trump tries to send a 'legit white nationalist' to the u.n., trips over his own party
Sen. John Curtis heads down the Capitol steps, possibly wondering why the Trump administration keeps nominating Telegram channels for Senate-confirmable posts.
The Trump White House, forever on the hunt for the worst possible person for every job, tapped Jeremy Carl — a Claremont Institute "scholar" and former Trump Interior official — to be assistant secretary of state for international organizations. Unfortunately for them, Carl arrived at his confirmation hearing with a few tiny baggage items: agreeing in 2024 that Israel is "not a victim but a perpetrator" and that Jews should stop "resting" on the Holocaust, plus a long digital trail of race-and-religion hot takes he frantically tried to delete before the nomination.
Sen. John Curtis, a Republican from Utah who apparently missed the memo that the party is supposed to just nod along, publicly torched the nomination, calling Carl's anti-Israel views and remarks about Jews "unbecoming" of the job. Because Republicans hold only a 12–10 edge on the Foreign Relations Committee, Curtis' "no" freezes the nomination in an 11–11 tie — meaning Trump’s latest culture-war diplomat is stuck in the waiting room, clutching his talking points about how he’s actually very inclusive.
Democrat Chris Murphy then helpfully asked Carl to explain his views on "white identity" and what exactly is being "erased." Carl replied that mass immigration has "balkanized" the once-great "majority common American culture" and weakened the country — which Murphy then posted online while calling him a "legit white nationalist." This comes a day after another Trump appointee, Religious Liberty Commissioner Carrie Prejean Boller, was booted for her own comments on antisemitism and Israel, suggesting the administration may want to stop recruiting its diplomatic corps from the comments section of Breitbart.
Meanwhile, the White House offered no comment, Claremont went silent, and the rest of the world got a preview of Trump’s second-term foreign policy vision: send people who think diversity is an existential threat and the Holocaust is an overused reference to represent the United States at the U.N., then act shocked when even Senate Republicans decide that might be a bit much.
#awful-nominations#racism#killing-democracy
goldman’s top lawyer loved “uncle jeffrey,” regrets getting caught
Goldman Sachs headquarters, where the code of conduct is strictly enforced unless you’re buddies with a convicted sex trafficker bearing luxury gifts.
Goldman Sachs’ chief legal officer Kathy Ruemmler has announced she’s stepping down after emails revealed she had a cozy relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, lovingly calling him “Uncle Jeffrey” and gushing that she “adored him” — years after his 2008 sex-crimes conviction and sex-offender registration. Nothing says “top legal judgment” like luxury handbags and a fur coat from a convicted predator you’re later going to publicly label a “monster.”
Goldman, whose code of conduct supposedly frowns on high-end gifts and conflicts of interest, now insists she “regrets ever knowing him,” which is a fascinating way to spell “regrets you all saw the emails.” Epstein was still calling her cell the night of his 2019 arrest, while she was busy advising him on how to handle media questions about his sweetheart legal treatment. CEO David Solomon, who as recently as December was praising her as an “excellent lawyer” with his “full faith and backing,” now very respectfully accepts her resignation and would like everyone to move along before anyone asks how normal it is for the top lawyer at a megabank to be on speed dial for a serial sex offender.
So to recap: the American financial and political elite spent years laundering Epstein’s reputation while he trafficked girls, then, once it became inconvenient, discovered retroactive moral outrage and deep, performative regret. Rule of law for the poor, fur coats for the friends.
#corruption#forever-grifting
trump tries to straightwash stonewall, nyc says absolutely not
Stonewall’s flagpole, bravely surviving yet another attempt by the federal government to pretend history is straight, white, and uncomplicated.
The Trump administration looked at Stonewall — the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement — and apparently decided the real problem with America is too much history. So the Interior Department put out a memo decreeing that only certain Very Serious Flags™ could fly at national parks, which just so happened to mean ripping the Pride flag down from the Stonewall national monument. You know, for "consistency". With what, exactly? Hungary?
New York officials responded by doing the unforgivable: following history instead of a bigoted bureaucracy. After the city council passed a resolution telling Congress to respect Stonewall’s actual significance, local leaders marched over and put the Pride flag right back up the pole, flying alongside the American flag like it’s 2026 and not 1956. Brad Hoylman-Sigal declared, "The flag is up ... We have prevailed," while Jerry Nadler reminded everyone that Stonewall was a rebellion and is now a call to action again — mostly because the White House keeps trying to reenact the prequel.
Meanwhile, the Interior Department, hiding behind an unnamed spokesperson like a Twitter egg with subpoena power, denounced the re-raising of the flag as a "political stunt" and a "distraction". Bold words from an administration that is literally ordering National Park Service workers to strip panels about enslavement from a historic site in Philadelphia so the exhibits don’t harsh Trump’s vibes. When your governing philosophy is state-mandated amnesia, a rainbow flag over Stonewall starts to look downright subversive.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump’s justice department can’t even politicize prosecutions correctly
Pictured: the exact moment the grand plan to prosecute Democrats for a campaign video ran headfirst into basic criminal procedure.
The Trump administration’s dream of turning the Justice Department into a full-time opposition research firm hit a slight snag: they apparently couldn’t find a way to indict Democrats over a campaign video about so‑called “illegal orders.” Turns out that screaming “LOCK THEM UP” at rallies is a bit easier than meeting, you know, evidentiary standards in court.
Instead of the big authoritarian show trial they clearly wanted, DOJ ended up with the legal equivalent of a sad trombone. All that bluster about Democrats committing crimes, all the breathless hints that charges were right around the corner, and what does the mighty law-and-order administration deliver? Nothing. Not even a pity indictment.
This is what happens when you treat federal law enforcement like a personal hit squad and then run it with the competence of a drunk HOA board. They tried to turn campaign propaganda into criminal charges, and the system — weakened, battered, and understaffed — still managed to cough up a tiny, defiant “no.” It’s not a full victory for the rule of law, but it is a helpful reminder that Trump’s people are not just dangerous — they’re also embarrassingly bad at the coup cosplay.
#retribution#killing-democracy
trump fires the lawful guy to defend the unlawful guys
Pam Bondi’s justice department cosplay squad, seen here right before another court explains what the law actually says.
The federal judges in upstate New York tried a wild experiment this week: following the Constitution. With Trump loyalist John Sarcone III ruled to be serving unlawfully as U.S. attorney, the court used its explicit Article II authority to appoint veteran prosecutor Donald Kinsella to fill the vacancy. He was sworn in quietly, with decades of experience and zero Fox hits, so obviously this could not stand.
Hours later, the White House nuked him by email. Deputy Director of Presidential Personnel Morgan DeWitt Snow notified Kinsella that "the president directed that I be removed," offering all the transparency of a Kremlin HR memo. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche then strutted onto X to declare, "Judges don’t pick U.S. Attorneys, @POTUS does. See Article II of our Constitution. You are fired, Donald Kinsella"—apparently banking on nobody reading the part of Article II that explicitly lets Congress vest those appointments "in the Courts of Law," which is exactly what Congress did and the judges followed.
This latest stunt lands on top of a whole clown car of unlawful Trump prosecutor appointments. Sarcone is just one of several U.S. attorneys federal judges have ruled were serving illegally after being installed by Attorney General Pam Bondi. Lindsey Halligan—insurance lawyer, zero prosecutorial experience, 100% MAGA cosplay—was forced out after a judge said she was "masquerading" as U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. An appeals court also upheld the disqualification of Alina Habba from pretending to run the New Jersey office, citing the Federal Vacancies Reform Act like some kind of buzzkill.
So the pattern is crystal clear: loyalists with no legal basis to be there get protected and stretched past statutory limits; a highly qualified, properly appointed career prosecutor gets bounced the same day he takes the oath, all to preserve Trump’s control over the prosecutorial machinery. The message from this White House is simple: the law doesn’t pick U.S. attorneys, judges don’t pick U.S. attorneys, Congress doesn’t pick U.S. attorneys—Trump does. And if the Constitution disagrees, well, that’s what social media posts and firing emails are for.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
guy who tried to trademark yosemite now gets the keys to it
Scott Socha, contemplating which national wonder to rebrand first: "Grand Canyon™ by Delaware North" or "Yellowstone® Presented by ExxonMobil".
Donald Trump has nominated Scott Socha, a hospitality executive whose company once tried to trademark the name “Yosemite National Park”, to run the National Park Service. Because why just privatize the parks when you can put the would-be brand manager of Yosemite in charge of the whole system? Regulatory capture isn’t a bug of this administration; it’s the mission statement.
The Park Service, already kneecapped after losing a quarter of its staff in Doge’s civil sector purge and ordered to scrub slavery and other "unflattering" history from its sites, will now be led by a man whose career has revolved around squeezing maximum profit from national parks, not protecting them. Conservation experts are pointing out that Socha has exactly zero experience in public service or land stewardship, but he does have extensive experience turning public treasures into corporate revenue streams, which is the only qualification that matters here.
Socha’s company, Delaware North, is famous in conservation circles for its Yosemite stunt: after losing a contract, it sued claiming it owned trademarks to names like “Yosemite National Park”, “Ahwahnee Hotel”, and “Curry Village”, temporarily forcing the park to rename iconic landmarks until a settlement in 2019. Now, instead of being laughed out of court for trying to privatize the English language, that mindset is being invited to run the entire National Park system. Our public lands allegedly belong to all Americans, but under Trump they increasingly look like a distressed asset being prepped for sale to the highest bidder.
#forever-grifting#corruption
gop discovers the real victims of trump’s immigration agenda: ice agents
Republican lawmaker bravely defends the most endangered species in Trump’s America: federal agents with near-total power and zero meaningful oversight.
On Meet the Press, a Republican lawmaker heroically identified the true crisis in Trump’s immigration regime: not the families in detention, not the people dying in the desert, not the asylum backlog that looks like it was designed by Betsy DeVos with a headache — no, the agents might not be safe enough.
Instead of talking about restraining ICE’s abuses, demilitarizing the agency, or putting basic guardrails on Trump’s deportation fantasies, the conversation is framed around how any ‘reform’ must first protect the people with the guns, badges, unions, and legal immunity. The folks in cages and on buses to nowhere will apparently have to wait their turn in line behind the paramilitary HR department.
So we get the usual performance: Republican concern-trolling about ‘safety’ and ‘supporting law enforcement’ while the administration weaponizes ICE as a political tool, terrorizes immigrant communities, and dares anyone in Congress to actually impose oversight. Call it what it is: a taxpayer-funded fear factory where the only occupational hazard being addressed is the remote possibility that an ICE agent might one day face consequences.
#anti-immigration#killing-democracy
hegseth tries to cancel the first amendment for veterans
Sen. Mark Kelly takes his seat, blissfully unaware the Pentagon is about to accuse him of sedition for endorsing the same rules they teach in basic training.
The Pentagon, now apparently operating as the President’s personal Praetorian Guard, just got bench‑slapped by a federal judge for going after Sen. Mark Kelly. Kelly’s crime? Starring in a video calmly explaining to U.S. servicemembers that they are required to refuse illegal orders — you know, the thing we pretended to learn after Nuremberg. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded by calling it “seditious” and launching a process to slash Kelly’s retirement rank and pay, because nothing says "support the troops" like financially kneecapping a retired Navy captain for quoting the UCMJ.
Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee (so not exactly Antifa’s general counsel), issued a preliminary injunction blocking Hegseth and the Pentagon from retaliating. Leon wrote that the administration had "trampled" Kelly’s First Amendment rights and threatened the liberties of millions of military retirees, then helpfully added a Bob Dylan quote to underline that you don’t need a constitutional law degree to see what’s going on here. The Trump team is testing how far they can go in punishing veterans and lawmakers who say the quiet part out loud: if the commander in chief tells you to break the law, you’re supposed to say no — not salute and ask whether he wants it livestreamed.
So we’ve now reached the phase of the experiment where the government tries to brand reminding troops to follow lawful orders as sedition, while judges have to step in and say, "Actually, the First Amendment still exists." For the moment. For now.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
ai safety pacs: now with 20 million extra democracy-bucks
Anthropic and OpenAI prepare to train their most powerful model yet: the United States Congress.
Anthropic has decided the best way to make sure AI "serves the public good" is to shovel $20 million into a political group to influence who writes the laws about AI. The money goes to Public First Action, a nice, wholesome outfit whose main mission is to stop the federal government from overriding state AI regulations — including that December Trump executive order designed to kneecap pesky state-level rules that might inconvenience his tech buddies.
One of the lucky beneficiaries: Republican Marsha Blackburn, now running for Tennessee governor, who bravely fought against Congress trying to stop states from passing their own AI laws. So yes, we have an AI company bankrolling a Republican politician to resist federal preemption pushed by Trump, all so the "public good" can be lovingly curated by whichever donor has the biggest checkbook this quarter.
Across the field, Leading the Future — backed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and VC hype priest Marc Andreessen — has already hoovered up $125 million to fight stricter AI regulation. So the midterms are shaping up to be a delightful little experiment in algorithmic self-governance, where the people get to choose between Team Slightly-Regulated AI and Team Please-Do-Not-Regulate-My-Stock-Options, while Trump’s executive orders loom in the background like a half-finished Terms of Service written in crayon.
The result: a political system where the most advanced AI labs on Earth are locked in a spending war to decide how lightly they themselves should be policed. Democracy, in its final form: not one person, one vote, but one billionaire, one PAC, one regulatory capture strategy.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
pentagon power plan now brought to you by big coal
Donald Trump beams as coal executives thank him for ordering the U.S. military to keep buying their product, heroically defending America from the terrifying threat of an actually competitive energy market.
The White House held a heartwarming little tribute to regulatory capture, where Donald Trump was crowned the "undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal" by the Washington Coal Club — an industry-funded fan club that just happens to adore presidents who order the Pentagon to buy billions of dollars in coal power. Peabody Energy CEO James Grech personally handed Trump a bronze coalminer trophy, because nothing says "independent energy policy" like the largest coal company in America literally giving the president a prize for forcing the military to keep their product on life support.
Trump marked the occasion by signing an executive order commanding the Defense Department to lock in long-term coal power contracts for "mission-critical" facilities, helpfully converting the U.S. military into a captive customer for a dying, most-polluting fuel. The Department of Energy chipped in another $175m to "modernize" and extend the life of coal plants in key swing-state-ish regions, while the administration keeps handing out public land and hundreds of millions more to the coal industry.
This would just be standard-issue fossil-fuel fealty, except it slots neatly into Trump’s growing trophy shelf of transactional adoration: Swiss billionaires give him a gold Rolex desk clock and a $130,000 gold bar, he eases tariffs on Switzerland; Tim Cook gives him a gold-based glass statue, Apple gets a tariff exemption; coal barons and lobbyists shower him with praise and hardware, and the Pentagon gets drafted into a mandatory coal subscription. America’s energy strategy is now basically a loyalty rewards program for whoever can engrave the fanciest gift.
#forever-grifting#corruption
trump doj fires antitrust chief for insufficient corporate worship
Pam Bondi and Gail Slater reenact corporate antitrust policy: one pushes, the other falls, and the merger walks away untouched.
The head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Gail Slater, has been gently escorted to the nearest window and pushed out of the Trump administration after making the unforgivable mistake of occasionally acting like an antitrust lawyer instead of a mergers concierge. Slater tried to block a $14bn Hewlett Packard Enterprise–Juniper Networks merger on boring "competition" grounds, which enraged Attorney General Pam Bondi and the White House’s business-class fan club. When Slater said intel agencies had no national security problem with blocking the deal, CIA director John Ratcliffe popped up later to say actually, allowing the merger was a national security must-have, raising the obvious question of whether national security now means "don’t upset big donors".
Her internal enemies won: DOJ dropped the suit, cut a settlement, and then quietly fired two of Slater’s deputies, prompting Senate Democrats to ask a federal judge to investigate whether the government’s antitrust position was being run by lawyers or by political bagmen. Slater, once boosted into Trumpworld by JD Vance and confirmed 78–something in the Senate, watched her support evaporate as Vance got tired of her telling people he had her back, while Bondi seethed over everything from the merger fight to Slater attending an OECD conference after Bondi said no and then having her government credit cards canceled like a bad airline. Now Omeed Assefi is stepping in as acting antitrust chief, and the message from the Trump DOJ is clear: antitrust is fine, as long as it never actually inconveniences a multibillion-dollar merger or a political ally.
#corruption#forever-grifting
president very mad that tv showed what he said, sues planet
Trump glaring at a BBC logo like it personally stormed the Capitol and edited his speech on the way out.
Trump, freshly re-elected and absolutely not obsessed with his image or anything, is hauling the BBC into a Florida courtroom in a multibillion-dollar tantrum over a Panorama edit of his 2021 pre-insurrection speech. A federal judge has set a 2027 trial date and told the BBC it actually has to hand over internal documents before the court even decides if it has jurisdiction, because nothing says "healthy democracy" like a sitting president using friendly courts in Florida to drag a foreign public broadcaster through discovery hell.
The BBC already apologised for splicing two parts of Trump’s speech without making the edit clear, but Trump’s 33-page complaint calls it a "staggering breach of journalistic ethics" and accuses the network of fabricating calls for violence he "never made"—a bold claim from the guy whose supporters then went and stormed the Capitol in real time. The case hinges on whether the documentary was even available in Florida via BritBox, which the BBC disputes, but the judge is letting Trump rummage through the BBC’s files first and ask jurisdiction questions later. Due process, but make it MAGA.
This lawsuit is just the latest entry in President Grievance’s media hit list. Since his 2025 re-election, Trump has already squeezed $15m out of ABC and $16m from Paramount over alleged defamation and "false editing"—cases media lawyers thought were winnable until corporate execs decided it was cheaper to pay off the president than fight while begging his administration for merger approvals. So the message is clear: cover Trump in a way he doesn’t like, and your legal department gets a new full-time job. The First Amendment is still technically on the books; it’s just being priced out of the market.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump nominates great replacement guy to represent america to the world
Jeremy Carl, seen here auditioning to be America’s ambassador to 4chan, prepares to explain white genocide theory to the United Nations.
The Trump administration looked at the entire pool of potential diplomats and said: what if we send the great replacement guy to handle the United Nations? Jeremy Carl, a Claremont Institute fellow and former Interior official, is Trump’s pick for assistant secretary of state for international organizations — the person who would manage America’s relationship with the UN while publicly describing the Civil Rights Act as an “anti-white weapon” and musing about “white genocide”. Truly the perfect face of US multilateralism: a man who thinks Juneteenth is “race hustling and white-shaming” and that “self-hating white people” are “mentally ill”.
Carl’s online history is a greatest hits album of far-right grievance: pushing the “great replacement” conspiracy, declaring “we either win or die” about political opponents like Cori Bush, calling George Floyd a “thug” “looking up from hell”, and comparing Proud Boys seditionists to Black men in 1930s Mississippi courts — because nothing says "serious policy thinker" like equating accountability for an attempted coup with Jim Crow lynch justice. He also reportedly flirted with addressing the “Jewish question” and claimed Jews “love to play the victim”, but don’t worry, he later tried to mass-delete 5,000 posts and even scrub the Wayback Machine, because nothing screams innocence like frantically power-washing your own digital crime scene.
Democrats on the Senate foreign relations committee, shockingly, are not thrilled about sending a white supremacist-adjacent podcaster to represent the US to a planet that is about 93% non-white. Desirée Cormier Smith points out the obvious: it’s hard to “credibly engage” with diplomats from Africa, Latin America, Asia, or basically anywhere when you’ve built a career arguing they’re part of a plot to erase white people. Yet with Trump’s Senate already having rubber-stamped Pete Hegseth at Defense, RFK Jr at Health, and Kristi “Shoot-the-dog” Noem at Homeland Security, Carl might only be “a bridge too far” if one Republican suddenly discovers that openly racist, antisemitic, and homophobic tirades are slightly off-brand.
So as US global favorability plummets and alliances wobble, Trump’s solution is to nominate a man whose core message to most of the world is: you’re either a demographic threat or mentally ill. The job is "assistant secretary for international organizations"; the audition reel is "Claremont Institute YouTube comments section". If you were trying to convince the world that American democracy is circling the drain, you couldn’t design a better envoy.
#racism#awful-nominations
trump epa to science: drop dead
EPA headquarters, now proudly serving as the fossil fuel industry’s DC branch office, as climate advocates gather outside to remind them the Clean Air Act is not supposed to be optional.
The Trump EPA is preparing to torch the 2009 "endangerment finding" – the legal backbone that lets the government regulate planet-cooking pollution – because nothing says "public service" like formally declaring that carbon doesn't hurt people, only profits. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse helpfully translated the move from bureaucratese to English: this is "old fashioned, dirty political corruption" by an agency "weapon of the fossil fuel polluters" now run by Lee Zeldin, a man apparently hired to prove you really can fail a climate science pop quiz and still run the Environmental Protection Agency.
This little science bonfire also happens to arrive about a year and a half after Trump reportedly asked oil executives for $1 billion in campaign cash in exchange for scrapping environmental rules. Ed Markey summarized the transaction as "cash and carry": they give Trump the money, he carries away all the regulations protecting your lungs and your coastal cities. The administration is branding it the "largest deregulatory action in American history" and claiming it will save Americans $1.3 trillion, a number they seem to have pulled from the same place they store Trump's inauguration crowd size.
While Trump signs an executive order forcing the Pentagon to buy more "clean, beautiful coal" – the fossil fuel equivalent of chain-smoking in a neonatal ICU – climate groups like NRDC, Earthjustice, and Sierra Club are lining up lawsuits, and a 10-year-old is reduced to begging the government not to wreck her future on live TV. Meanwhile, the coal industry, which spent $3.5 million helping re-elect Trump, rewards him with the prestigious "Undisputed Champion of Coal" trophy, presumably molded from the collective asthma attacks of frontline communities. The billionaire class gets richer; everyone else gets higher energy bills, worse air, and the privilege of living through the consequences of an administration that decided the real endangered species is fossil fuel profit margins.
But don’t worry, the White House swears they can "protect the environment" while dismantling every legal mechanism to do so. After all, science did not change when Donald Trump was inaugurated – only the willingness of the federal government to pretend it can’t read.
#forever-grifting#corruption#anti-science
nbc gives venezuela’s veep of authoritarianism a morning show spa day
Kristen Welker listens politely as Delcy Rodríguez explains that when *they* dismantle democracy, it’s actually just good governance and very legal, unlike when poor people vote the wrong way.
Kristen Welker sat down with Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez, who used three blessed minutes of American network airtime to declare that Nicolás Maduro is the “legitimate president” of Venezuela and that the future of the country is somehow bright, which is an interesting word for mass exodus, political prisoners, and an economy that makes Dogecoin look stable.
Rodríguez calmly reframed a decade of repression, rigged institutions, and crushed opposition as normal governance, while US media treated it like just another spicy foreign-policy segment between Olympic highlights and a Snoop Dogg hit. The whole spectacle plays like a masterclass in soft-focus authoritarian PR: a regime that jailed opponents and dismantled democratic checks gets to sound reasonable and statesmanlike, because nothing says "rule of law" like a tightly controlled petro-state explaining its own innocence on American TV.
The punchline, of course, is that Trump-world spent years fake-crying about "freedom for Venezuela" while openly drooling over the exact style of power consolidation Maduro’s crew perfected. Now we have Maduro’s number two explaining that everything is totally fine and totally legal, which tracks perfectly with the broader MAGA foreign-policy doctrine: if the elections are dubious, courts captured, and institutions hollowed out, you’re not a cautionary tale—you’re a blueprint.
#fascism#killing-democracy#imperialism
trump administration cosplays kgb, shops for spare province in canada
Trump officials explain that they definitely respect Canada’s sovereignty while quietly asking Alberta separatists what size flag they wear.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that if you can’t buy Greenland, you start window-shopping in Alberta. Leaders of the "Alberta Prosperity Project" – a right‑wing separatist group trying to rip Canada’s oil‑rich Texas-from-the-North out of the country – say they’ve had three meetings at the U.S. State Department and Treasury, with a fourth tentatively on the way. Topics reportedly included switching to U.S. currency, creating a new military, and how Washington might help them glide into sovereignty. The separatists came away bragging that the "entire U.S. administration" is supportive, while the State Department frantically insists this was all very low‑level and unserious, like a coup planning session but for interns.
This diplomatic dumpster fire is happening while Trump spends his second term fantasizing about absorbing Canada as the 51st state, raging on Truth Social about bridges to Ontario, and accusing Ottawa of being soft in the Arctic. His own National Security Strategy literally says the U.S. will "reward and encourage" political movements aligned with its hard-right worldview, which Canadian scholars note is basically an open invitation to weaponize radical conservative groups as foreign policy tools. So yes, the White House is now treating separatist movements in allied democracies the way previous administrations treated anti-communist militias.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent then wandered onto Jack Posobiec’s Davos podcast to coyly flirt with Alberta secession on camera, calling the province a "natural partner" and teasing that "people are talking" about a referendum – the diplomatic equivalent of subtweeting Canada’s territorial integrity. Former U.S. diplomats are describing this as "irresponsible as hell" and "highly unusual" because traditionally, the U.S. did not openly encourage the breakup of NATO neighbors like it was picking teams for dodgeball. But the Trump administration has discovered a new hemispheric strategy: reward your ideological friends, punish liberal governments, and if necessary, help their provinces shop for exit options.
#killing-democracy#fascism#imperialism
trump discovers citizenship is now a subscription service
USCIS field office staff study new guidance on citizenship: "Assume it's fraud unless proven white."
The Trump administration has decided that U.S. citizenship is less a right and more a gym membership they can cancel whenever they get bored. USCIS is being retooled into a nationwide scavenger hunt for "bad" naturalized citizens, with field offices told to cough up 100 to 200 denaturalization candidates per month. Once upon a time, denaturalization was reserved for, say, Nazis and war criminals; now the Justice Department is floating examples that range from national security threats to people who committed Medicaid fraud, plus a handy catch‑all for "any other cases" they just feel like pursuing.
Instead of processing immigrants, USCIS is shipping out "experts" and retraining staff to retroactively second-guess citizenship they already approved, turning every naturalized American into a provisional American whose status depends on which strongman is in office. Trump, who is still fixated on who counts as a "real" American, is simultaneously asking the Supreme Court to help him chip away at birthright citizenship and promising on Truth Social to "denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility" — which apparently now means anyone not deemed a "net asset" or "compatible with Western Civilization." Very normal, totally healthy republic stuff.
Officials insist this is all about "zero tolerance for fraud," while openly hunting for shortcuts to speed up stripping people of the country they swore allegiance to, years after the fact. Policy experts warn this retroactive reinterpretation of rules could make perfectly legal citizens suddenly vulnerable to claims of "misrepresentation" because the administration moved the goalposts. So yes, 800,000 people a year still take the oath, answer civics questions, and prove their "good moral character" — only to discover that under Trump, their passport is more of a revocable coupon than a guarantee.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#lawlessness
house discovers article i, mildly inconveniences dear leader
House Republicans briefly cosplay as a coequal branch of government before returning to their regular role as Trump's tariff notification service.
The Republican-led House briefly woke up from its 8-year constitutional coma and remembered that Article I actually exists, voting 219-211 to terminate Trump's Canada tariffs. Six Republicans joined Democrats to swat at the trade war piñata, which is adorable given that the same House literally voted last year to block itself from canceling his tariffs in the first place.
Trump, naturally, responded like a guy who thinks "separation of powers" is a kind of hair product, threatening political retribution for any Republican who dares vote against his tariffs: "Any Republican ... that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time." So the official policy of the executive branch is now: obey my random tariff whims or face the wrath of the Party Leader. Very normal, totally not authoritarian at all.
A few Republicans — Thomas Massie, Kevin Kiley, Don Bacon, Dan Newhouse, Jeff Hurd and Brian Fitzpatrick — decided that maybe Congress should, you know, do the thing the Constitution says it’s supposed to do. Bacon even said out loud that Congress has "handed that authority to the executive branch" for too long, as if this realization just descended from the heavens and not from eight years of watching Trump run trade policy like a personal revenge Etsy shop.
The resolution now heads to the Senate, where it will have the honor of being quietly strangled by the same party that keeps shouting about Biden tyranny while cheerfully defending Trump's right to slap 100% tariffs on Canada if they talk to China without his permission. America’s checks and balances: now available in symbolic, non-binding, absolutely-not-guaranteed-to-pass form.
#killing-democracy#trade-war
house gop unveils jim crow, now with extra paperwork
Mike Johnson explains that if you can show ID to buy Sudafed, you can definitely clear a federal paperwork obstacle course to exercise a constitutional right.
The House GOP just passed the "SAVE America Act," a 32-page attempt to save America from voting. Under Trump’s latest fever-dream legislation, you don’t just have to be a citizen to vote (which is already the law), you now have to prove it in person with documents many people don’t have easy access to. Birth certificate? Passport? Perhaps a notarized scroll from your great-grandmother? All lovingly wrapped in new photo ID mandates for in-person voting and extra ID hoops for mail ballots. Because if there’s one thing Republicans hate more than imaginary noncitizen voting, it’s actual citizens voting easily.
Speaker Mike Johnson helpfully explained that you need ID for things like driving and buying cold medicine, so naturally voting should be just as difficult as surviving the American healthcare system. Democrats pointed out that noncitizen voting is already illegal and extremely rare, which of course is why Republicans are building an entire national regime around it. Trump, meanwhile, is openly talking about "nationalizing" elections and "taking over the voting" in a bunch of places, which is a fun way of saying "federal election takeover" for a party that spent 2021 screaming that federal election standards were tyranny.
Over in the Senate, the whole thing runs into an awkward problem: Republicans’ own previous statements. Lisa Murkowski suddenly remembered that they all swore up and down they opposed federalizing elections back when Democrats wanted to expand voting rights, not suppress them. Susan Collins liked the original version that was at least pretending to be about citizenship, but thinks the Trump-upgraded edition goes too far, which is impressive given her usual tolerance for constitutional arson. Mitch McConnell is still on Team "States Run Elections"—apparently that principle only dies for judges, not for voter ID cosplay.
Chuck Schumer has already declared the bill "dead on arrival" and compared it to national Jim Crow-lite, while Senate Republicans try to figure out how to both appease Trump and not explicitly admit they’re trying to rig the electorate before the next meltdown. The filibuster isn’t going anywhere, which is the only thing currently standing between Trump’s dream of a federally mandated voter suppression maze and reality. For now, the SAVE America Act is mostly performance art: a dry run for killing democracy with paperwork.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump’s va discovers veterans are an inconvenient customer base
The VA Secretary explains how cutting red tape is totally different from cutting care, if you close your eyes and don’t read the fine print.
The VA Secretary wandered up to Congress for only the second time during the Trump administration to explain a national plan to "streamline" VA bureaucracy, which is Washington code for "we're about to break this and maybe our friends will get rich." Democrats asked for details; the administration, in keeping with long-standing tradition, arrived with vibes, buzzwords, and a powerpoint probably titled OPERATION: TRUST US BRO.
Instead of consistent oversight on the agency that literally keeps veterans alive, Trump’s team has treated the VA like a side quest they occasionally remember between indictments and Truth Social posts. Now they want to "drastically" reorganize one of the largest health systems in the country, while barely bothering to show up to Congress to explain how many vets get kicked off the merry-go-round. Streamlining, in this context, sounds a lot like: fewer services, more outsourcing, and a fresh round of contracts for whichever donor last picked up dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
#healthcare#forever-grifting
