Thursday, January 22, 2026
Stacey Abrams, apparently the only one reading the democracy index while the Trump administration speedruns the authoritarianism leaderboard.
Stacey Abrams looked at Trump’s second-term "competitive authoritarian" playground and said: fine, if we’re going to be Hungary now, we’re at least getting a coalition out of it. After watching the US get downgraded on the democracy index while the administration experiments with fun new hobbies like starving kids, the elderly, and disabled people during shutdowns to avoid giving them healthcare, Abrams is turning her 10 Steps project into a full-blown anti-authoritarian coalition. Because nothing says "normal country" like needing a national resistance infrastructure just to get back to basic rule of law.
She’s roped in Democracy Forward, Indivisible, MoveOn, Run for Something, UnidosUS Action Fund, Gen-Z for Change, and a bunch of lower-profile civic groups—basically everyone who’s noticed that the regime has checked off at least nine of the 10 classic authoritarian moves: attacking the media, normalizing violence, gutting the government… you know, the usual MAGA to-do list. Abrams’ pitch is that before anyone gets to the cinematic general strike montage, they need boring stuff like organization, coordination, and local infrastructure—because Trump and friends are quietly dismantling democracy through "component pieces" while cable news chases the next shiny outrage.
So while the White House speedruns the “killing democracy” checklist and calls it a win, Abrams is out here building a national “no, actually” network to organize, mobilize, and reclaim something resembling a functioning republic. In other words: the administration is doing fascism with a side of bureaucratic cruelty, and Abrams is trying to make sure the only thing that gets fully normalized isn’t authoritarian rule, but resistance to it.
Jack Smith arriving on Capitol Hill, bravely choosing to walk into a room full of House Republicans who think the real crime was prosecuting crimes.
Jack Smith, former special counsel and current designated public enemy of Mar-a-Lago, is heading to Capitol Hill to explain to House Republicans why he committed the unforgivable Washington sin of trying to hold a president accountable for crimes. Smith oversaw two federal indictments of Trump — neither of which ever reached a jury because Trump did the most on-brand thing possible and just won back the presidency before the trials could happen. Because nothing says "totally innocent" like needing presidential power as your main legal defense strategy.
In a previously released deposition, Smith committed further heresy by stating the obvious: that Trump was "by a large measure the most culpable" in the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election and that the January 6 attack wouldn’t have happened without him. Smith’s prepared remarks spell out the radical position that "no one should be above the law" — a cute little civics notion that went out the window around the time 140 cops were getting beaten at the Capitol while Republicans were workshopping the phrase "tourist visit." Meanwhile, Trump is bragging at press conferences about having fired most of the DOJ prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on the case, listing the purge as an accomplishment, because nothing screams "rule of law" like turning the Justice Department into a loyalty program.
Trump, ever subtle, is calling Smith "deranged Jack Sick Smith" and a "sick son of a bitch," while openly fantasizing about criminally investigating him or kicking him out of the country — in other words, the standard authoritarian starter pack. Smith will also have to tiptoe around the classified-documents investigation, where the FBI found sensitive materials in the ballroom, the bathroom, and the office at Trump’s Florida resort, a.k.a. America’s least secure self-storage facility. The second volume of Smith’s report on that little mishandling-of-secrets adventure is being blocked from release by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who has apparently decided that the best way to restore faith in the judiciary is to act like Trump’s in-house compliance department.
Wednesday, January 21, 2026
A snowy Main Street in Trump country, where nothing is getting better but at least the authoritarian is "our" authoritarian.
NPR took a winter road trip through Trump country to discover that, shockingly, people who voted for Trump still like Trump. Along the way, they found voters who say prices are killing them, "yay" hasn’t happened yet, and nothing has actually improved in their lives — but the Democratic Party is "broken" and "dead," so obviously the only solution is four more years of the guy who’s already in charge.
In Maryland, Ann Marie Hamilton loves Trump but notes that groceries and electric bills still sting like crazy. In Pennsylvania, waitress Tina Howell says things are actually getting tighter for people, and Trump is too focused overseas — but still insists he’s great and Democrats are not an option. In other words: the house is on fire, but the fire alarm is "too woke."
By the time NPR gets to Whitehall, New York, former Marine Frank Juckett gives Trump a solid B+ while casually comparing his style to Vladimir Putin and praising the idea that if you’re "really good and crooked, things get done." Because nothing says "healthy democracy" like openly admiring a strongman as long as he steps on the right people. Everyone interviewed admits they want less chaos, less drama, and better economics — and then promises to keep backing the chaos engine that’s using federal power to crack down on immigrants and "shake the foundations of American democracy." But sure, it’s all about grocery prices.
The big takeaway: even when Trump’s own voters say it isn’t working, they’re still on board with the power grabs and bullying. The policy results may be a mess, but the authoritarian vibes are immaculate.
Trump in Davos, bravely warning billionaires about the grave threat posed by… Somali families in Minnesota.
Nothing says ‘serious global statesman’ like jetting to the World Economic Forum and using your time with world leaders to attack Somali immigrants and the state of Minnesota. While everyone else in Davos is talking about things like monetary policy and climate risk, Trump is apparently running a one-man Fox News segment, recycling his greatest hits about scary refugees and that one midwestern state that had the audacity to elect Ilhan Omar.
Trump “continues to target Somalians and Minnesota,” because when you’ve got nothing on jobs, health care, or inequality, you can always fall back on demonizing Black and Muslim immigrants and implying one of your own states is basically a failed territory. In other words, the President of the United States went to a global economic summit to tell the world that a chunk of his own country is an immigrant-infested disaster zone—and that this is somehow a selling point for his leadership.
This isn’t policy, it’s propaganda. You whip up fear about Somali communities, then point to the fear you caused as proof you were right all along. It’s the same playbook that gave us the Muslim ban, family separations, and a permanent campaign against anyone who doesn’t fit the MAGA demographic profile. But sure, tell us again how this is about ‘security’ and ‘values,’ not about turning a religious minority and an entire state into permanent villains for electoral profit.
Tom Emmer explains how you can go from "hell no" to "yes, sir, Mr. Trump" in just one phone call.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer has discovered a revolutionary new governing philosophy: massive Trump-branded spending and debt are totally fine, as long as Dear Leader says so. The same "hell no" Republicans who spent a decade shrieking about deficits suddenly found the courage to vote for short-term funding bills, a multitrillion-dollar package, and a giant debt ceiling hike—after Emmer handed them the political equivalent of, "That’s cute, now go tell Donald Trump to his face you’re voting no." In other words, fiscal conservatism died so the cult could live.
Emmer’s proud of it, too. He brags that he only counts Republican votes—Democrats don’t matter, the public barely matters, and the only real metric is whether Trump approves. When his whip counts come back with dozens of "no" and "maybe" responses, the tough cases get escalated to the new switchboard of American governance: Donald J. Trump, personal arm-twister-in-chief. Because nothing says "coequal branch of government" like members of Congress being told, essentially, "You can defy me, but then you’ll have to explain yourself to the guy your base worships like a golden calf in a red tie."
The result: a tiny GOP majority manages to pass spending bills on its own, Schumer blinks, Democrats fold during a 43-day shutdown, and the House Freedom Caucus—those brave warriors against Big Government—quietly votes for the very kind of giant debt-ceiling increase they used to call tyranny. Emmer and Speaker Mike Johnson call it a "revolution." They’re not wrong: it’s a revolution where Congress stops being a legislature and becomes a loyalty test to one man, while the "limited government" crowd lines up to rubber-stamp a "big, beautiful" mountain of Trump-approved debt.
Jerome Powell walks into the Supreme Court to find out if the Federal Reserve is still a central bank or just the interest-rate wing of Trump 2028.
The Supreme Court is taking up Donald Trump’s latest hobby: seeing how many American institutions he can bend until they snap. This week’s contestant is the Federal Reserve, where Trump is trying to fire Governor Lisa Cook — a Biden appointee and the first woman of color on the Fed board — over what his people call mortgage fraud and what normal people call an "isolated notation" on some paperwork. A federal court already told him no, but why respect 14‑year terms and central bank independence when you can just ask the Supreme Court to turn the Fed into another Mar‑a‑Lago loyalty program?
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice — now apparently the Department of Rate Cuts and Retaliation — has opened a criminal investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell, nominally about office renovations but quite transparently about his failure to "follow the preferences of the president". Because nothing screams “sound monetary policy” like prosecuting the guy who won’t tank interest rates fast enough to juice your re‑election portfolio.
Trump’s lawyers are arguing that he can boot a Fed governor basically at will, while Cook’s team is pointing to this thing called the Fifth Amendment and the whole "for cause" requirement Congress wrote into law back when we still pretended to care about independent institutions. Even the Supreme Court has previously hinted that the Fed is structurally special and might deserve extra protection, but now they get to decide whether the central bank stays quasi‑independent or becomes just another agency where Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency fires everyone who can do math.
In other words, the president who already used DOGE to purge tens of thousands of civil servants is now test‑driving whether he can personally reprogram monetary policy by threatening the jobs — and freedom — of anyone at the Fed who won’t turn the US economy into his campaign ATM. But sure, tell us again how this is about mortgage paperwork and not about turning the Federal Reserve into the Federal Re‑Elect Donald J. Trump Committee.
Pictured: the look you give when you realize you let Elon Musk’s "efficiency" startup rummage through Social Security and then maybe hand it to election truthers.
The Justice Department quietly told a federal judge that Elon Musk’s beloved Department of Government Efficiency — DOGE, because of course it is — may have taken Americans’ Social Security data and gone full MAGA fan fiction with it. After a judge in Maryland slapped DOGE with a temporary restraining order in March blocking access to SSA data, an unnamed political advocacy group allegedly slid into the DOGE team’s DMs asking them to "analyze state voter rolls" to "overturn election results in certain States." In other words: take data collected to run Social Security and see if it can help overthrow elections, all in the name of "efficiency."
One DOGE staffer even signed a "Voter Data Agreement" with this mystery group four days after the restraining order was issued, because nothing says "we respect the courts" like immediately doing the one thing the court is worried you’ll do. DOJ says it’s not clear yet whether personal info was actually handed over, but SSA admits DOGE geniuses were funneling data through Cloudflare — a third-party server explicitly not approved for SSA data — right up until a week before the TRO. SSA only discovered this months later, long after DOGE had shut down early in a blaze of whistleblower allegations about dumping millions of people’s records into a "cloud environment that circumvents oversight," which is a very polite way of saying what if Equifax, but with Elon in charge?
Remember: the Supreme Court heroically stepped in last June to reverse that pesky restraining order and let DOGE back into the Social Security data vault, after the agency solemnly promised it just wanted to "modernize technology" and "maximize efficiency." Judge Ellen Hollander had already warned DOGE was on a fishing expedition for a voter fraud epidemic that doesn’t exist, risking millions of people’s private info to find a needle they don’t even know is in the haystack. The Trump administration has now made a couple of Hatch Act referrals like that’s going to fix the part where a privatized, billionaire-run shadow agency allegedly tried to weaponize federal benefits data for election games. But sure, tell us again how this was all about cutting waste and improving government services.
Tuesday, January 20, 2026
A historian gently explaining on live TV that the presidency has mutated into a semi-legal monarchy, while everyone nods like this is fine and normal.
NBC brings on historian Douglas Brinkley to politely translate what everyone else has been screaming for years: Trump’s first year in office wasn’t just chaotic, it was a case study in how to stretch presidential power until the Constitution starts making that weird cracking sound. From emergency declarations as a lifestyle brand to running foreign policy via rage-tweets, we’re told we’ve entered an “era of extreme presidential power” — in other words, the part of the movie where the lights flicker and the soundtrack gets ominous.
Instead of checks and balances, we got Republican leadership treating Congress like a presidential fan club, the courts playing whack-a-mole with unlawful orders, and Trump discovering that if no one actually stops you, you can just keep doing the thing. The historian frames it as a structural shift in the modern presidency; translation: future presidents now have a handy Trump-sized precedent for ignoring norms, bulldozing institutions, and treating the rule of law as optional fine print.
So yes, historians are calmly labeling it an era of extreme power, as if this is just another chapter in a textbook and not the part where the democratic experiment starts speed-running its own failure mode. But sure, let’s call it “robust executive authority” instead of what it looks like from orbit: a slow-motion stress test of whether American democracy can survive one man’s need for attention and control.
Pictured: The exact moment the Trump DOJ decided that governing Minnesota is now a federal crime.
The Trump Justice Department has apparently finished its busy schedule of losing court cases and is now moving on to its favorite hobby: punishing blue states for not being cruel enough to immigrants. Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and other state and local officials as part of the administration’s shiny new "immigration crackdown"—because nothing says "law and order" like using the DOJ as a blunt political weapon against jurisdictions that don’t worship at the altar of ICE.
In other words, instead of focusing on actual crime, Trump’s DOJ is chasing mayors and governors whose main offense is not enthusiastically helping deport their own residents. The message is clear: comply with our anti-immigrant agenda or enjoy your subpoena. It’s the same old playbook—brand normal governance as "lawless," send in the feds, and hope the chilling effect does what the Constitution inconveniently won’t let them do directly.
So now Minnesota joins the ever-growing list of places where the federal government is trying to make basic decency toward immigrants legally suspect. Walz and Frey are being treated like mob bosses for the crime of not turning their cities into junior border patrol outposts. But sure, tell us again how this is all about "public safety" and not about building a nationwide system where the president can sic federal law enforcement on any state that refuses to join his deportation cosplay.
If you were wondering what it looks like when the federal government weaponizes subpoenas to intimidate local officials into abandoning sanctuary-style policies, congratulations: you’re watching it in real time. Rule of law has left the chat; retribution-by-subpoena is running the group now.
The Supreme Court’s conservative justices, seen here workshopping the constitutional right to bring a Glock to Applebee’s.
The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority is once again gathered to do what it does best: turn the Second Amendment into a golden idol and every other right into a suggestion. In Wolford v. Lopez, three Maui residents and a local gun group — backed by Donald Trump’s administration, because of course they are — are asking the justices to strike down Hawaii’s rule that says you can’t bring a gun onto private property open to the public unless the owner actually wants guns there. You know, basic property rights and consent, which conservatives only care about when it’s corporations or zygotes.
Justice Sam Alito complained that Hawaii was treating the Second Amendment as a “second-class right,” because nothing says “first-class freedom” like forcing every coffee shop, beach bar, and corner store to be a potential crossfire zone unless they put up a sign begging people not to show up strapped. Chief Justice John Roberts helpfully compared asking for votes at someone’s door to showing up with a concealed weapon, because in this court’s universe, canvassing and concealed carry are basically the same thing.
Meanwhile, Hawaii — which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country and, shockingly, one of the lowest firearm death rates — is in the absurd position of having to argue that maybe, just maybe, property owners should get to decide whether random armed strangers can waltz into their businesses. Sonia Sotomayor asked where exactly the Constitution guarantees a right to carry guns onto private property; the challengers said it does, because why not, we’re just making up a new tier of rights now. In other words, the Trump-built court is inching toward a world where your right to carry a gun trumps everyone else’s right to feel safe on their own property — but sure, tell us more about how it’s the liberals who hate freedom.
Artist’s rendering of the Eastern District of Virginia posting a LinkedIn ad to inform Trump’s DOJ that their imaginary U.S. Attorney does not, in fact, exist.
The Eastern District of Virginia just put up a public job posting for "Interim U.S. Attorney" because Chief Judge M. Hannah Lauck has decided that, minor detail, the office is actually vacant — despite Trump’s Justice Department still insisting that loyalist Lindsey Halligan is totally, definitely, legally in charge. In other words, the judiciary is now subtweeting the executive branch with a USAJobs listing.
Halligan, you’ll recall, was already ruled to be unlawfully serving in the role, which led a judge to toss her politically motivated cases against top Trump enemies James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Since then, the Trump administration has tried — and failed, and then failed again — to get a grand jury to indict James on flimsy mortgage charges, a remarkable achievement given that grand juries usually indict ham sandwiches, not presidents’ political targets.
In the meantime, a senior EDVA attorney was fired for not being sufficiently enthusiastic about re-indicting Comey over 2020 testimony that is now past the statute of limitations, because nothing says "law and order" like firing career prosecutors when the calendar and the Constitution get in the way. Yet DOJ still refers to Halligan as "United States Attorney and Special Attorney," citing some secret OLC memo as if internal fan fiction trumps a federal court order. The judge has now invited literally anyone with a law license to apply for the job, because at this point, random LinkedIn applicants are more legitimate than Trump’s handpicked, experience-free hatchet woman.
Kristi Noem explains that if Congress can’t see inside the detention camps, that actually proves how transparent the system is.
The Trump administration just scored a temporary win in its ongoing campaign to turn ICE facilities into oversight-free black boxes. A federal judge in DC ruled that DHS can keep demanding a week’s notice before members of Congress inspect immigration detention camps — the same policy she blocked last month — because this time it’s funded with money from Trump’s so-called “big beautiful bill.” In other words: same authoritarian policy, new checking account, so now it “facially differs.” Because nothing says checks and balances like “try filing a whole new lawsuit if you want to see what we’re doing to people in cages.”
While they were busy lawyering congressional oversight into oblivion, DOJ lawyers were also in Minnesota arguing that the state has no right to stop what its own attorney general calls a federal “invasion” — including warrantless racist arrests, targeting courts, churches, and schools, and the killing of an unarmed US citizen, Renee Good, by an ICE agent. The feds dismissed Minnesota’s lawsuit as an “absurdity” that would make the supremacy of federal law “an afterthought to local preferences,” which is a very polite way of saying: we get to terrorize your residents and you’re supposed to say thank you.
On top of that, the administration is appealing an injunction that told ICE and friends to stop doing a few tiny things like pointing guns at protesters, pepper-spraying crowds, and arresting observers in retaliation. Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem has already walked back her denial that chemical agents were used, now insisting they were necessary to “establish law and order” — because nothing screams “law and order” like lying about gassing people and then demanding the right to keep doing it. So to recap: block Congress from seeing the camps, tell Minnesota to sit down and enjoy the occupation, and fight in court for the constitutional right to menace protesters with weapons. But sure, tell us again how this is all about security and not about building a little domestic police state on layaway.
Bill Cassidy smiles politely while the party he served hands his career a blindfold and a cigarette.
Bill Cassidy made the unforgivable mistake of treating the Jan. 6 coup attempt like it was bad, so naturally the Republican Party is now trying to remove him from public life like a virus Trump’s immune system finally noticed. Rep. Julia Letlow has launched a primary challenge in Louisiana, armed with a fresh endorsement from the twice-impeached, coup-curious ex-president himself, who screamed "RUN, JULIA, RUN!!!" on social media like Forrest Gump with fewer brain cells and more indictments.
Cassidy — who voted to convict Trump after the Capitol riot, back when some Republicans briefly pretended to care about sedition — is now facing a fully Trump-branded firing squad in a newly closed GOP primary, because nothing says "healthy democracy" like changing the rules and then purging anyone who once suggested overthrowing the government might be bad. State Treasurer John Fleming, a proud alum of Trump’s first administration, and state Sen. Blake Miguez are already in the race, turning the primary into a contest over who can pledge louder that they will never again let silly things like the Constitution get between them and Dear Leader.
Meanwhile, Cassidy insists he’s running as a "principled conservative who gets things done," which is adorable given that the only principle that matters in today’s GOP is unquestioning loyalty to Trump. Of the Republicans who dared vote to impeach or convict him, most are retired, resigned, or otherwise vanished from the party like witnesses in a mob movie. In other words, this isn’t just a Senate race — it’s another public execution of dissent, live from the Trump GOP, where the platform is simple: obey, forget January 6 ever happened, and never, ever cross the guy who tried to stay in power after losing.
Student delivers eulogy for the humanities, which universities and the Trump administration have thoughtfully buried next to 'civics' and 'basic critical thinking.'
Universities across the US are holding a quiet little wake for the humanities, and the invited guests are hedge fund consultants, Republican legislators, and Trump’s budget axe. Montclair State students literally staged a mock funeral for their humanities and social sciences departments, because nothing says healthy democracy like consolidating English, classics, languages and Latino studies into one mega-unit called "human narratives and creative expressions" – a phrase that sounds less like a college and more like an AI prompt.
It’s not just one campus. Indiana Republicans forced public universities to kill or mash together roughly 400 degree programs – mostly humanities and social sciences – by law. At UT Austin, faculty are bracing for the inevitable hit on African studies, Latina/o studies, and gender studies, while UNC plans to shutter centers for the Study of the Americas and Middle East and Islamic Studies. The University of Chicago’s solution? Just stop admitting grad students in most humanities fields altogether. If you were hoping for people who understand history, languages, or how fascism works, the market has spoken: “just not monetizable.”
Driving this train off the cliff: years of deliberate public disinvestment in higher education and a rightwing crusade against any field that might produce someone who can read a budget, a treaty, or, God forbid, a propaganda poster. The piece explicitly notes Trump administration cuts of billions in federal research funding to universities that don’t toe the ideological line – because nothing screams "small government" like using federal dollars to enforce political loyalty on campuses. Meanwhile, university admins hide behind corporate consultants and emails about “maximizing faculty impact” and “enhancing student success,” which is administrator-speak for "we’re stripping faculty power and turning your education into a subscription product."
In other words, the country that once bragged about the liberal arts as a pillar of civic life is now systematically defunding anything that teaches critical thinking, history, or non-US perspectives, while pouring cash into whatever can be turned into a patent or a defense contract. But sure, let’s keep asking how authoritarianism sneaks up on a society where students literally hold funerals for the disciplines that teach them how to recognize it.
Israeli soldiers in Hebron, presumably waiting for guidance from Trump's new Board of Peace™, the international governance equivalent of a timeshare pitch.
Donald Trump has launched a brand-new "Board of Peace" — because nothing says respect for international law like trying to spin up your own off-brand U.N. Security Council in Florida between golf rounds. Invitations are flying out to everyone from Israel to Russia to Belarus to the EU, with zero clarity on what this thing actually does, who runs it, or how you square "global peace" with putting Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko on the guest list.
France, understandably not thrilled about burning down the existing international order just to flatter Trump's ego, is "holding off" for now. In response, Trump threatened a 200% tariff on French wine and champagne to pressure Emmanuel Macron into joining, because in this administration, "peace" is apparently enforced via trade war cosplay and petty economic blackmail. Meanwhile, Morocco, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Hungary, and Argentina have already signed on, while Israeli officials and far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich are publicly wondering why they should trust a board that claims to oversee a Gaza ceasefire they're actually a party to.
In other words, Trump is trying to build a rival power structure to the U.N., staffed with assorted strongmen and opportunists, run on vibes, tariffs, and his personal grudges. But sure, tell us again how this is all about "a bold new approach to resolving global conflict" and not about one guy who lost the popular vote twice trying to cosplay Secretary-General of Planet Earth.
Gretchen Whitmer at the Detroit Auto Show, calmly explaining why it’s perfectly rational to prep for the president maybe using federal forces to mess with elections — just another day in the best democracy money and tariffs can buy.
In a thriving democracy, governors spend their time cutting ribbons, fixing potholes, and maybe arguing about school funding. In Trump's America, Gretchen Whitmer is doing tabletop exercises on how to stop the White House from using federal muscle to screw with elections. Because nothing says "land of the free" like state leaders quietly gaming out how to respond if the president decides his immigration crackdown troops would look great stationed near ballot boxes.
Whitmer, sitting in front of a shiny red Cadillac Escalade at the Detroit Auto Show — the same venue where pro-Trump protesters tried to shut down vote counting in 2020 — politely explained that it's not "paranoia" to worry Trump might turn his deployed federal personnel into an election control squad. In other words: when someone has already tried to overturn an election once, maybe you don’t give them the benefit of the doubt the second (and third) time.
She also took a sledgehammer to Trump's latest round of "very smart" tariffs, noting they've taken a "terrible toll" on U.S. auto manufacturing and helped contract the very industry he pretends to be rescuing. Auto companies say they got hammered for billions, the union brass says they love tariffs, and rank-and-file workers get to enjoy job losses and higher prices. But sure, tell us more about how this is all 4D chess for the working man.
Meanwhile, Whitmer is out here trying to figure out why Democrats are bleeding male voters and whether the country is ready for a woman president, all while planning for the possibility that the commander-in-chief might point federal agents at the ballot box. Totally normal, healthy republic stuff — just your average day where governors prep for hurricanes, blizzards, and potential federal election subversion from the White House.
Trump and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles arrive at the White House, where the dress code is business casual and the hiring requirement is unconditional fealty.
Trump’s second-term White House is being hailed as a model of stability because the staff turnover rate has dropped from a record-shattering dumpster fire to merely a routine inferno. According to Brookings’ Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, senior staff turnover is down from 35% in 2017 to a totally normal-for-a-banana-republic 29%. For context, past presidents averaged around 10%, but sure, let’s call this progress because nobody got fired by tweet this week.
The real innovation isn’t less drama, it’s better casting: out with the conflicted adults-in-the-room, in with the fully housebroken loyalists. Trump’s people openly credit the new ‘stability’ to hiring based on loyalty above all else—not expertise, not experience, just unwavering devotion to the guy at the Resolute Desk cosplay set. Promotions like Trump hype-man Sergio Gor becoming ambassador to India are described as wins, because nothing says serious foreign policy like rewarding your staffing czar with a diplomatic posting.
Instead of public meltdowns starring Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer, and the 11-day wonder Anthony Scaramucci, the exits this time are lower-profile apparatchiks quietly shuffled around the board. Less public chaos, more disciplined consolidation of power. In other words: the clown car is now a sealed bus, everyone on it has signed a loyalty oath, and the driver has stopped pretending there’s a brake pedal.
Donald Trump and Keir Starmer smiling politely, back when the plan was to manage US-UK relations with diplomacy instead of whatever Trump’s thumbs felt like that morning.
Keir Starmer spent a year speed‑running the Tony Blair DLC: be the good ally, flatter the US president, brag that your special relationship is specialer than everyone else’s, and sell last year’s tariff deal as proof that hugging Trump close was a genius move. In return, Trump called him a friend, praised him in public, and Washington even officially welcomed the UK–Mauritius agreement over the Chagos Islands — the one designed to protect the Diego Garcia base from legal challenges while finally acknowledging that maybe, just maybe, 1960s‑style imperial land grabs aren’t a great look in 2026.
Now Trump has apparently discovered Chagos on a globe and is firing off ALL‑CAPS rage posts about the very deal his own State Department endorsed. Because nothing says "stable superpower" like reversing strategic policy by social media outburst months after the fact, and casually threatening the viability of a key intelligence and military hub because he woke up mad at a Labour prime minister. The UK government is left insisting the agreement still secures the base and that, yes, the US did like it before Daddy got bored and changed his mind.
And this may just be the warm‑up act. With a decision looming on a new Chinese embassy in London — and Washington already twitchy about the UK looking too cosy with Beijing — everyone’s bracing for the next presidential temper flare. In other words: Starmer built his foreign policy around not getting publicly torched by Trump, and Trump is now publicly torching him. But sure, tell us again how tying your national security strategy to the whims of a man who governs by caps lock is the mark of a serious, grown‑up administration.
Keir Starmer welcomes Mike Johnson to Downing Street, bravely pretending that a quick photo-op can offset the fact that Trump is out here LARPing as a 19th-century empire with nukes.
Mike Johnson marked 250 years since American independence by traveling to London to reassure Parliament that the United States is not, in fact, being run by a guy trying to buy Greenland at gunpoint. He told President Trump his mission was to "calm the waters"—because nothing says stable democracy like having to personally reassure your closest ally that the commander in chief probably won’t invade Denmark over real estate.
While Johnson waxed poetic about the "spiritual birthplace" of the American nation, the actual president was busy on Truth Social threatening tariffs and refusing to rule out military action to seize a semi-autonomous territory of a NATO ally. At the same time, Trump reversed himself on the U.K.’s decolonization deal over the Chagos Islands—where the U.S. has a key base on Diego Garcia—calling it "great stupidity" and "total weakness." In other words: London is trying to unwind a colonial-era theft under international pressure, and Trump’s mad they’re not clinging harder to the empire we park our bombers on.
British leaders, from Speaker Lindsay Hoyle to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, are doing their best "no, this is fine" routine—cracking jokes about the Boston Tea Party while quietly scrambling to manage a White House that treats allies like tenants and territories like Monopoly properties. Johnson gets history-making honors as the first House speaker to address Parliament; Trump gets history-making honors as the first U.S. president to seriously float invading Denmark and scolding Britain for not being colonial enough. But sure, tell us again how this is all about "shared values."
