The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

ICE is rolling out a $100m ‘wartime recruitment’ media blitz because nothing says ‘totally normal democracy’ like the federal government targeting the MAGA-verse with Call of Duty–style ads for real-life deportation squads. The agency is geofencing military bases, Nascar races, gun shows, and college campuses to find people whose dream job is "deport illegals with your absolute boys" — an actual ICE ad line, not a rejected Proud Boys slogan.

All of this is made possible by Trump’s big, beautiful HR 1, which shovels $45bn into cages and another $32bn into enforcement and manpower, so ICE can hire roughly 14,000 new agents and brag that arrests will “explode” in 2026. They’re dangling up to $50,000 signing bonuses and $60,000 in student loan payoff to fill the ranks, while a record 68,440 people sit in detention — the vast majority with no criminal conviction — and the administration grumbles that only about 300,000 people have been deported so far, well short of their dream of a tidy, round million removals in year one.

To sell this, ICE is slapping Uncle Sam, George Washington, and Lady Liberty onto recruitment ads that paint immigrants as ‘criminals and predators,’ and then farming out the message to fitness and ‘tactical lifestyle’ influencers for at least $8m, because why just have fash aesthetics when you can literally sponsor them? Marketing experts politely note that the campaign is aimed at people “with something to prove” who want power “under the guise of patriotism” — in other words, exactly the personality type you’d pick if your goal was maximum abuse potential with a flag on top. But sure, tell me again how this is about ‘guarding the homeland’ and not building a taxpayer-funded, ultra-jacked deportation militia.

Congress dropped the 255-page Jack Smith transcript on New Year’s Eve, because nothing says "fresh start" like a meticulous record of how the sitting president allegedly committed crimes and then just canceled the prosecutions by winning the Electoral College again. Smith calmly walks through how his team found proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election and hoarded highly classified documents at his country club — including in a ballroom and a bathroom, because when you think "national security," you obviously think "next to the guest towels."

Smith also notes that Trump "repeatedly tried to obstruct justice" and that there was enough evidence to charge him in both cases. So what happened? Trump got re-elected, took back control of the Justice Department, and his people helpfully made the criminal cases "go away" — not because he was innocent, but because he was in charge. In other words, the rule of law got replaced with the rule of "who’s holding the nuclear codes this week." Smith and his staff were then fired, because nothing screams "totally exonerated" like purging everyone who investigated you.

Now, from the safety of his restored throne, Trump is demanding investigations into the officials who charged him, and Smith openly says he has "no doubt" Trump wants retribution against him and that DOJ now wants payback on anyone who worked the Trump cases. House Republicans, led by Jim Jordan, are doing their part by hauling Smith in for an eight-hour deposition, just to make sure every future prosecutor in America understands the new precedent: if you follow the evidence to the president, enjoy the unemployment line and maybe an investigation. But sure, tell us again how this is all about "law and order."

In year one of his comeback tour, Trump took a Biden-era public health response that was actually reducing overdose deaths and replaced it with a loud, shiny drug war reboot, because nothing says “I care about the opioid crisis” like cutting treatment and sending in the Navy. Biden’s team poured tens of billions into medication-assisted treatment, harm reduction, Medicaid coverage, and housing — and overdose deaths started dropping in 2023 and 2024. Trump looked at that modest success and said, essentially, “what if we tried the 1980s again, but dumber?”

So now fentanyl is officially labeled a “weapon of mass destruction,” cartels are designated terrorist organizations, National Guard troops are patrolling U.S. cities and the border, and the Navy is launching strikes on alleged drug boats — all while the administration temporarily froze $140 million in addiction treatment grants and threw basic public health programs into chaos. In other words, we’re criminalizing illness, militarizing domestic policy, and starving the people actually keeping addicts alive. Trump even claimed “three hundred million people died last year from drugs,” which is impressive, since that’s basically the entire U.S. population. But sure, let’s trust that guy with WMD classifications and troop deployments.

The result: a sweeping pivot from treating fentanyl deaths as a health crisis to treating them as a justification for more cops, more troops, more executive power, and fewer services. It’s the classic Trump formula — less science, more guns — sold as tough-on-crime leadership while quietly dismantling the only strategies that were working. Because why save lives with boring medicine when you can posture on TV with a big executive order and pretend you’re fighting ISIS instead of addiction?

DC district judge Amy Berman Jackson just had to explain, in writing, that the Trump administration does not get to personally decide which laws and agencies exist, no matter how many Office of Legal Counsel memos they crank out to say otherwise. Russell Vought, currently cosplaying as CFPB acting director while trying to kill the agency, claimed the Federal Reserve was too broke to fund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Jackson politely noted this "crisis" was completely manufactured by the defendants and that funding has been flowing just fine even while the Fed ran at a loss.

This is the second time in a year the court has had to block Team Trump from dismantling the CFPB and mass-firing its workforce, after the National Treasury Employees Union sued to stop the slow-motion execution of the only federal agency whose job is "stop banks from robbing people in broad daylight." Jackson spelled it out: the "only new circumstance" is the administration’s determination to erase a congressionally created watchdog "with the stroke of a pen" while the case is literally before the DC Circuit. In other words, the White House is trying to nullify Congress and the courts because nothing says "constitutional conservative" like pretending separation of powers is optional.

Elizabeth Warren, who helped create the CFPB, pointed out that the agency has returned $21 billion directly to Americans cheated by big banks and giant corporations—so naturally Trump’s people are desperate to shut it down before it can stop any more corporate looting. The judge’s order forces the administration to keep the money flowing so the bureau can, bare minimum, pay its employees and continue existing. The White House, having just been told it can’t unilaterally erase a law it doesn’t like, declined to comment—probably busy workshopping its next "novel workaround" for killing consumer protections without technically admitting it’s siding with the scammers.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — once a monument to American culture — is now the Trump-Kennedy Center, because nothing says "arts" like slapping the name of a twice-impeached coup enthusiast on the building. In response, yet another act, the legendary jazz septet The Cookers, has bailed on their New Year’s Eve gig, politely reminding everyone that jazz was born from "struggle" and "freedom" — you know, all the stuff Trumpism keeps trying to stomp out.

They join drummer Chuck Redd, folk singer Kristy Lee, and Doug Varone and Dancers, all of whom decided they’d rather not help launder the reputation of a man and a board that saxophonist Billy Harper describes as representing "overt racism and deliberate destruction of African American music and culture." In other words: the talent noticed the fascist branding and headed for the exits.

Enter Trump-appointed Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell, who responded in the most on-brand way possible: by threatening to sue a jazz musician for $1 million for canceling a gig and calling it a "political stunt" and "classic intolerance." Because nothing screams "the arts are for everyone" like trying to financially crush a drummer for not wanting to play under a giant Trump sign. Grenell also ranted that previous leadership booked "far left political activists" instead of "artists willing to perform for everyone," which is a very elegant way of saying: no one good wants to play our new fascism-flavored arts center.

So now DC’s historic Black cultural scene — in the city that gave us Duke Ellington, Marvin Gaye, and go-go — is watching a once-respected institution get turned into a shrine to one extremely fragile ego. Artists are voting with their feet, the board is doubling down, and the Trump-Kennedy Center is rapidly becoming what it deserves to be: a very expensive, taxpayer-subsidized reminder that authoritarian branding and actual art do not mix.

The Republican Congress celebrated Trump’s second term by doing what it does best: shoveling money to the rich, militarizing everything that moves, and rewriting the rules to make sure nobody can stop them next time. Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill is now permanent, because nothing says fiscal responsibility like locking in a $4.5 trillion tax cut that disproportionately benefits the highest earners while everyone else gets the patriotic honor of paying for it later.

But wait, there’s more: the bill rockets the Pentagon over the $1 trillion mark and tosses in $170 billion to supercharge ICE raids and mass deportations, turning immigration policy into a federally funded terror campaign. To help pay for this, they took a chainsaw to Medicaid and clean energy funding—because if there’s one thing Republicans hate more than poor people getting health care, it’s the planet not being on fire.

Meanwhile, Congress went on a deregulation bender, using the Congressional Review Act like a legislative wood chipper to shred 22 Biden-era rules on everything from consumer protection to cybersecurity. Then Senate Republicans decided minority rights were cute but inconvenient, nuking rules to ram through Trump nominees in giant en-bloc batches and creatively redefining what 51 votes can do. In other words, they’re not just passing laws—they’re rebuilding the system so the next round of looting and authoritarian cosplay is even easier.

Donald Trump, standing next to Benjamin Netanyahu like it’s an Axis of Impunity reunion tour, used a press conference to call Fed chair Jerome Powell a “fool” and muse about firing him and suing him for “gross incompetence” – because nothing says independent central bank like the president threatening to can the guy who won’t juice the economy hard enough for your re‑election party. He again lied about the cost of the Federal Reserve’s building renovation, nearly doubling the real $2.5bn figure to $4.1bn, then declared it “the highest price in the history of construction,” which is an interesting take from a man whose own businesses have specialized in overbilling, underdelivering, and occasionally not existing.

Trump also forgot to mention the tiny detail that he was the one who first appointed Powell in 2018, instead blaming Biden for reappointing “a fool” – a convenient bout of amnesia from the self-proclaimed hiring genius whose administration was basically a revolving door of future defendants. He then contrasted the Fed project with his own “magnificent, big, beautiful ballroom” replacing the demolished East Wing, bragging that it’s “under budget and ahead of schedule” before immediately admitting the cost has jumped from $200m to $400m. In other words: Powell is incompetent because his numbers are real; Trump is a visionary because his numbers are made up on the fly.

Having now decided the new ballroom will host the inauguration, Trump blamed the doubled price on “all bullet-proof glass” and a “drone-free roof,” as if the Fed’s problem is not inflation but insufficient gold plating. Meanwhile, he keeps dangling the idea that he “might still” fire Powell and is openly salivating over picking the next Fed chair in January – presumably someone willing to run monetary policy off a Truth Social poll. But sure, tell us more about how the real threat to democracy is technocrats quietly trying to keep the economy from turning into a meme stock.

US media in the Trump era is apparently a group project between angry billionaires and a vengeful president, and somehow the only ones not invited are readers and the truth. While Murdochs, Bezos, Soon‑Shiong, and the very Trump‑friendly Ellison clan play Monopoly with newsrooms, they helpfully “guide” coverage so it aligns with their pet projects, personal feuds, and investment portfolios. Because nothing says “independent press” like your boss’s hobbyhorse turning into the editorial line.

On the other side, Trump is running his own quality-control department, where “quality” means “does it flatter me.” He’s using frivolous defamation suits and weaponized regulatory agencies to squeeze outlets that offend his delicate feelings: a giant settlement out of CBS over a banal Kamala Harris edit, a lawsuit against the New York Times for being mean in print, and an FCC chair threatening ABC’s broadcast license over a comedian’s joke. In other words, it’s not censorship if you just bankrupt or de-license everyone who laughs at you.

Under pressure from both their billionaire owners and Trump’s retribution machine, big outlets are dialing everything down to legally vetted mush—soft-pedaled coverage, hedged language, and opinion sections that read like hostage notes to shareholders and the White House. The result: worse journalism at the exact moment the country needs better. But don’t worry, The Guardian would like you to know that they don’t have a billionaire owner, they’re not pulling punches, and they answer to readers instead of oligarchs or the guy threatening broadcast licenses. Also, please click the big donate button to help fund this rare, non-captured corner of the press.