trump launches board of peace, keeps board of bombs fully funded
Trump unveils his 'Board of Peace' in front of a backdrop of places that need rebuilding from all the peace he’s been delivering.
Trump has spent the past year rattling sabers, dropping bombs, and threatening pretty much anyone with a shoreline, so naturally he’s now rolling out a grand new branding exercise called the global "Board of Peace." Because nothing says committed to nonviolence like treating military force as your first draft and a peace board as the marketing copy.
The shiny new plan is being sold as Trump-the-Peacemaker’s big vision for the world, even as the actual work of rebuilding Gaza remains a brutal slog of shattered infrastructure, displaced civilians, and underfunded relief. In other words, the people picking through the rubble get photo ops and vague promises, while Trump gets another podium to brag about his "historic" peace efforts.
So we now have a president who regularly reaches for the military option, then turns around and demands credit for being a statesman because he stapled the word "Peace" onto a board. Gaza’s reality is concrete dust and humanitarian crisis; Trump’s reality is a press release about his soaring ambitions. But sure, let’s all pretend the Board of Peace is going to fix what the bombs broke.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
treasury bravely protects billionaires from embarrassment
Pictured: the moment Washington decided the real problem with the tax system was that the public found out how rigged it is.
The Treasury Department has heroically canceled $21 million in Booz Allen Hamilton contracts after a contractor leaked IRS data showing how the ultra-wealthy — including Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos — pay little or nothing in taxes. Because nothing says "restoring trust in government" like making sure no one ever again finds out how thoroughly the tax code has been engineered to kiss the ring of the billionaire class.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tore up 31 contracts and declared this an "essential step" to rebuilding confidence, which is an interesting way of saying: we can’t have the peasants seeing the receipts. The leaker, Booz Allen contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn, already got five years in prison for exposing how the richest people on earth treat the IRS like a suggestion box, but apparently that wasn’t enough punishment for the crime of publicly humiliating Trump and his fellow tax contortionists.
Booz Allen, for its part, insists it’s shocked — shocked! — by Treasury’s decision, stressing that the leaks happened on government systems, not theirs, and that they helpfully assisted in the investigation that put Littlejohn behind bars. In other words: they’re very committed to ethics, as long as those ethics begin and end with protecting the confidentiality of billionaires’ shell games, not the public’s right to know that the system is a joke.
So the message is clear: if you’re a billionaire, the government will bend over backwards to safeguard your privacy as you legally acrobat your way out of paying taxes. If you expose that rigged circus? Enjoy prison, canceled contracts, and a federal government that treats transparency like the real crime.
#corruption#oligarchy
melania’s $75m vanity doc bombs harder than trump says it sells out
Empty cinema seats eagerly await the sold‑out crowds that exist only on Trump’s social media and in Amazon’s balance‑sheet fan fiction.
Amazon dropped about $75m on an authorised Melania Trump hagiography – including a "considerable" personal payout to the first lady – and UK audiences have responded with the enthusiasm of a dental waiting room. Vue’s flagship London cinema managed to sell one ticket for the first screening and two for the second, while entire multiplexes across Blackburn, Castleford and Hamilton remain wide open, just like the legal loopholes Trump uses to rename the Kennedy Center after himself.
Naturally, Trump is on Instagram and Truth Social insisting the film is a "MUST WATCH" and tickets are "selling out, FAST!" – because nothing says historic demand like three people in a 200-seat theater. The documentary lovingly chronicles the 20 days before Trump’s 2025 return to power, was screened at the White House, and will officially premiere at the newly christened (and legally disputed) Trump-Kennedy Center, which is what you get when a personality cult collides with a national arts institution.
Melania is an executive producer with "full" creative control – she supposedly built the trailer, picked the music, and shaped the global ad campaign currently tanking in 27 countries. To complete the vibes, the film marks the comeback of Brett Ratner, who’d been sidelined by multiple sexual misconduct allegations until Trump personally pushed for him to get Rush Hour 4 greenlit. In other words: the president used his bully pulpit to revive a disgraced director’s career and help sell a taxpayer-adjacent propaganda doc about his wife, and the public’s response so far is a resounding, beautifully democratic no thanks.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump gets his very own state media app
TikTok logo hero shot, now proudly brought to you by rolling outages, algorithmic glitches, and just a little light pro-Trump censorship allegedly.
Gavin Newsom just announced that California is investigating whether the newly "Americanized" TikTok is quietly doing what the Trump administration has loudly dreamed of: scrubbing criticism of Dear Leader from one of the biggest platforms in the country. The timing is chef's kiss: three days after a Trump-approved deal to spin off TikTok's US operations into a Trump-aligned business group, thousands of users report their political posts — especially those critical of Trump or mentioning a federal-agent shooting in Minneapolis — are suddenly getting "zero views" or vanishing from feeds. But don't worry, TikTok swears it's just a "major infrastructure issue" and a power outage. Because nothing says random technical glitch like only the anti-Trump and "Epstein" content falling into the memory hole.
Newsom's office says it has independently confirmed instances of TikTok suppressing content critical of President Trump and is launching a probe into whether the company is violating California law. Meanwhile, users are discovering that even trying to send the word "Epstein" gets flagged, political videos are mysteriously missing from the For You page and search, and creators are watching fresh uploads die at zero views while monetization tools sputter. Celebrities like Meg Stalter are bailing from the platform, saying it's now "completely censored and monitored" under the new ownership. In other words, the Trump White House finally found a way to fix Big Tech bias: buy the platform, then blame the censorship on a power outage and some bugs.
And just to complete the authoritarian synergy, the whole mess is wrapped in the patriotic branding of "USDS Joint Venture LLC" with Oracle — one of Trump's favorite corporate courtiers — sitting on a nice stake and retraining a special US-only algorithm. The official line is that this protects Americans from foreign influence. The practical result looks a lot more like a state-approved social media feed where criticism of Trump and inconvenient names like "Epstein" get quietly throttled while the administration shrugs and points at some server racks. But sure, tell us again how the real threat to free speech is college kids protesting on campus.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump’s fake prosecutors keep getting caught playing dress‑up
Lindsey Halligan, briefly starring in the role of ‘U.S. Attorney’ in Trump’s community theater production of The Justice Department, before the judge closed the show for false advertising.
Lindsey Halligan, a Trump loyalist who wandered into the Justice Department from the glamorous world of insurance law, is now officially not employed by DOJ after a federal judge said she had to stop “masquerading” as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Halligan, who had exactly zero prosecutorial experience, nonetheless managed to pose as the top federal prosecutor while pursuing two failed cases against Trump’s perceived enemies, because nothing says independent law enforcement like sending the president’s personal lawyer to go settle scores.
Judge David Novak — a Trump appointee, just to really underline how bad this was — found she was unlawfully holding the role and politely suggested she stop LARPing as a U.S. Attorney. He declined to refer her for disciplinary proceedings, generously blaming it on her “inexperience” rather than the obvious problem: a Justice Department being run like Trump’s personal Patreon perk. Halligan now joins fellow Trump fixer Alina Habba, who was also disqualified as an acting U.S. Attorney in New Jersey but somehow managed to cling to a DOJ job afterward, as part of the growing alumni network of Make Prosecutorial Misconduct Great Again.
In other words, Trump’s DOJ staffing strategy remains consistent: don’t pick seasoned prosecutors who know the law; pick personal loyalists who know him, shove them into top jobs they’re not qualified for, and then act shocked when courts notice that the nation’s premier law enforcement agency is being run like a third-tier revenge law firm with government letterhead. But sure, we’re told, the real threat to the rule of law is career civil servants and law professors posting mean things on the internet.
#corruption#killing-democracy
trump invents state capitalism, forgets to tell the ethics office
Smartphone in a glossy shop window, powered by rare earths and good old-fashioned taxpayer-funded corporate welfare.
The Trump administration is dropping $1.6 billion of public money into USA Rare Earth, an Oklahoma-based "critical minerals" firm, in what officials are spinning as a bold move to counter China's dominance in rare earths. The deal is "non-binding"—because nothing says serious industrial strategy like a shrug emoji—and includes a $1.3 billion loan from the Commerce Department that magically comes with the US government taking an equity stake in a private mining company. In other words: the state is now literally buying into corporate winners, but don't worry, it's still socialism only when poor people get healthcare.
USA Rare Earth, which just happens to control deposits of "heavy" rare earths used in defense tech, also raised $1.5 billion from private investors, and its stock popped 20% on the news. So the market loves this brave new world where taxpayers quietly underwrite capital gains for whichever firm the Trump Commerce Department points at. The agency, naturally, "did not immediately respond" to questions, presumably because they're busy picking the next lucky magnet startup to shower with billions.
This is part of a growing pattern: a $1.4bn deal with Vulcan Elements, money into MP Materials (owner of the only operational US rare earths mine), and now a direct stake in USA Rare Earth, all under the banner of "national security" and "supply chain resilience." Meanwhile, Trump is bragging about a "framework" for a future deal over Greenland that—what a coincidence—also involves rare earth access. So yes, reducing dependence on China is a legitimate strategic goal; turning that into a barely-disguised state-run venture capital fund for politically favored extractive industries is the very on-brand part.
But sure, this is all about freedom and the free market. The government picks winners, takes equity, backstops risk, and boosts stock prices with press releases, while the upside flows to private shareholders and connected executives. When Beijing does it, it's authoritarian state capitalism. When Trump does it, it's just another beautiful deal—funded by you.
#forever-grifting#oligarchy
trump threatens to annex canada’s trade policy
Donald Trump explains that Canada only exists at his pleasure, while a map of North America quietly files for emancipation.
Donald Trump woke up, opened Truth Social, and decided that Canada is now a Chinese colony and therefore must be punished with 100% tariffs. The alleged crime? A narrowly targeted Canada–China deal that lowers Chinese levies on Canadian canola oil and trims Canada’s tariffs on a limited number of Chinese EVs from 100% to 6.1%. In other words, normal trade tinkering between two sovereign states, rebranded by Trump as an act of war requiring immediate economic carpet-bombing.
China’s foreign ministry carefully explained that the agreement “does not target any third party,” which is diplomatic code for: please calm your unhinged neighbor. Prime Minister Mark Carney then patiently reminded everyone that Canada is not pursuing a free-trade deal with China, has never considered it, and that under USMCA they’d be required to notify the US if they did. So far, no one has found the clause in USMCA that says “Canada only exists because Donald Trump says so,” though Trump came close by declaring that “Canada lives because of the United States” and uninviting Carney from his very serious-sounding “Board of Peace.”
Because nothing says ‘rules-based international order’ like threatening your closest ally with massive tariffs over a canola and EV side deal, then calling it ‘negotiating’. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried to mop up the mess by claiming the threat only applies if Canada lets China “dump goods,” which is adorable given Trump is the one publicly accusing Canada of becoming a Chinese “drop off port” while Canada is literally imposing tariffs. Carney, being a polite Canadian hostage in this relationship, spun it as just the president’s “strong negotiating” ahead of the USMCA review, even as he quietly said the quiet part out loud: Canada needs to diversify away from the US so it’s less dependent on the guy who thinks your national economy is his personal reality show subplot.
So to recap: Canada tweaks a couple of tariffs, China says it’s a win-win, and Trump responds by threatening to bludgeon the Canadian economy unless they stop acting like an actual country. But sure, this is all about fair trade and not about one man’s need to constantly prove he can hurt allies whenever they forget who’s boss.
#trade-war#killing-democracy
trump’s tariff tantrum meets ted’s bloodbath math
Ted Cruz explains to donors that the economy is on fire and Trump’s response was to yell at the smoke detector.
On a secretly recorded donor call, Ted Cruz helpfully confirmed what everyone already suspected: when confronted with basic political reality, Donald Trump’s presidential instinct is to scream “fuck you, Ted” and hang up. Cruz says he warned Trump in 2025 that his shiny new round of sweeping tariffs might turn the 2026 midterms into an economic “bloodbath” if 401(k)s tanked and prices kept climbing. In other words, the GOP’s big concern about Trump’s trade policy isn’t that it wrecks people’s lives — it’s that it might wreck their House majority.
Cruz reportedly told Trump that if voters hit election day with retirement accounts down 30% and grocery prices up 10–20%, Republicans would lose the House, lose the Senate, and Trump would spend “the next two years being impeached every single week.” Trump, noted master dealmaker and stable genius, responded by yelling and cursing at multiple GOP senators, because nothing says “serious steward of the economy” like throwing a profanity-laced fit when someone explains how math and inflation work.
The public, rudely failing to appreciate this 4D chess, currently gives Trump a 34% approval rating on the cost of living, with 64% disapproving — a fun number if you’re into watching your own coalition peel away in real time. Meanwhile, Cruz used the same recording to torch Vice-President JD Vance as Tucker Carlson’s puppet, accusing the Vance–Tucker tag team of ousting national security adviser Mike Waltz for wanting to bomb Iran. So the party of law and order now features a president running an economy into the ground with tariffs, a veep allegedly installed by a TV demagogue, and a senator live-commentating the implosion on hidden tape. But sure, tell us more about how this is all going according to plan.
#killing-democracy#trade-war#full-stupid
trump closes asylum, opens human export business
Pictured: the ‘world’s greatest democracy’ literally air-mailing asylum seekers it refused to let speak to a judge.
Trump’s second-term immigration brain trust has apparently decided that if you can’t legally deport people back to countries that might kill them, you just outsource the problem. Enter Costa Rica, one of several Central American countries strong-armed into taking plane-loads of asylum seekers the US refused to even let ask for asylum. These people — including 81 children — were flown in chains on deportation flights despite not being criminals, because nothing says "land of the free" like shackling desperate families and dumping them in countries they’ve never set foot in.
Among them: a Russian family who fled after the husband documented election irregularities in Putin’s happy fun democracy and tried to get the evidence to Navalny’s network. They did the “legal” thing under Biden’s system, got a CBPOne appointment, and then watched Trump stroll back into the White House and, within hours of inauguration, nuke the entire asylum process and cancel their slot. When they turned themselves in at the border anyway and requested asylum — that thing protected by both US and international law — they were handcuffed in front of their child, locked in Otay Mesa for a month, then loaded onto a military plane and secretly shipped to Costa Rica.
Once there, this supposed “safe haven” locked them in a migrant detention center for two months, prompting Human Rights Watch to call it “reprehensible.” The family didn’t even know where Costa Rica was on a map, but Trump knew it was far enough away that Americans wouldn’t see what was being done in their name. In other words: the US government grabbed a political dissident fleeing an authoritarian regime, denied him the right to request asylum, chained his family up, and disappeared them into a third country where they’re still in legal limbo — and we’re all supposed to pretend this is just "border security" and not a dress rehearsal for how you treat dissidents once you’re done with the immigrants.
#anti-immigration#killing-democracy
trump fights fraud by starving children first, asking questions never
Trump administration officials bravely shielding taxpayers from the grave threat of low-income kids having somewhere safe to go while their parents work.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new way to "defend American taxpayers": threaten to cut off nearly $10.6 billion in childcare and family assistance to five Democratic-run states based on a viral right-wing video that’s already been thoroughly debunked. Minnesota, New York, California, Illinois, and Colorado—all blue, what a coincidence—are staring down a freeze on Child Care and Development Fund, TANF, and Social Services Block Grant money, because nothing says good governance like making toddlers collateral damage in a Fox News segment.
The supposed smoking gun? A conservative influencer’s Somali daycare hit piece that media outlets and investigators have already shredded, plus a totally different Covid-era meals fraud case that was prosecuted under Biden and had nothing to do with current childcare funding. In other words, the administration is using old fraud by some Somali-Americans to smear all Somali childcare centers and then using that smear to punish entire states. Childcare workers describe being treated like criminals while they keep the economy functioning, but Mike Stuart at HHS went on X to declare this is all just a "partisan political stunt" and insist the administration has "serious concerns" it somehow can’t put into evidence.
Meanwhile, families who already can’t afford $13,000-a-year childcare are being told to enjoy their "impossible choices": quit working, leave kids in unsafe situations, or go broke. Providers—many of whom qualify for public assistance themselves—are staring at losing their only income because Trump wants a culture-war headline about "fraud" in blue states and among immigrants. The five states have sued, winning a temporary court order blocking the freeze and arguing the move is illegal and unconstitutional. The White House, naturally, had no comment, because it’s hard to explain how starving low-income kids and working parents over a YouTube video is anything but killing-democracy meets racism with a side of forever-grifting culture war.
#killing-democracy#racism
sure, let google write the plane safety rules, what could go wrong
Trump DOT officials proudly watching Google Gemini hallucinate the next federal safety rule, while a plane flies overhead and everyone pretends this is fine.
The Trump Department of Transportation has decided that when it comes to keeping planes in the sky and trains from exploding, what America really needs is... Google Gemini doing first drafts. According to internal records and staff interviews, DOT is rolling out a plan to use Gemini to churn out federal transportation regulations in minutes, because nothing says responsible governance like letting a hallucination-prone chatbot write the rules for gas pipelines and toxic freight trains.
DOT General Counsel Gregory Zerzan bragged that Trump is "very excited" and that the department will be the "point of the spear" for AI-written rules. Zerzan also clarified the new safety standard: "We don’t need the perfect rule... we don’t even need a very good rule. We want good enough. We’re flooding the zone." In other words, the plan is to bury the public and watchdogs under a blizzard of AI-generated regulatory word salad so no one notices what’s actually being changed—or broken.
At a December demo, more than 100 DOT employees were told Gemini can do 80–90% of the work of writing regulations and crank out a draft rule in under 20 minutes, because the preambles are just "word salad" anyway. The model even produced a mock Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that helpfully forgot to include the actual legal text. Concerns about AI hallucinations were waved off; staff were told their new job would be to "proofread this machine product"—like spellcheck, but for the Code of Federal Regulations.
All of this is being wrapped in the usual tech-bro buzzwords about "AI culture," "upskilling," and humans as a "choke point" who will eventually just supervise "AI-to-AI interactions." Meanwhile, the administration is already using AI to draft an unpublished FAA rule. So the people in charge of aviation and pipeline safety are treating generative AI like a productivity hack, and the president is "very excited" that the future of regulation is whatever Gemini spits out between hallucinations. But sure, tell us more about how this is about innovation and not about deregulation on autopilot.
#killing-democracy#anti-science#forever-grifting
trump’s border cops shoot a citizen, then seize the evidence
Nothing says “public safety” like killing a citizen at a protest and then treating the evidence like it’s Mar-a-Lago’s server room.
In Minneapolis, 37-year-old U.S. citizen Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal officers during an immigration enforcement protest, and the Trump administration’s response has been: shoot first, stonewall later. Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith says the feds are flat-out ignoring a court order that lets state investigators access the evidence. State investigators reportedly had to get a warrant just to see the basic facts of a killing in their own city, and even then federal agents still refused to hand anything over—because nothing says "we did nothing wrong" like hiding the evidence from everyone with a badge you don’t control.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem helpfully announced that her own department will lead the investigation into the killing committed by…her own department. Meanwhile, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara says he’s gotten zero cooperation or information from DHS. Even Senate Republicans like Thom Tillis and Bill Cassidy are nervously edging away from the crime scene, demanding a “thorough and impartial” joint investigation and warning the White House not to shut out local law enforcement—translation: this looks bad even to people who thought family separation was just tough love.
On TV, Trump’s Border Patrol czar Greg Bovino declared that the armed federal agents are actually "the victims" and insisted Pretti “perpetrated violence” and approached officers with a weapon. The problem: video and eyewitness accounts so far say that’s not what happened, and NPR hasn’t verified any evidence that Pretti ever brandished his handgun. Then Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli chimed in on X to explain that if you approach law enforcement with a gun, officers are “legally justified” in shooting you—an exciting new doctrine that even the NRA and Rep. Thomas Massie think sounds like a constitutional tire fire. In other words, the same crowd that screams "shall not be infringed" is now watching Trump’s immigration machine argue that merely existing near cops with a firearm is a death sentence. But sure, tell us more about how this is all about law and order.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
trump’s doj discovers separation of powers is, unfortunately, still a thing
Trump’s justice department, moments after learning that “go around the judge” is not actually a recognized legal doctrine.
The eighth circuit just told Trump’s justice department that, no, it may not speed‑run authoritarianism and invent a new way to criminalize protest because a pastor with apparent ICE ties got his feelings hurt. A magistrate judge already refused to sign off on arrest warrants for five people, including journalist Don Lemon, saying there wasn’t enough evidence. So DOJ’s brilliant plan was to ask higher courts to personally bless the warrants, because nothing says "rule of law" like shopping around for a judge who’ll rubber‑stamp your retaliation.
Chief US district judge Patrick Schiltz called the request "unheard of" in his entire circuit, which is legalese for "what the hell are you people doing." All three appeals judges refused to intervene, even the one who thought the evidence might be enough, because apparently some folks in the judiciary still remember how due process works. Meanwhile, Trump’s DOJ continues to charge three activists with "conspiracy against rights" for a protest in a church, while vowing to "protect Christian services"—in other words, weaponizing civil-rights law and religion as a shield for an immigration crackdown.
Don Lemon, who was covering the protest, not leading it, calmly pointed out that the administration will likely try to "go around a judge" and "retrofit" laws to get him anyway. That’s the Trump doctrine in a nutshell: if the law doesn’t fit the persecution you want, just keep jamming until it breaks. The appeals court didn’t stop the case entirely—DOJ can still run to a grand jury or re‑argue the warrants—but for one brief moment, the system reminded them that "protecting churches" doesn’t mean you get to declare open season on protesters and journalists.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump discovers the off switch for europe’s wallet
Ursula von der Leyen studies a QR code, trying to figure out how to pay for lunch without routing the transaction through Donald Trump’s mood swings.
Donald Trump hasn’t even finished dreaming up new ways to bully allies, and Europe is already gaming out what happens when the guy who tried to buy Greenland decides to sanction your groceries. French MEP Aurore Lalucq goes viral for pointing out the obvious: if Trump is happy to treat NATO like a protection racket, imagine what he’ll do with control over Visa and Mastercard. The US already showed Russia what happens when Washington pulls the payments plug; now Europe is realizing its "ally" might try the same trick just because Ursula von der Leyen hurt his feelings in Davos.
So Europe is flirting with the radical idea that maybe, just maybe, its entire economy shouldn’t depend on whether Donald wakes up mad at Brussels. Lalucq is calling for an "Airbus of payments" – a public, European version of India’s UPI – because nothing says sovereignty like not having your retail sector hostage to a Florida man with Wi‑Fi. India built a state-backed digital payments backbone that US companies can use but can’t control, while Europe is still busy rolling out "Wero," a private bank wallet so inspiring that even the chair of the European Parliament’s economic committee is subtweeting it.
Meanwhile, China is exporting an authoritarian, surveillance-ready payments ecosystem, India is exporting an open standard, and Europe is exporting think-tank panels about "strategic autonomy". The Guardian politely suggests that maybe defending democracy starts with making sure Trump can’t personally decide whether Europeans get to buy bread. In other words: if you don’t want your politics run from Mar-a-Lago, stop letting your tills be run from there.
#killing-democracy#fascism
kidnap first, declare war later
When your foreign policy is just a silhouette of a guy’s head filled with explosions, but somehow the Pentagon still calls it ‘measured’.
Donald Trump has apparently decided that the "America First" foreign policy now includes kidnapping heads of state and threatening to bomb a NATO ally’s territory. In this fun new phase of the regime, he’s abducted Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro, is menacing Iran with troops, and is fixated on Greenland like a bored Bond villain with early-onset map addiction. Even his own supporters are confused, which is impressive given what they’ve already swallowed.
Peter Beinhart walks through the depressing American tradition that got us here: presidents start cautious after a disaster like Vietnam or Iraq, then a few "easy" wars go well, and suddenly the White House is drunk on "surgical" violence and medals. Trump, who once ran as the guy who hated pointless wars, has now discovered that nothing says "global domination" like a quick kidnapping, some airstrikes, and a total disregard for international law. Hubris plus unchecked executive power plus a president obsessed with domination – history suggests this story doesn’t end with Greenland turning into a timeshare, it ends with catastrophe.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
trump voter cosplay reaches sundance, punches sitting congressman
Maxwell Frost at Sundance, where the films are indie, the parties are exclusive, and the racists apparently think they’re deputized by Donald Trump’s deportation fanfic.
Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost went to Sundance to attend a CAA party and instead got a live-action demonstration of Trump’s America. An apparently drunk, uninvited man allegedly told the 29-year-old congressman that President Donald Trump was going to deport him, followed him out of the restroom, hurled racist comments, and then punched him in the face—because nothing says “respect for law and order” like breaking and entering a private event and assaulting a Black Latino member of Congress.
Security kicked the guy out, and Park City police arrested him on two counts of simple assault and two counts of aggravated burglary, with sentencing enhancements. Frost says he’s okay and thanked security and police, while the Sundance folks rushed out a statement condemning violence and hate speech and clarifying this was a “non-Festival-affiliated event” (translation: please don’t cancel your premieres, Hollywood).
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the attack “horrifying” and demanded aggressive prosecution, while Frost reminded everyone on X that “we are in scary times” and urged people not to be silenced. In other words: a sitting U.S. congressman can’t even go to a film festival party without some MAGA-brained racist fantasizing about Trump deportation squads and throwing punches—but sure, tell us more about how political violence is a both-sides problem and everything’s totally normal.
#trumps-america#racism
bbc discovers americans are somehow still into this guy
A calm BBC explainer asking how popular the arsonist is while the house smolders picturesquely in the background.
The BBC sends Ros Atkins on a noble quest to answer the eternal question: how popular is a president who tried to overturn an election, treats the Constitution like a nondisclosure agreement, and governs like a bored oligarch with Wi-Fi? Spoiler: popular enough that we all have to keep talking about it.
In tidy charts and calm narration, Atkins walks through how Americans are processing a news cycle that ping-pongs from Venezuela to Greenland to Minneapolis to Washington, DC—while Trump’s approval rating shuffles around like it’s just another normal presidency and not a rolling stress test of whether checks and balances actually work. Because nothing says "healthy democracy" like needing an explainer on how many people are still cool with a guy who openly dreams of being president-for-life.
The piece politely asks how Americans feel about their president, delicately sidestepping the obvious follow-up: how many are fine with the grift, the strongman cosplay, and the permanent state of constitutional brinkmanship—as long as their side is "winning." In other words: it’s a popularity contest where the prize is what’s left of American democracy, but sure, let’s focus on the graphics.
#killing-democracy#oligarchy#full-stupid
from ‘we need real news’ to ‘have you tried fascism?’
Tucker Carlson, back when his bow tie was the most dangerous thing about him, explaining freedom of the press before spending a decade helping his viewers hate it.
Back in 2009, Tucker Carlson stood on a CPAC stage and told conservatives that rightwing media needed to be more responsible and accurate, basically arguing, “hey, maybe we shouldn’t just lie for a living.” The crowd booed, because nothing says movement of ideas like jeering the suggestion that your news shouldn’t be made up. Fast-forward through the Trump era, and that same guy has reinvented himself as a full-time grievance grifter whose business model is precisely the thing he once warned would fail.
Jason Zengerle’s new book, Hated by All the Right People, tries to answer the question haunting political reporters: “What the hell happened to Tucker?” Spoiler: money, fame, and a Republican base that rewards whoever can scream “globalist” and “invasion” the loudest. The book walks through Carlson’s evolution from a semi-serious conservative writer who called Trump “the single most repulsive person on the planet,” to a Fox News anchor privately trashing Trump while publicly cheerleading him, to a post-Fox podcaster who openly platforms white nationalists, Holocaust revisionists, and Kremlin propaganda while describing Zelenskyy as “sweaty and ratlike.” In other words, he went from pretending to care about truth to realizing fascism pays better.
Zengerle, who once liked Carlson and used him as a source, now frames Tucker as the funhouse mirror of the last 30 years of conservative politics: start with a “gifted young writer,” add the Fox outrage machine, mix in Trump, and end with a guy flying to Moscow to help launder Vladimir Putin’s image while ranting about “persecuted Christians.” The Dominion texts exposed the gap between Tucker’s private contempt and his on-air MAGA cosplay; this book fills in how that hypocrisy became the entire business model of rightwing media. But sure, tell us again how the real threat to democracy is college kids being rude on TikTok.
#killing-democracy#fascism
when prince harry is your nato damage control guy
Prince Harry, a literal prince, trying to explain basic NATO obligations to a guy who once asked if we could just use nukes more.
Prince Harry, a guy who used to dress up like a Nazi for fun and still manages to clear the moral bar over Donald Trump, showed up on NBC’s TODAY to defend NATO troops after Trump’s latest brain-melter about alliance forces on the front lines.
Trump reportedly made comments downplaying or politicizing NATO deployments and the risks to troops in Eastern Europe, because nothing says "commander in chief" like treating collective defense as a reality show plot twist. Harry, who actually served in Afghanistan and has this wild concept called "respect for people risking their lives," pushed back and talked about the sacrifices of NATO service members who are, you know, trying to keep authoritarian regimes from rolling tanks into their neighbors.
In other words, we’ve reached the stage of American decline where a British royal ex-pat has to go on morning TV to remind the former U.S. president that NATO soldiers are not extras in his grievance tour. Trump keeps chipping away at the alliance that underpins Western democracy, and the international response is basically: send in the spare Windsor and hope he can talk sense into the world’s most powerful Fox News comment section.
#national-security#killing-democracy#fascism
the invisible man vs the very loud fascist
Joe Biden fades into the background while Trump stands at center stage furiously rewriting January 6 as a patriotic field trip.
Joe Biden is quietly writing a memoir and fighting cancer; Donald Trump is loudly rewriting history and democracy. One year after leaving office, Biden has basically vanished from public life, which would be normal if his successor weren’t busy turning the federal government into a personal grievance machine. While Biden tinkers with a 500-page book deal and struggles to raise money for a presidential library no one seems excited to fund, Trump is out here issuing mass pardons to more than 1,500 January 6 rioters and installing 2020 election deniers in senior posts—because nothing says "law and order" like rewarding the people who tried to overturn an election on your behalf.
Trump has junked Biden’s climate agenda in favor of burning everything that isn’t nailed down, pitching fossil fuels as the patriotic power source of the AI future while launching an unrestrained assault on clean energy. He’s also busy purging thousands of career officials, imposing loyalty tests, and gutting agencies that were once semi-insulated from political interference. In healthcare, he’s elevated Robert F. Kennedy Jr and other fringe cranks, because who needs science when you have vibes? Meanwhile, DEI frameworks are being torched across government, universities are under sustained political attack, and immigration policy—legal and illegal—is being hardened into something that looks less like governance and more like a Fox News comment section with subpoena power.
On the world stage, Trump is "sketching a new world order" based on raw power and economic coercion, threatening to seize land and slap allies with tariffs like it’s his old bankruptcy lawyer doing foreign policy. NATO and support for Ukraine—cornerstones of Biden’s foreign policy—are out; territorial threats and transactional shakedowns are in. In other words, it’s American imperial cosplay with none of the competence and all of the extortion. Biden, increasingly seen by Democrats as the guy who clung to the 2024 nomination just long enough to hand the country back to Trump, is fading into the background. But Trump and the GOP won’t let him disappear entirely—they need "Crooked Joe" and "Sleepy Joe" as the eternal scapegoat while they dismantle what’s left of the postwar democratic order in real time.
So Biden becomes the "invisible man"—and Trump becomes the guy using the full machinery of the state to turn his resentments into policy. One is writing a book; the other is writing a manual on how to kill a democracy and call it patriotism, but sure, let’s keep debating who "looked weak" on a debate stage two years ago.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
