The Trump Presidency Timeline
Documenting the chaos since day one. 2122 entries and counting.
anti immigration
trump closes historic border road to protect america from canadian farmers
Sign politely indicating the international boundary where the Trump administration has decided friendly neighbors are now a security risk.
The Trump administration has bravely identified the gravest threat to American security: two Canadians who access their homes via a dusty farm road and some neighbors who share equipment and childhood bike routes. So, naturally, DHS is shutting down a nine-mile stretch of "Border Road" between Montana and Alberta after more than 80 years of informal, peaceful crossings, citing "irregular migration" and drug smuggling. When you can’t competently manage asylum law, ports of entry, or actual trafficking networks, you go after wheat fields and grandmas.
Canada, ever the straight man in this abusive comedy duo, is now spending C$8m to build a parallel road on their side so farmers and families can keep some semblance of normal life. The result: two roads running side by side, one American, one Canadian, like a sad Cold War diorama sponsored by John Deere. Locals on both sides call the closure "unfortunate" and "ridiculous," which is polite prairie-speak for "this is what happens when your neighbor elects a guy who thinks national security is a vibes-based concept." DHS, of course, did not respond to the BBC, presumably busy reviewing satellite photos of suspicious Canadian grain silos.
Source: bbc.com
#anti-immigration#killing-democracy
killing democracy
trump’s doj brags about ‘cleaning house,’ accidentally hands fired fbi agents exhibit a
FBI Director Kash Patel, seen here proudly running the Federal Bureau of Loyalty Tests.
The Trump administration’s war on independent law enforcement has reached the "accidentally confessing at CPAC" stage. Three former FBI special agents who worked on federal public corruption cases tied to Trump — Michelle Ball, Jamie Garman and Blaire Toleman — just filed a lawsuit over their "illegal" firings, and their star witness is… Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Blanche, who used to be Trump’s personal lawyer and is now somehow the No. 2 at DOJ, proudly told CPAC that FBI Director Kash Patel had "cleaned house" so thoroughly that there’s not a single armed agent left who had anything to do with prosecuting Trump. Subtle.
The suit says more than 50 FBI employees have been kicked to the curb without the slightest hint of due process, while Trumpworld loudly smears them as corrupt and biased for the crime of doing their jobs. Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi — both described in the complaint as among Trump’s "most devoted loyalists" — are accused of running a retribution campaign "timed to drive headlines and curry favor with political supporters." Ball’s firing just happened to line up with Bondi’s Senate Judiciary testimony; Toleman was fired, unfired, and re-fired like a glitchy HR software demo; and Garman was tossed out after a decade of federal service. Rule of law has been replaced by "how will this play on Fox tonight?"
The agents also helpfully remind the court that Patel wrote a 2022 children’s book called The Plot Against the King, casting himself as Trump’s heroic knight, while ex–co-deputy FBI director Dan Bongino allegedly spent his podcasting days boosting election-fraud conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the government’s legal position in a related case is basically: the president can purge high-level law enforcement officials if he feels like it because "constitutional prerogative." Bondi even issued a February memo retroactively blessing Patel’s earlier firings, just to make sure the paperwork matched the purge. This isn’t an administration managing personnel; it’s a loyalty test with badges and guns.
So to recap: the FBI’s public corruption squad that helped Jack Smith build the now-vanished Trump cases was folded, dozens of agents tied to those investigations were removed, top officials are bragging on stage that they eliminated everyone who touched Trump prosecutions, and those same officials are insisting in court it’s all perfectly normal. Totally what a healthy democracy’s justice system looks like.
Source: nbcnews.com
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#retribution
killing democracy
white house wants unlicensed wellness guru to run public health
Dr. Casey Means, future Surgeon General of Gut Feelings, prepares to lead America’s public health corps without the burden of an active medical license or consensus science.
The Trump White House is demanding the Senate hurry up and confirm Dr. Casey Means as Surgeon General, while Trump himself shrugs on Air Force One that he doesn’t really know what’s going on with her nomination, but hey, there are “a lot of great candidates.” Nothing says serious governance like the president publicly wandering off-message while his press secretary insists he is 100% committed to the nominee.
The nominee in question: an entrepreneur and bestselling wellness author whose greatest professional achievement appears to be yelling at processed food, who does not have an active medical license, has not completed a residency, and has a long trail of vaccine, birth control, and pesticide skepticism she tried to dodge under oath. Even Trump’s own former Surgeon General Jerome Adams is out here gently screaming that the person in charge of a corps that requires active medical licenses should maybe, possibly, have an active medical license — and maybe also not waffle on measles vaccines during a national outbreak.
Complicating this brave new era of vibes-based medicine, Means is not only a campaign alum of RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” crusade, she’s also perfectly positioned in the family-and-friends plan: her brother Calley is a White House adviser, and her talking points are now planks of Kennedy’s agenda. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, usually the patron saints of “deep concern followed by yes votes,” are suddenly hung up on small details like her past skepticism of hepatitis B shots for newborns and her psilocybin use. The Senate promptly responded to all this by doing the most productive thing it knows how to do in a crisis: adjourning for a two-week Easter recess.
Source: nbcnews.com
#killing-democracy#anti-science#forever-grifting
killing democracy
trump’s god squad grants oil companies dominion over the fishes of the sea
The Trump administration’s ‘God squad’ carefully weighing the fate of an entire species against the sacred right of BP to drill another ultra-deepwater hole in the ocean and somehow deciding this is what God would want.
After 30+ years of hibernation, the federal “God squad” has been dragged out of its crypt so the Trump administration can do what it loves most: sacrifice endangered species on the altar of oil company profits and call it "national security". Defense secretary Pete Hegseth demanded – and got – an exemption from the Endangered Species Act for Gulf of Mexico drilling, despite the minor detail that only about 51 Rice’s whales are left and the Gulf is still basically a BP crime scene with waves.
Chaired by interior secretary Doug Burgum, the extinction committee – sorry, Endangered Species Committee – voted unanimously to greenlight more drilling, even as a fresh spill just smeared oil across seven protected reserves and a federal judge had literally just smacked down Trump’s earlier attempts to weaken ESA rules. So the administration’s solution was not to follow the law, but to assemble a panel of cabinet officials and give themselves permission to ignore it.
Hegseth insists this is all about stopping Iran and protecting Americans from high gas prices, not about bailing out fossil fuel companies threatened by those pesky lawsuits from environmental groups. Meanwhile, legal experts openly warn this move could knowingly wipe the Rice’s whale off the planet, potentially making Trump the first president to deliberately exterminate a species for the sake of another BP ultra-deepwater science experiment. The ESA says it’s illegal to harm endangered species; the God squad says it’s illegal to harm quarterly earnings. Guess which law wins.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
perverts
trump’s spiritual adviser for ‘family values’ is a convicted child sex abuser, so that tracks
Pictured: a former Trump ‘spiritual adviser’ demonstrating the administration’s unique approach to family values.
America’s booming Christian-industrial complex delivered yet another miracle: Robert Morris, founder of Texas megachurch Gateway and one-time White House spiritual adviser to Donald Trump, is out of jail after serving a grand total of six months for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s. He pleaded guilty to five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child, got a 10-year sentence, and then watched most of it disappear into the magical land of suspended time, probation, and a $270,000 check.
Back in the Reagan era, Morris was a 21-year-old traveling preacher welcomed into a family home, where he abused a 12-year-old girl, Cindy Clemishire, who has spent decades trying to rebuild her life while he built one of the largest megachurches in the country and cozy relationships with Republican power. She had to publicly remind the world that there is no such thing as consent from a 12-year-old while the man who assaulted her got to spend the Trump years praying over the presidency and hosting the guy at Gateway for a 2020 "roundtable" on "transition to greatness".
So now this registered sex offender, who once helped shape the administration’s pious "family values" branding, walks free under supervision while evangelicals who cheered Trump’s moral crusade pretend they had no idea. Of course the ecosystem that screamed about drag queens and school libraries had an alleged child predator in the inner spiritual circle; that’s not a bug, it’s the operating system.
Back in the Reagan era, Morris was a 21-year-old traveling preacher welcomed into a family home, where he abused a 12-year-old girl, Cindy Clemishire, who has spent decades trying to rebuild her life while he built one of the largest megachurches in the country and cozy relationships with Republican power. She had to publicly remind the world that there is no such thing as consent from a 12-year-old while the man who assaulted her got to spend the Trump years praying over the presidency and hosting the guy at Gateway for a 2020 "roundtable" on "transition to greatness".
So now this registered sex offender, who once helped shape the administration’s pious "family values" branding, walks free under supervision while evangelicals who cheered Trump’s moral crusade pretend they had no idea. Of course the ecosystem that screamed about drag queens and school libraries had an alleged child predator in the inner spiritual circle; that’s not a bug, it’s the operating system.
Source: theguardian.com
#perverts#forever-grifting
killing democracy
trump’s ‘save america’ act mostly saves republicans from voters
Trump, mid-rant, explaining that the only way to restore faith in elections is to keep fewer people from having them.
Donald Trump has found a new toy to break democracy with: the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which he keeps rebranding as the Save America Act because of course he does. He’s declared it his “No. 1 priority,” vowed not to sign any other bills until it passes, and bragged it will “guarantee the midterms” for his party. Subtle. The bill would force people to prove citizenship in person just to register, gut mail-in voting, severely restrict online registration, and hand state voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security so the feds can helpfully “clean up” the lists — by purging voters. All to stop a kind of non-citizen voter fraud that research shows basically doesn’t exist.
This isn’t election security; it’s a federally coordinated voter suppression project with an official presidential slogan. After years of Trump screaming that elections are “rigged” and that mail-in ballots are corrupt, public trust has cratered: confidence in fair elections is down 10 points since 2024, and the U.S. has slid from 37th to 43rd globally in election confidence. Mission accomplished, Mr. President. While Republicans insist Democrats only oppose the bill to protect their imaginary army of fraudulent voters, polls show Americans now increasingly expect to show up at the polls and be told they’re “not eligible.” When DHS is being positioned as the national voter-roll bouncer, that’s not paranoia; that’s reading the fine print.
Fifty-odd years ago, the federal government used its power to expand the franchise with the Voting Rights Act. Now we’ve got a president threatening a legislative hostage situation to ram through a law designed to make voting harder and less trusted, then calling it “saving America.” This is what happens when you put a guy who lost the popular vote — twice — in charge of deciding how many people should be allowed to vote next time.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
killing democracy
great news: the government has decided to pay workers for their jobs again
Behold: a functioning TSA line, temporarily restored after the president remembered that workers need money to live.
Airports are suddenly moving again, and not because the Trump administration discovered competence. TSA lines are shrinking now that workers are finally receiving paychecks and returning to their posts, which is being reported like some kind of economic miracle rather than the bare-minimum undoing of a crisis the government itself engineered.
Instead of admitting that holding federal workers’ livelihoods hostage was a grotesque stunt, the White House gets to bask in headlines about how travel is "back to normal"—as if normal now means: work weeks for free, wait while politicians do cable hits, then celebrate when your own paycheck shows up like it’s a surprise bonus. It’s hostage negotiation as HR policy.
The real security theater isn’t the shoe-removal line; it’s an administration that treats critical safety staff as disposable pawns, then expects applause when it grudgingly stops abusing them. Travelers get shorter lines, TSA officers get to pay rent again, and Trump gets to pretend this wasn’t all a self-inflicted wound. Five stars, would definitely govern like a failed state again.
Source: today.com
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy
trump builds a columbus shrine and turns federal agents into ufc extras
Christopher Columbus returns to the White House lawn, because this administration looked at 500 years of colonial atrocities and said, “Great brand synergy.”
While normal countries wrestle with how to honor collective struggle and democratic movements, the Trump administration is busy doing what it does best: digging up the worst possible symbolism and stapling it to the White House lawn. After Black Lives Matter protesters in Baltimore sent a Christopher Columbus statue to its rightful home at the bottom of the harbor, Trump’s crew lovingly commissioned a replica and plopped it down on the people’s property, like a giant middle finger to anyone who doesn’t think genocide is a cute aesthetic. Why respect the communities who tore these monuments down when you can cosplay as the world’s tackiest colonial restoration project?
Not content with worshipping dead colonizers, Trump’s handpicked tough guys are busy turning the federal government into a live-action Call of Duty lobby. At the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth apparently thinks the U.S. military is a CrossFit cult with nukes, while at the FBI, Kash Patel decided what agents really need isn’t language skills, cyber expertise or civil-rights training, but UFC fighters to teach them how to punch people. Because nothing says “serious law enforcement in a democracy” like converting your intelligence service into a taxpayer-funded fight club. While ordinary people in places like Minneapolis are quietly risking their lives to protect neighbors from ICE, Trump’s America is out here putting Columbus on a pedestal and treating federal agents like extras in a low-budget action movie. Authoritarian vibes, reality-TV execution.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#fascism
imperialism
manifest destiny, but make it the moon
Trump staring at the sky like a man trying to remember whether he already trademarked "TRUMP MOON RESORT & CASINO".
The Trump White House has discovered a bold new frontier for America First: anywhere that can't vote him out. Enter Artemis, a NASA mission that scientists describe as a crucial step toward a permanent lunar base and eventually Mars, and Trump describes as a great place to plant flags, mine stuff, and own China in the ratings. The administration is selling the first deep-space journey since 1972 as a unifying national moment, which is a cute pitch from a government currently busy bombing Iran and tearing itself apart over immigration and the economy.
Instead of the old "for all mankind" thing, we now get NASA administrator Jared Isaacman promising that "America will never again give up the Moon" while Trump signs an executive order turning the lunar surface into a branding exercise and potential extraction zone. The Cold War space race at least pretended to be about human progress; this one is openly about who gets the best seat at the helium-3 gold rush and whose flag gets to loom over everyone else's. Call it the Artemis Accords meets a real estate seminar.
So while three Americans and one Canadian strap themselves to a rocket in the name of exploration, the president is busy framing the whole thing as a geopolitical turf war and a campaign ad with better lighting. The message is clear: the Moon is no longer a shared human achievement, it's prime beachfront property in Trump's cosmic trade war. If you were hoping the final frontier might escape 21st-century nationalism, sorry — we’re exporting that too.
Source: bbc.com
#imperialism#killing-democracy
killing democracy
civil rights agency heroically defends most oppressed class: fortune 500 white guys
EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, seen here preparing to bravely shield white executives from the existential threat of diversity trainings.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, born out of the Civil Rights era to protect vulnerable workers, has now been lovingly repurposed by Trump-appointed chair Andrea Lucas as the Equal Feelings of White Dudes Commission. Lucas blasted out a letter to Fortune 500 leaders warning them that their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts might be illegal if they take race or sex into account at all. Because nothing honors the legacy of Selma quite like telling Nike and Planned Parenthood to please stop being so mean to white men in middle management.
Lucas has launched an EEOC probe into Nike’s hiring and promotion practices to see whether they disadvantage white people, wrung a $500,000 settlement out of a Planned Parenthood affiliate over alleged discrimination and harassment against white staff, and then went on social media to personally invite white men to file complaints if they feel harmed by DEI. The agency that once chased systemic racism in hiring is now chasing the terrifying scourge of uncomfortable conversations about equity in HR training.
Instead of targeting employers who underpay, harass, or fire marginalized workers, Lucas is lecturing corporate America to “reject identity politics” while centering the entire enforcement agenda on the identity politics of aggrieved white guys. The EEOC’s original mission was to dismantle barriers for people who had none of the power; under Trump’s legacy appointees, it’s rapidly becoming a taxpayer-funded help desk for those who’ve had it all and are outraged that someone else got a mentorship program.
#killing-democracy#racism
killing democracy
army apaches do low pass over kid rock’s ego
Kid Rock, noted strategic asset, prepares to defend America from the grave threat of insufficient attention by introducing JD Vance between merch drops.
The U.S. Army is very politely pretending to be surprised that two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters just happened to hover beside Kid Rock’s Nashville swimming pool while he saluted, fist-pumped, and filmed campaign-ready content for his favorite president. The Trump superfan declared it a "level of respect" that California Gov. Gavin Newsom would "never know," because nothing honors the fallen quite like turning taxpayer-funded war machines into props for a culture-war influencer with a backyard infinity pool.
According to the 101st Airborne’s public affairs officer, there was "no official request" from Kid Rock for the flyby, which is doing some Olympic-level work for the word "official." The same flight also cruised over a "No Kings" protest against the Trump administration, which the Army insists is totally unrelated, just a fun coincidence where military hardware looms over anti-government demonstrators while pausing to vibe with a presidential hype man. Don’t worry though, an "administrative review" is underway to ensure everything complied with regulations, because nothing reassures you about creeping authoritarian aesthetics like the institution investigating whether its own propaganda cameo was technically within the altitude rules.
So to recap: protesters get Apaches overhead, Kid Rock gets a personal salute-by-rotorwash, and the Army gets to claim it’s all just routine training. Militarized pageantry for the dear leader’s friends, plausible deniability for everyone else — the Trump-era civil-military divide is going great.
Source: npr.org
#killing-democracy#fascism
forever grifting
trump unveils presidential library slash fundraising tower
Artist’s rendering of the Trump Presidential Library, seen here heroically blocking out both the Miami skyline and the concept of ethical governance.
Donald Trump has shared renderings of his "presidential library" in Miami, which appears to be less a repository of documents and more a 1,000-foot-tall campaign ad with elevators. The glass spike, complete with a giant gold TRUMP logo, will loom over Miami’s historic Freedom Tower — the building that symbolizes refuge for Cuban immigrants, now conveniently overshadowed by a monument to the guy who cashed in on their votes.
The plans proudly showcase a presidential plane on the ground floor: a Boeing 747 "gifted" to Trump by the Qatari government, now destined to be a museum piece in his personal legacy tower. Foreign government luxury swag as permanent exhibit is certainly a bold curatorial choice for a former president with a lifelong allergy to ethics rules.
The site itself is a nearly 3‑acre, $67 million slice of waterfront Miami that had to crawl through a legal fight over its transfer from a local college to the state, a process that miraculously ended in Trump’s favor. The location also happens to sit conveniently close to Trump National Doral, because of course the presidential library has to double as an advertisement for the family resort portfolio. And naturally, the Truth Social video unveiling this monument to subtlety comes complete with a link to donate to the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation Inc., turning the whole thing into one more branded cash vacuum dressed up as civic history.
So to recap: a skyscraper-sized ego project, a foreign-government mega-jet as lobby art, a contested public land deal, and a built-in fundraising portal. The Trump library may not be rich in books, but it’s already a master class in forever-grifting.
The plans proudly showcase a presidential plane on the ground floor: a Boeing 747 "gifted" to Trump by the Qatari government, now destined to be a museum piece in his personal legacy tower. Foreign government luxury swag as permanent exhibit is certainly a bold curatorial choice for a former president with a lifelong allergy to ethics rules.
The site itself is a nearly 3‑acre, $67 million slice of waterfront Miami that had to crawl through a legal fight over its transfer from a local college to the state, a process that miraculously ended in Trump’s favor. The location also happens to sit conveniently close to Trump National Doral, because of course the presidential library has to double as an advertisement for the family resort portfolio. And naturally, the Truth Social video unveiling this monument to subtlety comes complete with a link to donate to the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation Inc., turning the whole thing into one more branded cash vacuum dressed up as civic history.
So to recap: a skyscraper-sized ego project, a foreign-government mega-jet as lobby art, a contested public land deal, and a built-in fundraising portal. The Trump library may not be rich in books, but it’s already a master class in forever-grifting.
Source: nbcnews.com
#forever-grifting#oligarchy#corruption
killing democracy
sheriff cosplay coup pauses for legal reasons
Sheriff Chad Bianco, seen here auditioning for the role of ‘county-level election czar,’ pauses his ballot kidnapping spree while the courts remind him the constitution is not optional.
Riverside County sheriff and aspiring mini-Trump Chad Bianco has graciously decided to pause his solo fan-fiction investigation into supposed voter fraud around California’s Prop 50, after seizing more than 650,000 ballots like they were evidence in a cartel bust. Bianco, who is also running for governor because of course he is, claimed he was "on hold" due to "politically motivated" lawsuits — which is a fun way of saying: the courts noticed he had no legal authority to hijack an election.
This whole melodrama started when a self-appointed "Riverside Election Integrity Team" insisted there was a 45,896-vote discrepancy between the official tally and some handwritten notes. Actual election officials, who can read numbers without turning them into a conspiracy podcast, pointed out that the real difference was 103 votes and mostly due to the fuzziness of hand counts. Bianco’s response was not "oh, my mistake" but to physically seize hundreds of thousands of ballots over the objections of the state, prompting Attorney General Rob Bonta to run to the California supreme court and describe the stunt as an "unprecedented constitutional emergency".
So now the sheriff’s maverick ballot raid is frozen under a blizzard of litigation from the state and UCLA’s Voting Rights Project, while Bianco campaigns for higher office on the strength of his willingness to treat democracy like lost property in the back of a squad car. Republicans spent years screaming about a "weaponized" justice system, and their answer is… a gubernatorial candidate sheriff literally grabbing ballots to chase a debunked conspiracy about a gerrymandering measure. Election integrity, GOP edition: if you don’t like the result, have law enforcement confiscate it.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
killing democracy
florida spends $5 million to name the airport after the guy already clogging its runway
Ron DeSantis signs the paperwork to convert a functioning airport into a 24/7 tribute act to the guy who already treats it like his personal driveway.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a bill to rebrand Palm Beach International Airport as President Donald J. Trump International Airport, because nothing screams "serious democracy" like slapping the Dear Leader’s name on every piece of public infrastructure that doesn’t move out of the way fast enough. The change kicks in July 1, pending FAA paperwork, which apparently now includes a box for "Is this airport being renamed for the sitting president’s ego?".
The Trump Organization, ever alert to fresh grift opportunities, already filed a trademark application for the new name, while the bill simultaneously insists Palm Beach County must have the "perpetual and unrestricted right" to use it for free. So the public foots an estimated $5 million in costs, Trump’s brand gets a taxpayer-funded billboard on every boarding pass, and we all pretend this isn’t state-sponsored advertising for the president’s private resort five miles down the road.
Eric Trump is on X bragging about his "small role" in making it happen, which is at least honest about the family division of labor: Donald demands, Republicans in Tallahassee obey, Eric posts. Democrats point out that Republicans could have spent that money making life less hellish for Florida families, but the ruling party chose instead to underwrite an airport-sized campaign logo. Meanwhile, we learn this is part of a broader pattern: Trump has already tried to trade federal tunnel money for renaming Dulles and Penn Station after himself, plastered his name on the Kennedy Center, the U.S. Institute of Peace, discount drug programs, savings accounts, warships, and is now getting his signature on paper currency and his face on a 24-karat commemorative coin.
So yes: the United States now has a sitting president whose political allies are renaming airports for him while his company trademarks the name, his appointees mint gold coins with his image, and his autograph goes on the money. Totally normal republic behavior, nothing at all killing-democracy-adjacent about the government slowly turning into one long Trump-branded infomercial.
Source: nbcnews.com
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy
jan. 6 rioters demand cash prize for failed coup
Just a totally peaceful crowd of tourists exercising their constitutional right to demand millions after trying to overturn an election.
The pro-Trump mob that tried to overturn an election by beating cops with flagpoles has now discovered its true victim: itself. A group of Jan. 6 participants — led by Alan Fischer, a Proud Boys–adjacent Florida man whose modeling photos helped identify him — has filed a class action lawsuit claiming police used excessive force against what they describe as a “peaceful crowd” helpfully engaged in smashing its way into the U.S. Capitol. They want more than $18.4 million, with the class potentially ballooning into the thousands, because if there’s one thing this movement believes in, it’s personal responsibility… for other people.
The cast of plaintiffs reads like a MAGA true-crime anthology: a former Boston K-9 officer who called his own actions “an abomination,” a Proud Boy who cut off his monitoring bracelet and went on the run before getting 10 years for assaulting officers, and a man who was pardoned by Trump for Jan. 6 and then went on to be convicted of child molestation and sentenced to life in prison. That last one allegedly tried to bribe a victim with the promise of a big government payout, so at least someone was thinking ahead to this lawsuit. All of this is made possible thanks to Trump’s mass clemency for roughly 1,500 Capitol rioters in his second term, which wiped out criminal cases and cleared the runway for them to rebrand as oppressed patriots seeking damages.
The same administration that quietly cut a nearly $5 million settlement with the estate of Ashli Babbitt (while insisting it wasn’t admitting liability) is now facing a wave of Jan. 6 litigation from every direction: Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio is also suing, claiming his prosecution was tainted, while the DOJ is asking for more time to respond to a motion from alleged DNC/RNC pipe bomber Brian Cole, who says Trump’s blanket pardon for Capitol rioters covers him too. So the coup didn’t overturn the election, but it did successfully turn the federal courts into a loyalty rewards program for insurrectionists. Law and order, but make it cash back.
The cast of plaintiffs reads like a MAGA true-crime anthology: a former Boston K-9 officer who called his own actions “an abomination,” a Proud Boy who cut off his monitoring bracelet and went on the run before getting 10 years for assaulting officers, and a man who was pardoned by Trump for Jan. 6 and then went on to be convicted of child molestation and sentenced to life in prison. That last one allegedly tried to bribe a victim with the promise of a big government payout, so at least someone was thinking ahead to this lawsuit. All of this is made possible thanks to Trump’s mass clemency for roughly 1,500 Capitol rioters in his second term, which wiped out criminal cases and cleared the runway for them to rebrand as oppressed patriots seeking damages.
The same administration that quietly cut a nearly $5 million settlement with the estate of Ashli Babbitt (while insisting it wasn’t admitting liability) is now facing a wave of Jan. 6 litigation from every direction: Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio is also suing, claiming his prosecution was tainted, while the DOJ is asking for more time to respond to a motion from alleged DNC/RNC pipe bomber Brian Cole, who says Trump’s blanket pardon for Capitol rioters covers him too. So the coup didn’t overturn the election, but it did successfully turn the federal courts into a loyalty rewards program for insurrectionists. Law and order, but make it cash back.
Source: nbcnews.com
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
killing democracy
trump creates ai litigation hit squad to protect big tech’s feelings
Trump stares at a server rack like it’s a voting machine he hasn’t accused of fraud yet, while lawyers in the background assemble the AI Litigation Task Force Voltron to protect Big Tech from the horror of basic safety rules.
California had the absolute nerve to suggest that maybe, just maybe, AI vendors getting lucrative state contracts shouldn’t be casually distributing child sexual abuse material, violent porn, or building discrimination engines on the side. Gavin Newsom signed an order telling companies to show how they prevent CSAM, violent porn, "harmful bias", unlawful discrimination, detention, and surveillance, plus to work on watermarking deepfakes. You know, the kind of boring "protect basic rights and safety" stuff that really ruins a good shareholder call.
Trump, meanwhile, has decided the real threat isn’t AI-powered abuse or civil rights violations – it’s states trying to stop those things. His White House rolled out a national AI "framework" that basically says: regulations are bad, corporate vibes are good, and states should sit down and shut up. To drive the point home, he ordered the justice department to stand up an "AI Litigation Task Force" whose job is to smack down state AI rules that might inconvenience the industry. Federalism is sacred, unless a state wants to regulate tech bros – then it’s time for centralized, top-down, pro-corporate enforcement.
So California is trying to keep AI from being a civil-rights-violating, porn-spewing surveillance tool, and Trump is mobilizing DOJ to defend the right of AI companies to innovate in the exciting field of plausible deniability. Welcome to the future, where the administration’s idea of "freedom" is unfettered machine learning and very fettered states.
Trump, meanwhile, has decided the real threat isn’t AI-powered abuse or civil rights violations – it’s states trying to stop those things. His White House rolled out a national AI "framework" that basically says: regulations are bad, corporate vibes are good, and states should sit down and shut up. To drive the point home, he ordered the justice department to stand up an "AI Litigation Task Force" whose job is to smack down state AI rules that might inconvenience the industry. Federalism is sacred, unless a state wants to regulate tech bros – then it’s time for centralized, top-down, pro-corporate enforcement.
So California is trying to keep AI from being a civil-rights-violating, porn-spewing surveillance tool, and Trump is mobilizing DOJ to defend the right of AI companies to innovate in the exciting field of plausible deniability. Welcome to the future, where the administration’s idea of "freedom" is unfettered machine learning and very fettered states.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
killing democracy
state department psyops goes global, now with extra musk
Marco Rubio and Elon Musk conceptually high-fiving over a globe while Pentagon PsyOps runs the teleprompter off-screen.
Marco Rubio’s State Department has helpfully reminded the world that US embassies are no longer just for visas and cocktail parties – they’re now full-service propaganda franchises. A new cable orders every embassy and consulate on Earth to launch coordinated campaigns against “hostile messaging,” explicitly teaming up with the Pentagon’s Military Information Support Operations unit, which is what they call PsyOps after a branding consultant told them “psychological warfare” didn’t focus-group well.
Having defunded the boring, semi-accountable Global Engagement Center and shuttered other foreign influence task forces, the Trump-Rubio brain trust is skipping the middleman and going straight to militarized messaging. Embassies are told to recruit local influencers, academics, and community leaders to push US-approved narratives that look “locally organic” – because nothing says “freedom” like paying people to pretend they just naturally woke up loving American foreign policy.
To really drive home the seriousness of this fight against disinformation, the cable officially endorses Elon Musk’s X – yes, the platform already fined by the EU for deceptive practices – as an “innovative” tool to counter anti-American propaganda without harming free speech. So the US government is now recommending that diplomats trust the content moderation judgment of a guy who runs public policy via late-night meltdown. Bold strategy. Meanwhile, more than 700 “American Spaces” abroad are being rebranded as free speech “zones” and distribution hubs for “uncensored information,” which, given the rest of this plan, sounds less like civic education and more like a global franchise rollout of Trump-era reality distortion.
The cable also demands “prominent, flag-forward branding” on US foreign assistance, turning aid into a marketing campaign: humanitarian help, but make it influencer content. The message to the rest of the world is clear: you can have information, as long as it’s pre-cleared by Rubio, the Pentagon’s psychological operations shop, and Elon Musk’s algorithm. Truly, a golden age for telling America’s story – at very high volume, with military support, and sponsored by DOGE.
Having defunded the boring, semi-accountable Global Engagement Center and shuttered other foreign influence task forces, the Trump-Rubio brain trust is skipping the middleman and going straight to militarized messaging. Embassies are told to recruit local influencers, academics, and community leaders to push US-approved narratives that look “locally organic” – because nothing says “freedom” like paying people to pretend they just naturally woke up loving American foreign policy.
To really drive home the seriousness of this fight against disinformation, the cable officially endorses Elon Musk’s X – yes, the platform already fined by the EU for deceptive practices – as an “innovative” tool to counter anti-American propaganda without harming free speech. So the US government is now recommending that diplomats trust the content moderation judgment of a guy who runs public policy via late-night meltdown. Bold strategy. Meanwhile, more than 700 “American Spaces” abroad are being rebranded as free speech “zones” and distribution hubs for “uncensored information,” which, given the rest of this plan, sounds less like civic education and more like a global franchise rollout of Trump-era reality distortion.
The cable also demands “prominent, flag-forward branding” on US foreign assistance, turning aid into a marketing campaign: humanitarian help, but make it influencer content. The message to the rest of the world is clear: you can have information, as long as it’s pre-cleared by Rubio, the Pentagon’s psychological operations shop, and Elon Musk’s algorithm. Truly, a golden age for telling America’s story – at very high volume, with military support, and sponsored by DOGE.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#fascism#forever-grifting
retribution
trump sues minnesota for the crime of not bullying trans kids
The Trump DOJ heroically racing to protect America from the menace of trans middle schoolers running the 400-meter dash.
The Trump Department of Justice has decided that the greatest threat to the republic is not an unpopular war, skyrocketing gas prices, massive health insurance hikes, or a partial government shutdown caused by ICE agents killing two Minnesotans in broad daylight. No, the real emergency is… transgender girls running track in Minnesota. So DOJ is suing the state’s education department and high school league, claiming that letting trans girls play girls’ sports and use the same bathrooms somehow violates Title IX — the law that was written to stop sex discrimination, not cosplay it.
Minnesota, which has had the gall to be a "trans refuge" instead of a Fox News backdrop, already sued the administration last year over its "only two genders, federally mandated" orders. Trump’s people responded with the subtlety of a mob shakedown: reverse your laws or we’ll withhold billions in federal education funds. Now they’ve escalated to a Title IX lawsuit that insists inclusive policies create "unfair competition" and a "hostile environment" — apparently the hostility doesn’t extend to the part where the federal government targets a tiny group of kids for political sport.
Attorney General Keith Ellison politely pointed out that maybe, just maybe, a president juggling an unpopular war, rising gas prices, health insurance chaos, and a shutdown triggered by his own murderous immigration agents should have better things to do than harass children "just trying to be themselves." But this is a retribution administration: 27 states have already restricted trans athletes, and Trump is determined to drag Minnesota down to that level. Why solve real problems when you can manufacture a culture war, call it "civil rights," and dare anyone to notice that the bully is the one holding the Title IX complaint?
Source: theguardian.com
#retribution#killing-democracy
imperialism
president big boy threatens iran’s power grid on tv
File photo of the region Trump is casually threatening to plunge into darkness, thirst, and chaos between Fox hits.
The White House press briefing has now fully transitioned from "questions about policy" to "hey, is the president actually threatening war crimes or are we all just hallucinating?" After Donald Trump publicly floated the idea of targeting Iranian civilian infrastructure — you know, the stuff hospitals, water systems and actual human beings rely on — reporters asked the obvious follow-up: is the official position of the United States now that civilian populations are fair game if Trump gets mad enough?
The response, naturally, was a shimmering word salad of denials, hedges, and "we don’t want to get ahead of the president’s comments" — as if there's a normal way to clarify "no, we definitely won’t bomb power plants and water systems" that somehow eludes them. Instead of a simple rejection of collective punishment, the briefing turned into a live demonstration of how you launder an authoritarian threat into "strategic ambiguity."
Meanwhile, as Trump hails supposed progress in negotiations with Iran, more U.S. troops are being shipped to the region and markets are tanking on the back of a war he keeps escalating on live television. It’s a neat trick: claim you’re a master dealmaker while publicly dangling the prospect of targeting civilians, then send the Pentagon to go make your tantrum real. International law scholars are screaming, military planners are quietly panicking, and the White House is out here treating the Geneva Conventions like optional terms of service you scroll past and ignore.
The response, naturally, was a shimmering word salad of denials, hedges, and "we don’t want to get ahead of the president’s comments" — as if there's a normal way to clarify "no, we definitely won’t bomb power plants and water systems" that somehow eludes them. Instead of a simple rejection of collective punishment, the briefing turned into a live demonstration of how you launder an authoritarian threat into "strategic ambiguity."
Meanwhile, as Trump hails supposed progress in negotiations with Iran, more U.S. troops are being shipped to the region and markets are tanking on the back of a war he keeps escalating on live television. It’s a neat trick: claim you’re a master dealmaker while publicly dangling the prospect of targeting civilians, then send the Pentagon to go make your tantrum real. International law scholars are screaming, military planners are quietly panicking, and the White House is out here treating the Geneva Conventions like optional terms of service you scroll past and ignore.
Source: nbcnews.com
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#imperialism#killing-democracy#national-security
killing democracy
trump’s fbi turns oppo research department against swalwell
Kash Patel, proudly unveiling the FBI’s newest division: the Office of Electoral Interference and Candidate Smearing.
The Trump White House has apparently decided that if you can’t beat Eric Swalwell at the ballot box, you just hand the FBI a shovel and start digging. According to the Washington Post, Trump’s handpicked FBI director Kash Patel is pushing to release a decade-old counterintelligence file about a suspected Chinese agent who once fundraised for Swalwell—a case in which the FBI already said Swalwell cooperated and was not suspected of wrongdoing. Minor detail, easily ignored when you’re running the Bureau like a Super PAC with subpoenas.
This sudden passion for transparency just happens to arrive as Swalwell climbs in the California governor’s race, locked in a three-way tie with Katie Porter and Tom Steyer while picking up big labor endorsements. Republicans are leading in recent polls, so naturally the president’s response is to turn federal law enforcement into his own dirt-delivery service, trying to slime a political opponent who also inconveniently helped impeach him.
Jamie Raskin summed it up: the FBI is trying to smear a sitting congressman and gubernatorial candidate, and it has absolutely nothing to do with law enforcement. It has everything to do with weaponizing the FBI for partisan warfare. Trump and Patel would very much like to decide who governs California; the pesky concept of voters is just an obstacle to be managed with selective leaks and innuendo. Law-and-order conservatives, meet your favorite new pastime: state security as campaign oppo.
Source: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#fascism