The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Documenting the chaos since day one — one awful day at a time.

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Monday, March 23, 2026

killing democracy

trump turns voice of america into voice of dear leader

Kari Lake discovers that when you can’t win ratings, you can always try state television.

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?"
npr.orgSource Article
#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump’s favorite ‘traitor’ won’t stay exiled

Alex Vindman, seen here committing the unforgivable offense of believing presidents shouldn’t extort foreign allies for campaign dirt.

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.
theguardian.comSource Article
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#retribution
fascism

fox & friends & fascism

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, 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.

theguardian.comSource Article
#fascism#killing-democracy
forever grifting

trump picks ambassador whose nursing home empire is suing trump

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.

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.
propublica.orgSource Article
#corruption#forever-grifting#pro-publica-is-a-national-treasure
killing democracy

trump fishes a racist statue out of the harbor and gives it a white house address

Contractors carefully install a marble tribute to genocide so it can "peacefully shine" under taxpayer-funded security, unlike the people it commemorates.

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.
nbcnews.comSource Article
#killing-democracy#racism

Sunday, March 22, 2026

fascism

senate fast-tracks guy accused of cheering political violence to run homeland security

Markwayne Mullin, auditioning to run Homeland Security by convincing the Senate that encouraging political violence is just another leadership style.

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.

theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: nbcnews.comAlso: theguardian.com
#fascism#killing-democracy
full stupid

trump launches aliens.gov, still refuses to register ethics.gov

Artist’s impression of the moment aliens decide to turn around after seeing that the United States registered aliens.gov.

Artist’s impression of the moment aliens decide to turn around after seeing that the United States registered aliens.gov.

The US government has officially registered alien.gov and aliens.gov, because nothing says "serious superpower" like turning the federal web registry into a 1998 X‑Files fan forum. This comes just weeks after Donald Trump loudly promised to release UFO/UAP files, bravely taking on the most pressing challenge of our time: not corruption, not climate, not healthcare, but whether little green men are doing flybys over Louisiana. The White House’s deputy press secretary responded to questions with a "stay tuned!" and an alien emoji, which is exactly the level of professionalism you’d expect from an administration that treats national security like a group chat. Meanwhile, NASA’s Michael Gold is out here praising the administration for "supporting transparency" because they might put some PDFs on a website, as if this is not the same political universe where basic visitor logs and tax returns are treated like nuclear launch codes. Trump has ordered agencies to scour their files for anything related to aliens, UAPs, UFOs, and presumably whatever else is trending on Truth Social this week. JD Vance is "neutral" on aliens, Marco Rubio is worried about mystery aircraft over nuclear sites, and Tulsi Gabbard "believes in the possibility" of alien life—so at least someone in this administration believes in something that isn’t grift. A bipartisan cast from AOC to Chuck Schumer to Tim Burchett is now united around UAP transparency, because apparently the only thing that can still cross the aisle is the hope that the real adults in the room are extraterrestrials. Historians and the CIA gently remind everyone we’ve done this dance before: prior UFO panics turned out to be cover for secret reconnaissance programs and a lot of official lying. This time around, we get prediction markets betting on whether aliens will be confirmed before 2027, while the federal government rolls out aliens.gov like it’s a Black Friday drop. If you were wondering whether American democracy is healthy, just know that we are one step closer to a world where aliens.gov is updated more reliably than basic ethics disclosures.
theguardian.comSource Article
#full-stupid#killing-democracy
anti immigration

kelly loeffler discovers small business loans are for ‘real americans’ only

Kelly Loeffler bravely protects America from the grave threat of immigrant-owned coffee shops and dry cleaners.

Kelly Loeffler bravely protects America from the grave threat of immigrant-owned coffee shops and dry cleaners.

Kelly Loeffler, fresh off her lifelong commitment to whatever makes rich Republicans richer, has decided the Small Business Administration will no longer approve loans for small business owners unless they’re U.S. citizens. Green card holders, legal permanent residents, tax-paying immigrant entrepreneurs who’ve followed every rule? No soup, no loans, no capitalism for you. Apparently the American Dream now comes with an asterisk and a citizenship test.

This isn’t about risk, economics, or the SBA’s mission to support small businesses; it’s about turning a loan program into a campaign ad for Trump’s anti-immigrant base. Under Biden, the SBA got scolded for overly diverse stock photos; under Trump 2.0, the fix is to actually discriminate in real life. The agency that’s supposed to help anyone running a legal business is now drawing a bright, political line: your paperwork is fine, your taxes are welcome, but your non-citizen status makes you useful only as a talking point.

The punchline: the author’s solution is to take the SBA out of government altogether and hand it to a public–private Frankenstein of bureaucrats, CEOs, and big business lobby groups, as though that crowd has ever resisted the temptation to pick winners and losers. Still, when an agency has been turned into a presidential propaganda hose that cuts off capital to the wrong kind of Americans, you can see why people start fantasizing about throwing the whole thing into a locked box and mailing it somewhere far away from Mar-a-Lago.
theguardian.comSource Article
#anti-immigration#killing-democracy
anti science

trump, rfk jr, and the miracle b vitamin that cures science

Trump and RFK Jr announcing that autism can be fixed with a B vitamin, while evidence, ethics, and basic neurology are escorted out of the building by security.

Trump and RFK Jr announcing that autism can be fixed with a B vitamin, while evidence, ethics, and basic neurology are escorted out of the building by security.

Trump and RFK Jr decided to cosplay as neurologists and announced that leucovorin, a folinic acid (read: fancy B vitamin), was basically the first FDA-recognized treatment for autism and that autism might be "entirely preventable". The FDA commissioner Marty Makary happily joined the magic show, bragging on C‑SPAN and podcasts that 50–60% of autistic kids could see clinical improvement and that "hundreds of thousands" would benefit. Parents, understandably desperate and misled by their own government, rushed to doctors, and leucovorin prescriptions for kids 5–17 promptly jumped 71%. Then reality, like a very boring but necessary friend, showed up. The biggest leucovorin-for-autism study (a grand total of 77 kids) was retracted in January when re-analysis couldn't reproduce the results. Other studies were tiny and badly blinded. The American Academy of Pediatrics publicly said the evidence is too thin to recommend it. Even Richard Frye, the doctor whose work inspired the idea, was stunned the administration basically greenlit it "without more studies or anything". Meanwhile, neurodevelopmental specialists were left debating whether they should start doing spinal taps on kids to chase a rare folate deficiency that merely resembles autism. So on 10 March, the FDA quietly backed away from the cliff and approved leucovorin only for cerebral folate deficiency – a very rare condition that can have "autistic features" – while pretending that months of hype about an autism breakthrough never happened. Doctors like William Graf and Leon Epstein are now saying the quiet part out loud: giving treatments without evidence is unethical, this was "almost like public deception", and the real result is that people learn they can't trust public health officials who treat science like a campaign prop. Also helpful: at the same time this crowd is selling vitamin-based miracle cures, they're slashing Medicaid and autism services and pulling FDA warnings about dangerous bogus autism therapies. Why fund real support when you can just announce that autism is optional now?
theguardian.comSource Article
#anti-science#healthcare#killing-democracy
imperialism

commander-in-tweet sets monday deadline for global chaos

Pictured: a man who thinks the Strait of Hormuz is something you threaten on a Sunday show so it’ll trend by Monday.

Pictured: a man who thinks the Strait of Hormuz is something you threaten on a Sunday show so it’ll trend by Monday.

Trump has now moved from threatening domestic institutions to threatening one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes like it’s a cable bill that’s past due. He’s publicly warning Iran that if the Strait of Hormuz isn’t opened by Monday, there will be consequences — because nothing says stable superpower like turning a chokepoint for a fifth of the world’s oil into a reality show cliffhanger.

Instead of diplomacy, alliances, or literally any coherent strategy, we get the usual: a made-for-TV ultimatum, zero nuance, and the implied promise that millions of people’s access to fuel and a functioning global economy can be decided by whether Trump wakes up in a good mood. Foreign policy has officially been downgraded from "serious business" to "live-action Doomscrolling Theater."
today.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.comAlso: theguardian.com
#imperialism#national-security#killing-democracy
killing democracy

trump keeps losing in court, tries yelling at judges instead

A federal district judge, bravely attempting to explain ‘you actually have to follow the law’ to an administration that thinks contempt of court is a campaign strategy.

A federal district judge, bravely attempting to explain ‘you actually have to follow the law’ to an administration that thinks contempt of court is a campaign strategy.

American democracy’s latest defense system is… a bunch of exhausted district court judges who signed up to interpret statutes, not fend off a wannabe caudillo with Wi-Fi. While Trump shreds norms like they’re classified documents in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom, trial judges across the country keep smacking down his executive orders: attempts to kill birthright citizenship, punish disfavored law firms and universities, gut election laws, slash the civil service, and freeze funds all keep running into this annoying obstacle known as the Constitution. The numbers are almost slapstick. More than 650 lawsuits against Trump executive actions, plaintiffs winning more than twice as often, and judges using phrases like “deliberately ignorant,” “chilling harm of blizzard proportion,” and “an assault on constitutional rights” to describe what the White House insists is just bold leadership. At least 95 times since August, judges have had to ask federal officials why they shouldn’t be held in contempt for just… not following court orders. One conservative Bush-appointed judge, Patrick Schiltz, dryly noted he can’t recall another moment in U.S. history where a federal court had to threaten contempt “again and again and again” to make the government obey the law. Strong words for a branch that usually communicates in footnotes. Naturally, the president responded like any responsible head of state: by trying to sic the mob on the refs. Judges have been doxxed, SWAT-ed, and showered with death threats while Trump rants about “Crooked Judges,” calls for impeachment of those who rule against him, and has his DOJ file a farcical misconduct complaint against a judge who dared insist Venezuelan migrants get a hearing before being dumped in a Salvadoran hell-prison. One judge was targeted on the dark web by someone looking up his address so “Smith & Wesson” could “pay him a visit.” Law and order, Trump-style, means law for you, orders for him. Of course, these rulings aren’t always the last word; appellate courts and a Supreme Court stacked with Republican appointees often ride to Trump’s rescue like a Federalist Society Uber. But while Congress enjoys a 14‑month spa retreat and the president auditions for Strongman Idol, a scattered corps of district judges is quietly doing what everyone else keeps pretending is optional: enforcing the Constitution. They’re the modern heirs to the judges who enforced Brown v. Board—only now the segregationists show up in red hats and the threats come with tracking numbers and livestreams. These are the guardrails, and they’re made of flesh, blood, and a frankly heroic tolerance for reading Trump’s briefs without screaming.
theguardian.comSource Article
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
racism

trump admin bravely takes on its greatest enemy: black history

The Trump administration, bravely standing up to the menace of schoolkids learning what the Underground Railroad was.

The Trump administration, bravely standing up to the menace of schoolkids learning what the Underground Railroad was.

The Trump administration has apparently decided that the real threat to America isn’t, say, foreign adversaries or climate disasters, but a small Underground Railroad museum in Albany, New York, trying to teach kids that slavery happened. The Underground Railroad Education Center is suing after the National Endowment for the Humanities yanked a $250,000 grant, allegedly because the project had the wrong kind of history and the wrong color of people attached to it.

This all traces back to Trump’s 2025 executive order nuking anything that smelled like diversity, equity, or inclusion, which federal agencies then used as a shredder for about 1,400 grants. The lawsuit says the administration systematically went after programs that increased understanding of Black history and culture, while the current crop of executive branch geniuses pump out statements that lawyers politely describe as "overt and coded racism" in support of white supremacy. Subtlety has left the chat.

It’s not just this museum. A court already had to order the administration to restore a slavery exhibit in Philadelphia after it started sanitizing the President’s House Site like it was prepping a condo listing. They’ve also swapped out free national park days to dump Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, and launched a political review of Smithsonian exhibits to make sure they line up with Trump’s preferred fairy tale version of America, where racism either never existed or was extremely overblown by woke abolitionists.

Meanwhile, the Albany museum—housed in the former home of abolitionists Stephen and Harriet Myers, who helped thousands escape slavery—is stuck scrambling for funds because the federal government decided that accurately teaching Black history is now a partisan act. The grant was supposed to help build a $12 million interpretive center; instead, it’s become Exhibit A in the administration’s ongoing effort to put Black history back in the attic and padlock the door.

nbcnews.comSource Article
#racism#killing-democracy

Saturday, March 21, 2026

killing democracy

the man who politely suggested maybe crimes happened has died

Robert Mueller, who wrote a meticulous 448-page cautionary tale about presidential lawlessness that America treated like optional homework, 1944–2026.

Robert Mueller, who wrote a meticulous 448-page cautionary tale about presidential lawlessness that America treated like optional homework, 1944–2026.

Robert Mueller, the special counsel who spent two years painstakingly documenting how Trump welcomed Russian election interference and then tried very hard not to call it a crime, has died at 81. The former FBI director’s family announced his passing, closing the chapter on the last time the political class pretended that facts, evidence, and 448-page reports might still matter.

Mueller was appointed in 2017 by Rod Rosenstein to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible ties to the Trump campaign, a probe that produced indictments, convictions, and one legendary moment where Mueller told Congress that yes, a president could be charged after leaving office. Washington responded by doing absolutely nothing about it, thereby proving that no one obstructs justice more effectively than a cowardly Congress.

The Guardian obit is short on detail so far, but the outline is already clear: a decorated Marine, former FBI director, and institutionalist spent his final major act trying to warn a country that its president was at least obstruction-curious and very Russia-friendly. The institutions he devoted his life to responded by issuing sternly worded tweets. Mueller is gone; the report is gathering dust; and the people it exposed are still on TV yelling that it totally exonerated them. Hell of a legacy for the rule of law.
theguardian.comSource Article
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
forever grifting

black nazi on nude africa heroically lies for trump

Mark Robinson, explaining that lying about being a pro-slavery Nazi on a porn site is fine as long as it’s for Trump, which is definitely a totally normal sentence in a functioning democracy.

Mark Robinson, explaining that lying about being a pro-slavery Nazi on a porn site is fine as long as it’s for Trump, which is definitely a totally normal sentence in a functioning democracy.

North Carolina’s former Republican lieutenant governor Mark Robinson has now helpfully confirmed what everyone with a functioning Wi‑Fi connection already knew: he lied about being the guy posting pro‑slavery, antisemitic, homophobic, and "I’m a black NAZI!" comments on a porn forum called Nude Africa. The posts also praised Mein Kampf as a "good read" and a "real eye-opener," which is generally not the book review you want from someone running to be governor of an actual U.S. state. Robinson spent the 2024 campaign insisting, "those are not the words of Mark Robinson" while they were, in fact, extremely the words of Mark Robinson. Now he says he misled voters because it was "the most expedient thing to do" to protect Donald Trump’s comeback bid and other Republicans, explaining that if he had to "ignore the truth" for their benefit, that was the "right thing to do." Honesty, family values, and personal responsibility have officially been replaced with strategic lying to safeguard the Dear Leader’s electoral prospects. Trump once called Robinson "one of the great stars" of the GOP before suddenly discovering that the "black NAZI" porn‑forum superfan was maybe not ideal campaign decor. Robinson’s staff bailed, his gubernatorial run cratered by 14 points, and now he’s on a podcast with a pastor retrofitting his porn "obsession" and Nazi book club phase into a redemption arc. Asked if he’d lie again for the cause, he proudly says yes. The Republican Party’s moral message in the Trump era remains consistent: sin all you want, just make sure you’re doing it for the president.
theguardian.comSource Article
#forever-grifting#trumps-america
anti immigration

trump discovers you can deport more people if you just make them illegal first

America: where the sign on the church says “Immigrants & Refugees Welcome” and the sign on the federal government says “Just Kidding.”

America: where the sign on the church says “Immigrants & Refugees Welcome” and the sign on the federal government says “Just Kidding.”

The Trump administration has finally cracked the code on mass deportations: if there aren’t enough undocumented immigrants to hit your targets, just create more. Legal residents, refugees, TPS holders – everyone’s fair game in what advocates are calling a “great de-legalization campaign”. The government is actively hunting for technicalities, paperwork gaps, and retroactive excuses to strip people of status and shove them into the deportation pipeline. It’s less an immigration system than a booby trap with flags.

Refugees who already survived wars, persecution, and several background checks that Jared Kushner would fail instantly are now being rewarded with an executive order “suspending” the refugee program, stranded flights, gutted resettlement support, and a sweeping review of anyone admitted under Biden. Green card processing for refugees? Paused. Detention for those who haven’t applied after a year? Potentially indefinite, with advocates estimating 100,000 at risk. And for 2026, the US refugee cap has been slashed from Biden’s 100,000 to 7,500 – with Trump openly trying to stack the tiny remaining slots with white South Africans, because the Statue of Liberty apparently now comes with a Pantone chart.

All of this is wrapped in the same law-and-order cosplay we’ve come to expect: ICE and DHS chasing deportation quotas while courts are flooded with challenges to blatantly discriminatory bans and retroactive status reviews. The administration isn’t enforcing immigration law; it’s rewriting the definition of “legal” on the fly so more people can be treated as criminals. Call it what it is: a federal program to convert documented immigrants into deportable bodies, backed by executive orders, travel bans covering 39 countries, and a bureaucracy repurposed as a deportation machine.

theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: today.comAlso: nbcnews.com
#anti-immigration#killing-democracy
killing democracy

pro-life means never having to say you're sorry (for bombing kids)

Pro-life leaders thoughtfully weighing the sanctity of life against the pressing need to drop another bomb on a school.

Pro-life leaders thoughtfully weighing the sanctity of life against the pressing need to drop another bomb on a school.

The Trump administration has discovered a bold new interpretation of "pro-life": protect every fertilized egg in Georgia, vaporize actual children in Lebanon and Iran. Since Trump and his bestie in Tel Aviv kicked off their Iran adventure on 28 February, more than 1,800 children have been killed or injured across the region, with Lebanon now losing a classroom’s worth of kids a day on top of the 20,000 children already killed in Gaza. Asked about a U.S.-linked bombing of an elementary school in Iran, Trump basically shrugged and said he could "live with that report" – because of course the man who thinks windmills cause cancer is very chill about mass child death as long as it’s happening somewhere with brown people and oil.

Back home in the shining city on a hill, the same movement that treats foreign kids as acceptable blast radius is furiously criminalizing anyone with a uterus. Since Roe fell, at least 412 pregnancy-related prosecutions have been launched, with Georgia now charging 31-year-old Alexia Moore with murder after she allegedly took abortion pills. She’s sitting in jail without bond so the "small government" crowd can feel spiritually fulfilled. Meanwhile, six-week bans based on what doctors politely describe as "sporadic electrical impulses" are sold as "heartbeat" laws, and Republican states are trying to outlaw traveling for out-of-state abortions, because freedom is for guns, not for women.

The result is a neat two-track system: abroad, U.S. policy helps fill graves with children whose names we’ll never learn; at home, it stuffs prisons with women whose medical histories are now criminal evidence. The "culture of life" turns out to be a culture of surveillance, forced birth, and drone strikes. The fetus is sacred, the pregnant person is disposable, and once that baby is born in the wrong country or the wrong zip code, it’s just another acceptable casualty in the administration’s ongoing war on both human rights and basic arithmetic.

theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: npr.org
#killing-democracy#pro-life#imperialism
healthcare

hipaa is for peasants

Trump explains medical privacy by demonstrating that it only applies to himself.

Trump explains medical privacy by demonstrating that it only applies to himself.

Donald Trump, a man whose own medical records are treated like the nuclear codes he left in the bathroom, decided to publicly announce that Rep. Neal Dunn "would have been dead by June" without White House doctors swooping in to save him. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s response — "OK, that wasn’t public" — was the closest thing this administration has to a conscience, which is to say: mild surprise followed by immediate compliance. While Trump brags about providing Dunn with world-class care and jokes that he did it "for him first and for the votes second" (but it was a close second), millions of Americans are watching their healthcare costs explode after the expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies. So yes, if you’re a loyal Republican vote, you get elite presidential doctors; if you’re a regular citizen, you get a GoFundMe and a prayer chain. Etiquette experts and Republican strategists politely describe this as "inappropriate" and "pointless", which is a very gentle way of saying "the president treats other people’s medical privacy like podcast content." Meanwhile, the White House furiously denies any issue with Trump’s own mystery neck rash, insisting his health is "exceptional" and his energy "unmatched" — always a reassuring phrase when used about a 70-something man yelling at reporters about sunscreen. But don’t worry, says Team Trump: this is a "non-issue" invented by "fake news" and anyway, they insist, the president is totally transparent about his health — except for the parts where he attacks reporters for asking, refuses basic disclosure, and weaponizes other people’s diagnoses for clout. The bar for decency in public life keeps dropping, and Trump is right there, personally digging the hole.
theguardian.comSource Article
#healthcare#forever-grifting
imperialism

special relationship downgraded to situationship

Keir Starmer waits patiently for Trump to notice Britain exists, armed only with a sad nuclear deterrent on a US leash and a very special PowerPoint about being an ally.

Keir Starmer waits patiently for Trump to notice Britain exists, armed only with a sad nuclear deterrent on a US leash and a very special PowerPoint about being an ally.

Britain has finally noticed that its "special relationship" with Trump’s America looks less like Churchill–Roosevelt and more like an emotionally abusive WhatsApp thread where only one side is sending heart emojis. Keir Starmer dares to draw a microscopic line between "defensive" and "offensive" strikes in Trump’s latest Middle East war, and the response from the MAGA brain trust – represented here by Steve Bannon, America’s favorite nicotine-stained authoritarian cosplayer – is basically: "fuck you, the special relationship is dead". Diplomatic subtlety meets the foreign-policy equivalent of a bar fight behind a Waffle House. The piece walks through how Britain, having amputated its EU leg with Brexit, is now limping around on its one remaining crutch: US security dependence. That dependence buys London exactly zero leverage. Decades of British prime ministers promising that if they just stay really, really close to Washington they’ll "shape" US decisions have culminated in Trump openly treating them like background extras, while his people dismiss their concerns as "diplomatic bullshit". The UK built a nuclear deterrent it can’t fully operate without US tech, shrank its army to cosplay scale, and now finds itself being described by American soldiers with something closer to pity than respect. So we end up with the great post-imperial plot twist: Britain, once the empire that lectured the world, is now the needy ex refreshing Trump’s Twitter feed for signs of affection while he publicly announces the relationship is over. The only realistic route back to dignity, the author notes, is for the UK to stop begging the White House for scraps of relevance and reattach itself to Europe – including, gasp, rejoining the EU. Until then, Trump gets to play global strongman while his allies line up to sacrifice their self-respect for a photo-op and a pat on the head.
theguardian.comSource Article
#imperialism#killing-democracy
killing democracy

senate can't fund tsa without tipping extra for the secret police

Senators bravely debate whether TSA workers should get paid before or after they underwrite ICE’s right to kick in your door without a name tag.

Senators bravely debate whether TSA workers should get paid before or after they underwrite ICE’s right to kick in your door without a name tag.

Senate Republicans have discovered a bold new innovation in governance: if the public gets angry enough about airport lines, maybe they’ll happily subsidize a slightly more polite secret police. The bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security failed again because Democrats declined to rubber-stamp full DHS funding that shovels more money to ICE, the agency currently under fire for its role in the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis. Chuck Schumer is pushing a clean TSA-only bill so people can get to their flights, while John Thune is out here acting like everyone is equally to blame for tying paychecks for TSA workers to ICE’s right to kick in doors without a warrant.

Behind closed doors, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan is meeting with senators, trying to salvage the administration’s favorite toy: a "rogue agency," as Patty Murray politely called it, that Democrats now want to subject to such radical leftist ideas as wearing name tags, not wearing masks, and getting a warrant before busting into people’s homes. In response, the White House is offering cosmetic tweaks – more body cameras (except when things are sensitive, or inconvenient, or Tuesday) and promising to tone it down a bit at hospitals, schools, and churches. Also, Trump fired Kristi Noem as DHS secretary and dumped Tom Homan directly onto Minneapolis like that’s a reform instead of a threat.

Out on the Senate floor, Republicans insist they’ve made a “very fair, reasonable offer,” which apparently means: pay TSA, fund the rest of DHS, and stop asking why ICE gets to cosplay as an unmarked militia. Democrats want to reopen TSA while they keep negotiating over whether ICE has to follow the Fourth Amendment, which is being treated as some radical bargaining demand instead of the baseline of a functioning democracy. Meanwhile, TSA workers are still on the job without pay, call-outs are climbing, airport lines are stretching, and the message from Washington is clear: your right to fly is now collateral in the ongoing dispute over how unaccountable the domestic security apparatus gets to be.

theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.comAlso: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#lawlessness

Friday, March 20, 2026

forever grifting

white house expands trump-branded coupon site, still not a health care plan

Stock photo of pills and a laptop, bravely standing in for a functioning health care system while TrumpRx offers coupons and vibes.

Stock photo of pills and a laptop, bravely standing in for a functioning health care system while TrumpRx offers coupons and vibes.

The White House is proudly announcing that TrumpRx — the president’s very normal, totally-not-a-marketing-gimmick drug discount website — now has three more drugs, bringing the grand total to "still basically nothing." They’ve added two Type 2 diabetes meds and a COPD drug from Boehringer Ingelheim, with steep-looking discounts that sound impressive until you notice pesky details like: one already has a cheaper generic and sites like GoodRx often have similar or better deals. Critics point out that TrumpRx covers fewer than 60 drugs, doesn’t work with insurance, and doesn’t count toward deductibles — which is a fun way of saying it’s useless for most people who are drowning in medical bills. The administration, in turn, has bravely responded by refusing to say how many people have even used it and then retroactively redefining success: an HHS official now insists the "goal was not actually some massive reach," which is a convenient standard when hardly anyone has heard of your program. Meanwhile, about a third of Americans say they’re rationing meds or skipping care to afford health expenses, but sure, let’s roll out a tiny, opaque cash-pay coupon site with the president’s name slapped on it and call that "addressing soaring health care costs." Nine drugmakers are now on the platform, which is starting to look less like policy and more like a lightly regulated Trump-branded discount aisle for pharma, while the real structural fixes to drug pricing remain safely untouched.
nbcnews.comSource Article
#forever-grifting#healthcare