gateway to trump’s ego, closed for construction
Artist’s rendering of Trump’s vision for Penn Station: same delays, same crumbling tunnels, 400% more gold letters spelling his name.
The president who bankrupted casinos is now lecturing New York and New Jersey about fiscal responsibility, announcing that the federal government won’t pay a single dollar of cost overruns for the long-delayed Gateway tunnel project. This comes just days after a federal judge had to step in and block his administration from withholding money for the $16 billion tunnel in the first place. Normal presidents use infrastructure to create jobs and modernize transit; Donald Trump uses it the way he uses everything else: as leverage for personal branding and revenge.
NBC News previously reported that Trump’s team told Chuck Schumer that maybe, just maybe, the money could flow if Penn Station in New York and Dulles Airport in Virginia were renamed after Trump. Today, Trump insists the idea was totally not his, merely something floated by “certain politicians and construction union heads,” because when you think union guys, you definitely think: let’s name the train station after the guy who tried to kill our pensions. The White House line is now that the tunnel could be “financially catastrophic” — unlike, say, holding a multi-state transportation network hostage to the president’s fragile ego.
The petty doesn’t stop at naming rights. Last fall, budget director and professional culture warrior Russell Vought proudly froze funding for the project, claiming the money might be tainted by “unconstitutional DEI principles.” On the same day, he slashed billions more from infrastructure in states that Kamala Harris carried in 2024, because nothing says “serious stewardship of taxpayer dollars” like turning the federal budget into a loyalty rewards program. Infrastructure in blue states is being treated as a luxury item, subject to cancellation whenever Trump needs a new vendetta or a fresh surface to slap his name on.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
white house comms shop now fully bilingual in english and white nationalism
Trump, on his way to Marine One, presumably brainstorming which white nationalist meme to accidentally post from his account next while the flag in the background dies a little inside.
The Trump White House briefly remembered there’s still such a thing as shame and deleted a Truth Social post from Trump’s account that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The official explanation: an aide did it. Of course. The president just accidentally keeps hiring staffers whose hobbies line up perfectly with Stormfront memes. Barack Obama called it "deeply troubling," which is a very polite way of saying, "this is straight-up racist garbage from the Oval Office."
The real fun, as civil rights experts point out, is that this wasn’t a one-off; it’s just the loudest part of a year-long pattern where federal agencies have been marinating their public messaging in the aesthetics of white nationalism. DHS, apparently bored with mere incompetence, has gone full propaganda lab, pumping out recruitment materials drenched in nostalgic white Americana and "defend the homeland" language that tracks almost word-for-word with decades of extremist, anti-immigrant screeds about a "migrant invasion" from the Global South.
Asked about all this, DHS and the White House responded with the subtlety of a Fox News chyron, accusing NPR of "manufacturing outrage" and calling questions about extremist themes "bizarre" and "leftwing advocacy." Scholars call it what it is: plausible deniability as policy. The government’s new communications strategy is simple — speak in the emotional language of white nationalism, then act shocked anyone noticed. Dog whistles are only for dogs, after all; why are the humans suddenly hearing them?
#fascism#racism
trump scares uk so much they’re building backup money
British bankers gather to ask a simple question: what if the world’s reserve currency is run by a guy who rage-posts at 3am?
UK bank bosses are quietly holding a "what if Trump turns off our money" emergency meeting, which is not ominous at all. With Trump threatening Nato allies over Greenland like a wannabe Bond villain with worse speeches, British banks have decided that maybe, just maybe, having 95% of card payments run through two US companies that a vindictive president could pressure is not the pinnacle of national security. So they’re building a domestic backup payments system, because the free world now plans around the possibility that the American president might unplug their economy for fun and foreign policy.
Rather than say the quiet part out loud, UK officials mumble about "cyber and operational risk" while European politicians openly warn that "Trump can cut everything off" and demand an "Airbus for payment systems." The punchline: Visa and Mastercard are being invited to help design the alternative to Visa and Mastercard, like putting the arsonist on the fire safety committee. Still, when your closest allies start engineering a financial escape pod in case Washington elects the chaos goblin again, that’s not just market innovation – that’s a global vote of no confidence in America’s ability to restrain its own would‑be autocrat.
So by 2030, the UK hopes to have DeliveryCo, a shiny new payments rail whose main design spec is: "works even if the US goes full Trump again." This is what "leader of the free world" looks like now: NATO countries scrambling to build parallel financial systems so they don’t get caught in the blast radius of the next tantrum in the Oval Office.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump republican buys epstein’s desert of bad decisions
Zorro Ranch, seen here trying very hard to look like a normal luxury property and not a 10,000-acre monument to everyone in power pretending they saw nothing.
Texas "Trump Republican" and aspiring comptroller Don Huffines turns out to be the proud political face of a family that quietly snapped up Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous New Mexico Zorro Ranch — the 10,000-acre sex-trafficking crime scene that came with more red flags than a CPAC stage. They bought it in 2023 through a nice, anonymous-friendly LLC, because nothing says "trust me with state finances" like hiding your ownership of a convicted predator’s playground behind shell paperwork.
His spokesperson insists the Huffines clan only swooped in four years after Epstein’s death, purely to help victims via the auction proceeds, and definitely not because they thought they could get a bargain on a disgraced billionaire’s lair. They even complained the place was overvalued due to its “notoriety”, and got the county to knock the assessed value down from $21.1m to $13.4m. Apparently the market just doesn’t properly appreciate the resale challenges of a property that doubled as the set for Epstein’s eugenics fanfic.
Meanwhile, Huffines is the GOP frontrunner for Texas comptroller, running on a promise to "DOGE Texas government" — a loving tribute to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the federal demolition crew that fired people first and asked zero questions later. He brands himself a "successful businessman" and "Trump Republican" endorsed by Ted Cruz, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ron Paul, and assorted culture-war influencers, while the Trump administration tries desperately to pretend the Epstein files — where Trump’s name shows up thousands of times and includes a sexually suggestive birthday note — are just a boring paperwork issue and not a giant neon sign about the company this movement keeps.
The campaign won’t say what the family actually plans to do with the ranch, but given Epstein once allegedly envisioned it as a base for spreading his DNA, it’s on-brand that the MAGA era has converted it into a real-estate asset for a Trump-branded candidate. From sex-trafficker’s compound to "Texas-first" balance-sheet opportunity — the free market works, folks.
#corruption#forever-grifting
america first, ohio last
John Paulson practices his love of American manufacturing by seeing how many American manufacturers he can stop manufacturing.
Hedge fund billionaire and Trump mega-donor John Paulson — the guy who got rich betting on the 2008 housing collapse and then somehow became an economic guru in Trumpworld — is closing a Conn Selmer factory in East Lake, Ohio, and shipping the work to China. That’s 150 union jobs gone so that a man who once raised $50.5m for Trump in a single Palm Beach evening can "improve competitiveness" and "meet market demands" — billionaire for "we found cheaper labor and don’t care if your town dies".
This is the same Paulson who went on CNBC in 2024 to thunder that "we can’t have American producers closing American factories and offshoring" while praising Trump’s tariffs and vowing to protect American manufacturing. Now his company tells the union there will be no bargaining because the plant is closing, after quietly opening a facility in China and siphoning work out of Ohio — while feeding workers reassurances that the new plant wouldn’t affect them. Shockingly, the brass parts coming back from China are low quality, but the corporate PowerPoint says the real problem is the American workers.
Employees call it a slap in the face; Paulson calls it Tuesday. The workers rally, release videos about betrayal and heartbreak, and beg the same Trump who made Paulson part of his economic policy brain trust to step in and save them. The White House responds with the full force of America First compassion by… not returning calls, just like the company. Meanwhile, Conn Selmer insists it remains "deeply committed" to US manufacturing — a bold claim for a firm that just told 150 Americans their livelihoods are a rounding error on John Paulson’s next yacht upgrade.
#forever-grifting#money
slumlord peace: kushner to fix ukraine between real estate deals
Zelenskyy listening politely as Jared Kushner explains Eastern Europe using the same expertise that once gave us “We’ll fix everything with an Abraham Accord and some condos.”
The Trump administration has decided that four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is the perfect moment to roll out its discount diplomacy package: send Jared Kushner and Trump mega-donor Steve Witkoff to Switzerland and call it “peace talks.” Because when you’re dealing with the largest land war in Europe since WWII, naturally you tap the guy who couldn’t even get Middle East peace without a map that looked like a WeWork floor plan.
Trump is publicly leaning on Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “act” because “Russia wants to make a deal,” which is a poetic way of saying give up your land and trust the guy who invaded you four times. Meanwhile, his own secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is out in Munich gently hinting that Moscow might not be all that serious about peace. So the official US position is: Russia is totally ready for a grand bargain, unless you ask literally anyone at State who can read a casualty report.
Ukraine, annoyingly for the Kremlin and Mar-a-Lago, is refusing to hand over the Donbas like it’s a golf course Trump lost in bankruptcy court. Zelenskyy points out that letting Putin keep stolen territory hasn’t worked out so great in Chechnya, Georgia, or Crimea, and that “Putin cannot be stopped with kisses or flowers” — a surprisingly concise review of the entire early-2000s western Russia policy. Washington, for its part, is trying to sell Kyiv on 15 years of US security guarantees while Ukraine, having watched America’s attention span, is asking for 30-50. One side is living in reality; the other is scheduling side meetings with Iran between press hits.
So Geneva will host another round of “talks” where Russia sends an adviser who denies Ukraine is real, the US sends a landlord and a legacy admission, and Ukraine sends people who are actually fighting a war. The Trump team calls it diplomacy; everyone else recognizes it as a live demonstration of how to pressure a democratic ally to swallow a bad deal so your president can brag about a “historic peace” on Truth Social before heading back to the buffet.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
great news: airport security is now a volunteer position
Pictured: the frontline of national security, now operating on vibes and overdue bills.
Welcome to the latest episode of "America, But Make It Feudal," where TSA agents are still required to show up, screen thousands of passengers, and protect national security — just without the unnecessary luxury of money. Because nothing says "world's most advanced democracy" like forcing people to work while their paychecks are held hostage by a political feud over DHS funding.
This partial government shutdown means the people rummaging through your bags and stopping you from accidentally packing a loaded gun in your carry-on are effectively unpaid interns for the Homeland. Miss a shift? You’re disciplined. Show up? You get the warm satisfaction of knowing your landlord definitely won’t accept "patriotic service" as rent. It’s illegal to not work, but perfectly fine for the government not to pay you yet — a fun little arrangement that would be called "forced labor" if any other country tried it.
Meanwhile, the same crowd screaming about "border security" is totally fine kneecapping the very department that handles, you know, security. Flights keep running on the backs of stressed, underpaid, now-unpaid workers, while the political class treats their livelihoods like poker chips in another shutdown stunt. We get slower lines, higher security risks, and a federal workforce learning that their employer will absolutely use them as leverage. Truly, the shutdown is going great.
#killing-democracy#money#forever-grifting
trumprx: coupons, culture war, and not much medicine
TrumpRx: because nothing says ‘universal IVF access’ like a discount code for 10% of the bill and a lecture from the Heritage Foundation.
Trump’s long-hyped miracle drug-discount program, TrumpRx, has finally launched and, shockingly, it’s mostly a glorified coupon site with 43 meds and the policy depth of a CVS receipt. The only drugs that actually get cheaper in any meaningful way are GLP‑1s for weight loss and a handful of fertility meds, giving Trump just enough IVF content to wave around and claim he delivered on his 2024 promise of “universal” IVF access. The catch? Those fertility coupons cover maybe 10–20% of IVF costs, in a world where a single cycle can run up to $30,000 and patients are told to budget for as many as four. It’s like promising everyone a house and then handing out Home Depot coupons for doorknobs.
The whole thing is wrapped in the usual second-term theological hostage situation. The Heritage Foundation — the same crew behind Project 2025 and other "America, but less democracy" ideas — considers embryos "sacred human beings" and treats IVF as morally suspect because not every embryo survives. That absolutist fertilized-egg-as-baby fiction boxes the administration into a corner: Trump wants credit for being the pro‑IVF guy after Dobbs backlash, while his ideological babysitters insist that modern reproductive medicine is a crime scene. So we get this half-step: some IVF-adjacent discounts, a little pandering to would-be parents, and zero serious policy to actually make treatment accessible.
To pad out the charade, TrumpRx quietly leans on fuzzy, Heritage-approved buzzwords like “restorative reproductive medicine” — a pseudo-medical framing that implies infertility isn’t a disease but a moral or lifestyle glitch you can fix if you just live right. It’s the same Make America Healthy Again logic that says diet and vibes can cure chronic illness, now repurposed for fertility: if you just fix the “underlying problems” (and, ideally, are a married heterosexual couple), the state might grudgingly tolerate your attempts to have a child. Meanwhile, the health department won’t even comment, clinics still charge luxury-car prices per cycle, and Americans are left with a government website that functions less as healthcare reform and more as a culture-war landing page with printable coupons.
#pro-life#killing-democracy
trump’s protection racket foreign policy goes global
NATO, now rebranded as ‘We Swear We’ll Pay, Please Don’t Leave Alliance,’ poses in front of a giant Trump headshot.
Europe is suddenly hanging billboards for drones on churches because Donald Trump has turned transatlantic security into a live-action remake of The Sopranos, except somehow dumber and with worse tailoring. With the US freezing new aid to Ukraine and Trump treating NATO like a gym membership he never intended to pay for, Germany is now the biggest single donor to Kyiv and is racing to build a war economy it thought it left behind in the 20th century.
At the Munich Security Conference, European leaders are basically holding a group therapy session about how their "former best pal" in Washington keeps threatening to walk out of NATO unless they pay tribute and applaud loudly enough. Trump officials "appreciate" Europe’s sudden €150bn defence splurge the way an arsonist appreciates how quickly the fire department shows up. The new world order is simple: America’s security guarantees are for sale, rule of law is optional, and the free world is advised to keep three to ten days of canned goods on hand, just in case the President’s next tantrum is strategic.
#killing-democracy#national-security#imperialism
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
