trump trades 'you’re fired' for 'loyalty über alles'
Trump’s ‘fantastic’ cabinet, seen here competing to see who can praise the Dear Leader loudly enough to keep their job and their security detail.
Donald Trump has finally found a way to cut down on staff turnover: stop hiring anyone who might ever say no to him. After a first term that looked like a White House remake of Battle Royale, Trump 2.0 has settled on a new management philosophy: keep the loyalists, ignore the scandals, and pretend everything is going great. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth is under fire for misusing encrypted apps and bungling Caribbean operations, Kristi Noem is allegedly treating Homeland Security like her personal AmEx Black, Kash Patel is torching what’s left of the FBI’s credibility, and Tulsi Gabbard is filming doomsday monologues about nuclear annihilation — and Trump’s response is basically: fantastic job, everyone.
Critics point out the obvious: this isn’t a cabinet, it’s a court. The only real qualification is personal devotion to Trump. As Brookings’ Bill Galston notes, it’s now loyalty über alles — if you’re a loud enough fighter for Trump, your actual performance is a rounding error. Tara Setmayer spells it out: the sycophancy is the point. Competence is optional; obedience is mandatory. The Senate, slightly less eager to jump off the cliff with him as his approval ratings crater, has made it harder to confirm new extremists, so Trump is stuck with the ones he’s got — which conveniently means he never has to admit a mistake or give the media the satisfaction of a firing.
Meanwhile, the real ‘personnel changes’ are happening out of sight. Trump has pushed millions of federal workers to quit, cleared out advisory councils, and let the justice department fire dozens of career prosecutors, including those connected to investigations involving him. In other words, he’s stopped firing cabinet-level loyalists and started quietly purging the people who actually enforce laws and provide independent oversight. Because nothing says “great job, Mr President” like dismantling the guardrails that might hold you accountable.
#killing-democracy#fascism
mar-a-lago accords: america’s freelance foreign policy shop
Zelenskyy prepares to discuss Ukraine’s survival at the world’s most corrupt country club, where international law goes to die between the shrimp tower and the putting green.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy is apparently heading to Florida, because nothing says "serious peace negotiations" like flying to the guy’s beach club to see what deal he and his real estate buddies cooked up between golf rounds. Trump’s "peace envoy" Steve Witkoff – a property developer, naturally – has been shuttling between Russian and Ukrainian reps, joined by America’s most experienced statesman, Jared "Middle East Peace, But Make It Kush" Kushner.
Behind the scenes, Trump’s crew is floating an updated US proposal straight to Putin’s top foreign policy aide while the Kremlin demands Ukraine hand over the entire Donbas and dangles a tiny "territorial exchange" like it’s haggling over a condo floor plan. Zelenskyy is talking about withdrawing heavy forces under a US-backed "free economic zone" plan, because when you’ve been invaded and partially occupied, what you really need is a special economic district designed by Trump-world.
In other words, US foreign policy is now being run like a distressed luxury asset: talked over at Mar-a-Lago, staffed by Trump’s son-in-law and a developer, and quietly pitched to Moscow as a take‑it‑or‑leave‑it deal involving someone else’s borders. But sure, this is all about "peace" and not about a twice‑impeached Putin fanboy desperately trying to prove he can end the war by giving the Kremlin most of what it wanted in the first place.
#killing-democracy#imperialism
trump declares climate a hoax, sends your bills to prove it
Trump explains that wind turbines are a scam while standing in front of a coal pile and a stack of your utility bills.
Turns out Americans can, in fact, connect dots. New Yale polling shows about 65% of voters now link the climate crisis to their rising cost of living, even as the Trump administration screams that clean energy is a "green scam" and a "con job". As floods, droughts, and heatwaves jack up food prices and help send coffee and chocolate into luxury-goods territory, voters are noticing that maybe, just maybe, burning the planet isn’t the cheapest long-term energy strategy.
Meanwhile, the White House has decided the real threat isn’t climate change, it’s people knowing about it. Trump has fired federal climate scientists, scrubbed climate information from EPA websites, tried to kill off a major climate research organization, and pushed to eliminate FEMA during hurricane season—because nothing says "strong leadership" like defunding disaster response while disasters get worse. He’s also trying to ban solar and wind farms and has choked off renewables that are often the cheapest source of power, then bragged about "lowering" energy costs as electricity and insurance bills soar.
The punchline: this agenda is wildly unpopular. Nearly 8 in 10 voters oppose restricting climate research and information, the same number think killing FEMA is insane, and 65% reject Trump’s crusade against offshore wind. In other words, there is zero mandate for any of this, but the administration is governing like it won a referendum on "more floods, less science". The official line from the White House is that Trump has "restored common sense" and "reversed Joe Biden’s green energy scam"—which is a bold way of describing paying more for dirtier energy while pretending voters are too dumb to notice their own bills.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
congress tries doing nothing and somehow manages to do less
Congress, seen here bravely guarding its constitutional powers by leaving the door unlocked and a note that says, "Do whatever, we’re on recess."
Congress started 2025 with an "ambitious agenda" and ended it by handing the car keys, the title, and the entire DMV over to Donald Trump. Twelve months, record-low number of bills, and a historic levels of "you know what, let him do it" later, the legislative branch has basically rebranded as the president’s cheering section.
Because nothing says "coequal branch of government" like ceding much of your power to an aspiring autocrat and then bragging about how you bravely did absolutely nothing. In other words, Congress looked at the Constitution, looked at Trump, and decided checks and balances were just suggestions.
So here we are: a "tumultuous year" in which the only real turbulence was the sound barrier breaking as lawmakers sprinted away from their duties. But sure, tell us more about how this is all just normal gridlock and not the legislative branch slowly strangling itself so the president doesn’t have to.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
truth social declares war on nigeria
Trump, proudly announcing airstrikes in a country most of his base couldn’t find on a map, while calling it a perfect Christian rescue mission and providing fewer details than a Call of Duty trailer.
Donald Trump has apparently decided that the US now runs airstrikes in Nigeria by Truth Social post, announcing that “at my direction as Commander in Chief” the US launched a “powerful and deadly strike” on ISIS “Terrorist Scum” in north-west Nigeria. No coordinates, no casualty counts, no Pentagon briefing, no Nigerian government statement—just the Department of War (yes, that’s what he’s calling it now) executing “perfect strikes,” because nothing says responsible use of military force like a caps-locked Christmas communiqué from a social network that can’t stay online for 24 hours straight.
Trump, who has been publicly fantasizing about a “guns-a-blazing” intervention in Nigeria, is selling this as a crusade to protect Christians, because if there’s one thing the religious right loves, it’s turning a complex, decades-long conflict over land, resources, and governance into a simple “Muslim bad, Christian good” movie pitch. Analysts point out that much of the violence is driven by competition over water and farmland and good old-fashioned criminal ransom schemes—but sure, let’s rebrand it as a holy war and send in American bombs with a side of domestic campaign messaging.
So we now have the US apparently conducting airstrikes in a sovereign, officially secular country with a nearly 50/50 Muslim-Christian split, based on a president’s public promise that there would be “hell to pay” if they didn’t handle things the way he likes. No congressional debate, no transparency, and no details beyond “trust me, they were perfect.” In other words: unilateral military action wrapped in sectarian rhetoric, live-streamed from a grievance app—because nothing screams “respect for international law” like using another nation’s internal conflict as a stage prop for your Christian nationalist fanbase.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
susie wiles discovers conscience, checks polling first
Susie Wiles gazes at Trump like a woman who just realized all her 11 taped interviews might not be enough to wash this off her résumé.
Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff and newly christened "Susie Trump" (because nothing says healthy democracy like your top White House aide being absorbed into the family brand), has apparently decided that now is the perfect time to start whispering that the president has "an alcoholic’s personality" and a vindictive streak a mile wide. In a marathon 9,500-word Vanity Fair profile based on 11 on-the-record interviews, Wiles calls JD Vance a conspiracy theorist, labels Elon Musk an "odd, odd duck" while trashing his dismantling of USAID, and dishes on the rest of the regime like she’s doing exit interviews for a collapsing startup instead of an administration.
Wiles is publicly insisting she was the victim of a "hit piece" and "selective quoting", because of course the first woman White House chief of staff in this mess has to speedrun the "I enabled it, but with a raised eyebrow" defense. Meanwhile, veterans like Rick Wilson point out there is exactly "0.000 chance" that a hyper-seasoned operator did 11 taped interviews by accident. In other words, Susie is trying to negotiate a plea bargain with history: yes, she helped manage the revenge-obsessed, conspiracy-curious, USAID-dismantling White House, but she got the joke, you see, so she’s not one of the bad authoritarians.
The whole thing offers a neat little window into Trump’s court: a vengeful president, a Q-pilled vice-president, a billionaire wrecking US foreign aid for funsies, and a chief of staff who wants credit both for keeping the machine humming and for quietly recognizing that the machine is a meat grinder for democracy. But sure, she’s "not an enabler"—she just schedules the enabling, staffs the enabling, and calls reporters to make sure history understands she found the enabling a bit gauche.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
turns out yelling in the streets actually works, which is awkward for king donald
Crowds at the Women’s March proving that contrary to White House belief, ‘real Americans’ do in fact own shoes, read books, and vote you out later.
Historians and political scientists have delivered some terrible news for Donald Trump and his friends in the "presidents should be kings now" caucus: mass protests work. From emancipation to civil rights to marriage equality, people taking to the streets has repeatedly forced the US government to stop being quite so openly terrible. In Trump’s America, that started with the 2017 Women’s March – the largest single-day protest in US history – which did more than generate pink-hat selfies. It helped trigger an explosion of women running for office and a measurable shift in votes toward Democrats in the 2018 midterms. In other words, a bunch of women showed up with signs and proceeded to rearrange Congress, which is presumably not what the Access Hollywood Administration had in mind.
The research is annoyingly clear: when lots of people protest, elections move. Counties with bigger Women’s March turnouts saw higher support for Democrats and more votes for women and candidates of color; Tea Party protests did the same for Republicans in 2010, proving that public rage is a bipartisan force multiplier. One study even notes that adding one more protester does more for a cause than adding one more voter – because nothing says "functional democracy" like having to stand in the cold with a cardboard sign just to get basic rights. And looming over Trump’s second-term fantasy of hereditary rule is the famous 3.5% rule: if roughly 3.5% of the population mobilizes against a regime, it tends to fall. With the new "No Kings" protests drawing historic crowds, the message is clear: you can pack the courts, gut the agencies, and flirt with autocracy all you want – but if a few million people decide they’re done with your cosplay monarchy, the streets start doing what the institutions won’t.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump’s doj receives a million epstein files, promises to maybe look at them eventually
Pictured: the DOJ bravely preparing to spend several weeks deciding which Epstein files to read and which ones to accidentally-on-purpose misplace.
The Department of Justice says it’s going to need “weeks” to review one million new Epstein-related documents, because nothing says equal justice under law like handing a mountain of potential blackmail material on the global elite to the same political operation currently obsessed with punishing enemies and protecting friends.
According to DOJ, they’re carefully assessing these documents to determine what’s real, what’s fake, and what’s politically inconvenient enough to quietly disappear into the world’s deepest filing cabinet. They’ve already rushed out to declare one Epstein letter referencing Trump as “fake,” which is fascinating, because this is the fastest anyone at DOJ has moved since… ever. Imagine if they reviewed corporate crime or domestic terrorism with this level of urgency.
In other words: the government that can’t process asylum claims, can’t count votes without screaming fraud, and can’t comply with subpoenas without crying witch hunt is now in charge of sifting through a million Epstein files that may implicate rich, powerful people—including some very good friends of Donald J. Trump. But sure, we’re absolutely going to get transparency and accountability this time. Totally.
So now we wait while Trump’s DOJ, with all the subtlety of a paper shredder in overdrive, decides which victims get justice, which predators get protection, and which documents get “lost” in the great American tradition of elite-only law enforcement. Merry Christmas from your two-tier justice system.
#lawlessness#forever-grifting
america first, allies last, laws optional
Trump contemplates foreign policy the only way he knows how: as a reality show where the prize is unchecked military power and nobody reads the fine print of the Constitution.
Turns out "America First" was never about staying home and minding our own business; it was about giving Donald Trump a blank check to throw U.S. power around the world like a bored oligarch with a drone fleet. NPR politely notes that in his first year back in office, Trump has made it clear this isn’t isolationism at all — it’s just unilateralism with worse manners, where treaties, allies, and Congress are speed bumps on the way to whatever impulsive flex he wants that day.
Aggressive use of unilateral power is doing a lot of work here. It means foreign policy made by one guy’s ego and a phone, weaponizing the world’s largest military and economy without meaningful oversight, because nothing says "responsible superpower" like improvising grand strategy between rallies and grievance posts. In other words, "America First" has fully matured into what it always was: a branding exercise for using the United States as a personal cudgel on the global stage — killing democracy abroad while eroding it at home, but sure, tell us more about how this is just a "doctrine" and not a long-running constitutional crisis.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
veteran diplomat attempts to translate trumpese into human
Seasoned diplomat stares into the middle distance, trying to turn Trump’s foreign policy word salad into something that wouldn’t terrify allied governments.
Wendy Sherman, who has served under three presidents who could locate countries on a map, stops by NPR to perform the impossible holiday miracle: explaining Donald Trump’s second-term foreign policy like it’s a coherent strategy and not just whatever he rage-posted on Truth Social between court dates.
In the segment, Sherman analyzes how Trump is approaching the world this year—read: shredding alliances, flirting with strongmen, and treating national security like a loyalty test and a personal brand opportunity. Because nothing says serious global leadership like threatening NATO on Monday, praising authoritarians on Tuesday, and asking, "Wait, which Korea is the good one again?" by the weekend.
So NPR politely calls it an “approach,” Sherman gamely translates it into diplomat-speak, and the rest of us are left watching a second-term foreign policy that looks a lot less like statecraft and a lot more like America’s geopolitical credit score circling the drain—but sure, let’s pretend this is all just normal presidential behavior.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump’s 'billionaire first' plan: crush unions, call it populism
Trump’s ‘Billionaire First’ jobs program: one job for you, three yachts for them.
Donald Trump has spent the year waging what AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler calls an “unrelenting attack on working people,” which in Trump World is marketed as economic genius and blue-collar outreach. His big move: executive orders nuking collective bargaining rights for more than 1 million federal workers, because nothing says “I love the working class” like kneecapping their ability to negotiate for pay and protections.
The House just passed a bill to restore those rights, but the AFL-CIO is now bracing for a Senate fight in January, right as another government shutdown looms and the White House continues to insist that concerns about affordability are a “hoax.” Out in reality, workers are drowning in record credit-card debt just to buy groceries, while Trump’s “Billionaire First” agenda showers corporations and the ultra-rich with rewards and tells everyone else to be grateful for the vibes.
Unions, somehow, are now the last major institution most people actually trust, and they’re gearing up to turn that into a 2026 midterm battering ram. With Starbucks baristas on strike for a first contract and inequality exploding alongside AI-driven consolidation of wealth, Shuler is basically spelling it out: either workers get power and guardrails, or the future of the economy belongs entirely to Trump’s favorite people — the billionaires, the corporations, and whoever can afford to pretend this is all going great.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
nothing says christmas like lying to children about coal and elections
Trump, surrounded by NORAD decorations, explains to an 8-year-old that coal is beautiful, elections he lost were actually wins, and that Santa is now a national security threat.
NORAD’s annual "track Santa" tradition is supposed to be a cute, nonpartisan moment where kids call in and chat with the president about reindeer and presents. Under Trump, it’s now a joint venture between the fossil fuel lobby and Stop the Steal. When an 8-year-old girl from Kansas City said she didn’t want coal for Christmas, Trump corrected her: it’s actually "clean, beautiful coal" — because nothing says holiday magic like marketing the dirtiest fossil fuel on Earth to children on live TV.
Trump then explained that the U.S. government is making sure Santa isn’t "infiltrated" and that we’re not getting a "bad Santa" sneaking into the country — in other words, he managed to work border paranoia into a call with a kid asking about presents. He also reminded another child that Oklahoma was "very good" to him in the election and told them not to ever leave the state, because apparently even Santa outreach has to double as a campaign stop now.
The real centerpiece, though, was Trump lying about the 2020 election to a child from Pennsylvania, claiming he won the state "actually, three times" and adding, "I bet your mom voted properly." So we’ve now reached the stage where election denial is just casual small talk with 8-year-olds. After the calls, he jumped onto Truth Social to wish a Merry Christmas to "Radical Left Scum" allegedly trying and failing to destroy the country, before bragging about how "respected" America is under him. But sure, tell me again how both sides are equally normal.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
trump tries to defund counterterrorism to own the sanctuary cities
The Trump administration, carefully weighing national security needs against the urgent priority of punishing blue states for not doing ICE’s paperwork.
The Trump administration had a fun new idea for "homeland security": strip more than $230 million in FEMA and DHS counterterrorism and disaster-prep grants from states that won't turn their cops into unpaid ICE agents. Because nothing says "keeping Americans safe" like yanking anti-terror and emergency response money from New York, Massachusetts, and D.C. to score Fox News points.
Unfortunately for the White House, US district judge Mary McElroy — a 2018 Trump appointee, no less — read the law instead of the press releases. In a blistering 48-page decision, she called it a "wanton abuse" of their grant powers and noted that this money funds actual life-or-death programs, citing the Brown University mass shooting response as one example. In other words, Trump’s DHS tried to hold counterterrorism funding hostage over immigration politics, and the judge replied: absolutely not, and also, are you people out of your minds?
Letitia James and a coalition of 12 state AGs dragged the administration into court and walked out with their funding back and a federal ruling that this little extortion scheme was "unconscionable" and unlawful. DHS, naturally, plans to appeal, because if there’s one thing this crowd hates more than immigrants, it’s the idea that federal money isn’t a personal political slush fund.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump discovers piracy, calls it foreign policy
Trump, staring at a map of Venezuela and Greenland like it’s the menu at a steakhouse, deciding which country’s resources to ‘reimburse’ himself with next.
Donald Trump has decided that international law is for losers and that Venezuelan oil on seized tankers is basically a Black Friday doorbuster for the United States. Asked what happens to the oil, he shrugged out loud: “Maybe we will sell it, maybe we will keep it … We’re keeping the ships also.” Because nothing says rules-based international order like “finders keepers” on the high seas backed by the Pentagon.
This isn’t a one-off brain worm, it’s a doctrine. Trump has spent years insisting the US should have “taken the oil” in Iraq, bragging in Syria that “we’ve secured the oil” and hinting ExxonMobil could just wander in and start pumping. Now he’s labeling fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction” to justify a Venezuela pressure campaign that — surprise — just happens to involve grabbing their oil. In other words, it’s the Iraq War logic but with the PR department turned off and the looting turned up.
And when he’s not playing pirate in the Caribbean, he’s shopping for minerals like a Bond villain with a world map. He’s threatened using force to seize Greenland from Denmark for its cobalt, lithium, and rare earths, while his administration eyes a direct stake in a major mine there. He struck a deal with Ukraine offering “continued military support” in exchange for privileged access to its minerals and uranium — a neat little arrangement where security guarantees come with a resource rider. Meanwhile, he’s trying to block Iran from selling its oil to anyone, because only Washington is allowed to sell hydrocarbons, apparently.
Experts call this “resource imperialism” and “resource nationalism.” Trump just calls it Tuesday. He rails against the “green scam” at the UN, demands allies drill more fossil fuels, and treats climate science as an inconvenient rumor. Previous presidents at least pretended it was about “market stability” and “multilateralism.” Trump’s innovation is to rip off the mask and say the quiet part into a live mic: US power exists to grab oil, gas, and minerals wherever they are, and if that looks like 19th-century gunboat diplomacy with nukes, well, he thinks that’s what makes America “great again.”
#imperialism#killing-democracy
trump sends troops to protect new orleans from falling crime rates
National Guard troops prepare to "fight crime" in a city where the crime stats are dropping but the authoritarian vibes are absolutely skyrocketing.
Donald Trump has approved the deployment of 350 National Guard members to New Orleans through February, because nothing says "law and order" like sending troops into a city where violent crime is actually going down. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell insists the Guard will just be "supporting" federal law enforcement like DOJ and DHS, which in this administration usually means turning domestic policing into a joint military–police cosplay of authoritarian chic.
Louisiana’s Republican governor Jeff Landry is, of course, thrilled. He went on Fox News to praise Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for helping him "crack down on the violence" in a city that’s on pace for its lowest homicide numbers in decades. In other words, the data says "improving public safety", while the GOP says "send in the troops"—but sure, this is definitely about crime and not about putting a federal boot on the neck of a Democratic-led city.
All of this is happening while Border Patrol runs a months-long immigration crackdown in the area with a target of 5,000 arrests, neatly merging "urban crime" panic with "immigration invasion" hysteria. Several hundred people have already been arrested, just to make sure everyone gets the message that federal force is now a permanent background feature of daily life. Meanwhile, Trump has rewarded Landry’s loyalty by naming him special envoy to Greenland, the icy colony Trump keeps insisting the US needs to "take over"—because when you’re busy militarizing American cities, you might as well dabble in bargain-bin imperialism on the side.
New Orleans, which has long experience hosting the Guard for discrete events like the Super Bowl, Mardi Gras, and post-attack security, is now being treated to an extended occupation framed as routine public safety. Crime is down, federal troops are up, immigration raids are ramping, and Republican officials are on TV calling it a win. Nothing is more "Trump era" than using falling crime as the excuse to normalize permanent paramilitary presence in blue cities.
#fascism#killing-democracy
america ruled by a very sleepy sun god
President Trump carefully not falling down the stairs on his way to confuse Albania with Armenia and declare victory over wind turbines.
Trump says he’s delivered “more positive change” than any administration in US history, which is certainly one way to describe a year spent nodding off in meetings, confusing Albania with Armenia, and inventing a fan-fiction backstory where his uncle mentored the Unabomber at MIT. Minor problem: the uncle was dead a decade before Kaczynski was identified and, also, Kaczynski never went to MIT. But sure, let’s hand this guy the nuclear codes and a microphone.
Across 2025, the 79‑year‑old president has treated the country to a highlight reel of deeply normal behavior: drifting off into two-minute rants about windmills driving whales “loco” and killing all the birds (scientifically: no), obsessing over how Barack Obama walks down stairs, and explaining his own foreign policy by mixing up entire countries. The White House solution? A rotating cast of flacks insisting his “mental sharpness is second to none” while former White House doc Ronny Jackson declares him the “healthiest president this nation has ever seen” — because nothing says medical credibility like pretending the guy who forgets which body part got an MRI is basically Captain America.
Meanwhile, the schedule for this supposed unstoppable dynamo of American greatness runs roughly noon to 5pm, with public events down nearly 40% from his first term. When he does surface, it’s often to call Somali immigrants “garbage” or to essentially blame Rob Reiner for his own death, all while periodically falling asleep in the Oval Office, in cabinet meetings, and at a cannabis reform presser. In other words: the substantive work of governing has been replaced by a fragile cult of personality frantically insisting that the emperor’s naps are actually 4D chess.
Democrats are reportedly planning to make his mental fitness a midterm issue, which the White House dismisses as partisan trash. But the real story here isn’t just whether Trump is mentally OK; it’s that an entire party, a tame physician, and a propaganda ecosystem are perfectly happy to let a visibly diminished man rage, doze, and ramble his way through the presidency — as long as he keeps signing the papers they put in front of him.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
trump to big pharma: your profits are safe, we'll just shake down our allies
Trump explaining that the way to lower US drug prices is to keep Big Pharma rich and send the bill to France, because of course he is.
Trump looked at America’s obscene drug prices and, in a stunning twist no one saw coming, concluded the real villains are France, Germany, and Japan – not the pharmaceutical companies making record profits by charging whatever they can get away with. Instead of touching private insurers or pharma margins, he’s promising a fantasyland 700% price cut at home by forcing allies to jack up their own prices, because nothing says "standing up for American patients" like turning healthcare into a protection racket.
The article lays out how the US helped build the current global pharma regime – TRIPS, ironclad patents, and all – that funnels billions to shareholders while rationing lifesaving drugs by bank balance. Now that profits might be peaking and China, Cuba, and others are building their own state-backed pharma sectors, Washington’s answer (under Trump) isn’t "rein in corporate power" but "make our allies pay more so Pfizer doesn’t have to suffer." In other words, preserve the same rigged system that made insulin unaffordable in the first place, just with a side of geopolitical extortion.
European and Japanese governments are left in a fun little bind: domestic pharma and private insurers would love higher prices, but their voters and public health systems will explode the second hospital budgets are fed into the shareholder furnace. Trump is selling this as a populist crusade for cheaper drugs, but the actual plan is to keep Big Pharma’s profit machine intact, shift the pain onto other countries, and call it a win for American patients. It’s not healthcare reform, it’s a globalized shakedown operation – forever-grifting, but make it pharma.
#forever-grifting#money
trump loves ai, hates risk assessment
Behold Stargate: a gigantic desert monument to the idea that if we build a massive A.I. temple and pump the stock market hard enough, the laws of economics will simply give up and move to Europe.
The Trump White House has discovered a new thing it doesn’t understand but will absolutely bet the country on: A.I. Asked if he was worried about an A.I.-driven bubble that could wreck the economy, Trump responded, “No, I love A.I.” — because nothing says serious risk management like answering systemic-financial-stability questions as if you’re picking an ice cream flavor.
In pursuit of a headline 4% growth number and some juiced tech stocks, the administration is showering A.I. giants with cash and regulatory hugs, while economists and even some Silicon Valley types keep pointing out tiny little details like “mass job losses,” “unsustainable hype,” and “possible financial havoc.” The White House response? Wave it all away and cheer Nvidia’s stock price like it’s the State of the Union.
In other words, we’re replaying the pre-2008 bubble, except this time the president is openly telling everyone he doesn’t see a downside and his economic team is on CNBC declaring an A.I. “boom” as if you can’t have booms without crashes. But sure, what could go wrong when an administration that already treats regulation as a personal insult decides that the best way to handle a world-altering technology is to close its eyes, hug the ticker tape, and hope the algorithm loves them back.
#full-stupid#money#killing-democracy
bread, circuses, and a ufc cage on the south lawn
Trump pacing the Daytona 500 field in The Beast, helpfully demonstrating what it looks like when the cult of personality literally leads the race.
Donald Trump spent 2025 turning American sports into his personal traveling propaganda circus, because nothing says "hardest working president" like treating the Super Bowl, Daytona 500, UFC, Ryder Cup, and the US Open as an endless series of campaign walk-ins and camera-thirst photo ops. He buzzed Daytona with Air Force One, paced the field in "The Beast," and literally inserted himself into Chelsea’s Club World Cup trophy lift, because why let the athletes have a moment when Dear Leader needs content for Truth Social?
What looks like leisure is actually the strongman starter pack. Trump is following the Mussolini/Hitler/Putin playbook: launder power and legitimacy through sports spectacle while networks dutifully blast his entrances on loop. Stadium appearances become mini-rallies optimized for "heat"—boos and cheers are the same currency, as long as he dominates the jumbotron. Meanwhile, leagues and broadcasters bend the knee, with the USTA reportedly asking TV partners to censor protests and crowd reactions, because nothing screams "land of the free" like pre-clearing your cutaways with the White House.
Behind the scenes, the real game is pay-to-play. Trump uses luxury suites as donor petting zoos and soft diplomacy hubs: Rolex wines and dines him at the US Open, a sticky trade problem with Switzerland magically eases, and suddenly there’s a gold Rolex clock on the Resolute Desk like it’s an official state emblem. Mega-donor and Mavericks owner Miriam Adelson dumps about $100m into his re-election and casually waves around another $250m if he goes for an unconstitutional third term in 2028, because in this regime, term limits are just another optional rule like holding or traveling.
And now we’re staring down 2026, when the US-hosted World Cup, the Olympics, and an actual UFC card on the White House lawn are poised to merge the presidency with the fight card. In other words: the line between "sports" and "state propaganda" is dissolving in real time, and the American political system is letting a reality TV autocrat turn the jumbotron into a throne—but sure, tell us again how this is just "fun" and "normal" presidential outreach.
#fascism#forever-grifting#oligarchy
trump’s ‘peace through strength’ gives gaza war, famine, and a photo-op truce
Democracy™ in action: U.S.-funded jets overhead, rubble below, and somewhere in Washington a press release calling this a ‘complex humanitarian situation.’
NBC walks through 2025 in Gaza: a year where Israel keeps bombing a trapped civilian population, famine spreads, and the U.S. response is basically, ‘have you tried more precision munitions and fewer calories?’ Schools, hospitals, and apartment blocks get turned into rubble, but don’t worry, State Department spokespeople assure us this is all happening under the strictest possible "rules of engagement" that somehow always end with starving kids.
Washington keeps shipping weapons and political cover while pretending to be the adult in the room pushing for a "truce"—which mostly means pausing the killing just long enough to restock the bombs and reset the talking points. The same administration that screams about border security is perfectly fine underwriting an open-air siege that manufactures refugees by the tens of thousands, because nothing says "defending democracy" like bankrolling collective punishment.
And when famine hits, the U.S. and its allies discover a bold new strategy: airdrop a few pallets of food, film it, and call it humanitarian leadership while backing the very blockade that created the famine. In other words, war as usual: military contractors eat well, politicians get to posture about "stability," and Gazans get to choose between being bombed quickly or starved slowly.
#imperialism#killing-democracy#lawlessness
