The FBI, seen here bravely looking everywhere for terrorists except at the guy in tac gear with a neo-Nazi manifesto walking into a Hindu temple.
A 19-year-old white nationalist allegedly showed up at a Hindu temple in Aurora, Illinois, with tactical gear, hundreds of rounds, and a manifesto charmingly titled “Why I Fought: A.K.A.: (Aurora Shooter’s Manifesto).” His gun jammed, he texted a co-worker at Taco Bell about his big day of terrorism, and the co-worker did what the federal government apparently can’t be bothered to do: called the cops. Inside that temple at the time? Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), a frequent target of the same right-wing ecosystem that’s been fantasizing about the “Indian question” and demographic “replacement.”
Krishnamoorthi is now begging the feds to refocus on domestic violent extremism, a thing the FBI used to do before Trump decided that following Nazis was less important than following his critics on social media. Under Trump, the Bureau has scaled back tracking neo-Nazi extremists and repositioned resources to go after left-leaning “threats” and whoever hurt the president’s feelings this week. So we’ve arrived at the natural endpoint of years of racist panic over South Asians and immigrants: a would-be mass shooter with a racist screed, a jammed gun, and a federal government that treats white nationalist terror as a distraction from the real enemy—democracy, and anyone who votes for it.
The police chief calls it “very fortunate” that “something much, much worse did not happen.” That’s one way to describe surviving on pure luck while the administration systematically defunds and de-prioritizes the people whose job is to stop these guys before they show up at temples with manifestos. Another way is: this is what happens when you turn federal law enforcement into a presidential protection racket and leave the actual counterterror work to a freaked-out Taco Bell employee.
Sen. Bernie Moreno has announced that if Republicans lose Congress in November, they’ll respond with the solemn dignity our institutions deserve: by chaining themselves to their desks and ramming through a mega–reconciliation "Last Supper" bill stuffed with every GOP fever dream they can find under the couch. Forget letting the voters’ verdict take effect; Moreno wants his colleagues to cancel Thanksgiving, live off cafeteria turkey, and sprint to pass "everything that we could possibly get" before the clock runs out.
The wish list is exactly what you’d expect from the Trump-era fan fiction writers currently running policy: a gargantuan Pentagon payday for Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense fantasy, more money for autonomous weapons, F-35 upgrades, and a "minimum" $350 billion to "rebuild the military" that’s already drowning in cash. While they’re at it, they’d like to slide in reauthorization of FISA Section 702—aka warrantless wiretapping—plus the NDAA, farm bill, permitting "reform," the debt ceiling, and whatever else they can cram into a reconciliation piñata that only needs 51 votes.
Sen. Ron Johnson helpfully admits they’re already coordinating with the House and Trump’s White House on what they can "sell to the public" once they stumble back from the campaign trail, which is a poetic way of saying: "We’re workshopping the lies in advance." The only real speed bumps are a handful of GOP senators who occasionally remember they’re supposed to be legislators and not extras in a Fox Nation special. Meanwhile, Moreno is also running—unopposed—for NRSC chair, so if Republicans do lose the Senate, the guy who just promised a lame-duck legislative looting spree will be in charge of winning it back. Accountability, meet the wood chipper.
Programming note: tonight’s scheduled government-sponsored snuff film has been canceled due to extremely minor remaining standards.
Pete Hegseth, one of Trumpworld’s favorite couch generals, reportedly had a fun little programming idea: turn the Fort Hood shooter’s execution into a livestream event, because why wouldn’t you merge state killing with cable news ratings? Somewhere between the chyron and the countdown clock, somebody finally realized, "Hey, this is dystopian even by our standards."
So Trump, ever the showman, steps in to cancel the plan — not because turning an execution into reality TV is grotesque, but because it might look bad and complicate the carefully curated "law and order" brand. The message from this White House remains consistent: executions are great for politics, just maybe don’t stream them like it’s UFC Fight Night.
What we’re left with is a government orbiting Fox News so tightly that a host felt comfortable pitching a snuff broadcast of state power, and only after the fact did the actual president decide that, yes, perhaps broadcasting a man’s death for clicks is a bit much. America: still technically a democracy, now run like a late-night programming block.
Nothing says "tough on corruption" like your former Trump campaign chief glad‑handing the guy the State Department literally banned from the country for being corrupt.
Republicans spent their Dallas "midterm convention" screaming that Democrats would turn America into a Marxist hellscape, while backstage they were literally rolling out the red carpet for Sali Berisha — an actual ex-communist and a man the U.S. State Department previously declared persona non grata for "significant corruption." Under Biden, Berisha was barred from entering the United States. Under Trump 2.0, he gets a visa waiver and a backstage pass to hang out with Attorney General Todd Blanche, Associate AG Stanley Woodward, RNC chair Joe Gruters, Sen. James Lankford, Mehmet Oz, and Ben Shapiro, like it’s a corruption-themed Comic-Con.
The Justice Department, the RNC, and Berisha’s own party all suddenly lost the ability to speak when asked what, exactly, this indicted Albanian opposition leader was doing at a high-dollar GOP fundraiser where balcony seats went for $5,000 and "Golden VIP" access cost $250,000. Berisha helpfully filled in the silence himself on X, boasting that his meeting with Blanche and Woodward was an "important" one for US–Albania relations and that he and his buddy, former defense minister Fatmir Mediu (himself linked to GOP fixer Ken Paxton), were there to brief Trumpworld on Albania’s supposed "narco-state."
So the Trump administration quietly overrules its own government’s corruption finding to let a foreign politician facing criminal charges fly in, mingle with top law enforcement officials, and network at a cash-soaked partisan event — all while the party screams about foreign crime and communist infiltration. America First apparently means "America first in hosting indicted foreign elites at $250,000-a-pop fascist pep rallies."
When you’re cosplaying as statesmen but the group chat is just extradition memes and coup nostalgia.
The Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium briefly transformed into the Authoritarian Extended Universe on Wednesday, as US officials, right-wing influencers, and conservative donors packed into a "Hispanic Heritage Gala" that was somehow mostly about… cheering on Brazil’s Bolsonaro clan and their latest shot at power. Argentina’s far-right president Javier Milei, lovingly marketed as Trump’s doppelgänger, was technically the headliner, but the real prom king was Eduardo Bolsonaro—son of Jair, brother of current presidential contender Flávio, and proud recipient of a fresh Brazilian arrest warrant.
Eduardo, who managed to lose both his congressional seat and his federal police job by literally not showing up to work, is now a MAGA celebrity on the run, sentenced to more than four years in prison back home for trying to meddle in his father’s coup case by lobbying the Trump administration. In normal politics, that’s called obstruction; in MAGA politics, it’s called a résumé. He’s already being floated as Brazil’s next foreign minister if Flávio wins, because nothing says “diplomacy” like a fugitive convicted for interfering with the justice system.
Inside the gala, tuxedoed reactionaries swarmed Eduardo for selfies, prayers, and assorted worship while Milei promised to “kick out the communist dictator in Brazil” and “reconquer the hemisphere,” casually describing a continent-wide right-wing takeover like he’s announcing a new Marvel phase. Eduardo, standing in Washington while dodging Brazilian law, vowed that when his brother takes the presidency, Latin America will enter a new “Golden Era”—which, judging by his family’s track record, means more coups, more crackdowns, and a regulatory environment extremely friendly to mining Brazil’s rare earths and torching the Amazon.
So the Trump orbit is not just rooting for a Bolsonaro comeback; it’s actively building a transnational network where indicted ex-presidents, convicted coup plotters, and their influencer friends swap stages, talking points, and strategies for dismantling what’s left of democracy—one black-tie gala at a time.
Kristi Noem, seen here in her natural habitat: an official-looking role with unofficial friends and undefined responsibilities.
Kristi Noem is no longer Trump’s special envoy for the grandly titled Shield of the Americas initiative, which sounds less like foreign policy and more like a Marvel knockoff you’d find in the bargain bin at Dollar Tree. Her envoy status "expired" last month, the State Department says — a very polite way of saying, "we’re not doing this cosplay title anymore" — but don’t worry, she’s still inside the building. She’s now a "senior advisor" to Deputy Secretary David Landau, continuing to work on the same portfolio, just with fewer press releases and more plausible deniability.
This is the same Kristi Noem who was bounced from Homeland Security amid growing scrutiny of her management and the mysterious gravitational pull of her adviser Corey Lewandowski, who kept showing up in photos on her five-country tour despite having no official job at State. So naturally, after questions about her leadership and his shadow influence, the solution was to slide her sideways into a vague diplomatic role where she could keep doing high-level meetings with Latin American leaders while everyone pretends the title situation is just a clerical detail.
Even after the envoy label quietly disappeared before the U.N. General Assembly, Noem was still being publicly introduced by Ecuador’s president as the Shield of the Americas envoy and was thanked by Trump himself for doing a "really terrific job." The job, it turns out, was mostly a handful of photo-op–friendly meetings in Quito, Washington, and on the sidelines of the U.N., plus whatever behind-the-scenes influence comes with being a Trumpworld loyalist who never actually leaves, just gets refiled. The hemisphere’s security architecture is apparently being run like a reality show cast reunion: nobody knows exactly what they do now, but they’re still on camera.
Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ed Markey are trying the legislative equivalent of grabbing the steering wheel before Trump drives the country straight into a radioactive ditch, filing a joint resolution to block his shiny new nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. The agreement would bless Riyadh with a "civilian" nuclear program, because if there's one regime you want playing with enrichment tech, it's the one that murders U.S.-based journalists and dismembers them like a deleted scene from a mob movie.
The resolution forces a vote after Nov. 29, meaning Congress will have to go on record about whether it's cool handing nuclear capabilities to Mohammed bin Salman, Trump’s favorite sword-dancing autocrat. The senators are warning that the deal gives the kingdom way too much freedom to develop sensitive nuclear infrastructure with far too few safeguards, but the Trump White House appears laser-focused on its usual priorities: helping authoritarian buddies, ignoring proliferation risks, and pretending this is all about peaceful energy. Because when you think "stable, transparent, rights-respecting partner for nuclear tech," you obviously think Saudi Arabia under MBS.
Undecided voters stare thoughtfully into the middle distance, bravely considering whether the guy they re-elected to smash institutions might, shockingly, be smashing institutions.
Some 2024 Trump voters in swing states have finally noticed that giving an aspiring autocrat unified power might not, in fact, produce a Hallmark movie about "shaking up Washington." NPR’s focus groups find people who happily hit the red button two years ago now musing about voting for Democrats or split tickets in 2026 to "check his power" — as though they accidentally subscribed to authoritarianism+ and are now looking for the unsubscribe link.
Instead of admitting they helped create this mess, participants delicately describe being "concerned" about Trump going too far, about the chaos, about the threats to basic institutions — the same ones he loudly promised to bulldoze while they nodded along on Election Night. Now they talk about needing "balance" in Washington, like they’re ordering a side salad to cancel out two years of deep-fried fascism.
The political media dutifully treats this as a sign of a healthy democracy self-correcting, rather than what it actually is: a last-minute fire drill by people who smelled the smoke in 2016, 2020, and 2024 and only started looking for the exits once the flames reached their HOA. Democracy: still technically functioning, now with focus groups of regretful arsonists wondering whether maybe, possibly, someone should call the fire department.
The Trump White House has apparently decided that what America’s energy policy really needed was a Russian diesel loyalty program, announcing a deal so sketchy that even five House Republicans felt compelled to put something in writing besides fundraising emails. Reps. Don Bacon, Brian Fitzpatrick, Michael McCaul, Dan Newhouse and Joe Wilson joined 17 Democrats to politely inform President Deals-For-Despots that maybe handing Vladimir Putin a fresh revenue stream while sanctions are supposed to be squeezing Moscow is not, technically, how any of this is supposed to work.
This bipartisan letter says they’re “particularly concerned” about the arrangement, which is congressional code for “are you kidding me.” While the U.S. is ostensibly trying to punish Russia for its behavior, Trump is out here announcing a diesel arrangement like he’s launching a new golf resort, and House Republicans are stuck playing the role of reluctant chaperones at a mob wedding. Instead of tightening sanctions, the president is busy improvising a fossil-fueled care package for the Kremlin, reminding everyone that under Trump, foreign policy is less ‘America First’ and more whoever cuts him the friendliest deal.
Screenshot of Katie Zacharia’s Instagram, where the word "lawyer" bravely cosplays as a professional license.
The Trump White House has once again pioneered a bold new legal doctrine: vibes-based licensure. Press secretary Katie Zacharia now concedes she never actually passed a bar exam anywhere, despite repeatedly calling herself a lawyer, telling Fox News she was a "corporate lawyer" in Beijing, putting "lawyer" in her Instagram bio, and being introduced by Donald Trump as an "attorney". Minor details, like the pesky fact that only Chinese nationals can take the bar in China, are apparently just deep state technicalities.
Zacharia insists she was "very careful" and never said "attorney at law," as though the California statute criminalizing holding yourself out as a lawyer secretly comes with a magic asterisk for people who workshop their LinkedIn titles with Pepperdine’s president first. Meanwhile, the White House swears she "practiced international transaction law, with all the appropriate credentials"—none of which they can actually name. Stanford law professor Nora Freeman Engstrom helpfully notes that California law bans not just unlicensed practice of law, but the unlicensed pretending to be a lawyer, which seems…relevant here.
The Campaign for Accountability has filed a complaint with the California State Bar, pointing out that under state law, calling yourself a lawyer without a license isn't just résumé inflation, it's a misdemeanor. The White House response? Communications director Steven Cheung jumped on X to call the watchdog "radical," "rabid numbskulls," and "deranged low lifes"—a thoughtful legal argument sure to impress the disciplinary board. The administration’s position appears to be that if you shout "TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME" loudly enough, the statute books catch fire and float away.
So the person paid to speak on behalf of the president may have built her credibility on a legally questionable fantasy of being a lawyer, while the White House calls her "uniquely qualified" and "whip smart" for the job. In this administration, that’s not a scandal; it’s basically the hiring rubric.
Stock footage of a MOAB test blast, helpfully illustrating what Trump wants to do to both Iran and the concept of responsible foreign policy.
The White House and Pentagon are reportedly gaming out plans to drop a Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb — the "mother of all bombs" — on Iran, just in case Donald Trump wakes up from a Fox-induced nap and decides it’s time to rerun his favorite 2017 airstrike. A Pentagon official, apparently speaking from the Department of Euphemisms, assured CBS that "the Department of War" (points for honesty, at least) plans for a wide range of scenarios to "execute Presidential and Secretary level direction" — which is a very polite way of saying, "if he says push the shiny red button, we’re ready."
Trump, ever the statesman, has publicly promised not to attack Iran before the midterm elections, as though war is just another rally venue he’s penciled in for after the votes are counted. He vaguely bragged about "productive conversations" with Iran, offering roughly the same level of detail he provides when explaining why his golf courses keep losing money. Meanwhile, the administration is dusting off the MOAB — a 30,000-pound, $170,000-per-shot monument to American overkill — because nothing says "diplomacy" like pre-writing the blast coordinates.
This is being framed as normal contingency planning, but the last time Trump used the MOAB, the White House treated it like a fireworks show with better ratings. Now the biggest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal is being quietly slotted into options for Iran, hanging over a volatile region on the whims of a guy who schedules foreign policy around cable segments and campaign calendars. Totally fine, very stable governance from the people who treat potential war with Iran like a programming decision between town hall or season finale.
Eric Deters, a Trump donor who allegedly got the VIP treatment of being asked by then–U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle to wire $100,000 straight to her American Express account, has now filed a defamation lawsuit against her and her lawyers. According to prior reporting, that little "wire me six figures personally" moment helped usher Guilfoyle out of the Trump administration, because even by Trumpworld standards, directly billing your donor like he’s your corporate card starts to look less like fundraising and more like personal concierge grift.
Deters is now suing Guilfoyle and her defense attorneys Jesse Binnal and David M. Schwartz, claiming they lied about him and trashed his reputation. So we’ve reached the stage of the MAGA era where the donors are suing the influencers over who really tried to monetize whom, while everyone insists they are the wronged party. It's a perfect snapshot of the movement: a closed ecosystem where the money men, the TV faces, and the lawyers all accuse each other of lying, while the only uncontested fact is that somebody was trying to move $100,000 like it was lunch money.
What this lawsuit really underscores is the Trump-era business model: public office as a networking opportunity, donors as walking ATMs, and legal teams as full-time spin machines. The line between campaign finance, personal enrichment, and "oops, was that unethical?" is now so blurred it should qualify as abstract art. And if this is what spills out in civil court, imagine what the group chats look like.
FBI Director Kash Patel, moments before allegedly deciding that due process is for losers and Article II is his new HR software.
Nine former FBI employees are suing after being fired for the high crime of…working on the Trump classified documents investigation. No misconduct findings, no internal review, not even the traditional half-hearted HR memo — just Kash Patel allegedly waving “Article II” around like a golden ticket to purge anyone who ever touched the Mar-a-Lago files. The lawsuit says they were axed purely to satisfy Trump’s personal vendetta, because nothing says "independent law enforcement" like "the president was mad, so you’re fired."
The timing is artful in that uniquely Trump-era way: the mass firing happens over two days in February 2026, just as the U.S. and Israel are preparing strikes on Iran. While everyone’s staring at the looming war, Patel’s guy Miles Starr races in demanding access to the "Plasmic Echo" case files, conveniently getting a list of everyone who worked the documents case. Less than 48 hours later, those same names are escorted out of the building. Subtle.
It somehow gets dumber. The lawsuit suggests the purge also doubled as a distraction from Patel being caught at the Milan Olympics "chugging a beer" and spraying alcohol around the U.S. men’s hockey locker room like a frat pledge who stole dad’s security clearance. An FBI supervisor allegedly even guessed the firings were tied to that bad press. So the bureau that once took down mob bosses is now allegedly firing counterintelligence veterans to cover for the director’s locker-room bender and the president’s wounded ego. Rule of law has officially been replaced with vibes and vendettas.
These plaintiffs had over a century of combined experience in national security, leak investigations, and counterterrorism. Their reward for following the facts and the law on Trump’s stolen-documents case? Being labeled enemies of the state by the guy whose boxes they tried to retrieve, then purged by a director who apparently thinks "Article II" is a universal justification for turning the FBI into the president’s personal revenge squad.
Tom Tiffany, seen here shaking hands with voters while pretending 20-week abortion limits were handed down on stone tablets and not by the same people now begging everyone to stop asking follow-up questions.
Republican gubernatorial candidates across the country have embarked on a bold new moral journey: realizing that openly bragging about forced birth is bad for their careers. Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin, who three years ago co-sponsored a six-week ban, now serenely calls the state’s 20-week limit "settled law" — which is a fun way of saying "I’d still sign a ban, I’d just rather not talk about it while you’re standing there with a ballot." Stacy Garrity in Pennsylvania and Ty Masterson in Kansas are playing the same game: years of anti-abortion crusading, now wrapped in a soothing "let’s respect current law" blanket because 60% of Americans stubbornly insist on having rights.
The pattern isn’t subtle. John James in Michigan once compared abortion to genocide and opposed it in all cases; now he says the issue is "decided." His running mate Jay DeBoyer was caught fantasizing about using a constitutional convention to sneak in a 12-week ban, then promptly pivoted to calling abortion "settled" too. Republicans spent decades engineering the fall of Roe, and after voters noticed and started setting their hair on fire at the polls, the same crew is sprinting away from their own victory like it’s a flaming campaign ad.
Meanwhile, Democrats and groups like Planned Parenthood Votes are doing the unthinkable: replaying Republicans’ own words back to them. Democratic candidates and PACs are highlighting past anti-abortion remarks in states like Maine and Michigan, because nothing motivates voters like being reminded that the people now cooing about "respecting current law" were five minutes ago plotting how to rip it up. Anti-abortion groups such as SBA Pro-Life America are still trying to revive the crusade, but GOP candidates seem to have discovered a new life principle: abortion bans are amazing, as long as you never, ever say so near a swing voter.
So the "pro-life" movement has entered its "don’t scare the normals" phase: the laws are still on the books, the ambitions haven’t changed, but the rhetoric has been moved to the witness protection program. Voters, for their part, have correctly concluded that nothing about this is "settled" except Republicans’ willingness to lie about what they’ll do once they’re safely sworn in.
Artist’s rendering of public institutions watching two billionaires decide who owns the sky.
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have apparently decided Earth is too regulated, so they're taking their billionaire slap-fight to the moon. As laid out in the interview, both men want to colonize the lunar surface, strip-mine it for resources, and stuff low Earth orbit with thousands more satellites. It's not about exploration or science; it's about who gets to own the sky, meter access to space, and bill taxpayers for the privilege.
The best part? Their "only real competition is each other," which is a poetic way of saying U.S. policy has happily outsourced a core national capability to two guys whose main qualifications are: 1) enormous government contracts and 2) a deep emotional need to be Space Emperor. While regulators nap and politicians pose for launchpad photo-ops, Musk and Bezos are quietly turning orbital infrastructure into a privatized toll road. The future of space isn’t Star Trek; it’s a HOA run by two tech oligarchs who already think they’re above the law down here.
Ken Paxton, seen here auditioning for "Senator, But Make It Indictable," as Elon Musk attempts to speedrun the tutorial level of buying a government.
American democracy, that scrappy little experiment in self-government, has now been fully converted into an in-app purchase. Elon Musk just dropped $158m into the Senate Leadership Fund and another $10m straight into a pro–Ken Paxton PAC, because if there’s one guy you want to elevate to the world’s most powerful deliberative body, it’s the indicted Texas attorney general whose brand is basically “have you tried being more corrupt?”
Republicans admitted months ago that backing Trump’s handpicked chaos muppet Paxton could cost up to $200m, so naturally the solution was to call the world’s richest man and shake him like a money tree. Paxton is struggling against James Talarico, a progressive who somehow committed the unforgivable sin of funding his campaign with mere tens of millions raised from actual donors instead of one bored oligarch trying to speedrun Citizens United.
Musk has now shelled out about $366m this cycle alone – more than he spent helping Trump in 2024 – despite solemnly promising in 2025 that he was going to dial back the political spending. As always, the only thing more flexible than Republican principles is a billionaire’s definition of "less." His PAC helpfully warns that if Democrats win, America might become "socialist, woke and borderless" – unlike the current model, which is oligarchic, lawless and paywalled, where Senate seats are essentially venture investments for tech barons and indicted officials, and voters are just the branding.
ICE agents stand outside Ilhan Omar’s home, bravely defending America from 30-year-old paperwork and sagging GOP poll numbers.
The Trump administration’s favorite hobby—turning federal law enforcement into a campaign arm—has now reached the "raid a sitting congresswoman’s house" stage. Homeland Security Investigations agents hit Rep. Ilhan Omar’s D.C. home over alleged immigration paperwork issues from the 1990s, right as Republicans are flailing into the midterms. Even ICE officials are looking at the timing and saying, essentially, yeah this smells like a political stunt, which is quite something coming from the agency that brought you family separation.
Inside ICE, agents say they’re being yanked off child exploitation and trafficking cases so they can do critical democracy-protection work like… knocking on doors across nine states to interrogate people about voter fraud before there’s any evidence. One official calls it a "waste of time"; the administration calls it Tuesday. Meanwhile, after an ICE officer shot and wounded a 28-year-old Venezuelan man in Austin, leadership briefly ordered a quiet nationwide pullback on arresting non-criminal immigrants, then pretended publicly it never happened, while field offices followed the secret "don’t put it in writing" guidance for days.
Analysts are politely noting that using ICE to target blue states, blue politicians, and voters is "a significant challenge for the reputation of law enforcement." That’s one way to describe an administration that treats badges like campaign merch. You’ve got partisan raids, statute-of-limitations gymnastics, covert enforcement freezes, and agents openly admitting they’re being used as pawns to "stoke divisive fires." Law enforcement as a midterm Hail Mary is less a policy agenda and more a killing-democracy business model.
Protesters outside the Kennedy Center, bravely attempting to preserve the radical idea that a presidential memorial to the arts should not be remodeled into the Donald J. Trump Center for Bulldozers and Hurt Feelings.
The Kennedy Center was created by Congress as a living memorial to John F. Kennedy and American arts. So naturally, Trump stacked its board with his own people, had them make him chairman, tried to slap his name on the building, close it for two years, and openly floated just tearing the whole thing down if he didn’t get enough credit. Now that Rep. Joyce Beatty is suing over this little cultural hostage situation, the White House has decided that what the Founders really meant by "executive privilege" was "the president’s secret plans for rebranding and/or demolishing the national performing arts center."
White House deputy counsel Joshua Hoyt has informed a federal judge that Trump is formally asserting the presidential communications privilege over records about the attempted two-year closure, the Kennedy Center’s finances, the push to bolt Trump’s name onto the facade, and the possibility of demolition. The Justice Department is screaming "fishing expedition" and separation of powers, while simultaneously insisting that anything involving Trump or White House staff is just too sacred to be discussed — even though this is about his actions as board chair of a congressionally created institution funded with public money. Presidential duties now apparently include picking out fonts for the marquee and reviewing "Kennedy Center Demolished" placards on Air Force One.
A federal judge has already blocked the closure and ordered Trump’s name stripped from the exterior, but the administration is still using a blanket "protective" privilege claim to shut down deposition questions and document requests about what Trump told Kennedy Center staff to do. Beatty’s lawyers call it an unprecedented abuse of privilege; DOJ calls it Tuesday. The presidency was once about safeguarding democracy and the Constitution. Under Trump, it’s about shielding his conversations on how best to gut a national cultural landmark and staple his brand over a dead president’s memorial.
Apparently America has reached the "screaming into a pillow" phase of the Trump sequel. Multiple new polls say nearly two-thirds of the country thinks the economy is bad, seven in ten think the country is out of control, and eight in ten want either "substantial change" or "complete and total upheaval" in how the country is run. So, mission accomplished for President Chaos: he promised to shake things up, and now everyone’s shaken like a car with three lug nuts.
Trump’s approval on inflation has plummeted to a majestic 22%, which is only slightly higher than the approval rating of food poisoning. His overall job approval sits at 36%, a new low for either term, driven down by young voters, low-income voters, non-white voters, and people without college degrees — you know, the folks he keeps insisting love him. The White House, naturally, had no immediate comment, presumably because "Have you tried not looking at the polls?" isn’t a great communications strategy.
Democrats, for their part, are somehow managing to underwhelm in a political environment where voters are actively asking for "complete and total upheaval" and already living under a president who governs like a flaming roulette wheel. Polls show more people are pessimistic than optimistic about both parties’ futures, though Democrats hold a growing lead in the House generic ballot and are gaining ground on traditionally Republican issues like inflation and foreign policy — a strong sign that the GOP brand has achieved the rare feat of being less trusted on the economy than the party that actually says government should do things.
Republicans know they’re on defense, yanking ads in doomed races and carpet-bombing once-safe states just to hang on. Democrats, meanwhile, face the delicious prospect of winning only to be greeted by a fresh crop of internal rebels who might prefer burning the party playbook to reading it. Pollsters politely remind everyone they’re not clairvoyant, so we’ll have to wait until after the midterms to see whether Americans’ discontent becomes a real upheaval or just another deeply felt, statistically significant sigh.
Trump personally rushed out a statement to Politico to declare that reports his White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is on the chopping block are "TOTAL FAKE NEWS," which is how you know someone definitely passed him a burn book thicker than the federal register. After reportedly soliciting allies’ opinions on Wiles and hearing a chorus of knives sharpening behind her back, the president now insists everything is wonderful and no one should read anything into all the leaking, scheming, and public denial.
So the West Wing remains what it always is under Trump: a reality show set where senior staff serve at the pleasure of the last person who trashed them in his ear, and job security is measured in half-lives of bad press. Instead of a functioning executive branch, we get a court drama where the king periodically announces that his favorite adviser is absolutely not about to be fed to the crocodiles, while the moat guy quietly warms up the water.
