trump personally cancels the wind so oil doesn’t feel insecure
Wind turbines off Rhode Island, bravely continuing to exist until Trump figures out how to personally sue the breeze for disrespecting oil companies.
The Trump administration has discovered an exciting new use for presidential power: pressuring a French energy giant to stop building offshore wind and go pump more fossil fuels instead. Interior cut a deal with TotalEnergies to hand back nearly $1 billion in offshore wind lease payments off North Carolina and New York, in exchange for the company promising to shovel that cash into U.S. oil, gas, and an LNG plant in Texas. As a bonus, TotalEnergies also pledged to never again sully America’s pristine coastline with new offshore wind projects, bravely declaring that clean energy apparently isn’t in the “country’s interest.”
Energy analysts are politely screaming that this is a giant, flashing "do not invest here" sign for anyone thinking about long-term infrastructure. The administration has effectively rolled out a new presidential hobby: if Trump doesn’t like a sector, he’ll just lean on companies until they back out and get their money back. Leslie Abrahams of CSIS notes this kind of made-up-on-the-fly interference means fewer projects, slower timelines, and higher costs across the economy — so, a perfect complement to inflation fearmongering.
The White House punted questions to Interior, where Secretary Doug Burgum dutifully called this corporate hostage exchange "yet another win" for Trump’s "affordable and reliable energy" crusade — which, coincidentally, always seems to end with more oil rigs and fewer turbines. TotalEnergies’ CEO Patrick Pouyanné called it a "win-win" too, because of course it’s a win when the U.S. government refunds your bad bets and then begs you to drill more. The climate loses, regulatory certainty loses, and long-term infrastructure planning gets kneecapped, but the fossil lobby and Trump’s ego are having a fantastic week.
#killing-democracy#anti-science#forever-grifting
trump’s italian fan club runs into a constitution
Giorgia Meloni discovers that when you copy Trump’s homework on ‘fixing’ the judiciary, European voters still remember how the last strongman project turned out.
Giorgia Meloni tried to speedrun the authoritarian playbook: complain that prosecutors are biased, dress it up as ‘reform’, and then quietly rewire the judiciary so the executive gets a lot more say over who holds the handcuffs. Her government pitched a constitutional overhaul that would split judges and prosecutors into separate career tracks, carve the judicial council into multiple bodies, and then pick members by lottery — because when you’re messing with the separation of powers, why not make it feel like a scratch-off ticket. Italians, being oddly attached to not sliding into post-fascist cosplay again, said no by 53.2% to 46.8%.
The campaign turned into a bare-knuckle fight between the executive and the judiciary, with Meloni’s own past threats and her bromance with Viktor Orbán serving as Exhibit A for anyone worried about creeping illiberalism. Then there’s her proud alignment with President Trump, whose idea of ‘rule of law’ is “it doesn’t apply to me.” That special relationship hasn’t stopped Trump from slapping Italy with tariff threats and NATO spending ultimatums, and now his attack on Iran is driving up fuel prices and reminding Italians that hitching your democracy to a chaos engine has… costs. Funny how a president openly at war with prosecutors at home can make voters abroad skittish about letting their own executive tinker with the courts.
Turnout surged in left-leaning regions, big cities, and among the young — the exact people least impressed by Meloni’s ‘responsible stateswoman’ act and her Trump-curious foreign policy. The defeat forces her to mothball grander plans to beef up the powers of the prime minister’s office, depriving her of a shiny constitutional trophy for the next campaign. She’s wounded but still the dominant figure in Italian politics, mostly because the opposition is a disorganized buffet of centre-left, populists, and wishful thinking. Still, it’s a neat little reminder for Europe’s far right: hugging Trump might thrill the base, but it’s a great way to convince everyone else you’re one constitutional amendment away from trying this coup thing at home.
#killing-democracy#fascism
mail-in ballots for me, coups for thee
Trump explains that mail-in voting is rigged and corrupt, except on the many occasions when he does it, which are flawless and beautiful and the best ballots anyone’s ever seen.
Donald Trump stood up at an NRCC event and declared that mail-in ballots are a "way of cheating" — a bold stance from a guy who has repeatedly voted by mail himself. Apparently, when Trump does it, it’s patriotism; when anyone else does it, it’s fraud, rigging, and the deep state hiding in your mailbox. Projection remains the only part of his platform with consistent follow-through.
This is the same playbook he ran in 2020: preemptively label legitimate votes as suspicious, then scream "stolen" if the numbers don’t go his way. It’s not about policy, it’s about building a ready-made excuse to reject any election he doesn’t win and training his base to distrust the basic mechanics of democracy. If you were looking for a subtle, responsible defense of the franchise, you accidentally tuned into the guy who tried to overthrow the last election.
#killing-democracy#fascism
federal housing czar moonlights as trump’s personal revenge paralegal
Letitia James on screen, while somewhere in Washington a Trump appointee frantically prints out X posts and calls it a criminal case file.
Trump’s Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte has apparently decided his job description includes running opposition research for the boss, firing off not one but two new criminal referrals against New York Attorney General Letitia James after the Justice Department has already face-planted three times trying to prosecute her. The “evidence”? Stuff posted on X by MAGA lawyer/influencer Mike Davis, based on court documents from the already-collapsing criminal case against James in Virginia. Truly, our federal law enforcement system is now powered by quote-tweets.
Pulte is alleging that James committed insurance fraud by misrepresenting who lived in two Norfolk, Virginia homes and how often they were occupied, and has sent referrals to U.S. attorneys in Florida and Illinois, carefully chosen not because of any legal nexus, but because that’s where the insurers are based — and, coincidentally, where Trumpworld thinks they might find friendlier ears. James’ attorney Abbe Lowell notes that Trump and his “political enablers” are just renaming and refiling the same baseless accusations in a rolling vendetta, instead of, say, governing. Hard to argue when DOJ grand juries have already refused to indict her twice and a federal judge nuked the earlier case after finding Trump-appointed prosecutor Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully installed.
This flurry of referrals didn’t materialize in a vacuum: James is the one who sued Trump and the Trump Organization over more than 200 instances of fraud, winning a gigantic civil judgment that an appeals court later slashed as an “excessive fine” while still acknowledging, yes, the fraud was real. So the administration’s response is not "stop committing fraud" but "keep trying to criminally charge the prosecutor until something sticks." Pulte has also been churning out referrals against other Trump critics like Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff, and Fed governor Lisa Cook, because nothing says “independent justice system” like a housing official acting as the president’s personal hitman with federal letterhead.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#retribution
trump tries to buy greenland, accidentally revives european social democracy
Artist’s impression of Trump pointing at a map and yelling, “Mine,” while Europe quietly restocks the blood banks.
Donald Trump’s long-running fantasy of turning Greenland into Mar-a-Lago North has now escalated to the point where Denmark was literally flying in blood supplies in case the United States – the NATO ally – decided to invade. That’s not a war game, that’s a cry for help from a continent that just realized the guy with the nuclear codes thinks Risk is a policy manual.
The good news for Europe’s center-left is that Trump’s illegal, economically self-immolating war on Iran and his annexation fanfic are finally starting to rot the populist right’s sheen. Mette Frederiksen squeaks through in Denmark after running on the bold platform of “please don’t let the Americans take our giant ice rock,” while Marine Le Pen whiffs yet again in France and Giorgia Meloni gets smacked down by voters for trying to remodel Italy’s judiciary to White House specifications.
Meanwhile in Slovenia, a Trump-flavored opposition campaign allegedly enjoys a little foreign interference sparkle and still loses the tightest election in the country’s history, suggesting that the MAGA export model may be approaching its sell-by date. With Trump-made energy shocks hammering voters and the populist-right formula of militant nationalism plus tax cuts for rich guys named “Erik” starting to sour, European progressives suddenly look almost competent by comparison – which, in the Trump era, apparently counts as a political renaissance.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#imperialism
trump loses his own backyard timeshare
Mar-a-Lago, seen here doubling as a war room, social club, and now the center of a district that just voted for literally anyone else.
Democrat Emily Gregory just walked into Florida House District 87, politely took the keys, and flipped the Republican seat that includes Mar-a-Lago — the place where Donald Trump has been casually directing wars like it's a themed dinner show. Trump endorsed GOP candidate Jon Maples, screamed into social media about it, even cast a ballot himself, and still watched his own backyard district go blue by 51% to 49%. The guy running American foreign policy from the pool deck can't even hold a state House seat containing his golf cart parking lot.
This is now the 10th GOP-held state legislative seat Democrats have flipped since Trump’s second term began, while Republicans have flipped precisely zero. So yes, the man with approval ratings languishing in the high 30s who launched a wildly unpopular war with Iran from his beach club Situation Room is discovering a minor flaw in the "authoritarian strongman" brand: it helps if people actually like you. Democrats just proved they can win on Trump’s literal home turf, while he keeps proving that turning your private resort into a shadow government HQ is not, in fact, a long-term turnout strategy.
Gregory ran on boring, real-life stuff like rising costs; Maples ran on the usual "business experience and tax cuts" PowerPoint, plus the coveted endorsement of the guy currently dragging his party’s numbers into the ocean. As Trump keeps treating Mar-a-Lago like a cross between a military bunker and a wedding venue, voters in his own district appear to have decided that maybe, just maybe, they’d like someone in office who isn’t trying to cosplay commander-in-chief from a gilded ballroom. Trump wanted a mandate from his backyard; he got an eviction notice instead.
#killing-democracy#losses
trump's magic endorsement shrinks to 23 sad little votes
Phil Berger stares into the middle distance, contemplating how six "BIG WINS" from Trump somehow turned into 23 very small losses.
Phil Berger, the top Republican in the North Carolina Senate and longtime architect of the state's hard-right makeover, just lost his primary by a grand total of 23 votes — with Donald Trump’s endorsement. After a recount confirmed that Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page beat him 13,135 to 13,112, Berger did the unthinkable for a modern Republican: he conceded reality.
This was not a clash between a moderate and a Trumpist. This was a contest between "I am fighting for the Trump agenda" and "I led Sheriffs for Trump." Trump tried to keep Page out of the race by praising him as "GREAT" and begging him to come to Washington instead of challenging Berger. Page responded by doing the most on-brand MAGA thing possible: ignoring Trump’s actual request and running anyway. Loyalty to Dear Leader now apparently includes steamrolling his stated preference.
Berger leaves behind a 15-year legacy of turning North Carolina into a test lab for gerrymandering, voter suppression, and right-wing power grabs, and his reward is getting politically shivved by a Trumpist sheriff in a primary decided by a couple dozen people who remembered to vote. Democracy remains barely functional in at least one corner of the GOP universe, but only as a tool for deciding which authoritarian-adjacent Republican gets to carry the banner in November.
#killing-democracy#fascism
markwayne mullin puts homeland security in ‘hold my beer’ mode
Markwayne Mullin, moments before being handed the keys to one of the world’s largest security bureaucracies like it’s a CrossFit trophy.
Trump has now sworn in Sen. Markwayne Mullin as Homeland Security Secretary, because when you’re building an authoritarian cosplay cabinet, you naturally hand the domestic security apparatus to the guy best known for trying to start a fistfight in a Senate hearing and bragging about going rogue in Afghanistan. Who needs calm, competent stewardship of DHS when you can get a walking Facebook comments section with subpoena power?
This isn’t just another bad personnel pick; it’s the logical next step in turning DHS into a partisan enforcement arm. A department already infamous for family separation, secret police in unmarked vans, and a Border Patrol that thinks the Geneva Conventions are a suggestion now gets a boss whose brand is performative rage and "tough on the border" soundbites. Expect more photo-op raids, more cruelty packaged as "security," and a lot fewer guardrails.
While NBC runs the swearing-in as a tidy little ceremony clip, the real story is that Trump is stacking the security state with loyalists who see the law as optional and immigrants as props. Mullin doesn’t have to be a policy genius; he just has to obey the guy who wants DHS to function as his personal grievance enforcement squad. Congratulations, America: the agency with the most guns and badges is now being run like a Trump rally meet-and-greet.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#fascism
trump invents 'fraud czar' to hunt fraud, accidentally describes himself
Colin McDonald, soon-to-be fraud enforcer, practices keeping a straight face while pledging independence from the same White House he’ll have a "direct line" to.
Trump’s Senate just signed off on creating a brand-new Justice Department job: assistant attorney general for fraud enforcement, a role that comes with what JD Vance bragged will be a "direct line" to the White House. Nothing screams "independent law enforcement" like wiring Main Justice straight into Trump’s grievance switchboard.
Democrats and former DOJ officials are gently pointing out that, historically, the Justice Department wasn’t supposed to function as the president’s personal oppo-research firm. But the National Fraud Enforcement Division McDonald will run is being stood up right as the White House launches a Vance-chaired, "government-wide" anti-fraud task force that mysteriously focuses on places like Minnesota — a favorite MAGA punching bag lovingly amplified by Trump-aligned influencers.
Officially, this is all about protecting taxpayers from scams in government programs. Unofficially, it’s a ready-made pipeline for turning TikTok talking points into federal indictments. The White House and DOJ, asked how this new division and Vance’s task force will actually work together, had no answers — which is Washington-speak for "however Trump wants, whenever he wants." The "war on fraud" looks a lot less like good governance and a lot more like building a dedicated office to criminalize your political enemies and call it ethics.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
melania trump to ‘empower children,’ presumably by letting her husband deport them
Melania Trump delivers prepared remarks on ‘empowering children’ while the broader Trump project continues empowering book bans, deportations, and generational trauma.
Melania Trump popped up at a global summit to talk about how much she cares about empowering children through education, which is a bold theme for an administration that treated public schools like a hostile foreign power and migrant children like misplaced luggage. Nothing says "fostering the future" quite like presiding over years of family separations, underfunded schools, and book bans while flying to a conference to read warm words off a teleprompter.
This is the Trump era’s favorite magic trick: break the system, then send out a glossy surrogate to give a speech about hope and opportunity. While Melania gently intones about education and children’s potential, her husband’s allies are busy purging school curricula, terrorizing immigrant families, and turning classrooms into culture-war minefields. It’s less a policy agenda than a branding exercise — a soft-focus ad campaign plastered over a government that keeps using kids as props, pawns, and collateral damage.
So yes, Melania Trump is now a global champion for children’s education. And if that feels a bit like putting the Trump Organization in charge of ethics reform, that’s because it is.
#killing-democracy#trumps-america
unpaid tsa, fully paid ice: welcome to airport security under trump
A TSA checkpoint staffed by unpaid officers and freshly imported ICE agents, because nothing says ‘aviation security’ like political hostage-taking and on-the-job training at 30,000 feet.
Six weeks into Trump’s second DHS shutdown in six months, TSA workers are back to the classic MAGA workplace model: mandatory labor, optional paychecks. Over 400 officers have quit, thousands more are calling out, and security lines are stretching longer than Trump’s list of unpaid contractors. The people actually trained to detect explosives are pawning belongings to afford gas, while the White House explains this is all somehow the Democrats’ fault.
Instead of, say, paying the workers who keep planes from exploding, Trump has decided to fly in a different kind of chaos: ICE agents, who are still getting paid and are about as qualified for aviation security as Trump is for the Constitution. The union representing TSA points out that ICE officers aren’t trained or certified to spot aviation threats, but who needs specialized instruction when you’ve got vibes and a gun? As AFGE’s Everett Kelley notes, this doesn’t close a security gap; it creates one.
Democrats are refusing to refund DHS until Republicans agree to rein in ICE, which is currently facing accusations of killing two unarmed U.S. citizens and repeatedly ignoring court orders. Senate Republicans floated a compromise to fund everything except ICE and deal with that mess later. Trump, ever the dealmaker, rejected it—and then his DHS and White House mouthpieces went on TV to blame Democrats for the shutdown he just chose to extend. The same administration that refused a bipartisan funding plan is now scolding workers for quitting because they can’t afford rent.
So TSA officers are working a second unpaid stretch in under a year, still paying off loans from the last shutdown, watching fully funded ICE agents stroll into their checkpoints and collect salaries to not know how to read an X-ray machine. It’s a perfect snapshot of Trump’s America: weaponize ICE, destabilize basic public safety, starve frontline workers, and then angrily insist this is all about “keeping our skies safe.”
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
oil markets briefly fooled by trump’s imaginary iran peace talks
Trump explains his detailed Iran peace plan, which appears to consist of vibes, a Sharpie, and whatever Fox segment he half-watched that morning.
Trump strolls out and announces that actually, there are peace talks with Iran now, which is news to Iran, U.S. diplomats, and anyone who has ever seen a map. Oil prices, ever the optimists, twitch downward for a hot second on the assumption that the President of the United States might be tethered to reality.
Then reporters, diplomats, and basic facts show up. Skepticism spreads, experts note that Iran is still firing missiles and not sending fruit baskets, and the market slowly remembers who’s talking: the guy who once declared North Korea denuclearized because he felt like it. Prices "settle" not because peace is at hand, but because traders decide they can’t keep repricing crude every time Trump free-associates about war and peace on television.
So U.S. foreign policy is now a live-action pump-and-dump theater where the Commander-in-Chief ad-libs global stability, oil futures jump, and the rest of the world has to guess whether he’s describing a secret diplomatic breakthrough or just narrating the movie in his head. Meanwhile, actual diplomats are left doing damage control for a president who treats nuclear standoffs like a ratings stunt.
#killing-democracy#national-security#full-stupid
trump deploys ai to do what he does best: crush states, please donors
Trump signs an AI executive order flanked by lobbyists, proving once again that the only intelligence he trusts is artificial and heavily subsidized.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new use for artificial intelligence: as a pretext to kneecap state governments and shower tech barons with regulatory immunity. In December, Trump signed an executive order telling his administration to both sue and financially punish any state that dares regulate AI – even though more than 70% of voters want more AI oversight at both state and federal levels, and Congress already rejected a similar moratorium almost unanimously. When democracy and oligarchs clash, this White House knows exactly which side it’s on.
What’s sold as “innovation policy” is just federal muscle being flexed on behalf of industry lobbyists terrified that someone, somewhere, might ask their algorithms not to ruin people’s lives quite so aggressively. The self-branded MAGA “populist” movement is now openly trading in its blue-collar cosplay for VIP ballroom time with tech moguls, as Trump’s project fuses government power with corporate AI interests and strips states of consumer protections. Local communities across Maryland, Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan and beyond are revolting against massive, power-hungry data centers, but the administration’s position is clear: if your town doesn’t want to be turned into a GPU furnace, that’s adorable – and irrelevant.
So while voters across red and blue states line up against unchecked AI and its physical sprawl, Trump is busy welding Washington to Big Tech’s wish list and calling it freedom. The supposed populist warrior against elites has managed to turn AI into yet another tool for centralized, top-down punishment of any state that won’t play ball. Regulatory states’ rights? Only when they’re banning books and abortion, not when they’re inconveniencing billionaires.
#killing-democracy#oligarchy
trump slaps sanctions on human rights and calls it freedom
Trump and Marco Rubio bravely defending freedom by sanctioning anyone who talks to the people investigating war crimes.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new way to defend "Western civilization": financially strangle a UN human rights expert and terrify American academics into silence. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, recommended ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant and suggested maybe – just maybe – companies helping commit war crimes should face consequences. For this unspeakable crime of doing her job, the White House hit her with sanctions so sweeping they amount to a bureaucratic excommunication: no US bank account, no selling her DC house, no salary from American universities. Civil liberties, meet civil death.
The fun doesn’t stop there. Trump signed an executive order threatening criminal prosecution for anyone who provides "funds, goods, or services" to Albanese or Palestinian human rights organizations – language so vague a Maine university canceled an academic conference because she was going to Zoom in for free. Marco Rubio, now playing cosplay Secretary of State, piled on by sanctioning ICC prosecutors, judges, and Palestinian NGOs, because nothing says "land of the free" like punishing people for investigating war crimes and genocide.
The result: professors and students across US campuses are now afraid to share research with Albanese or the ICC, lest they end up fined or arrested for the crime of emailing a PDF. The Supreme Court has spent six decades saying this kind of "chilling effect" on speech is unconstitutional; Trump’s response is to crank the thermostat down to freezer-burn and dare the courts to stop him. Human rights lawyers and academics are filing briefs to challenge the order, arguing that criminalizing contact with a UN expert for criticizing an ally’s atrocities is not exactly what the First Amendment had in mind. But hey, on the bright side, at least we finally know what "free speech absolutism" means in Trump’s America: you’re absolutely free to shut up.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
trump dusts off cold war law to drill california, not iran
Trump’s energy team, seen here trying to convince a federal judge that a 2015 oil spill was actually a patriotic act of national defense.
California AG Rob Bonta is suing the Trump energy department because Energy Secretary Chris Wright apparently read the Defense Production Act and thought, "Ah yes, my do whatever I want button." Using powers handed to him by a Trump executive order, Wright tried to resurrect the long-disputed Sable Offshore pipeline system—shut down after a 2015 spill dumped over 100,000 gallons of crude into the Pacific—as if state law, state court orders, and a federal settlement were just optional side quests.
California is asking a federal court to remind the Trump administration that the constitution still exists and that "national defense" doesn’t mean "let’s reopen the oil leak from hell." The state wants the court to block the restart order and bar DOE from operating the Santa Ynez platform and pipelines under this Cold War cosplay. Meanwhile, Sable Offshore is already bragging about shipping hydrocarbons again and ramping up to 50,000 barrels a day, because why wait for rulings when you’ve got an oil-friendly White House writing you permission slips?
Gavin Newsom helpfully pointed out that Trump literally started a war with Iran, admitted it would spike gas prices, and is now using the crisis he engineered to jam open California’s coastline for his industry buddies. It’s disaster capitalism with extra tar balls: manufacture an international crisis, jack up prices, then scream "energy emergency" while you bulldoze state authority and environmental protections. The administration is also trying to rebrand a pipeline that never leaves California as "interstate," because if the facts don’t fit your power grab, you can always just relabel the map.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
millions of peasants rudely interrupt trump’s monarchy cosplay
Americans rudely declining their assigned role as extras in Trump’s ICE propaganda reel, armed with cardboard, markers, and an outdated belief in democracy.
The Trump administration’s dream of a comfy little elected monarchy keeps running into the same problem: tens of millions of people who stubbornly insist they’re citizens, not subjects. The third nationwide No Kings protests are set to blanket more than 3,000 cities and towns, with organizers expecting what could be the largest protest in US history — all because Donald really, really wants to play Commander-in-Chief and King George III at the same time.
At the center of this round: Minnesota’s Twin Cities, where residents had the absolute nerve to watch ICE operations in their own communities, and were rewarded when federal agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti for the crime of observing their government. ICE and DHS are now widely described as running a “reign of terror,” which is a fun way of saying the federal government has decided due process is for suckers and accountability is for other countries.
The protests are fueled by a double feature of Trump-era lawlessness: an allegedly illegal war on Iran and a mass deportation campaign at home, all wrapped in criminalization of dissent and attacks on voting rights. Indivisible, 50501, the ACLU, labor, and civil rights groups are coordinating what they insist will be nonviolent, organized resistance — because when the White House is flirting with authoritarianism, someone has to model responsible behavior. While Trump’s people build a police state with ICE and DHS, millions are showing up to remind them that “No Kings” wasn’t supposed to be a controversial concept in a country literally founded on that idea.
So on 28 March, Bernie Sanders, Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Maggie Rogers, and a few million of their closest friends will gather to do the thing this administration fears most: peaceful, visible, sustained pro-democracy organizing. The White House keeps acting like the constitution is optional; the streets are sending back a very large, very loud second opinion.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
trump moves to rename kennedy center after his favorite president: himself
The Kennedy Center, seen here moments before being reimagined as a marble-and-gold tribute to one president’s ego and another president’s ghost rolling his eyes.
Conservation and preservation groups are suing to stop Donald Trump from turning the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts into the Trump–Kennedy Center, because apparently we’re just stapling his name onto American history like it’s another failed casino. The lawsuit says Trump and his handpicked board are rushing a $250 million "renovation" that will "hastily gut" the place down to its steel studs while blowing off the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and that pesky detail where Congress never actually authorized a Trump-branded architectural vanity project.
The plaintiffs point out that the Kennedy Center is a living memorial to JFK, not a blank canvas for a septuagenarian real-estate critic to test out his "beautiful, beautiful marbles" theory of governance. They’re asking a judge to rule that last year’s $256 million appropriation for repairs and security doesn’t magically include "new structures" and aesthetic makeovers that would make the lobby look like a Palm Beach steakhouse. Meanwhile, the board has already started mucking around with the site, including slapping Trump’s name on the signage before the legal fights are even over, because the first step in any infrastructure project is, of course, branding.
The administration insists this is all about creating the finest performing arts facility in the world, which is an interesting claim from a president whose signature cultural contribution is rage-posting through felony indictments. A federal judge has already had to step in just to let Rep. Joyce Beatty attend (but not vote in) the board meeting that rubber-stamped the two-year closure, while another part of her challenge is still pending. The conservation groups have a simpler request: stop the White House from taking a chisel to the building’s historic fabric just so Trump can add another monument to himself and call it public service.
#killing-democracy#corruption
trump to gop: no laws unless fewer people can vote
Trump, moments before explaining that the only real voter fraud problem is too many people voting against him.
Donald Trump has issued his latest royal decree to the Republican Party: no deals with Democrats unless they jam voter ID into it. Not "fight for better healthcare," not "fix the economy"—the non-negotiable demand is making it harder to cast a ballot. The man who tried to overturn an election is once again explaining, very loudly, that the only acceptable compromise is one where fewer of the wrong people vote.
This isn’t policy, it’s strategy: hold the entire legislative process hostage until you can rig the rules of the next election. Republicans, who swear they love "election integrity," are being told—by the guy with more indictments than coherent sentences—to prioritize voter ID over literally everything else. Governing is optional; voter suppression is mandatory.
So while normal democracies negotiate over budgets and public safety, Trump’s GOP is negotiating over how many hoops Black, brown, young, and poor voters have to jump through to participate in elections at all. Democracy is supposed to be one person, one vote; Trump’s version is more like one party, all the vetoes—until the electorate is sufficiently "managed" to guarantee the right outcomes.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump turns voice of america into voice of dear leader
Kari Lake discovers that when you can’t win ratings, you can always try state television.
Voice of America journalists are suing Trump administration starlet and failed-TV-anchor-turned-state-media-enthusiast Kari Lake, alleging she’s been using VOA as her own Farsi-language MAGA infomercial. While she’s supposed to safeguard the outlet’s editorial independence, the lawsuit says she’s instead pumping out pro-Trump propaganda and shredding the legal firewall that’s supposed to keep U.S. government media from turning into a taxpayer-funded campaign channel. You know, that pesky "not literal authoritarian state TV" rule.
Not content with just flattering Trump on VOA’s Persian service, Lake reportedly followed Trump’s March 2025 order to hack the network down to its “smallest legal size” by firing contractors, putting more than 1,000 staff on paid leave, and gutting 49 language services down to six. Because when Iran is in crisis and authoritarian regimes are tightening their grip, what better time to kneecap one of the few sources of independent news and then stuff what’s left with administration talking points? Veteran journalists — represented by Norm Eisen — are now asking the courts to remind Lake, Michael Rigas, and the rest of the “US Agency for Global Maga” that federal law and the First Amendment still exist, even if the Trump crew would prefer a more North Korea–chic media environment.
VOA was literally created during World War II to counter Nazi propaganda by telling uncomfortable truths, including Allied failures, to build credibility. Eighty-plus years later, the Trump administration’s contribution to that legacy is: fire the journalists, slash the languages, and send Kari Lake on air to gush about the president to audiences living under repressive regimes. The U.S. once used VOA to model a pluralistic society where politicians don’t dictate the news agenda; now the model on display is "what if we tried the propaganda thing, but with worse production values?"
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump’s favorite ‘traitor’ won’t stay exiled
Alex Vindman, seen here committing the unforgivable offense of believing presidents shouldn’t extort foreign allies for campaign dirt.
Alexander Vindman, the guy who heard Trump try to shake down Ukraine like a mob boss with bone spurs, has decided that sitting quietly in Florida while the people who smeared him as a "traitor" run the place into the ocean is not really his vibe. Instead, the retired lieutenant colonel and Purple Heart recipient is running for US Senate in Florida — a state currently governed like a Fox News green room by Ron DeSantis and represented by Ashley Moody, a DeSantis appointee whose main qualification appears to be signing whatever the hard-right puts in front of her.
Rather than cashing in on a bestseller and consulting gigs, Vindman is voluntarily walking back into the same political meat grinder that got him purged from the National Security Council for the high crime of reporting that the president was abusing his office. Trump and his GOP chorus spent years calling him a "traitor" for telling the truth under oath; now those same geniuses are still using the line as he campaigns on ending "chaos" and "crushing corruption" — a pretty on-the-nose slogan for the guy who literally reported presidential corruption at the highest level.
His likely opponent, Senator Ashley Moody, comes pre-packaged as a DeSantis-installed rubber stamp whose track record includes helping turn Florida’s insurance market into a flaming sinkhole while protecting big insurers from having to, you know, pay claims. Vindman is pitching himself as the anti-chaos, anti-corruption alternative in a state where single-party rule has produced sky-high costs, broken systems, and a steady stream of Republican officials who treat public office like a loyalty test to Trump and his mini-mes. So the choice is shaping up nicely: the whistleblower who tried to stop an extortion plot, versus the party that punished him so they could keep the chaos flowing.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#retribution
