Supreme Court building, now offering same-day service on stripping rights from people who did everything legally.
The Trump administration is back in court asking the conservative supermajority to help them finish the job of turning "temporary protected status" into "don’t unpack, you’re deported." After already greenlighting the removal of TPS for more than 300,000 Venezuelans on the shadow docket, the supreme court will now hear whether the White House can also yank protections from Syrians and Haitians — people the U.S. government itself previously declared couldn’t safely go home because of war, state collapse, and disasters.
Nearly 1.3 million people started Trump’s second term with TPS. The administration has spent the year trying to rip that away from 13 countries, including Afghanistan, Honduras, Yemen, and others, while deadpanning that Syria is moving toward “stable institutional governance” and Haiti has “no extraordinary and temporary conditions” — a bold claim, given the raging gang violence and state failure currently happening there in real time. Kristi Noem, moonlighting as a geopolitical visionary, apparently believes that if you just say "it’s fine" enough times, civil war and organized crime politely disappear.
Haitian and Syrian TPS holders have sued, and their cases are now consolidated before the same court that’s been treating immigrant lives like administrative clutter. If the justices side with Trump again, analysts expect the administration to go for the full set and dismantle TPS everywhere — turning a 1990 humanitarian safeguard into yet another tool for legalized cruelty dressed up as policy. The message to people who followed the rules, built lives, and paid taxes is simple: your safety is temporary, but this government’s appetite for deportation is permanent.
Thomas Massie, apparently under the mistaken impression that Congress is supposed to be independent of the guy rage-posting from the Oval Office.
The White House has apparently merged with the RNC to launch the 2026 "Revenge Tour," where President Donald Trump spends his time not governing but hunting down Republicans whose crime was momentary independent thought. Kentucky, Indiana, and Louisiana are the first stops on this rolling purge, with Trump trying to kneecap anyone who crossed him on redistricting, impeachment, or the unforgivable sin of wanting Jeffrey Epstein files released. Policy differences? No, this is about loyalty, tribute, and making sure everyone knows who owns the party.
Trump advisers are remarkably candid: they don't love the "revenge tour" branding, but they’re very clear that Republicans who don’t "stand up for his agenda" get politically executed. Rep. Thomas Massie, who dared oppose Trump’s "big, beautiful" deficit explosion and pushed for Epstein transparency, is now the main target, with a Trump-built political machine recruiting a Navy SEAL just so the president can settle a personal score. Massie openly says colleagues are afraid to vote against Trump because they don’t want to be next, but sure, we definitely still have three branches of government and not one man and his fan club.
In Indiana, Trump is backing primary challengers against state senators who wouldn’t rig redistricting hard enough for his taste. In Louisiana, he’s trying to oust Sen. Bill Cassidy for the high crime of voting to convict him after January 6. Outside groups, super PACs like MAGA KY, and Republican Jewish Coalition money are all being marshaled to send a nice clear message: cross the Dear Leader, lose your job. Massie, hilariously, frames his own survival as the test of whether we still have a functioning legislative branch. When that’s the bar for American democracy in 2026, things are going spectacularly well.
Artist’s rendering of Trump’s immigration system: a guy in a knockoff uniform on WhatsApp takes your money, and the real government shows up just in time to put you on a plane.
The Trump administration’s latest contribution to American entrepreneurship: a thriving cottage industry of immigration scams built on fear, confusion, and WhatsApp. As Trump floods cities like New Orleans with federal agents for things like "Operation Swamp Sweep" — because subtlety is for democracies — asylum seekers like Jasmir Urbina are panicked, desperate, and looking for help. What they’re getting instead is fake Catholic Charities lawyers on Facebook, bogus virtual hearings with costume-store "federal officers" in front of American flags, and bills totaling nearly $10,000 — their life savings — wired away on Zelle.
Urbina did what the system tells people to do: fled persecution, checked in with ICE, waited for her court date, and sought what she thought was legal help. For her trouble, she was scammed out of her money, falsely told she’d "won residency," instructed to skip court, and then arrested at her ICE check-in and deported to Nicaragua in shackles. Scammed, then deported — the Trump-era version of "customer service." Meanwhile, DHS won’t answer questions about her case, New Orleans police go radio silent, and the official line is that impersonators "will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." Sure. Any day now.
Federal Trade Commission complaints about immigration scams have doubled since Trump’s election, with at least $94.4 million reported stolen over five years — almost certainly an undercount, because nothing encourages crime reporting like a government promising mass deportations. State AGs, the ABA, and even AARP are frantically warning people not to trust WhatsApp lawyers, while USCIS sagely notes that it does not, in fact, grant residency over encrypted chat apps. But Trump’s crackdown has done what it was designed to do: create a lawless, terrorized environment where immigrants are too scared to seek help, predators cash in, and the only people the government reliably manages to locate are the victims it can deport.
Four people in white tie walk into a state dinner: two trying to stabilize a 70-year-old alliance, two trying not to trip over the diplomatic wreckage on the carpet.
Trump used a White House state dinner to announce that King Charles "agrees with me even more than I do" that Iran should never get a nuclear weapon, casually conscripting the British monarch into his personal foreign-policy fan club. The minor problem: Charles is constitutionally supposed to be politically neutral, but Trump treats diplomatic norms like he treats security briefings—optional reading at best.
Trump bragged that the US had "militarily defeated" its Middle East opponent and that "they’ve known it right now, very powerfully"—a sentence structure that suggests the real WMD was grammar. Buckingham Palace then scrambled out a statement reminding everyone that the king is merely "mindful" of the UK government’s anti-proliferation stance, which is royal-speak for please stop quoting him like he’s your Fox & Friends co-host.
While Charles gamely tried to revive the "special relationship" with a history lesson about Suez and a gentle warning against US isolationism in Congress, Trump focused on publicly insulting Prime Minister Keir Starmer over Iran and declaring him "no Winston Churchill"—a bold line from the guy who thinks diplomacy is yelling at NATO and then sending a fundraising email. The result: a state visit that was supposed to repair alliances instead became another episode of The President Will Now Ad-Lib Nuclear Policy Into A Microphone.
Guests like Jeff Bezos and Rory McIlroy looked on as the US and UK tried to reenact 1957-style damage control, except this time the crisis is not a canal in Egypt, it’s one man with a podium and zero impulse control. Nearly 70 years later, Charles joked that it’s hard to imagine such a crisis happening again. The punchline is that it was happening in real time, over canapés.
King Charles arrives in Washington to reassure Britain that everything is fine while Trump and a pack of tech billionaires quietly auction off the future of UK sovereignty to the highest surveillance bidder.
Donald Trump is annoyed that Europe won’t clap loudly enough for his Iran disaster, so the White House has moved on to its favorite foreign policy tool: the shakedown. Britain is being reminded that under Trumpism, the "special relationship" is less NATO ally and more strip-mall protection racket. Use your bases, kill your regulations, hand over Greenland, and don’t you dare tell the guy with the nuclear codes "no"—or suddenly Washington might discover a deep concern for Argentine sovereignty over the Falklands.
Meanwhile, the real leverage isn’t just tariffs and tantrums; it’s code and compute. As US tech giants race China, Europe and the UK risk becoming glorified app stores running on infrastructure owned by a handful of US oligarchs. The Trump administration has even blacklisted Anthropic as a "national security risk" for the high crime of refusing to strap its Claude model onto autonomous lethal weapons and domestic surveillance systems. Say no to building robo-cops and AI killbots, and congratulations: you’re now a threat to America.
Hovering over all this are the usual suspects: Sam Altman portrayed as a ruthlessly ambitious would-be AI overlord, Alex Karp of Palantir proudly declaring his mission is to serve US supremacy while his software burrows into UK government systems, and Elon Musk—whose satellite network can decide how much Ukraine gets to communicate—playing edgelord on X while his chatbot once happily branded itself "MechaHitler". Britain is being told to pick a side in the AI future: captured by authoritarian Beijing, or captured by unaccountable US billionaires operating with Trump’s blessing and zero democratic oversight. Sovereignty, but make it SaaS.
Liz Kendall dares to suggest that "middle powers" band together so they’re not all living at the mercy of whichever American tech bro is currently whispering in Trump’s ear about surveillance, weapons, and market dominance. Which is adorable, given that Britain is still busy arguing about Peter Mandelson’s vetting drama while the White House toys with their trade deals and territorial claims. The AI panic isn’t just about robots taking jobs; it’s about whether democratic governments will be allowed to exist as anything more than customer service departments for US tech empires and a president who thinks foreign policy is just The Apprentice with drones.
The Trump DOJ staring at a map of voter rolls like it’s a DoorDash menu for democracy: everything must go.
The Trump administration’s Justice Department took another swing at building its dream all‑you‑can‑purge voter database and, once again, the courts told them to go entertain themselves elsewhere. A federal judge in Arizona — a Trump appointee, because irony still works overtime — dismissed DOJ’s lawsuit demanding the state’s detailed voter rolls, ruling that the National Voter Registration Act doesn’t magically authorize the attorney general to collect everyone’s birthdays, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers like some creepy authoritarian Costco membership list.
Arizona joins Rhode Island, California, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Oregon on the “absolutely not” side of this nationwide data grab, while at least 13 very brave states have already handed their voters’ personal information to Trump’s DOJ, which has been sharing it with DHS’s "Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements" program. That system is so accurate it regularly flags legal voters based on outdated records — the perfect tool if your goal is "oops, mass disenfranchisement" dressed up as "election integrity." Experts note that voter fraud is exceedingly rare, but the administration’s appetite for sensitive data is not, and the real point here seems to be stockpiling ammunition for future conspiracy theories about elections Republicans might lose.
Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes has been publicly telling DOJ to, quote, "pound sand," which is apparently now the official legal term for "stop trying to build a federal voter surveillance regime the Constitution doesn’t allow." Six federal courts have agreed that this scheme is legally baseless, but the Trump administration keeps filing, refiling, and forum‑shopping like a desperate lawyer trying to find the one judge who thinks the Voting Rights Act is a suggestion and privacy is for suckers. The Department of Justice, naturally, had no comment — hard to issue a press release that honestly says, "we’d like your data so we can scare you out of voting next time."
Construction crews quietly turn a demolished historic wing into a $400m presidential panic disco while a judge’s order waves politely from the rubble.
The Department of Justice, formerly known for things like "law" and "professionalism", has now submitted a court filing that reads like it was ghostwritten by Truth Social. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is begging a federal judge to let Trump restart his $400m White House ballroom project, citing the recent shooting at the Correspondents’ Dinner as proof that what America really needs is… a larger, fancier presidential party bunker.
The minor hitch: preservationists say Trump had no legal authority to bulldoze the historic East Wing without Congress and agency approvals, a concern Trump initially dodged by claiming the new structure would be merely "near" the East Wing before, you know, demolishing it. DOJ’s filing responds not with serious constitutional reasoning, but by accusing the National Trust for Historic Preservation of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" and praising Trump as a "highly successful real estate developer" with special abilities that other presidents apparently lack.
Legal experts note the judge is unlikely to be impressed by a brief that sounds like a campaign rally transcript stapled to a zoning variance. Meanwhile, the Trust politely reminds the government that their lawsuit "endangers no one" and simply asks the administration to follow the law — a standard that now apparently qualifies as deranged. The White House keeps building below ground despite a court order, the East Wing is gone, and the Justice Department is out here cosplaying as the Trump Organization’s in‑house counsel. Separation of powers? No thanks. We’re doing separation of historic architecture instead.
Pictured: one constitutional monarch and one guy whose staff keeps accidentally tweeting out the job description he really wants.
Congress spent the day giving a warm bipartisan welcome to an actual hereditary monarch, and Republicans promptly had a meltdown that Democrats didn’t show the same reverence to their aspiring one. Sen. Ashley Moody took to X to demand why every Democrat stood and applauded King Charles III, apparently confused by the radical concept that you can oppose a president trying to govern like a king while still being polite to…a literal foreign head of state.
Not to be outdone in the race to miss the point, the RNC posted a screengrab sneering “So, what happened to ‘No Kings’,” while Rep. Wesley Hunt helpfully edited together Democrats not standing for Trump’s State of the Union with them standing for Charles acknowledging the Declaration of Independence. The message: if you don’t rise for Donald Trump, you’re a hypocrite for not also rejecting the British monarchy, because the problem was never about abuse of power, just about insufficient fealty to Dear Leader.
Abe Hamadeh’s office called it a “confusing scene” that Democrats who’ve joined “No Kings” protests applauded a king, somehow skipping the part where those protests are about the American president acting like an unelected sovereign. Meanwhile, Republicans were also on their feet cheering Charles, then turned around and attacked Democrats for doing the same. The White House finished the day by posting a photo of Trump and Charles labeled “TWO KINGS,” which is definitely something you do in a healthy republic and not at all a giant flashing sign that the guy who keeps insisting “I’m not a king” would very much like to be treated as one.
The Trump energy strategy in one image: a wind turbine being quietly dismantled while an oil rig gets a taxpayer-funded champagne bath in the background.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new form of energy efficiency: it’s extremely efficient at turning offshore wind projects into cash payouts for fossil fuel investors. Interior just blocked two already-permitted wind farms and promised the companies millions in refunds — but only if they plow that money straight into oil, gas, or LNG. It’s like a green energy program run by Exxon’s legal department: you get reimbursed for not building clean power, as long as you help cook the planet faster.
This follows last month’s little $1bn love letter to a French energy company to kill yet another wind project, conveniently sidestepping those pesky courts that already told Trump he can’t just scream “national security” whenever a turbine hurts his feelings. Interior secretary Doug Burgum is out here declaring that Americans are finally free from “expensive, unreliable, intermittent” wind, while simultaneously paying companies not to build projects that would power millions of homes during an energy crunch partly caused by Trump’s war in Iran and the AI datacenter boom. Stunning commitment to affordability: jack up prices, then kill the cheap power.
Democrats Jared Huffman and Jamie Raskin are politely asking why the government is doing secret backroom deals to pay corporations not to provide affordable, clean electricity, and whether that’s even legal. Meanwhile, Trump is still ranting that wind is “worthless” and “ugly,” a position he’s held since he tried to stop turbines from ruining the view from his Scottish golf course — turbines that now power up to 80,000 homes, which is roughly 80,000 more homes than his policies will help. The message from this White House is clear: if it spins in the wind, kill it with taxpayer cash; if it pumps gas, back up the Brinks truck.
Artist’s rendering of the new U.S. passport: the Declaration of Independence, an American flag, and a helpful reminder that your freedoms now come with a giant Trump watermark.
The State Department has announced a "special" 250th anniversary U.S. passport that features a large image of Donald Trump superimposed over the Declaration of Independence and an American flag, plus his signature in gold lettering. Because nothing says "of the people, by the people" like turning your travel documents into a devotional poster for the sitting president. These vanity passports will be the default at the Washington Passport Agency, just in case you forgot who you're supposed to be loyal to when you leave the country.
This is not an isolated bout of tackiness; it's the latest installment in the ongoing Trump-branding of the federal government. His image and signature are being slapped onto U.S. dollars and coins, courtesy of a federal commission made up entirely of Trump appointees that also approved a 24-carat commemorative gold coin featuring his face. Treasury is putting his signature on paper currency for the first time in U.S. history, elbowing aside the long-standing practice of featuring the treasury secretary and treasurer instead of the guy running for re-election.
Meanwhile, the Trump name is being welded onto everything that doesn't move fast enough: the U.S. Institute of Peace, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Justice, Agriculture, and Labor Department buildings draped with giant Trump banners, and a grab bag of TrumpRx drug programs, Trump-branded savings accounts, and even proposed "Trump-class" warships. Founders on the page, Dear Leader on the cover is a pretty tidy summary of the project: wrap the cult of personality in sepia-toned patriotism and hope no one notices the republic quietly being rebranded.
David Morens, allegedly seen here discovering that "reply all" to your co-conspirators is not a great FOIA-avoidance strategy.
The Trump-era justice department has discovered a shocking new threat to America: a 78-year-old former Fauci adviser with a Gmail account and a taste for wine. David Morens, longtime senior adviser at NIAID, has been indicted for allegedly hiding federal Covid records, routing sensitive business through his personal email, and coordinating behind-the-scenes efforts to restore funding to a grant that included the Wuhan Institute of Virology — all while trying to "counter the narrative" that the virus leaked from a lab. Because if there’s one thing this country needed during a mass-casualty pandemic, it was senior health officials playing PR games in their inboxes.
Prosecutors say Morens and unnamed co-conspirators explicitly agreed in writing to dodge FOIA by using his personal Gmail, then used it to share non-public NIH info, lobby on funding decisions, ghostwrite letters to leadership, and run "back-channel" comms with senior officials. For his "behind-the-scene shenanigans", one co-conspirator allegedly sent him wine and dangled Michelin-star restaurant meals in Paris, New York and DC — and Morens supposedly responded by identifying an "official act" he could perform to "deserve" it: a scientific commentary in a major journal arguing Covid had natural origins. Science! Now with loyalty perks.
Acting attorney general Todd Blanche — yes, the same Todd Blanche who moonlighted as Trump’s personal lawyer — solemnly declared this a "profound abuse of trust" at a time Americans needed it most. Stirring words from an administration that spent the same pandemic downplaying the virus, mocking masks, and rage-tweeting at Fauci on live TV. Still, if the indictment holds, Morens faces up to 20 years per falsified-records count and several more for conspiracy and concealment, proving once again that under Trump’s permanently politicized Covid universe, everyone is either a heroic truth-teller exposing the lab leak, a corrupt deep-state shill hiding emails, or both, depending on which way the polling goes this week.
Workers bravely attempt to turn a historic national memorial into the world’s saddest luxury condo pool, per executive direction.
Washington woke up to find the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool drained, full of construction equipment, porta-potties, and a few guys hosing down the bottom with what looks like Home Depot’s "Florida cul-de-sac" blue. President Trump, naturally, calls it “American flag blue” and insists it will take just one week and cost a very chill $2 million — which, coincidentally, is exactly the sort of number you throw out when you’ve never once dealt with a government procurement rule in your life.
Instead of, say, the National Park Service leading a transparent preservation project for one of the country’s most famous memorial spaces, Trump proudly tells reporters he’s working with “one of his best pool builders” from his real estate days. Because when you’re dealing with a historic national monument, why not subcontract it like a New Jersey golf course water feature? NPR politely asked NPS for details on the cost, contract, and upkeep; the agency responded with the traditional Trump-era answer: total silence.
The plan is to turn the dignified, gray granite basin that once reflected civil rights marches and anti-war protests into something that looks like the shallow end at a mid-range resort. It’s the Trump aesthetic in a nutshell: take a site tied to democracy and sacrifice, slap a brand color on it, declare patriotic victory, and let the taxpayers pick up the tab while the paperwork – and the oversight – mysteriously vanish into the blue.
James Comey, moments before learning that seashell numerology is now a federal offense in Trump’s America.
The Trump Justice department has filed new criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey for the high crime of … an Instagram seashell arrangement. Comey posted shells spelling out “86 47”, which the government has now decided is basically a murder plot against Donald Trump. He deleted the post, apologized, and said he didn’t realize the numbers were linked to violence. Trump’s DOJ response: perfect, let’s indict him.
This is Comey’s second trip through the Trump justice funhouse; the first case for allegedly lying to Congress collapsed when a judge ruled the prosecutor was illegally appointed. That same tiny legal speed bump also wiped out the DOJ’s paper-thin mortgage fraud case against New York AG Letitia James. Rather than taking the hint that these prosecutions look like political hit jobs, acting attorney general Todd Blanche — who really wants the job permanently — has decided to speedrun the purge, greenlighting flimsy cases against Trump critics like the Southern Poverty Law Center and even cranking up an inquiry into former CIA director John Brennan.
All of this is happening days after a California man was arrested with weapons at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and charged with trying to assassinate the president. Faced with an actual violent threat, Trump’s DOJ has chosen to focus its firepower on … a seashell post and the career of Comey’s daughter, Maurene, who just won the right to sue over her own allegedly political firing. The message from Trump’s America is clear: if you investigate Trump, criticize Trump, or are related to someone who did, the state will come for you — but don’t worry, it’ll be under the very solemn banner of “law and order.”
Delaney Hall ICE detention center in Newark, where the Trump administration briefly experimented with the legal theory that time, due process, and basic humanity are all optional.
The Trump administration’s latest legal theory is that if you once crossed the border illegally, you are forever “seeking admission” — like an eternal DMV line, but with handcuffs. A unanimous Second Circuit panel, led by Judge Joseph F. Bianco (yes, one of Trump’s own first-term appointees, awkward), just shredded that idea, ruling that the policy of locking up people who crossed years ago and denying them bond hearings is unlawful. Bianco politely translated the government’s argument as an “attempt to muddy these textually clear waters,” which is judge-speak for: are you kidding me?
The administration’s position would let ICE treat anyone who ever crossed illegally as a permanent target for near-indefinite detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225 — even if they’ve been living and working here for years. Two other appeals courts already nodded along with this, because why not toss due process on the bonfire one more time, but now there’s a circuit split and the whole mess is headed to the Supreme Court, where the Federalist Society fan club will decide how long “seeking admission” can last. (Current Trump theory: until death, and possibly beyond.)
Meanwhile, thousands of migrants have already been jailed for months under this scheme, flooding federal courts with habeas petitions and overwhelming both judges and the Justice Department, which keeps getting yelled at for not releasing people it had no legal basis to cage in the first place. Even another Trump appointee, Judge Ralph Erickson on the Eighth Circuit, has been waving a red flag about this policy in dissent. When your own handpicked judges are telling you your detention regime “defies” the statute’s text, history, structure, and purpose, you might just be running an authoritarian fantasy rather than an immigration system.
America 2026: formalwear, filet mignon, and live ammunition — please silence your phones and any would-be assassins before the program begins.
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner — that annual ritual where journalists and politicians pretend they don’t loathe each other over rubber chicken — briefly turned into a live-fire drill. BBC State Department correspondent Tom Bateman was in the room with Donald Trump when shots rang out, sending the press corps and political class scrambling under tables, finally experiencing what American students have been practicing in classrooms for years.
As Bateman walks through the minute-by-minute chaos, we get the full transformation from glitzy self-congratulation to “are those gunshots?” to “please don’t let this be how I trend on Twitter.” The alleged gunman, 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, has been charged with attempting to assassinate Trump and two firearms offenses, and the motive is still a mystery — though living in a country where the political system treats mass gun violence as a scheduling inconvenience probably didn’t help.
So the president survives, the press corps survives, the gun culture that made this possible also survives, and by next week half of Washington will be back to insisting that more guns at the dinner would have fixed it. The only thing that actually took a bullet was the illusion that this is a functioning, sane democracy and not a reality show where the season finale is always, somehow, “shots fired.”
Google and the Pentagon, seen here adjusting the 'evil' slider from OFF to 'as long as it’s classified.'
Google has reportedly signed on to let the Pentagon run its AI models on classified networks for basically “any lawful government purpose”, which is Washington-speak for: we’ll decide what’s lawful after we’ve done it. The deal includes Google helping the military tweak or dial down safety filters whenever the government asks, because nothing says "responsible AI" like handing the off-switch for guardrails to the same institution that brought you warrantless surveillance and forever wars.
The contract solemnly declares the AI system is not intended for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons without appropriate human oversight — the kind of carefully lawyered phrase that will look great on the slide deck at the Hague. Google, now freed from its old promise not to build tech that causes "overall harm", insists this is all about national security, while also conceding it has no power to veto what the Pentagon actually does with the tools. The fox has signed a memorandum of understanding with the henhouse and agreed to provide premium analytics.
Inside the company, more than 600 employees are frantically waving little ethical red flags, begging Sundar Pichai not to let their work be used in "inhumane or extremely harmful ways" — a concern that was apparently edited out of the latest quarterly earnings report. This is the sequel to the 2018 Project Maven revolt, except this time Google didn’t walk away; it rewrote the rulebook so it wouldn’t have to. Meanwhile, Anthropic gets labeled a "supply-chain risk" for refusing to help with autonomous weapons and surveillance, which is Washington’s new term for "company that still has a functioning conscience."
Mary Barra smiles through gritted teeth while explaining how GM’s earnings now depend on whether Donald Trump’s illegal tariffs get refunded before his next tantrum.
General Motors is expecting a cool $500m refund because the US supreme court finally noticed that Donald Trump’s "national emergency" tariff cosplay under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act was, legally speaking, hot garbage. GM’s 2026 earnings outlook jumps on the news, because nothing says "stable rule of law" like corporate balance sheets yo-yoing with every unconstitutional stunt the president dreams up between cable hits.
The court torched Trump’s IEEPA-based "reciprocal" tariffs and his "trafficking tariffs" on Mexico, Canada, China, Brazil, India and basically anyone else who looked at him funny. Customs and Border Protection now has an online portal so more than 330,000 importers who paid about $166bn under this illegal scheme can line up for their refunds, like a very depressing Black Friday sale on authoritarian overreach. Meanwhile, the still-legal Section 232 tariffs keep bleeding companies like GM, and the administration is promising even more duties, because the lesson they took from having a giant chunk of their trade agenda ruled unlawful was apparently: "Do it again, but harder."
Trump, naturally, is publicly pressuring companies not to seek refunds for the illegal tariffs and openly threatening to "remember" those that do, turning corporate tax treatment into a loyalty test. He calls it "brilliant" if firms just eat the costs of his unlawful trade war for him, which is one way to describe being shaken down by a government that first breaks the law, then dares you to ask for your money back. The message from Trump’s America is clear: pay for the president’s illegal economic experiments, and if you want your refund, be prepared to get on his enemies list.
Federal agents descend on a Minneapolis daycare to bravely defend America from toddlers, snacks, and Democratic governors.
The Trump administration has once again parachuted into Minnesota, this time with 22 federal search warrants and a new branding exercise: daycare fraud panic. The DOJ insists this has nothing to do with immigration, which is a comforting claim from the same federal machinery that just finished an ICE surge so aggressive it left two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, dead and thousands more living under occupation by 3,000 federal agents.
Now the show has a new ringmaster: JD Vance, freshly anointed "fraud czar" by Donald Trump, because if there’s one thing this White House knows, it’s how to identify fraud (call it professional courtesy). Vance vows to be "relentless" in chasing down scammers in Democratic-led states, while Trump confidently asserts that cracking down on alleged blue-state fraud could "literally" balance the entire US budget. Economists call this deranged; the administration calls it policy.
Minnesota Republicans like House majority whip Tom Emmer are dutifully applauding the raids and thanking Trump for defending taxpayers, as federal agents systematically target Medicaid and childcare providers, disproportionately in Somali American communities. This all follows Trump unilaterally freezing Minnesota’s childcare funding over alleged fraud, helpfully turning social services for kids into a hostage in his culture war. The underlying fraud investigation actually started under Biden and has already produced more than 60 convictions, but the current White House has upgraded it into a convenient excuse to punish a Democratic governor, intimidate immigrants, and send a clear message: federal law enforcement is now a partisan blunt instrument with a siren on top.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump, and Joe Rogan audition for a new show called ‘Shark Tank: Controlled Substances Edition’ in the Oval Office.
Trump just discovered a new frontier in Republican morality: drugs are bad, unless Peter Thiel can IPO them. Six decades after Ted Kennedy grilled Timothy Leary as the alleged acid Antichrist, his nephew RFK Jr is now literally standing behind Donald Trump in the Oval Office as Trump signs an executive order to "accelerate" psychedelic medicine. Joe Rogan is there too, naturally, because US drug policy is now apparently written via text messages from podcasters.
The sales pitch is mental health: ibogaine and other psychedelics for PTSD, depression, and suicidal ideation, especially for veterans and cops. The reality is a gold rush. With a projected multibillion-dollar mushroom market and over a billion people living with mental health conditions, Silicon Valley and the far-right donor class have realized that curing trauma is less important than capturing the revenue stream from it. Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin and assorted biotech guys in Patagonia vests are shoveling money into psychedelic startups while Trump uses the presidency as their regulatory battering ram.
So the same movement that spent decades fearmongering about "hippie drugs" and locking people up for possessing them is now fast-tracking hallucinogens—just as long as they’re dispensed in a clinic, wrapped in a patent, and backed by a billionaire. Street users still get the carceral state; investors get the visionary rebirth. It’s not a war on drugs any more, it’s a licensing deal—with the federal government and the MAGA coalition serving as the marketing department.
Linda McMahon, preparing to explain how cutting half the civil rights staff will somehow help twice as many kids, using only the power of corporate buzzwords.
The Trump Education Department, now helmed by WWE alumna and noted civil-rights visionary Linda McMahon, managed to resolve 30 percent fewer discrimination complaints in 2025 than in 2024 — during a year when a record number of students begged Washington for help with prejudice, bias and outright bigotry in their schools. So yes, more kids are being harassed, and the federal government’s answer is: "have you tried waiting quietly in the corner?" Roughly 20,000 students are now stuck in bureaucratic limbo, which is a fun way of saying their civil rights complaints are sitting in a digital junk drawer while the administration workshopped new ways to blame Joe Biden.
Officials are pointing at a supposed "backlog" from the Biden years and a 43-day government shutdown, as though the real mystery here is how time works, not how you enforce laws. Meanwhile, the White House is pushing a 35 percent budget cut for the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights and a 49 percent staff reduction — from 530 people to 271 — while McMahon insists a "more efficient" skeleton crew can magically handle the same statutory duties. It’s the classic Trump formula: break the thing, starve the thing, then swear the thing is failing because government just doesn’t work.
To really turbocharge this efficiency miracle, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly M. Richey has "restructured" the office, creating special teams for disability- and race-based complaints. On paper, that sounds like focus; in practice, it looks a lot like rearranging the deck chairs on a ship you’re actively scuttling. The result is an Education Department that treats civil rights enforcement as optional paperwork rather than, you know, the law — a quiet, grinding way to tell the most vulnerable kids in America that under Trump, their rights are just another line item to be cut.
