The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

New report: Temporary Protected Status holders add about $29 billion to the U.S. economy every year and pay nearly $8 billion in taxes. Trump’s response? Treat them like an invasive species that must be eradicated at once. Because if there’s one thing this administration hates more than refugees from war and disaster, it’s refugees from war and disaster who also pay taxes and keep the economy running.

Roughly 1.3 million people had TPS at the start of Trump’s second term, living in households with about 800,000 U.S. citizens. These are people the government already vetted and allowed to work legally because their home countries are engulfed in war, political chaos, or natural disasters. So naturally, the White House has spent the last year trying to slash the program for 13 countries, yanking protections from about a million people, including more than 600,000 Venezuelans and 330,000 Haitians, and then acting shocked when courts keep telling them "no, you actually can’t just ruin a million lives on a xenophobic whim."

Now the Supreme Court gets a turn on 29 April, hearing consolidated cases on Trump’s efforts to end TPS for Syrians and Haitians. Lower courts already ruled against the administration, but hope springs eternal when you’ve stacked the judiciary like a Mar-a-Lago buffet. Meanwhile, the House passed a bill to protect Haitian TPS holders, with a few Republicans briefly escaping the party’s cruelty discipline long enough to vote like their constituents are human beings.

The TPS program doesn’t even offer a path to citizenship; it just lets people work legally while their countries remain disaster zones. That modest, boring, technocratic fix has been too humane for the cruelty caucus, which has already managed to cut designations for Afghanistan, Honduras, Venezuela, Yemen, and is trying to do the same for Myanmar, Ethiopia, Haiti, South Sudan, and Syria. The message is clear: if you fled war, dictatorship, or catastrophe, built a life here, pay billions in taxes, and keep the economy humming, the administration will reward you by trying to deport you and label it a tough-on-immigration victory. Economic self-sabotage as immigration policy: very on brand.

Trump looked at the American education system, decided it wasn’t suffering nearly enough, and handed the Department of Education to Linda McMahon — the woman who used to get wheeled into WWE rings in a fake catatonic state while her husband made out with other women for ratings. Now she’s doing the same basic bit for Trump, except the humiliated prop this time is federal education policy.

According to Zach Helfand’s reporting, McMahon showed up to the Cabinet with zero education-policy experience but a rock-solid commitment to Trump’s dream of erasing the department altogether. Congress hasn’t actually killed it, so she’s doing the next best thing: systematically dismantling it from the inside, slashing about 50% of staff and scattering its functions across the bureaucracy like a busted folding chair. The collateral damage includes education research, student loan management, and programs for students with disabilities — you know, the stuff that actually helps people.

The wild part? She’s described as capable, kind, and empathetic — a “steady and effective leader” at SBA — which just proves that in Trumpworld, administrative competence is mostly valued as a tool for more efficient demolition. Wrestling taught the McMahons to blur the line between real and fake, heel and hero; now that same talent is being used to sell the public a feel-good storyline about reform while the department charged with expanding opportunity gets scripted out of existence. The crowd may be cheering, but the kids are the ones getting pinned.

Trump’s America is about to get a one-day trial run of what happens when the people who actually make the country function decide to stop doing that. May Day Strong is calling for a nationwide "no work, no school, no shopping" shutdown — a sort of democracy fire drill where workers demonstrate that the economy isn’t powered by Jared’s vibes and Elon’s memes, but by, you know, labor. The banner is subtle as a brick: "workers over billionaires, taxing the rich, demanding ICE out, money for people not wars, and expanding democracy". Somewhere, Stephen Miller just broke three teeth grinding.

Instead of quietly suffering through another news cycle about Trump’s latest tantrum, thousands of unions, DSA chapters, immigrant rights groups, reproductive justice orgs, and pro-democracy outfits are coordinating more than 3,500 actions — walkouts, rallies, teach-ins — all aimed at the quaint idea that people should be able to both defend democracy and pay rent. Chicago teachers even got 1 May declared a "day of civic action", which is a poetic way of saying "we’re done pretending everything’s normal while the government plays authoritarian cosplay with ICE occupying cities".

This year isn’t a full general strike (Taft-Hartley still exists, because of course it does), but it’s the warm-up act for 2028, when the UAW’s Shawn Fain has called on unions to line their contract expirations up like dominos on May 1. When those contracts — and their no-strike clauses — vanish, millions of workers might discover the wild, dangerous power of simply not showing up. Legal? Technically. Terrifying to Trump and his billionaire buddies? Extremely. As organizers keep reminding everyone: without workers, the world stops running. Without Trump, only his Truth Social account does.

After spending a year ghosting Congress like a deadbeat roommate, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suddenly embarked on a seven-hearing publicity tour, nominally about the 2027 HHS budget but actually about explaining why he turned federal health policy into a Telegram channel for anti-vaxxers. During his time off from oversight, Kennedy unilaterally rewrote the childhood vaccine schedule without outside advisers, presided over the worst measles numbers in three decades, and helped the Trump administration yank $250 million in Medicaid funding from Minnesota because it had the bad manners to be a blue state.

The funniest part is the Bill Cassidy subplot. Cassidy, a vaccine-supporting Republican doctor, cast the tie-breaking vote to make RFK Jr. health secretary, bragging he’d secured an “unprecedentedly close” working relationship, regular calls, and quarterly HELP Committee appearances. In reality, Kennedy blew off the hearings, shredded vaccine policy anyway, and treated Cassidy’s conditions like a software license agreement: click accept, ignore everything. Now Kennedy is back on the Hill, not because norms matter, but because the chaos finally got too loud to ignore — and Congress would like to know why the Department of Health and Human Services has been run like a Substack comment section with subpoena power.

US–Iran peace talks are stuck because Donald Trump has decided to conduct foreign policy like a bored uncle live-tweeting a family reunion. Pakistan is trying to mediate in Islamabad, Iran is at the table, and Trump is running a personal naval blockade while rage-posting up to seven times a day about how Iran has already surrendered, is about to surrender, or will soon be bombed for not surrendering correctly.

Iran’s negotiators keep getting two parallel realities: private messages saying one thing and Trump’s public brain-dump saying the opposite. When Iran signals it will ease some restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz, the normal response would be reciprocal de-escalation. Trump instead goes on TV to declare total Iranian capitulation, refuses to lift the blockade, and then confidently announces they’ve agreed “never” to close Hormuz again. Iran’s response? Close it again the next day, because even they have limits to how much gaslighting they’re willing to swallow.

Diplomats are now reduced to screenshotting Trump’s last 24 hours of statements like a deranged group chat: thanking Iran for closures, threatening Iran, blaming China, praising China, bragging the blockade is airtight, admitting Iran got supplies through it, promising peace, promising bombs. An Iranian embassy dryly brands him a “one-man WhatsApp chat group,” which is polite diplomatic code for “this guy should not be near nuclear launch codes.” Meanwhile Trump tells reporters he “expects to be bombing” Iran while also insisting Iran will attend talks on Wednesday, wrapping threats of mass death in Hallmark-card nonsense about Iran’s “wonderful people” who are, minor detail, allegedly “bloodthirsty” and “based on death and horror.”

The net result: Iran is now insisting on irreversible enforcement mechanisms in any deal, because they’ve figured out that Trump’s signature is about as reliable as his daily narrative about who’s winning. The world is once again held hostage to the attention span of a man treating war and peace like a glitchy social media app, and the US military like a notification he’s itching to tap.

Tucker Carlson, a man who spent years mainlining Trumpism into America’s frontal lobe, has announced he is now "tormented" by his role in getting Trump back into the White House and into a war with Iran. After campaigning with Trump in 2024 and cheerleading the movement that treats the Constitution like a suggestion box, Tucker has arrived at the shocking realization that, actually, helping an aspiring autocrat regain power might have been bad. He’s now deeply sorry for having "misled people" — unintentionally, of course, just like all those totally accidental lies about Dominion and the 2020 election.

The epiphany comes as Trump is busy posting AI images of himself as Jesus, attacking the pope for criticizing the Iran war, and calling Carlson "Low IQ" on social media while promising a public enemies list of MAGA supporters ranked as good, bad, and "somewhere in the middle". Tucker, who just months ago compared Trump to a "slave" tragically constrained by shadowy forces, has upgraded his concern to asking if the president might be the antichrist. Apparently, launching an unplanned war in Iran that betrays a decade of promises and mocking the central figure of Christianity finally crossed a line that "kidnapped children in cages" and "coup attempt" somehow didn’t.

This is all coming from a guy who helped launder Trumpism into respectability, cashed out of Fox after the $787.5m Dominion settlement, then went on to platform white supremacist Nick Fuentes and promote testicle tanning. Now, with the Iran war raging and the president cosplaying Messiah while compiling loyalty lists, Carlson wants a national "moment to wrestle with our own consciences". The rest of us have been wrestling with the consequences of his propaganda for years; Tucker just discovered that when you help build an authoritarian cult, you don’t get to opt out when the idol starts demanding blood and better lighting.

Virginia voters are trudging to the polls to answer a very simple question: should Donald Trump be allowed to keep drawing congressional districts like a bored toddler with a crayon and a vendetta? This special ballot measure on redistricting could decide which party controls the U.S. House, because nothing says “healthy democracy” like a single state having to emergency‑patch the Electoral College’s favorite chaos gremlin.

Instead of quietly accepting Trump’s latest “what if we just rig the map” brainstorm, Virginians are being asked whether maybe, just maybe, voters should pick their politicians rather than the other way around. Bold concept. If the measure passes, it throws a wrench into Trump’s gerrymandering push; if it fails, the House map becomes one more custom‑built MAGA safe space where competitive elections go to die. Either way, the fact that democracy now depends on a random Tuesday special election is doing a lot of work for the term “world’s oldest constitutional republic”.

Donald Trump has finally found his dream Federal Reserve chair: Kevin Warsh, a Milton Friedman–trained, Wall Street–married, $100m net-worth inflation hawk who has now discovered a deep spiritual belief in lower interest rates the moment Trump needs them. Once famous for warning that the Fed shouldn’t be the "ultimate rescuer" or wander into political territory, Warsh is now auditioning to be the president’s personal rate-cut butler, promising to fix the "broken leadership" that had the audacity to not juice Trump’s second-term economy on command.

The real plot twist is not even subtle. Trump has spent years publicly berating Jerome Powell — the Fed chair he himself picked — calling him a "jerk" and "MORON" while repeatedly threatening to fire him. Now, as Powell’s term ends and a conveniently timed criminal investigation into Fed HQ renovations hangs over his head, Trump’s allies are turning the central bank into a hostage situation. Republican senator Thom Tillis says he’ll block Warsh’s nomination until Trump’s Justice Department drops the investigation into Powell, effectively telling the Fed: nice independence you’ve got there, shame if something happened to it.

Democrats, for their part, are focused on Warsh’s murky financial disclosures and the small matter of his nine-figure fortune, which would make him one of the richest Fed chairs in recent history — because nothing signals concern for ordinary workers like putting another mega-wealthy Wall Street alum in charge of monetary policy. Meanwhile, Trump is on Fox Business promising that "when Kevin gets in" rates will go lower, bragging that Warsh is "central casting" and "will never let you down" — which is exactly what you say when the job description is less "independent central banker" and more "loyal concierge to a wannabe strongman’s stock portfolio."

NPR brings on Richard Haass to perform the increasingly common Washington ritual: calmly explaining that the president of the United States treats long-standing democratic allies like Canada the way a bored landlord treats tenants right before a condo conversion. Allies who bled with us in wars and underwrote decades of global stability now get public humiliation, tariff threats, and policy made via all-caps posts that read like they were drafted between golf swings and cable hits.

The fun twist is that this isn’t some impulsive quirk; it’s the strategy. Cozy up to authoritarians, kick democratic partners in the shins, then act shocked when alliances fray and everyone starts hedging against the U.S. like we’re the world’s least stable cryptocurrency. Haass politely describes the damage and how countries like Canada are adapting; translation: they’re quietly building workarounds so the free world doesn’t collapse every time Trump wakes up angry at Trudeau’s eyebrows. Global leadership, brought to you by a guy who thinks NATO is a gym brand.

Trump’s deportation machine has decided that the real threat to America isn’t, say, violent crime or foreign adversaries, but the wives of U.S. soldiers. Sgt First Class Jose Serrano, who’s given 27 years to the Army and deployed to Afghanistan, watched ICE snatch his Salvadoran wife, Deisy Rivera Ortega, during an immigration office appointment in El Paso – despite a 2019 legal protection that was supposed to bar her deportation. She had an active work permit, has been here since 2016, and followed every rule laid out for her. Naturally, the Department of Homeland Security responded by labeling her a “criminal illegal alien” because she once committed the federal menace of illegal entry, a misdemeanor.

This isn’t a one-off bureaucratic oopsie; it’s a pattern. Another soldier’s wife, Annie Ramos, was detained on base in Louisiana just days after her wedding, right as her husband prepared to deploy. Her great crime? A deportation order from a hearing her family missed in 2005, when she was a baby. She got released only after the media shined a light on the case, which is how you know "rule of law" in Trump’s America really means "rule of PR." Add in the deportation of Jermaine Thomas, born on a U.S. Army base in Germany and now essentially stateless, and you’ve got an immigration policy that treats military families like expendable props until they become inconvenient.

Serrano, who’s dealing with TBI and PTSD, now gets about two hours of sleep a night while ICE debates whether to ship his wife to a country she has no ties to, like Mexico, because geography is apparently just a suggestion. His verdict on all this: "ICE is out of control right now, sir, taking away rights, as soldiers, that we have." The Army’s response was to punt questions to DHS, because nothing says "support the troops" like handing their families over to an unaccountable enforcement agency that’s busy speedrunning how-fast-can-we-shred-due-process. This is what "law and order" looks like when cruelty is the actual policy goal.