Thursday, October 22, 2026
Nothing says ‘sanctuary city’ like a smiling mayor and his top cop posing at One Police Plaza while ICE runs masked raids and shoots people in front of their kids.
New York’s sanctuary city vibes took a bullet to the chest when ICE agents shot Oscar Belgal in front of his 5-year-old in Manhattan, while dressed like they were auditioning for a low-budget paramilitary reboot: plain clothes, disguises, and masks, with no visible identification, in apparent violation of federal rules requiring, you know, basic identification. The NYPD showed up, rendered first aid, and then—according to eyewitnesses and video—pivoted smoothly into their favorite role: crowd-control backup for federal gunmen whose names nobody knows.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani thundered that ICE is “rotten to its core” and should be abolished, then promptly treated his own police department’s behavior like a topic for extra credit homework. While NYPD officers allegedly shoved congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier to the ground and later cleared a path so ICE could whisk Belgal from the hospital to a detention facility, Mamdani’s big move was to…stand by Commissioner Jessica Tisch, order some policy reviews, toss a few coins at the inspector general, and ask everyone to be patient with reform. Bold rhetoric for ICE, soothing technocrat lullabies for NYPD.
Socialists, legislators, and Avila Chevalier herself called for Tisch’s firing and demanded Mamdani keep his promise to dismantle the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group—famous mainly for cracking down on protests like it’s their love language. He refused, praising her record on “uprooting corruption” and “lowering crime,” while studiously avoiding any real discussion of why his supposedly progressive administration is letting masked federal agents treat the city like a hunting ground, with NYPD playing usher. If cops are the thin blue line, Mamdani still can’t quite say whether ICE’s anonymous shooters are on the side of order, chaos, or just the part of the Venn diagram where due process goes to die.
President Trump gazes thoughtfully at a map, wondering which ocean, gulf, or strait to annex into his personal brand next.
Donald Trump, a man constitutionally incapable of seeing a body of water without trying to slap his name on it, told a South Carolina rally he called Google CEO Sundar Pichai to ask if Google Maps could rename the Atlantic Ocean after himself or America. This follows his executive order rebranding the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” and his ongoing tantrum campaign to turn Lake Ontario into “Lake America” on official US maps, because foreign policy is now just real estate branding with extra warships.
Even Google, which already caved to his earlier demands by showing “Gulf of America” and “Lake America” to US users, apparently found a line somewhere around "renaming an entire ocean." Trump says Pichai told him oceans "cover… a lot of countries" and declined to play cartographic make-believe at global scale. So the president of the United States bragged onstage about trying to pressure a tech giant into rewriting geography, then magnanimously announced he would "probably pass" and let the Atlantic keep its centuries-old name. Strong leadership: he fought the ocean, and the ocean won.
This is the same guy who has floated renaming the Strait of Hormuz to "TRUMP STRAIT" during an active war with Iran, because nothing cools down a volatile maritime chokepoint like slapping a narcissist’s surname on it. The administration’s foreign policy doctrine has officially evolved from "America First" to "Cartographers Last," with Google Maps functioning as a sort of state propaganda sandbox—until, apparently, the coastline gets too long.
Mike Rogers explains that he definitely supports religious freedom—just not for the guy standing 10 feet away from him.
Michigan GOP Senate nominee Mike Rogers spent his final debate channeling the purest essence of Trumpism: accuse the brown guy of terrorism and call it "national security." After Abdul El-Sayed tied him to Trump’s Iran war and the delightful $5-per-gallon gas souvenir it gifted Americans, Rogers responded by claiming El-Sayed is "bought off by the Muslim Brotherhood" with donors "from Hamas that support Hezbollah"—a word salad of scary nouns with roughly the evidentiary basis of a Truth Social post.
Instead of defending his own record of cheerleading war and mass ICE abuses under Trump, Rogers demanded to know whether El-Sayed is "for America or for these terrorist groups overseas," because nothing says "I respect the Constitution" like telling a Muslim candidate he’s a national security risk who merely "talk[s] real pretty." El-Sayed, somehow still living in the year 2026, had to calmly reaffirm that he’s proud of the Constitution and its guarantee of religious freedom—while Rogers and his allies run a weeks-long smear campaign built on old family social media posts and unsubstantiated "ties" that mysteriously only appear when a Muslim runs for high office.
So yes, Trump may not have been on the debate stage, but his spirit was there, wrapped in a flag, shouting about terrorists, and working overtime to turn a toss-up Senate race into a referendum on whether Muslims are allowed to be fully American. The authoritarian litmus test is simple: pledge allegiance to Trump’s wars and ICE, or be publicly tried as a security threat.
Donald Trump beams as he decorates himself with a made-up FIFA peace medal, proving that if you build a fake prize, the ego will come.
Gianni Infantino created the FIFA Peace Prize as a sort of Nobel For Dummies, handed it to Donald Trump, and then acted shocked when everyone noticed it was a glorified participation trophy for aspiring strongmen. Trump, ever the target demographic for shiny objects, slapped the medal around his own neck, basked in the glow of a big golden bauble, and—for a fleeting moment—forgot that he still hasn’t scammed his way into an actual Nobel Peace Prize.
Having successfully used the prize to butter up Trump and protect his revenue pipeline to the North American market, Infantino has now quietly dumped the award on FIFA’s "social responsibility committee"—a 22-person per diem distribution machine for his allies—to "rebrand" it into something less embarrassing. The new plan is to pretend this thing was always about social harmony, give it to people who actually do good (Afghan women players, Shakhtar Donetsk, Juan Mata, Marcus Rashford, Sadio Mané, N’Golo Kanté, random Scottish fans with better ethics than most politicians), and hope everyone forgets its origin story as a vanity trinket for the least peaceful Western leader in generations.
The article politely suggests the prize might one day mean something if it stops existing solely to stroke the ego of whoever can help FIFA cash in. That would require rules, standards, and a willingness to admit that "apolitical" awards don’t exist—especially when the first honoree was Donald Peace Through Caps Lock Trump. For now, the FIFA Peace Prize remains what it started as: a case study in how global sports governance and Trump’s bottomless need for flattery make an excellent couple—right up until the moment the grift becomes too obvious to ignore.
President Trump has managed the impossible: he filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit so ridiculous that a federal judge has now ordered him to sit for a deposition by Dec. 11. The BBC allegedly edited one of his speeches in a "misleading" way, so naturally the leader of the free world responded like a thin-skinned YouTuber with a cease-and-desist template, and now he’s on track to be questioned under oath in a case he personally launched. Lawfare, but make it self‑own.
This is the presidential strategy in a nutshell: use the courts as a PR flamethrower, then act shocked when the judge says, "Great, see you under penalty of perjury." If this moves forward, Trump will have to answer real questions instead of yelling "fake news" at a helicopter. Ten billion dollars and the grand prize might be watching him explain reality while someone reminds him lying there is actually a crime.
Virginia’s budget gatekeeper, allegedly using the keys to the vault to stock her own dispensary shelf.
Federal prosecutors say Virginia state senate president pro tempore L Louise Lucas looked at the phrase "political power" and apparently read it as "vertical integration opportunity." An indictment unsealed Thursday accuses the 82-year-old Democrat of helping run a criminal marijuana and money laundering operation grandly dubbed "the Lucas Enterprise" — which sounds less like a crime ring and more like a failed Star Wars spinoff, but here we are.
According to FBI director Kash Patel, Lucas and a tight circle of family and associates allegedly used her perch as chair of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee to keep their cannabis side hustle safe from scrutiny and tweak legislation to line their own pockets. So while the public thought she was blocking bills on policy grounds, prosecutors are suggesting it might have been more portfolio management than principle.
Lucas, who runs companies serving adults with intellectual disabilities and co-owns The Cannabis Outlet, had previously called the FBI’s May raids on her office and shop an intimidation tactic by the Trump-aligned Justice Department. Now that the feds have upgraded from "intimidation" to "indictment," her legal team is calling the whole thing a "circus" and promising a fuller response later. The DOJ, for its part, is going with the classic "no one is above the law" line — a bold claim in an era where people keep treating elected office like an all-access pass to the self-dealing buffet.
A choir of impossibly earnest high schoolers belts out equality while somewhere in Washington a Trump appointee drafts another bill to make this scene legally inadmissible in red states.
Ryan Murphy is resurrecting Glee, the Obama-era glitter cannon that once promised a queernormative high school utopia where the worst thing that could happen to you was a slushie to the face, not a state legislature to your civil rights. Back then, the show’s politics were neon-bright, clumsy and earnest: gay kids got big ballads instead of conversion therapy bills, trans teens transitioned with school support instead of lawyers, and the biggest culture war was whether you liked the Madonna episode.
Cut to 2026, where that fantasy has slammed into Trump’s second term like a tour bus hitting a Hobby Lobby. The article notes that the last 11 years have made Murphy’s egalitarian vision look like archival footage from a parallel universe: a pandemic, a reinstalled strongman, yawning economic inequality and a tidal wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the US and UK have turned "it gets better" into "it gets banned." The question now is whether a reboot can sing its way through an America where school boards are purging queer books, governors are policing pronouns, and the federal government treats LGBTQ+ kids as acceptable collateral damage in its culture war.
So Disney+ and Hulu are betting that revisiting a show about misfit choir kids can work in a country where the actual government is busy criminalising those misfits in real life. Once, Glee was aspirational propaganda for an inclusive future; under Trump 2.0, it risks becoming speculative fiction about a civil rights landscape that’s already been rolled back. The original series asked, "Don’t Stop Believin’." The reboot has to answer a more pressing question: believe in what, exactly, when the White House is harmonising with state-level bigots on a greatest hits album of rights erosion?
Congress has unveiled the "Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act" — BAAJA, pronounced like the Taco Bell drink you order right before regretting all your life choices — and every corporate lobbyist in America has apparently decided this is their Super Bowl. Oil and gas, mining, data centers, solar trade groups, even the tree-huggers are elbowing each other for a chance to scribble their wish lists onto the permitting rules that decide who gets to bulldoze what, how fast, and with how few lawsuits.
The National Mining Association is gunning for changes to the Clean Water Act so permits are easier, challenges are harder, and rivers become more of a suggestion than a resource. Pipeline lobbyists want smoother paths for interstate gas projects, because why let climate science interfere with quarterly earnings? All of this is happening while the Trump Interior Department asks a federal judge to let it "reconsider" a previously approved offshore wind project — a move Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse helpfully translates as "this is how you blow up a permitting deal." The administration insists it's just a procedural step, the same way kicking out a support beam is just a "structural experiment."
Meanwhile, Democratic attorneys general from nine states are waving a big red flag about the bill, warning that this lobbyist-authored speedrun of environmental permitting might not be great for the whole "rule of law and not poisoning everything" thing. As the first vote looms on November 9, the only guarantee is that the next round of lobbying disclosures will read like a guest list for a very exclusive party where the dress code is "business casual" and the theme is democracy is technically still here, but the corporations will see you now.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Rep. Jim Himes share a polite handshake while, off camera, the Trump FCC experiments with regulating bad vibes in polling data.
Brendan Carr, Trump’s pet enforcer at the FCC, has discovered a bold new regulatory principle: if the polls say Republicans are losing, the polls are fake and TV stations might be violating federal rules by mentioning them. Citing a real FCC concept called “news distortion,” Carr hopped on X to warn broadcasters that airing the wrong kind of numbers could be treated as a "Broadcast Hoax" — which is a fun way of saying he’s flirting with using government power to punish media outlets for reporting inconvenient data.
There are some genuinely fake, likely AI-generated polls floating around — mostly grifts aimed at betting markets — but rather than target the scammers, Carr is effectively telling newsrooms to think twice before reporting any polls that harsh Trump’s vibe. FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez had to play the role of the one adult in the building, reminding everyone that the rules don’t apply to stations that report polls in good faith, even if those polls turn out to be wrong. Minor detail Carr left out while auditioning for Minister of Truth.
All this just happens to line up beautifully with the broader Trump project: declare unwanted facts to be hoaxes, hint that the state might punish anyone who repeats them, and then scream about "election interference" when the numbers look grim. Speaker Mike Johnson is on X yelling "IGNORE THE POLLS" and "SAVE AMERICA" like a late-night televangelist, while Senate Intel Democrats are already warning that Trump is likely to cry "foreign interference" the moment the midterms don’t go his way. The polling isn’t the hoax here; the hoax is an administration trying to turn federal regulators into an election-protection racket for one guy’s ego.
Voters stroll past a Denver polling place, blissfully unaware that somewhere in D.C., the Trump administration is trying to put Election Day ‘monitors’ in charge of the fire alarm.
The Justice Department is rolling out its usual Election Day monitors this year, but there’s a twist: the Trump administration is also working hard behind the scenes to ‘control’ those very same elections. Nothing says ‘healthy democracy’ quite like the guy on the ballot trying to get a hand on the referees. DOJ officials are reportedly raising concerns about political interference, which is Washington-speak for, “this is wildly not normal and probably illegal adjacent.”
While Democrats are busy doing the old-fashioned thing — campaigning in states and trying to persuade voters — the White House appears focused on the more modern approach: leaning on the machinery of government to keep itself in power. You’ve got Obama, Harris, AOC, Bernie, Booker, and friends crisscrossing the map, while Trump’s people are eyeing the vote-counting process like it’s just another asset to acquire. Representative democracy is out; hostile takeover of the election system is in.
And in the background, AIPAC is slinking away from direct endorsements after years of blowback, and the U.S. is gaming out potential strikes on Iran with Israel – all while Americans are just trying to make it to the midterms without their ballots being ‘monitored’ into oblivion. On the upside, at least the DOJ still remembers its job description, even if the administration signing its paychecks very much does not.
French students clash with riot police while American pundits explain that the real violence is affordable tuition.
Trump is on the trail in Kansas, waving footage of French protests around like a clearance-sale Reichstag fire and yelling that "migrants" and "communists" are to blame, and that this is what "radical Dumocrats" want for America. The guy who tried to overthrow an election is now deeply concerned that someone, somewhere, might have free college and universal healthcare.
Over at Fox, Sean Hannity stares at flames in France and gravely explains that this is "by design" — the left’s master plan to "destroy the free world" by, apparently, giving people dental coverage. Laura Ingraham runs a big red siren graphic labeled "A warning to America" and tells viewers that policies like free college, climate action, and taxing the rich are how you get… Montpellier teenagers protesting. Truly the gulag.
Jesse Watters, never one to let coherence get in the way, insists the goal is "to replace communism with capitalism" while showing protests in a capitalist EU country. Lawrence Jones reads a JD Vance tweet warning that France is the future Democrats want, then nods along as Ben Domenech warns that this is what happens when you treat nationalism like a dirty word. Yes, the problem isn’t inequality, it’s insufficient flag worship.
Newsmax brings in Rick Santorum, who announces that mainstream Democrats want to import "the economy and style of government of Europe" — which, he claims, has a far worse standard of living than the US, a statement that would baffle anyone who has seen data or, frankly, a French vacation brochure. The whole right-wing infotainment complex is screaming "America, this is a warning" about Europe’s public transit, workers’ rights, and functioning healthcare systems, while the actual warning — authoritarian propaganda melting the brains of half the political class — is blaring right here at home.
Turns out when you hand the country to a corrupt septuagenarian chaos machine, spend years playing trade-war roulette, let prices explode, flirt with mass deportations, and treat Congress like a day-trading side hustle, the kids don’t come away feeling super jazzed about the future. According to the new Harvard Youth Poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans under 30 who plan to vote next month say their main motivation is to oppose Trump and his policies. Only 9% think the country is on the right track, which is roughly the polling equivalent of a fire alarm.
Young people list rising prices, corporate power, and trade wars as top threats to their long-term security — so Trump’s signature achievements of economic "populism" and billionaire worship are really landing with the target audience. Majorities want Medicare for All, a wealth tax, and bans on congressional stock trading, because when you watch people like Trump and his congressional fan club treat public office as a Robinhood Premium account, you start to suspect the system might be rigged. Also, three-quarters of young voters disapprove of congressional Republicans, and two-thirds disapprove of Democrats, which is a fun way of saying: the kids think the whole political class is trash, but Trump’s GOP is the landfill.
The poll’s bleakest number: for the first time, more young adults expect to be worse off than their parents than better off. Back in 2003, 74% thought they’d surpass mom and dad; now that’s down to 28%, while 69% say they’re more fearful than hopeful about America’s future. So the Trump-era sales pitch of "endless culture war, billionaire tax breaks, and maybe World War III if the vibes are off" is not exactly inspiring confidence. But hey, at least the youth have learned one vital civics lesson: when you put a lifelong grifter and his congressional stock-trading entourage in charge of the country, the future stops looking like a dream and starts looking like a forever-grifting business plan they were never invited to buy into.
Republicans are staring down another Election Day and, shockingly, the big idea is not "better policies" or "stop being unhinged." Instead, Trump proudly announces his political operation will torch over $400 million to prop up the party’s most vulnerable candidates, while the RNC frantically wires another $50 million like a deadbeat gambler begging the house for one more marker. Grassroots democracy, brought to you by a man who once claimed he was self-funding.
This isn’t strategy so much as emergency life support for a dying brand. Rather than ask why their candidates are flailing, the GOP solution is to carpet-bomb the airwaves with ads funded by a twice-impeached, multiply-indicted ex-president whose entire business model is monetizing rage and grievance. The party of "fiscal responsibility" is now mainlining donor cash into races where their nominees are busy ranting about stolen elections and drag queens while pretending this is all extremely normal.
The RNC, now basically a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Org: Campaign Edition, isn’t building a party; it’s maintaining a protection racket. The message is clear: stay loyal to Trump, deny reality on cue, and the money cannon might bless you. Cross him, and you can go fundraise on GoFundMe with the rest of the political roadkill. American democracy was supposed to be one person, one vote. Under Trump’s GOP, it’s one guy, nine figures, and a whole lot of terrified Republicans praying the checks clear before the voters do.
Paolo Zampolli, former Trump diplomat, current LinkedIn cautionary tale, demonstrating the State Department’s bold new strategy of staffing global partnerships like a nightclub guest list.
The Trump administration’s diplomatic clown car just lost a passenger: Paolo Zampolli, former modeling agent, Epstein associate, and somehow — because this is still America, allegedly — a State Department special envoy for global partnerships. After an internal "nasty email fight" with Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau spilled into Politico, the State Department confirmed Zampolli had been "terminated," which is a very formal way of saying even this administration finally got embarrassed enough to cut him loose.
Zampolli insists there was “no scandal,” just that “everybody’s getting out” and, most importantly, he “needs to make money,” which is about the most honest Trump-era diplomatic mission statement you’ll ever hear. His brief tenure, granted in March 2025, was a perfect snapshot of Trump’s personnel philosophy: take a guy whose résumé is heavy on fashion models and Epstein-adjacent sleaze, light on actual diplomacy, and hand him a U.S. government title to wave around in foreign capitals. The only real surprise is that it took this long for the State Department to admit that turning America’s foreign policy into a VIP lounge networking opportunity might not be going great.
So Zampolli departs the stage claiming he “served America at my highest level,” which, judging from the available evidence, says less about his performance and more about how far the bar has been dropped, rolled down a hill, and buried in a shallow grave behind Foggy Bottom. Another Trump-world loyalist flames out, another reminder that in this administration, the line between statecraft and bottle service is extremely theoretical.
Local shrine to the golden calf of Queens now offering 70% off idolatry while supplies last.
American democracy may be limping along, but the real tragedy is hitting where it hurts: the Trump impulse-buy economy. In Bensalem, Pennsylvania, the once-thriving Trump Store has shuttered, reduced to a clearance sale of "Trump Won" hats for $9.99 and pool floats for people who need to literally float in denial. With Trump in his second and final term, even the superfans are apparently realizing that four-dollar gas and creeping authoritarianism don’t pair quite as well with novelty koozies as advertised.
The big players are feeling it too. The online MAGA Mall says sales are down 30% compared to an election year when Dear Leader is actually on the ballot. Turns out it’s harder to move inventory when your entire business model is: "What if politics, but QVC?" The "movement" that swore it was about saving America is suddenly a lot less enthusiastic when it’s not attached to a fresh grievance and an imminent coup fantasy.
This is what happens when you build a political project on hats instead of policies: the moment the adrenaline drops, so do the receipts. The cult is still there, but the cash flow is thinning, the pop-up shrines are closing, and the Forever Campaign has discovered the one limit it can’t bully through—market saturation. He has peaked, say the retailers, which is a very polite way of saying the strongman brand is starting to look like yesterday’s clearance rack.
Cattle in Texas, blissfully unaware that their future price is being set by a guy who thinks ‘import quota’ is a type of golf club.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new form of agricultural policy: wake up, panic about grocery prices, and randomly blow a hole in the market with an executive order. After jacking up uncertainty with a trade war that helped China slash U.S. beef purchases, Trump has now "rescued" consumers by temporarily suspending tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of imported beef and ordering it sold at 25% below market price. Because nothing says "free market conservatism" like the White House dictating discount meat prices by fiat.
Out in Iowa, cattlemen like Scott Birker are watching years of tight-margin work get bulldozed so Trump can maybe shave 50 cents off a pound of ground beef before the midterms. Economists point out the obvious: surprise imports crash prices, torch producer confidence, and push ranchers to send breeding stock to slaughter instead of rebuilding herds — guaranteeing higher prices later. So the administration’s grand plan is to wreck long-term U.S. beef production to score a short-term talking point on Fox, then act stunned when rural voters who backed him start realizing that "economic populism" apparently means they’re the ones getting slaughtered.
Roger Marshall and Adam Hamilton debate whether Kansas should be ruined by Trump’s policies enthusiastically or just a little apologetically.
Kansas, the state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since radio was cutting-edge tech, is suddenly in play because the Trump administration turned farm country into a live-action stress test for how much economic pain people can take before they start questioning tariffs, forever war, and ICE raids. Sen. Roger Marshall is out here warning that if he loses, Chuck Schumer might get a promotion, while his opponent Adam Hamilton is sprinting away from Democrats so fast he’s about one soundbite away from endorsing himself as a third-party candidate named "Not That Kind of Democrat."
Marshall is loyally parroting Trump on everything from the Iran war to the price of diesel, blaming Ukraine for energy costs while gently side-eyeing Trump’s brilliant plan to buy Russian diesel and somehow call it "peace." He insists he’s independent-minded because he mildly objected to ICE raids and a beef import waiver that nuked Kansas farmers, which is sort of like bragging you pushed back on arson by asking the firebug to at least avoid the nursery. Hamilton, meanwhile, promises to "force" Trump to end the Iran war, trashes tariffs, calls ICE "militarized," and still bends over backward to prove he won’t vote for Schumer or touch anything that looks like a progressive idea with a ten-foot pole.
The ethics portion of the evening was a real crowd-pleaser: Marshall had to explain why a New York Times story says he chased poor former OB/GYN patients into court and toward arrest over medical debt, which he frames as standard industry practice and actually kind of generous, if you squint hard enough. Trump then helpfully defended him at a Wichita rally by saying Marshall’s been unfairly made out to be a "Shylock"—because when you’re already running a war in Iran and cutting diesel deals with Russia, why not sprinkle in some classic antisemitic tropes for flavor? Hamilton, for his part, is stuck explaining his church’s mishandling of a 2005 child sex abuse case at a youth camp—conceding he should have made sure the abuser never got near kids again, a bar so low even this Senate race managed to trip on it.
Now millions of dollars are flooding Kansas, early voting is spiking, and at least 100 Republican leaders (including Trump’s own ex–press secretary Stephanie Grisham) are backing Hamilton, because apparently even lifelong GOP loyalists are tired of living inside the Trump-Marshall economic and moral demolition derby. The choice for Kansas voters is clear: a Trump-aligned senator defending endless war, ICE crackdowns, and medical debt arrests—with bonus antisemitic cleanup from Trump himself—or a "moderate Democrat" who spends half his time promising he’ll never actually act like one. American democracy continues to shine, in the way a four-alarm dumpster fire shines.
Tom Tiffany explains that nullifying an election is fine if you read a Facebook meme about Mark Zuckerberg first.
Wisconsin’s lone governor debate featured Democrat David Crowley and Republican Tom Tiffany arguing over who loves Wisconsin more and who loves democracy less. Crowley pointed out that Tiffany happily voted for Trump’s 2025 "big, ugly" tax-and-spending monstrosity that showered benefits on high earners while taking a chainsaw to healthcare and food assistance, then stuffed his campaign coffers with cash from Republican megadonors. Tiffany, naturally, responded that he’s just a man of the people who wants to "put more money in taxpayers’ pockets" — a touching way to describe transferring public services into billionaire bank accounts.
The real show, however, came when Tiffany was asked why he voted to overturn the 2020 election. His answer: Zuckerbucks. Yes, the sitting congressman seeking to be governor calmly explained that he tried to throw out hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin votes because he didn’t like how Mark Zuckerberg spent money on election administration — donations that have been repeatedly debunked as some secret Biden plot. Crowley helpfully translated this for viewers: Tiffany is willing to toss your ballot in the trash over a Facebook-fueled conspiracy theory. Strong pitch for chief executive of a swing state.
On abortion, Tiffany suddenly discovered moderation, promising to uphold Wisconsin’s 20-week law despite his record of backing six-week federal bans in Congress. Crowley said he’d push to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, and very politely declined to play the Republicans’ favorite game of "let’s invent an extreme bill you’ll never see and demand you answer for it." So voters now get a clear choice: a guy who wants to protect your vote and your bodily autonomy, versus a guy who thinks both are negotiable if Donald Trump or a billionaire donor has hurt feelings.
Federal agents stand outside Ilhan Omar’s home, bravely protecting America from the mortal threat of a congresswoman with a Muslim name and a voting record Trump doesn’t like.
Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Insecurity sent 10 to 15 agents to pound on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s door at 6am, rummage through her home for nearly five hours, and walk off with 17 items, including her phones. The alleged crime? Failing to be white, Christian, and sufficiently adoring of Dear Leader while being the subject of a years-old rightwing fanfic about marrying her brother.
Omar says the raid was designed to "freak" her out and toss red meat to Trump’s base, which has been marinating in these baseless immigration-fraud conspiracies since they oozed out of a random Somali blog and into the brains of Fox-addled influencers. Trump, never one to waste a good lie, followed up the raid by telling reporters that Omar is a "sick, very dishonest person who hates our country" and casually spitballed that she could be deported or jailed. Just the president of the United States publicly fantasizing about exiling an elected representative over paperwork he can’t describe—totally normal, very stable democracy stuff.
While Omar reminds everyone that she has a legal right to be a member of Congress, the administration appears focused on a different legal innovation: using federal law enforcement as a personal harassment service for the guy who lives in the White House and rage-watches cable news. Rule of law has officially been downgraded to "rule of whatever conspiracy Trump saw on TV last night."
Trump practices advanced conflict resolution: tell the aggressor he’s a humanitarian and ask the victim why they haven’t stopped bleeding yet.
Trump is once again auditioning for the role of Putin’s favorite concierge, "neutral" on the Russia-Ukraine war in the same way a hostage negotiator is neutral when they keep handing the kidnapper gift baskets. His handpicked lead negotiator, real estate guy Steve Witkoff, flew to St. Petersburg and called Vladimir Putin “a humanitarian” for releasing an American teacher Russia arbitrarily detained in the first place. When Susan Collins and Thom Tillis are the ones drawing the moral line, you’ve wandered a few miles past the guardrails.
Instead of backing the country that was invaded, Trump’s strategy is to distance himself from Ukraine, flatter Moscow, and hope Putin feels so seen and validated he decides to stop waging war. Experts note that the administration has avoided any serious leverage on Russia, but has eagerly rolled out red carpets, hung glamour shots of Trump and Putin in the White House, and treated Putin like a misunderstood statesman yearning to be reintegrated into "polite society." Meanwhile, Zelenskyy gets scolded for not having "settled" the war already, and Trump muses that maybe someone else should negotiate for Ukraine — ideally someone more comfortable trading away other people’s territory.
The "diplomacy" here looks a lot like rehabilitating an autocrat: thanking Putin for a diesel deal that hasn’t lowered prices, inviting him to the G20 at Trump’s own Doral resort, and floating a trilateral photo op with Putin and Xi so all three can cosplay as responsible nuclear stewards. European allies are quietly (and not-so-quietly) asking whether Trump’s peace plan is just "let Putin keep the land he stole" with a side of press conference. As one Estonian official points out, rewarding aggression tends to produce more aggression — a lesson apparently lost on a president juggling a war in Iran he started and a war in Europe he can’t stop, guided by an ever-shrinking inner circle and an ever-growing portrait collection of authoritarian man-crushes.
