trump doj releases half the epstein files, calls it transparency
Todd Blanche explaining that releasing half the Epstein files with 10,000 redactions is actually what "full transparency" looks like now.
The Trump justice department has announced, with a straight face, that the Epstein investigation is now "over" after dumping 3 million pages of documents and declaring victory, while quietly sitting on another 3 million. Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche insists "we have nothing to hide"—they're just refusing to release half the records, blacking out thousands of names, and ignoring both a congressional subpoena and a federal law that explicitly told them to hand everything over. Totally normal behavior for an administration that keeps insisting the whole Epstein thing is a "Democrat hoax" while Trump’s own name shows up in the files.
Democrats like Jamie Raskin, Hakeem Jeffries, and Ro Khanna, plus Republican Thomas Massie (who apparently missed the memo that you’re not supposed to investigate rich predators in this country), are pointing out the obvious: this looks a lot less like transparency and a lot more like a state-sponsored damage control operation for the elite. Survivors are furious that their names were accidentally exposed while the powerful men they say abused them are still buried under redactions and missing documents. Lawyers for more than 200 victims are now in court asking DOJ to take down its document site because the department managed to produce what may be "the single most egregious violation of victim privacy in one day in US history"—but sure, tell us more about how this is all about justice.
Meanwhile, Massie is being punished by his own party for the unforgivable sin of wanting "rich men perp walked in handcuffs"—a standard that, if ever actually applied, would turn half of Mar-a-Lago into a work-release program. As Republicans try to bounce him off the ballot for demanding Epstein transparency and Trump yells "hoax" into the void, the Trump administration is doing what it does best: weaponizing the federal government to protect friends, punish dissenters, and bury anything that might threaten the golden boys of America’s ruling class. Elite impunity remains undefeated; the rule of law, not so much.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
president extremely mad that jokes still legal
Trevor Noah on stage at the Grammys, moments before the president of the United States decided the biggest threat to the republic was a joke about Epstein and an island he swears he never visited.
Donald Trump watched the Grammys, heard Trevor Noah make one Epstein joke, and immediately decided the real crime in America is defamation against Donald Trump. After Noah quipped that Trump needed Greenland since "Epstein's island is gone" and he needs a new place to hang with Bill Clinton, the president jumped onto Truth Social to call Noah a "poor, pathetic, talentless dope" and promised to sic his lawyers on him for "plenty$"—because nothing says "totally innocent and not defensive at all" like threatening to sue over an awards-show punchline.
Trump insisted he has "never been to Epstein Island" and, more importantly, had never even been accused of it "not even by the Fake News Media"—which is a very normal thing for a president to angrily clarify during the Grammys. Meanwhile, the crowd and artists spent the night denouncing his anti-immigrant policies, wearing anti-ICE pins, and reminding the country that "no one is illegal on stolen land", which probably didn’t help his mood as he live-posted through being publicly clowned.
This tantrum slots neatly into the broader second-term project: punishing comedians and media that dare to mock Dear Leader. Stephen Colbert’s show is being axed by CBS after he criticized the company for settling a $16m lawsuit with Trump (totally unrelated, they swear), Jimmy Kimmel got suspended by Disney and briefly had the president lobbying the FCC to yank ABC’s license, and Bari Weiss now oversees CBS’s rightward drift while Trump cheers the Grammys getting booted from the network as "garbage". The message is clear: criticize Trump and you might lose your show; joke about Trump and Epstein and he’ll threaten to sue you personally.
Noah, on his way out after six years hosting, responded to the outrage in real time: "It’s my last year! What are you gonna do about it?" The president has answered: deploy the lawyers, weaponize the chill, and keep testing how far a White House can go in treating mockery as a legal offense. Free speech is still technically alive; it’s just being sued, canceled, and harassed by the guy who swore an oath to protect it.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump threatens fed, gold investors discover gravity
Kevin Warsh, photographed moments before being informed his new job is "trying to keep the Fed independent while Trump live-tweets rate policy."
Global markets just had a minor heart attack because everyone has spent weeks assuming Donald Trump was about to stuff the Federal Reserve with a MAGA mascot who'd cut rates whenever he got bored on Truth Social. Gold and silver had been blasting through record highs as investors fled into "safe havens" from the terrifying prospect of Trump turning the Fed into his personal campaign ATM.
Then Trump announced he’d nominate Kevin Warsh, an actual central banker with real Fed experience and a reputation for not being a total pushover. Cue an 8% plunge in gold, a 7% drop in silver, and a bunch of traders suddenly realizing they might have slightly overpaid for their apocalypse bunker metals. One analyst politely translated this as "relief that a Trump cheerleader would not be installed" — Washington-speak for "we were all bracing for a loyalist who’d torch Fed independence on command."
Bitcoin, oil, copper, platinum — basically the entire speculative panic buffet — also slid as tensions with Iran might be easing and markets recalibrated from "Trump breaks Fed" to "Trump only threatens to break Fed this quarter." Deutsche Bank still thinks gold can hit $6,000 this year, which is a fun forecast that doubles as a confidence poll on whether Trump will keep menacing monetary policy until investors start stockpiling bullion again. The underlying message: as long as Trump is hovering over the Fed like a raccoon over a trash can, nobody believes institutional stability is more than a temporary condition.
#killing-democracy#money
trump nationalizes the arts, installs himself as head usher
Artist’s rendering of the Kennedy Center’s future: same building, 400% more gold letters and one very confused bust of JFK wondering how he ended up opening for Donald Trump.
Trump has decided that the Kennedy Center — the nation’s performing arts memorial to a murdered president — is "tired, broken, and dilapidated," which is bold talk from the guy whose brand is gold-plated bankruptcy. Having already stacked the Kennedy Center board with handpicked loyalists, made himself chair, stripped out Pride events, and jammed his name in front of John F. Kennedy’s on the façade, he’s now announcing a two-year shutdown for renovations, effective July 4. Because nothing screams "respect for institutions" like shuttering them on Independence Day.
The funding, Trump assures us, is "completed, and fully in place" — from where, he declines to say, and the White House is suddenly very shy. The Kennedy Center itself isn’t commenting either, possibly because they found out about their two-year closure the same way the rest of us did: a Truth Social post citing "Contractors, Musical Experts, Art Institutions, and other Advisors and Consultants" — a phrase that reads like it was generated by an AI trained exclusively on Mar-a-Lago brunch conversations.
Meanwhile, the actual arts community has responded the only way it can: by fleeing. Since the board voted to staple Trump’s name over Kennedy’s, artists have been canceling in droves. Stephen Schwartz bailed on hosting a Washington National Opera gala, and the opera itself has now left the building after more than 50 years. One of the board’s ex officio members, Rep. Joyce Beatty, is suing the administration over the renaming, arguing that you can’t just rebrand a congressionally created memorial like it’s another failed Trump casino. But sure, let’s lock the whole place down for two years of mystery-financed "renovations" under a board that already turned a national cultural institution into a MAGA vanity project.
When it finally reopens for the promised "Grand Reopening," don’t be surprised if the nation’s performing arts center looks less like a living tribute to American culture and more like a very large, very tacky campaign rally venue with better acoustics.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
loser endorses man who called him a loser
John Sununu, seen here discovering that calling Trump a "loser" is fine as long as you later agree he’s your dear leader and job reference.
Donald Trump has bestowed his "Complete and Total Endorsement" on former senator John Sununu in the New Hampshire Senate race, because nothing says strong movement like a twice-impeached, insurrection-adjacent ex-president handpicking who’s allowed to run in a supposedly independent party primary. Sununu once wrote an op-ed calling Trump a "loser" while backing Nikki Haley, but in MAGA world, all sins are forgiven as long as you’re willing to carry the "America First" banner and pretend the cult leader is still the main character of American politics.
Democrat Chris Pappas responded by simply reposting Trump’s endorsement and saying he "approves this message," which is what you do when your opponent voluntarily brands himself as Trump’s franchise location in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, Scott Brown — former Massachusetts senator, Trump ambassador, and now rejected applicant for the MAGA loyalty badge — bravely announced he will "keep working," which here means running against both Sununu and the reality that Trump owns the GOP like another failed casino.
The RNC dutifully declared the race a top priority, thrilled that the party’s Senate strategy still boils down to: wait for Trump to pick a favorite, call it grassroots energy, and hope voters don’t notice the entire process is being run like a licensing deal for the "America First" trademark. Representative democracy, but with brand management.
#killing-democracy#fascism
amazon spends $75m on melania fanfic, swears it’s not a bribe
Melania Trump on a giant screen, bathed in soft golden light, while Amazon executives in the front row frantically whisper, “Please don’t break us up, Mr. President.”
Amazon just blew a cool $75m on a Melania Trump documentary that critics describe as "dispiriting, deadly and unrevealing" and "expensive propaganda"—in other words, exactly the kind of content you make when you're trying to impress the guy who can make your antitrust problems disappear. The film cost $40m to make and another $35m to promote, only to open at $8m and get beaten at the box office by two horror movies, which is fitting since this is basically a horror movie about what happens when corporate America decides the First Lady is a line item in their lobbying budget.
The target audience? Older conservative women in deep-red, rural Republican counties, fed a glossy slurry of "patriotism, Christianity, and family" while Amazon, which just laid off 16,000 corporate workers, shovels millions into a feature-length campaign ad. Critics note the end credits praise Melania in such over-the-top fashion that "North Korea would blush"—because nothing says "healthy democracy" like leader-worship montages scored like a Marvel movie.
Director Brett Ratner, who'd mostly vanished from Hollywood under a cloud of sexual misconduct allegations, resurfaces here to assure everyone this definitely isn’t corruption, just a very, very expensive documentary where you’ll "see where the money went." On the same day the film opened, Ratner also appeared in newly released Justice Department "Epstein files" photos—because this administration can’t even roll out its vanity propaganda without accidentally cross-promoting the sex-crime cinematic universe. But sure, tell us again how this $75m love letter to Melania is just about "making a great movie for audiences" and totally not about currying favor with President Trump.
#forever-grifting#oligarchy
trump’s ice murders a mom, then fox news murders her character
Nothing says ‘land of the free’ like a memorial poster that has to clarify you were murdered by your own government.
Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mom of three, was shot and killed by ICE on 7 January. Within hours, bodycam footage torched the official fairy tale that agents fired in "self-defense"—so the Trump administration did what it does best: lie harder and smear the dead. Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem claimed Good had "weaponized" her car (she hadn’t), while Trump helpfully explained that "at a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement"—which is now apparently a capital offense.
On cue, the right-wing media outrage machine clocked in for its shift. Jesse Watters mocked Good as a queer "self-proclaimed poet" with pronouns in her bio, Laura Loomer announced that Good "deserved it" and wished her widow had been shot too, and JD Vance decided the real problem was that she was a "deranged leftist" whose own murder was "a tragedy of her own making". Because nothing says law and order like celebrating a state killing and then bullying the corpse.
When the public reacted with horror, the Justice Department—rather than investigate why ICE gunned down a woman in front of her home—opened a criminal investigation into her grieving widow, Becca Good, over vague ties to unnamed "activist groups." That was so grotesque that six federal prosecutors resigned in protest. In other words, the Trump administration has moved from "the police can kill you and face no consequences" to "the police can kill you, we’ll defame you on TV, and then we’ll try to criminalize your spouse for being sad about it." But sure, tell us again how this is the party of family values and freedom.
#lawlessness#killing-democracy
fbi raid, because trump still can't get over 2020
FBI agents hauling away boxes of Georgia ballots, bravely protecting America from the grave threat of Trump losing an election six years ago.
While ICE was busy turning Minneapolis into a campaign ad, another arm of Trump’s authoritarian fan fiction government was at work in Georgia. The FBI raided Fulton County’s central election facility and walked out with more than 700 boxes of 2020 ballots and election records, because nothing says "law and order" like using federal law enforcement to chase down your hurt feelings from four years ago. This is the first time in American history the FBI has seized ballots from a past election, but sure, tell us more about how it’s really about “election integrity.”
To really underline that this is about raw power, not security, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard showed up in person, because apparently the nation’s top intelligence official now moonlights as Trump’s personal ballot repo agent. The warrant vacuumed up everything: tabulator tapes, ballot images from the original count and recount, absentee and early voting records, voter rolls — the whole thing Trump has been obsessively lying about since he begged Brad Raffensperger to "find" him votes. Every claim he made about Georgia fraud has already been repeatedly debunked, so naturally the solution is to send in the FBI and pretend it’s 2020 forever.
Trump has openly said he regrets not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in 2020 because they weren’t "sophisticated" enough. Enter the FBI. Now he’s on Truth Social screaming "TRUMP WON BIG" and promising prosecutions, while his DOJ argues it has "sweeping power" to grab election records from states. In other words, the federal government will keep elections "free and fair" until they produce a result Trump likes. The Fulton County raid isn’t about the past; it’s a warning shot for 2026: cooperate with the narrative or watch your ballots disappear into a federal evidence locker.
State officials like Maine’s Shenna Bellows are basically reduced to saying, "I have the key and he’s not getting our ballots," which is where we are now: democracy defended by whoever still controls the padlock. The ICE invasion of Minneapolis shows how Trump plans to police people; the FBI raid in Georgia shows how he plans to police votes. Different agencies, same message: the law is whatever serves the president’s grievances today.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump's health department discovers the fun of live human experiments
RFK Jr and his vaccine advisory team bravely recreating the 1920s so we can finally settle the question: was polio really that bad, or just bad vibes and poor sanitation?
Robert F Kennedy Jr is running HHS and has decided the best way to prove he was always right about vaccines is to, checks notes, let measles and polio come back and see what happens. His handpicked chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), Kirk Milhoan, is now "reconsidering" all vaccine recommendations and musing on podcasts about how school vaccine requirements are basically "medical battery"—because nothing says "evidence-based public health" like turning a 60-year-old expert committee into a Facebook comments section.
As measles cases spike—416 in the first three weeks of 2026 after the worst year in three decades—Milhoan cheerfully describes it as a "real-world experience" to measure hospitalizations and deaths among unvaccinated kids. Public health experts call this "so dangerous as to approach criminality"; the Trump administration calls it "medical freedom". In other words, your child is now a data point in RFK Jr’s giant natural experiment in how fast we can reverse a century of progress.
To sell this, Milhoan pretends that making recommendations is "authoritarian" and that CDC "has to basically canonize" whatever ACIP says, which is not how any of this works. States actually set school vaccine rules through long, boring, evidence-based processes—at least they did, before Republicans and anti-vax crusaders started gleefully "decoupling" from federal guidance. So now we have a federal vaccines committee that thinks recommending vaccines is tyranny, state lawmakers chasing conspiracy clout, and a measles outbreak being treated as a teaching moment. But sure, tell us more about how masks were the real authoritarian overreach.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
trump celebrates freedom 250 by trying out a real blockade
Drivers in Havana wait in a fuel line so long it might qualify as a new form of US foreign policy: slow-motion regime change by empty gas tank.
Trump signed a shiny new executive order slapping extra tariffs on any country that dares sell oil to Cuba, because nothing says “protecting American citizens” like deliberately collapsing another country’s electricity, hospitals, food supply and transportation system. The White House tossed in some boilerplate about Cuba being a “safe haven” for Hezbollah and Hamas, and then, in a bold move, forgot to provide literally any proof. In other words: we’re doing regime change sanctions again, but this time with even less subtlety.
On the ground, Cubans are queuing for hours at gas stations that only take dollars most people don’t have, watching the clock tick down to the moment the island just runs out of fuel in a few weeks. Mexico backed off a planned oil shipment after US pressure, Venezuela’s oil is gone now that Washington helped boot Maduro, and other allies have gone quiet. Meanwhile, at the US embassy’s Freedom 250 party, chargé d’affaires Mike Hammer helpfully clarified the policy: Cubans have complained about “the blockade” for decades, but now there is going to be a real blockade. Because nothing says “land of the free” like bragging about economically strangling 11 million people.
Washington officials are reportedly shopping around for Cuban insiders “who would cut a deal,” just like they did before toppling Maduro, while floating the idea of a full naval blockade to Politico. A European diplomat points out they don’t even need warships—fear of US punishment is enough to stop tankers on its own. Cuba calls it a “brutal assault against a nation that doesn’t threaten the US,” releases videos of soldiers training for invasion, and prepares for more blackouts. Trump, for his part, says “Cuba will be failing pretty soon,” treating the slow-motion humanitarian disaster as a campaign talking point. But sure, tell us again how this is all about democracy and not 1960s-style imperial cosplay.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
stable genius explains nato to guy who lost his leg there
British Marines sprint toward Taliban positions in Helmand, bravely failing to meet Donald Trump’s standard of "a little back, a little off the front lines."
Donald Trump has discovered a bold new strategy for global security: tell the people who bled for you that they actually hung out "a little back, a little off the front lines." Lance Cpl. Cassidy Little, who left his right leg somewhere in Helmand and watched his friends die pushing into territory "not yet controlled by NATO," apparently just imagined being so far forward he couldn't even see the front line behind him. Trump, whose most dangerous deployment was to the buffet at Mar-a-Lago, has thoughts.
NATO’s only-ever Article 5 mission — the one where over 1,000 allied troops from more than 25 countries died after answering America’s 9/11 call — is now, in Trump’s retelling, a half-hearted group project where everyone else slacked off and the U.S. did all the work. Veterans from Britain, Estonia, Denmark, Canada and more remember it slightly differently, probably because they were busy getting blown up instead of rage-posting on Truth Social.
After managing to offend basically the entire United Kingdom, from Prince Harry to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump tried the classic "praise the troops, change none of the substance" maneuver, calling British soldiers "among the greatest of all warriors" while carefully not apologizing or acknowledging all the other dead allies. So the message to NATO is clear: We heard the call, we came running, and now we’re being told we were late, lazy, and standing in the wrong place. Truly a masterclass in alliance management from the guy who thinks threatening to abandon mutual defense is a negotiating tactic, not an engraved invitation to the next war.
#killing-democracy#national-security#fascism
texas voters briefly remember democracy is an option
The Texas Capitol, where Republicans just got a gentle reminder that permanent one-party rule isn’t actually in the state constitution.
In a plot twist no one at Mar-a-Lago focus group headquarters saw coming, Democrat Taylor Rehmet just flipped a Trump +17 Texas state Senate district by more than 14 points, because nothing says "mandate for authoritarian rule" like losing a blood-red seat to a union guy with a toolbox. This is a district Republicans have hugged tightly for decades, but apparently even Fort Worth-area voters have their limits on culture war cosplay and billionaire tax cuts.
Trump personally jumped onto his vanity social media app to boost Republican Leigh Wambsganss, calling her a "successful entrepreneur" and "incredible" MAGA loyalist, which turned out to be the electoral equivalent of a curse. Meanwhile, Rehmet — an Air Force veteran and machinist — ran on boring, dangerous ideas like lowering costs, funding public schools, and protecting jobs, and somehow that beat "more Trump, but from Austin." Democrats, already on a streak of special-election overperformance under Trump 2.0, are treating this as yet another neon warning sign that voters might not be fully on board with the whole slow-motion-democracy-strangulation project.
Rehmet only gets the seat until January unless he wins again in November, and the Texas GOP still holds a comfy majority, so no, this isn’t the part where the credits roll and everything is fine. But in a state where Republicans custom-ordered the maps and still managed to trip over their own gerrymander, a MAGA-branded candidate getting clobbered in a deep-red district is a useful reminder: you can suppress voters, you can rig districts, you can scream "fraud" into every microphone — but sometimes, people just walk into a voting booth and say, "actually, no."
#killing-democracy#losses
trump’s golden dome and the doomsday clock
Keir Starmer and Xi Jinping, both carefully not mentioning the part where China is racing to build more nukes while Trump tries to sell a magic missile umbrella to terrified Americans.
Keir Starmer goes to Beijing, skips the part about human rights and Taiwan, and somehow also forgets to bring up the tiny issue of China’s secretive nuclear binge. Because nothing says "responsible statesman" like politely nodding while Xi Jinping quietly stacks warheads like it’s a Costco sale. Meanwhile, the Doomsday Clock just moved to 85 seconds to midnight – closer to nuclear Armageddon than ever – but Western leaders are busy workshopping their "constructive engagement" photo ops.
China is racing to expand its arsenal – about 100 new warheads a year since 2023 – while refusing to join arms control talks, all under the soothing label of maintaining only the "minimum level required for national security" (a number they conveniently forgot to define). The US and Russia still hoard about 90% of the world’s ~12,000 warheads, New START is about to expire, and nearly every nuclear state is upgrading to shiny new toys like hypersonic missiles and low-yield "usable" nukes. In other words: everyone is playing nuclear Jenga and hoping someone else knocks the table over first.
Enter Donald Trump, who, rather than strengthen arms control, is pushing a multilayered, Greenland-adjacent "Golden Dome" missile shield that experts say could blow up what’s left of strategic stability. Because nothing says "let’s calm this down" like building a giant, wildly expensive, probably-not-working space umbrella that convinces your rivals they’d better build more missiles to overwhelm it. The Pentagon is already warning that China’s "hair-trigger" posture and new ICBM fields make the US homeland more vulnerable, but Trump’s answer is: more toys, fewer treaties, and maximum provocation.
Xi calls Trump one of the "rampant" powers following the law of the jungle, which is rich coming from a guy racing to emperor-for-life status while quietly building the arsenal to match. But he’s not wrong about the jungle part: Trump helped torch the arms control architecture, is now selling a fantasy missile dome to his base, and everyone else is responding by doubling down on nukes. The adults in the room were supposed to stop this. Instead, they’re arguing over who gets the best optics while the countdown clock keeps ticking.
#national-security#killing-democracy#imperialism
ai, crypto, and trump’s favorite oligarchs build a democracy‑optional future
Marc Andreessen, pausing briefly from reinventing feudalism with venture capital to fund an AI super PAC that primary-hunts anyone who suggests maybe the machines shouldn’t run everything yet.
America’s brightest minds in unregulated money and unaccountable algorithms are teaming up with Donald Trump to make sure voters have as little say as possible in the 2026 midterms. Pro-crypto outfits like Fairshake waddled into 2026 with nearly $194 million to spend, because nothing says “innovation” like a gigantic dark-money firehose aimed at anyone who dares regulate their casino. Their AI cousins at Leading the Future — bankrolled by Greg Brockman, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and friends — are sitting on another $39 million, already targeting a New York candidate whose crime was sponsoring AI safety legislation. In other words: write laws to keep the robots from wrecking everything, and the billionaires’ super PAC will try to wreck your career instead.
Hovering above it all like a bloated orange Death Star is MAGA Inc., Trump’s main super PAC, which finished 2025 with a casual $304 million in the bank. A big chunk of that came from people with business in front of the administration or family members staring down legal jeopardy — so at least the bribery-to-pardon pipeline is being handled with admirable efficiency. Trump can’t legally run for a third term (despite his constant fan fiction), but with that kind of cash, he doesn’t need to be on the ballot to own the GOP; he just has to keep writing checks and menacing primaries.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk — the man who threatened a third party and then wandered back like a sitcom character who never really left — is cutting $5 million checks to the Senate Leadership Fund and Congressional Leadership Fund, and quietly topping up his own America PAC after spending a quarter-billion last cycle to reinstall Trump. Democrats, for their part, are dutifully playing the same game: House Majority PAC, Senate-aligned groups, and AIPAC’s United Democracy Project are all stockpiling tens of millions to decide which candidates are acceptable to donors before voters ever see a ballot. But sure, tell yourself we still have representative democracy, not a full-time auction where policy is written by whoever can light the biggest pile of crypto and AI money on fire.
#corruption#oligarchy#killing-democracy
europe decides trump’s america is bad, but not ‘skip the world cup’ bad
Germany’s DFB headquarters, where leaders courageously concluded that Trump’s travel bans, tariff threats, and protest crackdowns are troubling—but not nearly troubling enough to miss a single sponsored banner at the World Cup.
Germany’s football federation took a brave stand against authoritarianism by announcing that, after deep reflection on Donald Trump’s travel bans, threats of tariffs over his Greenland cosplay annexation bid, and his tear-gassing-protesters-for-photoshoot governing style, they have decided to… play the group stage in Houston, Toronto, and New Jersey. Because nothing says sending a message to Trump like absolutely not changing your plans at all.
DFB vice‑president Oke Göttlich briefly flirted with the radical notion that maybe holding a giant sports festival in a country busy menacing Europe, roughing up domestic protesters, and playing regime-change tourist in Venezuela might be a bad look. The federation swiftly smacked that down, insisting such debates should be held "internally"—in other words, behind closed doors where they can be safely ignored while everyone pretends football is magically separate from politics, visas, tariffs, and border guards with guns.
France chimed in with the same bold energy, saying there is currently “no desire” to boycott this “great competition,” though they graciously left the door open to caring later if things get even more on‑fire. Meanwhile, fans are staring down obscene ticket prices and Trump’s travel bans, which might bar some supporters from even entering the country. So the official line is: sport is unifying, politics should stay out of it, and if your fans can’t get past Trump’s border regime, well, at least the TV signal still crosses borders.
Fifa’s own disgraced ex‑lord Sepp Blatter is telling people not to travel to the US—when Sepp Blatter thinks your World Cup optics are too corrupt and unstable, that’s an achievement. But the DFB insists they’ll be there to “celebrate a peaceful festival of football,” apparently confident that Trump’s America will suspend the creeping police‑state vibes for 90 minutes at a time. The message to Trump is clear: keep undermining democracy and cracking down on dissent, just don’t touch the kickoff time.
#killing-democracy#imperialism
trump ‘wins’ the trade war, loses the global economy
Trump stares at a trade deficit chart upside down, declares victory, and somewhere in Beijing a surplus hits $1.2 trillion.
Donald Trump spent four years LARPing as a tariff whisperer, slapping duties on Chinese goods and declaring victory on Twitter while the actual global economy quietly re-arranged itself around him. The result? China’s trade surplus exploded to $1.2 trillion in 2025, exports surged across Asia and Europe, and US influence in the global trading system kept circling the drain. In other words, Trump “owned” China so hard that Beijing ended up exporting more to everyone else while imports stayed flat and manufacturers from Latin America to Europe got strangled by Chinese overcapacity.
The piece politely notes that the US “turned against the global order it built,” which is a very academic way of saying Trump took a sledgehammer to institutions like the WTO, walked away from serious rule‑writing, and replaced it with vibes-based nationalism and rally merch. Meanwhile, other rich countries actually built social safety nets to cushion the China shock, while the US just handed people Fox News and fentanyl and told them to blame foreigners. That rage powered MAGA, while China happily kept running a turbocharged mercantilist model—state subsidies, undervalued currency, closed markets—and watched everyone else belatedly realize the WTO no longer works when one giant player just ignores the rules.
Now the EU is openly talking about ditching the WTO’s most-favored-nation principle, Mexico and India are slapping tariffs on Chinese goods, and developing countries are filing hundreds of antidumping cases. Mark Carney flies to Beijing to sign a “strategic partnership” while Washington is too busy threatening its own civil servants to bother leading anything. The world needs an engaged US to balance China; instead it got Trump’s cosplay trade war and a Republican Party that thinks international law is for suckers. But sure, tell us again how the tariffs were a historic win for American manufacturing.
#trade-war#killing-democracy
government shuts down, deportation death squads keep the lights on
Congress turns out the lights on half the government while making sure ICE’s $75bn deportation slush fund stays plugged in—priorities, people.
Congress has shut down chunks of the federal government again, but don’t worry: Trump’s deportation machine is fully funded and ready to kill more Americans. After federal agents gunned down Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis—during a Trump-ordered surge of immigration agents—Democrats decided maybe, just maybe, it was time to ask that armed federal officers not roam American cities like masked paramilitaries.
The ask? No masks, mandatory body cameras, an actual code of conduct, independent investigations when agents kill people, and a ban on "roving patrols" that amount to "you look foreign, get in the van." In other words, basic 21st-century policing standards. The response from the Trump GOP: better to partially shut down defense, education, labor, health, transportation, and housing than mildly inconvenience the president’s pet deportation squads. Because nothing says "law and order" like blocking rules that might stop your agents from shooting citizens.
Meanwhile, House Republicans—clinging to a one-seat majority and a full-size persecution complex—are trying to strap the "Save Act" voter-ID suppression scheme onto the funding bill, just to make sure that while ICE keeps its $75bn war chest from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, fewer Americans can actually vote against the people running this clown show. And in case anyone wondered what gets protected in a Trump-era shutdown: health care subsidies for regular people quietly died at the end of 2025, but deportations roll on, agents can be forced to work through the shutdown, and the only thing the White House is really worried about is keeping the mass removal conveyor belt humming.
So the government pauses, but the authoritarian core functions—militarized immigration raids, voter suppression demands, and total impunity for federal agents who kill citizens—keep right on operating. Trump’s America: where your subsidies expire, your government closes, but the deportation death squads are an essential service.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#lawlessness
trump upgrades jobs numbers from 'rigged' to 'fixed'
Trump explaining that the real unemployment problem is too many statisticians who won’t lie for him.
Donald Trump, still mad that math refuses to pledge personal loyalty, has now nominated Brett Matsumoto to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the same agency whose commissioner he personally fired hours after a bad jobs report. Back in August, Trump declared the data "rigged" and implied Erika McEntarfer cooked the numbers "for political purposes," because nothing says "independent statistics" like the president decapitating the agency when the line on the chart points the wrong way.
This comes after the administration’s first genius idea: nominating Heritage Foundation/Project 2025 warrior E.J. Antoni, whose qualifications included attacking BLS and being a self-described Jan. 6 "bystander" at the Capitol. That nomination had to be yanked once it turned out installing a coup-adjacent ideologue to control jobs data was a tiny bit on-the-nose. Now we get Matsumoto, a career economist everyone insists is "unbiased" — which is exactly what you want to hear after the president has already demonstrated he’ll fire anyone whose spreadsheets make him look bad.
In other words, the message to every civil servant crunching numbers is clear: produce data that reflects reality, and you’re accused of rigging it and tossed out; produce data that flatters Dear Leader, and suddenly you’re a "Brilliant, Reputable, and Trusted Economist" on Truth Social. But sure, let’s all pretend this is just a normal nomination and not another step in turning official economic statistics into campaign literature.
#killing-democracy#fascism#forever-grifting
armadas, deadlines, and vibes-based foreign policy
Trump in the Oval Office, confidently explaining that the Navy is basically just really expensive driftwood that he’s decided to park next to Iran.
Donald Trump announced that Iran "wants to make a deal" while simultaneously floating a large US naval "Armada" off its coast, because nothing says good faith diplomacy like parking a war fleet in someone's front yard and then refusing to say when you'll leave. Asked if there was a deadline for Tehran, Trump replied that "only they know for sure" — a strong statement from a man whose entire Iran strategy appears to be vibes, bluster, and whatever Fox was running in the chyron that morning.
In between threatening a sovereign state with war, Trump laid out his two conditions to avoid military action: "no nuclear" and "stop killing protesters" — which would sound less cynical if he weren't simultaneously cozying up to other regimes with body counts and zero democracy. Human rights groups estimate more than 6,300 people have already been killed in Iran's crackdown, with the final toll potentially above 25,000, while Trump treats the whole thing like a reality show cliffhanger: "If we do make a deal, that's good. If we don't make a deal, we'll see what happens."
Meanwhile, Iran repeats that its nuclear program is peaceful and says its missile defense systems will "never" be up for negotiation, Russia is quietly meeting with Iran's security chief, and Trump is out here explaining that the warships "have to float someplace, so they might as well float near Iran." In other words, US foreign policy is now officially "we pointed a gun at your head because we needed somewhere to put it" — a totally normal way to run a nuclear-adjacent standoff in a volatile region.
#imperialism#national-security
lindsey graham shuts down government to protect lindsey graham
Lindsey Graham, bravely defending the sacred constitutional right of senators to cash in if the DOJ looks at their phone records.
Lindsey Graham spent 24 hours holding the government hostage because the new funding deal dared to repeal his favorite little side hustle: a custom provision that lets him and seven other GOP senators sue the DOJ for potentially millions if their phone records were subpoenaed in Trump coup investigations without their knowledge. In other words, Congress almost shut the lights off so Lindsey could keep his "hurt feelings = cash payout" clause intact.
Last year, during the great MAGA Shutdown Spectacular, Graham quietly tucked into the reopening deal a provision that applies only to senators, conveniently including himself, to sue if investigators accessed their phone records. House members from both parties noticed that this smelled less like oversight and more like Senate VIP Rewards Points, so they repealed it in the latest six-bill funding package. Senate negotiators agreed — and Graham promptly lost his mind, dressing it up as a principled stand for DHS and ICE, because nothing says "law and order" like demanding special legal protections for the guys who helped enable an attempted coup.
Graham ranted about ICE agents being "demonized" and "spat upon" while the real crime, apparently, is that Jack Smith’s "Arctic Frost" probe dared to look at his call logs. He insisted "every senator" should want this protection, which is a cute way of saying: we’d like to be above the law now, please. When the White House and Chuck Schumer cut a deal with Trump without involving him, Graham reminded everyone he’s an ally of the White House but "not owned by them" — just a guy who will tank a funding bill unless he gets a vote on his sanctuary cities bill and a rebranded version of his Arctic Frost perk that he swears contains "no enrichment" for him anymore. Because nothing screams innocence like promising to slightly dial back the self-dealing once you’re caught.
He even threatened Speaker Mike Johnson for repealing his provision without asking permission: "Speaker Johnson, I won’t forget this." In normal democracies, lawmakers fight to protect citizens’ rights from government overreach. In Trump’s America, Lindsey Graham nearly shuts down the government so he can keep a personalized legal cheat code in case the DOJ notices his role in the 2020 election mess. But sure, tell us more about how the real problem is "open borders" and not a senator trying to legislate himself a get-rich-off-investigations card.
#corruption#forever-grifting
