The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

The First Circuit just told Donald Trump that, regrettably, the Constitution still applies even when he’s mad about mail-in ballots. A federal appeals court refused to let his administration roll out an executive order in 23 states that would have let Washington muscle into state-run elections, rewrite mail voting rules on the fly, and call it “security” while it quietly kneecapped turnout.

Trump’s Department of Justice argued the lawsuits were premature because agencies hadn’t fully implemented his scheme yet – the legal equivalent of, “You can’t arrest me for planning the heist, I haven’t robbed the bank yet.” The court responded that when the president sets hard deadlines forcing states to scramble to comply with new voting procedures right before elections, that’s not hypothetical, that’s a live grenade.

The order would have had DHS building federal voter eligibility lists, USPS turning into a ballot gatekeeper that only delivers to people on approved lists, and DoJ prioritizing prosecution of local election officials who didn’t fall in line. Judge Indira Talwani – apparently having read the Constitution at least once – pointed out that the president has no authority to commandeer state election systems, USPS has no power to regulate voting, and the federal government doesn’t get to intimidate local officials with criminal charges for not using “necessarily incomplete” citizenship lists.

So the man who still insists 2020 was stolen tried, yet again, to rewrite election rules from the Oval Office to stop the next one from slipping away by mail. The courts, for now, are still that annoying branch of government that keeps reminding him this isn’t a reality show where he can just executive-order the voting public off the island.

Donald Trump, a man whose relationship with facts is purely theoretical, has now ordered warning labels slapped on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to alert visitors to alleged “inaccurate information.” Yes, the guy who tried to Sharpie a hurricane map is accusing the historians of lying. The executive order instructs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the National Park Service to put up official U.S. government signage outside the museum basically saying, “Don’t believe the museum, believe the White House report we wrote about how the museum is bad.”

This is the latest episode in Trump’s campaign to turn the Smithsonian into a taxpayer-funded MAGA Heritage Foundation gift shop. After a July 4 White House report declared that museum leaders are “radical activists” who can’t be trusted to tell America’s story “honestly and in a way that is inspiring,” Trump is now using federal agencies and “all available authorities” to enforce his March 2025 order targeting funding for exhibits with “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology.” Translation: history that mentions racism, inequality, or non-triumphalist reality must be punished.

Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch politely replied that the institution is actually driven by “scholarship, accuracy and an uncompromising commitment to tell the fullness of America’s story,” which is exactly the kind of dangerous extremism this White House cannot abide. Instead, visitors will now be helpfully directed to government-approved “locations and resources for accurate information regarding America’s history” — presumably somewhere between Trump’s Truth Social feed and the gift shop’s new Dear Leader: A Totally Not Divisive History of America coloring book.

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s favorite Fox News cosplayer now LARPing as defense secretary, has decided the key to American military dominance is not strategy, logistics, or alliances, but checking every man over 30 for low T and juicing them up. Welcome to the High-T Department of War, where the solution to every problem is more hormone gel and a war crimes vibe check. If your testosterone is a little droopy, Uncle Sam is thrilled to subsidize your midlife crisis.

There’s just one tiny snag: a federal judge noticed that this same Pentagon insists hormone treatment is a fatal flaw that justifies banning transgender troops. Judge Ana Reyes, apparently still capable of basic logic, has ordered Hegseth & friends to explain why cis soldiers get taxpayer-funded testosterone replacement therapy, while trans troops are told that needing hormones makes them unfit for service. Trump’s own executive order is on the record demanding troops meet standards “without the benefit of routine medical treatment” – unless, apparently, that treatment is part of the administration’s masculinity pageant.

Medical experts, meanwhile, are standing off to the side like, "Hi, yes, just to be clear, blasting unnecessary testosterone into thousands of people can actually harm readiness, fertility, and long-term health." The Pentagon, which has spent years clutching its pearls about the supposed cost of gender-affirming care, is now tripping over itself to bankroll mass TRT for cis men because it polls well with the Joe Rogan demographic. Equal protection, military cohesion, evidence-based medicine – all sacrificed so the commander in chief can turn the armed forces into a taxpayer-funded podcast comment section.

The Trump administration has discovered a bold new way to honor American history: by making it dramatically easier to demolish it. To clear the path for Trump's proposed 250-foot triumphal arch on the National Mall, his allies are moving to weaken Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act — the boring little rule that currently forces federal agencies to consider whether they're about to pave over sacred tribal land, Black neighborhoods, or, say, anything older than a Trump casino bankruptcy.

The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, which oversees this process, just happens to be stacked with Trump loyalists — he controls 21 of its 24 seats — and is now poised to "reinterpret" the law in a way that would make decades of preservation protections about as sturdy as a Trump University diploma. The council chair seat is conveniently vacant, so acting vice chair Travis Voyles is running the show while pushing through draft language to water down what counts as an "adverse effect" and what agencies actually have to do about it.

Preservation experts warn this isn't just about one gaudy arch; it's an open invitation to blast through historic neighborhoods, cultural landmarks, burial grounds, and tribal sites nationwide with fewer guardrails and less input from the people most affected. The White House and Interior Department, naturally, had nothing to say to NPR — presumably too busy designing the font for the gold-plated plaque on Trump's future arch while the rest of the country’s heritage gets put on the clearance rack.

The House has once again tried to break up with Trump's deeply illegal Iran war, passing a resolution 214–208 to remove U.S. forces from hostilities that Congress never actually authorized. This is the second time they've done this, because nothing says "functioning republic" like repeatedly reminding the president that wars are not supposed to be a solo project. Naturally, the measure is nonbinding, because the only thing more symbolic than congressional oversight is congressional backbone.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal calls it an "illegal war" with no mission, no strategy, and no end goal — so basically the foreign policy version of Trump's Twitter feed, but with 18 dead U.S. troops and nearly 500 injured since February. Trump, who campaigned on ending "forever wars," is now fully committed to starring in one, dismissing war powers votes as "meaningless" and blaming it all on "Trump Derangement Syndrome," which is a bold way of describing Congress reading the War Powers Resolution out loud.

Over in the Senate, Democrats tried their own war powers move and lost 47–49, because a few Republicans are still deeply committed to the radical notion that the president should be able to lob the country into war like it's a reality show season finale. The Senate even briefly passed a war powers resolution last month, then reversed itself after Trump complained — a helpful live demonstration of how separation of powers becomes separation of spine the moment the Dear Leader tweets.

Brett Kavanaugh has finally found his calling: not as a neutral arbiter of law, but as Trump’s in-house idea factory for turning authoritarian fantasies into semi-plausible legal doctrines. While Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito do the full cosplay originalism routine, Kavanaugh skips the Latin and goes straight to the point: if Trump wants it, it’s just "common sense". Racial profiling by ICE? Totally reasonable. Tariffs by presidential tantrum? Historically normal, if you close your eyes and make up the history.

His solo concurrence in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo blessed what are now charmingly known as “Kavanaugh Stops” – a legal green light for ICE to grab anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and has the audacity to work a low-wage job. The result: U.S. citizens “dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot,” kids locked up, and multiple people killed, including citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Legal scholars called his reasoning “factual revisionism” and “preposterous”; the government called it a policy manual.

After getting roasted by everyone who can read, Kavanaugh tried to sneak a quiet walk-back into a random footnote in an unrelated case, suddenly discovering that maybe race-based immigration stops are bad actually. Unfortunately for him, Stephen Miller doesn’t govern by footnote, so the Kavanaugh Stops roll on, now with a higher body count and more shattered families. Meanwhile, on the trade front, Kavanaugh’s dissent in Learning Resources v. Trump helpfully rewrote decades of law so Trump could pretend emergency powers cover whatever tariffs he dreamed up on cable news.

When the Court told Trump no, Kavanaugh basically left a breadcrumb trail of alternative statutes he could abuse, and Trump followed it within hours, slapping on a global surcharge that was swiftly ruled illegal. Trump called the justices who stopped him “fools” and “lap dogs,” but reserved rare praise for Kavanaugh: the one guy on the Court willing to turn the Constitution into a choose-your-own-dictatorship adventure. The separation of powers is hanging by a thread, and Kavanaugh’s busy knitting Trump a safety net.

Trump demanded mid-decade redistricting, the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc weakened the Voting Rights Act for him, and Republican legislatures in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina said, "Say no more, fam." Majority- and plurality-Black districts are being sliced up like a corporate merger chart, with Black communities methodically scattered into majority-white districts where their voting power politely disappears.

Texas sprinted out of the gate, ramming through a map that shifts five seats toward Republicans and has already cost Black Houston a seat at the table by forcing two Black Democrats into the same district. Meanwhile, the Court helpfully branded Louisiana’s old map an "unconstitutional racial gerrymander" — not the new, surgically precise dilution of Black voters, of course, just the parts that still let them elect anyone. That ruling opened the floodgates for dismantling Black districts across the South, all while Republicans calmly insist this is just about "boosting their party" ahead of midterms. Very normal, healthy democracy stuff.

So Black voters, who went nearly 78% for Kamala Harris in these states in 2024, are discovering the modern GOP cure for that particular problem: redraw the lines until their votes are mathematically outnumbered. The franchise remains technically legal; its effectiveness has simply been reallocated. Jim Crow got a UX redesign and a GIS upgrade, and the Trump court is here to assure you it’s all perfectly constitutional now.

The Trump White House has apparently decided that if you can't stop reporters from writing about your sketchy, Qatari-gifted luxury Air Force One, you can at least send the FBI to their front doors at night. The New York Times is in federal court arguing that the administration is abusing the justice system to shake down its reporters for sources after they published stories about security concerns on Trump's new flying ego complex. Because nothing says "we're totally confident in our retrofit" like trying to turn national-security journalism into a criminal conspiracy.

Instead of following long-standing practice and serving subpoenas on the newspaper's lawyers, FBI agents went straight to reporters' homes—within 48 hours of the first story—dragging in records for journalists and even their family members. The Times' legal team calls it a violation of basic First Amendment protections and part of "an escalating series of attacks on journalists" this administration can't stand. Reporters' spouses describe feeling like "enemies of the state," which is a neat way of saying the government is using grand juries as a mood-management tool for an angry president.

As a fun subplot, FBI Director Kash Patel reportedly helped oversee the effort from inside the White House, because why bother with even the illusion of separation between political revenge and federal law enforcement? The supposed emergency here isn't foreign espionage or terrorism—it's that someone told the press the president's rush-delivered, foreign-gifted jumbo toy might not have the missile defenses you'd want on a plane carrying America's most fragile ego. So the administration's response is to aim the legal system at reporters, not the security flaws. Free press, meet free-fall.

Conventional wisdom says an unpopular president should quietly avoid swing districts in a midterm year. The Trump White House has examined this history, learned precisely nothing, and decided the solution to a historically low approval rating is more Trump, everywhere, all the time. He’s already logged more 2026 campaign trips than he had by this point in 2018, when Republicans lost the House in a 40-seat faceplant. Naturally, the lesson they drew from that disaster was: needs more cult of personality.

Past presidents like George W. Bush understood that sometimes the best thing you can do for an endangered incumbent is stay the hell away so they can run their own race. Trump, by contrast, is barnstorming toss-up districts, swinging through Georgia and New York to slap his brand on every vulnerable Republican like a clearance sticker. At rallies, he dutifully "supports" candidates by… not letting them on stage, because the midterms are explicitly being re-engineered as a national referendum on His Greatness. White House chief of staff Suzie Wiles openly brags that they’re tossing out the normal midterm playbook and making everything about the guy in the White House. Governing is for suckers; this is a personality cult road show now.

The Trump administration watched one viral YouTube video from far-right influencer Nick Shirley, ignored the part where local reporters and state investigators immediately debunked it, and decided the obvious next step was to freeze over $10bn in childcare and social services funding to five mostly blue states. California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York suddenly found federal support for childcare, food, and basic assistance held hostage because a guy with a camera demanded proof of enrollment at Somali-run daycare centers and then yelled “fraud” on Elon Musk’s X.

Senior Trump officials actually cited Shirley’s video as the basis for the freeze, because why rely on audits, data, or law when you’ve got a racist internet stunt and Minnesota Republicans helping with the production schedule? A federal judge had to step in on 9 January to block the freeze, and when courts ordered the administration to cough up unredacted emails about how this brain-genius policy was born, the White House quietly backed off the freeze rather than let anyone see who wrote, "what if we cut poor kids’ daycare because a YouTuber said so?"

Now the ACLU, the National Women’s Law Center, and other civil rights groups are suing HHS for refusing to respond to a FOIA request seeking communications with Shirley and emails referencing “fraud” and “Somali.” They argue the restrictions and attempted freeze stoked panic among families, delayed childcare funding, and were driven by racist, anti-Somali, anti-immigrant rhetoric and a burning desire to punish Democratic states. The administration’s response so far? Silence. Because if your grand strategy is “govern by viral hoax, target immigrants, and starve blue states,” transparency is not your friend.