save america by stopping americans from voting, naturally
Behold: quaint little "I voted" stickers from that brief era when casting a ballot didn’t require a document scavenger hunt and a DHS background check.
The "Save America" Act is back, and once again the plan to "save" democracy is to make sure fewer people can participate in it. This year's model bolts together strict documentary proof-of-citizenship requirements, a very tight voter ID regime, and the casual threat of criminal charges for election officials who don’t perfectly navigate this booby-trapped mess. As a bonus, states would have to hand their voter rolls over to the Department of Homeland Security on the regular, because nothing screams "free and fair elections" like running your local precinct out of a national security file cabinet.
Instead of just calling this what it is — a mass voter suppression bill built to lock in minority rule — the Trump orbit is selling it as "election integrity" while his supporters are still relitigating 2020 and the FBI is poking around Fulton County. Meanwhile, civil rights groups are in court trying to stop Trump from kneecapping mail-in voting, because the GOP finally noticed that when more people can vote, they tend to lose. The Guardian is politely inviting readers to ask questions about what this all means for November’s midterms and the future of American democracy. The short answer: if Trump gets his way, the future looks a lot like DHS-approved voter lists, terrified election workers, and a government that only trusts elections it has pre-rigged.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump discovers minority rights are for losers
Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans gazing lovingly at the filibuster, wondering if they should kill it now or wait until it can hurt them personally.
President Trump is once again staring at a guardrail of American democracy and asking, very sincerely, whether it would look better smashed through the windshield. This time it’s the Senate filibuster, which he wants to vaporize so he can shove the so‑called Save America Act through the chamber without the pesky inconvenience of needing more than 50 senators to agree.
Senate Republicans, however, are having a rare moment of semi-conscious thought. They’re reportedly nervous about detonating the filibuster because they understand that one day, they might not be the ones holding the gavel, and then Democrats could use the same no‑rules sandbox to pass things that aren’t handouts to donors and Christian nationalists. So we get the usual GOP dilemma: protect basic institutional norms, or hand Trump the matches and hope the fire only burns other people.
The filibuster has a long, ugly history — from civil-rights obstruction to routine gridlock — but it’s still one of the last speed bumps left between Trump and full‑tilt majoritarian rule dressed up as populist revolution. The fact that the future of a 200‑year‑old legislative norm now hinges on whether Senate Republicans are more afraid of Trump’s rage tweets than of someday being in the minority tells you exactly how sturdy American democracy is in 2026: held together with vibes, cowardice, and a parliamentary procedure nobody actually likes.
#killing-democracy#fascism
acting ag proudly announces doj now a trump family office
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche explains that the Justice Department runs best when the defendant is also the boss.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche went on NBC to do the one thing the Justice Department was specifically not designed for: gush about how wonderful it is that Donald Trump is personally "involved" in its work. The nation’s top law enforcement official-in-training wheels essentially confirmed what everyone already knew — the DOJ is no longer an independent institution, it’s just another Trump property, somewhere between Mar-a-Lago and the food court at Bedminster.
Instead of even pretending to defend the traditional wall between the White House and federal prosecutors, Blanche praised Trump’s hands-on approach like he was talking about a tech startup founder, not a guy facing more criminal exposure than a mob convention. The message to career prosecutors was clear: your new job is not to enforce the law, it’s to enforce Trump’s feelings. Investigations? Charging decisions? That’s adorable. The only thing that really matters now is whether the king is pleased.
This is the part of the movie where the regime usually tries to hide the capture of the justice system. The Trump administration has politely skipped that step and gone straight to bragging about it on cable news. When the acting attorney general is on TV applauding the president’s direct meddling in prosecutions, you’re not looking at a justice system anymore — you’re looking at a loyalty test with subpoenas.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
trump bravely refuses to apologize to literal pope
Trump, moments before explaining that actually *he’s* closer to God in the polls than the Pope.
Trump is facing bipartisan backlash after deciding the most pressing issue for the leader of the free world is... publicly beefing with Pope Leo and then announcing he will absolutely not apologize. Because when you’ve got inflation, wars, and a melting planet, what voters really want is a presidential slap-fight with the Vatican.
Republicans and Democrats alike are reportedly telling him to knock it off, but Trump is digging in, insisting he did nothing wrong and sees no reason to say sorry. So instead of basic statesmanship, we get another episode of “The President vs. Anyone Who Doesn’t Clap Loud Enough”, this week featuring the head of the Catholic Church.
The White House could have used this as a chance to look even vaguely presidential. Instead, they’ve chosen the path of maximum grievance, minimum dignity, and zero self-awareness. American soft power continues its long, tragic journey from "shaping the global order" to "starting a flame war with the Pope on morning TV."
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
trump fires the refs in immigration court
Artist’s impression of judicial independence under Trump: a courtroom with a trapdoor under every judge’s chair, controlled from the White House.
The Trump DOJ has discovered a bold new theory of law: if the judge doesn’t give you the deportation you ordered, you just fire the judge. Two immigration judges, Roopal Patel and Nina Froes, have been dumped near the end of their probationary terms after they blocked the administration’s attempts to deport pro-Palestinian university students Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi, both swept up in Trump’s crusade against the Gaza protest movement.
Patel and Froes, appointed under Biden and guilty of the unforgivable sin of having defended immigrants in court, did the unthinkable: they looked at the law and concluded the government had no grounds to kick these students out. Within months, both are gone, part of a group of six judges terminated as Trump’s people quietly remodel the immigration bench into an assembly line where "due process" means do you process this removal order fast enough. Patel describes a system under mounting pressure to move cases quicker with fewer experienced judges, which is exactly what you build if the goal is error, fear, and mass deportation dressed up as paperwork.
Naturally, the Justice Department insists this is all about "impartiality" and "integrity"—because nothing screams neutrality like purging judges who rule against the government in politically sensitive cases while keeping the ones who treat every non-citizen like a security threat. The message to the remaining judges could not be clearer: rule for the Constitution and you’re out, rule for Stephen Miller’s dream board and you’re "meeting performance expectations". Independent judiciary, meet the Trump model: you’re independent right up until you’re inconvenient.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump shares ai jesus fan art, claims he thought he was a doctor now
Trump, seen here in his preferred specialty: artificial intelligence, artificial humility, and artificial martyrdom.
Donald Trump, the man with access to nuclear codes and apparently zero access to his own eyeballs, tried to explain away a controversial AI image he shared that depicted him as a Christ-like figure by saying he thought it showed him "as a doctor." Yes, the guy who suggested injecting disinfectant now wants you to believe he saw a lab coat, not the Son of God cosplay.
The image, widely criticized as yet another piece of MAGA messianic propaganda, is part of the growing pile of AI hero-fanfic Trump and his followers pump out to replace reality with something more flattering. Rather than admit he boosted a blasphemous campaign meme casting him as Jesus, he’s going with the ‘oops, wrong delusion’ defense. Authoritarian cult building, but make it badly Photoshopped.
While the White House spends its time laundering AI worship posters through the presidential social feed and then pretending it’s all just an innocent misunderstanding, the line between religious devotion and political obedience gets a little blurrier. The message to the base is clear: Trump isn’t just a leader, he’s a savior — and if anyone complains, it was just a harmless little doctor picture, why are you so upset?
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump heroically agrees not to take down the pride flag he already took down
Stonewall’s Pride flag, still flying—for now—while the Park Service quietly edits LGBTQ+ history like it’s a Trump tweet gone off-message.
The Trump administration has graciously agreed to keep flying the Pride flag at the Stonewall national monument, but only after yanking it down first and then getting dragged into court by LGBTQ+ and historic preservation groups. According to court papers, Interior and the National Park Service now "confirm" they’ll maintain a Pride flag at Stonewall and only remove it for "maintenance or other practical purposes"—a bold new standard in civil rights: equality, as long as the paperwork and lawsuits check out.
This tiny concession comes packaged with a broader project: Trump’s people have been busily scrubbing references to transgender people from Stonewall’s website and materials, while putting parks, museums, and landmarks under a political content filter that flags anything "divisive or partisan"—which somehow always means queer people, racial history, and anyone who fought back against police raids. Stonewall, the first national monument to LGBTQ+ history, now gets to keep its rainbow flag wedged between the US and park service flags, while the administration quietly rewrites the story underneath. Congratulations to everyone on this hard-fought victory: the flag can stay, as long as the history it represents is carefully edited for MAGA comfort.
#killing-democracy#trumps-america
trump sues murdoch for $10 billion, discovers judges still read the law
President Trump, seen here on the South Lawn, preparing to board Marine One and presumably go brainstorm his next multi-billion-dollar tantrum lawsuit against reality.
Donald Trump’s bold new strategy for crisis management: sue everyone who reminds the public he was friendly with Jeffrey Epstein. This time, he went after the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch for a casual $10 billion because they published a story about a sexually suggestive letter, allegedly signed by Trump, in Epstein’s 2003 50th birthday album. Apparently the real defamation, in Trumpworld, is journalism with receipts.
U.S. District Judge Darrin P. Gayles responded the way the legal system often does to Trump’s rage-litigation: by tossing the case. The judge ruled that Trump failed to show the article was published with actual malice, which is a polite judicial way of saying, "you can’t just scream ‘fake news’ and demand ten billion dollars." Gayles did let Trump file an amended complaint, presumably for the comedic value.
Lawyers for the Journal and Murdoch tried to go a step further and get the court to declare the article’s statements true as a matter of law, but the judge said questions like whether Trump wrote the letter or was Epstein’s friend are factual issues for later. Meanwhile, the whole spectacle is just the latest episode in the administration’s ongoing effort to weaponize defamation suits to freeze out reporting it doesn’t like, especially around the embarrassingly real Epstein files Congress pried loose from the estate.
The White House and Dow Jones both declined to comment, perhaps too busy calculating how many more times the president can try to sue his way out of his own documented history. The First Amendment, annoyingly for Trump, remains in effect.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump’s floating death penalty for ‘bad boats’
US warship heroically defeats two unverified fishing boats in the name of freedom and engagement metrics.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that the ocean is now a summary-execution zone. US Southern Command blew up two more small boats in the eastern Pacific, killing five people and leaving one survivor, bringing the body count from these “drug boat” strikes to at least 168 since September. Evidence the boats actually had drugs? Naturally, that’s classified in the same vault as Trump’s humility and basic understanding of international law. The public gets grainy clips on X of tiny boats, then giant fireballs, and we’re told to clap for another victory in the War on Nouns.
This is all wrapped in Trump’s new favorite legal theory: the United States is in “armed conflict” with Latin American cartels, so he can treat random maritime suspects as enemy combatants and blow them up on the high seas. No trials, no due process, just “narcoterrorist” stamped on your forehead from 10,000 feet. Minor detail: the fentanyl actually killing Americans mostly comes over land from Mexico, not from cartoon villain speedboats in the open ocean. But why let facts get in the way of a good explosion?
While the Pentagon is playing whack-a-mole with skiffs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, Trump is also gearing up for a naval blockade of Iran’s ports after ceasefire talks stall. So on one front, the US is conducting what looks a lot like extrajudicial killings in Latin America; on another, it’s threatening to choke off 20% of global oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Congress didn’t declare any of this, but who needs that dusty old branch of government when you’ve got a president who treats the US military like his own private cartel, armed with cruise missiles and a social media account?
#killing-democracy#imperialism#lawlessness
commander-in-chief declares holy beef with the pope
President Trump explains Catholic doctrine to reporters, having just promoted himself to assistant savior of the Western world.
The leader of the free world has now formally entered a beef with the leader of the Catholic Church, because of course he has. Flying home from Florida, Donald Trump took a break from threatening Iran with annihilation to rage-post about Pope Leo XIV, calling the American-born pontiff "very liberal," "WEAK on Crime" and "terrible for Foreign Policy" — which in Trumpworld means Leo's main sin is suggesting that maybe waging a quasi-religious war in Iran fueled by a "delusion of omnipotence" is bad.
Trump, whose administration is currently justifying the Iran war in explicitly religious terms, then accused Leo of being fine with Iran having nukes (he isn't) and attacked him for criticizing the U.S. ouster of Venezuela's government, bragging that he's doing exactly what he was elected "IN A LANDSLIDE" to do. So we’ve got the president boasting about toppling foreign governments and threatening to wipe out "an entire civilization" while smearing the Pope as a radical leftist for quoting Isaiah about blood-soaked hands. Totally healthy democracy vibes.
Not content with screaming at the Vicar of Christ, Trump capped the night by posting an image of himself in biblical robes, glowing hands outstretched over a sick man, surrounded by eagles, a flag, and reverent onlookers — a sort of QVC knockoff of Renaissance religious art. Having already suggested Leo was picked "because he was an American" to deal with him, Trump helpfully clarified the theology of Trumpism: if he wasn't in the White House, Leo wouldn't be in the Vatican, God is apparently his campaign manager, and the presidency is now a part-time role moonlighting as messiah-in-chief.
#killing-democracy#imperialism
trump’s big, beautiful death panel: it’s called the 2027 budget
Trump touts his 'big, beautiful' budget: a gleaming mountain of missiles, with healthcare for his voters buried somewhere underneath the rubble.
The world’s richest country is watching people die from treatable conditions at nearly twice the rate of its peers because they can’t afford to see a doctor, get tests, or fill prescriptions. Trump looked at that grim statistic, shrugged, and proposed a 2027 budget that hacks $15 billion (12%) out of Health and Human Services on top of last year’s "big, beautiful bill" that already ripped over $1 trillion out of Medicaid and ACA marketplaces and will kick about 15 million people off insurance. Americans are literally rationing insulin; Trump is rationing compassion.
On childcare and social supports, the message is even clearer: if you’re not a defense contractor or a billionaire, try not needing anything. Affordable childcare is a key reason women’s labor participation lags other rich countries, but instead of fixing that, Trump’s budget showers $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years on the already well-off, juicing the after-tax income of the top 10% by thousands while calling programs for everyone else "little scams" that states should handle. Medicaid, Medicare, daycare – all downgraded to petty grifts in the presidential brain while he deletes the incriminating video from the White House YouTube like that will erase the quote from the internet or from the attack ads.
What actually gets treated as sacred? The machinery of war and internal repression. Last year’s BBB threw $165 billion at DHS to turbocharge arrests and deportations, and now Trump wants $1.5 trillion for the military in 2027 alone – a 42% jump over 2026 and roughly triple Iran’s entire GDP – even as the Iran war has already burned through tens of billions and has "guarding the country" in about the same way a flamethrower guards a dry forest. Non-defense spending gets hacked by 10%, which still doesn’t cover the Pentagon binge, meaning the rest of the safety net goes on the chopping block next. The White House is even justifying cuts by claiming dead people got electricity assistance and NIH is promoting "dangerous ideologies," because nothing says serious governance like accusing biomedical researchers of thoughtcrime while people die from preventable disease.
For the working-class voters who twice bought the story that Trump would help the forgotten man, this budget is the mask fully off. The forgotten man is still forgotten; Raytheon and the top 10% got engraved invitations. The data is blunt: American men and women – many of them Trump voters – are dying younger. The administration’s response is to spend record sums ensuring there are more bombs, more deportations, and fewer doctor visits. It’s less a social contract and more a social triage chart: rich on top, defense contractors in bold, everyone else in the "expendable" column.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
monarch flies in to explain democracy to america, because that’s where we are now
King Charles arrives on Capitol Hill to deliver a lecture on democracy to the country that invented Hamilton, while Trump live-tweets that the crown is totally endorsing his war crimes and tariffs.
King Charles is heading to Washington to address a joint session of Congress, and Simon Tisdall politely suggests he use the moment to tell Trump and his congressional enablers that the United States is behaving like a rogue state with nuclear weapons and a merch store. Trump, naturally, plans to spin the royal state dinner as a personal endorsement, because when you’ve got a disastrous Iran war, abandoned Ukraine, and a body count in Gaza and Lebanon, what you really need is a photo-op with a guy in a sash.
Instead of the usual "shining city on a hill" fan fiction, the draft speech has Charles calling out the whole Trump project: voter suppression, criminalizing protest, fascist-adjacent immigration cruelty, rampant corruption, and a deliberate tilt toward tyranny wrapped in a flag. Abroad, the US is recast as a bully levying arbitrary tariffs, trashing NATO, ghosting Ukraine, sneering at the UN, and treating international law as a suggestion for poorer countries.
On top of that, the king is urged to roast Trump’s climate denial, resource strip-mining, tech monopolist worship, and slashing of humanitarian aid — a sort of greatest-hits compilation of how to be rich, powerful, and morally bankrupt at the same time. The wild part? Britain’s constitutional monarch is being pitched as the adult in the room, because Trump has so thoroughly nuked the concept of American leadership that we’re now relying on the descendant of George III to remind Congress what democracy is supposed to look like. Hell of a plot twist for the 250th anniversary of the revolution.
#killing-democracy#fascism#imperialism
get within 200 feet of the oval, go directly past jail
Trump measuring a 200-foot circle around the Oval Office with a golf rangefinder and calling it ‘the justice-free zone’.
Donald Trump is reportedly workshopping his final act as president: a radius-based group pardon for anyone who wandered within 200 feet of the Oval Office, like a war crimes Groupon. According to the Wall Street Journal, he’s been telling aides he’ll issue mass pardons at the end of his term, even fantasizing about a news conference where he announces them all at once. The room laughed; the justice system did not. The White House’s Karoline Leavitt insisted it was all a joke, then immediately reminded everyone that the president’s pardon power is “absolute”, which is a fascinating way to say, “We’re kidding unless we decide not to be.”
Trump has already handed out clemency like MAGA merch: more than 1,800 people so far, including 1,500 unconditional pardons on Day One for January 6 rioters, even those who assaulted cops. One accused pipe bomber is now arguing in court that Trump’s blanket Jan 6 pardons should cover him too, because his actions were “inextricably tethered” to the riot. When your legal system has to pause to ask whether the guy with the bombs is covered by the president’s vibes-based amnesty, things are going extremely well.
The pardon list doubles as a loyalty rewards program. Trump wiped the slate clean for Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, whose company conveniently processed a $2bn transaction from an Emirati fund through World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto toy, helping “legitimize” their digital currency. The White House called Zhao a victim of Biden’s “war on cryptocurrency”, which is one way to describe enforcing anti–money laundering laws when they’re not helping your family’s coin. He also commuted George Santos’s sentence after Santos pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft, praising him because “he lied like hell” but was “100% for Trump”. Honesty may be optional, but devotion to the Dear Leader is non-negotiable.
So we now have a president openly joking about an end-of-term purge of accountability, after already turning the pardon power into a punchline stapled to a loyalty oath and a crypto side hustle. The message is clear: commit crimes, lie spectacularly, maybe help the family grift a bit, and as long as you orbit within the magical 200-foot circle of power, the law is just a suggestion.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting#lawlessness
trump modernizes government by setting it on fire
A proudly "streamlined" federal government, seen here as one exhausted worker duct-taping together the jobs of five people while an OPM press release calls it innovation.
The Trump administration’s bold new vision for a "modern" government is apparently just mass layoffs with a press release. Tens of thousands of federal workers were handed buyouts and told to get lost, including people like Maggie, who was pregnant, counting on parental leave, and whose job was literally to make government work better. She got 10 days between giving birth and losing her job, and her health insurance vanished a month later. Efficiency, but make it dystopian.
Since Trump waltzed back into office, the federal workforce has shrunk by about 355,000 people, with job cuts so sloppy that courts had to step in and the administration quietly rehired some of the folks it accidentally fired. Agencies are hollowed out: Social Security staff are yanked into call centers, the VA is bleeding doctors and nurses, labor enforcement has cratered, and USAID’s shutdown has helped fuel hundreds of thousands of deaths from disease and malnutrition worldwide. At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, fraud cases were dumped while the agency is slowly smothered.
Veteran public servants say they were “thrown away like garbage” after decades on the job, while the job market is flooded with ex-feds applying to hundreds of positions and getting nowhere. The people who stay are “going down with the ship” because they still believe in keeping the public safe and alive, which is apparently now a fringe position inside the federal government. The White House, naturally, has nothing to say, but OPM director Scott Kupor assures everyone that this is just "reshaping the workforce" so government can "work for the American people, not the bureaucracy"—a bold way of describing dismantling public services and calling the rubble "high-quality" and "efficient."
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
jd vance, freelance peacemaker for the totally-not-authoritarian war we never voted on
JD Vance boards a plane to Pakistan to negotiate an end to a war Americans never got to vote on, but will definitely get to pay for.
Vice President JD Vance is apparently auditioning for the role of Discount Henry Kissinger, jetting off to Pakistan to negotiate an end to the U.S.-Israeli-led war in Iran — a war that Congress never really got around to, you know, declaring. American democracy used to argue for months before starting a major regional conflict; now we just speedrun it and send the veep on a patch-it-in-post tour when things get awkward.
This isn’t diplomacy so much as damage control for an administration that treated the Middle East like a Risk board and then got surprised when the pieces started catching fire. Instead of accountability, hearings, or even a coherent strategy, we get JD Vance trying to stitch together peace talks from Islamabad while the White House pretends this is all totally normal and not a giant neon sign flashing executive war-making on autopilot.
The U.S. and Israel drag Iran into a devastating war, Pakistan gets to host the "oops, our bad" summit, and the American public gets shut out of the decision-making but stuck with the bill. Call it what it is: the authoritarian dream — wage war first, ask permission never, and send the vice president abroad to mop up the mess and pose for history-book photos.
#killing-democracy#imperialism#lawlessness
kamala considers 2028 run while trump plays warlord and shreds voting rights
Kamala Harris, calmly discussing whether to run for president again while the current one threatens to ‘annihilate a whole people’ and his Supreme Court buddies speedrun the Voting Rights Act to the grave.
Kamala Harris popped up at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network convention to say she’s ‘thinking about’ running for president in 2028, which is Washington-speak for ‘yes, but I’m pretending to be coy.’ She reminded everyone she spent four years ‘a heartbeat away’ from the job, has been touring the country listening to how the status quo is failing people, and is allegedly weighing a run based on who can best serve the American people. Adorable that anyone is still pretending this is about ‘who can do the job’ and not ‘who can survive a primary in a country run by a man live‑tweeting war crimes.’
Harris then did the thing Democrats occasionally remember they’re allowed to do: describe what Trump is actually doing. She called the US war on Iran a ‘war of choice’ and pointed out that while Trump struts around threatening to ‘annihilate a whole people’, he’s really just making the US weaker and more isolated while cosplaying strongman. She also rang the alarm on the Supreme Court’s steady demolition of the Voting Rights Act, predicting they’re about to kill Section 2 – the part that lets people challenge racist voting laws in court. Translation: the right has spent years stacking the court so they can legally launder voter suppression, then call it ‘election integrity.’
Between warning people to check if they’ve been quietly purged from the rolls and describing the GOP’s favorite game of ‘move Grandma’s polling place and hope she can’t drive across town,’ Harris basically laid out the 2028 platform: try to hold an election while Trump’s administration and his pet court do everything possible to make sure the wrong people can’t vote and the right people can still bomb whoever they want. Pete Buttigieg showed up to strongly hint he’s running too, blasting Trump’s ‘seek and destroy’ approach to anything that helps disadvantaged communities and politely suggesting Democrats might want to try ‘better leadership’ before the concept of democracy becomes a historical curiosity discussed in AP World History, assuming that class isn’t banned by then.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump discovers even his own ghouls have a line on war crimes
Trump stares resolutely into the middle distance, presumably searching for the part of the Constitution that lets him call bombing civilian infrastructure a great Easter message.
Donald Trump took a brief break from threatening to bomb civilian infrastructure in Iran to wage his real favorite kind of war: a 372-word tantrum on Truth Social. After declaring that Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Alex Jones, and Candace Owens are "stupid" and that "nobody cares about them," he then spent several paragraphs proving that actually he very much cares, meticulously listing their sins like a jilted prom date with nuclear launch codes.
The four right-wing influencers, who once served as unpaid state media for Trump's 2024 campaign, are now discovering the downside of building your entire brand around a guy who thinks loyalty is a one-way street. Carlson is calling Trump's Easter threats to bomb Iranian civilian energy and transportation infrastructure a war crime, Owens is suggesting it's time to put "Grandpa" in a home, and Marjorie Taylor Greene is suddenly very concerned about broken campaign promises and transparency over Epstein files. When Alex Jones starts looking like the restrained one, you’ve really stress-tested the Overton window.
Meanwhile, as this MAGA civil war plays out in the group chat from hell, the actual war keeps grinding on. A fragile two-week ceasefire with Iran is barely holding while Vice-President JD Vance flies to Pakistan to play diplomat, and Trump brags to the New York Post that the US is rearming and resupplying for the next round. So the president is publicly musing about restarting a potentially illegal war, his former allies are accusing him of being controlled by Netanyahu, and the conservative coalition that cheered on his rise is finally noticing that giving an unstable man unchecked power over life, death, and foreign policy might have been slightly irresponsible. Leopards, meet faces.
#killing-democracy#imperialism#full-stupid
trump administration discovers you can just ignore the budget and dismantle the forest service
Behold: a creek in a national forest, soon to be managed by one understaffed office in Colorado and 15 political hacks with a map from 1987.
The Trump administration has apparently decided the best way to manage 193 million acres of US public land is to first blow up the agency in charge of it and then see what’s left standing. All regional US Forest Service offices are set to be shuttered, headquarters is being yanked from DC to Salt Lake City, and 57 research facilities will be mashed into one lonely outpost in Colorado, because nothing says "science-based land management" like a single building and a prayer.
Union leaders say this isn’t a reorganization so much as a mass eviction notice: employees can "relocate or resign" while 15 new politically appointed "state directors" take over what used to be a professional, region-based structure. The small problem? The fiscal year 2026 budget explicitly bans using agency funds to relocate offices or reorganize programs. So, naturally, Trump’s people are doing exactly that.
Steve Lenkart of the National Federation of Federal Employees calls the scheme "illegal" and a constitutional violation, while Republican lawmakers respond with their trademark boldness: total silence. The same crowd that clutches pearls over "tyranny" when someone regulates dishwashers is apparently fine with the White House ignoring black-letter appropriations law to purge career staff and centralize control over public lands. Freedom!
On the ground, workers describe it as chaos wrapped in a pink slip. Research gutted, institutional knowledge scattered, and wildland firefighters and land managers told to uproot their lives for a political vanity project. But rest easy: your national forests will now be supervised by handpicked loyalists whose main qualification is knowing which donors want which trees turned into which golf courses.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump to toast press freedom, threaten to jail it on the way out
Trump prepares to celebrate press freedom by testing how many reporters you can threaten to jail before dessert is served.
The White House Correspondents’ Association is rolling out the red carpet for Donald Trump, a man who just threatened to throw a reporter in jail for not revealing a source about a missing U.S. airman. Nothing says "celebration of the First Amendment" like giving a prime speaking slot to the guy whose administration has raided a Washington Post reporter’s home, weaponized the FCC, sued media outlets he doesn’t like, and slapped new restrictions on Pentagon reporters for sport.
Some outlets have noticed the dystopia vibes. HuffPost is bailing on "Nerd Prom," with editor-in-chief Whitney Snyder pointing out that Trump’s second term is an outright affront to a free press: punitive lawsuits, regulatory harassment, and casual threats of jail time are apparently not her idea of a fun night out. The New York Times, which noped out of this access pageant years ago, is now looking uncomfortably prescient as Peter Baker wonders why anyone thinks hosting a gala for a president who calls them "enemies of the people" and sics the government on them is a smart brand move.
Yet plenty of the press corps is still suiting up, convincing themselves that Trump showing up to insult them in person is a sign of "normality" returning. One anonymous correspondent is mainly worried about the Secret Service making it hard to leave the ballroom, not the part where the president is actively trying to criminalize their jobs. To keep things extra safe for the regime, the WHCA has ditched comedians – after that terrifying episode where Michelle Wolf made Sarah Huckabee Sanders sad – and booked a "famed mentalist" to "get inside" Trump’s mind. Bold choice, trying to find thoughts where there’s just a looping chyron that says "I ALONE CAN FIX IT."
Meanwhile, networks are competing for the honor of hosting cabinet officials and top media-bashers at their tables, including Defense Secretary and Fox News export Pete Hegseth. So yes, the nation’s top political reporters will spend the evening clinking champagne glasses with the same people who are suing them, regulating them, and threatening them with prison. It’s not a celebration of press freedom; it’s a hostage banquet, and the captors are on the VIP list.
#killing-democracy#fascism
white house hr department now handling election sabotage
White House officials hard at work ensuring that no Indiana Republican ballot is allowed to escape Trump’s personal supervision.
The Trump White House has officially merged the Presidential Personnel Office with the Department of Political Retribution. NBC got the tapes of senior aides calling up a 34-year-old Indiana network engineer, Alexandra Wilson, and trying to gently nudge her out of a GOP state Senate primary — by offering her a government job and then, when that didn’t work, a preview of the character assassination they’d be happy to watch her endure. All so Trump’s preferred Brenda Wilson (no relation, just convenient branding) can more efficiently take out state Sen. Greg Goode, who committed the unforgivable sin of not rigging a congressional map hard enough for Dear Leader.
The cast list reads like a civics class cautionary tale: White House political director Matt Brasseaux, deputy chief of staff James Blair, Midwest regional political director Marshall Moreau, plus Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith and Gov. Mike Braun’s chief of staff, all working the phones to get one woman to stop confusing the ballot with her inconvenient existence. Brasseaux floated administration jobs and board appointments to "kill two birds with one stone" — i.e., buy her off and clear the way for Trump’s revenge project — while Blair, calling from a plane with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, helpfully flagged her old resisting-arrest charge and her husband’s DUI as things that might suddenly become very public if she stayed in.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt insists this is just the political team "doing their jobs" and that Trump is the "decision-maker in these races" up and down the ballot, which is a weird way to describe a president personally orchestrating local primaries like a mob boss who discovered spreadsheets. The message to Republicans is crystal clear: oppose Trump’s gerrymander, and the full weight of the White House will descend on your little state Senate race, complete with job offers, veiled threats, and opposition research on random network engineers. American federalism, now brought to you by a guy on a plane to Germany explaining how your husband’s DUI could be weaponized.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
