Todd Blanche explaining that his crypto policy had nothing to do with his crypto holdings, just like your seatbelt ticket had nothing to do with the cop’s monthly quota.
Todd Blanche, Trump’s criminal defense lawyer turned Deputy Attorney General, allegedly looked at federal conflict-of-interest law, shrugged, and said, "What if we just didn’t?" An ethics watchdog complaint says Blanche ordered DOJ to shut down crypto investigations and disband the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team while personally holding at least $159,000 in crypto-related assets. In other words, he didn’t just pick winners and losers in the market — he picked himself.
This is the same Todd Blanche who signed an ethics agreement promising to dump his crypto within 90 days and avoid anything that could affect his digital coin stash. Instead, he issued an April memo declaring Biden’s crypto crackdowns "regulation by prosecution," torched the enforcement team that had actually won cases, and watched as his bitcoin jumped an estimated 34% in value before he finally "divested" — by gifting it to his adult children and grandchild, because nothing says "public service" like turning DOJ policy into a family wealth transfer event.
The Campaign Legal Center’s complaint politely calls this "blatant" and asks the DOJ inspector general to investigate whether a crime was committed, which is adorable given that Blanche is literally the No. 2 at the same department he may have just used as a personal crypto pump. The penalties on paper are up to five years in prison, but sure, we’re definitely going to see the sitting Deputy AG prosecuted by the agency he helps run for enriching his own portfolio while dismantling white-collar enforcement.
Blanche, who helped get Trump through 34 felony convictions and then watched two other criminal cases evaporate when his client retook the White House, is now busy remaking the Justice Department into a sort of legal protection racket for friends of the regime — from personally interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell to telling the crypto industry that the "regulatory weaponization" era is over. The market loved it, enforcement hated it, and the rule of law is somewhere under the bus with the rest of American democracy — but hey, the grandkids’ wallets are looking fantastic.
Nothing honors a murdered refugee like turning her photo into a multi-million-dollar right-wing marketing asset.
Donald Trump saw the horrific killing of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska and, in classic statesmanlike fashion, immediately went on Truth Social to demand a “quick” trial and “THE DEATH PENALTY” for the Black suspect he called an “ANIMAL”. Elon Musk chimed in to explain that the real crime here is that the "mainstream media" supposedly didn’t cover it enough because she was white. JD Vance blamed “soft-on-crime” policies, and Andrew Tate briefly took a break from his own violent-rape allegations to warn that if you’re a "pretty girl" in America you basically can’t go outside. In other words: a tragic killing became instant content for the right-wing fear-industrial complex.
Then the grift-industrial complex kicked in. Trump-loving tech CEO Eoghan McCabe announced he’d drop $500,000 in $10,000 grants to paint giant murals of Zarutska’s face in “prominent” US locations, and Elon Musk replied, "I’ll see your half-mil and raise you $1m." The project, hosted on Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo — home to Proud Boys, January 6 rioters, and every racist-fired-for-being-racist GoFundMe reject — has now raised over $100,000 more from smaller donors. McCabe’s team claims the whole thing, now a $1.7m shrine, is just to "memorialize the story of an innocent young woman" killed in a senseless crime.
So now Zarutska’s image is splashed across buildings from Bushwick to DC, Miami, and LA, wrapped in lilies and cursive fonts, while the same movement funding the murals uses her death to push racist panic, harsher punishment, and "cities are hell" propaganda. No money for mental health care, no interest in systemic reform — but huge enthusiasm for weaponizing a murdered refugee’s face as a permanent campaign poster. Because nothing says "we care about victims" like turning their memory into a billionaires’ culture-war branding exercise.
ICE agents, bravely defending America from the existential threat of children walking to school and parents checking in with the principal.
The Trump administration proudly ordered ICE on 15 June 2025 to launch “the largest mass deportation operation in American history,” targeting major cities and wrapping it all in the usual buzzwords about keeping communities “safe and free from illegal alien crime, conflict, and chaos.” In other words: federalized fear as a lifestyle brand. Agents don’t even have to knock on your door every day – the point is that they could, at any time, so people reorganize their entire lives around avoiding the state that’s supposedly protecting them.
The article lays out how this isn’t just an “immigration issue” so much as a quiet, rolling redefinition of who gets to feel like they belong in America. Afghan and other Middle Eastern communities are living in permanent “on alert” mode: kids withdrawing in classrooms, families skipping school events, citizens in mixed-status families acting like fugitives in their own country. Fear spreads through social ties, not visa categories, turning basic things – going outside, calling a government office, making a joke in your own accent – into risk calculations. But sure, tell us again how this is all about “law and order” and not a deliberate project of killing-democracy by teaching entire communities that the safest civic choice is silence.
The aftermath of Iran’s economic collapse and protest crackdown, now featuring a bonus U.S. carrier group headed their way because Washington never met a crisis it couldn’t escalate with ships.
Donald Trump, fresh off his Davos ego massage, announced that a U.S. "armada" is steaming toward Iran, because nothing says thoughtful diplomacy like LARPing as a 1940s battleship commander while a brutal regime massacres its own people. With activists saying more than 5,000 protesters have been killed and the U.N. documenting “gross human rights violations,” Trump’s main priority is making sure everyone knows he supposedly stopped "837 hangings" with a single tough-guy line.
Iran, for its part, is busy doing its own authoritarian greatest hits: internet blackouts, mass killings, torture, and forced confessions, while claiming the dead are mostly "terrorists" and blaming the U.S. and Israel. But into this horror show strides Trump, insisting his threats alone halted a wave of executions—claims Iran’s prosecutor general calls "completely false" and "irrational and arrogant." In other words: the guy overseeing a crackdown that’s killed thousands still thinks Trump is too unhinged to take seriously.
Meanwhile, the White House is moving a carrier strike group, extra aircraft, and air defenses into the region, with Trump bragging about a "big force going to Iran" that he just might use if Tehran crosses his ever-shifting red line. So we’ve got a genocidal theocracy on one side and, on the other, a U.S. president treating potential war like a reality show cliffhanger where he’s both the host and the self-declared hero. But sure, tell us again how this is all about "protecting human rights" and not about a flailing authoritarian fantasizing about being the guy who decides when the bombs drop.
Trump’s America: FBI agents doing immigration checks while corporate fraudsters relax and work on their *own* jigsaw puzzles made of shredded subpoenas.
In Trump’s second-term reboot of law and order, "nobody is above the law" has been updated to "unless you wear a suit and donate generously". Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, AOC, Dan Goldman, and Madeleine Dean just dropped a letter to multiple inspectors general accusing the administration of quietly yanking more than 25,000 federal agents off fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, sanctions, cybercrime, and public corruption cases so they can instead help Trump run his sprawling civil immigration dragnet. Because nothing says "protecting American families" like shutting down white-collar investigations so the FBI can guard detention centers and do immigration checks.
The FBI has allegedly diverted nearly a quarter of its agents nationwide – up to 40% in major offices – away from corporate and public corruption cases. IRS criminal investigators? 1,700 of them reassigned, up from 250 last summer, because why chase tax cheats when you can chase gardeners. Homeland Security Investigations – once the place you went to bust global fraud – is reportedly now 90% focused on deportations. Even the Postal Inspection Service, famous for nailing mail fraud, is now apparently playing border cop. In other words, if you’re running a massive financial scam, the odds of a knock at your door just went from "eventually" to "only if you forget to renew your passport".
The Justice Department’s public integrity section – the unit that prosecutes corrupt politicians – has been shrunk from 36 lawyers to just two, with the rest shipped off to a shiny new "sanctuary cities enforcement" team where some reportedly have so little to do they’re passing the time with jigsaw puzzles. Meanwhile, Trump has been handing out pardons like MAGA merch, erasing an estimated $1.3bn in fines and restitution owed to taxpayers and victims. Democrats warn that corruption and fraud cases are being delayed or abandoned entirely as investigators are pulled off long-running probes, leaving Americans more exposed to scams, market manipulation, and predatory financial practices – but sure, tell us again how this is the tough on crime administration.
Blumenthal calls the whole thing a reckless diversion of resources in service of Trump’s "brutal, ruthless" immigration agenda, while Goldman points out that 25,000 fewer white-collar cops is basically an engraved invitation for fraudsters. The letter asks watchdogs to tally the damage: how many agents were moved, how many cases stalled or killed, and what whistleblowers have been saying as the corporate crime beat is hollowed out. Translation: Trump is using the immigration panic as cover to stand down the cops policing his donor class – a neat little two-for-one where you terrorize immigrants and let white-collar criminals cash out in peace.
Donald Trump explaining that the ICE shooting you just watched actually proves the victim was a terrorist, because in this administration the camera is always wrong and Dear Leader is always right.
Donald Trump has apparently updated the presidential seal to read: “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” After an ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Trump immediately rushed to Truth Social to declare that Good was part of a “Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate” who had “viciously ran over” the officer — a claim that collapsed the second anyone watched the video showing Ross was never knocked down and calmly walked away after shooting her three times.
Because nothing says “law and order” like inventing a terrorist attack that didn’t happen, Trump’s lie became the official party line. Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem eagerly branded Good a “rioter and domestic terrorist,” and VP JD Vance chimed in by calling her a “deranged leftist.” In other words, the federal government is now running on a simple operating principle: if state violence looks bad on camera, just declare the victim a terrorist and dare people to argue with you.
This is the same magical thinking Trump applies to everything else: insisting there’s “no inflation” while food prices are up 3.1% and coffee is up nearly 20%, claiming gas is $1.99 “in much of the country” while the national average sits over $2.80, and bragging about cutting drug prices by 500%, 1,400%, or maybe 3,000% — numbers that would make a sixth-grade math teacher file an ethics complaint. Meanwhile he’s still pushing that Ukraine started its own war, Portland is burning to the ground, Obama founded ISIS, the Capitol police caused Jan. 6, and oh yes, Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets in Ohio.
What ties it all together is the authoritarian core: Trump is openly testing how far he can replace observable reality with presidential fan fiction, knowing rightwing media will dutifully repeat it and his base will treat it as scripture. When the president can watch a video of an ICE killing and then order everyone to pretend it shows the opposite, that isn’t just lying — that’s practice for government by pure propaganda. But sure, tell us more about how this is all about “owning the libs.”
Trump, moments before explaining that real diplomacy is when you uninvite your closest ally from your imaginary peace club because they hurt your feelings.
Donald Trump, live from Davos or whatever gilded snow globe he’s in this week, reportedly rescinded Canada’s invite to his grandly titled ‘Board of Peace’ after a spat with Canadian officials. Because nothing says serious global statesman like treating international diplomacy as a middle-school birthday party where you uninvite the kid who wouldn’t trade you his pudding cup.
In other words, America’s foreign policy is now: if you don’t flatter the dear leader enough, you don’t get to sit at his imaginary peace table. Allies? Long-term strategic coordination? Shared democratic values? Wrong. The only value that matters is Trump’s ego, and the only ‘peace’ he’s interested in is peaceful, uninterrupted praise.
So Canada, a stable democracy that’s fought and bled alongside the U.S. in multiple wars, gets tossed out of Trump’s cosplay League of Nations because he had a tantrum. But sure, tell us again how this administration is restoring American leadership and respect on the world stage. Nothing screams ‘rule-based international order’ like weaponizing made-up councils for personal vendettas.
CDC officials bravely debating whether telling people not to die alone might be ‘too encouraging’ of survival.
The Trump administration has discovered the real threat to American streets: people surviving drug overdoses. In a meeting with CDC Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) grantees, federal officials strongly hinted that programs may soon be barred from using the basic, life‑saving message to “never use alone”—because nothing says "ending crime and disorder" like telling people to go overdose in total isolation.
This is all in service of Trump’s July executive order, heroically titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” which bans federally funded “harm reduction” and “safe consumption” efforts on the grounds they supposedly “facilitate illegal drug use.” In other words: condoms cause sex, seatbelts cause car crashes, and clean syringes are clearly the problem in an overdose crisis driven by a poisoned drug supply and a shredded treatment system. CDC officials told grantees that anything that could be construed as "encouraging drug use" is off-limits, and then refused to say whether telling people not to die alone counts.
Meanwhile, the administration is still allowing Narcan and fentanyl test strips—classic harm reduction tools—while simultaneously demonizing “harm reduction” as a concept. Experts are calling this hair‑splitting “absurd”; the White House prefers the term "policy." Doctors like Chicago’s Dr Jennifer Hua point out that “never use alone” is literally Harm Reduction 101, and that people using drugs in public where others can administer Narcan are the ones surviving. Isolation, not naloxone, is what kills people—but sure, let’s regulate the slogan instead of the crisis.
Addiction researchers note that the real scandal is the chronically inadequate, short‑term funding that makes building a functioning treatment system impossible. Biden underdelivered on his promise to expand capacity, and under Trump, experts expect even less. So the overdose crisis continues, but now with an extra dose of cruelty: a federal government micromanaging whether public health workers are allowed to say the quiet part out loud—please don’t die alone.
Steven Fleischman, apparently the last guy in Washington still reading actual medical studies instead of Trump’s Truth Social feed.
The Trump administration has finally done it: they’ve made OB‑GYNs tell patients, “Yeah, maybe don’t trust the CDC.” Because nothing says functioning democracy like turning the nation’s top public health agency into a crank Facebook group and forcing the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) to become the resistance.
Trump’s “guerrilla war on science” now includes casually suggesting Tylenol in pregnancy causes autism, fearmongering about antidepressants, and getting the CDC to pull Covid vaccine recommendations for pregnant women — all without credible evidence, but with lots of vibes and culture-war talk. ACOG’s president Steven Fleischman is left publicly explaining that, no, the data still says vaccines and SSRIs save moms’ lives, and yes, it’s very bad when the government just makes stuff up about medicine.
Meanwhile, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — because of course it has that name — is set to strip insurance from an estimated 10 million people and push hundreds of hospitals toward cuts or closure. The administration is also dangling federal money to bully institutions into dropping DEI and gender‑affirming care, with marquee hospitals and elite universities quietly cutting services and writing checks to Trump’s government like it’s a protection racket. ACOG, to its credit, has told Trump to keep his blood money, rejecting federal funding outright so they can keep doing research that isn’t pre-approved by Steve Bannon’s Telegram channel.
In other words: major medical institutions are folding, the federal health apparatus is being turned into a political weapon, and the people trying to deliver babies safely now have to run a parallel truth infrastructure just to counter their own government. But sure, tell us again how this is all about “protecting women and children.”
Mary Berry retires with dignity; America looks at Trump and says, ‘What if we just never stopped this show ever?’
Britain is talking about cake, America is talking about coups. Simon Jenkins starts with Prue Leith and Mary Berry gracefully hanging up the Bake Off apron in their 80s, then swerves straight into the land where octogenarians don’t retire, they just get nuclear codes.
We get a polite reminder that in normal countries, age discrimination is illegal but actual incompetence is still grounds for retirement. Then we hop across the Atlantic, where Donald Trump, nearly 80 and already once declared mentally unfit by a small army of psychiatrists, is back in the Oval Office because nothing says “healthy democracy” like ignoring the giant red warning lights and just hoping the 25th Amendment will do CrossFit.
The piece walks through how impossible it is to remove a clearly unfit president: you need the VP and two-thirds of both houses of Congress, which in Trump’s Washington means asking his loyalists to admit the emperor has no clothes while they’re busy selling MAGA-branded fig leaves. But sure, let’s all comfort ourselves that if things go off the rails, the system will totally work this time. After all, it worked so well the first term.
Traders watch the US dollar slide as Trump explains macroeconomics via tariff threats against Greenland.
Global finance has issued its verdict on Trump’s latest season of "America, But Worse": sell the dollar, buy literally anything else. Every time Trump threatens tariffs over the Greenland cosplay dispute, attacks the Fed, or takes another swing at immigrants, universities, or the rule of law, the Australian dollar mysteriously goes up. In other words, the world has decided the traditional "flight to safety" now means fleeing from the United States – because nothing says "reserve currency" like a president waging war on his own institutions.
The famous "Trump trade" that was supposed to supercharge the greenback has quietly been replaced by the "sell America trade," where investors dump US assets because the government’s finances are a joke and policy is being run by vibes and retribution. A Danish pension fund just announced it’s unloading US$100m in Treasuries over weak US government finances, while the only thing keeping the US economy looking half-respectable is the AI tech bubble. Meanwhile, Australia’s currency is surfing a wave of commodity prices, gold fever, and the simple fact that its central bank isn’t being publicly kneecapped on social media by its own head of state.
So now, when Trump manufactures a crisis and then "solves" it with a pretend framework deal, the result is the same: the US looks less like a safe haven and more like an emerging market run by a guy live-tweeting his own macroeconomic sabotage. Investors demand a risk premium to touch anything American, the dollar sinks, and the Aussie rises. But sure, tell us again how this is all 4D chess and not just the world quietly diversifying away from a country busy de-basing its currency and its democracy at the same time.
Gregory Bovino, brave warrior in the Trump immigration crackdown, pictured somewhere between ‘I lied under oath’ and ‘the jury didn’t buy it’.
The Trump administration just face-planted again in court, after a Chicago jury took less than four hours to decide that a carpenter with a few bucks in his bank account was not, in fact, running a $10,000 Snapchat murder-for-hire operation against Border Patrol hardliner Gregory Bovino. Juan Espinoza Martinez was painted by DHS as a "depraved" gang "thug" and "ranking member" of the Latin Kings, only for the judge to bar any gang testimony because the government had, minor detail, no evidence. But sure, trust them on the secret cartels hiding under your bed.
Prosecutors tried to turn a "10k if u take him down" Snap shared with a brother and a government informant into a federal assassination plot, while the defense pointed out small problems like: no plan, no money, no follow-up, a witness informant who could barely walk, and a defendant who thought he was passing along neighborhood gossip after a few beers. The jury believed reality over Trump-world fan fiction.
This isn’t a one-off: it’s the latest collapse from Operation Midway Blitz, Trump’s big Chicago immigration crackdown, where about half of ~30 criminal cases have already been dropped or dismissed. A federal judge has already found Bovino lied under oath about alleged gang threats, and in Los Angeles he was the only witness to an alleged assault on an agent that a jury also didn’t buy. In other words, the administration is trying to build a narrative of heroic border warriors under siege from bloodthirsty immigrant gangs, and the courts keep replying, "Have you tried not lying?"
NIH headquarters, where ‘advancing science’ now means banning the science that actually works because Trump’s base got mad on Facebook.
The National Institutes of Health, formerly known as the world’s biggest public funder of biomedical research and now apparently a branch office of the Heritage Foundation, has announced it will no longer fund any research using human fetal tissue from elective abortions. NIH director Jay Bhattacharya – because nothing says “cutting-edge medicine” like elevating a Great Barrington Declaration guy – declared that this is all about “advancing science” and “reflecting the values of the American people,” which is an extremely polite way of saying: theocrats yelled, Trump listened, science loses.
This is the most sweeping move yet in the administration’s long-running crusade to kneecap fetal tissue research, which has been crucial for work on diabetes, Alzheimer’s, infertility, and, minor detail, vaccines for things like polio, hepatitis A, and rabies. Researchers can still use tissue from miscarriages, but scientists overwhelmingly prefer donated tissue from abortions because it’s actually usable and not riddled with the genetic problems that often cause miscarriages in the first place. In other words, the NIH just took a proven, life-saving research pipeline and smashed it in favor of whatever “breakthrough technologies” Jay’s friends in the culture war think sound holy enough on Fox News.
The ban takes effect immediately, yanking support from roughly $60m worth of 2024 projects and sending a very clear message: if your work offends the anti-abortion lobby, you’re done. The administration is calling this “modernization,” which is an interesting rebrand for “we’re discarding decades of scientific progress so Trump can keep his base hopped up on moral panic.” But sure, canceling research that helped create vaccines and fight major diseases is just another big win for “pro-life” governance – as long as you don’t count the actual living people who’ll suffer.
Trump, battlefield expert and noted Afghanistan non-attendee, explains to actual combat veterans what really happened in their war.
Donald Trump went on Fox News to explain that NATO has never really done anything for the United States, casually erasing two decades of allied blood in Afghanistan with the claim that they "stayed a little off the front lines." In other words: the guy who dodged Vietnam with bone spurs is now rewriting the history of a war where 3,500 coalition troops died, including 457 British service members, as if they were all just doing cosplay in Kabul.
British politicians across the spectrum, including Labour’s Emily Thornberry and Conservative Ben Obese-Jecty – who actually served in Afghanistan, unlike the TV president – called the remarks an "absolute insult" and "disgraceful." Former officers lined up to point out that Trump’s version of events bears no resemblance to reality, while politely not adding "because he’s making it up on live television again." But sure, let’s keep letting him undermine NATO’s Article 5 commitments on cable news, because nothing says "collective security" like a U.S. president publicly wondering if the alliance should even bother showing up next time America is attacked.
Trump also complained that the U.S. has been "very good to Europe" and that it "has to be a two-way street," which is an interesting take given that the only time Article 5 has ever been invoked was when NATO rushed to defend the United States after 9/11. Allies sent troops, fought, and died in a war Washington started – but in Trump’s telling, they basically took a scenic tour while America did all the work. It’s not just historically illiterate; it’s part of the ongoing project to delegitimize NATO so that when he guts it, his base will cheer and call it a "win."
Marco Rubio watches a slide deck explaining how to turn a bombed-out enclave into a beachfront IPO, while pretending this is foreign policy and not a timeshare presentation over a mass grave.
The Trump administration took a two-year war, 60 million tonnes of rubble, and an 81% destruction rate in Gaza and said: have you considered luxury condos? At Davos, because of course it was Davos, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled a "New Gaza" PowerPoint that looks like someone reskinned SimCity over an active crime scene. Skyscrapers, coastal tourism, data centres, and a shiny new seaport are all on the menu—just as long as Israel keeps a nice, empty "security perimeter" wrapped around the whole thing.
Jared Kushner, still LARPing as a Middle East strategist, bragged about "catastrophic success" and explained that they briefly considered a "free zone" and a "Hamas zone" before deciding to just bulldoze their way to utopia. He promised "amazing investment opportunities" for the private sector, because nothing says post-genocidal reconstruction like pitching venture capital on beachfront rubble. Meanwhile, Rafah—once a Palestinian city, now largely leveled and folded into Israeli-controlled territory—is slated to become "New Rafah" with 100,000 housing units and 75 medical facilities, as if you can just slap "New" in front of a name and erase who lived there and how they were removed.
Trump, ever the "real estate person at heart," helpfully clarified that Gaza is actually just a "beautiful piece of property" waiting to be flipped into the "Riviera of the Middle East"—a concept he floated last year alongside the idea of permanently relocating Palestinians to neighboring countries. In other words, the US is openly workshopping ethnic cleansing plus resort development as a peace plan, and calling it the "Board of Peace" because of course they are. But sure, tell us again how this is about security and not about carving up a shattered enclave into a militarized investment park.
When your case is so weak you have to add AI tears and a melanin filter to sell it to the base.
The Trump White House has officially moved from lying about reality to Photoshopping it. After attorney general Pam Bondi hyped the arrest of Nekima Levy Armstrong — one of three people detained for a protest at a St Paul church over an alleged ICE connection — Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem posted a photo of the arrest showing Armstrong calm and composed. About 30 minutes later, the White House posted the same image, except now Armstrong is dramatically crying and her skin appears darker, because nothing says "law and order" like racially loaded, AI-style mugshot fanfic.
The Guardian overlaid the two photos and confirmed they’re the same shot: the officer lines up, the background person lines up, the arm position lines up — the only thing that changed was the White House’s need for a better villain. Asked if the image was digitally altered, the White House didn’t deny it; instead, deputy comms director Kaelan Dorr proudly declared that "the memes will continue" and that this is all about enforcing the law. In other words: state-run disinformation is now just official communication strategy.
This is at least the 14th time since Trump’s second term began that the White House has blasted out AI-generated or manipulated content, according to Poynter. So we’ve reached the part of the authoritarian speedrun where the government manufactures fake images of protesters, racializes them, and then smirks that it’s all just memes. Who needs a Ministry of Truth when you’ve got a White House shitposting deepfakes to 3.5 million followers?
State department officials carefully attaching a "no gays, no DEI, no abortion" EULA to every dollar of US foreign aid.
The Trump administration is taking the classic Reagan-era "Mexico City policy" – the one that already blocks foreign groups from getting US funds if they so much as whisper the word "abortion" – and cranking it up to full theocracy. This time, it’s not just about family planning or even just global health funding; Trump is slapping a global gag rule on roughly $30bn in foreign aid, and extending it to anything that smells like DEI, LGBTQ rights, or recognition that trans people exist. Because nothing says "pro-life" like cutting funding to the clinics and programs that actually keep people alive.
Under the new rules, any international or US-based NGO operating abroad that uses American assistance can’t support "gender ideology" – which, in rightwing translation, means: no DEI work, no trans rights, no non-binary people, no complex thoughts beyond "there are only two genders, because Trump signed a piece of paper that says so". The administration is also re-upping its ban on funding anything it calls "abortion as a form of family planning", but won’t explain what that means, which is perfect if your policy goal is maximum fear, minimum clarity.
This is the logical next step in Trump’s crusade to purge DEI and trans people from federal policy: he’s already gutted DEI support at home, declared there are only two genders by executive order, and kneecapped research on racial and gender equity. Now he’s exporting the American culture war as a condition of foreign aid, turning US assistance into a loyalty oath to Christian nationalist ideology. In other words, if poor countries want vaccines, maternal health care, or development money, they have to sign up for "Make the World Straight and Cis Again". But sure, tell us more about how this is all about "freedom" and "human rights".
Jamie Dimon staring into the middle distance, wondering how his life choices led to being sued for $5bn by the guy who told people to march on the Capitol and then got mad when banks noticed.
Donald Trump has reportedly decided that if you can’t overthrow democracy, you might as well sue a bank for $5bn about it. The sitting US president has filed a complaint in Miami accusing JPMorgan Chase and CEO Jamie Dimon of "debanking" him after the January 6 insurrection, because nothing says "I definitely didn’t do anything wrong" like demanding billions from a private company that didn’t want to be associated with your failed coup.
Trump claims JPMorgan "incorrectly and inappropriately" discriminated against him by declining to offer services in the wake of the Capitol riot, as if banks are constitutionally required to underwrite sedition. This is the natural evolution of the conservative martyr complex: you try to overturn an election on live TV, corporations decide you’re bad for business, and suddenly it’s a civil rights crisis. In other words: the man who screams about the free market is now suing the free market for treating him like a reputational tire fire.
The lawsuit, breathlessly promoted by Fox Business and dutifully noted by Bloomberg, is part legal Hail Mary, part fundraising pitch, and part warning shot to any other institution thinking of distancing itself from a twice-impeached, insurrection-adjacent president. It’s also a nice reminder that in Trump’s America, rule of law means "the law is a weapon I use on anyone who doesn’t keep the checks coming." But sure, tell us more about how cancel culture is when a college disinvites a speaker, not when the president tries to shake down a bank for billions over his coup hangover.
Trump and Ford execs touring a factory, presumably scouting which regulations to crush under the next F-150’s wheels.
The Trump administration is getting ready to nuke the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding — the legal backbone for basically every US climate regulation — and it turns out the White House may have had a little help from its friends in Detroit. The Senate environment committee, led by Sheldon Whitehouse, has expanded its probe of fossil-fuel lobbyists and think-tank ghouls to include Ford Motor Company, after Trump accidentally did the thing he never does: tell the truth on a hot mic.
During a tour of a Ford plant, Trump bragged that CEO Jim Farley “calls me all the time: ‘Can we get rid of this environmental piece of garbage?’” — because nothing says responsible corporate citizenship like begging the president to let your exhaust pipes cook the atmosphere a little faster. Whitehouse called it what it is: Trump boasting about working “hand in glove” with industry to unleash more pollution on American communities, while the EPA under Lee Zeldin dutifully moves to shred a Supreme-Court-upheld finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health.
Ford, meanwhile, is playing its favorite game: Climate Hero in Public, Climate Arsonist in the Back Room. The company pledges net-zero emissions, posts glossy sustainability PDFs, and says nice things about the Paris agreement — then stays in trade groups that fight EPA rules and cheers Trump’s rollback of fuel economy standards as “aligning with market realities.” In other words, Ford is proudly committed to saving the planet, just as soon as it squeezes every last dollar out of making it uninhabitable.
Whitehouse calls the move a “corrupt rollback” that will leave Americans with dirtier air, higher health costs, and a climate-driven economic collapse. But sure, let’s pretend this is all about freeing the market from burdensome regulations, and not about a president and an automaker teaming up to cash out the future so Jim Farley doesn’t have to slightly inconvenience the F-150.
Stacey Abrams, apparently the only one reading the democracy index while the Trump administration speedruns the authoritarianism leaderboard.
Stacey Abrams looked at Trump’s second-term "competitive authoritarian" playground and said: fine, if we’re going to be Hungary now, we’re at least getting a coalition out of it. After watching the US get downgraded on the democracy index while the administration experiments with fun new hobbies like starving kids, the elderly, and disabled people during shutdowns to avoid giving them healthcare, Abrams is turning her 10 Steps project into a full-blown anti-authoritarian coalition. Because nothing says "normal country" like needing a national resistance infrastructure just to get back to basic rule of law.
She’s roped in Democracy Forward, Indivisible, MoveOn, Run for Something, UnidosUS Action Fund, Gen-Z for Change, and a bunch of lower-profile civic groups—basically everyone who’s noticed that the regime has checked off at least nine of the 10 classic authoritarian moves: attacking the media, normalizing violence, gutting the government… you know, the usual MAGA to-do list. Abrams’ pitch is that before anyone gets to the cinematic general strike montage, they need boring stuff like organization, coordination, and local infrastructure—because Trump and friends are quietly dismantling democracy through "component pieces" while cable news chases the next shiny outrage.
So while the White House speedruns the “killing democracy” checklist and calls it a win, Abrams is out here building a national “no, actually” network to organize, mobilize, and reclaim something resembling a functioning republic. In other words: the administration is doing fascism with a side of bureaucratic cruelty, and Abrams is trying to make sure the only thing that gets fully normalized isn’t authoritarian rule, but resistance to it.
