The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Thomas Massie, the libertarian cosplay congressman Trump helped politically kneecap in a primary, has now decided to return the favor by trying to impeach defense secretary and former Fox News action figure Pete Hegseth. The charges? Only the usual: running an illegal war in Iran past the 90‑day mark without congressional authorization, blowing off a bipartisan war powers resolution telling him to stop, and racking up civilian casualties like it’s a Pentagon loyalty program.

The impeachment articles read like a greatest hits album for a collapsing empire: a strike on a school in Minab, Iran that killed more than 168 people, at least 221 people extrajudicially killed on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, and a side quest where Hegseth allegedly helped kidnap former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. For extra constitutional spice, he’s also accused of retaliating against Democratic senator Mark Kelly for criticizing him, because nothing says “defending freedom” like punishing people for using it.

House rules mean Republicans actually have to vote on this by Thursday, which is awkward timing given they’re weeks away from midterms and Hegseth is the face of Trump’s Iran adventure that was supposed to be quick and popular and has turned out to be neither. If it passes, the whole mess goes to the Senate, where GOP leaders will have to decide whether to protect Trump’s favorite war cheerleader or pretend, briefly, that they remember what the constitution is. Massie has already used this wafer‑thin majority plus united Democrats to force out Epstein documents; now he’s testing whether there’s any limit at all to how much lawbreaking Republicans will swallow as long as it’s wrapped in a flag and shouted on Fox News.

The Trump Justice Department has heroically sprung into action to protect the most endangered species in America: Donald J. Trump’s personal safety and ego. Federal prosecutors charged former California podcaster Benjamin Azariah Southworth for repeatedly threatening to kill Trump online, including a video where he pretended to teleport into the Oval Office and knife the president, plus selling “Kill Trump” stickers like it was a deranged Etsy store from hell.

Southworth is also accused of cyberstalking one of Trump’s personal lawyers and his family, whom FBI Director Kash Patel helpfully identified on X as Jay Sekulow, because nothing says "professional counterintelligence operation" like subtweeting case details. Patel declared that “deadly threats like this are as vile as they are criminal,” which is true, though interesting how that energy never quite appears when it’s Trump or his fans fantasizing about executing political enemies, jailing journalists, or doing a little light insurrection cosplay.

Attorney General Todd Blanche solemnly warned that people who make violent threats online “will not be allowed to hide behind their screens,” a stirring message from an administration that has spent years cheering on stochastic terrorism as long as the targets are migrants, election workers, or random Democrats. The machinery of federal law enforcement is suddenly precise, relentless, and very morally serious — just as long as the threatened party is the guy who keeps calling for “retribution” rallies.

Donald Trump has discovered the moral horror of forced labour – specifically, the kind allegedly happening in other countries that he wants to hit with tariffs, not the kind happening in U.S. prisons that props up American supply chains. After the Supreme Court struck down his last round of tariffs, the administration did what any responsible government would do: slapped on clearly illegal 150-day “temporary” tariffs, let them expire, and then rebranded the same trade war cosplay as a noble crusade against slavery. Regulatory laundering, but make it authoritarian.

The new tariffs conveniently track Trump’s old deficit-based tariffs, because apparently bilateral trade balances and forced labour rates are now spiritually aligned. China – a long-time forced labour concern – just happens to skate by, since it controls rare earths and could body-slam Trump’s little tariff tantrum. So the tough-on-slavery president bravely goes after … the EU, which already has a 2024 law banning imports made with forced labour, while his commerce secretary Howard Lutnick recently complained that this exact EU law was an “unnecessary burden” on American companies. Now it’s the moral standard. Sure, why not.

Meanwhile, the U.S. runs a massive system of captive prison labour protected by the 13th Amendment loophole, with over a million prisoners working – hundreds of thousands in manufacturing – while Trump howls about forced labour in Europe and Canada. If anyone actually took his rhetoric seriously, the EU would be slapping tariffs on products from U.S. states that lean hardest on prison labour and on companies like Walmart, Burger King, and Cargill that happily dip into that pool. Instead, European leaders mostly sigh in relief they weren’t hit harder, which is exactly how bullies and wannabe strongmen keep winning.

All of this economic cosplay has produced no manufacturing renaissance, no smaller trade deficit, and no coherent policy – just record-high deficits, higher costs for American consumers, and another round of Trump using state power as a personal cudgel while pretending it’s about human rights. Call it what it is: a lawless, hypocritical protection racket dressed up as moral leadership, with the world still too timid to call his bluff.

Tom Homan, Trump’s freshly-minted “border czar”, has had a stunning revelation: maybe the ICE officer who allegedly abused multiple ex-wives and then shot and killed 25-year-old Colombian man Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine shouldn’t have been hired with a gun and federal authority. Only took a dead migrant and two ex-wives publicly describing a “persistent pattern of abuse, intimidation, manipulation, fear and control” for anyone in charge to wonder if handing this guy a badge was a bad call.

Homan now wants to know how the vetting process “failed,” asking whether the information “was not available” or if they “did not know”. Fascinating questions to raise after the killing, given that Democrats like Bennie Thompson are pointing out the obvious: if this guy cleared ICE vetting, the vetting is garbage. Meanwhile, this is the second ICE killing in July — the other in Texas, where the “meth” in the van turned out to be a salt mix construction workers used as electrolytes — and neither case has body camera footage. So Homan’s big reform is to finally mandate body cams on vehicle stops, a policy upgrade that lands like installing a smoke detector in a house that’s already burned down.

But don’t worry, we’re told these are “rare instances,” as if that’s comforting when the “rare instances” involve unvetted, allegedly abusive officers killing migrants and then hiding behind missing video, contradictory lab results, and internal investigations that promise, someday, to tell us whether anyone in power should face consequences. The border security apparatus keeps insisting it’s about “law and order,” while the only consistent order is shoot first, paperwork later, accountability never.

Donald Trump, a man who has allegedly written many books but apparently owns no documents, has been told by a US judge that he actually has to hand over real records in the BBC defamation case. The BBC coughed up 87,000 pages in discovery, while Team Trump produced a majestic 735 pages — mostly news clippings and stuff they printed off the internet, which is less a legal production and more a bored intern’s first day with Google.

Trump’s lawyer Alejandro Brito called the BBC’s requests “oppressive” and “sweeping,” which is MAGA legal code for “they asked for things that might prove something.” He also fought against turning over records about Trump’s conversations with aides over the Capitol riot and whined that subpoenas to former officials were just a “fishing expedition” to “harass” them. Translation: don’t look in the lake, you might find a whole school of crimes.

Instead of producing documents, Trump’s team is clinging to a letter from BBC chairman Samir Shah, who apologized that a Panorama clip may have given the “mistaken impression” that Trump directly called for violence. Brito is trying to spin that into a grand “admission,” as if one carefully worded British letter wipes out everything we saw on January 6th. Meanwhile, the BBC is still asking the court to toss the whole case because the documentary wasn’t even broadcast in the US, which would make this one of the most on-brand Trump lawsuits ever: complain loudly, sue internationally, and then get dragged into discovery about your finances and the coup you keep insisting wasn’t a coup.

After three years, multiple appeals, and enough procedural whining to power a small law school, E Jean Carroll has finally received the $5.6 million a Manhattan jury said Donald Trump owes her for sexually abusing and defaming her. The money was sitting in the court’s registry investment system because both sides agreed that if Trump’s appeals died, the cash would go straight to Carroll. The appeals died. The cash went straight to Carroll. Somewhere in Florida, a gold-plated calculator is weeping.

Trump begged for more time even after the supreme court refused to hear his appeal, because of course he did; delay is the only bill he ever pays on time. Judge Lewis Kaplan responded by doing something almost unheard of in Trumpworld: enforcing the agreement Trump’s own lawyers signed. The court released the funds on 9 July, and Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan politely reminded everyone that a unanimous jury already found Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation—facts he continues to deny, in the same way he denies losing elections, grasping reality, or knowing how escrow works.

And this is just the small bill. Carroll also holds an $83.3 million defamation judgment from a separate 2024 trial over things Trump said while he was president, because using the bully pulpit to smear a woman you assaulted is apparently just another day at the office. For a guy who spent his life stiffing contractors, vendors, and lawyers, being forced to actually pay a woman he attacked is a rare plot twist: the con man finally hits a legal wall he can’t bankrupt his way through.

Donald Trump, a man who never met a bill he didn’t try to stiff, is asking a judge to please, please not make him hand over the $5.8m he owes E Jean Carroll from the civil trial where a jury found he sexually abused and defamed her. The money is already sitting in a court-controlled account, gathering 11% interest like a very patient collection agency, but Trump now claims actually releasing it would cause him "irreparable harm"—unlike, say, being sexually abused and then called a liar on national television.

Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan points out that Trump already agreed back in June 2023 that the funds would be released when certain legal milestones were hit, such as the Supreme Court refusing to hear his appeal. That happened on 29 June. Trump’s response? File a rehearing petition on 6 July and insist the agreement magically doesn’t count anymore because he found a new stall tactic between rounds of golf.

His legal team argues that Carroll would suffer only a "temporary delay"—with interest!—while Trump would face "unrecoverable loss" if she donates the money as promised. Translation: the guy who spent four years turning the presidency into a personal ATM is now horrified that money he owes might go to third parties who aren’t named Trump. So he’s asking Judge Lewis Kaplan to either block the payout or at least kick the can a little farther down the road, because the one thing Donald Trump believes should never be final is a verdict against Donald Trump.

Kash Patel, the man Trump decided should run the FBI, is reportedly so desperate for likes that he may have blown through federal law and bureau rules to tweet about a sealed terrorism case. Two days after the White House’s historic "UFC 250" cage match, Patel jumped on social media to brag that five men plotting a drone-and-explosives attack had been "stopped cold" — while agents were still hunting for more suspects and the whole thing was under a court seal. Normally, exposing details of a sealed case is the kind of thing that gets you sanctioned, investigated, or fired. Unless, apparently, you’re the director.

Veteran FBI officials say this isn’t a one-off; it’s a pattern. Patel allegedly pesters agents on conference calls for fresh case details not to, say, solve crimes, but to craft his next heroic tweet. Former counterterrorism official Lauren Anderson describes a director more interested in "what my tweet should look like" than in the actual investigation, with behavior brushing up against unprofessional even by post-2016 standards. Other agencies, like the Secret Service, are reportedly thrilled — deputy director Matt Quinn politely reminded everyone not to "choke on your own smoke," which is DC-speak for "tell your influencer boss to stop leaking our cases."

This is also not Patel’s first performance as America’s least reliable crime reporter. He previously blasted out premature victory laps about suspects in the Charlie Kirk murder and a mass shooting at Brown University, only for those people to be released without charge. You’d think repeatedly misidentifying suspects to millions of followers might cause some introspection, but instead we get custom whiskey bottles and more misconduct allegations. The FBI insists nothing was compromised in the UFC plot case and that no subjects were named before unsealing, which is a bold statement when the core problem is that the director treats sealed investigations like his personal content calendar.

Under normal circumstances, an FBI employee leaking a sealed case for self-promotion would be staring down the Office of Professional Responsibility and possibly a contempt citation from a very annoyed judge. Under Trump’s remake of federal law enforcement, the guy allegedly doing it is the one in charge of discipline. America’s top cop is basically a clout-chasing true-crime podcaster with subpoena power, and the only thing truly sealed in this administration is accountability.

The Supreme Court has quietly told former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page to take his Comey fanfic lawsuit and file it directly in the circular bin. Page was trying to revive a case against James Comey and seven other former FBI officials over the spectacularly sloppy FISA warrants used to spy on him during the Russia investigation. Yes, those warrants were a mess — the DOJ’s own watchdog said so — but the courts pointed out a minor issue: Page waited so long to sue that the statute of limitations basically turned to dust.

The federal government already cut Page a check in a separate settlement, which the Trump administration’s DOJ used as a chance to issue a statement thundering that the whole thing was a “political sham from the get-go” against a man “never charged with a single crime.” Bold words from the same political universe that loved warrantless surveillance right up until it singed one of their own. Once again, FISA — the beloved toy of the national security state — is treated as perfectly fine for mass surveillance of random Americans, but a civil rights tragedy when it lands on a guy who used to sit near the Trump campaign’s craft services table.

Trump, naturally, folded this into his ever-expanding Russia “hoax” mythology, casting Page as the wronged hero of Deep State fanfic. But when it came time for the big legal showdown, the justices didn’t bite: no hearing, no dramatic showdown, just a one-line rejection. Page’s claims against the individual officials are dead, Comey’s lawyer isn’t even bothering to comment, and the only real legacy here is a bipartisan reminder that the government’s surveillance powers are both overbroad and incompetently managed — right up until someone important gets mad, and then it’s grievance merch for the base.