guy who never read the constitution now doing constitutional review of war powers
Trump, moments before explaining that checks and balances are also 'very unfair' and probably illegal.
Trump, a man whose constitutional scholarship begins and ends with the words "Article II lets me do whatever I want," has now announced he considers the War Powers Act "unconstitutional." That’s the 1973 law where Congress tried, in its naïve post-Vietnam optimism, to gently remind future presidents they are not actually emperors with aircraft carriers.
This is not a legal argument so much as a vibes-based coup memo: if a statute limits Trump’s ability to unilaterally start or escalate wars, it must be illegitimate by definition. Why bother with Congress declaring war when you can just declare Congress irrelevant? Separation of powers is being treated like a suggestion on a BuzzFeed quiz, not the foundation of the republic.
So we now have a president on tape saying the branch that controls the purse and declares war doesn’t get to put guardrails on his military adventures. That’s not a constitutional theory, that’s the plot of a mid-budget coup thriller where the Joint Chiefs start looking real nervous. But sure, let’s roll the dice on whether the guy who thought nuking hurricanes was smart also gets unilateral, unreviewable war authority.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
europe must pay for greenland, apparently
Trump and Ursula von der Leyen shake hands like two people who both know one of them is about to light the trade deal on fire.
Donald Trump has decided Europe needs a little more "freedom" in the form of a 25% tariff on EU cars and trucks, because he says they're "not complying" with a trade deal he can't be bothered to explain. The same EU that just spent months wrestling his tantrum over annexing Greenland into a legal clause that literally says they can walk away if the U.S. starts threatening their territorial integrity. Totally normal stuff to have to write into a trade agreement with your supposed closest ally.
While grown-ups in Brussels were trying to sort out steel and aluminium details, Trump skipped straight to holding the European auto industry hostage, because if there's one thing he loves, it's an economic gun pointed at someone else's head. He’s now telling European carmakers they can avoid the tariffs by moving production to the U.S., like a mob boss offering "protection" to the shops he just finished smashing. And yes, this is the same guy whose big "Liberation Day" tariff binge under IEEPA just got ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, with companies now lining up for refunds — but don't worry, this new round of economic roulette is under a "different legal process," so what could possibly go wrong?
Trump is bragging that there has "never been anything like what is happening in America today," and for once he’s right. You don’t usually see a president simultaneously losing a Supreme Court case on illegal tariffs while launching a fresh trade broadside at an entire continent because they were insufficiently enthusiastic about his Greenland cosplay. Industrial policy by tantrum is now the backbone of U.S. trade strategy.
#trade-war#killing-democracy
trump toys with buying spirit airlines, discovers government is his favorite private equity fund
Artist’s rendering of the Trump administration’s airline rescue plan: a Spirit jet duct-taped to a gold-plated 757, both headed straight for a taxpayer-funded crater.
Spirit Airlines is circling the drain after running out of cash, failing to cut a deal with creditors, and discovering that Donald Trump’s idea of a “rescue” is mostly just saying the word “bailout” into a microphone and wandering off. The administration loudly floated a $500m federal loan and even mused about the government buying the airline outright so it could later “sell it for a profit,” because when you think disciplined long-term capital strategy, you obviously think Trump and the federal government playing day-trader with a discount carrier that charges you extra to have knees.
Instead of admitting the airline business is a cartel with wings, the White House helpfully blamed the Biden administration for blocking Spirit’s $3.8bn merger with JetBlue on antitrust grounds, insisting Spirit would be “on a much firmer financial footing” if regulators had just let two struggling airlines fuse into one bigger, more efficient bankruptcy. Now Spirit looks headed for liquidation, which experts warn will mean less competition and higher fares, while Delta’s CEO calmly notes that rich people are still flying and he can keep jacking up prices. Meanwhile, a coalition of other budget airlines is pitching Trump on a $2.5bn bailout, because once the president openly suggests the government should buy an airline like it’s a golf course, every low-cost carrier suddenly discovers its inner welfare queen.
The administration, of course, is treating the federal treasury like a private slush fund for whichever executives can whine the loudest about oil prices. Regulatory policy is now basically: if you’re a big carrier, you ride out the storm on premium fares; if you’re a struggling budget airline, you line up outside the White House to see if the guy who bankrupted a casino wants to run your balance sheet with taxpayer money. Limited government, but only until it can buy an airline on sale.
#forever-grifting#money
president golf cart begs pga to forgive saudi-funded deserters (who play at his clubs)
Trump thoughtfully weighs the national interest, then remembers LIV is paying to use his 14th fairway.
The sitting US president has once again bravely stepped up to defend the most oppressed people in America: multimillionaire golfers who took Saudi blood money and now want back into the PGA Tour after the Public Investment Fund started tightening the tap. From the Oval Office — the place where previous presidents dealt with, say, wars and pandemics — Trump mused dreamily about Rory vs Bryson and Rahm vs Scheffler, like a kid fantasy-booking WrestleMania, and confidently predicted that "they’ll all be back on tour and it’ll be great."
A small detail the White House etiquette guides forgot to cover: LIV’s next event is at Trump National in Virginia, and Harman is speaking from Trump National Doral in Miami. So the president is effectively doing a televised customer retention pitch for a breakaway league that literally pays him to use his golf courses. State power meets pro shop loyalty program. While actual PGA loyalists talk about consequences, resentment, and lawsuits, Trump’s contribution to the national conversation is: please be nice to the guys who helped Saudi sportswash murder and also keep my tee sheets full.
Players like Brian Harman and Jordan Spieth are out here gingerly debating penalties, “bad blood,” and antitrust scars, while the president reduces the whole thing to "time heals all wounds" and "they’re playing at my course in two weeks." It’s a perfect Trump-era morality play: ethics are negotiable, the presidency is a marketing arm, and the only thing more important than American institutions is ensuring that every future golf broadcast has a discreet aerial shot of a Trump logo on the clubhouse.
#forever-grifting#corruption
doj now filing court briefs in trump caps-lock
The Department of Justice, now featuring a giant Trump banner so nobody confuses it with a place where laws are applied equally.
The Department of Justice has officially completed its transformation from "independent law enforcement agency" into "press office for one very aggrieved Florida man." How do we know? Because Trump’s own Truth Social word salad is now being copy-pasted directly into official DOJ court filings to defend his new East Wing ballroom, complete with random capitalization and the ever-scientific diagnosis of "TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME." Lady Justice’s motto is still carved on the building, but her face has been replaced by a multi-story MAGA banner like a failed Black Mirror pitch about fascism sponsored by Home Depot.
Into this clown court saunters the re-indictment of James Comey, whose alleged crime against the state was … posting seashells on Instagram spelling out "86 47." Normal people recognize that as "remove 47." Trump’s DOJ, led by aspiring permanent lackey Todd Blanche and backed by FBI director Kash Patel, has decided this is actually a coded assassination threat, because when you’ve purged 3,000 career lawyers and thousands of staff, all that’s left are people who think Merriam-Webster is a deep-state hitman. Comey’s first indictment was tossed because the prosecutor was illegally appointed, but rather than take the hint, Team Retribution just found someone even more obedient.
The result is a justice system where Trump’s enemies get felony charges over beach art, while his loyalists get promotions, pardons, and probably a complimentary ballroom drink coupon. William Barr — yes, that William Barr — now reads like a tragic hero by comparison because at least he wouldn’t torch the Constitution to validate the Big Lie. Today’s DOJ hiring standard is simple: zero relevant experience, infinite willingness to criminalize dissent and cosplay Putin. The law isn’t blind anymore; it’s just squinting at Trump’s Instagram feed and asking how it can help.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
doj drops hotel casing video from america’s failed banana republic reboot
Surveillance still of a suspect wandering a hotel, helpfully illustrating what happens when a country treats political violence as a talking point instead of a red line.
The DOJ has released new surveillance footage of the suspected would-be assassin calmly casing a hotel like he’s shopping for throw pillows instead of vantage points. Because nothing says "functioning democracy" quite like needing a full CSI episode every time the political calendar hits a major event.
This latest video is part of the government’s attempt to reconstruct how someone allegedly tried to turn a high-profile gathering into a ballistic Yelp review. Meanwhile, the same political ecosystem that marinated in stochastic terrorism for years will now spend weeks pretending to be shocked — shocked — that a culture of violent rhetoric and hero-worship of "toughness" occasionally produces exactly this outcome.
So the DOJ combs through hotel hallways frame by frame while the broader political class shrugs at the radicalization pipeline humming right along on cable, social media, and campaign stages. We get grainy footage of a guy scouting exits; we don’t get accountability for the people who spent years telling their followers that their enemies are traitors, invaders, and existential threats. But sure, let’s act mystified that someone took them literally.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#trumps-america
trump doj demands america’s voter rolls, red states suddenly discover ‘states’ rights’ again
Trump’s DOJ, seen here trying to download democracy into a corrupted DHS spreadsheet and wondering why even red states keep hitting ‘deny request’.
The Trump Department of Justice has decided that if you can’t win people’s votes, you can always try to own their voter file. DOJ has sued 30 states and DC to get full voter registration lists, including driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers, so they can feed them into DHS’s notoriously error-soaked SAVE database — a system so bad it basically generates false "non-citizens" the way Trump generates lies on Truth Social. Courts in California, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, Arizona, and Michigan have already smacked this down, but the administration is still lumbering forward like a zombie Kris Kobach commission with more subpoenas.
The punchline: even some of the reddest states are backing away from this authoritarian clown car. Utah, West Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky, and Idaho — all Trump country — are refusing to hand over voters’ sensitive data, citing that pesky Constitution, state privacy laws, and the minor issue that DOJ hasn’t articulated any legal basis beyond "because Trump thinks the election was stolen". Internal DOJ emails and courtroom statements admit the plan is to ship the data to DHS and run it through SAVE, which voting experts warn could be used to purge eligible voters and challenge results in the 2026 midterms. So yes, the federal government is suing states for not helping it pre-rig elections.
Republican election officials are now doing the world’s saddest tightrope act: publicly praising Trump while quietly refusing to give him the tools to wreck their own voters’ lives. West Virginia’s secretary of state says he won’t break state law or hand over protected personal data; Utah’s lieutenant governor says DOJ has no right to hoard private information on law-abiding citizens; Idaho’s secretary of state politely points out that the feds already leaked Social Security data and maybe shouldn’t be trusted with a national identity theft starter pack. Meanwhile, at least 12 GOP-led states have already rolled over and delivered complete voter lists, proving there’s still a strong market for helping Trump undermine elections in the name of "election integrity".
So the Trump administration is suing states to seize voter data, planning to run it through a broken federal database that flags citizens as foreigners, all rooted in Trump’s fantasy of a stolen election. It’s not about finding fraud; it’s about manufacturing it on paper so they can cry foul when real voters show up. American democracy: now with a federal voter-suppression API.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump discovers you can just hit 'pause' on the constitution
Pete Hegseth explains that the War Powers Act doesn’t apply if you close your eyes and say “ceasefire” three times into a camera on Fox & Friends.
Day 60 of the Iran war, which is when the War Powers Act says the president has to either get Congress’s permission or knock it off, and the Trump administration has chosen a bold third option: declare that time is a flat circle and the clock doesn’t count if you say the word "ceasefire" loudly enough. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth assured a Senate committee that the 60‑day clock has "paused, or stops" because hostilities have "terminated" — a fascinating legal theory that appears to be based on vibes, Fox greenroom chatter, and absolutely not the text of the law.
Over in the Senate, Republicans once again body‑blocked a war powers resolution from Adam Schiff that would have required Congress to actually authorize further military action. It’s the sixth failed attempt, because why would Congress want to do that whole "declare war" thing the Constitution gave them when they can just outsource it to Donald Trump’s mood swings? A couple of GOP senators, Susan Collins and Rand Paul, remembered they technically have a job, while John Fetterman decided the imperial presidency could use another protein shake.
Meanwhile, the side quests are pure Trump‑era chaos: Jeanine Pirro, now the top federal prosecutor in DC, released edited security footage from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting, because nothing reassures a jittery public like selective evidence handling by a former TV judge. The Secret Service director then admitted the alleged gunman was actually stopped by a metal-detector shipping box, meaning the most effective security measure in Washington is accidental workplace clutter. And just to round out the strongman cosplay, Trump is threatening to yank troops from Spain, Italy, and maybe Germany, because allied leaders had the nerve to say his Iran adventure is humiliating. If you squint, you can almost see a foreign policy doctrine under all this — it’s just mostly retribution and sulking.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump turns nato into his own personal protection racket
Trump studies a map of Europe while asking which bases he’s allowed to repossess if the allies won’t join his unauthorized war-of-the-month club.
Donald Trump, now fully committed to speed‑running the collapse of the postwar order, is threatening to yank U.S. troops out of Italy and Spain because they won’t let him use their bases as a drive‑thru for his “illegal war” on Iran. Italy refused to turn its Sicily bases into a weapons transit lounge, Spain said no to using its joint bases for strikes, and suddenly 60+ years of alliance cooperation is reduced to, “Italy has not been of any help to us and Spain has been horrible, absolutely horrible.” Foreign policy by Yelp review.
Italy’s defence minister patiently explained that no, Italian-linked ships weren’t sneaking through the Strait of Hormuz, and yes, they’ve actually offered to help protect shipping. The U.S. military even appreciated it, which is awkward for Trump’s narrative that everyone is mean to him. Relations with Rome are so bad that even Giorgia Meloni, far-right bestie and Pope-insulter in training, got blasted by Trump for not joining his war, prompting him to rage‑post that “Italy wasn’t there for us, we won’t be there for them!” on Truth Social like a teenager subtweeting their ex.
Spain, meanwhile, is being punished for the high crime of insisting on “international law” and refusing to be complicit in a war its prime minister calls bad for the world and contrary to Spain’s values. Trump has already threatened a full trade embargo and is now flirting with pulling troops from Rota and Morón, two bases that just happen to be central to U.S. power projection in Europe, Africa, and the Med. He’s also "absolutely without question" considering pulling the U.S. out of NATO, a move blocked only by a 2024 law that assumed, correctly, that one day a president would try to blow up the alliance out of spite.
So NATO’s founding principle has evolved from collective defense to: join Trump’s illegal war, hand over your bases, and pretend his Hormuz fan fiction is real, or he’ll threaten to dismantle the security architecture of Europe on live TV. The alliance used to deter Russia; now it’s mostly trying to deter the guy in the Oval Office.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
great leader demands his speeches be aired in full, like all free countries do
Trump, patiently explaining that a truly free press is one that airs his every word, uncut, uninterrupted, and unquestioned.
Trump sat for a CBS interview and then, through his press secretary, basically said: air the whole thing or we sue. Not "here’s why your edit is wrong", but a straight-up legal threat if they dared exercise editorial judgment. Newsrooms are now quietly asking not "what makes this better journalism?" but "what keeps us out of Trump’s lawsuit-of-the-week folder". Exactly what the First Amendment’s supposed to prevent: the government muscling its way into the edit bay.
The new trick is to hijack consumer protection laws and call normal editing "deceptive" or "fraud". Trump has already gone after CBS, the Des Moines Register, the BBC, and even ran a zombie libel case through Trump Media just to bleed outlets of time and money. The cases are garbage, but the costs are real—and every settlement or dropped segment gets repackaged as "proof" the media are crooks who got caught. It’s lawfare as programming note: air Dear Leader in full, or enjoy your subpoena.
This isn’t about transparency; it’s about turning the American press into C‑SPAN for autocrats. China runs speeches in full. Russia plays extended, unedited rambling from officials. Turkey uses legal chokeholds to neuter editorial oversight. Trump’s pushing the same logic: the media should transmit, not interpret. Force outlets to dump raw, unedited rants on audiences until they tune out, and suddenly propaganda looks a lot like "just asking questions".
So as World Press Freedom Day rolls around, yes, there are the obvious threats—licenses yanked, journalists arrested, reporters attacked. But the quieter attack is here too: sue them until they’re so scared of "deceptive editing" they stop editing altogether. A press that can’t cut, frame, or contextualize isn’t "more fair" or "more transparent". It’s just a very expensive loudspeaker for whoever’s most willing to sue.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump speedruns election subversion on new game+
A dramatic reenactment of the Trump administration’s election policy process: first, remove the brakes; second, blindfold the driver; third, insist the crash is stolen-car fraud.
In 2020, the only thing standing between Donald Trump and an outright stolen election was a ragtag coalition of Republican appointees who liked power but not prison. They told him no, the votes were real, the fraud claims were garbage, and the Constitution was still, regrettably for him, a thing. Fast-forward less than 18 months into Term 2, and Trump’s solution is simple: remove the people who followed the law, replace them with people who think the Kraken was underutilized.
The administration has pushed out at least 75 career officials across DHS, DOJ, and other agencies who worked on election integrity, and swapped them for about two dozen loyalists — many of whom literally tried to overturn 2020 or run in those circles. First on the chopping block: CISA, the agency that dared to say the last election wasn’t hacked. The "Rumor Control" team that debunked his lies? Put on leave, then fired or exiled, while DHS leaders suddenly discovered that protecting elections is "electioneering" and not, you know, defending critical infrastructure.
Meanwhile, over at law enforcement, FBI Director Kash Patel nuked the public corruption team and the foreign influence unit, because if you don’t look for crimes or foreign meddling, you can’t find any, and that’s basically compliance, right? DOJ’s Civil Rights Division voting section has been hollowed out and refilled with conservative lawyers who previously tried to help overturn 2020. Into this vacuum marches "Team America" — an actual nickname, because subtlety is for regimes that aren’t trying to federally micromanage voting. Led by DHS assistant secretary David Harvilicz and election-fraud fabulist Heather Honey, the crew is using Homeland Security tools and Trump’s 2025 executive order to dig for "noncitizen voters" and feed an election-denial base that now gets private briefings straight from their friends in government.
So when Trump boasts about his plan to "take over" the midterms, it’s not just bluster; it’s a blueprint. Tear out the guardrails, stack the agencies with true believers, and give fringe conspiracy theorists badges, clearances, and access to voter data. The federal government is being retrofitted from "protect elections" to "protect Trump’s narrative about elections" — and once the lies come stamped with an official seal, undoing the damage to public trust will make 2020 look like the warm-up act.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump signs tax cuts, sends poor people a homework assignment for their lungs
Trump proudly autographing a bill that showers permanent gifts on the rich while sending Medicaid recipients a strongly worded suggestion to get a fourth job if they’d like to keep seeing a doctor.
Trump’s 2025 "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (yes, that’s the real name, not a parody from a failed SNL sketch) finally kicks in for Medicaid in Nebraska, and the experiment is going exactly as designed: people who already work multiple jobs are terrified they’re about to lose health coverage because they can’t keep up with the paperwork.
Instead of employers being required to offer health insurance, low-wage workers like Schmeeka Simpson — juggling three jobs with zero benefits — now have to prove to the government they’re working enough, in the right way, with the right documentation, on the right schedule, through a system that already knocks people off food assistance over "technical problems." Republicans call it "personal responsibility"; everyone who’s ever tried to navigate a benefits renewal website calls it "I guess I just won’t go to the doctor anymore."
The big conservative innovation here isn’t getting people into jobs — Schmeeka already has more of those than most House Republicans have coherent policy ideas. It’s using red tape as a quiet budget cut: design a Medicaid maze so tedious and glitchy that thousands of eligible people fall off coverage without a single vote to "take away health care" ever hitting C-SPAN. The rich get permanent tax cuts; the poor get a pop quiz every month on whether they’re sick enough but also working enough to deserve insulin.
#healthcare#killing-democracy
no kings, just one very whiny emperor
Demonstrators march toward the White House to remind the guy inside that the job title is president, not Sun King-in-Chief.
Across the country, workers, students, and anyone who has looked at their paycheck and then at Trump's billionaire cabinet are walking off the job for May Day, under the banner "May Day Strong" and the already-iconic "No Kings" protests. The message: the United States was not actually founded so a gold-plated landlord and his donor class could run the government like a Mar-a-Lago VIP list.
Instead of quietly accepting that the country is now a subsidiary of Trump Corp and Goldman Sachs LLC, more than 500 unions, student groups, and community organizations are organizing a boycott of work, school, and shopping. The National Education Association is helping lead the charge, pointing out that while Trump & friends shower tax cuts and contracts on billionaires, basic things like public education funding are being carved up like it's the appetizer course at a hedge fund retreat.
Students with the Sunrise Movement are planning a massive school "strike"—because if you're already living under a creeping authoritarian cult that denies climate science, you may as well skip algebra to protest fascism and demand a Green New Deal. In North Carolina, where teacher pay and per-pupil spending are buried somewhere near the Earth’s mantle, at least 20 school districts are shutting down as educators, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers head to Raleigh to ask why there’s always money for billionaires, border militarization, and vanity walls, but never for textbooks or working school buses.
Charlotte’s school board has literally preemptively canceled class because so many staff are expected to walk out, which is a pretty solid indicator that Trump’s "run the country like a business" experiment has gone about as well as his casinos. May Day used to be about winning the 8-hour day; now it’s about reminding the White House that this is still a republic, not a reality show monarchy with executive orders instead of rose ceremonies.
#killing-democracy#oligarchy#fascism
retirement community accidentally notices they live in a monarchy now
Behold: the royal motorcade of The Villages, where the coup is sponsored by Titleist and runs on premium unleaded and Fox News.
The Villages, America’s favorite gated fantasy camp for boomers, is discovering that when you invite Donald Trump back to the White House, you also invite him back into your HOA. The world’s largest retirement community, normally obsessed with golf carts and cover bands, is now hosting a presidential rally so he can "champion his economic policies" before the midterms – because governing is for suckers and every day is campaign day in Trump’s America.
Residents are quietly admitting that politics has turned social life into a minefield, where asking about someone’s dog is safer than mentioning democracy. A massive "No Kings" protest pulled in nearly 7,000 people, which is a pretty strong sign that some of the folks who once thought Trump was just a fun TV golf buddy have started to notice the whole strongman-who-never-leaves vibe. Democrats are forming their own pickleball teams just to escape the screaming matches, while Republicans scramble for rally tickets like it’s Springsteen in ’78.
The whole place runs on golf carts, so even protesting the president requires an hour-long, 20-mph pilgrimage across this sprawling conservative theme park. But the real traffic jam isn’t on the roads; it’s in basic conversation. When retirees in a meticulously planned utopia are suddenly organizing under banners like "No Kings," that’s not just neighborhood drama – that’s a focus group report on what happens when a democracy lets one guy keep treating the presidency like his personal throne.
#killing-democracy#fascism
60 minutes, 0 backbone
Sharyn Alfonsi, moments before discovering that in 2026 the real editorial policy at CBS is: "all the news that won’t upset the guy with his finger on the DOJ."
At CBS News, veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi just committed the modern newsroom’s gravest sin: insisting that a factually correct story about Venezuelan migrants being dumped into El Salvador’s notorious Cecot prison should air without being rewritten to flatter the Trump administration. CBS News editor Bari Weiss — because of course it’s Bari Weiss — allegedly "spiked" the piece until it included more White House spin, then finally aired a barely changed version a month later, minus an on-air Trump official. So the story was fine, but the timing needed to wait until corporate and political handlers finished hyperventilating.
Alfonsi used her Ridenhour prize speech to describe what’s really going on: "the spread of corporate meddling and editorial fear" where executives ask not "Is it true?" but "Is it good for business?" Translation: is it good for ad revenue, stock price, and keeping Trump from rage-posting their names in ALL CAPS. She refused to change the piece, worried that viewers would notice that the original version accidentally aired in Canada and realize CBS had caved. Because the audience is, tragically for management, literate.
Her reward for basic journalistic integrity? Her job is now in jeopardy, she wakes up to headlines speculating about her firing, her bosses are furious, and someone even swatted her house after the segment was delayed. But sure, the real threat to democracy is college kids with protest signs. Alfonsi and former 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens — who already quit over corporate interference — are getting courage awards while the network that built its reputation on grilling presidents is now terrified of losing "access" and catching a frivolous lawsuit. The line between newsroom and PR shop is getting so thin you need a microscope to see it.
So we’ve arrived at the logical endpoint of Trump-era media capture: a flagship investigative show demands more administration talking points before it will air a story about a hell-prison, while the reporter who insists on telling the truth gets treated like the problem. Free press, meet free market. One of you is not walking out of this alive.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump punishes fema for wanting fewer dead people
FEMA HQ, where warning about another Katrina gets you benched and cutting tornado tracking is just another day at the office.
Fourteen FEMA employees just got released from Trump-world detention — also known as eight months of "administrative leave" — for the crime of signing a public letter warning that gutting disaster preparedness might, stay with me here, kill a lot of people. They dared to write the "Katrina declaration" on the 20th anniversary of Katrina, pointing out that hollowing out FEMA and shredding mitigation programs is a great way to relive 2005, but with more climate change and fewer staff. The administration's response? Yank them off the job in 24 hours and call it a day for whistleblower protection.
The new DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin, apparently read the part of the law that says you can’t openly retaliate against whistleblowers and decided to at least pretend to care. He reinstated the workers, loosened Kristi Noem’s $100,000 micromanagement chokehold on FEMA spending, and started releasing over $1bn in backlogged grants that Noem had been sitting on like a vindictive dragon who hates floodplain maps. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions in preparedness funding have already been cut, a third of FEMA’s full-time staff is gone, and the agency is stumbling into hurricane, heat, and fire seasons like it pregamed with bleach injections and Facebook memes.
The body count is not theoretical. Aid to Hurricane Helene survivors was severely delayed, it took over 72 hours to authorize federal search-and-rescue after the Guadalupe River flood killed more than 135 people, and tornado-hit communities had to respond without key tracking tools because a $200,000 FEMA contract just… lapsed. But Trump is still sermonizing that states should do more disaster response on their own, while his budget slashes state and local preparedness grants by another $1.3bn. So yes, the whistleblowers are back at their desks, feeling "vindicated". Too bad the policy is still: if you warn that people will die, we ignore you until they do.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
tsa bravely protects america from anti-putin oscar
Pavel Talankin’s dangerous gold statuette, moments before TSA realized it posed a grave threat to overhead bins and authoritarian sensitivities alike.
At JFK, the Transportation Security Administration has heroically prevented an 8.5lb gold statue from brutally hijacking a Lufthansa flight. The Oscar belonging to Pavel Talankin, co-director of the documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin, was seized because agents decided the statuette was a weapon. Talankin, who has flown with the same Oscar multiple times without issue, was told he had to check it under the plane. No hard case? No problem, said the brain trust: Lufthansa handed him a cardboard box and some bubble wrap, and off the Oscar went to the cargo hold.
Naturally, the box then mysteriously vanished somewhere between New York and Frankfurt. Lufthansa can’t find it, despite a ticket number, and Talankin’s award for exposing Putin’s propaganda machine has been disappeared faster than an inconvenient critic in Moscow. Co-director David Borenstein publicly wondered whether a famous actor or fluent English speaker would’ve been treated the same way. Given that Russia has already banned the film for promoting "negative attitudes" about the government and the war in Ukraine, it’s nice to see US airport security stepping up to do its own small part for transnational authoritarian vibes.
The film itself is about how you lose a country through "countless, small, little acts of complicity." TSA appears to have taken that as a how-to manual. Instead of protecting a dissident’s symbol of free expression from a regime that bombs schools, US security officials decided the real threat was… a pointy golden man. Putin censors the movie; TSA loses the Oscar. Truly a global partnership for security.
#lawlessness#killing-democracy
trump names iraq’s prime minister, pretends it’s democracy
Trump, on the phone with Baghdad, explaining that Iraq is fully sovereign and free to choose any prime minister he personally approves of.
Donald Trump got on the phone with Iraq’s new prime minister-designate Ali al-Zaidi to offer congratulations, an invitation to Washington, and the diplomatic equivalent of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. He then rushed to Truth Social to proclaim the start of a “tremendous new chapter” of prosperity and stability, because nothing says respect for sovereignty like the U.S. president publicly blessing a foreign leader’s appointment like he’s handing out rose ceremonies on reality TV.
None of this is subtle. Iraq’s dominant Shiite bloc originally wanted Nouri al-Maliki, but Trump loudly threatened to cut off aid to Iraq if they picked the guy he didn’t like. After some posturing, they magically “compromised” on al-Zaidi, a businessman who conveniently chairs a bank that was previously barred from dollar transactions under U.S. pressure, but somehow never quite made it to the sanctions list. Now that he’s the chosen one, Trump is eager to reboot relations with a man whose business and investment ties might prove highly productive in all the ways that never quite make it into official readouts.
Iraq’s constitution says parliament gets to confirm the new prime minister, but Trump has already pre-graded the exam and posted the answer key online. While Iraq tries to navigate the fallout from the Iran war and an oil-choked economy, the U.S. is busy turning its aid spigot into a remote-control governance device. Call it “democracy assistance”: you get the democracy, Trump gets the assistance.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
king charles discovers trump’s off switch: scotch
King Charles leaves Washington having discovered that US trade policy can be rewritten with a state visit, a speech about alliances, and the promise of better whisky photos at Mar-a-Lago.
Donald Trump has announced he’s lifting US tariffs on Scotch whisky, not because of a coherent trade strategy or economic analysis, but because the King and Queen of the United Kingdom were very nice to him at the White House. After slapping broad tariffs on British goods in 2025, Trump is now bragging on Truth Social that Charles and Camilla “got me to do something nobody else was able to do, without hardly even asking!”—which is less a flex and more a confession that US trade policy is just whatever flattery-based roulette wheel is spinning in his head that day.
Rather than admit his tariffs helped tank Scotch exports and cost the industry an estimated £4m a week, Trump framed this as a benevolent royal favor to "two very important Industries within Scotland and Kentucky" and their magical wooden barrels. The Scotch Whisky Association is understandably relieved to stop paying for Trump’s economic cosplay, but the bigger message is clear: if you want stable, rules-based trade with the United States, forget diplomats and trade reps—send a monarch, pour him a drink, compliment his crowd sizes, and watch a 10% tariff disappear like Trump’s attention span during a briefing.
So the United States now has a de facto trade doctrine: tariffs go on when Trump is mad, tariffs come off when someone important pats him on the head and calls him special. King Charles used his congressional speech to gently nudge Trump back toward “traditional alliances”; Trump responded by proving that the special relationship is alive and well—as long as it comes with a royal visit and a branded bottle.
#trade-war#full-stupid#money
trump kidnaps a president, american airlines gets the loyalty points
Nothing weird here, just the transport minister smiling over a toy plane while everyone politely ignores the part where US helicopters were recently the main airline in this airspace.
US–Venezuela relations have entered what officials are calling “a new chapter,” which is a poetic way of saying: now that Trump’s special forces snatched Nicolás Maduro in a two-and-a-half-hour night raid, we can finally get back to selling plane tickets.
Nearly four months after US attack helicopters were carving up Caracas airspace to grab a sitting head of state for a narco-terrorism trial in New York, an American Airlines jet glided into Simón Bolívar airport so executives and diplomats could declare a “historic milestone” and hand each other tiny toy planes. The US chargé d’affaires credited the flight to Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s three-phase plan for post-Maduro Venezuela: stabilize, reboot the economy, and eventually maybe remember what the word “democracy” is supposed to mean. Totally normal foreign policy: regime change by commando raid, followed by a ribbon-cutting at the duty-free.
The same airport that once symbolized mass exodus, repression, and journalists getting interrogated is now the backdrop for American Airlines staff waving Venezuelan flags in front of a balloon arch, while a saxophonist plays “Hotel California” — because nothing says “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave” like celebrating a US military snatch-op with soft jazz. Officials on both sides gushed about “reconnecting our peoples” and “economic opening,” carefully skipping the part where Washington just demonstrated it can abduct foreign leaders and then send in the travel agents. It’s not diplomacy, it’s imperialism with a frequent flyer program.
#imperialism#national-security#killing-democracy
