House Democrats have finally remembered that the Constitution gave Congress a very sharp object: the power of the purse. If they take back the House, Rosa DeLauro is poised to run the Appropriations Committee, which means Trump’s wishlist of authoritarian cosplay and taxpayer-funded ego monuments might suddenly have to pass through someone who can read a budget and isn’t trying to turn the U.S. government into a family business franchise.
Instead of politely tweeting concerns while Trump lights federal agencies on fire, Democrats are talking about using spending bills to actually condition or block his pet projects, attach real oversight, and force disclosures. In other words, they’re threatening to make him do the one thing he hates most: follow rules written by other people. That is the nightmare scenario for a president whose management style is "what if Nixon, but with merch."
Of course, this assumes Democrats don’t immediately negotiate against themselves, staple a few "strongly worded" report phrases onto a trillion-dollar omnibus, and then declare victory on cable news while Trump’s crew quietly carve out new loopholes. Still, even the possibility that appropriations might be used to slow the grift, fence in the wannabe strongman, and force a paper trail is the closest thing to accountability this timeline has coughed up in a while. It’s not a cure, but it’s at least a fire extinguisher in a building Trump keeps trying to rezone as a fireworks factory.
Donald Trump and Ken Paxton, seen here testing whether two ethics black holes can merge into a single Senate seat.
Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who treats ethics laws like optional pop-up ads, is somehow in a dead heat for a US Senate seat in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide since dial‑up internet. He’s Trump’s guy, which the former president helpfully underscored by telling a rally Paxton "may not dress right" and isn’t the "best-looking" — a campaign ad so brutal it should qualify as an in-kind contribution to the Democrat.
Paxton’s resume reads less like a public servant and more like a true-crime podcast season guide: securities charges settled without admitting guilt; impeachment by his own Republican legislature on abuse-of-office allegations and then acquittal; a bizarre Dairy Queen episode where God allegedly told a tech bro to hand Paxton 100,000 shares; an allegedly stolen $1,000 Montblanc pen; and that pesky FBI referral from eight senior staffers who thought maybe, just maybe, the attorney general shouldn’t be using his office to allegedly help a donor in exchange for a kitchen remodel and a job for his alleged mistress.
For variety, there’s also the 2022 Chevy-truck getaway, where his then–state-senator wife allegedly helped him flee a process server like a low-budget Coen brothers remake, followed by her filing for divorce on "biblical grounds" — always a good sign for a family-values crusader with two alleged affairs. Now this walking ethics complaint is locked in a toss-up with 37-year-old Democrat James Talarico, whom Republicans sneer at as a "Coexist bumper sticker" in human form while dumping millions into Texas to keep Paxton’s scandals on the public payroll, just with a nicer office and a federal title.
The stakes: control of the US Senate. The question: will Texas send a man repeatedly accused of abusing his office to an even bigger office, or will voters briefly remember that the attorney general probably shouldn’t need multiple explanations for why he definitely did not steal that pen, accept that stock, or flee that subpoena? Either way, the modern GOP continues its bold experiment in seeing how close you can get to a rap sheet before it just becomes your campaign bio.
Rep. María Elvira Salazar, seen here realizing that building your party around a guy who calls your voters criminals might have some minor political side effects.
In Little Havana’s Domino Park, a guy gets arrested mid-game and suddenly the conversation turns from double-sixes to deportations and who wrecked the cost of living more, Biden or Trump. Welcome to Florida’s 27th, where more than 70% of the district is Latino and a growing number of people have noticed that Trump’s big beautiful deportation machine doesn’t really care if you voted for him in 2024, as long as you’re easy to throw in a van.
Rep. María Elvira Salazar, who has apparently discovered that terrorizing your own base has downsides, filmed an ad in front of the White House telling Trump he’s “gone too far” on immigration and that the Hispanics who helped elect him now feel betrayed. Trump responded on Truth Social by boosting a post calling her a “back stabber,” because nothing says “serious governing” like subtweeting your own party’s Cuban-American congresswoman while ICE is raiding her district.
Salazar insists this is just Democracy, where you tell “the boss” what your people are feeling — a charming way to describe the relationship between a coequal branch of government and the guy screaming on social media. Meanwhile, new polling shows Latinos swinging back hard toward Democrats (57–31 in a recent survey), suggesting that maybe, just maybe, running on family separation plus mass deportations in a community where everyone knows someone with papers issues is not the electoral masterstroke Republicans sold themselves. The GOP wanted a strongman crusade against immigrants; now they’re shocked the strongman is coming for their own voters too.
Min Aung Hlaing, freshly rebranded from genocidal strongman to ‘strategic partner’, waiting for his complimentary White House invite and a MAGA hat full of rare earths.
Marco Rubio once demanded that Myanmar’s generals face justice for what he bravely called “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya. Now that he’s Trump’s secretary of state, he’s discovered a bold new moral framework: genocide is bad unless the perpetrators are sitting on rare earth minerals America wants. The same Min Aung Hlaing Rubio wanted prosecuted is now being courted as a potential ally, with the Trump administration quietly opening direct talks and floating the idea of lifting sanctions. Western allies found out the same way everyone else did: by reading about it and screaming into a pillow.
Hovering over all this like a cigar smoke–shaped vulture is Roger Stone, the convicted-but-Trump-saved dirty trickster who now moonlights as a lobbyist for Myanmar’s military regime. Stone’s job? “Rebuilding relations” between Washington and the junta, which apparently translates to: get a senior State Department official, Michael Vance, on a plane to Naypyidaw. The trip was nominally to free a US citizen, but somehow evolved into cozy talks about securing access to Myanmar’s rare earths while the generals keep bombing markets and piling up bodies.
So the Trump doctrine rolls on: abandon human rights, blindfold democracy, and sprint toward whichever dictator is offering strategic minerals and photo ops. While Myanmar’s civilians are being slaughtered, displaced, and starved, the US helps hand the junta a propaganda victory and a path back to international respectability. The message to every aspiring war criminal on Earth is clear: if you commit atrocities but can undercut China’s supply chain, Washington will eventually stop calling you a genocidal maniac and start calling you a partner.
Lake Mead, bravely attempting to survive both climate change and the Trump Interior Department’s cosplay as a 19th‑century water baron.
The Trump Interior Department has decided the best way to manage the collapsing Colorado River is with a political chainsaw, proposing deep cuts to Arizona and Nevada’s water while the upper basin states — Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico — mysteriously walk away untouched and hydrated. Arizona has now joined Nevada’s lawsuit, because when the federal government starts messing with your literal drinking water, that’s when the states’ rights talk suddenly stops being theoretical.
Arizona governor Katie Hobbs says the feds are refusing to hold the upper basin accountable for the water deliveries they legally owe, and are instead threatening "draconian" cuts that blow past the Lower Basin’s own voluntary conservation deal. So to recap: the states tried to negotiate, missed some deadlines, and the Trump administration responded with a plan that punishes the usual suspects, rewards the upstream states, and gambles with the possibility of the river hitting deadpool — a fun term meaning the water stops flowing downstream and tens of millions of people get to cosplay as extras in a climate apocalypse movie.
Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s water chief, is politely saying "we’re suing you, but please keep talking to us" while Interior can’t even be bothered to respond to comment. Federal water policy under Trump continues its proud tradition: ignore science, ignore equity, ignore long-term sustainability, but absolutely make sure the political map looks great while the reservoirs hit record lows. States’ rights, but make it dehydration.
Trump contemplates whether the best way to project American strength is tariffs, illegal wars, or just streaming an execution in 4K.
Australia is quietly asking the same question as the rest of the allegedly civilized world: now that Trump is shambling toward lame-duck status, is it finally safe to say out loud that the emperor is naked, screaming on Truth Social, and trying to livestream a firing squad? Zoe Daniel runs through the greatest hits of the second-term hellscape: an illegal and "economically reckless" war on Iran driving up global prices, tariffs as a blunt-force weapon, humanitarian aid gutted, human rights treated as optional, and a president so obsessed with fame he tried to turn an execution into content before awkwardly backing down.
Trump, juiced by his 2024 trifecta and encircled by yes-men, has spent years treating international law like a suggestion and allies like doormats. Now, with US midterms poised to turn him into a lame duck and possibly hand Congress to the Democrats, the rest of the world – including Australia – is wondering if they can finally stop pretending this is normal diplomacy and start treating Washington like the world’s most heavily armed reality show. Daniel’s point is painfully simple: when the White House flirts with snuff livestreams and calls basic equality "woke", the bar for authoritarian horror has dropped so low that even Canberra has to decide where the red line is – assuming we haven’t already tripped over it and face-planted.
Across the country, thousands of people spent their Saturday doing the thing the Trump administration hates most: publicly reminding Donald that the presidency does not, in fact, come with a crown. The "No Kings" Coalition staged a nationwide early-voting "day of action," turning ballot drop boxes and polling places into pop-up civics lessons on what happens when a would-be monarch keeps stress-testing the Constitution like it's a prenup.
Previous national actions from the group have focused on denouncing Trump’s policies, but this round leans directly into the core problem: a president who treats checks and balances like optional app add-ons. Protesters are showing up while early voting is underway, connecting Trump’s authoritarian cosplay to something concrete and terrifying: the fact that he keeps asking for more power and fewer rules, and a whole political party keeps nodding like bobbleheads.
So while Trump world dreams of a unitary executive with the legal accountability of a TikTok influencer, thousands of voters are literally standing in line to say: no kings, no coronations, and no, you don’t get a do-over on democracy. The administration keeps flirting with strongman rule; the streets are replying with an aggressively non-romantic "it’s not you, it’s the Constitution."
Richard Grenell and Alina Habba Mildon, pictured mid-dispute over whether the missing millions were for art, freedom, or just the usual Trump-era lifestyle subsidy.
The Trump White House is apparently running its own true-crime podcast now, investigating a $17.6 million bank transfer from the Democratic Republic of Congo to a Texas defense company that somehow turned into a screaming match in the Oval Office between two of Trump’s favorite loyalists, Alina Habba Mildon and Richard Grenell. Habba Mildon allegedly barged into Trump’s office claiming Grenell siphoned off millions from a 2025 deal organized by her then-boyfriend, Turkish investor Turhan Mildon, and that a slice of the cash was supposed to become a donation to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Conveniently, that donation never arrived while Grenell just happened to be running the Kennedy Center.
The script only gets better: Habba Mildon originally told White House officials the money came from her now-husband, but the first batch of documents his lawyer sent in had the sender’s name blacked out, because nothing screams "totally normal business transaction" like redacting who actually wired eight figures from Congo. Their once-cozy friendship has blown up precisely when reporters started asking what Turhan Mildon was doing, why the Kennedy Center’s donation jar is empty, and how this all intersects with Trump’s patronage network.
As usual, everyone involved has suddenly discovered the healing power of silence—Grenell calls the accusations "absurd" and refuses to elaborate, the Mildons ghost reporters, and the White House pretends not to have a phone. Meanwhile, inside an administration already busy ejecting a new press secretary and watching Trump-aligned officials flee or combust, we now have Congo cash, a defense contractor, a missing arts donation, and a feud between grifters that only surfaced once the checks and the headlines stopped lining up. Government of the people, by the loyalists, for the offshore accounts.
Elon Musk, moments before explaining that democracy is just fine because everyone clicked "I agree" on the terms of his $1m fantasy giveaway.
Elon Musk and his very patriotically named America Pac have agreed to settle two proposed class-action lawsuits accusing them of running what sounds less like civic engagement and more like a late-night infomercial for democracy. According to Arizona plaintiffs, Musk’s pro-Trump operation dangled a daily $1m lottery for people in seven swing states who signed his petition to "support the US constitution" — because nothing says "serious constitutional principle" like a digital scratch-off ticket.
The lawsuits allege this was straight-up fraud: promise life-changing cash, hoover up signatures in razor-thin states, and then, shockingly, the money never quite rained from the sky. Musk and the PAC, of course, deny everything while quietly telling a federal judge they’ve reached settlements, details sealed away where transparency goes to die. A judge already ordered Musk to testify, which is probably why this suddenly turned into "let’s just write a check and never speak of this again" territory.
So to recap: the billionaire backer of Trump’s second presidency allegedly tried to juice support in swing states with a bogus millionaire raffle dressed up as civic virtue, then settled when people noticed the "million" part never materialized. American elections are now apparently a mix of casino promo, startup scam, and constitutional cosplay. Democracy, brought to you by the world’s richest sweepstakes host.
Elon Musk has finally admitted what everyone trapped inside the DOGE blender already knew: his grand experiment running the federal deficit like a meme coin "proved there's no way we were gonna solve the deficit from within the government." After four months of LARPing as budget czar, Musk’s big takeaway is that democracy has too many people with opinions, so the national debt will have to be fixed by "AI and robots" instead. Why wrestle with Congress when you can just let a cluster of GPU racks decide who gets health care?
Musk complains to Walter Isaacson that nobody in power wants to cut spending, aside from the usual "Rand Pauls of the world," and gently dunks on Trump for liking to be liked too much to tell donors and defense contractors "no." He also concedes he "kinda got carried away" hanging around the West Wing and should've gone back to focusing on AI sooner, because nothing says "healthy republic" like a tech oligarch realizing he was too into sitting in on "big momentous decisions" in the Oval Office. As for that time he waved a chainsaw around onstage at CPAC during Trump’s second term, Musk shrugs it off as "a weird weekend" and declines to elaborate, which is always what you want to hear from the guy pitching automated fiscal policy.
Meanwhile Isaacson is out here gently warning that the Jobs-era geeks would be nervous about autonomous AI agents not tightly controlled by humans, while simultaneously giving Musk a prestige podcast to muse about turning public finance over to the server farm. The rest of the series features Peter Thiel and assorted AI barons explaining what "frightens them" as they sprint to build systems powerful enough to gut public institutions and call it innovation. America: where we tried democracy, it was annoying, so now we’re considering Skynet for Treasury Secretary.
When your entire political project is screaming about elite pedophiles and then you start looking a little too cozy in the Epstein split-screen.
Trisha Hope, a self-described “Front Row Joe” who treated Trump rallies like Phish concerts for people who hate reading, has finally had enough. Not because of the Iran war, not because of gas prices, not even because of the open firehose of corruption that has handed the Trump family billions in less than two years. No, the breaking point was watching Trump casually shrug off questions about the still-hidden Jeffrey Epstein files during a 2025 cabinet meeting, snapping, “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” at a reporter while Attorney General Pam Bondi sat there like a very loyal potted plant.
This blasé response to a massive trove of documents about a serial sexual predator didn’t play well with the people Trump spent a decade radicalizing on tales of elite pedophile cabals in pizza basements. Hope announced on X that his callousness toward Epstein’s victims “ends my relationship with him” and is now talking about walking the halls of Congress for his impeachment. When the people who believed Pizzagate, cheered QAnon slogans at rallies, and followed Jack Posobiec’s cosplay “investigations” into family restaurants start deciding you are the one covering for predators, the vibes get awkward fast.
The article traces how Trump rode the pedophile-panic wave from Pizzagate to QAnon, winking at a cult convinced he was the chosen warrior cleansing the world of child traffickers. Q stopped posting years ago, but the paranoia metastasized into a core part of MAGA identity and January 6 lore. Now, with Trump personally blocking full release of Epstein-related documents while his cronies and influencers still profit off the same conspiracies, a slice of the base has noticed that the supposed dragon-slayer keeps protecting the cave. Turns out, when your whole brand is "I alone will expose the cabal" and then you sit on the Epstein files, even the most devoted cult members can smell the grift.
Mourning doves on solar panels, seen here disrespecting Trump’s vision for an all–coal, all–billionaire energy future.
Trump’s latest crusade against reality: trying to strangle green banks that finance things like community solar for Black nuns in New Orleans, all‑electric affordable housing in Utah, and cheap rooftop solar loans for low‑income families in Maryland. Because if there’s one thing this administration cannot abide, it’s poor people paying less for electricity while the planet burns slightly more slowly.
Congress, via the Inflation Reduction Act, set aside $20 billion for green banks and another $7 billion for the Solar for All program. The Trump EPA responded by simply… freezing and then terminating both, like separation of powers is just a suggestion. Federal judges have now ruled the $20 billion freeze and the Solar for All cancellation illegal, but the administration is still sitting on the cash and racing to the Supreme Court to defend its right to ignore both Congress and the courts.
Meanwhile, the green banks are MacGyver‑ing the clean energy transition with duct tape and philanthropy, moving $1.4 billion of their own capital and leveraging $11 billion in private money into more than 40,000 projects — all while Trump’s team yanks away the federal funding they were promised. The message from the White House is clear: if it helps disadvantaged communities, Native‑led clean energy projects, or American‑built electric trucks instead of oil CEOs, it goes on the chopping block. Rule of law and climate policy are both optional; fossil fuel fealty is not.
Black congressman contemplates how many Supreme Court decisions it takes to turn the Capitol back into a very fancy Jim Crow museum.
Louisiana Rep. Cleo Fields was supposed to be running for reelection this year. Instead, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority helpfully solved that problem for his opponents by nuking his majority-Black district out of existence. In Louisiana v. Callais, the Roberts Court didn’t just tinker with the Voting Rights Act; it took Section 2 out behind the shed and "originalist"-executed it, making it vastly harder for Black voters to challenge discriminatory maps.
This wasn’t some shocking departure, it was the logical sequel to a decade of decisions slowly strip-mining the VRA—now with the added flourish of citing 19th-century cases that helped pave the way for Jim Crow. The Court essentially dusted off the legal playbook that greenlit segregation, slapped a modern font on it, and called it constitutional interpretation. The result: across the South, majority-Black districts are vanishing, Black voting power is being surgically diluted, and the highest court in the land is enthusiastically reenacting Reconstruction’s collapse, one "race-neutral" opinion at a time. Democracy is still on the brochure; it’s just not in the package anymore.
Trump studies a barrel of Russian diesel, carefully weighing America’s strategic interests against the low, low price per gallon.
Trump has decided that the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 has had a good run for the three weeks it existed and is now ready for retirement. He signed the bipartisan sanctions bill targeting Russia’s oil and gas money, then promptly suspended the new measures by executive order, declaring that letting Vladimir Putin dump hundreds of thousands of tons of Russian diesel on the global market is somehow in the "national interests of the United States." Apparently the national interest now comes in 55-gallon drums and smells like oligarch money.
Even Senate Republican Thom Tillis is out here saying there’s a "legitimate case" that Trump is just not following the law, which is a polite way of saying "the president might be openly ignoring the statute he just signed." The law requires an unclassified report to Congress before waiving the sanctions, and Trump says the White House has totally sent that, pinky promise, don’t worry about the part where the entire point of the law was to stop Russia from profiting off its war while he’s busy cutting them a diesel lifeline.
Meanwhile, Sen. Darline Graham, who is literally campaigning on how tough her late brother’s sanctions bill is, has chosen the bold strategy of saying absolutely nothing while Trump guts her marquee achievement three weeks before the midterms. She remains a "fierce Trump ally," which is a nice way of saying she’s letting him use her brother’s name as branding on a sanctions bill he’s now treating like a coupon code he forgot to apply at checkout. Sanctions on Russia in the brochure, discount fuel for Putin in the fine print.
Capitol Hill is apparently bracing for 2027, a year in which everyone keeps their job and absolutely nothing works. John Thune is set to remain Senate GOP leader, which mostly means getting publicly pantsed by Trump while MAGA influencers rage that he won’t nuke the filibuster fast enough to pass a nationwide voter ID crackdown. His supposed allies — Markwayne Mullin, Steve Daines, Marsha Blackburn, John Cornyn — are conveniently exiting stage right, just in time for a new batch of House-bred wrecking balls to arrive in the Senate with a mandate to "move fast and break things," primarily things spelled C-O-N-G-R-E-S-S.
Over in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson is doing his best community theater Hamlet impression about whether to stick around if Republicans lose the majority, while Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan circle like two vultures fighting over a very small, very dysfunctional carcass. On the Democratic side, Chuck Schumer is cruising toward potential "YOLO Chuck" status: a 76-year-old leader with a furious base, ambitious understudies, and
no incentive to do anything but gamble with what’s left of Senate norms. Hakeem Jeffries, meanwhile, is poised to inherit Johnson-style chaos from his own anti-establishment flank, but with the added bonus of having to negotiate with Trump, who has decided Jeffries is someone he "can work with" — Washington code for "will be blamed when this all inevitably detonates."
So the 2027 outlook: same leaders, more pressure, angrier bases, and a president who treats Congress like a prop department. Checks and balances are now mostly vibes.
Justin Pearson committing the unpardonable offense of criticizing Elon Musk’s pollution machines in public, moments before local democracy gets rate-limited.
Tennessee Rep. Justin Pearson showed up at a Memphis City Council meeting to protest yet another delay on a vote to temporarily stop Elon Musk’s xAI from turning Black neighborhoods into a bonus level of SimCity: Asthma Edition. The council’s response was to skip the public comment period, call in the cops, and then ban Pearson, his family, and local organizers from future meetings for two months—conveniently including the one where the moratorium will finally be voted on. Nothing says "healthy democracy" like preemptively ejecting the people breathing the pollution.
The official policy says attendees can’t be "defamatory" or "abusive"—a wonderfully vague catch-all the council is now using, as Pearson’s lawsuit notes, to filter out one specific type of speech: criticism of the council and its Musk-friendly dithering. Meanwhile, xAI has already dropped 59 gas turbines into Memphis, showering nearby Westwood and Boxtown with noise and filthy air, but sure, the real emergency is that residents chanted too loudly when the council canceled their right to speak.
Layered on top of this is the broader project: a Trump-backed gerrymander, blessed by a Supreme Court that helpfully kneecapped what was left of the Voting Rights Act, splintering a majority-Black district just as Pearson runs for Congress. So you get the full package: corporate pollution, silenced public meetings, weaponized "decorum," and racially targeted map-rigging. Musk gets his hyperscale data centers; Pearson and his neighbors get a First Amendment clinic filing for a restraining order just to attend a city council meeting. Democracy, but make it non-refundable and by invitation only.
Elon Musk, mid-tweet, carefully balancing $366 million in GOP life support with a fresh batch of weaponized conspiracy theories.
Republicans are staring down a blue tsunami, so naturally the cavalry arrives in the form of Elon Musk, a man who looked at Citizens United and said, "Cute, but what if I also owned the megaphone?" He’s dumped a record-shattering $366 million into the midterms to prop up GOP candidates, while simultaneously turning X into a firehose of lies. In Texas, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico disappears from the trail for a bit because he has the flu; the Musk-boosted MAGA rumor mill instantly upgrades that to a secret Ohio mental hospital stay and starts layering on homophobic smears. Musk eagerly amplifies the fake scandal, engages directly with the far‑right cranks pushing it, and declares that the campaign is "hiding something" voters need to know. Owning the platform and then personally juicing the disinfo about a candidate in a live race is apparently what "free speech absolutism" means now.
The rest of the Trump show isn’t exactly inspiring confidence in liberal democracy either. Kimberly Guilfoyle, U.S. ambassador to Greece and full‑time Trumpworld telemarketer, is forced out after reportedly asking a donor to pay off her $100,000 AmEx bill in exchange for access to administration officials. So yes, we’ve reached the stage of the regime where ambassadors are basically running personal GoFundMes for their luxury debt. At the same time, DHS raids Rep. Ilhan Omar’s DC home, conveniently aligning with Trump’s long‑running vendetta against one of the most prominent Black Muslim women in American politics. Law enforcement as a personal score‑settling service, social media as a weaponized rumor factory, billionaire cash as a life raft for a flailing party—Trump is supposed to be a lame duck, but the authoritarian stress test is still very much ongoing.
As Trump drags half his cabinet to Alaska to beg voters not to notice how badly the GOP is doing, Musk is stress-testing how far a single oligarch can tilt the information and money scales at once. The answer so far: pretty far. If you were wondering what it looks like when a failing movement leans on a billionaire propagandist, a grifting diplomatic corps, and politicized raids to cling to power, congratulations—you’re living in the beta version.
President Trump is hauling his traveling grievance circus to Georgia, where Republicans are hoping that putting democracy’s biggest arsonist on stage will somehow help them win a closely watched Senate race. He’s stumping for Rep. Mike Collins, whose main qualification appears to be that he’s willing to stand next to Trump and pretend the last decade never happened. The plan: yell about "election integrity" in the state where Trump tried to literally strong-arm officials into "finding" votes, then call it a normal campaign stop.
Georgia, of course, is where Trump’s post-2020 pressure campaign helped fuel a wave of voter suppression laws and death threats against election workers, but now it’s just another backdrop for his re-election photo op. The same guy who turned the state into a case study in attempted election subversion is back to "energize" the base, flanked by GOP candidates who have decided that hitching their futures to a twice-impeached, multiply-indicted coup enthusiast is a solid long-term investment. Democracy gets weaker, the rallies get louder, and the party of law and order keeps cheering for the guy who tried to overturn their votes on speakerphone.
Katie Zacharia at the podium, confidently not answering questions with the same authority she used to not pass the bar.
Katie Zacharia has shattered Anthony Scaramucci’s land-speed record, flaming out as White House press secretary in just five days after it turned out her legal credentials were about as real as Trump University diplomas. She billed herself as a lawyer, but a pesky detail emerged: she didn’t actually pass the bar exam anywhere, and there’s no evidence she’s licensed to practice law in any state. A nonpartisan watchdog promptly asked the California Bar to look into whether Zacharia broke the law by calling herself an attorney, because this administration can’t even hire a spokesperson without wandering into potential criminal misrepresentation.
Her one and only press briefing lasted under 15 minutes, featured almost no answers, and included her casually announcing that Trump had asked Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign over misconduct allegations — a detail the White House definitely hadn’t lined up for prime-time rollout. She also couldn’t say whether the U.S. had stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine, which is a fun thing for the world to find out the press secretary hasn’t been briefed on. Trump, ever the champion of accountability, said she’d been treated “pretty nastily” by the media and magnanimously told her she didn’t have to keep the job if she didn’t want it.
Now Zacharia is out, heading to dinner with Vice President JD Vance and family, presumably to discuss her next gig in this administration’s thriving ecosystem of failed influencers and wannabe lawyers. She came from Trump Media & Technology Group and Truth Social world, and somehow that still didn’t prepare her for the basic requirement of not allegedly lying about being a licensed attorney. Five days, one watchdog complaint, zero bar licenses — the Trump White House communications shop remains a revolving door where competence goes to die.
JD Vance explains that he absolutely follows the law, unlike the guy whose political shadow he’s living in on purpose.
Vice President JD Vance went to Michigan for a CBS "Things that Matter" town hall to talk about the economy, inflation and corruption — which is bold for the number two in an administration led by a man literally convicted of felonies and marinated in grift. Vance dutifully workshopped the usual talking points about how he totally understands what working people are going through, while backing a White House that treats economic policy like a loyalty test and a branding exercise.
The highlight reel includes Vance solemnly assuring Tony Dokoupil that he follows the law and would comply with subpoenas, as if that’s not the absolute lowest bar for someone a heartbeat away from the presidency. This, from a ticket whose standard-bearer has made ignoring subpoenas, defying court orders, and attacking prosecutors a core campaign plank. The administration’s message appears to be: law and order for you, vibes-based immunity for us.
While Vance lamented corruption and economic pain in carefully lit, network-approved tones, there was no mention of the small matter that his own administration’s chaos, tariff spasms, and open-for-business corruption helped supercharge inflation and instability in the first place. But sure, gather the cameras, slap "town hall" on it, and let the vice president cosplay as an ethics reformer who just happens to be hitched to a political crime syndicate.
