The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Wyoming Republicans have decided that once you take out Liz Cheney for the crime of acknowledging a coup attempt, you deserve a promotion. Rep. Harriet Hageman, the Trump-anointed Cheney slayer, just won the GOP primary for the state’s open Senate seat in a place where Democrats haven’t been seen since rotary phones were cutting-edge technology.

Trump, naturally, bestowed his “complete and total endorsement” from the safety of Truth Social, calling Hageman a “TOTAL WINNER!” which, in this era, mostly means she didn’t vote to impeach him or investigate an attack on Congress. Her main credential isn’t policy, lawmaking, or oversight; it’s demonstrating that if you cross Trump on impeachment or Jan. 6, you get replaced by someone who will never make that mistake again.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis is retiring, allegedly because she doesn’t have six more years in her, and Wyoming seems poised to swap a standard-issue conservative for a more reliable cog in the Trump loyalty machine. With just under 577,000 people, the least-populated state in the country is on track to send another guaranteed vote for whatever election-denying, accountability-dodging agenda Trump world dreams up next. Representation: two senators per state, one functioning democracy not included.

Florida Democrats briefly tripped and fell into something resembling democracy when Angie Nixon, an underfunded democratic socialist who actually organizes and gets arrested for protesting DeSantis’s gerrymander, beat Alexander Vindman and his $16m nostalgia tour for that one time he mildly inconvenienced Trump. Turns out voters preferred the person who shows up to their neighborhoods over the guy who wouldn’t even show up to a debate.

Across the state, the GOP’s gerrymandered wonderland is working as designed: Debbie Wasserman Schultz smoothly relocates to a brand-new, safely blue district carved by Republicans, because when DeSantis and friends warp the map, establishment Dems don’t fight it, they just shop for the best seat. Black voters get a plurality district that used to be represented by a Black Democrat; now they get a white DNC lifer who’s already learned the first rule of Florida politics: never let a racist map go to waste.

Meanwhile, Jared Moskowitz, the centrist who proudly became the first Democrat to back Trump’s "Department of Government Efficiency" — the DOGE fever dream that gutted USAID like it owed Elon Musk money — cruises to victory over a democratic socialist calling for healthcare and free college. Moskowitz also backed a Republican law supercharging ICE’s detention powers and votes against restraining U.S. military adventures in Iran, because nothing says "moderate" like cheering on deportation squads and open-ended war.

So Nixon’s win is the glitch in the system: a grassroots left candidate emerging from a landscape engineered for oligarchy, gerrymandering, and bipartisan enthusiasm for Trumpworld’s demolition of government. One race hints at resistance; the rest of the map is still MAGA-flavored, corporate-approved, and very efficient at making sure power never accidentally ends up with the people.

The Trump administration has decided that if you can't beat war-crimes charges, you should just sanction the people trying to bring them. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced new sanctions on International Criminal Court President Tomoko Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, because their unforgivable offense was doing their jobs and investigating alleged atrocities by U.S. and Israeli officials. When your foreign policy doctrine is "American exceptionalism, but make it untouchable by law," this is what passes for statesmanship.

Rubio helpfully explained that the ICC is a "corrupt and fatally politicized" court that "assaults state sovereignty" by investigating genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. So naturally, the U.S. is freezing the judges' assets, banning their travel, and cutting off basic financial services—because nothing says "rule of law" like using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to financially kneecap foreign judges who had the audacity to treat American and Israeli officials like they’re subject to the same rules as everyone else.

While Trump sulks silently in the background, Rubio is out front demanding all 125 ICC member states withdraw and join his "dismantle it brick by brick" tour. Human rights groups and even ICC judges are now suing the administration in U.S. courts, arguing that Washington is illegally weaponizing sanctions to punish and coerce independent jurists. Human Rights Watch summed it up: the administration is chasing a global "get-out-of-jail-free card" for anyone it likes. The message to the world is clear: commit war crimes, get political cover; investigate war crimes, get sanctioned.

ABC just sued Brendan Carr’s Trump-era FCC for turning broadcast licenses into a political obedience test. The network says the administration forced its eight local stations into early license renewal as part of a long-running campaign to punish ABC for the unforgivable crime of airing journalism the White House doesn’t like. Apparently the first amendment now comes with an asterisk: void where Trump is mad at your coverage.

Former FCC officials from both parties have already sounded the alarm, warning that this stunt is meant to send a “chilling message” to every broadcaster: criticize the president, and your license suddenly becomes very theoretical. Meanwhile, conservative attack shops like the Center for American Rights and the Media Research Center have helpfully filed petitions urging the FCC to yank ABC’s licenses because its reporting is “politically biased” — which is rich coming from people whose primary contribution to media ethics is yelling “fake news” whenever facts are inconvenient.

So we’ve arrived at the part of the show where the federal communications regulator is allegedly being repurposed as a content police force, and license renewals hinge on whether your anchors sufficiently flatter Dear Leader. State TV without the efficiency, censorship without the paperwork, and a nice little message to every newsroom in America: your broadcast future depends on how generously you edit the president’s feelings.

The Trump White House, ever allergic to accountability, has now upgraded from screaming "fake news" to threat-modeling a reporter’s kids. CNN’s Kristen Holmes asked Donald Trump a basic question: respond to Jon Ossoff’s criticism that he’d rather swan around in his Qatar-gifted flying palace with Natalie Harp than do his actual job. Trump responded like any serious statesman: by calling Ossoff a "Pee-wee Herman lookalike" and barking "Quiet, quiet, quiet" at Holmes before defaulting to his favorite line of constitutional theory: "You’re fake news."

The White House “rapid response” account then heroically stepped in to defend the honor of the man with the nuclear codes, calling Holmes a "disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment" and labeling journalists "scumbags" for the crime of quoting a sitting senator to the president. Not satisfied with just professional smears, they went full authoritarian fan fiction, publicly telling Holmes that one day her children will find her "disgusting and inhumane question" and be "sickened and embarrassed" by their mother. Nothing says "confident democracy" like state power being used to intimidate a reporter by explicitly weaponizing her kids.

Communications director Steven Cheung, presumably paid with your tax dollars, joined the statesmanlike discourse by calling Ossoff "Jon Jackoff" and "the biggest cuck loser in politics" on social media, because apparently the administration’s official messaging strategy is now 4chan comments with a press badge. This all slots neatly into Trump’s long record of misogynistic attacks on women in the press corps—calling a Bloomberg reporter "piggy", branding CNN journalists "corrupt", and bailing on NBC’s Meet the Press after deciding the moderator was "crooked or stupid". The free press asks questions; the Trump White House responds by trying to publicly shame and endanger them. Truly, killing-democracy in real time, one tantrum at a time.

Donald Trump, noted expert in third-hand anecdotes, announced that the USS Abraham Lincoln is "beautifully maintained" and "beautifully taken care of" because an unnamed retired admiral allegedly told him so. Actual reporting from Navy Times and Stars and Stripes — you know, the outlets that talk to people who have actually been on the ship — describes water shortages, plumbing failures, and multiple sailors so desperate during this record-breaking deployment in the Strait of Hormuz that they’ve tried to go overboard. But Trump has "other people" (also unnamed, of course) who supposedly proved it’s all fine, so reality loses.

When a CNN reporter dared to ask about this tiny discrepancy between "everything is beautiful" and "my loved one is trying not to jump off a nuclear carrier," Trump snapped at her to "be quiet" and dismissed it all as fake news. The commander-in-chief’s message to sailors stuck at sea for over 250 days and their families watching them crumble under the Iran war’s strain is crystal clear: your mental health crisis is an inconvenience to his narrative.

Families of Lincoln crew members, who grew up being told to respect the military’s sacrifices, are now watching the president and defense secretary Pete Hegseth call their relatives’ experiences lies. One sister, speaking anonymously out of fear of retribution — always a great sign in a healthy democracy — says she’s "really angry" that the people with the power to help are instead pretending everything is fine. Trump gets his "beautiful" talking point, Hegseth gets to play tough-guy patriot on TV, and the sailors get to wonder how many more months they’ll be floating in a barely functioning metal pressure cooker so the White House can keep insisting nothing’s wrong.

Jared Kushner, the real estate failson who once pitched peace in the Middle East as a kind of zoning variance, has resurfaced as Trump's "Middle East envoy" to personally fix Gaza. This time he's doing it under the banner of Trump's self-appointed "Board of Peace" — an "international organisation" that appears to consist of Trump, some letterhead, and whoever still answers Kushner's texts. The Board claims it has an agreement for the "complete disarmament" of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza, plus an Israeli troop withdrawal and a shiny new civilian Palestinian administration, which is a lot of words for a plan Israel has already publicly torched.

Undeterred by reality, Kushner held rare talks in Egypt with Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, alongside Nickolai Mladenov and, because we apparently live in a cursed reboot of 2005, Tony Blair. They reportedly discussed how to actually dismantle Hamas's arsenal, get Israeli forces out, and rebuild a strip of land that has already seen more than 73,000 people killed and 1.9 million displaced. Israel's answer remains: no withdrawal until full disarmament first — and also a flat rejection of Trump's 15-point plan, just to really underline how much respect they have for America's new freelance peace corporation.

Meanwhile, eight Muslim-majority countries — Egypt, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia — issued a joint statement saying Israel's rejection threatens Trump's peace efforts, which is a polite diplomatic way of saying, "We are all pretending this Board of Peace is a real thing now, apparently." Trump, naturally, chairs this pseudo-institution himself, having expanded it from a Gaza project to a global conflict fixer, because when you've already broken American democracy, why not cosplay as the UN too? The ceasefire technically still exists, the IDF is still conducting strikes, Hamas is still accused of violations, and into this meat grinder strolls Jared Kushner, armed with vibes, spreadsheets, and his father-in-law's delusions of imperial grandeur.

The Trump administration has decided that if executive privilege is good, infinite executive privilege must be even better. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel coughed up a memo saying Trump can now cloak not just his aides, but also outside private advisers in presidential secrecy, as long as they’re whispering sweet policy suggestions into the White House’s ear. Senator Adam Schiff calls it what it is: a preemptive shield to hide Trump’s "corrupt activities" from congressional subpoenas when Democrats likely take back a chamber.

Meanwhile, Democrats are trying to remember that Congress is technically a coequal branch and not just the comment section to Trump’s X account. They’re gearing up to dig into the unfinished Epstein files, which DOJ seems to be slow-walking so hard a federal judge is openly annoyed, and they’re eyeing Trump’s personal investments in companies with major business before his own government—because why merely serve as president when you can also day-trade off your own regulatory power?

Oversight capacity, of course, has been hollowed out. Inspectors general have been fired, key watchdog jobs sit empty, and Trump just nominated Dennis Kirk—an architect of the authoritarian Project 2025 wish list—to be inspector general at Interior, the office that’s supposed to investigate waste and abuse. So the new model is: sabotage the referees, declare all your friends "privileged," and then insist the real problem is partisan oversight. Democrats talk about rebuilding Congress’s watchdog muscles; Trump is already busy defunding the gym and padlocking the doors.

Donald Trump, self-proclaimed galaxy-brain dealmaker, has managed to turn his second term into a live-action demonstration of why you don’t let a reality TV landlord run an empire. He was re-elected on the promise that "I alone can fix it", then promptly got bored by economic policy and wandered off to start a disastrous war with Iran instead. The result: inflation higher than when he beat Biden, petrol prices spiking, and his approval rating face-planting to 34%. Truly, the businessman president is once again proving that bankruptcy is not just a financial strategy, it’s a governing philosophy.

The Iran adventure is going about as well as his casinos. No regime change, no checked nuclear threat, Iran’s missiles still flying, and Tehran now holding the world economy by the throat via the Strait of Hormuz. Trump ignored his own generals’ warnings about dwindling munitions because his gut told him it would be "fast and easy" – the same gut that thought COVID would disappear and that Mexico was going to pay for a wall. He keeps announcing phantom peace deals and fake breakthroughs that evaporate within days, because the only part of foreign policy he’s interested in is the headline and the camera angle.

Across the Atlantic, Nigel Farage is running the same nationalist-populist software, just on a smaller, stickier keyboard. He quit his Clacton seat in a tantrum over a standards probe, then immediately re-ran for it as a performative grievance circus – and even then refused to show up to his own victory announcement, allegedly over a "credible threat" that the police say doesn’t exist. This is the same Farage who claims he needed an undeclared £5m gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne for "security", yet somehow still couldn’t manage to feel safe standing next to a man dressed as a bin. Now that he’s back in parliament, the investigation into his murky finances has resumed, including gifts linked to convicted fraudster George Cottrell. Another byelection is on the horizon, this time with real parties running – not just aristocrats in trash costumes.

Strip away the flags, the shouting about elites, and the cosplay patriotism, and the common thread is obvious: these guys are unbeatable at performance politics and utterly useless at governing. Trump can’t win his own war, Farage can barely win a by-election without fleeing the stage, and both are staring down investigations and public backlash. The populist strongman project keeps promising history-shaping victories and keeps delivering… higher fuel prices, endless conflict, and a couple of fragile egos hiding from a standards committee and a bloke in a novelty bin suit. Turns out the real "deep state" problem is that none of these people knows how to do the job they fought so hard to steal.

Donald Trump spent January 2025 using executive orders like a blunt instrument, declaring DEI dead in the federal government and warning corporations that if they didn’t drop their diversity policies, the state would happily lean on them. Google, Goldman Sachs, McDonald’s, Walmart and the rest of the courage caucus immediately folded like a cheap lawn chair in a hurricane, loudly announcing the end of their DEI programs to appease the world’s most fragile strongman.

The joke, as usual, is on the authoritarians. New research by UC Berkeley’s Jacob Grumbach shows that the companies that refused to panic — firms like Costco, Apple, and Delta that kept their DEI policies or voted down anti-DEI shareholder tantrums — did just as well financially as the ones who sprinted to obey. In the days right after Trump’s anti-DEI orders, the noncompliers even outperformed the corporate bootlickers on the stock market. So much for "go woke, go broke"; turns out it was more "go scared, stay mediocre".

This all comes after years of right-wing culture-war cosplay: Bud Light boycotts, Target hysteria, Ron DeSantis trying to turn Disney World into a fascist HOA, and the supreme court helpfully opening the litigation floodgates by nuking affirmative action. Corporations read the room, panicked, and quietly gutted a lot of the DEI promises they made after George Floyd’s murder — not because it hurt profits, but because an authoritarian-leaning executive branch and a reactionary court made it legally and politically terrifying not to.

The punchline? Grumbach’s data shows that when big companies simply don’t obey the executive branch’s culture-war demands, they’re fine. No financial apocalypse, no mass shareholder revolt — just business as usual with fewer fascist vibes. So we’ve now empirically confirmed that Trump’s anti-DEI crusade was never about economic reality; it was about using state power to bully civil society into line. The market didn’t punish diversity. It mostly just watched the government try to.

Nevada Judge Mary Kay Holthus has decided that six Republican fake electors who signed and submitted a forged certificate claiming Donald Trump won the state in 2020 weren’t really trying to help steal an election — they were just doing a little political improv. The yearslong case accusing them of forgery and filing a false instrument has been tossed, because when you livestream your attempt to subvert democracy, apparently it becomes performance art instead of a crime.

The defendants, including Nevada GOP chair Michael McDonald, insisted their bogus electoral certificate was mere "political theater" to "preserve their rights" and not an effort to trick Mike Pence into counting fake votes on January 6. Prosecutors argued that yes, the point was exactly to have the fake paperwork mistaken for the real thing, but the judge said there wasn’t enough evidence of intent to deceive — and also dinged the state for failing to disclose exculpatory evidence to the grand jury. Accidentally trying to overturn an election: now with legal precedent.

This brings Nevada in line with Michigan, Georgia, and temporarily Arizona, where fake elector cases have also been dismissed or derailed, turning the multi-state conspiracy to keep Trump in power into a sort of accountability whack-a-mole the justice system keeps losing. Nevada AG Aaron Ford plans to appeal, while defense lawyers accuse him of playing politics, which is bold coming from a crew whose idea of civic engagement was signing counterfeit Electoral College certificates like it was a Mar-a-Lago merch table.

So the message for 2026 is clear: if you want to help a president cling to office after losing, just call it "theater," do it on camera, and hope a judge decides that coups don’t count if the cast remembers to smile for the livestream. Democracy: now an optional genre.