The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

The Trump administration’s latest innovation in law-and-order cosplay is now getting its day in court: the families of two Trinidadian men killed in an October U.S. strike on a small boat are suing for wrongful death and extrajudicial killing. The Pentagon called it a hit on a drug-smuggling vessel full of “narcoterrorists.” The families say Chad Joseph and Rishi Samaroo were fishermen and farm workers just trying to get home. The government’s evidence so far: Trump posted on Truth Social that they were bad guys. In other words, the usual rigorous intel vetting process.

This is the first lawsuit targeting Trump’s shiny new campaign of blowing up alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific — a campaign that has already hit about three dozen vessels and killed at least 125 people, according to the Defense Department. The administration’s legal theory is that the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels, which is a very fancy way of saying, “We wanted to use bombs instead of indictments.” The lawsuit points out the tiny problem that there is no actual armed conflict here, meaning the laws of war don’t apply and these are just… murders. Ordered, the complaint notes, by “individuals at the highest levels of government,” because nothing says limited government like claiming war powers against fishermen.

Trinidad’s own government says it has no information linking Joseph or Samaroo to any illegal activity, and no evidence anyone on the boat had drugs or weapons. But the U.S. didn’t bother notifying the families, because why add basic human decency to your extrajudicial killing program? Instead, their loved ones just stopped calling one day and never came home, while Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bragged that six “narcoterrorists” had been successfully obliterated. The families are suing under the Death on the High Seas Act and the Alien Tort Statute — quaint little relics that say you’re not supposed to vaporize foreign civilians on the ocean because the president got bored of sanctions.

The complaint calls the strike “simply murders,” and it’s hard to argue with that when your big legal move is to rebrand drug interdiction as a forever war and let the Commander-in-Chief play drone whack-a-mole with boats in the Caribbean. But sure, tell us again how this administration is the last line of defense against tyranny, as it literally claims global war powers to kill unarmed fishermen without charges, evidence, or notice to their families. Rule of law, Trump-style: if the president tweets you’re a narcoterrorist, you’re a legitimate target; if he’s wrong, your survivors can file some paperwork after the funeral and hope a judge still remembers what the Constitution is.

The United States has officially left the Paris climate agreement for the second time, because when Donald Trump finds the self-destruct button for the planet, he really likes to slam it twice just to be sure. The US now joins the climate non-party VIP lounge with Iran, Libya, and Yemen, but stands alone as the only country that actually walked away from the deal on purpose. In other words, the world’s richest country just told everyone drowning, burning, or starving, “good luck with that,” and went back to chanting “drill, baby, drill” at a stadium rally.

This isn’t just leaving Paris; the administration is also bailing on the entire UN climate framework, amounting to a full-on retreat from climate governance while the planet sets new heat records like it’s trying to win a prize. Experts warn this “we will be the bad guys” energy gives fossil fuel lobbyists in China and elsewhere a handy excuse to slow-walk the energy transition, while low-income countries are told that the US won’t fund their transition away from fossil fuels at all. Because nothing says global leadership like telling the global south, “we caused most of the problem, but you’re on your own.”

Meanwhile, renewables are now the cheapest new power almost everywhere, China dominates clean energy supply chains, and the US is choosing to be the guy in the corner burning coal to power AI data centers that will, presumably, generate even more climate denial memes. As one expert notes, it’s not clear America even has any credibility left to lose, but Trump is out here stress-testing that theory anyway. Pulling out of the key global climate agreement right as every scientific report says things are worse than we thought is less “policy” and more “suicidal performance art” — but sure, tell us again how this is all about sovereignty and freedom.

Alex Vindman — the guy who politely told Congress that Trump was trying to extort Ukraine like a mob boss with nuclear codes — is now running for Senate in Florida. His launch video helpfully reminds voters that the last time they saw him, he was under oath explaining how the president tried to shake down Volodymyr Zelenskyy for dirt on the Bidens and 2016, and then got his career kneecapped for the crime of telling the truth. In other words, he’s running on the radical platform of "maybe presidents shouldn’t run personal blackmail operations through U.S. foreign policy."

Vindman, a Ukrainian-born Army vet and retired lieutenant colonel, points out that Trump responded to his testimony with a classic authoritarian move: retaliation. Trump blocked his promotion, had him and his twin brother Eugene booted from the National Security Council, and generally treated the federal government like his own personal HR department for vengeance. Vindman now describes that period as a "reign of terror and retribution" — because nothing says "totally normal democratic administration" like purging national security officials for insufficient loyalty to the dear leader.

He’s aiming at GOP Sen. Ashley Moody, the former Florida attorney general who was magically elevated to the Senate after Marco Rubio abandoned legislating to go be Trump’s secretary of state. Moody’s job description is pretty simple: be a "yes" vote for Trump and the billionaires, which Vindman sums up neatly as, "She’s not Florida’s senator. She’s theirs." Meanwhile, Florida Democrats are trying to win a statewide race in a state Trump carried by 13 points and Rubio by 16, so this is basically a boss-level attempt to unseat a handpicked loyalist in the middle of Trump’s second-term chaos of thug militias, tariff-driven price hikes, and health care costs exploding.

The Democratic primary is crowded with other hopefuls, but Vindman is leaning hard into the contrast: one guy tried to stop a corrupt president from hijacking U.S. foreign policy for personal gain, got purged for it, and is now running to check that same regime from the Senate. The other proudly votes yes on whatever the Mar-a-Lago Politburo and its billionaire backers slide across her desk. But sure, tell us more about how the real threat to democracy is people being mean to Trump on the internet.

Lindsey Halligan, a Trump loyalist who wandered into the Justice Department from the glamorous world of insurance law, is now officially not employed by DOJ after a federal judge said she had to stop “masquerading” as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Halligan, who had exactly zero prosecutorial experience, nonetheless managed to pose as the top federal prosecutor while pursuing two failed cases against Trump’s perceived enemies, because nothing says independent law enforcement like sending the president’s personal lawyer to go settle scores.

Judge David Novak — a Trump appointee, just to really underline how bad this was — found she was unlawfully holding the role and politely suggested she stop LARPing as a U.S. Attorney. He declined to refer her for disciplinary proceedings, generously blaming it on her “inexperience” rather than the obvious problem: a Justice Department being run like Trump’s personal Patreon perk. Halligan now joins fellow Trump fixer Alina Habba, who was also disqualified as an acting U.S. Attorney in New Jersey but somehow managed to cling to a DOJ job afterward, as part of the growing alumni network of Make Prosecutorial Misconduct Great Again.

In other words, Trump’s DOJ staffing strategy remains consistent: don’t pick seasoned prosecutors who know the law; pick personal loyalists who know him, shove them into top jobs they’re not qualified for, and then act shocked when courts notice that the nation’s premier law enforcement agency is being run like a third-tier revenge law firm with government letterhead. But sure, we’re told, the real threat to the rule of law is career civil servants and law professors posting mean things on the internet.