alarm warning about where this is heading: war abroad, repression at home, and a government openly willing to trade bodies for oil and rare earths. The good news for the would-be authoritarians is that every time they arrest a Jessica on live TV, they help create a thousand more. If they don’t want people marching in the streets, they might want to stop giving them such excellent reasons to be there.
#killing-democracy#imperialism#lawlessness
pennsylvania governor announces he’d like to keep cleaning up trump’s mess
Josh Shapiro announces he’s running for re-election, presumably so there’s at least one adult left to sue the White House every time Trump mistakes Pennsylvania’s budget for his Mar-a-Lago rewards program.
Josh Shapiro is running for re-election in Pennsylvania, which in the Trump era means he’s applying for another four years of being the guy who sues the federal government every time Donald decides to use the state budget as his own personal punishment fund. The once-rumored Harris running mate is now doing the 2026 version of a presidential audition: win a swing state that Trump carried in 2024 while dodging both MAGA rage and progressive fury over his very enthusiastic support for Israel as Gaza is turned into rubble.
Shapiro’s pitch is basically, “I got more school funding, protected abortion, and didn’t set anything on fire, please clap.” His reward for this pragmatic-governor routine? Progressives yelling that he’s too cautious, Harris writing in her memoir that he wanted to be co-president, and Shapiro calling that account “complete and utter bullshit” because nothing says ‘unity ticket’ like publicly accusing the former VP of lying to sell books.
More relevant to our ongoing constitutional bonfire, Shapiro has been one of the few Democrats willing to say the quiet part loud about Trump’s foreign-policy-by-kleptocracy. He sued over Trump’s moves to withhold state funds, called his tariffs “reckless” and “dangerous,” and went on Pittsburgh radio to describe Trump’s kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro as “crazy” and basically a giant nation-building boondoggle whose main deliverable is Venezuela’s oil funneled straight to Trump’s friends. In other words: Shapiro is running for governor, but the actual job description is ‘local firewall against an increasingly unhinged, oil-thirsty federal crime syndicate.’
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
