The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

The House just looked at an unauthorized air and naval war with Iran, shrugged, and said, "seems fine." By a 212–219 vote, Republicans (plus a helpful handful of Democrats) killed a bipartisan war powers resolution from Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna that would have forced Trump to stop playing commander-in-chief-by-impulse until Congress actually authorized the conflict. Six US troops and at least 1,230 Iranians are dead so far, but the real emergency, according to Speaker Mike Johnson, is that limiting Trump might "empower our enemies" — unlike, say, lurching into a region-wide war with no clear objective.

The Senate GOP already torpedoed a similar measure, and Republican leaders in both chambers have decided that Trump was magically "authorized" to start bombing Iran because… reasons. Marco Rubio, now cosplaying as secretary of state, can’t keep his story straight about why the US attacked or what the goal is, beyond "Israel was going to hit them first" and the always-reliable "trust us." Constitutional requirements? The 1973 War Powers Resolution? Massie and Warren Davidson politely pointed out that none of the legal triggers for war have been met, which is adorable, because Congress abandoned that standard somewhere between Vietnam and the Bush administration.

Hakeem Jeffries noted that the country is drowning in an affordability crisis Trump promised to fix on "day one," but instead we’re burning billions on a foreign war with undefined aims and undefined legal authority. A few members, like Jared Moskowitz, tried to resuscitate congressional relevance, warning that "Congress is on the verge of irrelevancy." The vote result suggests we’re well past "on the verge" and deep into "organ donor." The branch that’s supposed to declare war just took another step toward being a very expensive comment section on the president’s foreign policy livestream.

Minnesota has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of "weaponizing Medicaid" against the state as political payback, because of course the health insurance program for low-income people is now just another blunt object in Trump's grievance toolbox. The feds are sitting on roughly $250 million in Medicaid matching funds that Minnesota already spent last summer, citing a supposed "war on fraud" that just happened to be announced by Vice President JD Vance 24 hours earlier. Nothing says good-faith oversight like retroactively yanking healthcare money from a swing state while the cameras are rolling.

Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Dr. Mehmet Oz — yes, your aunt’s favorite daytime TV supplement salesman is now in charge of federal healthcare dollars — held a press conference to brag about "temporarily" halting Minnesota’s funds so the state would "take its obligations seriously." Minnesota’s Deputy Health Commissioner John Connolly responded with the bureaucratic version of "are you kidding me," pointing out that the state already submitted a corrective action plan and has a Medicaid error rate of 2%, way below the national 6%. Federal prosecutors floated a dramatic "billions in fraud" number; the state says the real figure is in the tens of millions, which is bad, but not exactly "shut down healthcare for poor people" bad.

The lawsuit argues this isn’t about fraud at all, it’s about punishment — using federal healthcare dollars as a political cattle prod. So now, low-income Minnesotans get to be extras in the administration’s latest performance of Strongman Theater: Medicaid Edition, starring JD Vance as the nation’s new moral accountant and Mehmet Oz as the guy who used to hawk raspberry ketones and now decides whether your state’s children get medical care.

Donald Trump is methodically taking a sledgehammer to the legal and scientific machinery that lets the U.S. do anything about global warming, and the political class has responded with the collective energy of a dying Roomba. The administration has gutted the National Center for Atmospheric Research, kneecapped weather and climate research, and just repealed the 2009 EPA “endangerment finding” – the core legal basis for limiting greenhouse gas pollution from cars and power plants. In other words, they’re not just cooking the planet, they’re shredding the fire code and firing the fire department for good measure.

Over at the Department of Energy, Trump’s fossil-fuel fan club banned words like “climate change,” “green,” and “sustainability,” because if you don’t say it, the seas don’t rise, right? Climate denial lifer Marc Morano and the Heartland Institute are openly bragging that Trump has delivered their dream wishlist: kill climate science, erase the rules, and replace decades of research with vibes and oil royalties. Meanwhile, Democrats are busy debating whether they should talk about climate at all, despite voters saying they actually want clean energy, and tech billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are quietly backing away from their big climate promises as AI datacenters inhale electricity like it’s oxygen.

The result: the fossil-fuel lobby is running the government, the country’s premier climate research infrastructure is being dismantled in broad daylight, and the most forceful establishment response so far is a stern tweet and some focus-grouped “affordability” messaging. Trump’s people are busy erasing the very concept of climate risk from federal law and science, and the so-called opposition is arguing over whether it polls better to pretend the house isn’t on fire. Strong democracy, incredible oversight, five stars, would overheat again.

North Carolina’s “most powerful” state senator, Phil Berger — architect of the state’s creative-writing approach to district maps — is currently losing his primary by two votes to Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, despite having the sacred golden calf of modern Republican politics: a Donald Trump endorsement. Apparently, the omnipotent power of a Truth Social post now ranks somewhere between a yard sign and a Facebook rant in terms of electoral impact.

Trump tried to solve the problem the way he solves most things: with a job offer. He told Page he was “GREAT” and tried to lure him to Washington so he wouldn’t run against Berger, because nothing says “healthy democracy” like the cult leader trying to clear the field for his preferred loyalist. Page declined the gig, ran anyway, and is now two votes ahead, while both men spent the campaign aggressively cosplaying as Trump’s truest disciple.

Former Gov. Pat McCrory politely suggested this might be what happens when a powerful legislator spends years in Raleigh redrawing everyone else’s districts and forgets the people back home. Translation: you can gerrymander the whole state, but sometimes the voters still sneak through and remind you that power in Trump’s party is temporary, conditional, and occasionally overruled by the guy who shows up at the diner more often.

The Trump administration took a break from dismantling democracy at the federal level to see if it could also micromanage New York City traffic. Transportation secretary Sean Duffy tried to yank federal approval for NYC’s congestion pricing program — a law passed by the state legislature, signed by the governor, and already up and running — and then waved around threats to withhold federal funding if New York didn’t fall in line. Subtle stuff. Totally normal federalism.

US district judge Lewis Liman responded with a 149-page legal brick, ruling that DOT doesn’t actually have the power to unilaterally rescind that approval and calling the about-face "arbitrary and capricious" because the agency couldn’t be bothered to explain itself. He even wrote the line every authoritarian hates to read: “The democratic process worked.” Translation: you don’t get to rewrite state law just because your condo tower sits inside the congestion zone and you’re mad about a $9 toll.

Meanwhile, the program Trump is desperately trying to kill has cut 27 million vehicle trips into Manhattan, slashed air pollution by 22%, sped up commutes, and coughed up more than $550m for the city’s decrepit transit system. Businesses are doing better, tax revenues are up, and the sky has stubbornly refused to fall. So naturally, the White House position is: this must be stopped, by abusing federal power if necessary.

Governor Kathy Hochul, who originally wobbled on congestion pricing before lowering the fee and letting it launch, is now celebrating a "once-in-a-lifetime success story" and openly calling Trump’s effort "unlawful" trampling of New York’s self-governance. The judge just confirmed what everyone already knew: if there’s a functioning policy that helps millions of people and doesn’t personally enrich Donald Trump, this administration will try to smash it with a sledgehammer — and occasionally, the courts still remember they’re not supposed to hand him the tools.

Trump was nowhere near the actual White House when the military he allegedly commands started bombing Iran and kidnapping Venezuela’s president; he was at Mar-a-Lago, LARPing Commander-in-Chief behind some hospital-privacy curtains. But he will show up at 1600 Pennsylvania for the truly vital national-security priority: getting a photo op with Inter Miami’s MLS Cup, and maybe Lionel Messi if the optics gods are kind.

The article lays out the new normal: what used to be a boring, bipartisan sports photo line has become a public referendum on whether you’re willing to help launder the image of a ‘seemingly lawless presidency’. Show up, and you’re a prop for a guy who jokes that he only invited the women’s hockey team because of ‘woke’ pressure and happily turns every ceremony into a culture-war hostage situation. Don’t show up, and congratulations, you’re now an anti-Trump icon with a side order of death threats.

Team owners and executives, paragons of courage that they are, mostly dump this mess on the players, who get to decide if they want their Google Images page permanently watermarked with grinning-handshake shots next to a president who might segue from congratulating them on their win to ranting about transgender soccer or whatever Fox chyron he saw that morning. Either way, the visit means something now: you’re not just visiting the White House, you’re auditioning for a role in Trump’s ongoing attempt to turn every piece of American life into a loyalty test.

The Trump administration has discovered a bold new definition of "national security": any tech company that refuses to help build mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons is now a "supply‑chain risk". Anthropic told the Pentagon it didn’t want its models used for stalking the entire planet or automating who lives and who dies, so Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called that "woke" – because nothing screams strength like needing your chatbot to pull the trigger.

Trump then ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic and, within hours, OpenAI happily slid into the vacant spot, ready to rake in hundreds of millions in classified government contracts while promising to uphold the same safety principles Anthropic just got publicly flogged for. The administration is also threatening to wield the Defense Production Act to force Anthropic to strip out its own safety guardrails – a law meant for wartime mobilization now repurposed into a tool to make sure your AI is sufficiently murder‑enabled. The message from Trump’s Pentagon is crystal clear: build tools for mass surveillance and automated killing, or we’ll treat you like Huawei with better English.