Melania Trump delivers prepared remarks on ‘empowering children’ while the broader Trump project continues empowering book bans, deportations, and generational trauma.
Melania Trump popped up at a global summit to talk about how much she cares about empowering children through education, which is a bold theme for an administration that treated public schools like a hostile foreign power and migrant children like misplaced luggage. Nothing says "fostering the future" quite like presiding over years of family separations, underfunded schools, and book bans while flying to a conference to read warm words off a teleprompter.
This is the Trump era’s favorite magic trick: break the system, then send out a glossy surrogate to give a speech about hope and opportunity. While Melania gently intones about education and children’s potential, her husband’s allies are busy purging school curricula, terrorizing immigrant families, and turning classrooms into culture-war minefields. It’s less a policy agenda than a branding exercise — a soft-focus ad campaign plastered over a government that keeps using kids as props, pawns, and collateral damage.
So yes, Melania Trump is now a global champion for children’s education. And if that feels a bit like putting the Trump Organization in charge of ethics reform, that’s because it is.
A TSA checkpoint staffed by unpaid officers and freshly imported ICE agents, because nothing says ‘aviation security’ like political hostage-taking and on-the-job training at 30,000 feet.
Six weeks into Trump’s second DHS shutdown in six months, TSA workers are back to the classic MAGA workplace model: mandatory labor, optional paychecks. Over 400 officers have quit, thousands more are calling out, and security lines are stretching longer than Trump’s list of unpaid contractors. The people actually trained to detect explosives are pawning belongings to afford gas, while the White House explains this is all somehow the Democrats’ fault.
Instead of, say, paying the workers who keep planes from exploding, Trump has decided to fly in a different kind of chaos: ICE agents, who are still getting paid and are about as qualified for aviation security as Trump is for the Constitution. The union representing TSA points out that ICE officers aren’t trained or certified to spot aviation threats, but who needs specialized instruction when you’ve got vibes and a gun? As AFGE’s Everett Kelley notes, this doesn’t close a security gap; it creates one.
Democrats are refusing to refund DHS until Republicans agree to rein in ICE, which is currently facing accusations of killing two unarmed U.S. citizens and repeatedly ignoring court orders. Senate Republicans floated a compromise to fund everything except ICE and deal with that mess later. Trump, ever the dealmaker, rejected it—and then his DHS and White House mouthpieces went on TV to blame Democrats for the shutdown he just chose to extend. The same administration that refused a bipartisan funding plan is now scolding workers for quitting because they can’t afford rent.
So TSA officers are working a second unpaid stretch in under a year, still paying off loans from the last shutdown, watching fully funded ICE agents stroll into their checkpoints and collect salaries to not know how to read an X-ray machine. It’s a perfect snapshot of Trump’s America: weaponize ICE, destabilize basic public safety, starve frontline workers, and then angrily insist this is all about “keeping our skies safe.”
Trump explains his detailed Iran peace plan, which appears to consist of vibes, a Sharpie, and whatever Fox segment he half-watched that morning.
Trump strolls out and announces that actually, there are peace talks with Iran now, which is news to Iran, U.S. diplomats, and anyone who has ever seen a map. Oil prices, ever the optimists, twitch downward for a hot second on the assumption that the President of the United States might be tethered to reality.
Then reporters, diplomats, and basic facts show up. Skepticism spreads, experts note that Iran is still firing missiles and not sending fruit baskets, and the market slowly remembers who’s talking: the guy who once declared North Korea denuclearized because he felt like it. Prices "settle" not because peace is at hand, but because traders decide they can’t keep repricing crude every time Trump free-associates about war and peace on television.
So U.S. foreign policy is now a live-action pump-and-dump theater where the Commander-in-Chief ad-libs global stability, oil futures jump, and the rest of the world has to guess whether he’s describing a secret diplomatic breakthrough or just narrating the movie in his head. Meanwhile, actual diplomats are left doing damage control for a president who treats nuclear standoffs like a ratings stunt.
Trump signs an AI executive order flanked by lobbyists, proving once again that the only intelligence he trusts is artificial and heavily subsidized.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new use for artificial intelligence: as a pretext to kneecap state governments and shower tech barons with regulatory immunity. In December, Trump signed an executive order telling his administration to both sue and financially punish any state that dares regulate AI – even though more than 70% of voters want more AI oversight at both state and federal levels, and Congress already rejected a similar moratorium almost unanimously. When democracy and oligarchs clash, this White House knows exactly which side it’s on.
What’s sold as “innovation policy” is just federal muscle being flexed on behalf of industry lobbyists terrified that someone, somewhere, might ask their algorithms not to ruin people’s lives quite so aggressively. The self-branded MAGA “populist” movement is now openly trading in its blue-collar cosplay for VIP ballroom time with tech moguls, as Trump’s project fuses government power with corporate AI interests and strips states of consumer protections. Local communities across Maryland, Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan and beyond are revolting against massive, power-hungry data centers, but the administration’s position is clear: if your town doesn’t want to be turned into a GPU furnace, that’s adorable – and irrelevant.
So while voters across red and blue states line up against unchecked AI and its physical sprawl, Trump is busy welding Washington to Big Tech’s wish list and calling it freedom. The supposed populist warrior against elites has managed to turn AI into yet another tool for centralized, top-down punishment of any state that won’t play ball. Regulatory states’ rights? Only when they’re banning books and abortion, not when they’re inconveniencing billionaires.
Abel looks out over Los Angeles, the city he loves so much he’s leaving it to escape the people allegedly making it ‘great again.’
Abel Ortiz has lived in Los Angeles since he was two months old, built a life, a business, and a community, and yet remains an undocumented ghost in the only country he actually knows. After decades of existing in Trump’s America as a permanent suspect, his big crime is giving haircuts and paying rent, which of course makes him a top priority for the ICE cosplay police.
So under the constant threat of raids, detention, and bureaucratic roulette, Abel does the one thing the nativist brain trust has always fantasized about: he leaves. Not because he’s been deported, not because he’s committed some heinous offense, but because living in endless legal purgatory inside a militarized immigration regime is worse than starting over somewhere that doesn’t treat his existence as a felony. Trump’s America calls this a win for “law and order”; the rest of us recognize it as a man being pressured into self-deportation by a government that’s turned fear into domestic policy.
Trump and Marco Rubio bravely defending freedom by sanctioning anyone who talks to the people investigating war crimes.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new way to defend "Western civilization": financially strangle a UN human rights expert and terrify American academics into silence. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, recommended ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant and suggested maybe – just maybe – companies helping commit war crimes should face consequences. For this unspeakable crime of doing her job, the White House hit her with sanctions so sweeping they amount to a bureaucratic excommunication: no US bank account, no selling her DC house, no salary from American universities. Civil liberties, meet civil death.
The fun doesn’t stop there. Trump signed an executive order threatening criminal prosecution for anyone who provides "funds, goods, or services" to Albanese or Palestinian human rights organizations – language so vague a Maine university canceled an academic conference because she was going to Zoom in for free. Marco Rubio, now playing cosplay Secretary of State, piled on by sanctioning ICC prosecutors, judges, and Palestinian NGOs, because nothing says "land of the free" like punishing people for investigating war crimes and genocide.
The result: professors and students across US campuses are now afraid to share research with Albanese or the ICC, lest they end up fined or arrested for the crime of emailing a PDF. The Supreme Court has spent six decades saying this kind of "chilling effect" on speech is unconstitutional; Trump’s response is to crank the thermostat down to freezer-burn and dare the courts to stop him. Human rights lawyers and academics are filing briefs to challenge the order, arguing that criminalizing contact with a UN expert for criticizing an ally’s atrocities is not exactly what the First Amendment had in mind. But hey, on the bright side, at least we finally know what "free speech absolutism" means in Trump’s America: you’re absolutely free to shut up.
Trump announces a tiny discount on a few drugs while quietly handing the stock market another gift basket from working-class America.
Trump’s economy is doing great — as long as you’re in the top 10% hoarding about 90% of all stocks and responsible for half of U.S. consumer spending. The administration slashed regulations, showered corporations with tax breaks, and watched as seven tech giants turned the stock market into a VIP-only money cannon. Out in the real world, one guy is planning a house addition and not worrying about child care, while his friends are wondering why the “booming economy” never made it past the gated community.
Meanwhile, Trump’s tariff fetish is quietly functioning as a regressive tax on everyone who can’t buy groceries in bulk at Costco with their capital gains. Prices are up, job growth is sputtering, and lower-income workers are discovering that the president who promised to fight for them actually outsourced that job to robots and AI. Wages are slowing, hiring is weak, and people like a 23-year-old optometrist’s assistant in Portland are skipping meals and getting told by official Washington that everything is fine and they’re just imagining the hunger.
To paper over the mess, the White House is hyping a second-term rerun of the first: more tax cuts, more deregulation, and a crackdown on immigration dressed up as a wage plan. Toss in some Trump-branded 50-year mortgages, a handful of selectively cheaper prescription drugs, and a child savings account that only really works if your parents can throw in $5,000 a year, and you’ve got a perfect program: symbolic help for the poor, compounding returns for the rich. As families at the bottom juggle rent, loans, and food, Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” makes sure refunds are just large enough to distract from the fact that the entire system is engineered to keep the wealth gap not just wide, but growing.
A tractor heroically attempting to plant corn while the president turns U.S. farm country into a live-fire test of his economic fan fiction.
Trump’s Iran adventure is going great for one key constituency: fertilizer exporters who aren’t trying to move product through the Strait of Hormuz. For American farmers, though, the war means nitrogen fertilizer prices are exploding, diesel costs are through the roof, and the guy running the country thinks all-caps posts demanding “PASS THE FARM BILL, NOW” count as agricultural policy.
Meanwhile, the administration’s greatest hits are all playing at once in rural America. Deportations have gutted the farm labor force, tariffs helped jack up machinery prices, and Trump’s ongoing pissing contest with China has soybean prices doing a swan dive. Farmers are now choosing what to plant based not on markets or weather, but on which crop will bankrupt them slightly slower. As one economist politely notes, margins are “tight and in some cases negative,” which is economist for "this is a financial tire fire."
To paper over the damage, Trump and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins are bragging about more than $30 billion in direct aid and a fresh $12 billion package to offset the very “temporary trade disruptions and increased production costs” they personally engineered. Farm leaders and even Republican veterans are saying the quiet part out loud: these subsidies look less like policy and more like a reelection strategy with tractors. Break the markets, hand out bailout checks, call it winning. It’s farm policy as protection racket: nice operation you’ve got there, shame if anything…Trump happened to it.
Trump’s energy team, seen here trying to convince a federal judge that a 2015 oil spill was actually a patriotic act of national defense.
California AG Rob Bonta is suing the Trump energy department because Energy Secretary Chris Wright apparently read the Defense Production Act and thought, "Ah yes, my do whatever I want button." Using powers handed to him by a Trump executive order, Wright tried to resurrect the long-disputed Sable Offshore pipeline system—shut down after a 2015 spill dumped over 100,000 gallons of crude into the Pacific—as if state law, state court orders, and a federal settlement were just optional side quests.
California is asking a federal court to remind the Trump administration that the constitution still exists and that "national defense" doesn’t mean "let’s reopen the oil leak from hell." The state wants the court to block the restart order and bar DOE from operating the Santa Ynez platform and pipelines under this Cold War cosplay. Meanwhile, Sable Offshore is already bragging about shipping hydrocarbons again and ramping up to 50,000 barrels a day, because why wait for rulings when you’ve got an oil-friendly White House writing you permission slips?
Gavin Newsom helpfully pointed out that Trump literally started a war with Iran, admitted it would spike gas prices, and is now using the crisis he engineered to jam open California’s coastline for his industry buddies. It’s disaster capitalism with extra tar balls: manufacture an international crisis, jack up prices, then scream "energy emergency" while you bulldoze state authority and environmental protections. The administration is also trying to rebrand a pipeline that never leaves California as "interstate," because if the facts don’t fit your power grab, you can always just relabel the map.
Americans rudely declining their assigned role as extras in Trump’s ICE propaganda reel, armed with cardboard, markers, and an outdated belief in democracy.
The Trump administration’s dream of a comfy little elected monarchy keeps running into the same problem: tens of millions of people who stubbornly insist they’re citizens, not subjects. The third nationwide No Kings protests are set to blanket more than 3,000 cities and towns, with organizers expecting what could be the largest protest in US history — all because Donald really, really wants to play Commander-in-Chief and King George III at the same time.
At the center of this round: Minnesota’s Twin Cities, where residents had the absolute nerve to watch ICE operations in their own communities, and were rewarded when federal agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti for the crime of observing their government. ICE and DHS are now widely described as running a “reign of terror,” which is a fun way of saying the federal government has decided due process is for suckers and accountability is for other countries.
The protests are fueled by a double feature of Trump-era lawlessness: an allegedly illegal war on Iran and a mass deportation campaign at home, all wrapped in criminalization of dissent and attacks on voting rights. Indivisible, 50501, the ACLU, labor, and civil rights groups are coordinating what they insist will be nonviolent, organized resistance — because when the White House is flirting with authoritarianism, someone has to model responsible behavior. While Trump’s people build a police state with ICE and DHS, millions are showing up to remind them that “No Kings” wasn’t supposed to be a controversial concept in a country literally founded on that idea.
So on 28 March, Bernie Sanders, Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Maggie Rogers, and a few million of their closest friends will gather to do the thing this administration fears most: peaceful, visible, sustained pro-democracy organizing. The White House keeps acting like the constitution is optional; the streets are sending back a very large, very loud second opinion.
The Kennedy Center, seen here moments before being reimagined as a marble-and-gold tribute to one president’s ego and another president’s ghost rolling his eyes.
Conservation and preservation groups are suing to stop Donald Trump from turning the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts into the Trump–Kennedy Center, because apparently we’re just stapling his name onto American history like it’s another failed casino. The lawsuit says Trump and his handpicked board are rushing a $250 million "renovation" that will "hastily gut" the place down to its steel studs while blowing off the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and that pesky detail where Congress never actually authorized a Trump-branded architectural vanity project.
The plaintiffs point out that the Kennedy Center is a living memorial to JFK, not a blank canvas for a septuagenarian real-estate critic to test out his "beautiful, beautiful marbles" theory of governance. They’re asking a judge to rule that last year’s $256 million appropriation for repairs and security doesn’t magically include "new structures" and aesthetic makeovers that would make the lobby look like a Palm Beach steakhouse. Meanwhile, the board has already started mucking around with the site, including slapping Trump’s name on the signage before the legal fights are even over, because the first step in any infrastructure project is, of course, branding.
The administration insists this is all about creating the finest performing arts facility in the world, which is an interesting claim from a president whose signature cultural contribution is rage-posting through felony indictments. A federal judge has already had to step in just to let Rep. Joyce Beatty attend (but not vote in) the board meeting that rubber-stamped the two-year closure, while another part of her challenge is still pending. The conservation groups have a simpler request: stop the White House from taking a chisel to the building’s historic fabric just so Trump can add another monument to himself and call it public service.
Trump and oil execs smiling in front of an ocean view, thoughtfully preserved from the horror of wind turbines by a $1 billion taxpayer-funded protection racket.
While a war in Iran sends fossil fuel prices through the roof, the Trump administration has heroically stepped in to… pay nearly $1 billion to a French oil giant to cancel offshore wind projects that would have provided cheaper, domestic power. TotalEnergies agreed to surrender two offshore wind leases off New York and North Carolina, and in return Trump’s Interior Department will kindly reimburse the company the $928 million it paid under Biden. Apparently the only thing this White House hates more than wind turbines is the idea of Americans having affordable, homegrown energy.
Instead of building clean power off the east coast, TotalEnergies will pour that money into four new trains at the Rio Grande LNG plant in Texas, plus more conventional oil and shale gas in the Gulf. So the official US energy policy is now: when a fossil-fuel-driven crisis exposes how risky oil dependency is, immediately double down on… more fossil fuels, and pay handsomely to kneecap alternatives. Offshore projects like Vineyard Wind and Revolution Wind are already sending power to the grid, but Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum are too busy doing PR for gas exporters at CERAWeek to notice.
Climate advocates point out that this is “political theater,” which is a polite way of saying the administration is lighting public money on fire to score points against an energy source Trump thinks is ugly. After courts blocked his previous attempts to kill already-permitted wind farms, he’s now just cutting billion-dollar checks to make clean energy go away. American consumers get higher bills and more price shocks; TotalEnergies gets reimbursed and a fossil-fuel expansion package; Trump gets to stand on stage and pretend this is about “lowering costs for Americans.” Everyone wins, except the public, the climate, and basic logic.
Trump, moments before explaining that the only real voter fraud problem is too many people voting against him.
Donald Trump has issued his latest royal decree to the Republican Party: no deals with Democrats unless they jam voter ID into it. Not "fight for better healthcare," not "fix the economy"—the non-negotiable demand is making it harder to cast a ballot. The man who tried to overturn an election is once again explaining, very loudly, that the only acceptable compromise is one where fewer of the wrong people vote.
This isn’t policy, it’s strategy: hold the entire legislative process hostage until you can rig the rules of the next election. Republicans, who swear they love "election integrity," are being told—by the guy with more indictments than coherent sentences—to prioritize voter ID over literally everything else. Governing is optional; voter suppression is mandatory.
So while normal democracies negotiate over budgets and public safety, Trump’s GOP is negotiating over how many hoops Black, brown, young, and poor voters have to jump through to participate in elections at all. Democracy is supposed to be one person, one vote; Trump’s version is more like one party, all the vetoes—until the electorate is sufficiently "managed" to guarantee the right outcomes.
Former Rep. David Rivera explains to reporters that this is all a big misunderstanding and definitely not about $20 million, an encrypted chat, and a very well-kept yacht.
Miami has outdone itself. The federal trial of former GOP Rep. David Rivera — one-time roommate and political Siamese twin of now–Secretary of State Marco Rubio — is underway, featuring allegations that Rivera was basically Maduro’s very well-paid concierge to Trump’s Washington. Prosecutors say Rivera landed a $50 million contract from Venezuela’s state oil machine, then used his Republican Rolodex to try to soften the White House’s "tough" stance on the socialist regime, all while forgetting that pesky register as a foreign agent part.
The operation allegedly ran through an encrypted chat called "MIA" (subtle), where Maduro was "the bus driver," Rep. Pete Sessions was "Sombrero," and millions of dollars were "melons" — because if you’re going to launder money and influence U.S. policy, you might as well talk like you’re in a rejected Netflix narco-comedy. Of the roughly $20 million Rivera actually got, at least $3.75 million reportedly went to maintaining a luxury yacht owned by Raúl Gorrín, the Venezuelan media tycoon later charged with bribing officials. Foreign policy, Trump-era style: democracy promotion via yacht maintenance.
Into this strolls Marco Rubio, dragged onto the witness stand like a reluctant extra in his old roommate’s indictment. He’s not charged, but prosecutors say Rivera considered Rubio the key to unlocking the Trump White House — no Rubio, "no turkey," as Rivera allegedly bragged after a meeting. Rubio got a backchannel to Caracas while the administration raged publicly about Maduro; Rivera allegedly got paid; Gorrín got his boat polished; and U.S. law got treated as a suggestion. It’s a perfect snapshot of Trump-era foreign policy: loud sanctions up front, quiet yacht invoices in the back.
Kari Lake discovers that when you can’t win ratings, you can always try state television.
Voice of America journalists are suing Trump administration starlet and failed-TV-anchor-turned-state-media-enthusiast Kari Lake, alleging she’s been using VOA as her own Farsi-language MAGA infomercial. While she’s supposed to safeguard the outlet’s editorial independence, the lawsuit says she’s instead pumping out pro-Trump propaganda and shredding the legal firewall that’s supposed to keep U.S. government media from turning into a taxpayer-funded campaign channel. You know, that pesky "not literal authoritarian state TV" rule.
Not content with just flattering Trump on VOA’s Persian service, Lake reportedly followed Trump’s March 2025 order to hack the network down to its “smallest legal size” by firing contractors, putting more than 1,000 staff on paid leave, and gutting 49 language services down to six. Because when Iran is in crisis and authoritarian regimes are tightening their grip, what better time to kneecap one of the few sources of independent news and then stuff what’s left with administration talking points? Veteran journalists — represented by Norm Eisen — are now asking the courts to remind Lake, Michael Rigas, and the rest of the “US Agency for Global Maga” that federal law and the First Amendment still exist, even if the Trump crew would prefer a more North Korea–chic media environment.
VOA was literally created during World War II to counter Nazi propaganda by telling uncomfortable truths, including Allied failures, to build credibility. Eighty-plus years later, the Trump administration’s contribution to that legacy is: fire the journalists, slash the languages, and send Kari Lake on air to gush about the president to audiences living under repressive regimes. The U.S. once used VOA to model a pluralistic society where politicians don’t dictate the news agenda; now the model on display is "what if we tried the propaganda thing, but with worse production values?"
Alex Vindman, seen here committing the unforgivable offense of believing presidents shouldn’t extort foreign allies for campaign dirt.
Alexander Vindman, the guy who heard Trump try to shake down Ukraine like a mob boss with bone spurs, has decided that sitting quietly in Florida while the people who smeared him as a "traitor" run the place into the ocean is not really his vibe. Instead, the retired lieutenant colonel and Purple Heart recipient is running for US Senate in Florida — a state currently governed like a Fox News green room by Ron DeSantis and represented by Ashley Moody, a DeSantis appointee whose main qualification appears to be signing whatever the hard-right puts in front of her.
Rather than cashing in on a bestseller and consulting gigs, Vindman is voluntarily walking back into the same political meat grinder that got him purged from the National Security Council for the high crime of reporting that the president was abusing his office. Trump and his GOP chorus spent years calling him a "traitor" for telling the truth under oath; now those same geniuses are still using the line as he campaigns on ending "chaos" and "crushing corruption" — a pretty on-the-nose slogan for the guy who literally reported presidential corruption at the highest level.
His likely opponent, Senator Ashley Moody, comes pre-packaged as a DeSantis-installed rubber stamp whose track record includes helping turn Florida’s insurance market into a flaming sinkhole while protecting big insurers from having to, you know, pay claims. Vindman is pitching himself as the anti-chaos, anti-corruption alternative in a state where single-party rule has produced sky-high costs, broken systems, and a steady stream of Republican officials who treat public office like a loyalty test to Trump and his mini-mes. So the choice is shaping up nicely: the whistleblower who tried to stop an extortion plot, versus the party that punished him so they could keep the chaos flowing.
Pete Hegseth, freshly promoted from Fox & Friends to Secretary of War Crimes, carefully reviewing drone footage to see which strike will play best with the LindellTV demographic.
Pete Hegseth, now LARPing as "secretary of war" (a job title Congress did not authorize, minor detail), has turned the Pentagon into a live studio audience for a Call of Duty snuff-stream. The administration is pumping out glossy kill reels from the Iran war and small-boat massacres, not to explain strategy – they don’t have one – but to feed a televised "thirst for vengeance" and sell the idea that war is just pressing buttons from a safe distance while shouting about "fury" on cable.
This isn’t even old-school fascist death cult where you at least pretend to value sacrifice; it’s a nihilist upgrade where the only heroism is how cool the drone footage looks between MyPillow ads. Hegseth is on TV openly promising future war crimes – "no quarter," "punching them while they’re down" – while Trump merchandises repatriated American dead like they’re limited-edition MAGA Funko Pops.
Inside this fantasy Pentagon, real press conferences are out; staged banter with Epoch Times and LindellTV is in. Meanwhile, Hegseth babbles Christian nationalist clichés about praying for the troops "on bended knees and in the name of Jesus" as an unofficial patriotism test, casually body-checking the First Amendment while he’s busy body-slamming the laws of war. The whole thing has the intellectual depth of a YouTube manosphere stunt, except this time the fragile egos come with actual missiles attached.
Benjamin Landa, reportedly searching for Hungary on a globe while his nursing homes and the Trump administration sue each other over $31 million in Medicare money.
The Trump White House has discovered a bold new diplomatic vetting standard: is your company currently suing the U.S. government for trying to claw back tens of millions in Medicare overpayments? If yes, congratulations, you might be Benjamin Landa, nursing home mogul, $5 million MAGA Inc. donor, and Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Hungary — home of Viktor Orbán, the authoritarian man-crush Trump says does an “unbelievable job.” One of Landa’s facilities, Pinnacle Multicare, is accused by the HHS inspector general of pocketing at least $31.2 million in improper Medicare payments. The home’s response? Sue Trump’s own HHS, CMS, and inspector general to stop the collection, then ask the Senate to hand its co-owner a diplomatic passport.
Naturally, this isn’t Landa’s only brush with the concept of “accountability.” New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued multiple homes tied to him, alleging years of financial fraud, “looting,” and systemic understaffing that left residents with untreated wounds, malnutrition, life-threatening pressure ulcers, and preventable deaths. Judges have already let major claims proceed, ordered Landa and others to cough up $2 million, and installed an independent monitor at one facility. Landa’s lawyer insists he’s just a humble minority landlord who loves patient care more than rent checks, management fees, and consulting payments — the $31 million is apparently just a paperwork misunderstanding from the pandemic, and everyone else is being very unfair.
Meanwhile, the White House and State Department have gone full witness protection when asked about the nomination, because what do you even say? “Yes, we’re sending a man accused of bleeding nursing homes dry and overbilling Medicare to represent America in a right-wing government he and Trump both admire”? As Sen. Ron Wyden politely translated it, Landa is a walking example of giant corporate health interests that prey on the vulnerable and then get plum political appointments instead of investigations. Under Trump, if you’re accused of exploiting seniors, siphoning off public money, and then suing the government to keep the cash, that’s not disqualifying — that’s your résumé.
Contractors carefully install a marble tribute to genocide so it can "peacefully shine" under taxpayer-funded security, unlike the people it commemorates.
The Trump administration has now literally salvaged a Christopher Columbus statue from the trash heap of history and parked a replica right next to the White House, on the grounds of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The original? That was the one Baltimore protesters tossed into the harbor in 2020 after George Floyd’s murder, during a nationwide reckoning with racism and colonial violence. Trump saw that as a teachable moment — the lesson being that if people try to move past genocide and conquest, the federal government should step in and give the genocidal guy better real estate.
Instead of using the power of the presidency to, say, address ongoing violence against Indigenous communities, Trump is using it to cosplay as Defender of 15th-Century White Feelings. The White House proudly announced on X that "Christopher Columbus is a hero" and will be honored "for generations to come," because nothing says "forward-looking democracy" like aggressively centering a man whose greatest hits include enslavement, mutilation, and kickstarting centuries of land theft. Meanwhile, Italian American lobbying outfits get a victory lap, Indigenous Peoples Day gets sneered at as "left-wing arson," and the federal government literally enshrines colonial nostalgia on public land.
So yes, in Trump’s America, statues torn down by protesters as symbols of oppression don’t just get replaced — they get upgraded to federal shrine status. Historical revisionism isn’t a bug; it’s the branding strategy.
Markwayne Mullin, auditioning to run Homeland Security by convincing the Senate that encouraging political violence is just another leadership style.
The Senate has decided that the perfect person to run the Department of Homeland Security under Donald Trump is Markwayne Mullin – a guy facing allegations that he encouraged political violence. Because when your democracy is already on fire, why not hand the fire marshal job to someone who keeps showing up with a gas can?
The chamber voted 54–37 to cut off debate, because actually discussing whether the homeland security chief should maybe not be pro-political-violence is apparently too much to ask. Rand Paul, to his microscopic credit, opposed advancing the nomination in committee, but he and eight Democrats somehow managed to vanish when it was time to vote on limiting debate. Meanwhile, John Fetterman and Martin Heinrich wandered across the aisle to help Republicans speed things along, proving that enabling authoritarian creep is a proudly bipartisan tradition.
If confirmed, Mullin will replace Kristi Noem, who Trump fired on 5 March, continuing the administration’s long-running reality show "America’s Next Top Authoritarian." We are told that Mullin, a member of the Cherokee Nation, would be only the second Native American cabinet member – a genuinely historic milestone being used as camouflage for putting a political-violence enthusiast in charge of domestic security. Representation is great; weaponizing it to launder extremism is textbook Trump-era governance.
