The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Once upon a time, a citizenship ceremony ended with a pocket Constitution and a judge telling you that you were now equal to every other American. Under Trump 2.0, you get the same ceremony, plus an unspoken asterisk: "unless we later decide you’re inconvenient." The administration has cranked denaturalization from a rare, last-resort legal tool into a mass-production line, guided by a memo that basically says DOJ can target any naturalized citizen it "determines to be sufficiently important"—which is a poetic way of saying whoever Trump’s people don’t like this week.

For context: between 1990 and 2017, there were 305 denaturalization cases total, many of them, you know, actual Nazis. Biden did 64 in four years. Trump’s first term did 168. Now internal guidance talks about 100–200 denaturalization cases per month, while DOJ files to strip dozens of Americans of their citizenship on the back of categories that immigration lawyers politely describe as "ripe for political abuse" and less politely translate as "this is how you build an authoritarian state." You don’t even need a conviction—"pending criminal charges" or just being labeled a "national security threat" is enough. Very convenient when your critics tend to be immigrants.

The targets will, shockingly, be immigrants of color, in an administration that gutted refugee resettlement except for white South Africans and put Greg Bovino—fresh off headlining a European "Remigration Summit" about expelling non-white people—in charge of immigration enforcement. Over at D-Day commemorations, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is busy comparing modern immigration to an "invasion," because why not desecrate the memory of people who actually fought fascism while you quietly import its playbook into U.S. law? This isn’t "border security"; it’s turning citizenship into a revocable privilege for the wrong kind of American, administered by men whose big ideas barely clear the intellectual bar at a Telegram channel.

California’s nonpartisan primary has produced its latest reality show spinoff: Steve Hilton, former UK Tory "strategist," current Fox News shout-machine, and self-branded "pint-sized Rasputin," has slithered his way into the November governor’s race. His big qualification? A Donald Trump endorsement and the ability to say "Califordable" with a straight face. Naturally, Trump immediately declared Hilton the winner the moment he was ahead in early returns, then screamed "rigged" the second more ballots were counted and Xavier Becerra pulled into first. So yes, we’re still doing the every-legit-vote-is-fraud-if-I’m-losing thing.

Hilton has been doing his best "I already won" victory tour since the morning after the election, while California quietly continued the boring, fascism-resistant process known as "counting millions of mail ballots". As Becerra overtook him, Trump invented yet another baseless rigging narrative, because if there’s one constant in American politics now, it’s that any result not personally flattering to Trump becomes a federal case in his brain. Hilton, meanwhile, is selling himself as a "pragmatist" who can dial down tensions with Washington by… being close to the same president who keeps trying to delegitimize his own election.

The campaign aesthetic is pure MAGA cosplay tourism: beach shots, a Trump rally in Coachella, and an In-N-Out burger, because nothing says deep understanding of California like holding a Double-Double. His attempt at cultural fluency blew up when he confidently called a hard-shell thing a "street taco", instantly uniting Californians across party lines in bipartisan mockery. Still, Hilton’s pitch is that his chumminess with Trump and the cabinet will bring federal goodies to California, as if the state should elect a governor based on who can best flatter the guy who keeps accusing it of fraud for counting votes.

So the fall matchup is set: Becerra, the boringly competent former AG and HHS secretary, versus a Fox News personality whose patron reflexively brands normal election administration as criminal conspiracy. If Hilton wins, California gets a governor whose political base believes the state’s own vote-counting is illegitimate. If he loses, we get months of screaming on right-wing TV about how the deep state stole "Califordable" from a man who can’t identify a taco. Democracy: still hanging on, but the casting director is clearly trolling us.

Donald Trump has decided that the best person to serve as America’s top law enforcement officer is, naturally, his former personal lawyer Todd Blanche – the guy who has already been dry‑running the job as acting attorney general by turning the justice department into a bespoke revenge boutique. Under Blanche, DOJ has rolled out criminal charges against James Comey, escalated its hunt for John Brennan, and quietly scrubbed press releases about Jan 6 rioters like they were inconvenient Yelp reviews.

Because that wasn’t quite brazen enough, Blanche also helped design a secretive $1.8bn “compensation” fund for Trump’s allies – a hush-money loyalty program paid for with public power. He only killed the scheme after everyone noticed the mob‑movie plot unfolding in broad daylight and even Senate Republicans started edging toward the fire alarm. Now this same guy is Trump’s pick to run DOJ permanently, pending Senate confirmation. So yes, the president is literally trying to make his personal defense attorney the nation’s chief prosecutor, while they jointly memory‑hole an insurrection and shovel cash toward the loyal. Totally normal rule‑of‑law country we’ve got here.

Donald Trump has discovered a new branch of government: the Department of Things Are Rigged Whenever I Lose. This time, he’s decided that California’s elections are fake because an LA mayoral primary projection didn’t go the way he likes. He reposted GOP congressman Abe Hamadeh’s claim that California is "incapable of running free and fair elections" and slapped on his signature evidence-free stamp: "Rigged Election!" Apparently, if Decision Desk HQ calls a race for Nithya Raman, that’s not data — that’s treason.

During an NBC interview, Trump also insisted the California governor’s race was "rigged" and, when gently asked for literally any proof at all, he called Kristen Welker "crooked" and then "stupid" before ripping off his mic and flouncing out with a "Let’s call it quits" and a condescending "Thank you, darling." America’s strongman cosplay now includes storming out of interviews when journalists insist on facts.

Between declaring California elections illegitimate, insisting the 2020 election was stolen again, and casually announcing that Iran’s military has been "virtually decapitated" as his war hits day 100, Trump is just speedrunning the "collapse public trust in every institution" playbook. He’ll hit a New Jersey rally and a Knicks game later, where fans will enjoy airport-style security so the president can keep telling them democracy can’t be trusted unless it crowns him king.

Trump is out here explaining that his 2024 promise of "no new wars" was more of a vibe than an actual commitment, insisting that the war with Iran doesn't count because it's only been going on for three months. "I didn't guarantee no war," he tells NBC, helpfully clarifying that the slogan was just another campaign coupon with fine print. Also, if you're wondering why he built "the strongest military in the world," the answer apparently wasn't deterrence or defense, but store credit toward at least one fresh conflict.

He then declares he's "doing the world a service" by stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, while also bragging that U.S. strikes already "obliterated" Iran's nuclear sites last year. So either Iran had no nukes because he destroyed them, or they were such a threat he had to start a full-on war. Both are true, obviously, because the commander in chief said them within the same interview. Negotiating a better nuclear deal? That, he explains, "takes years"—unlike bombing, which takes an afternoon and no reading.

Just to round out the authoritarian sampler platter, Trump also defends his now-scrapped $1.8 billion fund to compensate his political allies—so, a taxpayer-financed loyalty rewards program—then pivots to claiming, again without evidence, that California's slow but normal vote-counting process is proof of mass fraud. His own Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Los Angeles says they're opening multiple investigations, because when the boss screams "rigged," the Justice Department apparently treats it like a to-do list. When NBC's Kristen Welker pushes back, Trump cuts the interview short, because nothing says "strong leader" like fleeing the set when someone reads the instructions on your talking points.

Donald Trump, the man who treated the Federal Reserve like his personal Yelp page for interest rates, now swears he doesn’t “want to have a big influence” on his new Fed Chair pick, Kevin Warsh. Of course he doesn’t. He just wants someone who will magically keep inflation at zero, the stock market at infinity, and his reelection odds pegged at 110%—all while insisting they’re totally independent and absolutely not taking daily phone calls from Mar-a-Lago.

The performance is familiar: Trump loudly proclaims his respect for institutional independence right before trying to bulldoze it. The Fed, historically insulated from raw partisan politics so the economy doesn’t live on a four-year campaign cycle, is now being sized up as another loyalty test. Warsh isn’t even confirmed yet and Trump is already pre-spinning the narrative: if rates help him, it’s because he picked a genius; if they don’t, it’s because the Deep State at the Fed betrayed him. Either way, the message to future central bankers is clear—your mandate is price stability, maximum employment, and keeping Dear Leader’s approval rating above water.

So when Trump says he doesn’t want a “big influence,” what he really means is he expects a Fed Chair who understands the assignment so thoroughly that Trump never has to ask. Subtlety doesn’t make it less corrosive; it just means the political capture of yet another independent institution comes with a wink, a nod, and a talking point about how he’s being very, very restrained this time. The markets may be watching the dot plot, but the rest of us are watching the slow conversion of the Fed into just another arm of the campaign.