president felon keeps speedrunning the appeals process
Trump gazes into the middle distance, perhaps wondering if the Supreme Court will eventually rule that hush money is an official executive function.
The president of the United States, who is also the proud owner of 34 felony convictions for cooking his business books to hide a $130,000 payoff to Stormy Daniels, is back in court trying to pretend this was all part of his official presidential duties. Because when you think "Article II powers," you obviously think "covering up hush money to a porn star."
Trump’s new lawyer, Jeffrey Wall, showed up in federal court to argue that the real injustice here isn’t that a sitting president is a convicted felon, it’s that his previous lawyers didn’t sprint to federal court fast enough to claim magical immunity. Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who has already rejected this stunt twice, politely informed him that you don’t get three bites at the apple just because your client lives in the White House and screams on Truth Social. Or, as Hellerstein put it, they’re "beating a dead horse"—which is generous, because the horse died somewhere around motion number two.
The Second Circuit forced Hellerstein to rehear the case to consider whether any evidence at trial touched on "official acts" that the Supreme Court’s Trump Immunity Gift Basket might cover. Trump’s team is essentially arguing that if a single scrap of trial evidence brushes up against his presidential schedule, the whole hush-money scheme transforms into an Official Act of State. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office responded with the radical idea that you don’t get to lose in state court, then yell "federal review!" like it’s a cheat code.
For now, the conviction stands, the sentence is an "unconditional discharge"—no jail, just the permanent label of "first criminal president"—and the country gets to watch a sitting commander in chief try, again and again, to lawyer his way out of the one thing the jury was crystal clear on: he did it. America: where the justice system still works, provided you have enough money to file endless motions trying to prove it doesn’t.
#lawlessness#killing-democracy
trump pulls out of who, illinois tries to stay in reality
JB Pritzker attempts the radical new strategy of listening to scientists while the Trump administration rage-quits global health like it’s a bad golf club membership.
Donald Trump, still workshopping new ways to make pandemics great again, pulled the entire United States out of the World Health Organization in 2025, blowing a hole in its budget, nuking about 2,000 jobs, and kneecapping global outbreak detection because he didn’t like the invoices or the concept of multilateralism. The US had been the WHO’s largest donor; Trump looked at that and said: what if we just... didn’t care if we saw the next virus coming?
Illinois governor JB Pritzker, apparently tired of waiting for the federal government to stop LARPing as a failed state, announced that Illinois will join the WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) directly, so at least one chunk of America can still see global early-warning alerts instead of relying on Trump’s preferred system: vibes and cable news. The state gets access to outbreak intelligence, technical support, and training, while the White House gets access to a bottomless well of grievance monologues about "unfair" payments and sinister foreigners "ripping us off" by providing, checks notes, global disease surveillance.
After Trump’s withdrawal triggered mass layoffs at WHO and loud condemnation from basically every medical organization that has met a germ before, Illinois joined a coalition of governors trying to rebuild what the administration is gleefully smashing: America’s public health infrastructure. The feds are busy dismantling the fire department; the states are out back trying to borrow smoke alarms from Europe. America First, just not necessarily alive.
#killing-democracy#anti-science#forever-grifting
coming soon: fdic-insured maga bucks
Artist’s rendering of a Trump Account statement: one line item reading 'Fees to Trump' and a remaining balance of pure patriotism.
NPR brings on New York Times money guy Ron Lieber to calmly walk listeners through the mechanics of the newly created "Trump Accounts" — because when you hear "Trump" and "your savings," the first word that comes to mind is obviously security. The segment promises to explain the who, what, and how, presumably skipping the why, since "to separate loyalists from their remaining disposable income" doesn’t take a whole show.
We don’t get the fine print here, but we can all guess the basic structure: slap the Trump brand on some lightly repackaged financial product, sprinkle in patriotic clip art, and let the marketing copy do the heavy lifting. While normal banks offer interest, these will likely pay out in vibes, grievance, and the warm feeling of subsidizing yet another Trump-branded revenue stream. America’s retirement plan, but make it a cult merch table.
#forever-grifting#money
eeoc repurposed as department of white feelings
The EEOC, seen here cosplaying as a civil-rights agency while doing Trump’s anti-DEI housecleaning.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, historically known for fighting discrimination, has been lovingly repackaged by Donald Trump as the Equal Opportunity For White Grievance Commission. Its latest mission: investigating Nike for allegedly discriminating against white workers, while demanding internal DEI targets, race data, and details on 16 supposedly race-restricted programs. Somewhere, a Federalist Society lawyer just got chills.
EEOC chair Andrea Lucas — a Trump appointee who arrived right after he fired Biden-era chair Charlotte Burrows — is dutifully reciting the new party line, praising Trump’s “commitment” to civil rights as she uses civil-rights laws to kneecap diversity programs. She insists Title VII is “colorblind” while the administration simultaneously orders agencies to terminate all “equity-related” grants, forces federal contractors to swear off DEI, and threatens universities with loss of funding if they don’t torch their diversity initiatives. Truly a bold new era of protecting minorities by banning anything designed to help them.
Nike, for its part, is doing the corporate tightrope act: calling itself a “proud American company,” swearing it follows every law in sight, and noting that it has already handed over “thousands of pages” of documents to an agency now treating DEI like contraband. The message from Trump’s Washington is clear: you can track race data to discriminate, but if you use it to fix discrimination, expect a subpoena and a lecture on colorblindness from the people busy defunding equity across the entire federal government.
#killing-democracy#fascism
supreme court briefly remembers democracy exists
The United States, now officially governed by the sacred constitutional principle of "whoever redraws the map last, wins."
For one shining, confusing moment, the US supreme court put down its "how can we help Republicans win more seats?" playbook and let California actually use the congressional map its voters approved. California Republicans, backed by the Trump administration, ran to the justices insisting that this map was an illegal racial gerrymander, unlike the perfectly wholesome Texas map that just happens to squeeze out up to five extra GOP seats and was blessed by the same court in December.
The justices, in a brisk unsigned order with no dissents, basically shrugged and said: nah, you guys can use the map. This comes after Donald Trump personally leaned on the Texas legislature to mid‑cycle gerrymander the state so he could grab five more House seats he says he’s "entitled" to, because nothing screams respect for the will of the people like treating congressional districts as loyalty rewards. California responded with a voter‑approved ballot initiative, Prop 50, to counter Texas’s power grab, because apparently the new federal system is just competitive map rigging with extra steps.
Even Samuel Alito, in a concurring opinion about the Texas case, admitted the obvious: all of this is "partisan advantage pure and simple"—which is a poetic way of saying both parties are now openly redrawing the electoral map mid‑decade like it’s fantasy football, while the court occasionally cosplays as neutral referee. Democrats, smelling blood thanks to Trump’s collapsing approval and an annoyed electorate, are hoping these dueling gerrymanders plus basic math will flip the House and finally let them investigate the corruption carnival running the executive branch. Trump wanted a House firewall; he may have built a very expensive political slip‑n‑slide instead.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump advertises fed nominee as his personal rate-cut button
Trump, explaining that the next Fed chair’s primary credential is a shared enthusiasm for cheap money and expensive consequences.
Trump helpfully announced that his nominee for Fed chair "wants to lower interest rates," turning what is supposed to be an independent central bank into a glorified loyalty test for whoever promises the cheapest money for his political needs. Monetary policy, meet Mar-a-Lago rewards program.
Instead of pretending the Federal Reserve is guided by boring things like data, inflation targets, or long-term stability, Trump is openly selling the job as "must be willing to juice the economy for me on command." The message to markets, institutions, and anyone who has read a civics textbook is clear: the Fed isn’t an independent referee, it’s a campaign prop.
This isn’t subtle pressure on the Fed; it’s a televised job posting for a compliant mascot who will trade institutional credibility for short-term political sugar highs. Independent central banking was nice while it lasted. Now we get the "Apprentice: Interest Rate Edition," where the only qualification that matters is how fast you’re willing to spin the money printer.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
great news: trump discovers 'softer touch' after trying 'crush them all'
Trump explains that after Minneapolis, he’s learned you can threaten protesters with overwhelming force, then call it a ‘softer touch’ if the polls look bad.
Donald Trump, the man who once treated Minneapolis like a live-action audition for authoritarian copaganda, now says he’s learned that "maybe we can use a little bit of a softer touch." This from the guy whose brand during unrest was tear gas, rubber bullets, and photo-op Bible walks. Apparently, after years of cheering on crackdowns, he’s decided the problem might not be that protesters exist, but that the optics of beating them on camera are bad.
The rebrand is almost sweet, in a "mob boss discovers PR" kind of way. Trump isn’t renouncing state violence; he’s just musing that perhaps the iron fist could use a slightly fluffier glove. The underlying message is the same: federal power as a tool to control dissent, only now with an added layer of "have we tried sounding reasonable on TV first?" If this is the new, gentler Trump doctrine, it’s still the same boot—just with a marketing department.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#fascism
one shooting, zero shame: trump freezes asylum nationwide
Press conference visuals: two dead soldiers, one accused shooter, and an invisible asterisk that says ‘now watch us gut asylum policy.’
One man is accused of a horrific crime near the White House, so naturally the Trump administration’s response is to punish… every asylum seeker in the country. Prosecutors say Rahmanullah Lakanwal ambushed National Guard members in November, killing 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom and seriously injuring 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe. He’s pleaded not guilty to nine federal charges while Attorney General Pam Bondi is already polishing her death penalty press release like it’s a campaign ad.
Subtle policy response this is not. Rather than let the criminal justice system handle a single defendant, Trump’s team slammed the brakes on all asylum decisions and ordered a review of Afghan refugees nationwide. One accused shooter, thousands of unrelated people thrown under the bus. Lakanwal came to the US via Biden’s Operation Allies Welcome after working with American forces in Afghanistan, but the administration’s message is clear: your years of helping US troops matter less than your value as a political prop.
Mental health red flags? Case workers had already documented that Lakanwal was spending weeks in a dark room and having "manic episodes" back in 2024. So instead of asking why the system failed on screening, support, and treatment, the White House skipped straight to collective punishment and fearmongering about refugees. It’s a familiar formula: take a tragedy, ignore the nuance, and use it to kneecap asylum and immigrant protections while pretending that’s what ‘law and order’ looks like.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration
hollywood can picture the explosions, not the coup paperwork
Two journalists in ‘Civil War’ bravely documenting a fictional strongman’s illegal third term, while the real one is busy weaponizing the bureaucracy off-screen.
Hollywood is once again bravely confronting American authoritarianism by… turning it into a dumb Netflix thriller where democracy collapses because of a best-selling book of essays. Meanwhile, in the world outside Diane Lane’s Georgetown kitchen, Kash Patel’s FBI is quietly seizing voting records in Fulton County and the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page Project 2025 manifesto is being fed through the legislative shredder formerly known as Congress. One side has speedboats and drones; the other has subpoenas and rule changes. Guess which one gets greenlit.
Emma Brockes points out that the real Trump 2.0 horror show isn’t a cinematic civil war or sexy young fascist mastermind, it’s the boring grind: voter manipulation, federal meddling in elections, and language games that sell one-party rule as “unity” and “togetherness”. Autocracy, it turns out, looks less like Alex Garland’s illegal third term with explosions and more like Colonel Lockjaw hunting "illegals" while think-tank lawyers quietly rewire the republic. The movies keep giving us the bang; the regime is betting you’ll sleep through the paperwork.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump conducts the fascism philharmonic
Trump posts fan art of himself as Supreme Conductor, leading an orchestra of bootlickers in the "Symphony No. 1 in C Minor: Democracy, Silenced."
Trump has decided that if real artists keep cancelling on him, he'll just cancel the actual arts. The newly rebranded "Trump Kennedy Center" is being closed for a "refit"—which very conveniently solves the problem of performers refusing to appear during his presidency. Hard to pull out of a concert that mysteriously no longer exists. Problem solved, free speech muted, donor plaque intact.
Enter Jon McNaughton, court painter to the MAGA monarchy, with his latest masterpiece of authoritarian fan fiction: Maga Symphony, personally blessed by Trump on Truth Social. The painting shows Trump as an omnipotent conductor leading an orchestra of right-wing politicians and hangers-on: Marco Rubio sawing away in the violins, JD Vance on cello, Melania demoted to the second desk, Tucker Carlson banging cymbals like the world’s smuggest percussion section, and Elon Musk on electric guitar because of course he is. No music stands, no scores—just pure Trumpian telepathy, a kind of political séance with better lighting.
The image leans into the classic dictator fantasy: the conductor as supreme ruler, one man with "the power of life and death over the voices of the instruments," as Elias Canetti put it. One hundred players, no dissent, no disagreement, no individuality—just bodies executing the Leader’s will. It’s not a metaphor they stumbled into by accident; this is the aesthetic language of autocracy dressed up as a patriotic concert poster. While actual orchestras thrive on tension, negotiation, and listening, McNaughton’s MAGA pit band is a visual hymn to submission.
So Trump is literally closing down a major cultural institution under his own brand while boosting kitsch propaganda that presents him as the mystical, unquestioned source of all sound and meaning. The "Maga Symphony" isn’t about music; it’s about normalizing the idea that a healthy society is one where everyone stares at the podium and waits for Dear Leader’s next downbeat.
#fascism#killing-democracy
trump ends his own hostage crisis, reloads for dhs
Congress celebrates ending the shutdown they helped cause, like arsonists high-fiving in front of a slightly less-on-fire building.
The partial government shutdown is over, which is Washington-speak for "we stopped punching ourselves in the face for a minute." Congress slapped together a short-term funding patch, federal workers get to briefly remember what a paycheck looks like, and the White House pretends this was all a bold negotiating strategy instead of a tantrum that shuttered basic services.
Of course, the next cliff is already built: DHS funding is now on a fresh countdown clock, because nothing says "stable democracy" like repeatedly threatening to defund the agency in charge of border security and disaster response. Trump and his allies get to keep using DHS as a political chew toy—either cough up more money and authority for their immigration crackdown or enjoy another round of chaos.
This isn’t budgeting, it’s governing by extortion: create a crisis, blame everyone else, then graciously agree to stop breaking things for a few weeks while you line up the next hostage. The only consistent winners are the manufactured talking points and the permanent campaign; the losers are federal workers, basic planning, and any pretense that this is a serious administration.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
make america wheeze again
Lee Zeldin, RFK Jr., and Linda McMahon sit together, presumably brainstorming exciting new ways to brand deregulation as a wellness program.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is out here promising to “Make America Healthy Again” while Trump’s EPA, under Lee Zeldin, is busy turning the country into a live-action asthma study. The health and human services department pledges to fix our food, air, water, soil, and medicine; the EPA responds by ripping up pollution rules, handing out waivers to toxic emitters, and giving oil, gas, and chemical companies a big sloppy regulatory kiss. Childhood cancers, heart disease, asthma, autism, ADHD? Don’t worry, the administration is bravely tackling them by making sure kids breathe more mercury, benzene, and particulate matter.
An EPA spokesperson called a Center for American Progress report on all this “fake news” and insisted the agency is in “lock-step” with the MAHA agenda. Which, depressingly, is true if the agenda is actually maximizing shareholder value for polluters. Zeldin’s EPA is moving to repeal strengthened mercury and air toxics standards, delay methane rules so the fossil fuel industry can keep belching away, narrow risk assessments so fewer chemicals count as dangerous, and even roll back the 2009 endangerment finding — the legal backbone of federal climate regulation — though that last bit is reportedly so shoddy it might not survive a court.
While experts say the U.S. needs far deeper emissions cuts, the EPA is bragging that America’s air is the “cleanest in decades” and that CO₂ emissions might drop a smidge, as if that cancels out dismantling the safeguards that actually keep kids from getting sick. The agency has even invited polluters to apply for air emission exemptions and two-year waivers from toxic standards specifically designed to protect children and communities. So yes, MAHA is technically on track — just not for the people breathing the air. For the industries selling it back to us in a can.
#anti-science#healthcare#forever-grifting
when billionaires think your grift is tacky
Ken Griffin, pausing from lighting cigars with Treasury bills to note that the Trump family’s grift is starting to look a little gauche.
Ken Griffin, Republican megadonor and hedge fund billionaire, has looked at the Trump White House’s corruption buffet and concluded: this is a bit much. At a Wall Street Journal conference, he politely translated "the Trumps are looting the place" into CEO-speak, saying the administration has taken decisions that are "very, very enriching" to officials’ families and might not, tiny detail, serve the public interest.
The part that even Griffin can’t swallow? The White House muscling into corporate America with the subtlety of Don Jr. at a coke-sponsored NFT launch, creating what he calls a culture of favoritism where CEOs feel pressured to grovel to whichever regime is currently stapled to the Resolute Desk. Meanwhile, Trump’s sons insist there’s a "huge wall" between their businesses and Dad’s job, a statement made significantly less convincing by the fact they’re getting showered in crypto-friendly policies and "big business deals" like it’s altcoin Christmas.
Griffin, who didn’t back Trump’s re-election but still cut a $1m check to the inaugural committee, somehow manages to both condemn the grift and praise Trump’s border crackdown and Fed pick Kevin Warsh. So yes, he’s horrified by the corruption — just not horrified enough to stop funding the machine that keeps spitting out the corruption. The White House, for its part, responded through spokesperson Kush Desai with the standard line that the only special interest is "the American people", then immediately pointed to stock indexes and wage numbers, because nothing says totally not captured by the billionaire class like measuring success exclusively in asset prices.
For a final twist, Griffin floated the idea of running for office himself, because clearly what this country needs after years of open, family-style self-dealing is to cut out the middleman and just let the hedge fund guys run the government directly. At least then the corruption would come with better PowerPoints.
#forever-grifting#corruption
assassination attempt at the trump golf temple heads to sentencing
Trump International Golf Club’s famed fifth hole, where American democracy now includes bunkers, water hazards, and the occasional assassination plot.
Ryan Routh, the guy who apparently thought the best way to save democracy was to crawl into the shrubbery at Trump International Golf Club with a gun, is back in federal court for sentencing. Prosecutors want life in prison, arguing he tried to stop American voters from electing Trump by just skipping to the murder part. Bold strategy: combat authoritarian drift with your own one-man armed coup on the fifth hole.
Judge Aileen Cannon — yes, that Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed legal speed bump who’s turned half of Trump’s federal cases into performance art — will decide how long Routh spends in prison. Routh, who represented himself at trial, delivered a closing argument that pinballed from Jan. 6 to Ukraine to Patrick Henry before Cannon finally hit the off switch, which is impressive given her usual tolerance for chaos when it benefits Trump. The jury took barely two hours to convict him on all counts.
Routh’s lawyer now says this wasn’t terrorism and is begging for a mere few decades behind bars, with mental health treatment attached, while prosecutors insist he’s unrepentant and dangerous. His family is writing heartbroken letters asking for a shot at rehabilitation, and at least a prison close enough to visit. Meanwhile, the larger message from the government is clear: political violence aimed at Trump will be crushed with maximum force, while political violence for Trump tends to get merch, GoFundMes, and sympathetic TV hits. Very stable country we’ve got here.
#killing-democracy#national-security
tariff relief now available, just show proof of sucking up to trump
Tim Cook shakes Trump's hand while silently calculating how many tariff breaks one polite smile and a few strategic meetings can buy in this very stable banana republic.
The Trump administration has apparently streamlined trade policy by cutting out all that boring "law" and "process" stuff and going straight to the important question: have you kissed the ring lately? Sens. Ron Wyden and Chris Van Hollen say the White House is running a closed-door tariff exemption racket that "appears to favor the politically connected" — which is a polite Senate way of saying the U.S. Trade Representative and Commerce Department are operating a VIP lane for CEOs who send gifts, write checks, and pose nicely for photos with Donald.
Instead of a transparent system where small businesses and family farms can seek relief, the administration built a fog machine: an opaque, ad hoc waiver process where the lucky winners tend to be the same big companies whose executives have been personally courting Trump. Think Apple’s Tim Cook, or the Rolex CEO who literally showed up with a gold-plated desk clock, as if he were paying tribute to a particularly tacky medieval warlord. Toss in tech titans bankrolling Trump’s dream of bulldozing part of the White House to build himself a ballroom, and you’ve got policy being auctioned off one glitzy donation at a time.
Wyden and Van Hollen warn this setup has "opened the door to corruption and economic harm." The door? This administration took the door off the hinges, turned it into a naming-rights sponsorship opportunity, and handed the key to whichever billionaire agreed to fund the ballroom bar. Small manufacturers and farmers get to enjoy the full weight of Trump’s tariffs, while the president’s favorite corporations glide past customs like they’re checking into Mar-a-Lago. Free market capitalism has officially been replaced with "how big was your gift basket?"
#corruption#forever-grifting#money
michigan invents the bipartisan pro-trump coalition no one asked for
John James, proudly modeling the Spring 2026 "I still support Trump" collection.
Michigan voters apparently told pollsters they think the state is on the right track after seven years of Gretchen Whitmer, so naturally the political system is working overtime to break that. Enter Mike Duggan, a lifelong Democrat who looked at the Trump era, the coup attempts, the tariffs kneecapping Detroit’s auto industry and thought: you know what this needs? Me, as an independent, funded by Trump donors.
Instead of just running in a primary like a normal ambitious politician, Duggan is trying out the new "above-the-fray, below-the-ethics" model: take checks from former Michigan GOP Chair Ron Weiser and other pro-Trump donors, refuse to seriously criticize Donald Trump, then insist Democrats are "failing" because they talk too much about the guy whose party tried to overturn Michigan’s votes. The state party chair, Curtis Hertel, keeps pointing out that Duggan is very bravely ignoring Trump right up until the moment it might cost him Republican support.
On the other side, Republicans are doing what they do best now: stapling themselves to Trump and calling it leadership. John James and Perry Johnson are busy auditioning for Most Loyal Mini-Trump while Jocelyn Benson, the Democrat who actually defended Michigan’s elections from Trump’s 2020 tantrum, has the audacity to mention that maybe the democracy-wrecking ex-president is relevant to people’s economic futures. Duggan’s pitch is that everyone else is too obsessed with Trump, a bold stance for a guy whose campaign is literally being fueled by Trump’s donor network.
So the 2026 Michigan governor’s race is shaping up as a three-way experiment in American politics: one candidate who fought Trump’s attacks on democracy, one candidate proudly aligned with Trump, and one candidate pretending Trump is just a vibe while cashing MAGA checks and insisting he’s the only serious adult in the room. What could possibly go wrong with a system where the path to power runs straight through the man who tried to toss out the state’s votes?
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
trump takes a chainsaw to science, hits federal courts instead
NWS launches another weather balloon to see if facts can still reach the upper atmosphere without prior approval from a Trump political appointee.
The Trump administration spent the last year trying to turn American science into a partisan loyalty program. They gutted thousands of jobs at NASA, NOAA and other agencies, tried to kneecap elite universities over trumped-up antisemitism crusades, yanked grants that smelled like "DEI" and proposed hacking NIH funding by more than 40%. For dessert, they tried to blow up the entire post–World War II model of federally funded university research by capping "indirect costs" — you know, frivolous luxuries like buildings, electricity and lab equipment.
The plan was simple: starve the research you don’t like, then call it fiscal responsibility. Instead, an alphabet soup of people who can read the Constitution — ACLU, AAAS, APHA, AAU — dragged the administration into court and won key rulings blocking the indirect cost cap and forcing NIH to restart grant reviews it had frozen in its little ideological temper tantrum. Meanwhile, Congress looked at Trump’s slash-and-burn budget and said, absolutely not, keeping funding roughly flat and even giving NIH a modest bump.
Of course, "not as bad as Trump wanted" still means NOAA and NASA lost thousands of employees, NIH leadership got purged, climate reports were quietly buried and the National Weather Service is flying fewer weather balloons because apparently forecasting storms is woke now. The White House, naturally, praised the final bill as "fiscally responsible" while courts and Congress shoveled billions of dollars back into the science it tried to suffocate. American research is "enduring as best it can" — which is Washington-speak for "survived an Elon-and-Donald science policy cosplay session by hiding behind the judiciary."
#anti-science#killing-democracy#lawlessness
maga masculinity: cosplay knights, real bullets
Trump’s America: one man steps forward to shield a stranger; the government’s answer is to prove its manhood with a firing squad and a press release.
On a frozen Minneapolis curb, Alex Pretti did the one thing the Trump-era tough-guy cosplay brigade cannot process: he used his body as a shield instead of a weapon. Federal immigration agents, marinating in the administration’s new theology that empathy is a civilization-ending disease, responded to this radical act of care by killing him. The White House then helpfully suggested that merely bringing a legal gun to a protest proves violent intent, which is a fascinating reinterpretation of the second amendment from people who usually think a fetus should be issued an AR-15 at 12 weeks.
The op-ed sketches the contrast nicely: on one side, Trump’s macho MAGA cult, mainlining medieval LARP aesthetics—QAnon shaman horns, Pete Hegseth’s crusader tattoo sleeve, and a general vibe of "Diet Templar"—while ignoring that actual chivalric codes frowned on profit-seeking, demanded mercy, and treated killing as a last resort. On the other side, Pretti, whose refusal to escalate and whose act of protection denied the administration its dream scenario: a clean excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and roll out the full repression package, with cable-news B-roll pre-approved.
While Elon Musk and the Christian right declare empathy "toxic" and "sinful", the piece points out what that propaganda campaign is really for: manufacturing a generation of atomized, angry young men who think "manhood" means doing whatever the state’s armored cosplay squad tells them, to whomever the state points at. Pretti’s version of masculinity—anchored in care and risk, not fear and domination—gets you a bullet from Trump’s federal agents. Theirs gets you a tactical vest, a crusader tattoo, and the moral depth of a Reddit thread.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump’s fed puppet remembers he’s supposed to pretend to be independent
Stephen Miran, bravely stepping down from one Trump job so he can more efficiently serve Trump in the other one that runs the central bank.
Stephen Miran, Trump’s handpicked rate-cut enthusiast, has finally resigned as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers so he can keep sitting on the Federal Reserve board without it being quite so obviously a conflict of interest. He’d been on unpaid leave from the CEA while serving on the Fed, a fun little arrangement that made Democrats point out the blindingly obvious: maybe the guy literally on Trump’s economic team shouldn’t also be setting “independent” monetary policy to match Trump’s public demands for cheaper money.
Miran insists lawyers told him it was totally fine to moonlight as both White House adviser and Fed governor for a few months, but now that his Fed stint is extending, he’s honoring his pledge to the Senate to formally quit the CEA. How noble. He’s been pushing for sharply lower interest rates at every Fed meeting since he arrived, which just happens to align perfectly with Trump’s stated litmus test for Fed officials: must love easy money and doing what Donald says.
Meanwhile, the broader backdrop is Trump’s ongoing hostile takeover bid for the Fed. Jerome Powell is under a criminal investigation from Trump’s DOJ over statements about building renovations — which Powell describes as part of a pressure campaign to bring the central bank to heel — and Fed governor Lisa Cook is also under DOJ investigation while she sues to stop Trump from firing her. A majority of the Senate banking committee, including one Republican who still remembers what separation of powers is, calls the Powell probe political intimidation and wants nothing to do with Trump’s new would-be Fed chair, Kevin Warsh. So yes, Miran technically kept his promise to resign one job. The bigger promise Trump is working on is turning an independent central bank into just another branch of the Trump Organization.
#killing-democracy#fascism
pentagon plays whack-a-drone with iran
U.S. forces demonstrate their enduring mastery of turning the Middle East into a live-fire notification setting.
The U.S. military reportedly shot down an Iranian drone, because nothing says "stable world order" like perpetual, barely-explained confrontations in the Middle East. Details are thin, but the basic plot is familiar: a drone gets too close to U.S. forces, the Pentagon flexes, and everyone pretends this is just another routine Tuesday instead of one more step in an endless cycle of tit-for-tat brinkmanship.
Instead of Congress debating war powers or anyone asking whether this low-key air war has an endgame, we get a 1:22 highlight reel and move on to the next crisis. The message from Washington remains clear: the Forever War may be background noise now, but it’s still very much on autoplay.
#imperialism#national-security
