trump’s fed puppet remembers he’s supposed to pretend to be independent
Stephen Miran, bravely stepping down from one Trump job so he can more efficiently serve Trump in the other one that runs the central bank.
Stephen Miran, Trump’s handpicked rate-cut enthusiast, has finally resigned as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers so he can keep sitting on the Federal Reserve board without it being quite so obviously a conflict of interest. He’d been on unpaid leave from the CEA while serving on the Fed, a fun little arrangement that made Democrats point out the blindingly obvious: maybe the guy literally on Trump’s economic team shouldn’t also be setting “independent” monetary policy to match Trump’s public demands for cheaper money.
Miran insists lawyers told him it was totally fine to moonlight as both White House adviser and Fed governor for a few months, but now that his Fed stint is extending, he’s honoring his pledge to the Senate to formally quit the CEA. How noble. He’s been pushing for sharply lower interest rates at every Fed meeting since he arrived, which just happens to align perfectly with Trump’s stated litmus test for Fed officials: must love easy money and doing what Donald says.
Meanwhile, the broader backdrop is Trump’s ongoing hostile takeover bid for the Fed. Jerome Powell is under a criminal investigation from Trump’s DOJ over statements about building renovations — which Powell describes as part of a pressure campaign to bring the central bank to heel — and Fed governor Lisa Cook is also under DOJ investigation while she sues to stop Trump from firing her. A majority of the Senate banking committee, including one Republican who still remembers what separation of powers is, calls the Powell probe political intimidation and wants nothing to do with Trump’s new would-be Fed chair, Kevin Warsh. So yes, Miran technically kept his promise to resign one job. The bigger promise Trump is working on is turning an independent central bank into just another branch of the Trump Organization.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump admin discovers new infrastructure plan: don't build it
Artist’s rendering of a functional train tunnel, a fantasy project set in the distant, post-lawsuit future.
The Gateway tunnel — the massive, boring-but-crucial project meant to keep trains running between New York and New Jersey instead of, say, collapsing into the Hudson — is about to run out of cash by the end of the week. So the project leaders are doing what every responsible infrastructure planner dreams of: suing the federal government just to get the money that was supposed to be there in the first place.
The Trump administration is sitting on the funds like a cartoon dragon hoarding taxpayer gold, turning a bipartisan, economically vital rail link into yet another hostage in the endless campaign of political retribution and petty leverage. Forget "infrastructure week" — we’ve arrived at infrastructure lawyer up, where keeping the Northeast Corridor from falling apart requires litigation, not leadership.
#killing-democracy#money
president extremely mad that tv show used his own words
Donald Trump practicing his ‘defamed victim of the media’ face between court appearances and cable hits.
Donald Trump, currently juggling only several dozen legal problems, has decided the real threat to democracy is a BBC Panorama documentary that aired his 6 January 2021 speech in a way he didn’t like. He’s suing the BBC for multi-billion dollar defamation in Florida, because if there’s one thing the author of “find me 11,780 votes” hates, it’s people allegedly misrepresenting his words about elections.
The BBC has asked the Florida court to hit pause on discovery while it moves to get the case tossed, arguing the court doesn’t even have jurisdiction and that Trump hasn’t actually stated a valid claim. Trump’s lawyers responded that this defense is “untenable,” “misplaced,” and “unpersuasive,” which is bold talk from the legal team that keeps speedrunning sanctions hearings across America. They’re insisting discovery should barrel ahead, presumably so they can demand reams of internal BBC documents to send a very normal, very non-authoritarian message to other outlets: report critically on Trump’s role in January 6th, and you too can enjoy years of ruinously expensive litigation.
The BBC has already apologized for an edit but refused to hand over the cash or admit to defamation, and a trial date in 2027 is floated if this circus survives that long. So the president of the United States is now devoting years of federal-adjacent oxygen to trying to drag a foreign public broadcaster into a Florida courtroom over a documentary about his role in an attempted coup. Free press, meet the guy who thinks ‘accountability’ is what you file when a network’s chyron hurts his feelings.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump floats federal takeover of elections, gop pretends to clutch a constitution
John Thune bravely disagrees with Trump’s election power grab, moments before endorsing the rest of the voter suppression agenda.
Donald Trump went on Dan Bongino’s ragecast to suggest that Republicans should "take over" elections and "nationalize the voting" in at least 15 places, because nothing says "totally not a fascist" like demanding centralized partisan control of how votes are cast and counted. He wrapped it, of course, in his usual fan fiction about having actually won Georgia in 2020 and promised "interesting things" once the FBI finishes looking at Fulton County records — a man under perpetual investigation treating law enforcement like his personal spoiler alert service.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune then emerged from the witness protection program to say he’s "not in favor" of federalizing elections, calling it a "constitutional issue" and praising decentralized systems because they’re harder to hack. Fun twist: this is the same party that’s been screaming for years that those very state-run systems somehow stole the election from Trump while simultaneously insisting they work great, actually. House Speaker Mike Johnson tried to square the circle by saying states should run elections, but blue states are suspicious, and then touted the SAVE Act — a voter-suppression-friendly "solution" to a problem (noncitizens voting) that’s already illegal and vanishingly rare.
Meanwhile, Rep. Sanford Bishop said the quiet part out loud: this is an "attempt to intimidate and to try to take over the electoral system" and yet another sign of the administration’s authoritarian drift. Republicans are effectively arguing: states should control elections unless they elect Democrats, at which point Trump wants Washington Republicans to seize the machinery. It’s less a theory of federalism than a theory of power: the rules are "American elections" right up until they stop producing the right Americans.
#killing-democracy#fascism
homeland insecurity: everyone’s a terrorist now
Ah yes, the deadly threat of people holding signs while cops in body armor bravely defend America from the First Amendment.
The Trump administration’s second-term innovation in law enforcement is finally here: if you film ICE, question ICE, or are standing within 200 feet of ICE when they shoot someone, you’re a "domestic terrorist" now. Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem immediately smeared slain ICU nurse Alex Pretti as a terrorist, then tried to quietly walk it back once people noticed that facts were missing. Renee Nicole Good, also killed by ICE, and survivor Marimar Martinez got the same treatment, because why waste a good smear campaign when you can recycle it.
Out on the streets, agents have skipped straight to the quiet-part-loud stage. One ICE officer in Portland, Maine helpfully informed a legal observer that by recording him, she’d earned a spot in their "nice little database" and is now considered a domestic terrorist. Meanwhile, a growing pattern in courtrooms looks like a fascist Mad Lib: federal agents shove or assault protesters – including a 70-year-old veteran in Chicago – and then the Department of Justice swoops in to charge the victims under Section 111 for "resisting" federal employees. Over a hundred such prosecutions popped up in the back half of 2025 alone.
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Anti-protest bills have been multiplying since Trump first took office in 2017, and continued under Biden, steadily expanding what counts as a "riot" and punishing anyone who has the nerve to slow down a car with their human body. The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law has been tracking this slow-motion bonfire of the First Amendment, noting that lawmakers reliably panic-legislate whenever people actually use their right to assemble—especially after George Floyd’s murder. Now, with Trump back and DHS openly branding dissenters as terrorists, the long American tradition of criminalizing protest has finally found its perfect customer-service rep.
#killing-democracy#fascism
democrats discover they actually own some levers of power
Democratic leaders stare at a stack of unused constitutional tools like it’s an IKEA manual written in Latin while Trump’s police-state fantasy gets fast-tracked by the Supreme Court’s shadow docket.
Democrats, we are told, are sitting on a dusty, 19th‑century constitutional flamethrower while Trump builds a police-state ICE apparatus and the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc cosplays as “neutral umpires” on the shadow docket. Sidney Blumenthal politely reminds Team Blue that state legislatures can pass formal instructions and resolutions to put members of Congress and local Republicans on record about Trump’s authoritarian immigration crackdown and his open hostility to free and fair elections. You know, actual structural pressure instead of another fundraising email about “democracy on the ballot.”
Instead of just watching as Trump’s DOJ and ICE run wild and the Court quietly rubber‑stamps his power grabs in unsigned midnight orders, Democratic trifecta states could hold hearings, drag witnesses into the spotlight, force Republicans to vote on whether they’re cool with a budding police state, and then march those resolutions straight to Washington. The numbers are not small: hundreds of GOP state legislators and dozens of House members in blue or mixed states could be squeezed between the frothing MAGA base and a general electorate that’s increasingly horrified by Trump’s tactics.
The article even walks through Pennsylvania, where Josh Shapiro is popular, the GOP holds the state senate by a thread, and several swing House seats depend on Hispanic voters who have turned sharply against Trump’s ICE cosplay. In other words, there is a blueprint for using state power to resist an administration that treats the Constitution like a nondisclosure agreement. Whether Democrats choose to wield it or just workshop another “Democracy Dies If You Don’t Donate $7” subject line is, tragically, still an open question.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump demands $1bn from harvard for the crime of not obeying trump
Harvard University, moments before being rebranded as Trump National Patriotic Real University & Casino.
Trump has decided that the appropriate way to handle campus antisemitism concerns is not, say, funding education or security, but shaking down Harvard University for $1 billion in "damages" because it won’t let the federal government run its curriculum like a MAGA school board. After the New York Times reported that the administration had backed off an earlier $200m settlement demand, Trump hopped on Truth Social to declare that, actually, they now want five times more and "nothing further to do" with Harvard. Apart from the part where he keeps trying to control it, obviously.
This comes after his administration already tried to cancel $2.2bn in research grants, threatened $9bn in federal funding, demanded the end of DEI programs, ordered the snitching of international students, and even moved to block Harvard from enrolling foreign students altogether. A federal judge has already ruled that one of those little tantrums was unlawful, which naturally prompted the White House to appeal and then escalate the ransom note from $500m to $1bn. Harvard, for its part, is suing to stop the administration from "gain[ing] control of academic decision-making"—a phrase that, in healthier democracies, would be a red flag, not official policy.
So the sitting president is now openly treating a private university like a hostile takeover target, using the federal government as his litigation department and research budgets as the crowbar. But sure, tell us more about how this is all about protecting Jewish students and not about turning higher education into a loyalty test for Alan Dershowitz and Turning Point USA.
#killing-democracy
dni tulsi auditions to be trump’s election cop
DNI Tulsi Gabbard, seen here workshopping new ways to merge U.S. intelligence, local election offices, and presidential ego into one seamless constitutional migraine.
Tulsi Gabbard, now somehow the director of national intelligence in this timeline, decided that the best use of the nation’s top spy chief was to physically hover around an FBI search of a Fulton County election hub looking at 2020 records. She then helpfully dialed up Donald Trump so he could personally chat with the agents doing the search, which we’re told was just so he could say thank you, like a totally normal president who definitely hasn’t been ranting about “getting into the votes.” Absolutely no pressure on law enforcement there at all.
Gabbard insists this was all “well within” her authority, because when the law says the DNI can lead counterintelligence on election security, it obviously means “show up at local election raids and act as the president’s concierge.” She also refused to brief Congress beforehand, claiming she didn’t want to “irresponsibly share incomplete assessments,” which is a poetic way of saying: oversight is for suckers. Meanwhile, DOJ’s Todd Blanche is on TV trying to explain that she “wasn’t at the search, just in the area,” and that she’s not part of the investigation, except that Trump wants her on the team investigating election integrity.
National security experts are pointing out that the DNI is legally barred from domestic law enforcement and that this sort of stunt is “highly unusual”, which is Washington code for “what the hell are you doing.” Fulton County is now planning to sue the Trump administration, because of course it is. So we’ve got the intelligence chief at a local election raid, the president calling agents on scene, a legal justification written in crayon by ODNI’s own lawyers, and a case about old 2020 ballots that Trump keeps publicly hyping. America’s elections are safe and secure — just as long as they survive the federal government’s attempts to ‘protect’ them.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
judge explains haitians are doctors and engineers, not trump’s racist fan fiction
Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary and part-time phrenologist, explaining that a neuroscientist and a registered nurse are actually "leeches" while a federal judge quietly reacquaints her with the concept of equal protection.
The Trump administration’s latest attempt at mass human disposal hit a small snag called "the law" after Judge Ana Reyes blocked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from yanking Temporary Protected Status from up to 350,000 Haitians. Noem had apparently decided that people fleeing a collapsed state wracked by gangs and displacement were actually "killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies" – a description that, awkwardly, turned out to fit the administration’s moral compass better than the plaintiffs.
Reyes, in an 83-page opinion that sounded a lot like "have you people met the Constitution?", pointed out that the Haitian TPS holders in front of her were not Noem’s cartoon villains, but a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s, a software engineer at a national bank, a toxicology lab assistant, a college economics major, and a full-time registered nurse. She also noted it was "substantially likely" that Noem’s decision was preordained by "hostility to nonwhite immigrants" – legalese for "this was a racist stunt in search of a justification."
For now, the termination is "null, void, and of no legal effect," which is also a solid working description of this administration’s moral authority. Meanwhile, the same crew has been busy canceling protections for about 600,000 Venezuelans, 60,000 people from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal, more than 160,000 Ukrainians, and thousands from Afghanistan and Cameroon – all while insisting this is about "security" and not a mass deportation fantasy dreamed up by people who think the Statue of Liberty should carry an AR-15 and a homeowner’s association rulebook.
Attorneys for the Haitian TPS holders warned that if Noem’s termination stands, "people will almost certainly die" – from killing, disease, or starvation. The administration’s position, boiled down, is that this is an acceptable outcome so long as Fox & Friends gets a good segment out of it. The judiciary, for the moment, disagrees. Enjoy the stay of execution while it lasts.
#killing-democracy#racism#anti-immigration
arsonist urges firefighters to hurry up already
Trump, having discovered that shutdowns are unpopular outside his rally merch tent, bravely calls for an end to the crisis his own party keeps manufacturing.
Trump is now publicly urging Congress to pass a deal to end the partial government shutdown "without delay," which is a bold message from the guy whose entire political brand is breaking the machinery of government and then demanding applause when he stops hitting it with a hammer. After spending years normalizing shutdowns as a bargaining chip and turning federal workers into unpaid extras in his political hostage drama, he’s suddenly discovered urgency.
Speaker Mike Johnson is out doing his best "don’t worry, dad’s got this" routine, saying he’s confident the shutdown will end by Tuesday, while Republicans simultaneously wage yet another performative fight over DHS funding. So we get the usual GOP two-step: use national security as a prop, shut down the government over it, then claim Democrats are the ones endangering Americans. Strong family values, if your family is a crime syndicate.
Meanwhile, Democrats like Ro Khanna are saying they’re a firm no on reopening the government under yet another bad DHS deal, because apparently someone in the building remembers that governing is not supposed to mean "sign whatever the hostage-takers demand." Trump gets to posture as the dealmaker begging for resolution, Republicans get to keep breaking things, and millions of Americans get to learn, again, that their paychecks and basic services are just background scenery in the MAGA cinematic universe.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump loses another war against the scary windmills
Artist’s impression of the grave national security threat: some wind turbines standing 30 miles offshore, menacing radar screens and the delicate ego of one very loud golf enthusiast.
The Trump administration’s crusade against offshore wind just took another legal faceplant. A federal judge cleared Ørsted’s Sunrise Wind project off New York to move forward, making it the fifth and final offshore wind farm to get court permission to ignore Trump’s December "national security" freeze. Apparently, when you arbitrarily halt multibillion‑dollar infrastructure because the ex-president thinks turbines are ugly, judges eventually notice.
Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that losing access to specialized installation vessels and delaying construction is "irreparable harm"—a concept that somehow eludes the people currently running the Interior Department, who are still hiding behind classified "radar interference" claims while refusing to explain anything in public. Ørsted, which has already sunk more than $7bn into Sunrise Wind, is resuming work immediately but keeping its lawsuit alive, because nothing says stable investment climate like having to sue the U.S. government every time Trump remembers he hates windmills.
Meanwhile, analysts warn that even with the construction freeze lifted, the project now faces a "very difficult and turbulent period" thanks to ongoing Trump obstruction. Sunrise Wind is already about 45% complete and is supposed to power nearly 600,000 homes starting as soon as October—assuming the administration doesn’t invent a new emergency about how offshore turbines might be sending secret love letters to Chinese weather balloons. American energy policy, once again, is being made at the intersection of personal vendetta and executive overreach.
#killing-democracy#anti-science
trump’s weaponization czar quietly shuffled to the pardon factory
Ed Martin, seen here auditioning for the role of Chief Revenge Officer, before being reassigned to the presidential absolution punch card desk.
The man Trump put in charge of the Justice Department’s "Weaponization Working Group" — a special little revenge squad tasked with going after prosecutors who dared investigate Trump and his buddies — is suddenly not in that job anymore, NBC reports. Ed Martin, a Jan. 6 apologist who openly promised to "name" and "shame" people the DOJ couldn’t actually charge with crimes, is apparently no longer leading the group. Which is awkward, because publicly smearing non-charged individuals is a blatant violation of long-standing DOJ norms, but an excellent fit for Trump’s justice-by-Truth-Social model.
Don’t worry, though: Martin hasn’t been exiled, he’s just been promoted to a different part of the loyalty rewards program. A DOJ spokesman says he "continues to do a great job" as pardon attorney — you know, the guy who helps decide which friends, allies, and useful political martyrs get official forgiveness from the same government they tried to overturn. Martin was already wearing both hats after Republicans balked at making him U.S. attorney for D.C., so Trump simply made him pardon attorney and director of the weaponization group by executive order, while handing the actual D.C. U.S. attorney job to former Fox host Jeanine Pirro. Because if you’re going to dismantle rule of law, you might as well let cable news alumni and activist cronies drive.
The working group’s mission reads like Trump’s personal enemies list: former Special Counsel Jack Smith, any federal cooperation with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg over the hush money case, Jan. 6 prosecutions, and cases against anti-abortion activists. It’s a state-run grievance committee masquerading as oversight. Now the guy who wanted to run public shaming campaigns against people he couldn’t indict is parked in the pardon office, while no one will say who’s currently steering the weaponization ship. Fascism, but make it HR-compliant.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
trump tests new idea: democracy without counting people
Census worker’s bag from 2020, back when the government still pretended counting everyone was the goal and not just the people Team Trump finds demographically convenient.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new innovation in representative democracy: don’t actually test how to count people. The Census Bureau’s 2026 operational test for the 2030 census is being dramatically downsized from six states and a national sample to just two sites — Spartanburg, S.C., and Huntsville, Ala. Rural communities in western Texas and multiple tribal lands in Arizona and North Carolina have been quietly dropped, because why waste precious resources accurately counting people who aren’t big fans of authoritarian cosplay?
To really drive home the commitment to accuracy, the administration is also killing plans for Spanish- and Chinese-language online forms, leaving the test in English only. So the communities that are historically undercounted will now be scientifically under-tested as well. At the same time, the White House wants to experiment with replacing trained temporary census workers with already-overloaded USPS staff — because if there’s one institution Trump-world hasn’t finished kneecapping yet, it’s the Postal Service.
Meanwhile, the Census Bureau has refused to brief the members of Congress who are supposed to oversee it, and the administration has disbanded all of the bureau’s outside advisory committees, effectively pulling what one expert calls a “black-out shade” over 2030 planning. Translation: they’re messing with the machinery that decides political representation and hundreds of billions in federal funding, and they’d prefer you not watch while they do it. It’s less a census test and more a dry run for how far they can push voter dilution and structural minority rule before anyone manages to turn the lights back on.
#killing-democracy#racism#forever-grifting
trump doj releases half the epstein files, calls it transparency
Todd Blanche explaining that releasing half the Epstein files with 10,000 redactions is actually what "full transparency" looks like now.
The Trump justice department has announced, with a straight face, that the Epstein investigation is now "over" after dumping 3 million pages of documents and declaring victory, while quietly sitting on another 3 million. Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche insists "we have nothing to hide"—they're just refusing to release half the records, blacking out thousands of names, and ignoring both a congressional subpoena and a federal law that explicitly told them to hand everything over. Totally normal behavior for an administration that keeps insisting the whole Epstein thing is a "Democrat hoax" while Trump’s own name shows up in the files.
Democrats like Jamie Raskin, Hakeem Jeffries, and Ro Khanna, plus Republican Thomas Massie (who apparently missed the memo that you’re not supposed to investigate rich predators in this country), are pointing out the obvious: this looks a lot less like transparency and a lot more like a state-sponsored damage control operation for the elite. Survivors are furious that their names were accidentally exposed while the powerful men they say abused them are still buried under redactions and missing documents. Lawyers for more than 200 victims are now in court asking DOJ to take down its document site because the department managed to produce what may be "the single most egregious violation of victim privacy in one day in US history"—but sure, tell us more about how this is all about justice.
Meanwhile, Massie is being punished by his own party for the unforgivable sin of wanting "rich men perp walked in handcuffs"—a standard that, if ever actually applied, would turn half of Mar-a-Lago into a work-release program. As Republicans try to bounce him off the ballot for demanding Epstein transparency and Trump yells "hoax" into the void, the Trump administration is doing what it does best: weaponizing the federal government to protect friends, punish dissenters, and bury anything that might threaten the golden boys of America’s ruling class. Elite impunity remains undefeated; the rule of law, not so much.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
president extremely mad that jokes still legal
Trevor Noah on stage at the Grammys, moments before the president of the United States decided the biggest threat to the republic was a joke about Epstein and an island he swears he never visited.
Donald Trump watched the Grammys, heard Trevor Noah make one Epstein joke, and immediately decided the real crime in America is defamation against Donald Trump. After Noah quipped that Trump needed Greenland since "Epstein's island is gone" and he needs a new place to hang with Bill Clinton, the president jumped onto Truth Social to call Noah a "poor, pathetic, talentless dope" and promised to sic his lawyers on him for "plenty$"—because nothing says "totally innocent and not defensive at all" like threatening to sue over an awards-show punchline.
Trump insisted he has "never been to Epstein Island" and, more importantly, had never even been accused of it "not even by the Fake News Media"—which is a very normal thing for a president to angrily clarify during the Grammys. Meanwhile, the crowd and artists spent the night denouncing his anti-immigrant policies, wearing anti-ICE pins, and reminding the country that "no one is illegal on stolen land", which probably didn’t help his mood as he live-posted through being publicly clowned.
This tantrum slots neatly into the broader second-term project: punishing comedians and media that dare to mock Dear Leader. Stephen Colbert’s show is being axed by CBS after he criticized the company for settling a $16m lawsuit with Trump (totally unrelated, they swear), Jimmy Kimmel got suspended by Disney and briefly had the president lobbying the FCC to yank ABC’s license, and Bari Weiss now oversees CBS’s rightward drift while Trump cheers the Grammys getting booted from the network as "garbage". The message is clear: criticize Trump and you might lose your show; joke about Trump and Epstein and he’ll threaten to sue you personally.
Noah, on his way out after six years hosting, responded to the outrage in real time: "It’s my last year! What are you gonna do about it?" The president has answered: deploy the lawyers, weaponize the chill, and keep testing how far a White House can go in treating mockery as a legal offense. Free speech is still technically alive; it’s just being sued, canceled, and harassed by the guy who swore an oath to protect it.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump threatens fed, gold investors discover gravity
Kevin Warsh, photographed moments before being informed his new job is "trying to keep the Fed independent while Trump live-tweets rate policy."
Global markets just had a minor heart attack because everyone has spent weeks assuming Donald Trump was about to stuff the Federal Reserve with a MAGA mascot who'd cut rates whenever he got bored on Truth Social. Gold and silver had been blasting through record highs as investors fled into "safe havens" from the terrifying prospect of Trump turning the Fed into his personal campaign ATM.
Then Trump announced he’d nominate Kevin Warsh, an actual central banker with real Fed experience and a reputation for not being a total pushover. Cue an 8% plunge in gold, a 7% drop in silver, and a bunch of traders suddenly realizing they might have slightly overpaid for their apocalypse bunker metals. One analyst politely translated this as "relief that a Trump cheerleader would not be installed" — Washington-speak for "we were all bracing for a loyalist who’d torch Fed independence on command."
Bitcoin, oil, copper, platinum — basically the entire speculative panic buffet — also slid as tensions with Iran might be easing and markets recalibrated from "Trump breaks Fed" to "Trump only threatens to break Fed this quarter." Deutsche Bank still thinks gold can hit $6,000 this year, which is a fun forecast that doubles as a confidence poll on whether Trump will keep menacing monetary policy until investors start stockpiling bullion again. The underlying message: as long as Trump is hovering over the Fed like a raccoon over a trash can, nobody believes institutional stability is more than a temporary condition.
#killing-democracy#money
trump nationalizes the arts, installs himself as head usher
Artist’s rendering of the Kennedy Center’s future: same building, 400% more gold letters and one very confused bust of JFK wondering how he ended up opening for Donald Trump.
Trump has decided that the Kennedy Center — the nation’s performing arts memorial to a murdered president — is "tired, broken, and dilapidated," which is bold talk from the guy whose brand is gold-plated bankruptcy. Having already stacked the Kennedy Center board with handpicked loyalists, made himself chair, stripped out Pride events, and jammed his name in front of John F. Kennedy’s on the façade, he’s now announcing a two-year shutdown for renovations, effective July 4. Because nothing screams "respect for institutions" like shuttering them on Independence Day.
The funding, Trump assures us, is "completed, and fully in place" — from where, he declines to say, and the White House is suddenly very shy. The Kennedy Center itself isn’t commenting either, possibly because they found out about their two-year closure the same way the rest of us did: a Truth Social post citing "Contractors, Musical Experts, Art Institutions, and other Advisors and Consultants" — a phrase that reads like it was generated by an AI trained exclusively on Mar-a-Lago brunch conversations.
Meanwhile, the actual arts community has responded the only way it can: by fleeing. Since the board voted to staple Trump’s name over Kennedy’s, artists have been canceling in droves. Stephen Schwartz bailed on hosting a Washington National Opera gala, and the opera itself has now left the building after more than 50 years. One of the board’s ex officio members, Rep. Joyce Beatty, is suing the administration over the renaming, arguing that you can’t just rebrand a congressionally created memorial like it’s another failed Trump casino. But sure, let’s lock the whole place down for two years of mystery-financed "renovations" under a board that already turned a national cultural institution into a MAGA vanity project.
When it finally reopens for the promised "Grand Reopening," don’t be surprised if the nation’s performing arts center looks less like a living tribute to American culture and more like a very large, very tacky campaign rally venue with better acoustics.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
loser endorses man who called him a loser
John Sununu, seen here discovering that calling Trump a "loser" is fine as long as you later agree he’s your dear leader and job reference.
Donald Trump has bestowed his "Complete and Total Endorsement" on former senator John Sununu in the New Hampshire Senate race, because nothing says strong movement like a twice-impeached, insurrection-adjacent ex-president handpicking who’s allowed to run in a supposedly independent party primary. Sununu once wrote an op-ed calling Trump a "loser" while backing Nikki Haley, but in MAGA world, all sins are forgiven as long as you’re willing to carry the "America First" banner and pretend the cult leader is still the main character of American politics.
Democrat Chris Pappas responded by simply reposting Trump’s endorsement and saying he "approves this message," which is what you do when your opponent voluntarily brands himself as Trump’s franchise location in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, Scott Brown — former Massachusetts senator, Trump ambassador, and now rejected applicant for the MAGA loyalty badge — bravely announced he will "keep working," which here means running against both Sununu and the reality that Trump owns the GOP like another failed casino.
The RNC dutifully declared the race a top priority, thrilled that the party’s Senate strategy still boils down to: wait for Trump to pick a favorite, call it grassroots energy, and hope voters don’t notice the entire process is being run like a licensing deal for the "America First" trademark. Representative democracy, but with brand management.
#killing-democracy#fascism
fbi raid, because trump still can't get over 2020
FBI agents hauling away boxes of Georgia ballots, bravely protecting America from the grave threat of Trump losing an election six years ago.
While ICE was busy turning Minneapolis into a campaign ad, another arm of Trump’s authoritarian fan fiction government was at work in Georgia. The FBI raided Fulton County’s central election facility and walked out with more than 700 boxes of 2020 ballots and election records, because nothing says "law and order" like using federal law enforcement to chase down your hurt feelings from four years ago. This is the first time in American history the FBI has seized ballots from a past election, but sure, tell us more about how it’s really about “election integrity.”
To really underline that this is about raw power, not security, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard showed up in person, because apparently the nation’s top intelligence official now moonlights as Trump’s personal ballot repo agent. The warrant vacuumed up everything: tabulator tapes, ballot images from the original count and recount, absentee and early voting records, voter rolls — the whole thing Trump has been obsessively lying about since he begged Brad Raffensperger to "find" him votes. Every claim he made about Georgia fraud has already been repeatedly debunked, so naturally the solution is to send in the FBI and pretend it’s 2020 forever.
Trump has openly said he regrets not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in 2020 because they weren’t "sophisticated" enough. Enter the FBI. Now he’s on Truth Social screaming "TRUMP WON BIG" and promising prosecutions, while his DOJ argues it has "sweeping power" to grab election records from states. In other words, the federal government will keep elections "free and fair" until they produce a result Trump likes. The Fulton County raid isn’t about the past; it’s a warning shot for 2026: cooperate with the narrative or watch your ballots disappear into a federal evidence locker.
State officials like Maine’s Shenna Bellows are basically reduced to saying, "I have the key and he’s not getting our ballots," which is where we are now: democracy defended by whoever still controls the padlock. The ICE invasion of Minneapolis shows how Trump plans to police people; the FBI raid in Georgia shows how he plans to police votes. Different agencies, same message: the law is whatever serves the president’s grievances today.
#killing-democracy#fascism
stable genius explains nato to guy who lost his leg there
British Marines sprint toward Taliban positions in Helmand, bravely failing to meet Donald Trump’s standard of "a little back, a little off the front lines."
Donald Trump has discovered a bold new strategy for global security: tell the people who bled for you that they actually hung out "a little back, a little off the front lines." Lance Cpl. Cassidy Little, who left his right leg somewhere in Helmand and watched his friends die pushing into territory "not yet controlled by NATO," apparently just imagined being so far forward he couldn't even see the front line behind him. Trump, whose most dangerous deployment was to the buffet at Mar-a-Lago, has thoughts.
NATO’s only-ever Article 5 mission — the one where over 1,000 allied troops from more than 25 countries died after answering America’s 9/11 call — is now, in Trump’s retelling, a half-hearted group project where everyone else slacked off and the U.S. did all the work. Veterans from Britain, Estonia, Denmark, Canada and more remember it slightly differently, probably because they were busy getting blown up instead of rage-posting on Truth Social.
After managing to offend basically the entire United Kingdom, from Prince Harry to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump tried the classic "praise the troops, change none of the substance" maneuver, calling British soldiers "among the greatest of all warriors" while carefully not apologizing or acknowledging all the other dead allies. So the message to NATO is clear: We heard the call, we came running, and now we’re being told we were late, lazy, and standing in the wrong place. Truly a masterclass in alliance management from the guy who thinks threatening to abandon mutual defense is a negotiating tactic, not an engraved invitation to the next war.
#killing-democracy#national-security#fascism
