trump backs indicted guy over boring senator, calls it ‘greatness’
Trump congratulates Ken Paxton for surviving indictments, impeachment, and federal investigations — the closest thing this movement has to a résumé builder.
Donald Trump has weighed in on the Texas GOP Senate runoff and, in a shocking twist to absolutely no one, he’s endorsing the guy with the sprawling rap sheet. The former president jumped in a week before voting ends to bless Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, declaring on social media that Paxton has been treated “very unfairly,” is a “Fighter,” and embodies “Loyalty to the Cause of Greatness.”
Trump is essentially trying to slam the door on the race, rewarding Paxton’s years of sycophancy and legal adventurism — from trying to overturn the 2020 election to starring in a steady stream of ethics and corruption scandals — while sidelining Cornyn, whose main crime was occasionally pretending laws exist. Republicans are reportedly fretting that a Paxton nomination is a “nightmare scenario” that could hand Democrats a shot at a Texas Senate seat, but Trump has made his priorities clear: institutional stability is out, indicted loyalists are in.
So the leader of a party drowning in indictments, civil fraud judgments, and coup attempts is now openly using his kingmaker status to elevate a state attorney general who’s been under indictment for securities fraud, investigated by the FBI after his own staff accused him of bribery and abuse of office, and impeached by his own party before the Texas Senate rescued him. Rule of law is for suckers; the MAGA job posting is very specific: must be willing to weaponize your office, undermine elections, and swear unconditional loyalty to the guy still rage-posting on Truth Social.
#lawlessness#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump deports colombian woman to congo, congo says 'absolutely not'
A peaceful city park in Kinshasa, where the government somehow managed to show more concern for a sick deportee’s health than the self-styled beacon of human rights that tried to dump her there.
The Trump administration has now reached the "spin the globe and pick a country" phase of its deportation policy. A federal judge ruled that ICE and the State Department most likely broke the law when they deported a 55-year-old Colombian woman, Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata, to the Democratic Republic of Congo — a country that had explicitly said it would not take her. The judge has done the unthinkable in Trump’s immigration universe: ordered the U.S. to bring her back.
This fiasco is the byproduct of the White House leaning on agencies to find any country willing to accept migrants who can’t legally be sent home because they’d likely face persecution or torture there. So they cut side deals with governments, then tried to dump Ms. Zapata in Congo even after Congolese officials wrote ICE to say they couldn’t medically care for her diabetes, hyperlipidemia and hypothyroidism. When Congo is the one lecturing the United States on basic human decency and capacity, you know the moral floor has collapsed.
Rather than follow court rulings or basic asylum law, the administration’s strategy is essentially: "What if we just ignore everyone — judges, doctors, foreign governments — and see who we can shove on a plane?" It took a federal judge to point out that yes, that’s still illegal, even if Stephen Miller drew it on a whiteboard once. The cruelty isn’t a bug; it’s the operating system — and every now and then, an actual court hits Ctrl+Alt+Delete.
#lawlessness#anti-immigration
law and order party flirts with pardoning epstein’s fixer
House Republicans workshop whether ‘Back the Blue’ now includes the ones who trafficked the kids.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee have apparently discovered a bold new frontier in "law and order": floating clemency for convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell so she might pretty please help their Epstein investigation. Survivors and their lawyers are understandably furious, pointing out that dangling a pardon in front of Epstein’s co‑conspirator is less "justice" and more "let’s see how much we can debase the system for a headline". Even James Comer, who chairs this circus, admits the idea "looks bad" while also cheerfully noting his committee is split on whether freeing Maxwell is a good play. Inspiring stuff.
Trump, who campaigned on releasing the Epstein files, then had his Justice Department mysteriously fail to do that on time, is now watching his party melt down over whether to pardon the woman a jury found guilty of horrific crimes against minors. Maxwell was already shipped off to a low‑security Texas "camp" right after a conveniently timed interview with now–acting attorney general Todd Blanche, which really helps the whole totally not a cover‑up narrative. Congress had to pass a bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act just to force Trump’s DOJ to cough up documents, and even then they showed up late, heavily redacted, and politically radioactive.
While Democrats and a chunk of Republicans call the clemency talk "absolutely detestable" and a betrayal of survivors, a mystery faction of GOP members is apparently workshopping the idea like it’s a trial balloon and not a grotesque insult to every victim in the case. Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus, helpfully adds that there’s a "good chance" she’ll get a pardon, because subtlety is for people whose client isn’t the number two to Jeffrey Epstein. So the self‑proclaimed anti‑pedophile, law‑and‑order, "release the files" party is now half‑considering springing Epstein’s partner in crime while still failing to fully release the files. Accountability, Trump‑era style: weaponize the crimes, protect the enablers, and call it justice.
#lawlessness#killing-democracy
ice tries out kidnapping as an immigration tool
ICE agents, seen here field-testing the legal theory of "because we felt like it" against the quaint old concept of court orders.
The Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security apparently decided that obeying federal judges is for losers, so they tried a new tactic: court-order speedrunning. An Egyptian mother, Hayam El Gamal, and her five kids were finally released from ICE’s for-profit family prison in Dilley, Texas after a federal judge ordered it. They made it home to Colorado, hugged some lawmakers’ tweets, and then—hours later—ICE showed up and grabbed them again, like a vindictive landlord with a badge.
This time, DHS slapped the "terrorist associates" label on the entire family because the estranged husband—who they say they barely know—was charged with a hate crime in Colorado. No convictions, no individual findings, just good old-fashioned guilt by marriage. Their lawyer called it “kidnapping,” which is what you usually say when agents of the state ignore a judge and shove a family onto a plane anyway. A Colorado federal judge had to literally order the plane to turn around mid-flight to stop the government from deporting a family that was already under the protection of another court order.
While all this was happening, El Gamal’s untreated health issues from months in detention remained a nice touch of cruelty on the side, with ICE allegedly blocking follow-up testing after an emergency room visit. This is not a one-off, either: the administration has made a habit of treating court orders as helpful suggestions, including shipping Venezuelan and Salvadoran men off to a notorious Salvadoran mega-prison despite judicial intervention. The message from Trump’s DHS is clear: judges can issue orders, but ICE decides who gets kidnapped, where the plane goes, and when the Constitution gets a middle finger.
#lawlessness#killing-democracy#anti-immigration
tsa bravely protects america from anti-putin oscar
Pavel Talankin’s dangerous gold statuette, moments before TSA realized it posed a grave threat to overhead bins and authoritarian sensitivities alike.
At JFK, the Transportation Security Administration has heroically prevented an 8.5lb gold statue from brutally hijacking a Lufthansa flight. The Oscar belonging to Pavel Talankin, co-director of the documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin, was seized because agents decided the statuette was a weapon. Talankin, who has flown with the same Oscar multiple times without issue, was told he had to check it under the plane. No hard case? No problem, said the brain trust: Lufthansa handed him a cardboard box and some bubble wrap, and off the Oscar went to the cargo hold.
Naturally, the box then mysteriously vanished somewhere between New York and Frankfurt. Lufthansa can’t find it, despite a ticket number, and Talankin’s award for exposing Putin’s propaganda machine has been disappeared faster than an inconvenient critic in Moscow. Co-director David Borenstein publicly wondered whether a famous actor or fluent English speaker would’ve been treated the same way. Given that Russia has already banned the film for promoting "negative attitudes" about the government and the war in Ukraine, it’s nice to see US airport security stepping up to do its own small part for transnational authoritarian vibes.
The film itself is about how you lose a country through "countless, small, little acts of complicity." TSA appears to have taken that as a how-to manual. Instead of protecting a dissident’s symbol of free expression from a regime that bombs schools, US security officials decided the real threat was… a pointy golden man. Putin censors the movie; TSA loses the Oscar. Truly a global partnership for security.
#lawlessness#killing-democracy
trump tries to swap in 'the united states' as the defendant, court laughs in legal
Trump, pondering which constitutional clause says 'the government pays my defamation bills when I insult my alleged assault victim.'
The 2nd Circuit just told Donald Trump he cannot, in fact, hand the bill for his $83 million E. Jean Carroll defamation verdict to "The United States" like it's a corporate Amex. In a split decision, the court rejected his request for a full en banc do-over, with Judge Denny Chin politely noting that literally no other defendant gets to wander in fifteen months after losing at trial and say, "Actually, make the taxpayers the defendant." Revolutionary stuff: presidents don't get a punch card for unlimited immunity every time they open their mouths.
Undeterred, Trump's legal team responded with its usual legal brief in all caps: it's "Liberal Lawfare," a "Democrat-funded travesty," and of course a "Witch Hunt"—because nothing says "strong legal argument" like accusing your rape accuser of being too unattractive to assault and then demanding the Justice Department defend you as part of your "official duties." E. Jean Carroll, who has been dragging this case through the courts since 2019, would simply like to finally get justice, while a three-judge minority on the court would like to expand presidential immunity so far that defaming alleged sexual-assault victims becomes a constitutional perk of the office.
Judge Chin helpfully reminded everyone that Trump didn't just "respond" once to Carroll's accusation; he spent years calling her a liar chasing money and politics, all while insisting she was beneath his assaulting standards—an argument so vile it somehow got turned into an immunity claim. Now the path is clear for Trump to beg the Supreme Court to rescue him, as he simultaneously appeals another Carroll case where he already got hit for $5 million. The man who ran on "I alone can fix it" is now arguing "The entire United States must pay for it." Bold platform.
#lawlessness#forever-grifting
epstein survivors keep talking, elites keep hiding the files
Survivor Lisa Phillips stands outside the Capitol demanding the Epstein files, while somewhere a very nervous collection of billionaires and ex-presidents prays those boxes stay sealed forever.
Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are back on Capitol Hill, demanding the release of the still-mysterious Epstein files – the documents that somehow manage to incriminate half of elite society yet never quite make it all the way into the sunlight. For once, networks like NBC and ABC carried their testimony live, which is a refreshing change from the years where the only time Epstein hit prime time was when someone needed b-roll of Donald Trump at a party pretending he’d never met the guy he’s on tape hanging out with.
The women credit #MeToo – the movement, not the 2017 viral hashtag that corporate HR departments used as a branding opportunity – with giving them the courage and infrastructure to keep pushing. Tarana Burke and Me Too International have spent years doing the unglamorous work of treating sexual violence as the massive public health crisis it is, while the political and media class largely treated Epstein as a lurid true-crime podcast with a Mar-a-Lago guest list. Survivors like Lisa Phillips are done being quiet: they’re explicitly saying that the only way to crack powerful abusers and their protectors is to band together, get loud, and refuse to let the files stay buried.
So we now have a country where survivors of a global trafficking ring can finally get live coverage, but the actual documentary record of who flew on which plane, who visited which island, and who helped shut this down for years is still conveniently locked away. The lesson of #MeToo, apparently, is that if you’re a survivor you have to bare your soul on national television to be believed, but if you’re a rich man whose name might be in those files, you get privacy, discretion, and a legal system that suddenly develops a chronic case of the vapors whenever transparency is mentioned.
#lawlessness#killing-democracy
trump’s illegal oil war accidentally invents a green new world
Trump staring at an oil barrel like it’s a mirror, accidentally jump-starting the renewable revolution he tried to kill.
Donald Trump, the world’s loudest Exxon lobbyist with nuclear codes, has apparently done more to accelerate the green transition than any climate summit ever managed — by launching an illegal war on Iran that blew up global oil markets. Fossil fuel companies bankrolled his campaign to stop the energy transition, he repaid them by shredding clean energy rules, killing green programs, and calling environmentalists “terrorists” with his usual evidentiary standard of absolutely none. Oil CEOs are cashing out stock at obscene prices, Putin’s war budget gets a fresh injection, and the planet gets… a crash course in why depending on petro-autocrats and a tantrum-prone U.S. president for energy might be a bad idea.
The chaos has done what decades of polite reports never could: convince voters that fossil fuels are a geopolitical suicide pact. As Trump’s Iran adventure sends prices soaring, demand for EVs, solar panels, and heat pumps spikes across Europe, Asia, and even the United States — despite his administration kneecapping renewables at every turn. While Trump and his fossil-fuel friends cling to the past, battery tech races ahead, grid-scale storage is poised to make gas plants obsolete as “backup,” and Chinese EV makers plan five-minute ultra-fast chargers in countries that still pretend North Sea drilling will somehow save them. The green revolution isn’t happening because of Trump’s vision; it’s happening because the world just watched what happens when you hand the oil economy to a corrupt, attention-deficient strongman and thought, “Yeah, let’s not do this again.”
#lawlessness#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
ice agent discovers minnesota doesn't recognize 'because i'm federal' as a defense
ICE: now available in unmarked rentals, pointing guns at traffic since the Trump crackdown expansion.
Turns out when you’re an ICE agent in Trump’s America, the job perks apparently include using a rented, unmarked SUV and your service weapon to cosplay as an action hero on Minneapolis highways. According to prosecutors, ICE officer Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr was stuck in traffic on Highway 62, decided the shoulder was his personal HOV lane, and then allegedly pointed his gun at two people in a car that dared to get in his way. Not during an enforcement action. Not while chasing a suspect. On his way to clock out.
Hennepin County attorney Mary Moriarty says this is likely the first criminal case brought against a federal immigration officer tied to Trump’s big-city ICE surge. Morgan allegedly pulled up next to the car, drew his gun, yelled “Police. Stop.” and then discovered a critical flaw in his tactical genius: closed windows are surprisingly good at blocking sound. Prosecutors helpfully clarified that this was "beyond the scope" of his authority, because apparently that needs to be said out loud now.
There’s now a warrant for Morgan’s arrest on two counts of second-degree aggravated assault, one for each person in the car he allegedly terrorized for the crime of existing near his rental SUV. DHS and DOJ, naturally, have gone full ghost mode and declined to comment. Minnesota, on the other hand, would like to remind federal agents that "absolute immunity" is not an all-you-can-commit-crimes buffet, and that waving a gun at random civilians can still get you up to 10 years in prison, even if your badge says ICE.
#lawlessness#anti-immigration
eastman discovers actions actually do have consequences
Pictured: the presidential participation trophy ceremony where Trump handed out symbolic pardons to his failed coup interns.
John Eastman, the legal visionary who tried to turn Mike Pence into a one-man constitutional shredder, has finally achieved what many thought impossible: getting disbarred in California, a state that once let O.J. walk. The California Supreme Court upheld the State Bar Court’s recommendation, booting him from the profession and tacking on a $5,000 sanction—basically a service fee for attempting a coup by PowerPoint.
His lawyer now says they’re taking this to the U.S. Supreme Court to “repudiate this threat to the rule of law,” which is quite a line coming from the guy who literally designed a plan to stop the lawful transfer of power despite admitting it wasn’t, you know, legal. Apparently, “threat to the rule of law” means “people noticed we tried to overturn an election and are being rude about it.”
Eastman, recall, was the brains behind the scheme to have Pence reject electors so Trump could keep power, then immediately went groveling to Rudy Giuliani for a pardon once the mob he helped incite stormed the Capitol. He didn’t get one then, but Trump later tossed him into a giant, mostly symbolic mass-pardon grab bag for fake electors—sort of a loyalty punch card for attempted authoritarianism. Unfortunately for Eastman, federal cosplay pardons don’t block state bar discipline.
Now he joins Rudy—disbarred in New York and D.C.—in the “former lawyers who tried to wreck democracy” club, while Sidney Powell calls his disbarment “disgusting and so wrong” from her own perch as a Georgia election-interference defendant who already pleaded guilty. The Georgia RICO case against Eastman and Trump fizzled when prosecutors dropped charges, but at least the California bar has made one thing crystal clear: if you’re going to help a president try to steal an election, you might eventually lose your law license somewhere, sometime, from someone. Accountability, but make it glacial.
#lawlessness#killing-democracy
house discovers consequences, immediately faints
Democrat explains that Congress has ‘zero room’ for abusers of power, while broadcasting from a building that’s basically an open-plan office for them.
Eric Swalwell resigns from Congress over sexual misconduct allegations, and California Democrat Robert Garcia appears on TV to announce there is "zero room for anyone who abuses their power" in the House. Bold words from an institution that spent the Trump years treating abuse of power like a networking opportunity and a fundraising strategy. Apparently the new standard is: if you get caught this loudly, you finally have to go.
Garcia leans hard into the "accountability" framing, insisting the House must be a safe workplace and that abusing power is disqualifying. Meanwhile, the same building still contains a thriving ecosystem of alleged harassers, insurrection cheerleaders, and people who think ethics is a type of salad. But sure, today we’re drawing a bright red line — right through the one guy who already resigned.
The kicker is the retroactive tough talk: another Democrat insists Nancy Pelosi would have "decimated" Swalwell if she'd known about the allegations earlier, as if the real tragedy here is depriving Pelosi of the chance to personally vaporize a member on live TV. The broader lesson from all this? Congress will absolutely crack down on abuse of power — once it’s politically safe, media-saturated, and someone else has already taken the fall.
#lawlessness#killing-democracy
trump’s jan. 6 ‘patriots’ keep racking up child sex crimes
Future Trump martyr David Paul Daniel hydrating between assaulting cops and, as it turns out, starring in a federal child exploitation case.
The "law and order" president has done it again: another Jan. 6 rioter personally blessed by Donald Trump’s mass clemency program is now set to plead guilty to federal child sexual exploitation charges. David Daniel — who Trump helped scrub clean for assaulting police at the Capitol — has reached a plea deal over enticement of a child under 12 to produce sexual abuse images, plus another minor victim under 18. Truly the finest of people, the best people, the only people this movement ever seems to find.
Federal Judge Matthew Orso had to patiently explain that Trump’s Jan. 6 pardon does not magically extend to "child exploitation" because, astonishingly, raping children is not "conduct related to the events at or near the United States Capitol." This is not a hypothetical problem: Daniel is at least the third Trump-pardoned Jan. 6 rioter nailed in separate child sex cases. Daniel Tocci got four years for a child porn collection; Andrew Paul Johnson is doing life after trying to bribe a victim into silence with fantasy money from a supposed Trump Jan. 6 settlement. The movement that screams about "groomers" sure seems to have a recurring casting problem.
Meanwhile, the Trump DOJ has been tying itself in knots drawing magical lines around these pardons: guns seized during Jan. 6 raids? Sometimes pardoned. Child sexual abuse material uncovered during those same investigations? Not covered. One rioter, Dan Wilson, even got a second pardon to cover his gun conviction — because if there’s one thing this crowd takes seriously, it’s making sure the violent coup guys keep their firearms. And lawyers for alleged DNC/RNC pipe bomb suspect Brian Cole Jr. are now trying to cram bomb-planting under the Jan. 6 pardon umbrella too.
So the pattern is clear: Trump hands out mass pardons to insurrectionists like merch at a rally, a non-trivial number turn out to be accused or convicted child predators, and the courts are left sweeping up the wreckage while MAGA world still insists these are political prisoners and heroes. This is the movement that claims it’s saving America’s children.
#lawlessness#forever-grifting
ice insists it doesn’t kidnap people, just ‘forcibly relocates’ citizens in their underwear
ICE agents, seen here engaging in what they insist is definitely not kidnapping, just enhanced wrong-address customer service.
In St Paul, ICE decided the Fourth Amendment is more of a vibe than a rule and sent masked agents to smash down the door of ChongLy “Scott” Thao, a 56-year-old Hmong American and naturalized US citizen. They dragged him into the street in subfreezing temperatures, half-naked and clutching a blanket, drove him “to the middle of nowhere” to photograph him, realized they’d grabbed the wrong guy, and then just dropped him back home like a misdelivered Amazon package. Now Ramsey County authorities are investigating the episode as possible kidnapping, burglary, and false imprisonment, because apparently someone in Minnesota still thinks laws apply to federal agents.
Homeland Security’s response? A straight-faced statement that “ICE does not ‘kidnap’ people” and that this is all just a political stunt to “demonize” their officers. They claim they were executing a warrant targeting “sexual predators” allegedly tied to the property, that it’s "standard protocol" to hold everyone in the house, and carefully skip over the part where the local DA and sheriff say DHS has simply ignored requests for records. With a grand jury on the table and neighboring Hennepin County already suing the Trump administration for stonewalling investigations into three federal shootings—including the killings of anti-ICE protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti—Minnesota officials are having to sue their own federal government just to find out who keeps shooting and abducting people.
Meanwhile, deaths in ICE custody are quietly stacking up like a body-count scoreboard: 47 people have died since Trump’s second term started, at least 15 in 2026 alone. As Trump’s DHS tries to argue that Minnesota has no jurisdiction and federal agents are basically untouchable, Ramsey County’s sheriff gently reminds them that “there is no such thing as absolute immunity for federal agents.” Bold of him to assume this administration recognizes any authority besides Trump’s ego and whatever DHS lawyers can staple together as a constitutional theory on the back of a napkin.
#lawlessness#killing-democracy
swalwell speedruns the scandal any%
Eric Swalwell, seen here contemplating whether ‘cease and desist’ works on both accusers and the Department of Homeland Security.
Eric Swalwell, once busy auditioning to be California’s Next Top Governor, has now rage-quit his own campaign after a former staffer accused him of sexually assaulting her twice while she was too drunk to consent, and at least three more women say he treated their phones like unsolicited art galleries for his nudes. He denies everything, calls it a hit job, and is firing off cease-and-desist letters like that’s ever made allegations look less credible.
House colleagues, apparently remembering for five minutes that they’re supposed to have standards, are now talking about the nuclear option: expelling him from Congress. Republican Anna Paulina Luna is filing the motion, while Democrats like Jared Huffman, Pramila Jayapal, and Teresa Leger Fernández say they’ll vote to kick him out too – and, to keep things bipartisan, would also like to escort Republican Tony Gonzales to the door over his affair with a staffer who later died by suicide. The bar is on the floor, but at least someone has noticed it exists.
As if sexual assault and harassment allegations weren’t enough, DHS is now investigating claims that Swalwell hired a Brazilian nanny without legal work authorization, courtesy of a 68-page complaint from conspiracy filmmaker and self-proclaimed “conservative Michael Moore” Joel Gilbert. So we’ve got a Democratic lawmaker accused of violating immigration law while his party pretended to care about it and Republicans suddenly discovering the concept of expulsion. Meanwhile, out in the background, President Donald Trump is threatening a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and publicly beefing with Pope Leo XIV. America’s political class is either committing alleged crimes, investigating alleged crimes, or starting a war while subtweeting the pope. Seems healthy.
#lawlessness#forever-grifting
ice discovers that video cameras exist, immediately regrets it
ICE agents meet their most dangerous adversary yet: a fixed security camera with a better memory than their sworn statements.
Trump’s deportation shock troops in Minneapolis tried the classic play: shoot a guy, invent a heroic battle story, and let the federal government rubber-stamp the charges against the immigrant who somehow made the bullets attack him. Unfortunately for ICE, the apartment building had this new technology called surveillance cameras, and the footage promptly turned their tale of a three-minute broom-and-shovel brawl into yet another episode of "actually, that’s not what happened at all".
This case against Venezuelan nationals Alfredo Aljorna and Julio Sosa Celis joins a growing pile of collapsed prosecutions where ICE officers swore they were bravely defending themselves, only for video to show something closer to "reckless, armed cosplay". It’s now the third Minneapolis shooting where recordings shredded ICE’s self-defense narrative, following the fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti – events so blatantly awful they forced the White House to reshuffle DHS leadership just to staunch the political bleeding from Trump’s year-long blue-city deportation crusade.
In a plot twist no one saw coming, the new ICE director Todd Lyons isn’t immediately canonizing the shooters as patriotic martyrs. Instead, the officers are on administrative leave and facing possible firing or even criminal charges for lying under oath – which, as an ICE spokesperson helpfully reminded everyone, is technically still a crime in this country. Policy experts are calling it "baby steps" toward accountability, which is a generous way of saying that after years of impunity, the bar has been lowered so far that "we might investigate our own lies" now counts as progress.
The big question is whether this is a real turn toward transparency or just a PR rebrand for an agency that spent the last year treating Democratic-led cities like live-fire training grounds. For now, ICE’s strategy appears to be: keep deporting, keep shooting, but maybe stop getting caught on camera blatantly fabricating assault stories. Bold reform.
#anti-immigration#lawlessness#killing-democracy
trump admin invents deportation roulette, calls it policy
Marco Rubio explains that the U.S. is now in the business of exporting human beings like defective merchandise, as long as the warranty (the Constitution) doesn’t apply where they land.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that if you can’t legally deport people to the countries where they’ll be killed, you can just ship them to countries they’ve never heard of and let someone else finish the job. A bloc of Democrats is begging the inspectors general at DHS and State to investigate this "unlawful and costly" third-country deportation scheme, which has already been ruled illegal by a federal judge but is still chugging along because the government appealed. Meanwhile, DHS’ watchdog says it can’t even start looking into it yet because the agency is shut down. Perfect system: the law says stop, the court says stop, the oversight office says "we’re closed."
#lawlessness#killing-democracy
trump invents 'self-deportation by email,' judge reminds him laws exist
Migrant shows the CBP One app, which under Trump was apparently repurposed from legal entry tool to "click here to ruin your life" button.
The Trump administration looked at hundreds of thousands of migrants who followed the rules, used the CBP One app like they were told under Biden, obtained lawful parole and work permits, and thought: what if we just delete their lives with a mass email? So DHS hit send on "It is time for you to leave the United States" notices, yanked their work authorizations, and rebranded the app from a legal entry tool into a "self-deportation" button. Governing by Terms of Service pop-up.
A federal judge in Massachusetts has now done the unthinkable: read the law. Judge Allison Skye Burroughs ruled that DHS "exceeded the agency's statutory authority" and even violated its own regulations when it terminated parole for roughly 900,000 migrants who entered via the app. Translation: you can't just turn people from "lawfully present" into "illegal aliens" overnight because Stephen Miller’s ghost wrote a press release.
Trump’s DHS had defended the purge by accusing Biden of "abusing" parole and fueling the "worst border crisis in US history"—while simultaneously trying to erase lawful status for people who complied with that very system. Now, thanks to the lawsuit from the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts and several affected women, their parole and work authorization are restored nationwide. It’s not a path to permanent residency, but it is a rare moment where the courts tell the White House: you don’t get to run immigration policy like an unsubscribe list.
#lawlessness#anti-immigration
judge reminds trump the white house is not mar-a-lago north
Artist’s rendering: the East Wing, but make it Mar-a-Lago banquet hall, courtesy of one very confused "steward" who thinks he owns the place.
A federal judge had to put down his gavel and pick up a parenting voice to explain to President Donald Trump that, no, he cannot just knock down the East Wing of the White House to install his very own mega-ballroom like it's a new wing on a golf resort. U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon — notably a George W. Bush appointee, not exactly Antifa’s in-house counsel — ruled that “no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have” for this little demolition-and-disco project.
Leon temporarily blocked any further demolition, excavation, or construction on Trump’s dream ballroom, allowing only work needed for safety and security, and then politely paused his own order for 14 days so the administration can appeal. He also felt compelled to write the civics lesson of the decade: the president is the “steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” Translation: you’re a tenant, Don, not the landlord.
The judge made clear that unless and until Congress explicitly authorizes this fever dream of a donor-funded party bunker, the construction has to stop. Speaking of donors, Comcast — parent company of NBCUniversal, which reported this story — helpfully chipped in for the ballroom fund, because nothing captures the spirit of late-stage American democracy like media conglomerates helping finance an unauthorized presidential vanity construction project on a national landmark.
#lawlessness#forever-grifting
trump turns air force one cosplay flight into show-and-tell for classified maps
Trump patiently explaining to Susie Wiles which parts of the government’s most sensitive secrets he plans to wave around on private jets next.
Fresh from his first term as president and already speedrunning the sequel, Donald Trump allegedly treated a private plane in 2022 like his own airborne Mar-a-Lago storage unit, reportedly whipping out a classified military map to entertain the passengers. Among the lucky guests: Susie Wiles, then CEO of his super PAC and now White House chief of staff, apparently starring in her second episode of "Donald Shows Me Top Secret Stuff". According to a Justice Department memo to Merrick Garland, prosecutors believed Trump had a classified map on board and showed it off like it was a golf scorecard instead of sensitive national security material.
The memo also notes that Trump had some of the most tightly restricted documents in government, including items previously accessible to maybe half a dozen people on Earth, and—what are the odds—some of them were "pertinent to his business interests". So yes, the guy who swore he was just a very neat archivist seems to have been sitting on top secret intel that also happened to be financially convenient. Prosecutors got as far as documenting it, then watched the case get slow-walked and eventually murdered in court by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who helpfully dismissed the whole classified-documents case and later barred the DOJ from even releasing the special counsel’s final report.
Now House Judiciary Democrat Jamie Raskin is asking Attorney General Pam Bondi—because of course it’s Pam Bondi in this universe—who exactly was on that flight, who got the map show, and what business-related secrets Trump was hoarding. He’s also gently inquiring whether the DOJ violated a court order by coughing up these materials, because in Trump’s America even trying to explain the crimes might itself be a crime. The special counsel, Jack Smith, tried to appeal Cannon’s ruling, but after Trump won a second term he dropped the appeal and resigned. The message is clear: classified information is sacred, unless you’re Trump, in which case it’s an in-flight entertainment option.
#lawlessness#corruption#killing-democracy
europe wonders if swapping putin’s gas for trump’s bombs was really an upgrade
Angela Merkel and Dmitry Medvedev lovingly christen Nord Stream, a giant, steel reminder that betting your energy security on future war criminals tends to end exactly how you’d think.
German vice-chancellor-turned-Cassandra Robert Habeck politely explains that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are running the same basic operating system: megalomania with a side of international law doesn’t exist. Putin spent years carefully building a cheap-gas trap for Europe and then invading Ukraine; Trump, by contrast, launched a US–Israel war on Iran with all the planning of a late-night Truth Social post, then started wobbling the second oil prices and stock charts hurt his feelings.
Habeck’s main point: you can’t "game out" men who treat wars like personal-brand expansion projects. Both badly misjudged the people they attacked and the wider coalition forming around them. Ukraine fought back; Iran didn’t collapse on Trump’s timetable; Russia and China are delighted to watch the US bleed ammo in the Gulf. Meanwhile, global energy prices spike, Europe discovers it mostly just swapped Russian fossil addiction for American, and everyone gets to play the fun new game Guess Which Narcissist Will Weaponize Energy Next.
The EU proudly cut Russian gas from 45% to 13% and oil from 27% to 3%, then mostly just bought more fossil fuels from the US instead of actually electrifying anything. So now Europe gets to ask the comforting security question of the Trump era: is being dependent on a guy who starts illegal wars on a whim actually safer than being dependent on the guy who blows up your neighbors and turns off the pipeline? Habeck’s answer: stop trying to psychoanalyze the megalomaniacs and start hardening your systems, because Trump’s only real war aim is his own greatness, and the rest of the planet is just collateral damage and price volatility.
#lawlessness#killing-democracy
