trump filibusters america with 107 minutes of racist mad libs
Donald Trump delivers a 107-minute State of the Union cosplay as king, while the actual state of the union tries to fact-check him from the cheap seats.
Donald Trump showed up to the House chamber clearly hoping for a coronation and instead got a 107-minute fact-checking intervention from the people he keeps trying to deport. He strutted in like a budget medieval monarch, Republicans lining up for their chance to touch the holy spray tan, only to have Rep. Al Green greet him with a sign reading: “Black people aren’t apes!”—a sentence that really shouldn’t be necessary in 2026, yet here we are. Republicans tried to rip it out of his hands, Capitol security dragged him out, and the party of "free speech" applauded as a Black member was removed for pointing out that the president is boosting racist trash.
From there, Trump delivered the longest, most pointless State of the Union in history: a meandering mix of fantasy economics, culture-war gibberish, and open racism. He praised tariffs the supreme court just killed, ranted about crime and "election integrity," and then launched into a xenophobic fairy tale about "Somali pirates" supposedly "ransacking" Minnesota. He invented a $19bn social services scam, deputized JD Vance to lead a "war on fraud," and used it all to smear immigrants—especially the ones who have the nerve to represent districts in Congress. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, apparently the only people in the room still tethered to reality, spent the night yelling things like "That’s a lie!" and "You have killed Americans!" while Republicans responded with their favorite policy proposal: chanting “USA! USA!”
Trump demanded Democrats stand to affirm that the government should prioritize citizens over "illegal aliens"—they stayed seated, so he declared they should be ashamed. This from the guy whose Minneapolis "goon squad" operation left two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, dead—people he somehow forgot to mention between bragging about ending "eight wars" and pretending to care about kids while sitting on the Epstein files. Members shouted back about his corruption and insider trading as he vowed to clean up Washington, like a fox announcing new henhouse security protocols. By the time Omar, Tlaib, and others walked out, Trump had managed to talk for nearly two hours without changing a single mind or his dismal 39% approval rating. The speech was historic only in the sense that no one has ever wasted this much prime-time airtime to say absolutely nothing so loudly.
#killing-democracy#racism
trump invents the flat tax for rich guys, calls it tariffs
Abigail Spanberger, seen here attempting the radical act of explaining how tariffs work to a country currently being told they’re a magic free-money machine.
Abigail Spanberger used her rebuttal time to do the unthinkable: say out loud that Trump’s trade agenda is "reckless" while he’s busy promising that tariffs will magically replace the income tax. Because nothing screams "working-class champion" like a president proposing a national sales tax on everything you buy while his billionaire friends continue their lifelong allergy to paying anything resembling a fair share.
While Trump tells a cheering Fox News focus group that foreign countries will be paying all these tariffs, Spanberger points out the extremely inconvenient detail that tariffs are actually taxes on Americans — you know, the people already getting hammered by higher prices thanks to his last trade tantrum. Trump’s plan is essentially: soak consumers, spare the donors, call it freedom.
This is not economic policy so much as a late-night infomercial: "Tired of income taxes? Just switch to our exciting new tariff-based system, where China pays (they don’t), prices rise (they do), and the only guaranteed winner is whatever oligarch is getting the import carveout this week." Spanberger calling it "reckless" is generous; "forever-grifting with a side of macroeconomic self-harm" is closer to the mark.
But sure, let’s put the entire federal revenue stream on a roulette wheel of trade wars, presidential moods, and whichever lobbyist last bought dinner. What could possibly go wrong with turning the U.S. tax base into a Trump-branded duty casino?
#forever-grifting#money#trade-war
medal of honor, brought to you by regime change live!
Trump pauses his State of the Union to air a live-action trailer for Regime Change IV: Caracas Drift.
During his State of the Union, Trump turned the House chamber into a cross between a game show and a Pentagon recruitment ad, dramatically awarding the Medal of Honor to a pilot involved in the raid targeting Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Because nothing says "respect for the rule of law" like using America’s highest military honor as a primetime commercial for your latest foreign-policy cosplay.
Instead of a sober, stand-alone ceremony, we got the full reality-TV treatment: surprise reveal, emotional cutaways, and a not-at-all-subtle message that unauthorized or barely-authorized regime-change missions are now a great way to get your face on TV. The constitutional questions about attacking another country's leader without a declared war? Those got about as much airtime as climate change or voting rights.
This is the Trump doctrine in miniature: treat foreign intervention as spectacle, treat Congress as a studio audience, and treat the military as a prop department. The actual pilot may well have acted with real courage; the president, meanwhile, is courageously fighting the long-standing American tradition of pretending we don’t hand out medals for live-streamed assassination attempts during campaign season.
#imperialism#killing-democracy#national-security
guy who killed the iran deal now shocked iran wants nukes
Trump explains his new Iran ‘red line,’ seen here moments before he asks if you can nuke a centrifuge on Truth Social.
Donald Trump used his 2026 spotlight to announce a dramatic new "red line" on Iran getting a nuclear weapon, as if he didn't personally spend years lighting the old nuclear agreement on fire and then salting the earth where it used to be. The man who tore up the JCPOA and bragged about it is now gravely warning that Iran must never be allowed to do the thing his own policy choices made significantly easier.
This is classic Trump foreign policy: break the working smoke detector, smash the fire extinguisher, lay off the firefighters, then step in front of the cameras to declare that he alone will not tolerate house fires. While serious people once used inspections, multilateral diplomacy, and enforceable limits, we're back to the era of vibes-based deterrence and Sharpie geopolitics, where a "red line" is whatever Trump yells over the teleprompter that day.
What the administration is actually signaling is more unilateral brinkmanship and fewer constraints on presidential war powers. Congress, predictably, is treated as background furniture while Trump freelances nuclear policy on live TV. It's a great system if you’re an aspiring strongman or a defense contractor; slightly less great if you’re anyone living within range of, say, Earth.
So now the world is supposed to trust that the guy who confused hurricanes with Alabama is carefully managing a nuclear standoff with Iran. Sleep tight.
#national-security#imperialism#killing-democracy
trump demands congress stop doing the crimes he brags about
Trump, captured at the precise moment he discovered that pretending to hate insider trading polls better than admitting you text your buddies before you tank the market on live TV.
Donald Trump, a man who treated the presidency like a clearance sale at Mar-a-Lago, is now solemnly urging Congress to "Pass the Stop Insider Trading Act without delay." Because if there’s one thing this era excels at, it’s the guy with a history of market-moving tweets, family-brand stock promotions, and mystery debt suddenly discovering ethics like he’s hosting a very special episode of Schoolhouse Rock.
In this State of the Union clip, Trump scolds Congress about trading on nonpublic information, as if we all forgot the multiple members of Congress who dodged COVID market losses while he downplayed the pandemic, or the way his own administration treated sensitive economic data like party favors. The message is clear: insider trading is bad when they do it, but perfectly fine when the president’s friends, donors, and sons are out there guessing the market with uncanny accuracy.
What we’re watching isn’t reform, it’s performance art. Trump gets to pose as the anti-corruption crusader while stacking his administration with people who treat financial disclosure forms like optional homework. If this thing ever passes, expect the enforcement mechanism to be a sternly worded letter, a shrug, and a fresh round of trades five minutes after the next classified briefing.
#corruption#forever-grifting
trump’s dalilah law: show me your papers, then your license
Trump explains that driving to the grocery store is now a national security threat requiring immigration checks, because of course it is.
Trump is now demanding Congress pass something called the Dalilah Law, which boils down to: if you’re driving, the government wants more ways to treat you like a suspect foreign invader. Tougher immigration checks for drivers sounds very normal and not at all like a nationwide "papers, please" roadshow where every traffic stop can turn into an immigration dragnet.
The White House is packaging this as a heartfelt response to tragedy, which is how you know it’s actually a policy wish list for Stephen Miller’s dream universe. Rather than fix, say, enforcement priorities, data systems, or anything remotely competent, they’re pushing a law that functionally encourages cops and transportation officials to do immigration status cosplay at every checkpoint and traffic stop. What could possibly go wrong when you hand more discretion to agencies already famous for racial profiling?
While Trump brags about "keeping Americans safe," what he’s really pitching is another mechanism to harass immigrants, green card holders, citizens with the wrong accent, and anyone whose face doesn’t match the Fox News casting call. It’s not transportation policy; it’s a field test for turning everyday life—like driving to work—into a continuous immigration checkpoint. Freedom of movement, meet the back of the line.
#anti-immigration#killing-democracy
diplomacy, but make it nepotism
Trump explains that the best people for Middle East peace are his son‑in‑law, a condo guy, and Marco Rubio, because why would you ever involve the State Department in foreign policy?
Trump used his platform to applaud the cutting-edge diplomatic team of: his son‑in‑law Jared Kushner, Florida ambition hologram Marco Rubio, and luxury real estate developer Steve Witkoff — because when you're dealing with Iran and Gaza, what you really need is a guy whose main qualification is knowing where to put the infinity pool. Who needs a State Department when you can just assemble a group chat of donors, relatives, and guys who were already in the VIP section?
This isn’t foreign policy so much as an oligarch internship program. Kushner, who still hasn’t answered for the billions in Saudi money that floated into his private fund, is now back in the middle of Middle East "negotiations" with the full blessing of the president whose daughter he married. Rubio, ever eager to be relevant to whatever authoritarian project is currently trending, gets a shout‑out for playing junior partner in the shadow government. And Witkoff’s presence underlines the Trump doctrine: treat geopolitics like a distressed property — flip it fast, don’t ask questions, and hope no one looks too closely at the paperwork.
What Trump is really praising here is the normalization of private foreign policy: unelected, unconfirmed, financially entangled cronies running negotiations on war and peace while actual diplomats and institutions are sidelined. It’s not a government, it’s a family business with a few senators brought in to keep up appearances — and the rest of us get to live with whatever these guys scribble on the cocktail napkin they’re calling a peace plan.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
america’s most indicted man launches a ‘war on fraud’
JD Vance listens attentively as Trump explains that from now on, only the *approved* fraud is allowed.
Trump used his latest televised ramble to announce that JD Vance will be put in charge of the administration’s shiny new “war on fraud,” because nothing screams integrity like a guy whose political movement has been marinating in indictments, fake electors, and wire fraud cases. The president who literally tried to overturn an election is now deputizing his Senate hype man to hunt down other people’s dishonesty. Sure, why not let the arsonist run the fire department too.
This isn’t about cleaning up scams; it’s about branding dissent and oversight as “fraud” and then sending Vance after them with government power. The same crowd that called every inconvenient vote count “rigged” now wants a permanent taxpayer-funded witch-hunt office, aimed squarely at whoever gets in the way of Trump’s money, ego, or both. Regulators, journalists, and political opponents should probably start keeping overnight bags packed.
So the “war on fraud” will be led by an administration that treats ethics rules as optional, campaign finance laws as suggestions, and the Justice Department as a personal law firm. Expect lots of press conferences, lots of enemies lists, and very little interest in the actual fraud that’s been orbiting Trumpworld for a decade. The call is still coming from inside the house, they’ve just decided to bill the search party to the American public.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
great news: the numbers on tv love trump
Trump explains that the economy is great because a line on a chart went up while everyone in the cheap seats wonders how to pay rent with the S&P 500.
Trump used his latest televised ego recital to brag that the stock market is soaring, gas prices are terrific, and inflation is basically a bedtime story Democrats tell to scare donors. The message: if you own a brokerage account and live inside Fox Business, you’re doing amazing, sweetie. If you’re one of the millions crushed by housing costs, medical bills, or wages that haven’t kept up with anything except your own despair? Well, have you tried buying more stocks.
He then scolded members of Congress over inflation like a man yelling at a mirror he thinks is CNN, declaring, "You caused that problem" while very carefully not mentioning corporate price gouging, his own tariff tantrums, or the fact that his economic policy is basically vibes plus tax cuts for people who summer in the Caymans. But as long as the Dow is up and the Chyron of Triumph says "MARKETS HIT RECORD," Trump will keep insisting the economy is perfect and if you can’t afford groceries, you’re just not believing hard enough.
#killing-democracy#money#full-stupid
haha just kidding unless? trump riffs about a third term
Trump, mid-"joke" about a third term, seen here beta-testing the focus group response to constitutional demolition.
Donald Trump, currently treating the Constitution like a suggestions brochure, used remarks about prescription drugs to slip in a little crowd-pleaser: this "should be my third term." Hilarious stuff, if you ignore the whole Twenty-Second Amendment, the history of strongmen joking their way into extra terms, and the fact that his base hears this less as a punchline and more as a policy proposal.
Instead of lowering blood pressure with cheaper meds, the president is out here raising it by normalizing the idea that elections are optional if the Dear Leader is having fun. The room laughs, he smirks, and we all pretend it's a bit, while the guy who tried to overturn an election and treat January 6 as a patriotic field trip keeps seeding the idea that democracy is negotiable.
It's a familiar pattern now: float the authoritarian trial balloon as a "joke," watch the reaction, then dial it up later when everyone’s numb. Totally healthy civic culture we’ve got going when the president talks about ignoring term limits like he’s asking for extra ketchup packets.
#fascism#killing-democracy
congressman removed from state of the union for controversial stance that black people are human
House security escorts Al Green out for the crime of holding a sign that says Black people are human, while the guy who shared the racist ape video keeps his primetime slot.
The Trump era keeps finding new floors to crash through. At Trump’s State of the Union, Rep. Al Green was physically removed from the House chamber for the radical, deeply disruptive act of…holding a sign that said, “Black People Aren’t Apes.” In case you lost track of the timeline of American decline, that’s a reference to the video Trump himself posted this month depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as cartoon apes.
As Green was escorted out just minutes into the speech, he waved the sign toward the Republican side while Texas GOP Rep. Troy Nehls lunged to grab it away, because nothing screams "party of free speech" like trying to wrestle a sign that says Black people are human out of a Black man’s hands on the House floor. This is Green’s second year in a row getting tossed during a Trump address — last year it was for shaking his cane at the president. Trump, meanwhile, still hasn’t apologized for the racist video, instead offering the very statesmanlike defense that he “condemns its racist parts” after quietly deleting it.
So to recap: the president shares a racist ape video about the first Black president and first lady, faces a mild scolding, deletes it, and keeps the mic. The Black lawmaker who responds by literally stating that Black people are not apes? He’s the one dragged out of the chamber. American democracy remains, technically speaking, a going concern; American dignity, however, has left the building.
#racism#killing-democracy
democrats host the 'real' state of the union while trump cosplays president on tv
Democrats hold a pop-up democracy clinic on the National Mall while Trump delivers his fan fiction version of America down the street.
While Donald Trump delivers his carefully focus-grouped fantasy novel to Congress, Democrats and activists are a few blocks away holding the "People’s State of the Union" and describing what’s actually on fire. Lawmakers boycott the official spectacle as protesters wave signs like "No Money for ICE" and "Healthcare Not Warfare", plus a giant poster of more than 30 people killed in encounters with ICE since Trump’s glorious return to power. Senator Chris Murphy sums it up: "these are not normal times, and Democrats have to stop behaving normally"—which, translated, means maybe don’t clap politely for authoritarianism on live television.
Because it’s Trump’s America, a MAGA guy of course tries to rush the stage, gets peeled off by organizers, and Joy Reid has to remind the faithful that "Your bullshit is not welcome here"—a standard that, if applied on Capitol Hill, would leave about twelve people in the chamber. Representative Summer Lee leads chants of "Release the files!" and announces she’s introducing articles of impeachment against Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose big legal innovation is refusing to comply with a subpoena for the full unredacted Epstein files. The crowd points out the obvious: the government seems much more interested in protecting powerful men named in those documents than the women and girls they abused.
Across town at "State of the Swamp"—because subtlety is dead—politicians, activists, and Robert De Niro gather to list all the ways the Constitution is now treated as a suggestion: abortion rights gutted, foreign policy as temper tantrum, environmental protections as corporate party favors. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey calls it a room full of people "trying to stand up for democracy" and "frustrated by the lack of abiding to the United States constitution"—which is a very polite way of saying the president is busy shredding norms while Pam Bondi sits on subpoenaed files and ICE racks up a body count. Trump gets the cameras; the opposition gets YouTube. One of these feeds is describing the actual state of the union, and it’s not the one with the fancy seal.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump demands loyalty oath from the supreme court
Trump, moments before demanding the Supreme Court change its name to the Supreme Loyalty Committee.
Trump is heading into the State of the Union like a guy walking into HR after calling everyone there traitors on Facebook. Days after the Supreme Court ruled that most of his tariffs were unlawful in a 6-3 decision, he’ll be staring down Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and Justice Elena Kagan — three of the justices he just branded a “disgrace to our nation” and “very unpatriotic and disloyal to the Constitution.”
Unlike Barack Obama, who criticized a decision and not the justices themselves, Trump went full strongman fanfic, accusing the Court majority of being swayed by “foreign interests” because they dared suggest that the president can’t just slap tariffs on everything like he’s rage-clicking Amazon Prime. Awkward twist: two of the justices in that majority, Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, are his appointees, which means even the handpicked judges are failing the Dear Leader loyalty test.
Naturally, the justices who did vote to let him keep his legally-flimsy tariffs — Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas — got a presidential gold star and public praise. So the message from the podium this year is clear: judicial independence is for losers, and the Supreme Court’s job is to be a fan section that never claps but always rules his way.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump doj forgets there’s a first amendment, gets bench-slapped
Trump’s Justice Department, seen here trying to remember what the Privacy Protection Act is while clutching a hard drive full of a reporter’s sources.
A federal magistrate judge just yanked the Trump administration’s permission slip to rummage through a Washington Post reporter’s seized data, and you can practically hear the DOJ’s sad trombone from here. Judge William B. Porter said he’ll do an independent judicial review of the material taken from reporter Hannah Natanson, because when the government raids a journalist’s home and walks off with all her devices, someone should probably make sure we’re still pretending to have a free press.
The judge very politely wrote that it’s his “genuine hope” the Trump DOJ was really just trying to investigate a single national defense information case and not fishing for confidential sources from a reporter who wrote critical stories about the administration. He then added that he “further hopes” the evidence will support those claims, which is federal judge-speak for: I don’t believe you, but I’m giving you one last chance not to perjure yourselves.
Porter also discovered that the Justice Department somehow “forgot” to mention the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 — a law that explicitly limits the government’s ability to search or seize journalists’ work product. Multiple DOJ lawyers, including people “from the highest levels” (hi, Attorney General Pam Bondi), had chances to bring it up. None did. The judge said this “seriously undermined” his confidence in the government’s honesty and “disturbed” his usual deference to prosecutors, which is about as close as a magistrate gets to screaming, Are you kidding me? in open court.
While he stopped short of ordering everything immediately returned, Porter noted that Natanson’s rights were “restrained” when the Trump DOJ seized all her work product and devices, cutting her off from her confidential sources and the basic tools of her job. The government’s suggestion that she just “start from scratch” as a journalist earned a judicial eye-roll in writing, with Porter pointing out that this is not how either journalism or the First Amendment works. The bottom line: the court will sift out anything legitimately responsive to the warrant and the rest of the data hoard goes back, leaving Trump’s DOJ with a lot less surveillance loot and a lot more explaining to do.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
trump shuts down dhs, but relax, ice still gets to shoot people
Artist’s impression of DHS during a World Cup security briefing: the lights are off, FEMA’s missing, and ICE is the only one still getting paid.
The Trump administration’s latest DHS-only shutdown is doing what it was clearly designed to do: starve everything that vaguely resembles public safety or competent governance, while carefully bubble-wrapping ICE so it can keep doing whatever it wants. Congress already appropriated $625m for World Cup security through Trump’s "big beautiful" slush-bucket of a bill, but because DHS funding has been shut off in a standoff over immigration abuses — specifically, ICE agents killing Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis — the money is stuck in FEMA limbo. TSA, Coast Guard, Secret Service, local cops trying to secure five million visiting fans? On hold. ICE? Fully funded, essential, and untouched. Of course.
Host cities like Miami, Kansas City, and New Jersey are 100 days from kickoff and still waiting for the checks Trump already bragged about. Miami says losing the funding would be "catastrophic" for planning, Kansas City cops are warning that decisions will be made based on budget instead of threat, and New Jersey already had to kill a major Liberty State Park fan festival. Foxborough, population 18,000, is staring at a $7.8m security hole big enough to drive a FIFA motorcade through, and is now threatening to withhold the entertainment license for matches featuring England and France unless someone finds the money. The town is literally shaking down the Kraft family to cover the gap while DHS sits in the dark.
So the United States is hosting a global mega-event with millions of visitors, multiple high-value targets, and four national teams training in Kansas City alone — and the federal government’s message is: we can’t fund your security, but we made absolutely sure the agency that just shot two people in Minneapolis has cash for days. It’s a perfect Trump-era tableau: international spectacle, local governments begging for basic safety resources, Congress using the homeland security budget as a hostage, and the only part of DHS that never, ever misses a meal is the one that keeps leaving bodies on the ground.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump’s fcc discovers late-night comedy is a national security threat
Stephen Colbert, apparently now a national security risk, prepares to say something the Trump FCC thinks should only be available on YouTube and in FBI files.
Senate Democrats are poking around CBS and the Trump-stacked FCC after Stephen Colbert revealed that his network’s lawyers blocked an interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. Richard Blumenthal wants to know whether FCC chair Brendan Carr – a man who treats the First Amendment like a speed bump – and Paramount Skydance leaned on Colbert to keep anything critical of Donald Trump off the air. He’s asking for all the receipts, including any cozy backchannel chatter with Trump’s White House.
Paramount, now run by David Ellison – son of Trump pal and Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison – is trying to swallow Warner Bros Discovery in a $108bn merger that needs federal approval, so the timing of this sudden concern about "equal-time" rules is extremely convenient. CBS swears it’s just following new Trump FCC “guidance” that magically extends equal-time rules to late-night comedy, something nobody thought applied before. Meanwhile, Ellison has installed Bari Weiss to run CBS News, where she’s already killed a 60 Minutes piece on the brutal Salvadoran prison Trump’s been deporting people to. Colbert’s show is being shut down in May after more than three decades, but sure, tell us again how the real censorship is people saying "Happy Holidays."
So to recap: the Trump administration rewrites media rules to muzzle critics, a Trump-friendly media CEO allegedly censors satire while chasing a mega-merger, the FCC chair runs what Blumenthal calls a "partisan censorship scheme," and one of the last big broadcast platforms for mocking the president is being quietly taken off the board. Authoritarianism usually starts with jokes that suddenly aren’t allowed to air; the punchline this time is a corporate merger application.
#killing-democracy#corruption#fascism
trump heroically defends stonewall from the terrifying threat of a rainbow
Stonewall National Monument, now proudly commemorating the 1969 uprising by pretending the people who led it never existed.
The Trump administration looked at Stonewall – the site of a historic queer uprising led by Black and brown trans women – and decided the real emergency was… a Pride flag. So the National Park Service quietly yanked the rainbow flag, shoved an American flag up the pole, and waved a decades-old “policy clarification” memo like it wasn’t just state-sanctioned homophobia with letterhead. This follows their earlier downgrade from the inclusive Progress Pride flag back to the old-school rainbow, plus scrubbing references to trans people from the monument’s website, because why preserve history when you can whitewash it and call it "interpretation"?
While Trump signs executive orders declaring the government will only recognize sex assigned at birth, thousands of people are freezing outside Stonewall to re-raise a flag that their own government keeps trying to erase. Democratic lawmakers show up for the photo op, restore the less inclusive flag, and call it a win, while trans activists point out that maybe the people who were actually shot at and beaten in 1969 should be visible in the monument that allegedly honors them. Nonprofits are now suing the administration over the flag removal, because apparently we need federal litigation to let a national monument to a queer riot fly a queer flag.
Trans organizers are very clear this isn’t some petty “flag war” – it’s about survival and visibility while Black and brown trans women are being murdered and the federal government pretends they don’t exist. Meanwhile, Interior insists everything is fine, the policy is neutral, and Stonewall’s history is still being "preserved" – just without the people who started it, the flag that represents them, or any acknowledgment that the current administration’s agenda is to erase them from public life entirely. American greatness, now with fewer colors.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#full-stupid
trump repeals climate science, may accidentally repeal big oil’s legal shield too
Trump and EPA chief Lee Zeldin stroll past a sign bragging about “largest deregulation in US history,” helpfully documenting Exhibit A for future climate lawsuits.
The Trump EPA just torched the 2009 climate "endangerment finding" – the basic legal conclusion that greenhouse gases threaten public health – so that oil companies who dumped record cash into Trump’s campaign can enjoy a beautiful, regulation-free apocalypse. By revoking the finding, the administration wiped out federal limits on climate pollution from vehicles and is gearing up to do the same for power plants and other sources, because what is asthma compared to a quarterly earnings call.
The fun twist: that same act of climate vandalism also blows a hole in Big Oil’s favorite legal shield. For years, fossil fuel companies have argued that state climate lawsuits and "climate superfund" laws in places like Vermont and New York are preempted by the Clean Air Act, because the EPA supposedly has this covered. Now Trump’s EPA is standing in court saying, essentially, "Greenhouse gases? Never heard of her." Legal experts are pointing out that if the federal government refuses to regulate, it’s a lot harder for Exxon and friends to claim that federal law blocks states and cities from making them pay for the damage.
The supreme court is about to weigh a key case out of Boulder, Colorado, where oil companies are begging the justices to rescue them from state climate liability while the Trump administration simultaneously argues that the main federal climate hook no longer applies. Corporate trade groups are suddenly very nervous that their bought-and-paid-for deregulation might backfire into a litigation bonanza. When even the American Petroleum Institute is like, "Uh, maybe don’t repeal all of it," you know the grift has entered the "oops, we broke our own legal defense" phase of governance.
#forever-grifting#anti-science
dems pick ex-cia governor to subtweet trump on live tv
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger prepares to explain that no, actually, the country is not supposed to be run like a reality show with nuclear codes.
Democrats have tapped newly sworn-in Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer and six-term House member, to deliver the official response to President Trump’s State of the Union — because when the president keeps flirting with authoritarianism, you send someone whose old job was literally monitoring unstable regimes.
Spanberger, the first woman elected governor of Virginia after flipping the office from red to blue, is expected to talk about “rising costs, chaos in their communities, and a real fear of what each day might bring,” which is a polite, NPR-ready way of saying: this second Trump administration is going great, thanks for asking. Chuck Schumer framed her as someone who “puts service over politics,” a sharp contrast to a president who puts self-pity over everything, including the Constitution.
The party clearly hopes her purple-state, moderate-turned-"maybe-too-liberal" profile will sell a message of normal governance to a country currently being governed by Truth Social posts and revenge fantasies. Of course, history suggests her speech will be remembered less for its content and more for whether she sips water like Marco Rubio or accidentally recreates Katie Britt’s hostage-video-in-a-kitchen aesthetic. Still, if you’re going to answer Trump’s made-for-TV strongman monologue, a calm ex-spy talking into an empty room is probably the healthiest thing American democracy can hope for right now.
#killing-democracy#trumps-america#losses
rio grande valley learns you can't deport half your workforce and still pour concrete
Behold: one of the last remaining guys actually building anything while Trump’s deportation machine tries to shut down the entire housing market by handcuffing the workforce.
The Rio Grande Valley helped flip Texas for Donald Trump, and now the region is discovering that when you vote for mass deportations, you sometimes get mass deportations. Construction companies are watching their framing crews, foundation teams and stucco workers disappear into ICE vans, then acting shocked that houses do not, in fact, build themselves. One builder says this could "put us out of business" if it continues, as if the basic math of "no workers, no houses" was some kind of deep-state plot.
Local businesses are suddenly very interested in nuance: yes to "strong borders," but also yes to the undocumented workers who have quietly built the region for years. Realtors are stalling big land deals, tile warehouses are sitting on unpaid orders because there’s nobody left to install them, and families like Maria Vasquez’s are cutting food so they can keep the lights on while hours dry up. The same crowd that cheered Trump’s deportation agenda is now flying to Washington to beg the administration to please stop arresting their "non-serious-crime" workers — because apparently it was all supposed to be theoretical cruelty, not the kind that interrupts mortgage payments.
The White House, naturally, responds by waving an executive order about future "workforce preparedness" and apprenticeships, as though you can replace a decade of skilled immigrant labor with a press release and a hardhat photo op. Meanwhile, on the ground, builders keep discovering that every experienced stucco worker they try to hire has already been "taken". Trump promised to crack down on undocumented workers; the Rio Grande Valley is now finding out what happens when a president actually follows through on his worst ideas.
#anti-immigration#trumps-america
