The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

At the University of North Texas, an exhibit by Victor "Marka27" Quiñonez lasted about as long as due process at an ICE check-in. His show, Ni De Aquí, Ni De Allá — Neither from Here Nor from There, featured giant Mexican paleta sculptures with handcuffs, replica guns, rosaries, and popsicle sticks stamped with a parody ICE logo reading: "U.S. Inhumane and Cruelty Enforcement". You know, a factual statement.

The exhibit had already run peacefully at Boston University, but once it hit Texas, it apparently triggered the state’s Standing Your Ground Against Metaphor statute. Within days, students started pinging the artist: the show was suddenly shut down, works quietly removed, and administrators started speaking fluent Bureaucratic Passive Voice about "concerns" and "procedures." Translation: you can enroll, pay tuition, and live with the consequences of immigration policy — you just can’t visually criticize the people enforcing it.

So on a campus where a quarter of the students are Hispanic, an artist who literally grew up in East Dallas was told, effectively, that his experience of U.S. immigration enforcement is too spicy for the gallery walls. The message from the state that worships "free speech": by all means, celebrate tacos and folklórico — but the minute you mention cages, handcuffs, or the agency doing the caging, the First Amendment gets deported.

Lindsey Graham, who spent the last decade as the Senate’s most accomplished political weather vane, has died at 71 after what his office calls a sudden illness. The retired air force reserve JAG, famous for loving every war he met and wanting to meet several more, went from calling Trump a "race-baiting, xenophobic bigot" in 2016 to becoming one of his loudest hype men once the base made it clear they preferred the bigot over the hawk.

Washington reporters are already workshopping solemn tributes about his "independence" and "bipartisanship", carefully skipping the part where he helped launder Trump’s authoritarian impulses through the Senate, defended every new executive power grab, and treated constitutional checks like a suggestion box. The GOP, meanwhile, loses a reliable vote for forever war abroad and judicial extremism at home – and Trump loses one of his most practiced cable-news defense attorneys.

His death leaves an open Senate seat in South Carolina and a temporary vacuum in the "I used to have principles, then I met Donald" caucus. Expect a brisk primary among aspiring mini-Grahams, all eager to prove they, too, can go from calling Trump unfit for office to swearing eternal loyalty the moment it looks politically useful. The legacy of enabling doesn’t die; it just waits for the next host.

The Trump administration has apparently decided that if you can’t secure Air Force One, you can at least try to secure the narrative. After New York Times reporters revealed that Trump’s shiny new $400m Qatar-gifted presidential jet might be missing basic antimissile protections, the Justice Department helpfully showed up at their homes with grand jury subpoenas. Because nothing says “state-of-the-art security” like sending federal agents to intimidate the people who noticed you forgot the flares.

Press freedom groups are, shockingly, not thrilled that federal prosecutors are dragging journalists toward a secret grand jury for the crime of reporting on whether the president’s foreign-donated plane is a flying bullseye. Times lawyer David McCraw called the doorstep visits from federal agents an assault on the Constitution, which is generous, since this White House mostly treats the First Amendment like a suggestion box it can set on fire.

The White House insists the new Air Force One is totally safe and “state-of-the-art,” while also bragging that they use “distraction and misdirection” as security tools — which is one way to describe subpoenaing reporters who expose your security gaps. This comes on the heels of Trump’s team trying (and in other cases temporarily succeeding) to subpoena journalists at the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, prosecuting Don Lemon and other journalists for covering a protest, and greenlighting an FBI raid on a Post reporter’s home. The message is clear: the press is free to report anything it wants, as long as it’s flattering, pre-cleared, and doesn’t question the presidential warplane gifted by a friendly petro-monarchy.

The Department of Justice, now operating as the legal help desk for Trump’s favorite insurrectionists, has moved to toss out the seditious conspiracy convictions of Proud Boys leaders who helped turn January 6 into a fascist cosplay riot with real blood and broken glass. Federal judge Timothy Kelly — a Trump appointee, because of course — agreed to dismiss the case only after the appeals court had already vacuumed up the convictions at DOJ’s request, and then helpfully wrote a seven-page memo explaining that this is happening not because of the law or the facts, but because Donald Trump wants his goons off the hook.

Kelly painstakingly recites that Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, and Zachary Rehl were convicted of multiple serious crimes, and that Dominic Pezzola famously smashed a Capitol window to let the mob pour in — you know, the thing we all saw on video. He calls January 6 a "perilous event," an attack on police, Congress, and the peaceful transfer of power, then shrugs and signs off on the dismissal because the executive branch now prefers sedition-friendly outcomes. The judge basically says: the government’s motive is transparently Trump’s desire to excuse his own supporters’ violence, but hey, separation of powers means I can’t stop the president from torching the rule of law.

The result: a Trump-initiated prosecution of Trump’s own shock troops, brought while he was still in office, is now being undone by Trump’s second-term DOJ on orders from the same guy who incited them in the first place. Kelly ends with a solemn lecture about preserving the "miracle" of peaceful transfer of power, right after greenlighting the demolition crew that’s ripping it out by the foundation. It’s less a court ruling and more a historical exhibit: Here Lies the Justice System, We Knew Exactly What We Were Doing.

The Trump White House turned into a literal cage-fighting arena and, shockingly, it also became a magnet for people plotting mass murder. Eight men have now been hit with murder and terrorism conspiracy charges over an alleged plan to use explosive drones and snipers to attack Trump’s big UFC spectacle, "Freedom 250"—because apparently nothing says stable democracy like hosting a pay-per-view brawl on federal property.

According to the indictment, this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment bad idea; they spent weeks stockpiling guns, ammo, explosives, body armor, drones, and comms gear like they were looting a Call of Duty armory. Prosecutors say the group marinated in fringe conspiracy theories and fantasized that slaughtering a crowd at a Trump fight night would help "destabilize the government"—as though the government hadn’t already been doing a pretty solid job destabilizing itself by turning the White House into a cross between a casino and a warlord’s palace.

One defendant allegedly planned to fly bomb-laden drones into the event and then mow down panicked spectators as they ran for their lives. Another, 21-year-old Chandler Scaggs, was allegedly assigned as a sniper and kept trying to make it to the show even after his ride got arrested, which is dedication of the very worst kind. So now we have the full Trump-era package: a presidency branded like a combat sports franchise, extremist fanatics convinced they’re players in the show, and the FBI racing to keep the season finale from turning into a mass-casualty event. American democracy, now with undercard bouts and counter-terror operations.

OpenAI has finally released ChatGPT 5.6 to the unwashed masses after a brief detour through the Trump administration’s new favorite toy: an AI "voluntary" review process where tech companies voluntarily do exactly what the White House tells them or risk finding out what non‑voluntary looks like. For the past month, the model was limited to a tiny club of government-approved users, because nothing says "defending democracy" like a small, handpicked group of insiders getting first dibs on the most powerful information tools on Earth.

The same crew that spent years mocking regulation as socialism suddenly discovered cybersecurity panic as a handy excuse to throttle who gets access to advanced AI, slap temporary export bans on rivals like Anthropic, and annoy U.S. allies who thought "partnership" meant something more than "you can read the press release." The Center for AI Standards and Innovation — a phrase that sounds like it was generated by a bored intern with a buzzword API — gave the thumbs up, and now OpenAI and Anthropic can go back to racing for their trillion‑dollar IPOs while the government quietly normalizes pre‑clearance for new models.

Trump’s people loudly reject "reining in" AI when workers, privacy advocates, or civil rights groups ask for it, but the moment someone whispers "cyber-attacks" and "China," they’re all in on centralized gatekeeping and ad hoc export controls. So the public gets destabilizing AI‑driven disinformation and surveillance potential, while access to the safest, most capable versions is filtered through Washington’s favorite trusted partners. It’s not regulation, they insist — just a helpful reminder that in Trump’s America, your cutting‑edge technology, like your rights, is subject to review.

Palm Beach International Airport is dead; long live President Donald J. Trump International Airport, where your flight might be delayed but the cult of personality is running right on time. Thanks to legislation signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis back in March, workers are now swapping out highway signs and the Federal Aviation Administration is changing the airport code from the neutral "PBI" to the full-on fan merch version: DJT. Subtlety has clearly been grounded indefinitely.

Some travelers told the BBC the sitting president deserves to be honored this way, because nothing says "healthy democracy" like plastering a current leader’s name on public infrastructure while he’s still in office and actively campaigning. Others politely expressed that they liked the old name better, presumably because it didn’t scream "personality cult" every time they checked their boarding pass. Florida has essentially turned a normal airport into a rolling campaign ad and loyalty test, and we’re all just supposed to pretend this is a standard tourism branding decision rather than another step in the ongoing project of Trumpifying every public space that can’t run away.

The story of Trump's beloved 250-foot "Independence Arch" turns out to be less "national unity" and more "some guys on a right-wing think tank blog dared him." Design critic Catesby Leigh floated the idea in April 2025, literally writing that he hoped Trump would mandate an arch in D.C. to mark the country's 250th birthday. Because nothing says "republic" like a president personally ordering up a triumphal arch to himself, Caesar-style.

Leigh's piece came pre-loaded with sketches from two conveniently positioned friends: local architect Nicolas Charbonneau and an outfit led by developer Rodney Mims Cook Jr. — the same Cook Trump had nominated to chair the Commission of Fine Arts, the federal body that’s supposed to independently vet monuments. There was no open design competition, just a closed loop of Trump-adjacent enthusiasts pitching a 250-foot stone ego-trip that, in renderings, dramatically frames Robert E. Lee's house at Arlington. America’s 250th birthday, commemorated by a presidentially blessed arch literally spotlighting a Confederate general’s home. Truly, a subtle monument to the "heritage" these guys keep accidentally saying out loud.

The Trump administration has apparently decided that refuge is overrated, so now it's allegedly mailing asylum files of Iranian detainees straight to the Iranian government. According to a new lawsuit filed in D.C. by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and Public Citizen, U.S. officials have been "periodically" mailing or hand-delivering immigration files of Iranians in custody to Tehran's representatives since March 2025. You flee a repressive regime, beg the United States for protection, and the Marco Rubio State Department allegedly responds by forwarding your deepest fears to the people you’re hiding from. Bold strategy.

Federal law is extremely clear that asylum applications are confidential and especially not to be shared with the government persecuting you, but the complaint says ICE and the Iranian Interests Section have been holding cozy monthly meetings where deportation relief and asylum files were passed along like party favors. Those meetings reportedly stopped after the U.S. attacked Iran in February, but the document pipeline allegedly kept flowing, because why let a little thing like war interrupt your data-sharing program with an adversarial regime?

Lawyers say detainees report being summoned to meetings with senior Iranian officials who already know details from their asylum claims — details that could get them detained, imprisoned, or tortured, along with putting their families at risk back home. The lawsuit even cites confidential confirmation from an Iranian government official that this is policy. Homeland Security and the Iranian mission to the U.N. responded with the traditional Trump-era statement: absolute silence. Meanwhile, the regulations say asylum records must be protected; the administration’s apparent position is more along the lines of: what if we weaponized them instead.