The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Across the country, workers, students, and anyone who has looked at their paycheck and then at Trump's billionaire cabinet are walking off the job for May Day, under the banner "May Day Strong" and the already-iconic "No Kings" protests. The message: the United States was not actually founded so a gold-plated landlord and his donor class could run the government like a Mar-a-Lago VIP list.

Instead of quietly accepting that the country is now a subsidiary of Trump Corp and Goldman Sachs LLC, more than 500 unions, student groups, and community organizations are organizing a boycott of work, school, and shopping. The National Education Association is helping lead the charge, pointing out that while Trump & friends shower tax cuts and contracts on billionaires, basic things like public education funding are being carved up like it's the appetizer course at a hedge fund retreat.

Students with the Sunrise Movement are planning a massive school "strike"—because if you're already living under a creeping authoritarian cult that denies climate science, you may as well skip algebra to protest fascism and demand a Green New Deal. In North Carolina, where teacher pay and per-pupil spending are buried somewhere near the Earth’s mantle, at least 20 school districts are shutting down as educators, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers head to Raleigh to ask why there’s always money for billionaires, border militarization, and vanity walls, but never for textbooks or working school buses.

Charlotte’s school board has literally preemptively canceled class because so many staff are expected to walk out, which is a pretty solid indicator that Trump’s "run the country like a business" experiment has gone about as well as his casinos. May Day used to be about winning the 8-hour day; now it’s about reminding the White House that this is still a republic, not a reality show monarchy with executive orders instead of rose ceremonies.

At CBS News, veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi just committed the modern newsroom’s gravest sin: insisting that a factually correct story about Venezuelan migrants being dumped into El Salvador’s notorious Cecot prison should air without being rewritten to flatter the Trump administration. CBS News editor Bari Weiss — because of course it’s Bari Weiss — allegedly "spiked" the piece until it included more White House spin, then finally aired a barely changed version a month later, minus an on-air Trump official. So the story was fine, but the timing needed to wait until corporate and political handlers finished hyperventilating.

Alfonsi used her Ridenhour prize speech to describe what’s really going on: "the spread of corporate meddling and editorial fear" where executives ask not "Is it true?" but "Is it good for business?" Translation: is it good for ad revenue, stock price, and keeping Trump from rage-posting their names in ALL CAPS. She refused to change the piece, worried that viewers would notice that the original version accidentally aired in Canada and realize CBS had caved. Because the audience is, tragically for management, literate.

Her reward for basic journalistic integrity? Her job is now in jeopardy, she wakes up to headlines speculating about her firing, her bosses are furious, and someone even swatted her house after the segment was delayed. But sure, the real threat to democracy is college kids with protest signs. Alfonsi and former 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens — who already quit over corporate interference — are getting courage awards while the network that built its reputation on grilling presidents is now terrified of losing "access" and catching a frivolous lawsuit. The line between newsroom and PR shop is getting so thin you need a microscope to see it.

So we’ve arrived at the logical endpoint of Trump-era media capture: a flagship investigative show demands more administration talking points before it will air a story about a hell-prison, while the reporter who insists on telling the truth gets treated like the problem. Free press, meet free market. One of you is not walking out of this alive.

The Trump administration has bravely stepped forward to end the war on drugs by…partially rescheduling some cannabis sometimes for certain people under unclear conditions. Acting attorney general Todd Blanche signed an order bumping state-licensed medical cannabis and hypothetical future FDA-approved cannabis products from Schedule I to Schedule III, while leaving everything else in prohibition limbo. So if you buy an ounce from the medical side of the counter, you’re a patient with federally recognized medicine; if you take three steps to the left and buy the exact same ounce from the adult-use side, congratulations, you’re back to being a potential criminal. Regulatory clarity, Trump style.

The order leans hard on a 1961 UN narcotics treaty, as if the administration just found it in a dusty filing cabinet and decided to build modern drug policy around it. Experts note that the move pre-determines scheduling outcomes for future cannabis medicines without a full evidence-based review, but who needs science when you’ve got midterms to win and “younger males” to pander to? Even better, the carveout only really helps medical operators who can register with the DEA – a group that, thanks to how early markets were structured, skews whiter and wealthier – while Black and Latino entrepreneurs, more likely to hold adult-use licenses, stay stuck on the wrong side of federal law. Separate and unequal, now with more paperwork.

Patients are told they “should no longer be treated as criminals under federal law,” yet the order is so vague that housing, employment, and other discrimination are still very much on the table. Meanwhile, a new DEA hearing is scheduled for June, where full rescheduling remains “far from guaranteed” and still wouldn’t match the majority of Americans who support full legalization. So the grand reform amounts to a campaign talking point, a compliance nightmare, and a quiet subsidy to the more privileged slice of the industry. It’s not ending the drug war; it’s just reallocating who gets the shield and who keeps the target on their back.

Jimmy Kimmel cracks an age-gap joke about Melania Trump having “a glow like an expectant widow,” and within days the Trump White House turns it into yet another episode of Presidential Hurt Feelings Court. Melania denounces the line as “hateful and violent rhetoric,” Donald Trump calls it “a despicable call to violence,” and then demands ABC fire Kimmel, because nothing honors the First Amendment quite like the president personally trying to get comedians fired over monologue material.

The real fun starts when Trump’s handpicked FCC chair, Brendan Carr, decides the agency’s job isn’t regulating the airwaves but protecting the presidential ego. He orders early license reviews for eight ABC stations, pretending it’s about “unlawful discrimination” and DEI compliance while everyone with a functioning brain cell notes it’s retaliation over a joke. An FCC commissioner calls it the agency’s worst First Amendment violation yet, Free Press labels it an “extraordinary and unconstitutional attack on the media,” and Carr just keeps lumbering around Washington like a walking SLAPP suit.

Disney, having folded like a cheap lawn chair in earlier Trump tantrums—including settling a flimsy defamation case over George Stephanopoulos and watching CBS nuke Colbert after he called a corporate cave-in a “big fat bribe”—finally hints it might actually fight this one in court. Not exactly Patrick Henry, but better than preemptively handing Trump the remote. Meanwhile, the real point of Carr’s crusade is clear: scare networks into censoring themselves so thoroughly that the FCC and the White House never have to say a word. Trump gets the adulation, comedians get the message, and the First Amendment gets treated like a suggestion.

The Trump Justice Department took one look at an armed man allegedly trying to storm the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and kill the president and thought: you know what this country needs? fewer gun rules. So Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche rolled out more than 30 changes to federal gun regulations, headlined by a move to kill a 2024 Biden rule that finally tried to close the gun show loophole by forcing more sellers to run background checks.

Blanche bragged this was the “most comprehensive regulatory reform package” in ATF history, which is a poetic way of saying they’re helping unlicensed dealers keep shoveling guns into the stream of commerce without anyone asking awkward questions like, “Hey, are you legally allowed to own that AR-15?” Gun control groups noted that dismantling basic safeguards four days after gunfire at a presidential event is less “public safety” and more “Darwin Awards, federal edition.”

To really sell the bit, the rollback package was signed just after the Senate confirmed Robert Cekada as ATF director — only the third confirmed chief since 2006. So ATF finally gets a permanent leader and, as a reward, the administration starts yanking out the agency’s regulatory teeth while praising its heroic work taking illegal guns off the street. Conservatives spend decades turning ATF into a political punching bag, then Trumpworld uses it as a prop while quietly making sure the gun lobby never has a bad day again.