republicans discover ‘low-hanging fruit’ is just federal workers’ paychecks
Rep. Don Bacon explains that the easiest way to govern is to break the government first and negotiate over the wreckage.
Rep. Don Bacon pops up on Meet the Press to explain that the way out of the Trump-induced DHS shutdown is for Congress to find "low-hanging fruit" on DHS reforms — a bold way of saying, "what if we only partially dismantle the agency we just defunded?" While Trump demands sweeping immigration crackdowns and structural changes as ransom for reopening the government, Bacon is out here pitching starter authoritarianism: maybe just a few reforms, a little more border theater, and then we’ll consider letting DHS function again.
The framing, of course, is that this is all normal negotiation, not the president and his party holding national security, federal workers’ paychecks, and basic governance hostage for campaign talking points. DHS isn’t being reformed through hearings, oversight, or legislation; it’s being reengineered at gunpoint via shutdown brinkmanship. That’s not policymaking, it’s governance-by-extortion.
What Bacon sells as "low-hanging fruit" is really the bipartisan normalization of Trump’s strategy: shut it down, blame the other side, then demand structural concessions just to turn the lights back on. It’s a handy precedent for any future president who wants to bypass Congress and treat the federal workforce as disposable collateral. Democracy: now available only after you meet the president’s demands.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#trumps-america
gateway to trump’s ego, closed for construction
Artist’s rendering of Trump’s vision for Penn Station: same delays, same crumbling tunnels, 400% more gold letters spelling his name.
The president who bankrupted casinos is now lecturing New York and New Jersey about fiscal responsibility, announcing that the federal government won’t pay a single dollar of cost overruns for the long-delayed Gateway tunnel project. This comes just days after a federal judge had to step in and block his administration from withholding money for the $16 billion tunnel in the first place. Normal presidents use infrastructure to create jobs and modernize transit; Donald Trump uses it the way he uses everything else: as leverage for personal branding and revenge.
NBC News previously reported that Trump’s team told Chuck Schumer that maybe, just maybe, the money could flow if Penn Station in New York and Dulles Airport in Virginia were renamed after Trump. Today, Trump insists the idea was totally not his, merely something floated by “certain politicians and construction union heads,” because when you think union guys, you definitely think: let’s name the train station after the guy who tried to kill our pensions. The White House line is now that the tunnel could be “financially catastrophic” — unlike, say, holding a multi-state transportation network hostage to the president’s fragile ego.
The petty doesn’t stop at naming rights. Last fall, budget director and professional culture warrior Russell Vought proudly froze funding for the project, claiming the money might be tainted by “unconstitutional DEI principles.” On the same day, he slashed billions more from infrastructure in states that Kamala Harris carried in 2024, because nothing says “serious stewardship of taxpayer dollars” like turning the federal budget into a loyalty rewards program. Infrastructure in blue states is being treated as a luxury item, subject to cancellation whenever Trump needs a new vendetta or a fresh surface to slap his name on.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump scares uk so much they’re building backup money
British bankers gather to ask a simple question: what if the world’s reserve currency is run by a guy who rage-posts at 3am?
UK bank bosses are quietly holding a "what if Trump turns off our money" emergency meeting, which is not ominous at all. With Trump threatening Nato allies over Greenland like a wannabe Bond villain with worse speeches, British banks have decided that maybe, just maybe, having 95% of card payments run through two US companies that a vindictive president could pressure is not the pinnacle of national security. So they’re building a domestic backup payments system, because the free world now plans around the possibility that the American president might unplug their economy for fun and foreign policy.
Rather than say the quiet part out loud, UK officials mumble about "cyber and operational risk" while European politicians openly warn that "Trump can cut everything off" and demand an "Airbus for payment systems." The punchline: Visa and Mastercard are being invited to help design the alternative to Visa and Mastercard, like putting the arsonist on the fire safety committee. Still, when your closest allies start engineering a financial escape pod in case Washington elects the chaos goblin again, that’s not just market innovation – that’s a global vote of no confidence in America’s ability to restrain its own would‑be autocrat.
So by 2030, the UK hopes to have DeliveryCo, a shiny new payments rail whose main design spec is: "works even if the US goes full Trump again." This is what "leader of the free world" looks like now: NATO countries scrambling to build parallel financial systems so they don’t get caught in the blast radius of the next tantrum in the Oval Office.
#killing-democracy#fascism
slumlord peace: kushner to fix ukraine between real estate deals
Zelenskyy listening politely as Jared Kushner explains Eastern Europe using the same expertise that once gave us “We’ll fix everything with an Abraham Accord and some condos.”
The Trump administration has decided that four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is the perfect moment to roll out its discount diplomacy package: send Jared Kushner and Trump mega-donor Steve Witkoff to Switzerland and call it “peace talks.” Because when you’re dealing with the largest land war in Europe since WWII, naturally you tap the guy who couldn’t even get Middle East peace without a map that looked like a WeWork floor plan.
Trump is publicly leaning on Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “act” because “Russia wants to make a deal,” which is a poetic way of saying give up your land and trust the guy who invaded you four times. Meanwhile, his own secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is out in Munich gently hinting that Moscow might not be all that serious about peace. So the official US position is: Russia is totally ready for a grand bargain, unless you ask literally anyone at State who can read a casualty report.
Ukraine, annoyingly for the Kremlin and Mar-a-Lago, is refusing to hand over the Donbas like it’s a golf course Trump lost in bankruptcy court. Zelenskyy points out that letting Putin keep stolen territory hasn’t worked out so great in Chechnya, Georgia, or Crimea, and that “Putin cannot be stopped with kisses or flowers” — a surprisingly concise review of the entire early-2000s western Russia policy. Washington, for its part, is trying to sell Kyiv on 15 years of US security guarantees while Ukraine, having watched America’s attention span, is asking for 30-50. One side is living in reality; the other is scheduling side meetings with Iran between press hits.
So Geneva will host another round of “talks” where Russia sends an adviser who denies Ukraine is real, the US sends a landlord and a legacy admission, and Ukraine sends people who are actually fighting a war. The Trump team calls it diplomacy; everyone else recognizes it as a live demonstration of how to pressure a democratic ally to swallow a bad deal so your president can brag about a “historic peace” on Truth Social before heading back to the buffet.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
great news: airport security is now a volunteer position
Pictured: the frontline of national security, now operating on vibes and overdue bills.
Welcome to the latest episode of "America, But Make It Feudal," where TSA agents are still required to show up, screen thousands of passengers, and protect national security — just without the unnecessary luxury of money. Because nothing says "world's most advanced democracy" like forcing people to work while their paychecks are held hostage by a political feud over DHS funding.
This partial government shutdown means the people rummaging through your bags and stopping you from accidentally packing a loaded gun in your carry-on are effectively unpaid interns for the Homeland. Miss a shift? You’re disciplined. Show up? You get the warm satisfaction of knowing your landlord definitely won’t accept "patriotic service" as rent. It’s illegal to not work, but perfectly fine for the government not to pay you yet — a fun little arrangement that would be called "forced labor" if any other country tried it.
Meanwhile, the same crowd screaming about "border security" is totally fine kneecapping the very department that handles, you know, security. Flights keep running on the backs of stressed, underpaid, now-unpaid workers, while the political class treats their livelihoods like poker chips in another shutdown stunt. We get slower lines, higher security risks, and a federal workforce learning that their employer will absolutely use them as leverage. Truly, the shutdown is going great.
#killing-democracy#money#forever-grifting
trump’s protection racket foreign policy goes global
NATO, now rebranded as ‘We Swear We’ll Pay, Please Don’t Leave Alliance,’ poses in front of a giant Trump headshot.
Europe is suddenly hanging billboards for drones on churches because Donald Trump has turned transatlantic security into a live-action remake of The Sopranos, except somehow dumber and with worse tailoring. With the US freezing new aid to Ukraine and Trump treating NATO like a gym membership he never intended to pay for, Germany is now the biggest single donor to Kyiv and is racing to build a war economy it thought it left behind in the 20th century.
At the Munich Security Conference, European leaders are basically holding a group therapy session about how their "former best pal" in Washington keeps threatening to walk out of NATO unless they pay tribute and applaud loudly enough. Trump officials "appreciate" Europe’s sudden €150bn defence splurge the way an arsonist appreciates how quickly the fire department shows up. The new world order is simple: America’s security guarantees are for sale, rule of law is optional, and the free world is advised to keep three to ten days of canned goods on hand, just in case the President’s next tantrum is strategic.
#killing-democracy#national-security#imperialism
rfk jr turns nih into the world's most expensive vacant lot
CDC and NIH under RFK Jr.: come for the public health, stay for the conspiracy cosplay.
The National Institutes of Health — you know, the place that helped fund HIV treatments, Covid vaccines, and cancer drugs — is now being run like a mid-level Wendy’s with a 200% turnover rate. Of NIH’s 27 institutes and centers, 16 don’t have permanent directors. That’s not a staffing issue; that’s a controlled demolition. Trump’s second-term health czar Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has discovered that if courts and Congress block your budget cuts, you can just quietly remove the people in charge and replace them later with whoever thinks vaccine inserts are the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Former NIAID director Jeanne Marrazzo — Fauci’s successor — is out after having the gall to defend vaccines and object to canceling NIH research. She was put on leave and then fired, and is now suing NIH and HHS for illegal retaliation, while NIAID just sits there without a real director. This follows Kennedy firing CDC Director Susan Monarez after 29 days for not rubber-stamping his vaccine “revisions,” then gutting childhood vaccine recommendations and rewriting the CDC’s autism page to flirt with anti-vax mythology. The message to scientists is clear: shut up, nod along, and don’t say ‘evidence’ too loudly.
HHS, meanwhile, insists it’s all about “gold-standard science” and “strengthening scientific rigor,” which is a bold statement from an operation that can’t keep more than half of NIH’s top jobs filled and keeps purging anyone who remembers what a clinical trial is. With courts blocking the 40% budget cut and Congress refusing to let Trump and Kennedy chainsaw NIH into eight obedient fiefdoms, the backup plan is a leadership vacuum that can be quietly refilled with loyalists. It’s not exactly subtle: starve the expertise, then claim you’re just ‘reforming’ a broken system.
So the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research is now a parking lot for acting directors, whistleblowers, and people waiting to be fired for saying vaccines work. America’s chronic diseases are still here, but at least the administration is finally treating its real long Covid: a lingering infection of independent science.
#killing-democracy#anti-science#lawlessness
trump exports american decline, throws orbán a lifeline
Pro-Orbán billboard helpfully explains that the real threat to Hungary isn’t the corrupt strongman in power, it’s that pesky Ukrainian president asking not to be steamrolled by Russia.
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has turned one of central Europe’s former success stories into an economic pothole with a flag on it, and now faces a real challenger in Péter Magyar and the Tisza party. After 16 years of "strong leadership," the country has stagnation, crumbling public services, and voters who have finally noticed that permanent culture war doesn’t pay the bills.
So how does an ailing autocrat freshen the brand? Easy: import some American decay. Orbán is leaning hard on his friendship with Donald Trump 2.0, boasting that he alone can schmooze the leaders of the US, Russia, and China like a mid-tier Bond villain who overbooked his lair. A White House photo-op and a Budapest visit from Secretary of State Marco Rubio become campaign props to sell the idea that in a world of strongmen, Hungary needs its own mini-me authoritarian at the table.
Fidesz isn’t even pretending to run on competence any more. The message is pure despair politics: yes, everything is bad, but daring to change it would be worse. Orbán’s team brands European support for Ukraine, migrants, and LGBTQ+ rights as the sinister "Brussels path," while flogging a fantasy "Hungarian path" of peace, sealed borders, and state-sanctioned bigotry—an echo of the Trump administration’s own civilisational panic talk about liberal democracy. With Trump’s Ukraine-sceptic, Russia-friendly posture as cover, Orbán is freer than ever to cuddle up to Moscow and kick Kyiv, all while presenting himself as the only adult who can navigate the global chaos he enthusiastically helps create.
Trump’s America First has quietly become Orbán First, too: US power and prestige repurposed as campaign material for an illiberal European client who survives by convincing his citizens that hope itself is dangerous.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump announces elections are state-run, except when he feels like it
Trump on Air Force One, discovering new constitutional powers between Truth Social posts and in-flight dessert.
Trump, currently rage-posting from Air Force One like a bored monarch on a private jet, has announced that there will be national voter ID for the midterms, "whether approved by Congress or not." The Save America Act — his latest voter suppression starter pack that adds strict photo ID, proof-of-citizenship registration, and kneecaps mail-in voting — is stalled in the Senate, so he’s now threatening to just conjure it into existence via executive order.
The constitution, minor detail, actually leaves running elections to the states. Courts already told him last year that he "lacks the authority" to unilaterally rewrite voter registration rules, when a judge blocked his proof-of-citizenship order. So naturally, Trump’s response is to promise another one, claiming there are mysterious "Legal reasons" this is all allowed — to be revealed later, presumably right after Rudy finds them at the bottom of a Four Seasons landscaping invoice.
He also insists "the People" demand no mail-in ballots (they don’t; polling shows 58% support expanded vote-by-mail), while calling Democrats "horrible, disingenuous CHEATERS" and warning that if they ever gain power, they’ll add two states and pack the court. So the guy threatening to seize unprecedented federal control of elections and bulldoze voting rights is accusing others of planning a power grab. American democracy continues its fun experiment in whether the system can survive a president who thinks the separation of powers is just a bad ratings gimmick.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
ground control to major nutcase
Rep. Adam Smith politely trying to describe a five-alarm constitutional dumpster fire as merely ‘sheer insanity.’
The Trump FAA apparently decided El Paso’s skies were just another campaign prop. According to House Armed Services ranking member Rep. Adam Smith, the administration’s handling of the El Paso airspace closure was so chaotic he labeled it “sheer insanity” — which, to be fair, is the closest thing this White House has to a brand identity. Instead of clear communication, coherent justification, or basic respect for public safety and commercial traffic, we got the usual: confusion, secrecy, and a strong whiff of political convenience.
Because why treat controlled airspace like critical infrastructure when you can treat it like a VIP rope line at Mar-a-Lago? Flights were disrupted, local authorities and the public were left guessing, and the federal government once again demonstrated that under Trump, national assets — even the literal sky — are just tools for political theater. The message is clear: if you live near a border city, your airspace, your economy, and your safety are all subject to whatever impulsive stunt the White House dreams up before breakfast.
This isn’t just logistical incompetence; it’s one more example of an administration casually normalizing the idea that federal power exists to serve the president’s whims, not the public interest. Today it’s closing down airspace over El Paso like it’s a private airshow. Tomorrow? Who knows. Maybe they’ll start geo-fencing democracy itself.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump discovers there are still norms left to break
Deepa Shivaram, bravely documenting the president’s ongoing attempt to see if there are any norms he hasn’t shattered yet.
President Trump is once again doing his favorite presidential pastime: stress-testing what's left of American democracy like it's a cheap folding chair from Walmart. Ahead of a meeting with the nation's governors, he's reportedly gearing up not for cooperative federalism, but for another performance of "What If We Just Made Everything Partisan, Forever?"—this time targeting spaces that were historically nonpartisan on purpose, like basic intergovernmental coordination.
Rather than treat governors as partners in governing, Trump is treating them like contestants on a rigged game show where the prize is not getting your state punished. The article notes his "willingness to attack Democratic norms and traditions," which is a very polite way of saying he's once again trying to turn routine governance into a loyalty test and convert neutral institutions into extensions of his campaign rally.
The upshot: the more Trump injects partisanship into what used to be boring, functional parts of government, the more he normalizes the idea that every lever of state power exists to serve his political needs. It’s not policy, it’s not leadership—it’s a long, drawn-out experiment in how far you can erode democratic guardrails before the whole thing finally tips over.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump doj discovers bold new legal theory: journalism is a civil rights crime
Don Lemon walks into federal court to answer for the grave crime of pointing a camera at Trump’s immigration police while the government quietly pretends the First Amendment was just a suggestion.
Donald Trump’s Justice Department has apparently decided the real civil rights crisis in America is Don Lemon holding a camera. The former CNN host pleaded not guilty to federal civil rights charges after covering an anti-ICE protest at a Minnesota church whose pastor just happens to also be an ICE official. The administration’s position: interrupting a service to demand justice for two people shot dead by federal officers is a threat to religious freedom; shooting them in the first place is just solid border policy.
Prosecutors dusted off the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act—yes, the one meant to protect people from being terrorized at abortion clinics—and repurposed it to go after nine protesters and journalists, including Lemon and civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong. At the same time, the White House was busy pushing an AI-doctored image of Armstrong crying during her arrest, because if you’re going to criminalize dissent, you might as well add some deepfake propaganda for that authentic authoritarian flair.
The DOJ also grabbed Lemon’s phone in Los Angeles, stuck it in DHS custody, and sealed the warrant, because nothing says "we definitely aren’t retaliating against the press" like secret searches of a journalist’s device. Even the National Association of Black Journalists had to spell it out: this is an escalating government effort to criminalize the press under the warm, fuzzy branding of “law enforcement.” Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi calls the protest a “coordinated attack” on a church and press secretary Karoline Leavitt warns that Trump “will not tolerate the intimidation and harassment of Christians” — but federal agents killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti? That’s just business as usual.
To really drive home how corrupt this all is, one of Lemon’s lawyers, Joe Thompson, actually quit the U.S. attorney’s office in disgust over the immigration crackdown and the DOJ’s shrugging response to those killings. The administration, of course, cites fraud cases largely involving the state’s Somali community as justification for turning Minnesota into a laboratory for immigration crackdowns. So yes, they’re now using a law written to protect clinic patients to prosecute journalists and Black activists for chanting "ICE out" in church. Process as punishment, propaganda as policy, and the First Amendment as collateral damage—the Trump administration’s civil rights doctrine in one neat little indictment.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#fascism
lindsey graham: north star of the trump personality cult
Lindsey Graham, moments before explaining that blocking a $1.2 trillion funding bill so he can carve out legal protections for himself is just what a fiercely independent Trump ally does.
Sen. Lindsey Graham has discovered a rare political superpower: he can occasionally say the quiet part slightly less loud and still remain one of Donald Trump’s favorite emotional support senators. Fresh off briefly holding a $1.2 trillion government funding bill hostage so he could slip in a special perk letting eight senators (including himself) sue the government over their secretly obtained phone records, Graham assured everyone he’s an ally of the White House, just “not owned” by them. Bold talk from the guy who dropped his little accountability-shield tantrum within hours and then showed up in the Oval Office grinning under a red “America is Back” hat like he’d just liberated Europe.
On foreign policy, the longtime hawk has repackaged his endless-war instincts as helpful guidance for President Forever Coup Attempt. Graham loudly advertises sanctions and tough talk on Russia and Iran on Trump’s behalf, then watches as nothing actually happens, because the “America First” doctrine mostly consists of vibes and merch. He even publicly contradicts Trump about Iranian protesters still being killed, but it’s fine because he also calls Trump a “great president” and, crucially, knows how to play golf. Policy differences are allowed, as long as everyone agrees the sun revolves around Mar-a-Lago.
Back home in South Carolina, Graham’s main concern isn’t Democrats; it’s whether he looks sufficiently MAGA in a state where the only real election is the primary. After once calling Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” Graham has now fully harmonized with Trump’s anti-immigrant crusade, pushing a bill to end sanctuary city policies and bragging about “deporting violent illegal aliens” as his new bipartisan love language. Even former critic Nancy Mace has decided that backing Trump’s deportation agenda is the safest career move, because of course it is.
Meanwhile, Project 2025 architect Paul Dans is running at Graham from the right, calling it “a battle for the future of MAGA” and hoping Trump might swap endorsements like it’s another reality TV finale. The White House, for now, calls Graham a “critical” partner in advancing the America First agenda, which is a polite way of saying: he occasionally pretends to stand up to Trump, then folds, then gets invited back to the White House more than anyone else. Graham calls himself Trump’s “north star.” That’s one way to describe it. Another is: the courtier who figured out the only principle that really matters in this party — “I like him and he likes him.”
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
virginia court greenlights ‘democracy, but make it vibes-based maps’
Virginia Democrats announce their plan to fight Trump’s gerrymanders by… launching their own gerrymander, because the real bipartisan consensus is that voters are mostly decorative.
American democracy has entered its Late Gerrymander phase, and Virginia just punched its ticket. The Virginia Supreme Court politely informed Republicans that, yes, voters will get to weigh in on whether Democrats can redraw the state’s congressional map before November, and no, their lawsuit tantrum does not cancel elections. The court will still hear the GOP’s process complaints later, but crucially said that has "no effect" on the April 21 referendum, which is legalese for: the train is leaving the station, you can litigate from the platform.
Republicans are calling the move a brutal partisan power grab that would drop their share of House seats far below their share of voters. Democrats, having apparently discovered the concept of consequences, respond that they’re just answering President Trump’s multi-state "What if we just rig all the maps?" tour. Trump pushed Texas Republicans to redraw their map for five extra GOP seats, with Missouri and North Carolina each squeezing out one more. Now Virginia Democrats want to flip their delegation from 6D-5R to a 10D-1R "thanks for playing" arrangement, while California Democrats have already gotten voter approval for a map designed to cancel out Texas’ gambit.
The result is a national cartography arms race where both parties openly brag about how many seats they can manufacture with a pen, and voters are basically background extras. Overall, Republicans still lead the redistricting scoreboard by a couple seats, and Florida’s GOP is already warming up the eraser for their own April adjustment. Trump’s agenda for his final two years hinges on keeping a razor-thin House majority, so naturally the fate of the republic comes down to which side can draw the most imaginative lines on a map and convince a court it counts as representation. This is fine.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
trump sues harvard for insufficient groveling
Future defendants in a federal loyalty test gather on the steps of Harvard, blissfully unaware that their admissions files are now a front-line battleground in Trump's war on reality.
The Trump administration has decided that if it can't control what Harvard teaches, it will at least try to rummage through every admissions file like a racially obsessed raccoon. The DOJ, now starring Harmeet Dhillon as "Civil Rights" chief, is suing Harvard for allegedly slow-walking and limiting access to applicant-level admissions data tied to race, ethnicity and DEI. Officially, they're not accusing Harvard of discrimination or seeking money or cutting funding this time. Unofficially, Trump is on TV demanding $1bn from the university for being too "woke". Totally normal separation of powers behavior.
Harvard, for its part, says it's been complying "in good faith" while also refusing to "surrender its independence" or roll over for what it bluntly calls unlawful government overreach. That stance is not theoretical: last year Trump yanked roughly $2bn in research grants and froze federal funding, and a federal court had to step in and remind the White House that, no, actually, the government doesn't get to dictate what private universities teach or who they admit. The court found the cuts violated Harvard's free speech rights; the White House responded by vowing to appeal and announcing Harvard is still "ineligible" for future grants anyway. Checks and balances, Trump-style: lose in court, then just announce you won.
This latest lawsuit demands an injunction forcing Harvard to hand over more data now and in the future, while Trump publicly threatens to revoke its tax-exempt status and even seize control of its patents from federally funded research. Meanwhile, three other Ivy League schools—Columbia, Penn, and Brown—have already struck deals to preserve their funding, because nothing encourages academic freedom quite like the president personally shaking down universities until they agree to terms. The message is clear: comply with the ideological loyalty audit, or watch your grants, patents, and tax status go on the chopping block. Free speech, brought to you by the guy trying to nationalize Harvard's lab notebooks.
#killing-democracy#fascism#unconstitutional
missouri guy helps dc mob jack georgia’s ballots
Two guys in suits posing under a Trump portrait, presumably brainstorming how to use federal law enforcement to chase YouTube conspiracy theories.
The “law and order” gang is back at it, this time with Thomas Albus, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney from Missouri, quietly huddling with Trump’s election-dead-ender lawyers before the FBI raided the Fulton County, Georgia election center. Albus, whose prior experience with election law is checks notes basically zero, was handpicked by Attorney General Pam Bondi and given nationwide election powers anyway, because why let qualifications get in the way of a good authoritarian cosplay?
These strategy sessions featured Ed Martin and Kurt Olsen — yes, the same Olsen who was sanctioned by a federal court for lying about voting machines, and both of whom previously tried to overturn the 2020 election for Trump. They called it “election integrity,” which in Trumpworld means “use the Justice Department as a personal fixers’ office to chase our fan fiction about rigged elections.” When Fulton County officials wouldn’t hand over tens of thousands of absentee ballots, Martin went on Steve Bannon’s podcast to daydream about just sending U.S. marshals to seize them. Subtle.
Not long after those meetings, Albus and Olsen were interviewing friendly witnesses like conservative researcher Kevin Moncla, whose 263-page conspiracy scrapbook helped convince a judge to sign off on the Fulton raid. So the White House hires a sanctioned Stop the Steal lawyer, pairs him with a freshly empowered U.S. attorney, pipelines MAGA activists into affidavits, and then unleashes the FBI on a Democratic county’s election office — all while screaming about the “weaponization” of DOJ against them. Truly, no one abuses power quite like the guys who swear they’re the real victims.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
fda discovers bold new standard: vibes-based medicine
The FDA’s new peer-review process: one anonymous official, a coin flip, and a strong personal dislike of mRNA.
The FDA just refused to even review Moderna’s mRNA flu shot, and instead of a clear scientific explanation we got an anonymous official calling the trial a "brazen failure" and demanding the company come back after it has sufficiently "shown humility". Regulatory science has now entered its feudal lord phase: bring data, and also kiss the ring. The supposed cardinal sin? Using a standard-dose flu shot in the control group for people over 65 – a practice the FDA itself had previously said was "acceptable" in writing, while "recommending" high-dose. Recommendation, suggestion, order – all the same, unless we decide we need a pretext this week.
Outside experts are looking at this circus and seeing what the FDA and HHS swear doesn’t exist: a quiet, policy-level anti-vaccine agenda dressed up as ethics. Agency scientists reportedly wanted to review the application, but Vinay Prasad – the Trump-era CBER chief who’s already been fired once, reinstated, and now faces allegations of verbal and sexual harassment – personally overruled them. Then an unnamed FDA official dismissed internal dissent as "gossip in the hallways" while refusing to put their own name on the decision, prompting law professor Dorit Reiss to accurately label the whole thing a coward’s act.
Meanwhile, HHS defended the move by accusing Moderna of exposing seniors to "substandard care" – in a trial design the company says the FDA explicitly okayed, with informed consent and everything. The same FDA that has been yanking vaccine approvals instead of adding warning labels, and that has suddenly discovered that using antibody responses – a decades-long norm in flu trials – is now suspicious when it’s attached to mRNA. If your goal was to spook every vaccine developer on Earth and turn the US regulator into a political cudgel against its own scientists, mission thoroughly accomplished.
#killing-democracy#anti-science#forever-grifting
trump protects america from the deadly threat of…gender studies
Pictured: the last known sighting of "equality" on a public university syllabus before the state decided biology now comes pre-approved by Mar-a-Lago.
Texas A&M’s board of regents has decided that the real danger to students isn’t, say, campus sexual assault or underfunded mental health services, but gender studies and any mention of race. They’re just following the lead of Trump’s executive order, majestically titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, which helpfully turns "biological reality" from a scientific question into a legal doctrine. When you can’t win an argument, criminalize the syllabus.
The punchline arrives via the latest Epstein files dump from Trump’s own justice department, which make it painfully obvious why the boys’ club is so desperate to shut down anyone studying power, gender, and abuse. Elites like former Whitney Museum director David Ross could gush to Jeffrey Epstein about an art show called "Statutory" featuring underage models who "look nothing like their true ages" and still imagine themselves as enlightened tastemakers. Trump doesn’t need to be named in every document; his Access Hollywood tape and comments about Ivanka already put him firmly in the Epstein-adjacent theory of women-as-accessories.
Gender studies programs, which teach that "men on top" is not a law of physics, but a social arrangement, are being systematically purged from universities in Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Kansas and beyond. That’s not culture-war fluff; it’s a deliberate move to destroy the tools that let people understand how powerful men get away with the kind of predation Epstein normalized and Trump publicly shrugs off. The same crowd screaming about "erasing women" is very busy erasing slavery from Independence Mall exhibits and diversity from university mission statements, because nothing says "defending women" like making sure no one can name the system that keeps them subordinate.
So yes, Trump’s order claims the "erasure of sex" threatens the American system. What it actually defends is that system as a cozy arrangement of masculine rule, legal impunity, and taxpayer-subsidized misogyny. Shutting down gender studies isn’t just an attack on a discipline; it’s a preemptive strike against anyone who might connect the dots between Epstein’s private island, Trump’s public policies, and a political project built on keeping equality out of the syllabus and out of the law.
#killing-democracy#fascism#forever-grifting
rubio flies to europe to explain why america is maybe only annexing *some* allies
Marco Rubio, tasked with reassuring Europe that the US only wants to annex *select* NATO allies, not the whole set.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in Europe trying to convince NATO allies that the United States is still a responsible superpower, despite President Donald Trump casually threatening to annex Greenland like it’s a foreclosure special on Zillow. European leaders, having noticed that Washington is now openly menacing a fellow NATO member’s territory, are quietly workshopping Plan B: their own nuclear deterrent and a future where US security guarantees come with fewer war-crime punchlines.
French President Emmanuel Macron is talking "strategic independence," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is hinting at a joint European nuke, and former US NATO commanders are reduced to writing open letters explaining that NATO is not, in fact, a charity but the thing that lets America play global empire on a discount. Meanwhile, Rubio promises a "new era" in geopolitics, which is a polite diplomatic phrase for our president just threatened to steal land from an ally and slapped tariffs on you, but please don’t leave the alliance we’re busy torching.
Last year, Vice-President JD Vance showed up in Munich to yell at Europe about free speech and immigration; this year, Rubio’s big upgrade is to "not be JD Vance" while trying to soothe a continent wondering if the US is about to go full imperial landlord on more allied territory. As Trump dangles military action against Iran, toys with Taiwan policy, and undermines NATO in his national security strategy, European governments are finally asking the obvious question: if Washington is willing to threaten its friends, what does that make it to everyone else? Allies are optional, annexations negotiable, and the era of US reliability is officially on the endangered species list.
#killing-democracy#imperialism
trump tries to defund disease tracking because blue states hurt his feelings
CDC headquarters, where scientists once tracked diseases before their budget got turned into a hostage in Trump’s latest feud with blue states.
The Trump administration took a brief break from dismantling reality to attempt something more focused: yanking $600 million in CDC public health grants from four Democratic-led states — California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota — because they had the nerve to oppose his immigration crackdown. The money funds such frivolous luxuries as tracking disease outbreaks and studying health outcomes for LGBTQ+ people and communities of color. You know, the kinds of people this administration prefers to treat as either a talking point or a problem to be ignored.
U.S. District Judge Manish Shah stepped in and slapped a 14-day pause on the cuts, noting the states would suffer "irreparable harm" if Trump’s Health and Human Services got to follow through on its little revenge fantasy. The administration’s excuse is that the grants no longer "reflect CDC priorities" after those priorities were "revised" to align with the White House’s sudden allergy to the phrase health equity. Translation: if the money helps gay men, adolescents, or racial minorities avoid HIV and other STIs, that’s now off-brand for MAGA public health.
State attorneys general are calling this what it is: unconstitutional retaliation and an attempt to retroactively slap new conditions on money Congress already approved. These same states have also been targeted for cuts to food assistance, child care subsidies, and EV infrastructure, because nothing says "limited government" like using federal funding as a protection racket — nice safety net you’ve got there, shame if something political happened to it. For now the courts have put another temporary fence around Trump’s urge to rule by extortion, but the message from the White House is clear: comply, or we’ll come for your public health workers next.
#killing-democracy#healthcare#fascism
