president extremely mad that tv show used his own words
Donald Trump practicing his ‘defamed victim of the media’ face between court appearances and cable hits.
Donald Trump, currently juggling only several dozen legal problems, has decided the real threat to democracy is a BBC Panorama documentary that aired his 6 January 2021 speech in a way he didn’t like. He’s suing the BBC for multi-billion dollar defamation in Florida, because if there’s one thing the author of “find me 11,780 votes” hates, it’s people allegedly misrepresenting his words about elections.
The BBC has asked the Florida court to hit pause on discovery while it moves to get the case tossed, arguing the court doesn’t even have jurisdiction and that Trump hasn’t actually stated a valid claim. Trump’s lawyers responded that this defense is “untenable,” “misplaced,” and “unpersuasive,” which is bold talk from the legal team that keeps speedrunning sanctions hearings across America. They’re insisting discovery should barrel ahead, presumably so they can demand reams of internal BBC documents to send a very normal, very non-authoritarian message to other outlets: report critically on Trump’s role in January 6th, and you too can enjoy years of ruinously expensive litigation.
The BBC has already apologized for an edit but refused to hand over the cash or admit to defamation, and a trial date in 2027 is floated if this circus survives that long. So the president of the United States is now devoting years of federal-adjacent oxygen to trying to drag a foreign public broadcaster into a Florida courtroom over a documentary about his role in an attempted coup. Free press, meet the guy who thinks ‘accountability’ is what you file when a network’s chyron hurts his feelings.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump floats federal takeover of elections, gop pretends to clutch a constitution
John Thune bravely disagrees with Trump’s election power grab, moments before endorsing the rest of the voter suppression agenda.
Donald Trump went on Dan Bongino’s ragecast to suggest that Republicans should "take over" elections and "nationalize the voting" in at least 15 places, because nothing says "totally not a fascist" like demanding centralized partisan control of how votes are cast and counted. He wrapped it, of course, in his usual fan fiction about having actually won Georgia in 2020 and promised "interesting things" once the FBI finishes looking at Fulton County records — a man under perpetual investigation treating law enforcement like his personal spoiler alert service.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune then emerged from the witness protection program to say he’s "not in favor" of federalizing elections, calling it a "constitutional issue" and praising decentralized systems because they’re harder to hack. Fun twist: this is the same party that’s been screaming for years that those very state-run systems somehow stole the election from Trump while simultaneously insisting they work great, actually. House Speaker Mike Johnson tried to square the circle by saying states should run elections, but blue states are suspicious, and then touted the SAVE Act — a voter-suppression-friendly "solution" to a problem (noncitizens voting) that’s already illegal and vanishingly rare.
Meanwhile, Rep. Sanford Bishop said the quiet part out loud: this is an "attempt to intimidate and to try to take over the electoral system" and yet another sign of the administration’s authoritarian drift. Republicans are effectively arguing: states should control elections unless they elect Democrats, at which point Trump wants Washington Republicans to seize the machinery. It’s less a theory of federalism than a theory of power: the rules are "American elections" right up until they stop producing the right Americans.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump administration unveils coalie, the black lung death greeter
Donald Trump and Doug Burgum, moments before deciding that what coal really needs isn’t regulation or cleanup funds, but a cursed cartoon hype man.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that if you can’t make coal clean, you can at least make it creepy. Interior secretary Doug Burgum debuted "Coalie," a cartoon lump of coal in yellow mining gear with huge AI-anime eyes, as the new "spokesperson" for Trump’s "American Energy Dominance Agenda." Yes, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement — the agency that’s supposed to regulate coal mines and clean up their mess — now has a mascot whose job is to sell the very industry it’s meant to police. Regulatory capture, but make it kawaii.
OSMRE’s website features Coalie cheerfully posing with what looks like AI-generated Stepford families, winking from conference tables, and proudly showing off an abandoned coal mine that’s been transformed into a pastoral picnic spot — presumably located just out of frame from the toxic runoff and collapsing mine shafts. Meanwhile, Trump is still insisting on the phrase "clean, beautiful coal" while backing it up with an executive order to revive coal, adding it to a list of "critical" minerals, halting plant closures, and shredding environmental rules that mildly inconvenienced industry donors.
Out in the non-cartoon world, coal remains the dirtiest fossil fuel, a major driver of the climate crisis, and a reliable source of deadly air pollution. Coal miners are still getting black lung while the administration moves to roll back their safety protections and Republicans in Congress prepare to rip $500 million out of the fund that cleans up abandoned mines. Activists like Junior Walk, who actually live with the fallout of mountaintop removal and poisoned communities, describe Coalie as "sick" and haunting — a smiling, AI-generated demon hovering over a real-time mass extinction event. The message from Trump’s Interior Department is clear: we will give you fewer protections, dirtier air, and gutted cleanup funds, but don’t worry — there’s a mascot now.
#anti-science#forever-grifting
homeland insecurity: everyone’s a terrorist now
Ah yes, the deadly threat of people holding signs while cops in body armor bravely defend America from the First Amendment.
The Trump administration’s second-term innovation in law enforcement is finally here: if you film ICE, question ICE, or are standing within 200 feet of ICE when they shoot someone, you’re a "domestic terrorist" now. Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem immediately smeared slain ICU nurse Alex Pretti as a terrorist, then tried to quietly walk it back once people noticed that facts were missing. Renee Nicole Good, also killed by ICE, and survivor Marimar Martinez got the same treatment, because why waste a good smear campaign when you can recycle it.
Out on the streets, agents have skipped straight to the quiet-part-loud stage. One ICE officer in Portland, Maine helpfully informed a legal observer that by recording him, she’d earned a spot in their "nice little database" and is now considered a domestic terrorist. Meanwhile, a growing pattern in courtrooms looks like a fascist Mad Lib: federal agents shove or assault protesters – including a 70-year-old veteran in Chicago – and then the Department of Justice swoops in to charge the victims under Section 111 for "resisting" federal employees. Over a hundred such prosecutions popped up in the back half of 2025 alone.
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Anti-protest bills have been multiplying since Trump first took office in 2017, and continued under Biden, steadily expanding what counts as a "riot" and punishing anyone who has the nerve to slow down a car with their human body. The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law has been tracking this slow-motion bonfire of the First Amendment, noting that lawmakers reliably panic-legislate whenever people actually use their right to assemble—especially after George Floyd’s murder. Now, with Trump back and DHS openly branding dissenters as terrorists, the long American tradition of criminalizing protest has finally found its perfect customer-service rep.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump’s big beautiful plan to cut your energy bill (by raising it)
Trump gestures toward an imaginary 50% bill cut while Americans stare at their utility statements like it’s a ransom note from their gas company.
Donald Trump promised to cut energy prices by 50%, and in a stunning triumph for alternative math, electricity is up 6.7% and natural gas 10.8% over the past year. This wasn’t a surprise plot twist; it was the script. The administration declared a "national energy emergency" that somehow translated into prioritizing fossil fuel producers over actual human beings, expanding liquefied natural gas exports so your home heating bill can ride the same rollercoaster as geopolitics, freezing cheap offshore wind, and propping up expensive coal plants like they’re Civil War reenactors with a lobbyist.
Just to really drive home who matters and who doesn’t, Trump’s team tried to slash the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and the Weatherization Assistance Program — the two main federal tools that keep poor and working-class families from literally freezing. Congress, in a rare moment of "maybe let’s not create Dickensian winter death scenes," blocked the cuts, which is the only reason millions of people aren’t already in the dark. Meanwhile, energy-efficiency tax credits that actually lower bills? The administration backed killing those too, because if there’s one thing this White House hates, it’s cheap, boring competence.
The results are exactly what you’d expect when policy is written by oil executives cosplaying as patriots. Home heating costs are projected to jump 9.2% this winter — over three times the inflation rate — and utility arrears have exploded from $15.4bn in 2021 to an estimated $23bn in 2025, heading toward $28bn. Nearly one in four households now says their energy bills are unaffordable, but don’t worry, the LNG export terminals are doing great. Energy burdens are soaring for low-income households while the richest barely notice, which is a weird coincidence for an administration that keeps insisting it’s all about "forgotten Americans" while carefully remembering every fossil-fuel donor.
And the punchline? The fixes are boring and obvious: efficiency, weatherization, renewables, and targeted bill assistance — all the stuff this White House either tried to gut or kneecap. States and countries that embraced those tools have lower costs and more stable prices, which is precisely why Trump’s crew wants nothing to do with them. You can’t build a culture war around attic insulation and heat pumps, but you can build a donor list around LNG exports and zombie coal plants. Lower bills were never the point; the point was to turn your utility payment into a recurring contribution to the fossil fuel industry’s reelection fund.
#forever-grifting#money
democrats discover they actually own some levers of power
Democratic leaders stare at a stack of unused constitutional tools like it’s an IKEA manual written in Latin while Trump’s police-state fantasy gets fast-tracked by the Supreme Court’s shadow docket.
Democrats, we are told, are sitting on a dusty, 19th‑century constitutional flamethrower while Trump builds a police-state ICE apparatus and the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc cosplays as “neutral umpires” on the shadow docket. Sidney Blumenthal politely reminds Team Blue that state legislatures can pass formal instructions and resolutions to put members of Congress and local Republicans on record about Trump’s authoritarian immigration crackdown and his open hostility to free and fair elections. You know, actual structural pressure instead of another fundraising email about “democracy on the ballot.”
Instead of just watching as Trump’s DOJ and ICE run wild and the Court quietly rubber‑stamps his power grabs in unsigned midnight orders, Democratic trifecta states could hold hearings, drag witnesses into the spotlight, force Republicans to vote on whether they’re cool with a budding police state, and then march those resolutions straight to Washington. The numbers are not small: hundreds of GOP state legislators and dozens of House members in blue or mixed states could be squeezed between the frothing MAGA base and a general electorate that’s increasingly horrified by Trump’s tactics.
The article even walks through Pennsylvania, where Josh Shapiro is popular, the GOP holds the state senate by a thread, and several swing House seats depend on Hispanic voters who have turned sharply against Trump’s ICE cosplay. In other words, there is a blueprint for using state power to resist an administration that treats the Constitution like a nondisclosure agreement. Whether Democrats choose to wield it or just workshop another “Democracy Dies If You Don’t Donate $7” subject line is, tragically, still an open question.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump hits his deportation quota by deporting the wrong people
Man walks back into ICE office after U.S. government realizes it deported him illegally and decides to speedrun a do-over.
The second Trump administration is so committed to efficiency that it’s now deporting people judges explicitly said not to deport, then acting shocked when courts notice. Kilmar Abrego Garcia went from working in Maryland to being dumped in a notorious El Salvador mega-prison in about a week — a pace that would be impressive if it weren’t also flatly illegal, as a government lawyer helpfully admitted in court.
Lawyers thought Kilmar’s case might be a horrifying one-off. Adorable. Instead, it turns out he was just the promotional poster for a whole line of wrongful deportations, as judges in Maryland and New York have ordered ICE to drag multiple people back from the same hellhole prison after removals that violated standing court orders. When your deportation program keeps getting reversed because you literally ignored judges, that’s not “strong borders”; that’s “we don’t read the rulings.”
Driving all this is Trump’s magic number: one million deportations a year, with daily quotas pushing agents to ship people out within days — sometimes to their home countries, sometimes to random “third countries” willing to take America’s human paperwork errors. As policy experts note, the system is moving so fast that different parts of the government aren’t even talking to each other. The good news for the White House is that if you treat due process like a speed bump, your stats look fantastic. The bad news is that the Constitution is not supposed to be optional, and neither are those pesky court orders.
#anti-immigration#lawlessness#killing-democracy
trump discovers a $13 trillion piggy bank, calls it 'taxpayer relief'
Fannie Mae’s old headquarters, now doubling as a buffet line where Trump donors can pile their plates high with taxpayer-backed mortgage profits.
Trump’s second-term brain trust has found a fresh way to "help" the American people: carve up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the government-controlled mortgage giants that support about 70% of U.S. home loans — and see how much "value" they can extract. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, a Trump ally with big donor ties, is out front promising this is all for "U.S. taxpayers," which is Washington code for: the donors are about to eat first.
For the last 17 years, Fannie and Freddie have been in federal conservatorship after the 2008 crash, reliably stabilizing the $13 trillion housing finance system and keeping mortgage rates lower. Every administration since has looked at unwinding them, seen the giant radioactive risk ball labeled "could crash the housing market again," and backed away. The Trump crew’s reaction? Perfect time to partially privatize, strip out government control, and let politically connected investors cash in on assets taxpayers already saved and effectively own.
Economists are politely screaming that this could jack up mortgage costs, destabilize markets, and ultimately shove more risk back onto taxpayers while the upside flows to a handful of Trump-world shareholders. Even MIT’s Simon Johnson describes the administration’s proposals as "complete confusion" — which, to be fair, is the closest thing this White House has to a governing philosophy. But as long as big donors get their slice of Fannie and Freddie, who cares if millions of Americans get priced out of homeownership? The free market must be fed.
#forever-grifting#corruption#money
trump demands $1bn from harvard for the crime of not obeying trump
Harvard University, moments before being rebranded as Trump National Patriotic Real University & Casino.
Trump has decided that the appropriate way to handle campus antisemitism concerns is not, say, funding education or security, but shaking down Harvard University for $1 billion in "damages" because it won’t let the federal government run its curriculum like a MAGA school board. After the New York Times reported that the administration had backed off an earlier $200m settlement demand, Trump hopped on Truth Social to declare that, actually, they now want five times more and "nothing further to do" with Harvard. Apart from the part where he keeps trying to control it, obviously.
This comes after his administration already tried to cancel $2.2bn in research grants, threatened $9bn in federal funding, demanded the end of DEI programs, ordered the snitching of international students, and even moved to block Harvard from enrolling foreign students altogether. A federal judge has already ruled that one of those little tantrums was unlawful, which naturally prompted the White House to appeal and then escalate the ransom note from $500m to $1bn. Harvard, for its part, is suing to stop the administration from "gain[ing] control of academic decision-making"—a phrase that, in healthier democracies, would be a red flag, not official policy.
So the sitting president is now openly treating a private university like a hostile takeover target, using the federal government as his litigation department and research budgets as the crowbar. But sure, tell us more about how this is all about protecting Jewish students and not about turning higher education into a loyalty test for Alan Dershowitz and Turning Point USA.
#killing-democracy
trump sends an armada, discovers you can’t bomb a country into being fine
US Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet launches off the USS Abraham Lincoln, bravely defending America from the grave threat of not starting another Middle East war.
Donald Trump has parked an "
armada" off Iran’s doorstep, because nothing says
responsible governance like handing a man who rage-tweets at TV segments control of carrier strike groups. The USS Abraham Lincoln, guided-missile destroyers, bombers, and missile defenses are now the backdrop for a choose-your-own-disaster adventure in which Tehran’s options are: 1) accept a US-imposed deal that bails out its own corrupt regime, 2) get hit with "controlled" US strikes that somehow won’t spiral into region-wide chaos (sure), or 3) implode into Libya/Syria-style collapse while the White House pretends it’s all part of a freedom plan.
Internally, Iran is a wreck: years of corruption, economic collapse, and the brutal crushing of the 2022 "Woman, Life, Freedom" uprising have left a regime that’s still killing thousands but no longer scaring people into staying home. Externally, Israel has turned the long-running shadow war into a very loud, very kinetic one, systematically dismantling Iran’s regional network and nudging Tehran straight into Uncle Don’s crosshairs. The same US president who blew up the 2015 nuclear deal and had Qassem Suleimani killed is now back for a sequel, this time selling the fantasy that a bit more pressure, a few more bombs, and some sanctions magic will produce "regime transformation" instead of the usual endless rubble and refugees.
For the Iranian people, every path is terrible; for Trump, every path is a campaign ad. A coerced deal lets him pose as the great dealmaker saving the world from nukes while propping up a weakened theocracy. A "limited" war lets him cosplay wartime leader without ever explaining to Congress what the strategy is or what happens if it all goes sideways. And a chaotic collapse? That’s just another chance to scream about refugees on Fox and demand more emergency powers at home.
The only thing actually being stabilized here is the American imperial ego, and it’s getting more dangerous every time a president learns he can freelance foreign wars with nothing more than a press conference and some flag-draped B-roll.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
dni tulsi auditions to be trump’s election cop
DNI Tulsi Gabbard, seen here workshopping new ways to merge U.S. intelligence, local election offices, and presidential ego into one seamless constitutional migraine.
Tulsi Gabbard, now somehow the director of national intelligence in this timeline, decided that the best use of the nation’s top spy chief was to physically hover around an FBI search of a Fulton County election hub looking at 2020 records. She then helpfully dialed up Donald Trump so he could personally chat with the agents doing the search, which we’re told was just so he could say thank you, like a totally normal president who definitely hasn’t been ranting about “getting into the votes.” Absolutely no pressure on law enforcement there at all.
Gabbard insists this was all “well within” her authority, because when the law says the DNI can lead counterintelligence on election security, it obviously means “show up at local election raids and act as the president’s concierge.” She also refused to brief Congress beforehand, claiming she didn’t want to “irresponsibly share incomplete assessments,” which is a poetic way of saying: oversight is for suckers. Meanwhile, DOJ’s Todd Blanche is on TV trying to explain that she “wasn’t at the search, just in the area,” and that she’s not part of the investigation, except that Trump wants her on the team investigating election integrity.
National security experts are pointing out that the DNI is legally barred from domestic law enforcement and that this sort of stunt is “highly unusual”, which is Washington code for “what the hell are you doing.” Fulton County is now planning to sue the Trump administration, because of course it is. So we’ve got the intelligence chief at a local election raid, the president calling agents on scene, a legal justification written in crayon by ODNI’s own lawyers, and a case about old 2020 ballots that Trump keeps publicly hyping. America’s elections are safe and secure — just as long as they survive the federal government’s attempts to ‘protect’ them.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
project vault: now with 30% more billionaire
Trump, a mining billionaire, and GM’s CEO gather in the Oval Office to bravely protect America from the grave threat of insufficient subsidies for mining billionaires and GM’s CEO.
Trump has unveiled "Project Vault," a nearly $12bn critical minerals reserve that totally just happens to be announced while he’s flanked by mining billionaire Robert Friedland and GM CEO Mary Barra in the Oval Office. It’s modeled after the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, except this time the commodity is rare earths, and the vibe is more "state-directed industrial policy meets donor wish list." The money: a $10bn, 15-year government-backed loan from the Export-Import Bank plus $1.67bn in private capital, because nothing says "free market" like a federally underwritten minerals hoard.
Rather than, say, building out public capacity or strong environmental and labor standards, the US is "securing" supply chains by shoveling support at companies it already owns stakes in, like MP Materials, Vulcan Elements, and USA Rare Earth. China’s dominance over rare earth mining and processing is the official villain here, but somehow the solution keeps circling back to: more subsidies, more corporate stakes, and more leverage for the same set of politically connected firms. National security, but make it a portfolio.
The rollout is being treated like a geopolitical fashion show: Marco Rubio, now secretary of state, will host a ministerial on critical minerals, while Vice-President JD Vance delivers a keynote address to a room full of European, African, and Asian officials eager to sign bilateral agreements. The State Department promises "momentum for collaboration," which is a poetic way of saying "we’re building a global supply chain so our defense contractors and auto giants don’t have to worry about Chinese export controls again." Strategic resilience for them, long-term public risk for everyone else.
#forever-grifting#oligarchy
judge explains haitians are doctors and engineers, not trump’s racist fan fiction
Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary and part-time phrenologist, explaining that a neuroscientist and a registered nurse are actually "leeches" while a federal judge quietly reacquaints her with the concept of equal protection.
The Trump administration’s latest attempt at mass human disposal hit a small snag called "the law" after Judge Ana Reyes blocked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from yanking Temporary Protected Status from up to 350,000 Haitians. Noem had apparently decided that people fleeing a collapsed state wracked by gangs and displacement were actually "killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies" – a description that, awkwardly, turned out to fit the administration’s moral compass better than the plaintiffs.
Reyes, in an 83-page opinion that sounded a lot like "have you people met the Constitution?", pointed out that the Haitian TPS holders in front of her were not Noem’s cartoon villains, but a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s, a software engineer at a national bank, a toxicology lab assistant, a college economics major, and a full-time registered nurse. She also noted it was "substantially likely" that Noem’s decision was preordained by "hostility to nonwhite immigrants" – legalese for "this was a racist stunt in search of a justification."
For now, the termination is "null, void, and of no legal effect," which is also a solid working description of this administration’s moral authority. Meanwhile, the same crew has been busy canceling protections for about 600,000 Venezuelans, 60,000 people from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Nepal, more than 160,000 Ukrainians, and thousands from Afghanistan and Cameroon – all while insisting this is about "security" and not a mass deportation fantasy dreamed up by people who think the Statue of Liberty should carry an AR-15 and a homeowner’s association rulebook.
Attorneys for the Haitian TPS holders warned that if Noem’s termination stands, "people will almost certainly die" – from killing, disease, or starvation. The administration’s position, boiled down, is that this is an acceptable outcome so long as Fox & Friends gets a good segment out of it. The judiciary, for the moment, disagrees. Enjoy the stay of execution while it lasts.
#killing-democracy#racism#anti-immigration
trump discovers colombia exists, immediately wants to bomb it
Gustavo Petro, seen here shortly before flying to Washington to discuss how many US bombs it takes to qualify as a ‘strategic partnership’.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro is heading to the White House to meet Donald Trump, the man who recently said a military operation in Colombia "sounds good" like he’s ordering the sampler platter at Applebee’s. This follows months of Trump-approved US strikes on "alleged" drug boats, ICE behaving so brutally Petro compared them to "Nazi brigades", and Washington treating half the hemisphere as its personal backyard empire.
Now that the US has seized Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and cleared the way for American oil firms, suddenly there’s a very serious conversation about "stabilising" the Venezuelan-Colombian border — which, shockingly, turns out to mean protecting corporate assets from ELN guerrillas. Petro has already deployed 30,000 Colombian troops to the border, while Trump threatens to expand US strikes to land targets across the region, because nothing says "partnership" like your "ally" reserving the right to bomb your territory.
Enter Rand Paul, who apparently moonlights as the Empire’s marriage counselor, brokering a "cordial" phone call that did a supposed 180 for both sides. Washington calls it diplomacy; everyone else calls it what it is: the US dangling security cooperation and intelligence sharing while Trump keeps the option of regional airstrikes on the table to safeguard oil flows and reenact the Monroe Doctrine in 4K. But sure, we’re told this will be a "constructive conversation" — just ignore the drones, the navy, and the part where Colombia’s sovereignty is treated as a negotiable line item on an ExxonMobil spreadsheet.
#imperialism#national-security
uae buys half of trump’s crypto clown car, gets ai chips in the gift bag
Donald Trump smiles next to Emirati officials, presumably discussing geopolitics, national security, and the totally unrelated half-billion-dollar stake in his family’s crypto side hustle.
Donald Trump’s second-term ethics experiment continues apace, as we learn that a senior Emirati royal – Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, national security adviser and chair of a $1.5 trillion wealth fund – quietly dropped $500 million into the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, a few days before inauguration. For that bargain price, Tahnoon’s people got a 49% stake, $187m went to Trump entities, $31m to cofounder/Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, and the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause got tossed down a storm drain behind Mar-a-Lago.
The White House insists this is all fine because Trump is "not involved" in his businesses, which are merely run by his sons, Donald Jr and Eric – those famously independent paragons of fiduciary distance. Ethics experts, who apparently still believe words mean things, are calling it "beyond unprecedented" and a "blatant, disgraceful conflict of interest". Meanwhile, Trump has been busy hosting cozy White House dinners for Tahnoon and Emirati delegations and posting about the "long-standing ties and bonds of friendship" on Truth Social, which is a very polite way of saying thank you for the half-billion and the stablecoin partnership.
Then comes the part where policy just happens to line up perfectly with the president’s balance sheet. In May, World Liberty announces that the UAE’s AI investment arm will use its Trump-linked USD1 stablecoin to shove $2bn into Binance. Two weeks later, the Trump administration overrules prior US national security concerns and lets the UAE import 500,000 Nvidia AI chips, despite fears they’ll end up helping China. The Guardian can’t prove a quid pro quo, but when a foreign government buys nearly half your crypto company and then gets a massive, strategically sensitive tech deal, it’s less "we may never know" and more we absolutely know what this looks like.
Republicans, who currently control Congress, are the only ones who can investigate this mess, so naturally they’re too busy screaming about college DEI statements to notice the president running a live demo of "how to sell foreign policy for fun and crypto." Elizabeth Warren is out here yelling "corruption, plain and simple" while Trump’s lawyers insist the Emoluments Clause doesn’t apply because these are just "mere appearances" of business deals he "has no involvement" in – other than owning the company, appointing the envoy, meeting the royal, hosting the dinners, and signing the policy. Democracy may be hanging by a thread, but at least the stablecoin has great liquidity.
#forever-grifting#corruption
arsonist urges firefighters to hurry up already
Trump, having discovered that shutdowns are unpopular outside his rally merch tent, bravely calls for an end to the crisis his own party keeps manufacturing.
Trump is now publicly urging Congress to pass a deal to end the partial government shutdown "without delay," which is a bold message from the guy whose entire political brand is breaking the machinery of government and then demanding applause when he stops hitting it with a hammer. After spending years normalizing shutdowns as a bargaining chip and turning federal workers into unpaid extras in his political hostage drama, he’s suddenly discovered urgency.
Speaker Mike Johnson is out doing his best "don’t worry, dad’s got this" routine, saying he’s confident the shutdown will end by Tuesday, while Republicans simultaneously wage yet another performative fight over DHS funding. So we get the usual GOP two-step: use national security as a prop, shut down the government over it, then claim Democrats are the ones endangering Americans. Strong family values, if your family is a crime syndicate.
Meanwhile, Democrats like Ro Khanna are saying they’re a firm no on reopening the government under yet another bad DHS deal, because apparently someone in the building remembers that governing is not supposed to mean "sign whatever the hostage-takers demand." Trump gets to posture as the dealmaker begging for resolution, Republicans get to keep breaking things, and millions of Americans get to learn, again, that their paychecks and basic services are just background scenery in the MAGA cinematic universe.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump cuts $2bn, tosses $100m band-aid, calls it recovery
Robert F Kennedy Jr announces $100m in grants while standing in the smoking crater where the Trump administration parked $2bn in SAMHSA cuts and a third of its staff.
Robert F Kennedy Jr showed up at SAMHSA’s "Prevention Day" to announce $100m in grants for a shiny new program with a tortured acronym (STREETS), aimed at helping people experiencing homelessness and addiction move from "sidewalks" to "self-sufficiency". Sounds nice, until you remember that this is being rolled out by the same Trump administration that just abruptly canceled $2bn in SAMHSA grants last month and has laid off about a third of the agency’s 900 employees. Nothing says "we care about continuity of care" like firing your staff and yanking core funding, then tossing out a pilot project like a consolation prize from a rigged carnival game.
The $2bn cut was so egregious that even this Congress noticed, produced a spine for 24 hours, and forced the administration to reinstate the money. Meanwhile, the workforce that actually runs these programs has been decimated, leaving providers in a state of uncertainty, fear, and logistical chaos—which is also a decent working title for the Trump governance model. Into that mess, the White House now inserts a complex, integrated-care homelessness initiative and pretends the underlying sabotage of the public health infrastructure never happened.
Kennedy, who’s candid about his own addiction history, gave a moving speech about how the current system "cycles" people from sidewalks to ERs to jails and shelters, and how nobody takes responsibility for "the whole person". What he did not mention is that the administration he works for has spent the last year taking a chainsaw to the very agency now tasked with fixing that cycle. But don’t worry: the Trump team has a plan — more faith-based partnerships. The administration will expand eligibility for addiction-related grants to religious organizations because, as Kennedy put it, addiction is "above all, a spiritual disease".
So after destabilizing secular, evidence-based infrastructure, the White House is now routing public money toward ideologically friendly, faith-based providers under the banner of "reconnecting people to community". It’s a neat trick: manufacture a crisis in mental health and addiction services, then step in with a smaller pot of money and a sermon, and call it the Great American Recovery. The streets stay the same; the grift just gets better branding.
#forever-grifting#healthcare
kushner launches genocide chic real estate startup: ‘new gaza’
Jared Kushner, freshly promoted from failed peace envoy to genocide-era real estate pitchman, explains to Davos billionaires how you, too, can turn a flattened enclave into a waterfront investment opportunity.
Jared Kushner has emerged from whatever hedge-fund-scented cave he lives in to unveil “New Gaza”, a Trump administration blueprint that turns a devastated, densely packed strip of land into a glossy brochure for lofts, offshore rigs, and “advanced industrial zones.” Two years of war, a UN commission finding that Israel committed genocide, $18 billion in destroyed infrastructure, and 2.2 million displaced Palestinians are recast as a ground-floor investment opportunity. Kushner assures Davos that they’ve already started “removing the rubble and doing some of the demolition,” which is a poetic way of saying: the bombs were phase one of the development plan.
This miracle vision of peace-through-property-flipping rests entirely on Trump’s ceasefire deal: Hamas must fully disarm, Israel withdraws in phases, and reconstruction only happens in areas where Palestinians are either disarmed into submission or already cleared out and under Israeli military control. The plan is almost impressively vague on who actually gets housing, how land deeds work, or what happens to families currently living in the buildings Kushner wants to bulldoze in central and western Gaza City. But it’s crystal clear on one thing: Israeli real estate investor Yakir Gabay helped craft the scheme and sits with Kushner on the White House–appointed Gaza Executive Board, which will report to Trump’s Orwellian Board of Peace. So Palestinians may not get property rights, but at least the investor class gets a board seat.
Critics, including people NPR spoke to in Gaza, say the plan effectively erases Gaza and replaces it with a privatized “destination” layered over the ruins of a massacred population. The administration’s answer to a genocide finding isn’t accountability or self-determination; it’s park-lined neighborhoods, floor-to-ceiling windows, and an offshore oil and gas rig slapped on top of a mass grave. Call it the Trump Doctrine: turn every catastrophe into a branding opportunity, outsource justice to developers, and let the people whose lives were destroyed fight over whatever’s left in the footnotes—assuming they were ever consulted at all.
#imperialism#forever-grifting
trump loses another war against the scary windmills
Artist’s impression of the grave national security threat: some wind turbines standing 30 miles offshore, menacing radar screens and the delicate ego of one very loud golf enthusiast.
The Trump administration’s crusade against offshore wind just took another legal faceplant. A federal judge cleared Ørsted’s Sunrise Wind project off New York to move forward, making it the fifth and final offshore wind farm to get court permission to ignore Trump’s December "national security" freeze. Apparently, when you arbitrarily halt multibillion‑dollar infrastructure because the ex-president thinks turbines are ugly, judges eventually notice.
Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that losing access to specialized installation vessels and delaying construction is "irreparable harm"—a concept that somehow eludes the people currently running the Interior Department, who are still hiding behind classified "radar interference" claims while refusing to explain anything in public. Ørsted, which has already sunk more than $7bn into Sunrise Wind, is resuming work immediately but keeping its lawsuit alive, because nothing says stable investment climate like having to sue the U.S. government every time Trump remembers he hates windmills.
Meanwhile, analysts warn that even with the construction freeze lifted, the project now faces a "very difficult and turbulent period" thanks to ongoing Trump obstruction. Sunrise Wind is already about 45% complete and is supposed to power nearly 600,000 homes starting as soon as October—assuming the administration doesn’t invent a new emergency about how offshore turbines might be sending secret love letters to Chinese weather balloons. American energy policy, once again, is being made at the intersection of personal vendetta and executive overreach.
#killing-democracy#anti-science
trump’s weaponization czar quietly shuffled to the pardon factory
Ed Martin, seen here auditioning for the role of Chief Revenge Officer, before being reassigned to the presidential absolution punch card desk.
The man Trump put in charge of the Justice Department’s "Weaponization Working Group" — a special little revenge squad tasked with going after prosecutors who dared investigate Trump and his buddies — is suddenly not in that job anymore, NBC reports. Ed Martin, a Jan. 6 apologist who openly promised to "name" and "shame" people the DOJ couldn’t actually charge with crimes, is apparently no longer leading the group. Which is awkward, because publicly smearing non-charged individuals is a blatant violation of long-standing DOJ norms, but an excellent fit for Trump’s justice-by-Truth-Social model.
Don’t worry, though: Martin hasn’t been exiled, he’s just been promoted to a different part of the loyalty rewards program. A DOJ spokesman says he "continues to do a great job" as pardon attorney — you know, the guy who helps decide which friends, allies, and useful political martyrs get official forgiveness from the same government they tried to overturn. Martin was already wearing both hats after Republicans balked at making him U.S. attorney for D.C., so Trump simply made him pardon attorney and director of the weaponization group by executive order, while handing the actual D.C. U.S. attorney job to former Fox host Jeanine Pirro. Because if you’re going to dismantle rule of law, you might as well let cable news alumni and activist cronies drive.
The working group’s mission reads like Trump’s personal enemies list: former Special Counsel Jack Smith, any federal cooperation with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg over the hush money case, Jan. 6 prosecutions, and cases against anti-abortion activists. It’s a state-run grievance committee masquerading as oversight. Now the guy who wanted to run public shaming campaigns against people he couldn’t indict is parked in the pardon office, while no one will say who’s currently steering the weaponization ship. Fascism, but make it HR-compliant.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
