The Trump Presidency Timeline
Documenting the chaos since day one. 541 entries and counting.
Category: killing democracy
killing democracy
president demands netflix fire democrat or 'face consequences', democracy shrugs
Trump, fresh off promising to stay out of the Netflix–Warner Bros deal, explaining how he’ll totally stay out of it unless they fire the Democrat he’s mad at this week.
The President of the United States has now moved on from demanding loyalty oaths from cabinet officials to demanding them from Netflix. Donald Trump jumped onto Truth Social to order the company to dump former Obama national security adviser and current board member Susan Rice or "face the consequences" — a charming phrase when it comes from the man whose Justice Department and regulators are actively involved in approving Netflix's attempted takeover of Warner Bros Discovery.
Having literally promised a few weeks ago to stay out of the Netflix–Paramount Skydance fight over WBD, Trump has of course done the opposite, using his platform to blast Rice as a "political hack" with "no talent or skills" while amplifying Laura Loomer calling Netflix and Rice "anti-American" for the crime of saying that companies who enable Trumpism might one day be held accountable. So the president is now threatening a private corporation’s governance decisions in the middle of a massive merger review because he doesn’t like a Democrat on the board. Regulatory independence? Antitrust integrity? Adorable concepts from a bygone republic.
While Larry Ellison waves around a $40bn personal guarantee like a Bond villain with a cloud-computing hobby, Trump is busy turning federal approval of a $108bn media deal into his own loyalty test. If Netflix keeps Rice, it risks "consequences" from the same government that decides whether it gets to own Warner Bros, HBO, and about half the streaming market. If it caves, it proves that corporate America understands the new rules: cross Dear Leader and your business model gets it. Who needs authoritarian state TV when you can just threaten the platforms until they staff their boards to your liking?
Having literally promised a few weeks ago to stay out of the Netflix–Paramount Skydance fight over WBD, Trump has of course done the opposite, using his platform to blast Rice as a "political hack" with "no talent or skills" while amplifying Laura Loomer calling Netflix and Rice "anti-American" for the crime of saying that companies who enable Trumpism might one day be held accountable. So the president is now threatening a private corporation’s governance decisions in the middle of a massive merger review because he doesn’t like a Democrat on the board. Regulatory independence? Antitrust integrity? Adorable concepts from a bygone republic.
While Larry Ellison waves around a $40bn personal guarantee like a Bond villain with a cloud-computing hobby, Trump is busy turning federal approval of a $108bn media deal into his own loyalty test. If Netflix keeps Rice, it risks "consequences" from the same government that decides whether it gets to own Warner Bros, HBO, and about half the streaming market. If it caves, it proves that corporate America understands the new rules: cross Dear Leader and your business model gets it. Who needs authoritarian state TV when you can just threaten the platforms until they staff their boards to your liking?
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#fascism#corruption
killing democracy
trump discovers you can rig democracy without bothering to steal ballots
Behold: the House of Representatives, where the real contest isn’t elections, it’s who can draw the most creatively rigged squiggles on a map.
American democracy update: fewer than 5% of Americans now get anything resembling a real say in who controls the House, because President Trump decided the normal once-a-decade gerrymander just wasn’t quite undemocratic enough. So he leaned on Texas to redraw its map mid-decade for five extra GOP-friendly seats, California Democrats replied with their own ballot-measure power grab for five new Dem-favored seats, and suddenly 32 states don’t have a single competitive House race. Bipartisanship lives—both parties can agree voters are a nuisance.
Instead of elections, we now have a national cartography contest where politicians use precision software to carve the country into safe little fiefdoms, then call it representation. Experts say just 18 of 435 House races are true toss-ups, and even if you generously add the “lean” races, fewer than 10% of seats are actually in play. The rest will be decided in low-turnout primaries dominated by the most extreme partisans, producing what one analyst calls the least accountable Congress of our lifetimes. So no, your vote in November probably doesn’t matter much—but Trump’s mid-decade map-tweaking sure did.
Instead of elections, we now have a national cartography contest where politicians use precision software to carve the country into safe little fiefdoms, then call it representation. Experts say just 18 of 435 House races are true toss-ups, and even if you generously add the “lean” races, fewer than 10% of seats are actually in play. The rest will be decided in low-turnout primaries dominated by the most extreme partisans, producing what one analyst calls the least accountable Congress of our lifetimes. So no, your vote in November probably doesn’t matter much—but Trump’s mid-decade map-tweaking sure did.
Source: npr.org
#killing-democracy#oligarchy
killing democracy
project 2025: the fascist fanfic now running the country
Trump, wearing the world’s loudest hat, explains he’s never heard of Project 2025 while accidentally implementing chapter 7 on live TV.
Trump swore he had no idea what Project 2025 was, which is interesting given that his second term now reads like the audiobook version. The 900‑page Heritage Foundation fantasy novel about expanding presidential power, purging the federal workforce, and shoving an ultra‑conservative social order down everyone’s throats has apparently become the operations manual on his Resolute Desk.
While Trump pretends this is all just vibes and instinct, outside trackers say the White House has already implemented over half of the Project 2025 agenda: halting billions in foreign aid, trying to erase federal DEI programs, turbo‑charging immigration enforcement, and defunding NPR and PBS for the crime of occasionally telling the truth. Meanwhile, the hilariously named Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been unleashed to fire thousands of civil servants and drag independent agencies under tighter political control. Nothing screams "limited government" like a centrally planned purge of anyone who might say "no".
Heritage now insists that "all decisions are up to President Trump"—which is a cute way of saying "we just wrote the authoritarian cookbook, we can’t help it if the chef followed the recipe." The White House, for its part, responds with a word salad about making America "the hottest country in the world" by securing the border and cutting taxes, as if mass firings, institutional capture, and dismantling public broadcasting are just quirky side effects. Project 2025 was sold as a theoretical wish list; it’s now a status report on how far the administration has gotten in turning the federal government into a loyalty cult.
Source: bbc.com
#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy
trump wants his own arch of triumph, veterans sue to keep arlington from becoming mar-a-mausoleum
Memorial Circle, currently a solemn historic vista, shown here before the proposed addition of a 250-foot presidential ego obelisk in arch form.
Vietnam veterans and a retired architectural historian have gone to federal court to stop Donald Trump from plopping a 250-foot "Independence Arch" directly into one of the most sacred sightlines in the capital: the view from the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington House, designed after the Civil War to symbolize national unity. The lawsuit, filed in D.C. federal court and led by Public Citizen, politely translates to: no, you may not build a campaign billboard over our dead. The plaintiffs call it a "vanity project" that would desecrate a solemn vista they regularly visit and, as a bonus, potentially create an aviation hazard for planes using Reagan National. Nothing says "thank you for your service" like turning your cemetery into an obstacle course.
The suit names Trump, senior White House officials, and the National Park Service, accusing them of steamrolling multiple federal laws: the Commemorative Works Act (you’re supposed to get Congress’ approval before erecting mega-monuments on federal land), the National Environmental Policy Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act. Translation: you can’t just wake up, point at Memorial Circle, and say "build my arch there" because you saw something cool in Paris once. Meanwhile, the White House is out here insisting this will "enhance the visitor experience" and "give the greatest Nation on earth America the glory it deserves"—which is a very long way of saying Trump wants a giant patriotic selfie frame next to Arlington National Cemetery.
No one at the White House or NPS bothered to respond to NPR, presumably because they were busy measuring how tall a monument has to be for Trump to see it from his motorcade. This legal fight also comes on the heels of another lawsuit over Trump’s plan to replace the White House East Wing with a privately funded ballroom, because apparently every historic site in Washington now has to audition as a backdrop for his next fundraiser. The 250th anniversary of American independence was supposed to be about democracy and shared sacrifice; under Trump, it’s turning into a multi-year experiment in how far one man’s ego can stretch federal law, historic preservation rules, and basic decency before something finally snaps.
The suit names Trump, senior White House officials, and the National Park Service, accusing them of steamrolling multiple federal laws: the Commemorative Works Act (you’re supposed to get Congress’ approval before erecting mega-monuments on federal land), the National Environmental Policy Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act. Translation: you can’t just wake up, point at Memorial Circle, and say "build my arch there" because you saw something cool in Paris once. Meanwhile, the White House is out here insisting this will "enhance the visitor experience" and "give the greatest Nation on earth America the glory it deserves"—which is a very long way of saying Trump wants a giant patriotic selfie frame next to Arlington National Cemetery.
No one at the White House or NPS bothered to respond to NPR, presumably because they were busy measuring how tall a monument has to be for Trump to see it from his motorcade. This legal fight also comes on the heels of another lawsuit over Trump’s plan to replace the White House East Wing with a privately funded ballroom, because apparently every historic site in Washington now has to audition as a backdrop for his next fundraiser. The 250th anniversary of American independence was supposed to be about democracy and shared sacrifice; under Trump, it’s turning into a multi-year experiment in how far one man’s ego can stretch federal law, historic preservation rules, and basic decency before something finally snaps.
Source: npr.org
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy
cia tradecraft now includes loyalty oaths
The CIA, seen here carefully separating intelligence analysis from politics by handing the red pen to Devin Nunes and Reince Priebus.
The CIA has announced it will retract or heavily edit 19 intelligence reports after a review by the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board — a body now stacked with Trump loyalists like Devin Nunes, Reince Priebus, Brad Wenstrup, and Katie Miller (yes, the Stephen Miller one). CIA Director and Trump appointee John Ratcliffe swears this is all about protecting the agency from bias, which is a bold claim from a crew that treats objective reality like a hostile foreign power.
The offending reports? Analyses on white supremacist women being radicalized, global contraceptive shortages harming economic development, and LGBT activists under pressure in the Middle East and North Africa. So the Trump-era standard for "tradecraft" appears to be: if it makes right-wing culture warriors uncomfortable, it clearly fails the analytic rigor test. The agency insists this purge is just about meeting "the President’s expectations" that the workforce remain independent of any agenda — by obeying his agenda.
Sen. Mark Warner politely called this what it is: politicization of intelligence. Sen. Tom Cotton, meanwhile, applauded the move, accusing Obama and Biden of mixing politics and intelligence, while cheering on a board of hyperpartisan Trump picks literally rewriting the historical record. The intelligence community is supposedly being rescued from bias by the same people who think climate change is a hoax and that the deep state lives under their bed. What could possibly go wrong when national security analysis is run through a MAGA vibes-check?
Source: nbcnews.com
#killing-democracy#national-security
killing democracy
trump doj rides to the rescue of america’s most endangered group: white kids in la
Pam Bondi’s Justice Department, bravely charging into Los Angeles to protect the most oppressed group in a 73% Latino district: white students who might have to share the concept of smaller class sizes.
The Trump Department of Justice, now helmed by Pam Bondi, has decided that the true civil rights crisis in Los Angeles isn’t the massive achievement gap for Black and Latino students, but the “new minority”: white kids in a district where they make up about 10% of enrollment. So the DOJ is trying to jump into a lawsuit filed by the 1776 Project Foundation — because of course it’s called that — which claims LA’s decades-old desegregation remedies are actually a sinister plot of "overt discrimination" against white students.
For nearly 50 years, LAUSD has used a designation called PHBAO — predominantly Hispanic, Black, Asian or other non-white — to target smaller class sizes and extra support to schools that are over 70% nonwhite, in response to actual court-ordered desegregation. The result: over 600 schools qualify, about 100 don’t. The Trump DOJ took one look at a system designed to mitigate segregation and said: this must end immediately to protect the constitutional right of white students to have the same crowded classrooms as everyone else. Bondi’s civil rights division solemnly intones that students should “never be classified or treated differently because of their race,” having apparently skipped the part of history where segregation and systemic underfunding did exactly that.
Meanwhile, data show that students of color in LAUSD still lag far behind white students in test results, which you might think suggests that maybe, just maybe, extra support in majority-nonwhite schools is still necessary. But conservative groups, fresh off the Supreme Court’s demolition of affirmative action, are on a nationwide tear to dismantle any program that even sounds like it might help Black or brown kids. When LA tried a Black Student Achievement plan that actually showed positive results — better attendance, more AP enrollment, more engagement — the same crowd screamed "reverse racism" until the district watered it down. As UCLA’s Tyrone Howard put it, the message is clear: failing Black students are fine; helping them is unconstitutional.
So here we are: the Trump administration’s Justice Department has turned "civil rights enforcement" into a weapon to attack desegregation remedies in a majority-minority district, all while pretending they’ve just discovered colorblindness in 2026. When the federal government’s big stand for equality is making sure white kids in Los Angeles don’t accidentally sit in a class with fewer than 34.5 students, you’re not protecting the constitution — you’re using it as a prop in the culture war.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#racism#forever-grifting
killing democracy
cbs news brought to you by the trump–ellison ministry of information
Anderson Cooper walks away from 60 Minutes while CBS executives measure how far they can bend before Trump and Larry Ellison tell them to snap.
Anderson Cooper bails on 60 Minutes, Stephen Colbert has to smuggle a basic political interview onto YouTube like it’s banned literature, and CBS Evening News helpfully rewrites its own ICE reporting to make immigrants look scarier. No, that’s not a dystopian screenplay; that’s just what happens when your parent company, Paramount Skydance, wants to buy Warner Bros Discovery and needs Donald Trump’s government to pat it on the head and sign off.
David Ellison runs Paramount Skydance, Larry Ellison signs the checks, and Trump’s pet FCC chair Brendan Carr stands by, ready to bless the deal if CBS proves it can play nice and tilt right. Bari Weiss, now reporting directly to Ellison, steers 60 Minutes into MAGA-curious waters, while a CBS producer resigns and flatly says the quiet part out loud: editorial independence is gone; everything is screened for ideological compliance. Colbert called CBS’s settlement of Trump’s frivolous lawsuit a “big, fat bribe,” and—what do you know—his contract suddenly vanished too.
This is what media scholars politely call “media capture” and what normal people might call “corporate fascism with better lighting.” The state doesn’t even need to censor anyone; Trump just growls, and billionaires like the Ellisons start pre-censoring their newsrooms to protect a multibillion-dollar merger. Journalism is supposed to serve the public, but under Trump’s America it’s being repurposed to serve yacht upgrades and presidential ego management. Democracy gets downgraded to a content vertical.
David Ellison runs Paramount Skydance, Larry Ellison signs the checks, and Trump’s pet FCC chair Brendan Carr stands by, ready to bless the deal if CBS proves it can play nice and tilt right. Bari Weiss, now reporting directly to Ellison, steers 60 Minutes into MAGA-curious waters, while a CBS producer resigns and flatly says the quiet part out loud: editorial independence is gone; everything is screened for ideological compliance. Colbert called CBS’s settlement of Trump’s frivolous lawsuit a “big, fat bribe,” and—what do you know—his contract suddenly vanished too.
This is what media scholars politely call “media capture” and what normal people might call “corporate fascism with better lighting.” The state doesn’t even need to censor anyone; Trump just growls, and billionaires like the Ellisons start pre-censoring their newsrooms to protect a multibillion-dollar merger. Journalism is supposed to serve the public, but under Trump’s America it’s being repurposed to serve yacht upgrades and presidential ego management. Democracy gets downgraded to a content vertical.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#fascism#forever-grifting
killing democracy
grandma goes to yellowstone, trump’s ice sends her to jail
Come for the national parks, stay for the indefinite detention by a giant, screaming Donald Trump with a badge and a quota spreadsheet.
Karen Newton, a 65-year-old British grandmother with a valid US tourist visa, went to see bison and geysers and wound up getting the full Trump-era police state sampler. After Canadian border officials bounced her and her husband back over a paperwork issue with their car, US officials discovered his visa had expired and responded with the calm, proportionate measure you’d expect from an $85bn deportation machine: they handcuffed and shackled her too, then locked her in a cell and drove her 12 hours through the night to an ICE detention center.
Karen, who has no criminal record and apparently the wild, radical lifestyle of a retired primary school admin who does cross-stitch, spent six weeks in ICE custody despite having all the legal paperwork she needed to be in the country. Guards allegedly told her that ICE officers get paid per head they detain, which really clarifies why the agency is suddenly treating tourists like bounties in a dystopian loyalty program. Trump’s second-term ICE, now fattened from a $6bn budget to $85bn and showering new hires with up to $50,000 signing bonuses, has been ordered to crank daily arrests up to 1,200–1,500 — so sure, the math checks out: your valid visa is now just a cover charge for entering the for-profit detention arcade.
Karen joins a growing list of international travelers — German tourists, a British backpacker, a Canadian actor, a New Zealander and her six-year-old son — who learned the hard way that under Trump, legal entry status is mostly a suggestion and the real immigration policy is "how many warm bodies can we throw in a cell today." The message from America’s tourism board has never been clearer: visit the US, see the sights, try the cuisine, maybe get disappeared into an $85bn immigration gulag because someone needs to hit their quota.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
killing democracy
trump doj to federal judges: nice statute you’ve got there, shame if we ignored it
Todd Blanche hits “send tweet” to fire a court-appointed U.S. attorney, proving once again that under Trump, constitutional law is just content for the feed.
The Eastern District of Virginia got about three hours of lawful leadership before the Trump DOJ kicked it to the curb. Federal judges unanimously appointed veteran litigator James Hundley as interim U.S. attorney — a guy with 30+ years of experience, complex criminal and civil work, and an actual argument before the Supreme Court under his belt. Chief Judge M. Hannah Lauck swore him in, paperwork filed, oath taken, the whole quaint "rule of law" ritual.
Then Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche hopped onto X like a reality show contestant with a badge and declared, "Here we go again. EDVA judges do not pick our US Attorney. POTUS does. James Hundley, you’re fired!" Federal law explicitly lets judges appoint a U.S. attorney when the president’s nominee hasn’t been confirmed within 120 days — but the Trump administration has apparently moved on to a new constitutional theory: the statute doesn’t count if it inconveniences Dear Leader’s patronage network.
This is now a pattern, not a glitch. Hundley was stepping in after a judge ruled that Trump stan Lindsey Halligan — an insurance lawyer with zero prosecutorial experience whose main qualification was hating Letitia James and James Comey — was serving unlawfully. Same story in New Jersey, where Pam Bondi axed judge-appointed Desiree Leigh Grace to protect Trump ally Alina Habba’s turf, and in the Northern District of New York, where Donald Kinsella got an email from the White House informing him the president had personally ordered his removal. Federal judges follow the law, replace illegally installed loyalists, and the Trump team responds by yanking the replacements and reasserting political control over prosecutions.
So yes, the Department of Justice is now openly treating judicial appointments authorized by statute as optional suggestions, while blasting out "you’re fired" posts on social media like it’s 2017 and the Constitution is just a Terms of Service pop-up. The message to the bench is clear: you can rule our cronies are unlawful all you want — we’ll just keep firing anyone who isn’t a Trump foot soldier until the only qualification for U.S. attorney is "willing to prosecute the president’s enemies on command." Independent justice has officially been replaced with at-will employment, Mar-a-Lago edition.
Source: nbcnews.com
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
killing democracy
dhs forgets to mention it killed a us citizen during trump’s big immigration crackdown
DHS agents managing traffic, public safety, and the occasional undisclosed fatal shooting, all without the burden of telling the public what actually happened.
The Department of Homeland Security apparently decided that killing a 23-year-old US citizen during Trump’s second-term immigration purge was just a minor paperwork issue, not something the public needed to know about. Newly released, heavily blacked-out ICE documents show that Ruben Ray Martinez was shot and killed by a Homeland Security Investigations agent on South Padre Island in March 2025 during a traffic encounter that DHS somehow forgot to publicly disclose for 11 months. Local outlets reported a shooting at the time, but nobody mentioned that federal immigration agents were involved, because transparency is for governments that aren’t running a nationwide crackdown.
According to DHS, Martinez “intentionally ran over” an HSI agent, prompting another agent to fire “defensive shots” through the driver’s window. According to Martinez’s mother – and, awkwardly, a Texas Rangers investigator – there’s video that contradicts the federal agents’ story. That state investigation was reportedly finished in October and supposed to go to a grand jury, yet DPS now says the case is still “active”, which is bureaucrat for “we’re all waiting to see how much political heat this causes”. Meanwhile, the agents’ names are redacted, the only person who definitely died is a US citizen who went to the beach for his birthday, and the shooting is just one of at least six deadly federal encounters since Trump 2.0’s immigration dragnet kicked off. Law and order, it turns out, mostly means you don’t get to know who killed your kid or why.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
killing democracy
trump fails to cancel history, congress briefly remembers spine
Congress briefly pretends to value art and history, pauses Trump’s culture purge for one fiscal year only.
Donald Trump tried to defund reality again, this time by going after the Smithsonian, the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and museums that dare acknowledge women, Black Americans, Latinos, and Indigenous people exist. He even slapped an executive order with the extremely normal title “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” on it, accusing the Smithsonian of being corrupted by a "race-centered ideology"—because nothing says truth and sanity like demanding history be less accurate and more flattering to white grievance.
Congress, in a rare moment of wanting to look slightly less like an authoritarian book club, quietly restored funding in a January bill, keeping the IAIA and other targeted institutions alive. This didn’t happen because Republicans suddenly discovered the humanities, but because students, alumni, and advocates launched a relentless pressure campaign, writing letters, talking to the press, and explaining that maybe erasing Indigenous and minority culture from public life is bad. IAIA president Shelly C Lowe calls the funding a "relief"; the catch is that everyone now has to spend their time lobbying just to not be deleted from the federal budget every year like a line item in Trump’s ego spreadsheet.
So the Institute of American Indian Arts gets $13.5m to keep its doors open and continue proving that Indigenous art, culture, and economic impact are real. The trade-off is that they, and every other cultural institution Trump targeted, now live in a world where federal support for history and art is a recurring hostage situation. The good news: advocacy worked. The bad news: they’ll have to keep fighting, because the president still wants the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities to go the way of his attention span.
Congress, in a rare moment of wanting to look slightly less like an authoritarian book club, quietly restored funding in a January bill, keeping the IAIA and other targeted institutions alive. This didn’t happen because Republicans suddenly discovered the humanities, but because students, alumni, and advocates launched a relentless pressure campaign, writing letters, talking to the press, and explaining that maybe erasing Indigenous and minority culture from public life is bad. IAIA president Shelly C Lowe calls the funding a "relief"; the catch is that everyone now has to spend their time lobbying just to not be deleted from the federal budget every year like a line item in Trump’s ego spreadsheet.
So the Institute of American Indian Arts gets $13.5m to keep its doors open and continue proving that Indigenous art, culture, and economic impact are real. The trade-off is that they, and every other cultural institution Trump targeted, now live in a world where federal support for history and art is a recurring hostage situation. The good news: advocacy worked. The bad news: they’ll have to keep fighting, because the president still wants the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities to go the way of his attention span.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy
supreme court discovers spine, gently removes trump’s tariff bat
The U.S. Supreme Court, briefly moonlighting as a co-equal branch of government instead of Trump’s emergency rubber stamp.
The Supreme Court has finally looked at Trump’s "everything is an emergency if I say so" tariff regime and decided: actually, no, the president does not get to run the global economy like a casino he’s already bankrupted. In a 6-3 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court ruled that Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to slap massive, wildly fluctuating tariffs on imports is unconstitutional. That’s Trump’s signature economic policy, vaporized — and not even on the shadow docket this time.
Trump had jacked tariffs to at least 10% on most imports, up to 145% for China, and 25–35% on supposed "allies" like Canada and Mexico, because nothing says strategic genius like declaring trade war on maple syrup. Businesses, somehow unthrilled by having their supply chains tied to the president’s mood ring, sued, arguing he’d blown past his legal authority. After years of rubber-stamping Trump’s power grabs on the emergency docket, the justices finally took a real case, did full briefing, and told him no. Roberts plus five others sided with the Constitution; Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh dissented, presumably from an alternate universe where "emergency powers" means "whatever the guy with the loudest rally crowd wants."
The upshot: Trump’s trade policy — a chaotic protectionist cosplay justified by perpetual "emergency" — just hit a constitutional wall. The Court, which has spent years enabling his authoritarian cosplay, has now drawn at least one line: you don’t get to rewrite global trade law by executive order and call it Tuesday. Whether this slows the broader project of turning emergency powers into a permanent presidential cheat code is unclear, but for today, the imperial presidency took a rare loss.
Source: npr.org
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#killing-democracy#trade-war
killing democracy
federal judge to white house: stop running an immigration terror cell
ICE and Border Patrol agents stand around looking for the nearest constitutional right to ignore while the White House speed-runs the "authoritarian regime" checklist.
US district judge Sunshine Sykes has looked at Trump’s immigration machine, compared it to the rule of law, and concluded: yeah, this is terror. Not metaphorical, not vibes-based – she explicitly describes the White House as terrorizing immigrants and "extending its violence" to its own citizens, after ICE and Border Patrol officers killed two US citizens in Minneapolis who were protesting. You know your democracy is thriving when a federal judge has to write the words "the executive branch" and "killing American citizens" in the same sentence.
The administration, having been told in December that its mandatory detention scheme was illegal, responded with the maturity and restraint we’ve come to expect: it just kept doing it. Sykes ordered DHS to actually tell detainees they might be eligible for bond, and then – stay with me here – let them use a phone to call a lawyer within an hour. The government’s response was to wave around an immigration court ruling she has now tossed in the trash and to brag through DHS that the supreme court keeps "overruling" lower courts, as if "we break the law until our guys in robes rescue us" is a normal enforcement strategy.
While Trump’s people insist they’re targeting the "worst criminals", Sykes notes the obvious: most of the people they’re locking up for months without hearings don’t fit that description at all. More than 20,000 habeas petitions have been filed since Trump took office – a number you usually associate with failed states and war zones, not a country that prints "due process" on the brochure. Judges from Minnesota to New Jersey are now holding administration lawyers in contempt and demanding to know why court orders are treated as optional suggestions. Sykes spells it out: denying immigrants basic due process is shredding families, communities, and "the fabric of this very nation" – which, to be fair, appears to be exactly the point.
The administration, having been told in December that its mandatory detention scheme was illegal, responded with the maturity and restraint we’ve come to expect: it just kept doing it. Sykes ordered DHS to actually tell detainees they might be eligible for bond, and then – stay with me here – let them use a phone to call a lawyer within an hour. The government’s response was to wave around an immigration court ruling she has now tossed in the trash and to brag through DHS that the supreme court keeps "overruling" lower courts, as if "we break the law until our guys in robes rescue us" is a normal enforcement strategy.
While Trump’s people insist they’re targeting the "worst criminals", Sykes notes the obvious: most of the people they’re locking up for months without hearings don’t fit that description at all. More than 20,000 habeas petitions have been filed since Trump took office – a number you usually associate with failed states and war zones, not a country that prints "due process" on the brochure. Judges from Minnesota to New Jersey are now holding administration lawyers in contempt and demanding to know why court orders are treated as optional suggestions. Sykes spells it out: denying immigrants basic due process is shredding families, communities, and "the fabric of this very nation" – which, to be fair, appears to be exactly the point.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
killing democracy
president with five deferments calls injured olympian a 'real loser'
Gus Kenworthy, seen here doing actual athletic feats, as opposed to logging on to bully Olympians from a gold-plated couch.
Donald Trump, a man whose most strenuous athletic achievement is walking down a ramp at a 3% incline, decided to spend the first week of the Winter Olympics calling U.S. halfpipe skier Hunter Hess a "real loser" for having complicated feelings about representing his country under, well, him. Shockingly, the presidential meltdown unleashed a torrent of online abuse, turning what should have been the pinnacle of Hess’s career into what he describes as "the hardest two weeks of my life."
Instead of issuing an apology like a normal adult, the Commander in Chief of the Culture War just left a 27-year-old to deal with threats and harassment while he competed with a haematoma, bone bruising, possible broken hand, and knee pain — and still qualified for the final while flashing an L-sign and deadpanning, "Apparently I am a loser. I am leaning into it." Hess, who has repeatedly said he loves the United States and is proud to represent Team USA, learned the hard way that in Trump’s America, patriotism isn’t about sacrifice or performance; it’s about never deviating from the script.
Hess compared notes with fellow target Gus Kenworthy, who committed the unpardonable sin of writing "Fuck ICE" in the snow and was rewarded with violent, homophobic threats from the president’s fanbase. Kenworthy’s takeaway? Anyone who spends their free time posting rage comments at Olympic athletes probably isn’t the defender of American greatness they think they are. But sure, let’s keep pretending the real threat to the country is a skier with mixed feelings and a busted shoulder, not a president who treats citizens like enemies for failing the flag-worship vibe check.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#trumps-america
killing democracy
dan crenshaw begs for trump’s love, gets ghosted anyway
Steve Toth, seen here auditioning for the role of ‘Most Obedient Backbencher,’ explains that Dan Crenshaw’s real crime was momentarily acknowledging who actually won the 2020 election.
Donald Trump has endorsed every House Republican running in the early 2026 primaries except one: Dan Crenshaw, who is now spending a pile of money on TV ads insisting that he actually does love Big Brother. Texas state Rep. Steve Toth is challenging him from the ultra-MAGA right, arguing that Crenshaw’s occasional brush with reality on Ukraine and the 2020 election disqualifies him from serving in a party where the top policy priority is personal loyalty to Trump.
Crenshaw, who once dared to say the stolen-election fantasy was a "lie meant to rile people up," is now flooding the airwaves with footage of Trump calling him "great" and telling voters that if they think he’s not MAGA enough, they just aren’t stalking his social media hard enough. He’s bragging about defending Trump’s policies "in extremely hard places" like The View and Bill Maher, while simultaneously touting his hardline immigration stance, cartel war cosplay, and repeated attempts to strip Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care for minors to prove he’s on-brand authoritarian where it counts.
The punchline: even after signing on to Ken Paxton’s doomed legal stunt to overturn Biden’s win, Crenshaw still committed the unforgivable sin of voting to certify the election. So now his reward is a primary where both candidates are racing to prove who can worship Trump more convincingly, while Trump himself dangles a possible endorsement like a reality show rose. Policy, governance, democracy — all demoted to background extras in the ongoing casting call for Trump’s favorite congressional sidekick.
Source: nbcnews.com
#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy
trump turns nato into a protection racket, europe starts learning krav maga
Map of the Baltic Sea, also known as the body of water NATO members now have to defend from both Russia and whatever Trump’s mood is this week.
Europe joined NATO to be protected from Russia, not to have Donald Trump wake up one morning and threaten to carve off Greenland like it’s a Trump golf course with icebergs. After the "Greenland crisis"—in which the most powerful NATO member floated seizing territory from another member—Baltic Sea states quietly realized that the alliance’s biggest wildcard isn’t Moscow’s rusting navy, it’s the guy in Washington treating Article 5 like a gym membership he can cancel if the Europeans don’t "pay up".
So the Baltic countries did the unthinkable: they acted like responsible adults. Finland and its neighbors built a joint maritime surveillance center, spun up an AI system called Nordic Warden to watch over undersea cables and pipelines, and created a nonstop patrol—Baltic Sentry—to guard infrastructure that the US used to pretend to care about. While Trump is out there announcing that if allies don’t hit his arbitrary spending number he’ll just let Russia have a snack, these countries are patching the security holes he’s punching in the system.
Meanwhile, ordinary Europeans have noticed that the "leader of the free world" now talks about NATO like it’s a casino comp program. Only a quarter of Swedes think the US would actually show up if they were attacked, and most Britons doubt Washington would defend the Baltics at all. So regional mini-alliances are forming, France is boarding shady Russian tankers, and everyone is quietly preparing for a future where the United States is less a guarantor of security and more an unstable landlord threatening eviction. NATO may survive this, but it won’t be thanks to Trump—it’ll be because everyone else decided to do the grown-up work while the arsonist keeps playing with matches.
So the Baltic countries did the unthinkable: they acted like responsible adults. Finland and its neighbors built a joint maritime surveillance center, spun up an AI system called Nordic Warden to watch over undersea cables and pipelines, and created a nonstop patrol—Baltic Sentry—to guard infrastructure that the US used to pretend to care about. While Trump is out there announcing that if allies don’t hit his arbitrary spending number he’ll just let Russia have a snack, these countries are patching the security holes he’s punching in the system.
Meanwhile, ordinary Europeans have noticed that the "leader of the free world" now talks about NATO like it’s a casino comp program. Only a quarter of Swedes think the US would actually show up if they were attacked, and most Britons doubt Washington would defend the Baltics at all. So regional mini-alliances are forming, France is boarding shady Russian tankers, and everyone is quietly preparing for a future where the United States is less a guarantor of security and more an unstable landlord threatening eviction. NATO may survive this, but it won’t be thanks to Trump—it’ll be because everyone else decided to do the grown-up work while the arsonist keeps playing with matches.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#national-security
killing democracy
trump slaps his face on the justice department
The Justice Department, now featuring its new logo: Donald Trump’s face where blindfolded Lady Justice used to be.
The Justice Department just debuted its new look: a giant Trump banner draped over its headquarters like a third-rate casino promo, helpfully clarifying that the "independence" part of law enforcement has been discontinued. The slogan: "Make America Safe Again" — which here apparently means "safe for the president from consequences". Nothing says rule of law like the defendant hanging his own promo poster on the courthouse.
Pam Bondi, now attorney general and full-time presidential bodyguard, has ditched the old-fashioned idea that the AG shouldn’t act like the president’s personal lawyer. Instead, DOJ is proudly “celebrating 250 years” of American justice “at President Trump’s direction” — a phrase that would normally be a red flag, but is now just printed on official letterhead. While they insist they’re not weaponizing the department, they’re busy launching investigations into Trump’s perceived enemies: Letitia James, James Comey, Democratic lawmakers who warned troops about illegal orders, Jerome Powell for saying words in Congress, and random Minnesota officials for not being cruel enough on immigration.
Authoritarian regimes usually ease into the whole personality cult thing. This one skipped straight to hanging the leader’s face on the justice ministry while opening revenge probes against critics, then pretending it’s all just good governance. The banner says "Make America Safe Again"; the fine print reads: for Trump, not for democracy.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
killing democracy
cia lady vs chaos muppet: state of the union remix
Abigail Spanberger preparing to follow Trump’s State of the Union, also known as the annual ‘I definitely didn’t try to overthrow this place’ variety show.
Donald Trump is getting another taxpayer-funded therapy session in front of a joint session of Congress, and Democrats have decided to answer it by rolling out Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer whose entire career is basically one long no, actually, this is not normal to Trumpism. While Trump will be busy declaring his own perfection, Spanberger is set to talk about "rising costs" and "chaos in their communities" — also known as the Trump 2.0 governing agenda. One side brings flags and fantasies; the other brings someone who can pronounce "Ukraine" without needing Putin’s permission first.
Spanberger’s résumé is a walking subtweet of the Trump era: flipped a Republican district in 2018 during the first backlash to his rule, helped push Pelosi over the edge on impeaching him for extorting Ukraine, then crushed Republican Winsome Sears for governor by nearly 16 points — triple Kamala Harris’ 2024 margin over Trump in Virginia. So yes, the Democratic response is being delivered by a woman whose entire political rise is powered by the nuclear waste of Trump’s corruption, and she’s now being handed prime time to explain why people are tired of living in his perpetual crisis carnival.
Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer also tapped Sen. Alex Padilla to give the Spanish-language response, while Jeffries politely summarized Trump’s speech in advance as a live performance of lying, deflecting, and blaming everyone else for his failed presidency. Notably passed over: New York City’s socialist-flavored mayor Zohran Mamdani and New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill — because when you’re running against a would-be autocrat who already tried to overthrow the government once, the party has decided maybe let’s go with the ex-spook who helped impeach him for abusing foreign aid. Polls show Trump bleeding support on the economy and immigration, so Democrats are studying the Spanberger/Sherrill "competent boring person vs. flaming dumpster of fascist vibes" model for the midterms. Bold strategy: offering governance against a guy still selling grievance and gold sneakers.
Spanberger’s résumé is a walking subtweet of the Trump era: flipped a Republican district in 2018 during the first backlash to his rule, helped push Pelosi over the edge on impeaching him for extorting Ukraine, then crushed Republican Winsome Sears for governor by nearly 16 points — triple Kamala Harris’ 2024 margin over Trump in Virginia. So yes, the Democratic response is being delivered by a woman whose entire political rise is powered by the nuclear waste of Trump’s corruption, and she’s now being handed prime time to explain why people are tired of living in his perpetual crisis carnival.
Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer also tapped Sen. Alex Padilla to give the Spanish-language response, while Jeffries politely summarized Trump’s speech in advance as a live performance of lying, deflecting, and blaming everyone else for his failed presidency. Notably passed over: New York City’s socialist-flavored mayor Zohran Mamdani and New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill — because when you’re running against a would-be autocrat who already tried to overthrow the government once, the party has decided maybe let’s go with the ex-spook who helped impeach him for abusing foreign aid. Polls show Trump bleeding support on the economy and immigration, so Democrats are studying the Spanberger/Sherrill "competent boring person vs. flaming dumpster of fascist vibes" model for the midterms. Bold strategy: offering governance against a guy still selling grievance and gold sneakers.
#killing-democracy#losses
killing democracy
trump discovers even he has to praise someone who actually did things
Jesse Jackson marching for voting rights while the GOP frantically looks for new ways to draw a line around democracy and call it a ‘safe district.’
Donald Trump, lifelong huckster and part-time strongman enthusiast, briefly stepped out of character to call Jesse Jackson a “force of nature” — which is MAGA for, “this guy actually organized people and won things without lying about crowd sizes.” Reverend William Barber’s tribute walks through Jackson’s life of actual public service: nonviolent direct action, boycotts against corporate greed, rainbow coalitions, and that terrifying concept so hated by Republicans everywhere: registering poor people to vote.
Then we snap back to present-day America, where Trump loses an election during a pandemic, screams “fraud” into every available microphone, and turns belief in the big lie into a mandatory GOP blood oath. State-level Republicans, desperate to keep Jackson’s multi-racial coalitions from ever mattering again, respond the only way they know how: gerrymander Texas into abstract art and let Trump literally order a gerrymander in North Carolina to try to cling to House power. Jackson, already sick, is still out marching in the heat while the supposed tough guys of the right are busy redrawing maps so they never have to face actual voters.
Barber’s whole point is that Jackson bet on love, fusion politics, and democracy, while Trumpism is betting on coercion, propaganda, and a Sharpie on the electoral map. One side registered millions of new voters; the other side is frantically figuring out how to make sure those voters’ ballots are worth about three-fifths of a district. The lion of love is gone, and in his place we have a spray-tanned zookeeper frantically moving the cages around so the animals can’t vote.
Then we snap back to present-day America, where Trump loses an election during a pandemic, screams “fraud” into every available microphone, and turns belief in the big lie into a mandatory GOP blood oath. State-level Republicans, desperate to keep Jackson’s multi-racial coalitions from ever mattering again, respond the only way they know how: gerrymander Texas into abstract art and let Trump literally order a gerrymander in North Carolina to try to cling to House power. Jackson, already sick, is still out marching in the heat while the supposed tough guys of the right are busy redrawing maps so they never have to face actual voters.
Barber’s whole point is that Jackson bet on love, fusion politics, and democracy, while Trumpism is betting on coercion, propaganda, and a Sharpie on the electoral map. One side registered millions of new voters; the other side is frantically figuring out how to make sure those voters’ ballots are worth about three-fifths of a district. The lion of love is gone, and in his place we have a spray-tanned zookeeper frantically moving the cages around so the animals can’t vote.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
killing democracy
strongmen’s punchcard loyalty club rebrands as ‘board of peace’
World leaders line up in Washington to join Trump’s Board of Peace, a groundbreaking initiative where the people bombing Gaza help decide how to rebuild it, and the Palestinians are politely asked to die off-screen.
Donald Trump has launched his very own off-brand United Nations, the "Board of Peace" – a kind of Costco for authoritarians where strongmen, military regimes and assorted democracy enthusiasts (ranked helpfully by Freedom House as not that into rights) gather in Washington to "solve" Gaza. Palestinians, whose territory has been bombed into the Stone Age and now needs an estimated $70bn to rebuild, are not on the board. Israel, which still controls more than half the strip from behind a cute little "yellow line" border, is on the board. Truly, a bold experiment in conflict resolution: talk about a people’s future, just don’t invite the people.
Traditional US allies like the UK, Germany and France took one look at this fee-paying members’ club for aspiring mini-Trumps and RSVP’d with a firm "absolutely not," worried – correctly – that this is an attempt to sidestep the UN and replace it with a body run on the whims of a single man whose foreign policy expertise consists of yelling on social media. The Board of Peace has a UN security council–blessed mandate to oversee demilitarisation and reconstruction in Gaza, but its first big achievement is pledging $5bn – roughly couch-cushion change compared with the $70bn the UN says is needed. So the plan is: cement a US-led, Trump-chaired parallel institution, pack it with dictators, starve reconstruction, and call it peace.
Meanwhile, a Lancet study quietly points out that more than 75,000 people were killed in the first 16 months of the war, with 3–4% of Gaza’s population killed violently and the majority of deaths being women, children and the elderly – exactly the kind of numbers you’d expect to inspire humility and accountability. Instead, we get a glitzy summit of the world’s least democratic governments cosplaying humanitarianism while debating how to "demilitarise" a shattered enclave they helped turn into rubble. When you build a new international order around autocrats and call it the Board of Peace, you’re not ending war – you’re beta-testing the subscription model for killing democracy.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#fascism