trump liberates venezuela’s oil from venezuelans
Local mural of an oil pumpjack, soon to be replaced by a tasteful portrait of whichever US company wins the "liberation" contract.
Trump personally oversees the seizure of Nicolás Maduro, topples the Venezuelan government, and then immediately pitches the country’s oil reserves like a foreclosure auction on a golf course he happens to own. Now that a "more friendly" government is in place and the legislature has helpfully passed a bill opening the doors to foreign investment, he’s telling US oil companies they’ll be "extracting numbers in terms of oil like few people have seen" — which is a poetic way of saying we invaded your sovereignty, now hand over the hydrocarbons.
There’s just one snag in this little freedom-branded smash-and-grab: Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA has been gutted, its infrastructure is rotting, its engineers fled, and its much-hyped reserves may be more PowerPoint than petroleum. Trump wants US firms to dump at least $100 billion into rebuilding the place, because nothing screams "sound investment" like betting tens of billions on decayed heavy crude fields in a country whose last president was literally just seized in a raid.
Economists politely point out that Venezuela’s oil is low-quality, hard to refine, corrosive, and not obviously profitable at current prices. Also, PDVSA is a core symbol of national sovereignty, so the locals might not be thrilled about turning it into a Delaware LLC with a flag stapled on. But sure, after years of sanctions, economic collapse, and mass exodus, what Venezuela really needed was Washington kicking the door in and treating its subsoil like a MAGA-branded vending machine. Empire, but make it "energy policy".
#imperialism#forever-grifting
trump sells the climate for $1 billion and store credit at exxon
Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin pose next to a burning planet, holding a giant novelty check from "Fossil Fuel Donors, LLC" made out to "Deregulation Services Rendered."
The planet is on fire, the U.S. racked up $115 billion in climate disaster damage last year, scientists are yelling that we’re edging up to the climate point-of-no-return – so naturally Donald Trump’s response is to delete the Obama-era EPA "endangerment finding" that legally forces the government to treat greenhouse gases as dangerous. Why acknowledge reality when you can just edit it out of the Federal Register?
EPA chief Lee Zeldin dutifully showed up to help torch the agency’s own scientific foundation, while the administration pulled a number out of a hat and claimed Americans will somehow save $1.3 trillion by letting polluters run wild. This, despite research showing U.S. incomes would be 12% higher without the climate crisis. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse called it "corruption, plain and simple" – which is polite shorthand for Trump reportedly telling 20 fossil fuel execs in 2024 to cough up $1 billion for his campaign in exchange for tearing up their regulations. Regulatory capture has officially skipped the foreplay and moved straight to itemized invoices.
Meanwhile, China – still the world’s biggest emitter but at least pretending to live on the same planet – is clocking its 21st month of flat or falling emissions, expanding carbon reporting for heavy industry, and pouring investment into clean energy. It’s hardly a climate savior: coal plants keep sprouting, Uyghur forced labor taints solar supply chains, and "green mercantilism" is the business model. Yet somehow, the authoritarian one-party state is at least theoretically constrained by five-year plans and climate targets, while the self‑styled leader of the free world is constrained by whichever oil CEO picked up the dinner tab.
The result: a gaping hole where U.S. climate leadership used to be, a surging disaster bill at home, and a White House cheering on billionaires who plan to get richer selling the matches while everyone else buys the fire insurance. The rest of the world is trying, badly and unevenly, to slam on the brakes. Trump’s America has decided the real emergency is that Exxon might feel slightly regulated.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
trump builds a donor-funded death star ballroom
Artist’s rendering of the people’s house being upgraded to the donors’ palace, complete with complimentary executive overreach and a side of historic demolition.
Donald Trump’s latest vision for American democracy is a $400m, 90,000 sq ft White House ballroom financed by a who’s-who of corporations that just happen to have massive business before the federal government: Meta, Apple, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Palantir, Google, Comcast. Why bother with subtle lobbying when you can literally buy an extension to the presidency’s house? Call it the Access-Industrial Complex, now with chandeliers.
Before anyone approved construction, Trump already started demolishing the East Wing, because laws are for people who don’t own gold-plated toilets. Preservation groups say he violated multiple statutes by tearing into a historic building with “no review whatsoever,” so the National Trust for Historic Preservation has filed a federal lawsuit. The White House’s response: don’t worry, they documented the destruction and “meticulously preserved” some bits of the place they just ripped down. It’s like burning a library and proudly announcing you saved a couple of doorknobs.
Meanwhile, Trump has stacked the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts with loyalists, then—totally unrelated, of course—the official renderings mysteriously vanished from the NCPC website shortly after posting. Regulatory oversight now works on the Las Vegas principle: what happens to the East Wing, stays off the server. The administration insists this is all about “beautifying the visitor experience” and “risk reduction,” which is certainly one way to describe turning the people’s house into a donor-sponsored palace and future inauguration venue for whichever strongman thinks he owns it.
And Trump, naturally, is bragging that the project is “on budget, and ahead of schedule” and will be the “finest Ballroom ever built anywhere in the World.” American infrastructure can crumble, but rest easy: the oligarch-funded imperial ballroom is coming along great.
#corruption#oligarchy#killing-democracy
ivanka’s favorite realtors have… some disclosures to add
Luxury real estate’s finest: from showing Jared and Ivanka beachfront mansions to allegedly coordinating drug-fueled rapes. Location, location, litigation.
The Alexander brothers — Alon, Oren, and Tal — used to be the glossy, Hamptons-hopping real estate "closers" to the rich and shameless. Their client list sparkled: hedge fund guys, celebs, and, of course, Jared and Ivanka Trump, because the Venn diagram of Trumpworld and morally radioactive luxury bros is just a circle. Now the same trio is in federal court, accused of running a years-long operation to lure women with VIP parties and luxury travel, drug them with ketamine, Xanax, Ambien, and GHB, and then rape them — allegedly coordinating the whole thing like a particularly evil sales funnel.
Witnesses have testified to scenes straight out of a horror script: women too incapacitated to walk being dragged to pools, screams for help, and brothers "moaning" as they allegedly raped a woman in a hot tub. One woman described being 17 in Aspen when Alon allegedly handed her spiked vodka cranberries, then raped her in a hotel bathroom while she could "barely hold" her head up. Another early accuser, whose civil suit helped blow this open, is now dead in Australia; police say the circumstances are "non-suspicious", which is doing a lot of work for a case already drenched in power and fear.
Naturally, the defense has gone with the classic rich-guy playbook: it’s all a giant extortion plot by scheming women, the texts about "panty dropper pills" were just "crude jokes", and the brothers were merely successful, arrogant dudes who "liked and pursued women" — you know, normal dating, except with the GHB buffet. Dad Alexander is outside court claiming this all started as a $35m shakedown, while their crisis PR guy whines that the press only reports the "sensational" parts, like the alleged drugging, screaming, and coordinated rape. The jury will decide if this is trafficking or just billionaire-adjacent "hookup culture" with a ketamine garnish, but the Trump-adjacent luxury real estate scene once again looks less like aspirational capitalism and more like a crime scene with better lighting.
#perverts#trumps-america
rfk jr turns nih into the world's most expensive vacant lot
CDC and NIH under RFK Jr.: come for the public health, stay for the conspiracy cosplay.
The National Institutes of Health — you know, the place that helped fund HIV treatments, Covid vaccines, and cancer drugs — is now being run like a mid-level Wendy’s with a 200% turnover rate. Of NIH’s 27 institutes and centers, 16 don’t have permanent directors. That’s not a staffing issue; that’s a controlled demolition. Trump’s second-term health czar Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has discovered that if courts and Congress block your budget cuts, you can just quietly remove the people in charge and replace them later with whoever thinks vaccine inserts are the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Former NIAID director Jeanne Marrazzo — Fauci’s successor — is out after having the gall to defend vaccines and object to canceling NIH research. She was put on leave and then fired, and is now suing NIH and HHS for illegal retaliation, while NIAID just sits there without a real director. This follows Kennedy firing CDC Director Susan Monarez after 29 days for not rubber-stamping his vaccine “revisions,” then gutting childhood vaccine recommendations and rewriting the CDC’s autism page to flirt with anti-vax mythology. The message to scientists is clear: shut up, nod along, and don’t say ‘evidence’ too loudly.
HHS, meanwhile, insists it’s all about “gold-standard science” and “strengthening scientific rigor,” which is a bold statement from an operation that can’t keep more than half of NIH’s top jobs filled and keeps purging anyone who remembers what a clinical trial is. With courts blocking the 40% budget cut and Congress refusing to let Trump and Kennedy chainsaw NIH into eight obedient fiefdoms, the backup plan is a leadership vacuum that can be quietly refilled with loyalists. It’s not exactly subtle: starve the expertise, then claim you’re just ‘reforming’ a broken system.
So the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research is now a parking lot for acting directors, whistleblowers, and people waiting to be fired for saying vaccines work. America’s chronic diseases are still here, but at least the administration is finally treating its real long Covid: a lingering infection of independent science.
#killing-democracy#anti-science#lawlessness
trump exports american decline, throws orbán a lifeline
Pro-Orbán billboard helpfully explains that the real threat to Hungary isn’t the corrupt strongman in power, it’s that pesky Ukrainian president asking not to be steamrolled by Russia.
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has turned one of central Europe’s former success stories into an economic pothole with a flag on it, and now faces a real challenger in Péter Magyar and the Tisza party. After 16 years of "strong leadership," the country has stagnation, crumbling public services, and voters who have finally noticed that permanent culture war doesn’t pay the bills.
So how does an ailing autocrat freshen the brand? Easy: import some American decay. Orbán is leaning hard on his friendship with Donald Trump 2.0, boasting that he alone can schmooze the leaders of the US, Russia, and China like a mid-tier Bond villain who overbooked his lair. A White House photo-op and a Budapest visit from Secretary of State Marco Rubio become campaign props to sell the idea that in a world of strongmen, Hungary needs its own mini-me authoritarian at the table.
Fidesz isn’t even pretending to run on competence any more. The message is pure despair politics: yes, everything is bad, but daring to change it would be worse. Orbán’s team brands European support for Ukraine, migrants, and LGBTQ+ rights as the sinister "Brussels path," while flogging a fantasy "Hungarian path" of peace, sealed borders, and state-sanctioned bigotry—an echo of the Trump administration’s own civilisational panic talk about liberal democracy. With Trump’s Ukraine-sceptic, Russia-friendly posture as cover, Orbán is freer than ever to cuddle up to Moscow and kick Kyiv, all while presenting himself as the only adult who can navigate the global chaos he enthusiastically helps create.
Trump’s America First has quietly become Orbán First, too: US power and prestige repurposed as campaign material for an illiberal European client who survives by convincing his citizens that hope itself is dangerous.
#killing-democracy#fascism
white house posts jim crow meme, blames the intern
Barack Obama on the campaign trail, still somehow expected to be the adult in the room while the current president is reposting Jim Crow memes from his state-sponsored burner account.
The Trump White House decided to honor Black History Month by sharing a video on the president’s official social media depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, set to The Lion Sleeps Tonight because racism apparently needs a soundtrack now. The clip was tacked onto the end of yet another lie-filled rant about 2020 "voter fraud," just to make sure the fascist nostalgia had both the Jim Crow visuals and the Big Lie plotline.
The administration’s first response was to sneer that the backlash was just "fake outrage" — always helpful when the government’s communications shop openly workshopped the talking points of anonymous racists on Telegram. Only after bipartisan condemnation, including from Senator Tim Scott calling it "the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House," did the story evolve into the classic MAGA Mad Lib: a staffer did it, it was deleted, and Trump "didn't see" the part where he shared a viral racist meme to millions of people.
Obama, because someone in this country still remembers how presidents are supposed to sound, told podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen that the real crisis is the total evaporation of shame and decorum among public officials. He described the whole thing as part of a broader "clown show" of cruelty and indecency that dominates social media and TV, while most Americans still cling stubbornly to basic human decency. The current president, meanwhile, is out here stress-testing how much open racism you can run through the official White House communications pipeline before the GOP finally decides that maybe the problem isn’t just the interns.
#racism#killing-democracy
make manufacturing great again by breaking it, again
Trump and friends staring lovingly at a hard hat, searching for the working-class jobs they accidentally tariffed to death.
US politicians of both parties are still LARPing as foremen at a 1953 Ford plant, promising to resurrect the hard-hat economy while the actual economy has moved on to services, software, and selling each other healthcare at a 400% markup. Trump’s first term slapped tariffs on everything that wasn’t nailed down, jacking up prices on the imported components that American manufacturers rely on, making US steel more expensive than a Manhattan studio apartment and helping exactly no one except a few well-lobbied sectors. Manufacturing still accounts for less than 8% of US jobs, but sure, let’s build the entire political narrative around it and call that “populism.”
Biden tried the “slightly less stupid but much more complicated” version: hundreds of billions in industrial policy, Buy America rules, and subsidies so generous they managed to make manufacturing more expensive by bidding up materials, equipment, and wages while helping nudge up interest rates and the dollar. Factory construction boomed on paper, actual equipment investment lagged, and manufacturing output never even clawed back to pre-Covid levels. Then Trump strolls back in 2024, reheating the same "factories will come roaring back" line like leftover fast food, and the plant-building boom promptly fizzles.
The punchline: the decline of manufacturing is mostly a long-term structural shift, not a Deep State plot against hard hats. Productivity growth in factories stalled 15 years ago, the number of manufacturing firms has fallen even as the overall business count rises, and the only industrial bright spot is… kombucha and fancy sparkling water. There is a rational case for targeted support in critical areas like chips and clean energy, but instead we get nostalgia cosplay plus protectionism that raises prices for consumers and kneecaps other industries. The political class keeps selling voters a Norman Rockwell poster while delivering higher costs, zero revival, and a national strategy built around pretending the 21st century never happened.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
denmark lets the us play cop, wonders if that was a bad idea
Danish sovereignty, seen here being checked through U.S. military customs and declared a "donation".
Denmark helpfully signed a 2023 defense deal giving the U.S. “unhindered access” to Danish airbases and letting American soldiers and military police exercise powers over Danish civilians on Danish soil, then acted surprised when lawyers read the constitution and said: absolutely not. Independent MP Theresa Scavenius is now preparing to sue the Danish state, arguing that outsourcing sovereignty to the Pentagon without the 5/6 parliamentary majority required for transferring power to "international authorities" is, technically speaking, illegal.
While Copenhagen insists this is all totally fine and not at all a surrender of sovereignty, the agreement keeps U.S. troops under U.S. jurisdiction and lets them crack down on civilians at and even outside the bases in Karup, Skrydstrup and Aalborg. The Danish Institute for Human Rights has helpfully pointed out that this could mean U.S. soldiers can break up protests and use excessive force against Danes while remaining beyond the reach of Danish courts. So, a small-scale legal black hole, but with better design and pastries nearby.
Complicating the vibe, Donald Trump is out here threatening to invade Greenland again, turning his failed "buy Greenland" bit into a live-fire sequel. That has triggered a mini-European troop deployment to Greenland and raised the awkward question of whether maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t give a country whose ex-president is fantasizing about invading your territory the legal right to police your civilians. The Danish government, however, insists that with U.S.-Danish tensions this high, the smart play is to cling tighter to Washington. Because when the arsonist keeps waving matches at your house, the only logical response is to hand him the keys and power of attorney.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
ice discovers perjury is bad, after shooting a venezuelan through a closed door
ICE agents, bravely defending America from the mortal threat of immigrants armed with snow shovels, as long as the bodycam footage never sees daylight.
Federal authorities are shocked, simply shocked to discover that two ICE officers may have lied under oath about a Minneapolis shooting during Trump’s immigration crackdown. Video evidence appears to show that the sworn testimony from not one but two officers was, as ICE director Todd Lyons delicately puts it, "untruthful"—also known in non-bureaucrat English as perjury. The officers are now on leave and facing possible firing and criminal charges, which is the closest thing to accountability ICE has seen since its founding.
A federal judge has tossed felony assault charges against Venezuelan immigrants Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna and Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, who were accused of beating an ICE officer with a broom handle and snow shovel, supposedly forcing the brave federal warrior to shoot Sosa-Celis in the thigh. The Justice Department did a rare reverse ferret, moving to dismiss after "newly discovered evidence" turned out to be materially inconsistent with the original cop fanfic. Their lawyer says the charges were based on lies by an ICE agent who "recklessly shot into their home through a closed door," which really adds that special Trump-era flavor of militarized incompetence.
Naturally, the political hype machine was already running at full volume. Kristi Noem rushed to accuse Minnesota governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey of encouraging assaults on law enforcement, solemnly declaring the incident an "attempted murder of federal law enforcement" and describing an ambush with snow shovels and broom handles. DHS now concedes those claims were false, and Noem’s office has gone suspiciously quiet about her little copaganda fanfic. Meanwhile, the government still hasn’t said whether the men they shot at and falsely charged will be deported, because in Trump’s America, getting lied about and shot by the state doesn’t necessarily get you off the deportation conveyor belt—it just means you’re also a crime victim.
#lawlessness#anti-immigration
trump announces elections are state-run, except when he feels like it
Trump on Air Force One, discovering new constitutional powers between Truth Social posts and in-flight dessert.
Trump, currently rage-posting from Air Force One like a bored monarch on a private jet, has announced that there will be national voter ID for the midterms, "whether approved by Congress or not." The Save America Act — his latest voter suppression starter pack that adds strict photo ID, proof-of-citizenship registration, and kneecaps mail-in voting — is stalled in the Senate, so he’s now threatening to just conjure it into existence via executive order.
The constitution, minor detail, actually leaves running elections to the states. Courts already told him last year that he "lacks the authority" to unilaterally rewrite voter registration rules, when a judge blocked his proof-of-citizenship order. So naturally, Trump’s response is to promise another one, claiming there are mysterious "Legal reasons" this is all allowed — to be revealed later, presumably right after Rudy finds them at the bottom of a Four Seasons landscaping invoice.
He also insists "the People" demand no mail-in ballots (they don’t; polling shows 58% support expanded vote-by-mail), while calling Democrats "horrible, disingenuous CHEATERS" and warning that if they ever gain power, they’ll add two states and pack the court. So the guy threatening to seize unprecedented federal control of elections and bulldoze voting rights is accusing others of planning a power grab. American democracy continues its fun experiment in whether the system can survive a president who thinks the separation of powers is just a bad ratings gimmick.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
ground control to major nutcase
Rep. Adam Smith politely trying to describe a five-alarm constitutional dumpster fire as merely ‘sheer insanity.’
The Trump FAA apparently decided El Paso’s skies were just another campaign prop. According to House Armed Services ranking member Rep. Adam Smith, the administration’s handling of the El Paso airspace closure was so chaotic he labeled it “sheer insanity” — which, to be fair, is the closest thing this White House has to a brand identity. Instead of clear communication, coherent justification, or basic respect for public safety and commercial traffic, we got the usual: confusion, secrecy, and a strong whiff of political convenience.
Because why treat controlled airspace like critical infrastructure when you can treat it like a VIP rope line at Mar-a-Lago? Flights were disrupted, local authorities and the public were left guessing, and the federal government once again demonstrated that under Trump, national assets — even the literal sky — are just tools for political theater. The message is clear: if you live near a border city, your airspace, your economy, and your safety are all subject to whatever impulsive stunt the White House dreams up before breakfast.
This isn’t just logistical incompetence; it’s one more example of an administration casually normalizing the idea that federal power exists to serve the president’s whims, not the public interest. Today it’s closing down airspace over El Paso like it’s a private airshow. Tomorrow? Who knows. Maybe they’ll start geo-fencing democracy itself.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump discovers there are still norms left to break
Deepa Shivaram, bravely documenting the president’s ongoing attempt to see if there are any norms he hasn’t shattered yet.
President Trump is once again doing his favorite presidential pastime: stress-testing what's left of American democracy like it's a cheap folding chair from Walmart. Ahead of a meeting with the nation's governors, he's reportedly gearing up not for cooperative federalism, but for another performance of "What If We Just Made Everything Partisan, Forever?"—this time targeting spaces that were historically nonpartisan on purpose, like basic intergovernmental coordination.
Rather than treat governors as partners in governing, Trump is treating them like contestants on a rigged game show where the prize is not getting your state punished. The article notes his "willingness to attack Democratic norms and traditions," which is a very polite way of saying he's once again trying to turn routine governance into a loyalty test and convert neutral institutions into extensions of his campaign rally.
The upshot: the more Trump injects partisanship into what used to be boring, functional parts of government, the more he normalizes the idea that every lever of state power exists to serve his political needs. It’s not policy, it’s not leadership—it’s a long, drawn-out experiment in how far you can erode democratic guardrails before the whole thing finally tips over.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump doj discovers bold new legal theory: journalism is a civil rights crime
Don Lemon walks into federal court to answer for the grave crime of pointing a camera at Trump’s immigration police while the government quietly pretends the First Amendment was just a suggestion.
Donald Trump’s Justice Department has apparently decided the real civil rights crisis in America is Don Lemon holding a camera. The former CNN host pleaded not guilty to federal civil rights charges after covering an anti-ICE protest at a Minnesota church whose pastor just happens to also be an ICE official. The administration’s position: interrupting a service to demand justice for two people shot dead by federal officers is a threat to religious freedom; shooting them in the first place is just solid border policy.
Prosecutors dusted off the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act—yes, the one meant to protect people from being terrorized at abortion clinics—and repurposed it to go after nine protesters and journalists, including Lemon and civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong. At the same time, the White House was busy pushing an AI-doctored image of Armstrong crying during her arrest, because if you’re going to criminalize dissent, you might as well add some deepfake propaganda for that authentic authoritarian flair.
The DOJ also grabbed Lemon’s phone in Los Angeles, stuck it in DHS custody, and sealed the warrant, because nothing says "we definitely aren’t retaliating against the press" like secret searches of a journalist’s device. Even the National Association of Black Journalists had to spell it out: this is an escalating government effort to criminalize the press under the warm, fuzzy branding of “law enforcement.” Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi calls the protest a “coordinated attack” on a church and press secretary Karoline Leavitt warns that Trump “will not tolerate the intimidation and harassment of Christians” — but federal agents killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti? That’s just business as usual.
To really drive home how corrupt this all is, one of Lemon’s lawyers, Joe Thompson, actually quit the U.S. attorney’s office in disgust over the immigration crackdown and the DOJ’s shrugging response to those killings. The administration, of course, cites fraud cases largely involving the state’s Somali community as justification for turning Minnesota into a laboratory for immigration crackdowns. So yes, they’re now using a law written to protect clinic patients to prosecute journalists and Black activists for chanting "ICE out" in church. Process as punishment, propaganda as policy, and the First Amendment as collateral damage—the Trump administration’s civil rights doctrine in one neat little indictment.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#fascism
lindsey graham: north star of the trump personality cult
Lindsey Graham, moments before explaining that blocking a $1.2 trillion funding bill so he can carve out legal protections for himself is just what a fiercely independent Trump ally does.
Sen. Lindsey Graham has discovered a rare political superpower: he can occasionally say the quiet part slightly less loud and still remain one of Donald Trump’s favorite emotional support senators. Fresh off briefly holding a $1.2 trillion government funding bill hostage so he could slip in a special perk letting eight senators (including himself) sue the government over their secretly obtained phone records, Graham assured everyone he’s an ally of the White House, just “not owned” by them. Bold talk from the guy who dropped his little accountability-shield tantrum within hours and then showed up in the Oval Office grinning under a red “America is Back” hat like he’d just liberated Europe.
On foreign policy, the longtime hawk has repackaged his endless-war instincts as helpful guidance for President Forever Coup Attempt. Graham loudly advertises sanctions and tough talk on Russia and Iran on Trump’s behalf, then watches as nothing actually happens, because the “America First” doctrine mostly consists of vibes and merch. He even publicly contradicts Trump about Iranian protesters still being killed, but it’s fine because he also calls Trump a “great president” and, crucially, knows how to play golf. Policy differences are allowed, as long as everyone agrees the sun revolves around Mar-a-Lago.
Back home in South Carolina, Graham’s main concern isn’t Democrats; it’s whether he looks sufficiently MAGA in a state where the only real election is the primary. After once calling Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” Graham has now fully harmonized with Trump’s anti-immigrant crusade, pushing a bill to end sanctuary city policies and bragging about “deporting violent illegal aliens” as his new bipartisan love language. Even former critic Nancy Mace has decided that backing Trump’s deportation agenda is the safest career move, because of course it is.
Meanwhile, Project 2025 architect Paul Dans is running at Graham from the right, calling it “a battle for the future of MAGA” and hoping Trump might swap endorsements like it’s another reality TV finale. The White House, for now, calls Graham a “critical” partner in advancing the America First agenda, which is a polite way of saying: he occasionally pretends to stand up to Trump, then folds, then gets invited back to the White House more than anyone else. Graham calls himself Trump’s “north star.” That’s one way to describe it. Another is: the courtier who figured out the only principle that really matters in this party — “I like him and he likes him.”
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
virginia court greenlights ‘democracy, but make it vibes-based maps’
Virginia Democrats announce their plan to fight Trump’s gerrymanders by… launching their own gerrymander, because the real bipartisan consensus is that voters are mostly decorative.
American democracy has entered its Late Gerrymander phase, and Virginia just punched its ticket. The Virginia Supreme Court politely informed Republicans that, yes, voters will get to weigh in on whether Democrats can redraw the state’s congressional map before November, and no, their lawsuit tantrum does not cancel elections. The court will still hear the GOP’s process complaints later, but crucially said that has "no effect" on the April 21 referendum, which is legalese for: the train is leaving the station, you can litigate from the platform.
Republicans are calling the move a brutal partisan power grab that would drop their share of House seats far below their share of voters. Democrats, having apparently discovered the concept of consequences, respond that they’re just answering President Trump’s multi-state "What if we just rig all the maps?" tour. Trump pushed Texas Republicans to redraw their map for five extra GOP seats, with Missouri and North Carolina each squeezing out one more. Now Virginia Democrats want to flip their delegation from 6D-5R to a 10D-1R "thanks for playing" arrangement, while California Democrats have already gotten voter approval for a map designed to cancel out Texas’ gambit.
The result is a national cartography arms race where both parties openly brag about how many seats they can manufacture with a pen, and voters are basically background extras. Overall, Republicans still lead the redistricting scoreboard by a couple seats, and Florida’s GOP is already warming up the eraser for their own April adjustment. Trump’s agenda for his final two years hinges on keeping a razor-thin House majority, so naturally the fate of the republic comes down to which side can draw the most imaginative lines on a map and convince a court it counts as representation. This is fine.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
trump sues harvard for insufficient groveling
Future defendants in a federal loyalty test gather on the steps of Harvard, blissfully unaware that their admissions files are now a front-line battleground in Trump's war on reality.
The Trump administration has decided that if it can't control what Harvard teaches, it will at least try to rummage through every admissions file like a racially obsessed raccoon. The DOJ, now starring Harmeet Dhillon as "Civil Rights" chief, is suing Harvard for allegedly slow-walking and limiting access to applicant-level admissions data tied to race, ethnicity and DEI. Officially, they're not accusing Harvard of discrimination or seeking money or cutting funding this time. Unofficially, Trump is on TV demanding $1bn from the university for being too "woke". Totally normal separation of powers behavior.
Harvard, for its part, says it's been complying "in good faith" while also refusing to "surrender its independence" or roll over for what it bluntly calls unlawful government overreach. That stance is not theoretical: last year Trump yanked roughly $2bn in research grants and froze federal funding, and a federal court had to step in and remind the White House that, no, actually, the government doesn't get to dictate what private universities teach or who they admit. The court found the cuts violated Harvard's free speech rights; the White House responded by vowing to appeal and announcing Harvard is still "ineligible" for future grants anyway. Checks and balances, Trump-style: lose in court, then just announce you won.
This latest lawsuit demands an injunction forcing Harvard to hand over more data now and in the future, while Trump publicly threatens to revoke its tax-exempt status and even seize control of its patents from federally funded research. Meanwhile, three other Ivy League schools—Columbia, Penn, and Brown—have already struck deals to preserve their funding, because nothing encourages academic freedom quite like the president personally shaking down universities until they agree to terms. The message is clear: comply with the ideological loyalty audit, or watch your grants, patents, and tax status go on the chopping block. Free speech, brought to you by the guy trying to nationalize Harvard's lab notebooks.
#killing-democracy#fascism#unconstitutional
dhs promises to stop terrorizing specific cities and just terrorize everyone equally
DHS leadership, seen here carefully calibrating how many non-criminals you can arrest and how many citizens you can kill before calling the operation a success.
The Department of Homeland Security would like you to know that, after turning Minneapolis into a live-action ICE raid simulator, they have no immediate plans to do that to another city. Over 3,000 ICE, CBP, and assorted federal cosplay commandos flooded the Twin Cities in "Operation Metro Surge," netting 4,000 arrests, sparking protests, and, minor detail, the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. But don’t worry, DHS says the real lesson here is… logistics.
Instead of concentrating their chaos in one metro area at a time, officials now say ICE will focus on “serious criminals” nationwide — which is an inspiring claim from an agency that just oversaw a sevenfold increase in arrests of people with no convictions and swept up at least 75,000 non-criminals in large-scale city operations. Border Patrol agents who were bizarrely reassigned to roam the country’s interior are being sent back to the border, while their Minneapolis field trip leader Gregory Bovino has been quietly demoted back to his old job like a middle manager who crashed the company van.
Kristi Noem, now moonlighting as Homeland Security Secretary, plans to refocus on families of crime victims and, of course, "voting security" — the MAGA two-for-one special: stoke fear of immigrants, then pivot seamlessly into implying elections are suspect if the wrong people vote. Meanwhile, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons bragged to Congress about 379,000 arrests and 475,000 deportations, sprinkled with headline-friendly numbers of suspected gang members and "known or suspected terrorists" to make the industrial-scale expulsion of non-criminals sound like a Marvel movie plot instead of a massive, rights-shredding dragnet.
#anti-immigration#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump’s board of peace forgets the gaza and the peace parts
Kaja Kallas gamely waving while explaining that Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ forgot to include Gaza, the UN, or basic accountability, but did remember to center Donald Trump.
The EU just noticed that Donald Trump’s much‑hyped “Board of Peace” for Gaza is actually a Board of Trump, for Trump. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas politely pointed out that the shiny new charter for this thing somehow forgot to mention Gaza, the UN, any time limit, or Palestinians having any say at all. The original UN security council resolution set it up as a temporary, UN‑linked mechanism for Gaza; Trump’s version looks more like a free‑floating imperial franchise with a logo.
Democratic senator Chris Murphy then said the quiet part out loud: the board is built so there are basically no controls to stop billions in reconstruction cash from wandering off into the pockets of Trump’s "friends and cronies". So yes, the US is telling the world that routing money through the UN is too risky, and the safer bet is a bespoke Trump vehicle with less transparency than his tax returns. Very reassuring.
Trump’s handpicked "high representative for Gaza", Nickolay Mladenov, tried to stay above the fight and talk ceasefire phases, weapons decommissioning, and humanitarian aid, while carefully refusing to touch words like "genocide" with a ten‑foot pole. Meanwhile, US UN ambassador Mike Waltz scolded Europe for "hand‑wringing" and bragged about lining up Indonesian troops for an International Stabilisation Force, because nothing says accountable postwar governance like a security architecture welded to a statute that pretends Gaza and the UN don’t exist.
So to recap: a UN‑mandated body for Gaza reconstruction is being quietly repurposed into a semi‑permanent Trump‑branded authority with no Palestinian accountability, no clear endpoint, and a giant, blinking "billions available, oversight optional" sign. It’s foreign policy as a forever‑grifting business model, with a side of killing-democracy for dessert.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
missouri guy helps dc mob jack georgia’s ballots
Two guys in suits posing under a Trump portrait, presumably brainstorming how to use federal law enforcement to chase YouTube conspiracy theories.
The “law and order” gang is back at it, this time with Thomas Albus, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney from Missouri, quietly huddling with Trump’s election-dead-ender lawyers before the FBI raided the Fulton County, Georgia election center. Albus, whose prior experience with election law is checks notes basically zero, was handpicked by Attorney General Pam Bondi and given nationwide election powers anyway, because why let qualifications get in the way of a good authoritarian cosplay?
These strategy sessions featured Ed Martin and Kurt Olsen — yes, the same Olsen who was sanctioned by a federal court for lying about voting machines, and both of whom previously tried to overturn the 2020 election for Trump. They called it “election integrity,” which in Trumpworld means “use the Justice Department as a personal fixers’ office to chase our fan fiction about rigged elections.” When Fulton County officials wouldn’t hand over tens of thousands of absentee ballots, Martin went on Steve Bannon’s podcast to daydream about just sending U.S. marshals to seize them. Subtle.
Not long after those meetings, Albus and Olsen were interviewing friendly witnesses like conservative researcher Kevin Moncla, whose 263-page conspiracy scrapbook helped convince a judge to sign off on the Fulton raid. So the White House hires a sanctioned Stop the Steal lawyer, pairs him with a freshly empowered U.S. attorney, pipelines MAGA activists into affidavits, and then unleashes the FBI on a Democratic county’s election office — all while screaming about the “weaponization” of DOJ against them. Truly, no one abuses power quite like the guys who swear they’re the real victims.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
