president brands america by golfing england’s captain
Pictured: the leader of the free world conducting vital foreign relations between the 9th and 10th holes.
Harry Kane confirmed he played golf with U.S. President Donald Trump in Palm Beach about 18 months ago, describing the whole thing as "surreal" and, in what must have been the most politely diplomatic sentence of his career, praising Trump’s golf game. When the president of the United States invites you to his Florida money-laundering cosplay resort, you apparently say yes and hope the Secret Service doesn't tackle you in the bunker.
Trump, naturally, took to Truth Social to announce to the world that Kane is a "GREAT player!!!" and then immediately upgraded the relationship to "I played golf with him and I like him a lot"—the standard Trumpian path from total stranger to lifelong best friend in under 24 hours. Kane calls it a "unique experience"; for Trump it’s just another day turning the presidency into a cross between a fanboy meet-and-greet and a loyalty test conducted on a golf cart.
#forever-grifting#trumps-america
trump’s doj rescues proud boys, judge writes the confession note
Proud Boys leaders leaving court, presumably on their way to the next "perilous event," courtesy of the Trump Department of Justice’s Early Release for Loyal Insurrectionists program.
The Department of Justice, now operating as the legal help desk for Trump’s favorite insurrectionists, has moved to toss out the seditious conspiracy convictions of Proud Boys leaders who helped turn January 6 into a fascist cosplay riot with real blood and broken glass. Federal judge Timothy Kelly — a Trump appointee, because of course — agreed to dismiss the case only after the appeals court had already vacuumed up the convictions at DOJ’s request, and then helpfully wrote a seven-page memo explaining that this is happening not because of the law or the facts, but because Donald Trump wants his goons off the hook.
Kelly painstakingly recites that Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, and Zachary Rehl were convicted of multiple serious crimes, and that Dominic Pezzola famously smashed a Capitol window to let the mob pour in — you know, the thing we all saw on video. He calls January 6 a "perilous event," an attack on police, Congress, and the peaceful transfer of power, then shrugs and signs off on the dismissal because the executive branch now prefers sedition-friendly outcomes. The judge basically says: the government’s motive is transparently Trump’s desire to excuse his own supporters’ violence, but hey, separation of powers means I can’t stop the president from torching the rule of law.
The result: a Trump-initiated prosecution of Trump’s own shock troops, brought while he was still in office, is now being undone by Trump’s second-term DOJ on orders from the same guy who incited them in the first place. Kelly ends with a solemn lecture about preserving the "miracle" of peaceful transfer of power, right after greenlighting the demolition crew that’s ripping it out by the foundation. It’s less a court ruling and more a historical exhibit: Here Lies the Justice System, We Knew Exactly What We Were Doing.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#fascism
trump hires climate youtuber to edit reality
Matthew Wielicki, newly appointed chief climate skeptic, prepares to review federal data by asking PragerU how hot it feels outside.
The Trump administration has decided that the best person to oversee the US government’s flagship climate report is… a former geochemist who brands himself an "Earth science professor-in-exile" and spends his time calling climate science "snake oil" on X and starring in PragerU videos. Matthew Wielicki, who has no formal training in climate science but does have a thriving side hustle in denialism, will now run the US Global Change Research Program and lead the National Climate Assessment — the congressionally mandated report on how climate change is wrecking the country.
To prep the battlefield, Trump’s team already shut down the online portal for all previous National Climate Assessments and gutted the program during his second term. Now they’re "reconstituting" it by putting a professional climate contrarian in charge, while a White House spokesperson swears they’re "committed to using the best scientific information" — presumably defined as anything that doesn’t upset oil donors who just handed Trump record campaign cash.
Scientists, such as Carlos Martinez of the Union of Concerned Scientists, are pointing out that putting a climate denier in charge of the nation’s key climate report is maybe not ideal for public safety and scientific integrity. Meanwhile, major scientific societies are scrambling to produce their own peer-reviewed assessments to fill the crater left by the administration’s war on climate research, after Trump officials fired the entire contributor team for the next National Climate Assessment. The message from the White House is clear: if the data says the planet is on fire, the real problem is the data.
#anti-science#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump admin boldly declares war on owls, butterflies, and the concept of habitat
Endangered wildlife thoughtfully reviewing the Federal Register to see exactly which parts of their homes are now available for strip mining.
The Trump administration has decided the real endangered species in America is unrestricted resource extraction, so they’ve gutted a core piece of the Endangered Species Act that protected actual habitats. For 50 years, "harm" meant you couldn’t destroy the places animals live, eat, or raise their young — a definition the supreme court upheld back when spotted owls were the big controversy and not, you know, a planetary extinction crisis. Now, the Departments of Interior and Commerce have rebranded that protection as "regulatory intrusion" on private property, because if a wolverine can’t outbid a mining company, does it even deserve to exist?
Public support? Science? Law? That’s adorable. Roughly 80% of voters want the ESA fully funded, hundreds of thousands of people filed comments opposing this rollback, and experts keep screaming that habitat destruction is the number one driver of species loss. The administration’s response is to shrug, pat the oil and logging industries on the head, and promise that they’ll still technically prohibit directly killing endangered animals — just not bulldozing, poisoning, or paving over everything they need to survive. So, no shooting the manatee; you just get to turn its seagrass into a prop for a cruise ship commercial.
This is all part of Trump’s second-term hobby project: dismantling endangered species protections so energy and industrial interests can rummage through the country’s most sensitive ecosystems like a clearance bin at Walmart. He even convened the so-called "God squad" — a panel empowered to decide which species get sacrificed on the altar of domestic energy infrastructure — and stacked it with loyalists whose main religious belief is that oil rigs are a sacrament. Legal advocates are already lining up to sue, pointing out there is no scientific, legal, or public support for this change. Unfortunately, by the time the courts finish sorting it out, a lot of habitats may be gone, and the only thing thriving will be the quarterly reports of whatever company just strip-mined the last monarch butterfly corridor.
#anti-science#forever-grifting
trump tries to var the world cup
Donald Trump, freshly self-appointed as assistant referee to the free world, prepares to review the World Cup on the only monitor that matters: Fox News.
With one week left in the World Cup, the planet wanted to argue about offsides, not authoritarian cosplay. Instead, Donald Trump apparently decided that the world’s biggest sporting event needed his signature blend of grievance, ego, and geopolitical chaos, parachuting into the tournament like a malfunctioning VAR system that only reviews calls affecting his brand.
Details are still emerging, but the reaction from the football world was described as "shocked" – which is impressive, because this is a sport where Sepp Blatter once ran the place and Qatar bought itself a winter World Cup. Yet Trump managed to lower the bar, reportedly turning what should have been a global celebration into another episode of What If Foreign Policy, But Petty? Whether it was leaning on hosts, inserting himself into ceremonies, or using the tournament as a campaign prop, the throughline is familiar: take a shared public institution, jam it through the Trump content mill, and leave everyone arguing about politics instead of penalties.
So while players chase the trophy, Trump chases airtime, proving once again that no stage is too international, too apolitical, or too beloved to be dragged into his never-ending need for attention. FIFA may be corrupt, but at least it usually pretends the game comes first; Trump’s contribution is to remind everyone that in his universe, everything is just another rally.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
texas rewrites the rules so elon musk can have your lunch money
Greg Abbott carefully studying broadband options before circling the one labeled “Give $110m to Elon Musk.”
Texas Republicans allegedly looked at $110m in broadband grants, saw eight fiber providers, and decided: actually, what if we just handed 99% of this to Elon Musk? State senator and Democratic AG nominee Nathan Johnson says the whole thing "sure looks" like corruption, which is a very polite way of describing a process where Greg Abbott’s office reportedly rewrote the rules to favor low-Earth-orbit satellites and, surprise, the world’s richest Trump fanboy just happened to be standing there with a collection plate.
The Texas Broadband Development Office admitted under questioning that the changes came at Abbott’s request, while eight fiber companies complained they were effectively cut out of the new scheme. Even the Republican committee chair, Charles Schwertner, had to concede that "favoritism and transparency" were, as the kids say, a thing. Meanwhile, Musk has previously donated to Abbott—purely coincidental, we are assured, in the same tone you use to insist you only read Playboy for the articles.
Johnson is running on an anti-corruption platform and promising that, if elected AG, he’ll team up with the state comptroller to audit how these contracts magically migrate from public need to billionaire wallet. His Republican opponent, Mayes Middleton, proudly advertises himself as a Trump loyalist, because nothing screams "independent watchdog" like pledging fealty to the guy who turned public office into a family side hustle. Abbott’s office defends the whole arrangement as the most "cost-effective" way to wire up rural Texans—provided you don’t count the long-term price of turning state policy into a concierge service for oligarchs.
#forever-grifting#corruption
trump discovers the pocket veto of reality
Trump, moments before explaining that housing is a "big yawn" unless it comes bundled with voter suppression and applause.
Congress just passed what both parties are touting as the biggest housing bill in decades — a rare bipartisan attempt to make it slightly less impossible for normal people to afford a roof. The White House press secretary called it "one of the most significant pieces of housing legislation in American history." Trump, naturally, called it a "big yawn," because it doesn’t help him stay in power or settle a grudge.
Rather than sign the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, Trump tried to turn it into a hostage note for democracy. He canceled the signing ceremony and announced he’d only put pen to paper if Congress passed the SAVE America Act — a strict voter ID and proof-of-citizenship bill that can’t clear the 60-vote Senate threshold. So he’s "protesting" by refusing to sign a bill that… becomes law automatically at midnight under the Constitution. The man is literally losing a standoff with the calendar.
So housing reform will quietly become law while Trump rants on Truth Social about how the Senate has failed him personally. Millions of families get a shot at more affordable homeownership; Trump gets to publicly admit he cares more about making it harder to vote than making it easier to live indoors. It’s a neat civics lesson: the separation of powers is still barely functioning, and the president is out here trying to swap your mortgage for voter suppression like it’s some late-night infomercial deal.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump celebrates america’s 250th by deleting the slavery part
Visitor poses with the cutting-edge National Park Service exhibit on slavery: a blank wall, some bolts, and a federal order to pretend that’s progress.
The Trump administration looked at Philadelphia’s President’s House – the site where George Washington enslaved nine Black people while serving as president – and decided the real problem wasn’t slavery, but the panels that talked about it. So on 22 January 2026, the National Park Service dutifully unscrewed 34 interpretive panels and memory-holed half of them into storage, all in the name of Trump’s executive order charmingly titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Translation: if the founding fathers owned human beings, you didn’t see anything.
A federal judge briefly forced the government to put some of the panels back, but the Trump DOJ raced to the Third Circuit, which helpfully ruled that yes, the administration can swap out the exhibit for a new, Trump-approved, whiter-than-fresh-printer-paper version of history. Activists, historians, and ordinary Philadelphians responded by doing the radical thing of literally standing in front of the blank wall and reading the removed text aloud, because in 2026 the First Amendment now requires live performances to compete with federal censorship.
The Department of the Interior, moonlighting as the Ministry of Truth, sneered that Philadelphia should stop filing “frivolous lawsuits” that might “demean our brave founding fathers,” and instead focus on crime and jobs – a classic move where you erase Black history and then tell a majority-Black city to stop being so emotional about it. As the country approaches its 250th anniversary, the Trump administration is marking the occasion by surgically removing slavery from the origin story and calling it sanity. Philadelphians, inconveniently for them, still know how to read – and they’re not letting the bolts on the wall be the final word.
#killing-democracy#fascism#racism
nyc rudely interferes with corporations’ god-given right to scam you forever
Happy New Yorkers discover the radical new concept of ‘the price is the price,’ while landlords hold a candlelight vigil for their dearly departed boiler management fees.
New York City has decided that maybe, just maybe, capitalism doesn’t need to include a mandatory subscription trap mini-game every time you sign up for a gym, a streaming service, or a “wellness” app that just sends you push notifications and shame. Starting 1 October, companies that make it hard to cancel will face fines of $525 per user, plus back fees and more penalties, which is tragic news for every CEO whose business model is “what if nobody could find the cancel button ever again?”.
The city is also coming for “junk fees” – those delightful surprise charges for “boiler management”, “lifestyle amenities”, and whatever else landlords invent after realizing the rent is already at nosebleed altitude. Under the proposed rule, all mandatory fees have to be baked into the advertised price, which directly threatens America’s proud tradition of listing one price and then charging another. Industry groups, who have spent decades perfecting the art of hiding the real cost of things, are predictably furious that anyone would interfere with this sacred deception.
Samuel AA Levine, a former FTC consumer protection official, politely points out that 40 years of Reagan-brain deregulation and “the market will police itself” ideology has given us exactly what you’d expect: corporations competing not on price or quality, but on how cleverly they can lie about both. Nationally, business lobbyists already hacked Biden’s junk fee rule down to something real estate could live with, and a federal judge kneecapped the Biden “click-to-cancel” rule on procedural grounds. Now NYC’s Mamdani administration is trying to do locally what Washington keeps watering down, while Trump’s FTC allegedly plans a similar rule sometime soon, which surely won’t be riddled with enough loopholes to drive a private equity firm through.
The city is even eyeing a ban on “surveillance pricing” – algorithmic price discrimination based on your data – which is a shame for every tech bro who woke up one day and thought, “What if surge pricing, but for groceries and rent?” With Maryland already banning it and Colorado’s governor vetoing a ban, we’ve reached the stage of American governance where your right not to be algorithmically shaken down depends entirely on which state line you happen to be standing on when you open your wallet.
#forever-grifting#money
trump’s $25 million bounty buddy
Smiles all around as U.S. officials and an indicted strongman with a $25 million price on his head share a friendly chat about stability, mining, and how laws are for other people.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new innovation in foreign policy: put a $25 million bounty on a guy’s head, indict him for drug trafficking, accuse him of running repression and working with gangs—and then make him your key partner in rebuilding his country’s economy and managing its oil. Meet Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s interior and justice minister, suspected by Chilean prosecutors of ordering a kidnapping that ended with a dissident murdered in exile. U.S. officials once called him a narco-thug; now he’s getting face time with Cabinet secretaries and U.S. generals like he’s the regional manager of democracy.
The fun started after U.S. special operations forces literally snatched President Nicolás Maduro out of Caracas in 2025 and flew him to New York for a drug trial, because who needs international law when you’ve got a C-130 and a talking point about "restoring order"? Washington then set about reengineering Venezuela’s economy and seizing influence over its oil sector, all while deciding that Cabello—the allegedly murderous, cartel-adjacent strongman—was just too valuable to arrest right now. Former officials say the quiet deal is simple: the U.S. uses his indictment as a leash; Cabello uses his ability to blow up Venezuela’s stability as his shield.
Naturally, this paragon of stability has also been accused of interfering with earthquake rescue efforts after quakes killed more than 3,600 people, with U.S. search-and-rescue teams clashing with him on live TV. Members of Congress in Miami are screaming for his arrest on those still-pending U.S. charges, but the State Department has downgraded the whole thing to an "unfortunate misunderstanding"—which is one way to describe obstructing aid while you’re wanted for drug trafficking. Meanwhile, Cabello is sitting in high-level meetings with U.S. Southern Command’s Gen. Francis Donovan to coordinate disaster relief, because in Trump’s foreign policy universe, the line between "most wanted" and "most welcome" is just a scheduling issue.
So the current Venezuela strategy appears to be: kidnap the president, partner with the indicted interior minister who’s allegedly outsourcing hits to a transnational gang, lean on him to keep the oil flowing, and hope nobody notices that America’s "restoration of law and order" is being run by a guy we literally put a bounty on. Empire, but make it self-parody.
#imperialism#corruption#killing-democracy
80-year-old mccarthy fanboy discovers the word 'communist' again
President Trump, live from Turkey, bravely warning NATO that the real threat to America isn’t war or authoritarianism, but that some Democrat somewhere wants people to see a doctor without going bankrupt.
Abroad at a NATO summit about an Iran ceasefire, President Trump decided the real emergency wasn’t war, diplomacy, or global stability, but that Democrats might be insufficiently smeared as communists. From a podium in Ankara, he announced that “what's forming is communism,” declared it the biggest threat America has ever faced, and then helpfully added that he himself “would be the greatest communist in history” and “right up there with Lenin.” Truly inspiring stuff from the guy whose economic vision is “tariffs and vibes.”
This isn’t a new brainwave so much as an 80-year-old man replaying his childhood fear propaganda on loop. Raised in peak McCarthy era hysteria and mentored by Roy Cohn — the actual McCarthy henchman who hunted supposed communists — Trump has basically decided to turn the entire federal government into a nostalgia tour for 1950s witch hunts. Having already tested out "Comrade Kamala" and circulated fake communist rally photos of Harris, he’s now upgraded to telling religious voters that Democrats will “close your churches,” “kill your people,” and “end religion,” because some democratic socialists want free healthcare and less income inequality.
Scholars politely explain that democratic socialists want to keep capitalism and just make it slightly less predatory, while communists want to abolish private ownership. Trump politely ignores this because it’s much more electorally efficient to scream “COMMUNISM” at anything that looks like people getting insulin without selling a kidney. The strategy, by his own admission, is simple: define the opposition as communists or socialists who will “destroy our country,” then let the fear machine do the rest. It’s not policy; it’s pretext — the kind of pretext authoritarian movements have always used to paint domestic political opponents as enemies of the state.
#fascism#killing-democracy
trump fires the referees before the midterms
The Election Assistance Commission, moments before being replaced by an angry Trump tweet and a guy with a Sharpie.
Donald Trump has discovered a bold new strategy for restoring faith in American elections: fire the people whose job it is to make them work. The last three commissioners of the Election Assistance Commission – the tiny, bipartisan federal agency that helps states run elections, certifies voting systems, and maintains the national mail-voter registration form – were all forced out just months before the midterms. One Republican appointee was nudged into resigning, while the two Democrats got the classic Trump administration HR treatment: a cold email saying, effectively, "you’re fired", sent on behalf of the Dear Leader.
Nothing screams "we care about election integrity" quite like decapitating the independent commission that literally serves as the national clearinghouse on election administration. This purge just happens to follow years of Trump and his cronies obsessively trying to rewrite vote‑by‑mail rules and relitigate the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden. Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes called it "irresponsible and dangerous" and accused the administration of being hellbent on causing chaos for election officials. That’s generous; chaos is starting to look less like a side effect and more like the business model.
Legally, the Help America Vote Act lets the president appoint replacements, so in theory Trump could refill the commission. In practice, no one has the faintest idea what he’ll do next, which is exactly the point: keep the infrastructure hollowed out, keep the rules murky, and keep everyone guessing while you scream about fraud. The Election Assistance Commission was designed to help America vote. Trump just helped himself to its head on a platter.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
white house fight night now comes with terrorism charges
The People’s House, now available for weddings, cage fights, and thwarted terrorism plots.
The Trump White House turned into a literal cage-fighting arena and, shockingly, it also became a magnet for people plotting mass murder. Eight men have now been hit with murder and terrorism conspiracy charges over an alleged plan to use explosive drones and snipers to attack Trump’s big UFC spectacle, "Freedom 250"—because apparently nothing says stable democracy like hosting a pay-per-view brawl on federal property.
According to the indictment, this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment bad idea; they spent weeks stockpiling guns, ammo, explosives, body armor, drones, and comms gear like they were looting a Call of Duty armory. Prosecutors say the group marinated in fringe conspiracy theories and fantasized that slaughtering a crowd at a Trump fight night would help "destabilize the government"—as though the government hadn’t already been doing a pretty solid job destabilizing itself by turning the White House into a cross between a casino and a warlord’s palace.
One defendant allegedly planned to fly bomb-laden drones into the event and then mow down panicked spectators as they ran for their lives. Another, 21-year-old Chandler Scaggs, was allegedly assigned as a sniper and kept trying to make it to the show even after his ride got arrested, which is dedication of the very worst kind. So now we have the full Trump-era package: a presidency branded like a combat sports franchise, extremist fanatics convinced they’re players in the show, and the FBI racing to keep the season finale from turning into a mass-casualty event. American democracy, now with undercard bouts and counter-terror operations.
#killing-democracy#national-security
trump discovers 'voluntary' means 'do what we say'
Trump officials bravely protecting America from AI by making sure only their friends get to use it first.
OpenAI has finally released ChatGPT 5.6 to the unwashed masses after a brief detour through the Trump administration’s new favorite toy: an AI "voluntary" review process where tech companies voluntarily do exactly what the White House tells them or risk finding out what non‑voluntary looks like. For the past month, the model was limited to a tiny club of government-approved users, because nothing says "defending democracy" like a small, handpicked group of insiders getting first dibs on the most powerful information tools on Earth.
The same crew that spent years mocking regulation as socialism suddenly discovered cybersecurity panic as a handy excuse to throttle who gets access to advanced AI, slap temporary export bans on rivals like Anthropic, and annoy U.S. allies who thought "partnership" meant something more than "you can read the press release." The Center for AI Standards and Innovation — a phrase that sounds like it was generated by a bored intern with a buzzword API — gave the thumbs up, and now OpenAI and Anthropic can go back to racing for their trillion‑dollar IPOs while the government quietly normalizes pre‑clearance for new models.
Trump’s people loudly reject "reining in" AI when workers, privacy advocates, or civil rights groups ask for it, but the moment someone whispers "cyber-attacks" and "China," they’re all in on centralized gatekeeping and ad hoc export controls. So the public gets destabilizing AI‑driven disinformation and surveillance potential, while access to the safest, most capable versions is filtered through Washington’s favorite trusted partners. It’s not regulation, they insist — just a helpful reminder that in Trump’s America, your cutting‑edge technology, like your rights, is subject to review.
#killing-democracy#national-security#forever-grifting
trump’s $14.7m algae tub must be protected at all costs
Behold the $14.7m Trump Freedom Pool, now defended with more zeal than the actual Constitution.
The Trump administration spent $14.7m turning the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool into a giant, flag-themed kiddie pool, complete with an "American flag blue" liner that promptly started peeling and growing algae like it was auditioning to be a swamp. Naturally, the real threat here is not the shoddy, corrupt-looking boondoggle itself, but a 67‑year‑old former Olympic canoeist whose bike tire may or may not have grazed a hose.
US attorney Jeanine Pirro is on the case, solemnly declaring there is "tremendous evidence" that David Hearn "forcefully and violently" attacked the sacred plastic at the bottom of Trump’s Freedom Puddle, causing over $1,000 in damage to a $14.7m fiasco that’s already turning green and falling apart. Hearn says he didn’t vandalize anything and was in handcuffs before he even knew what was happening, while his lawyers call the whole thing a "concocted narrative" that should alarm everyone who doesn’t want to be prosecuted for offending a presidential branding exercise.
So the National Mall is literally disintegrating under the weight of Trump’s aesthetic judgment, but the justice system is busy treating a senior citizen on a bike like he’s a Bond villain with a vendetta against vinyl. Authoritarianism doesn’t always show up in jackboots; sometimes it arrives as a felony charge to protect a failing, algae‑coated monument to one man’s ego.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump guts the ftc, then asks it to fight corruption for the cameras
FTC consumer cop stands in front of a burning agency building, proudly holding a squirt gun labeled ‘Section 5’ while Trump sells the fire insurance on Truth Social.
Chris Mufarrige, the guy nominally in charge of protecting Americans from predatory companies, is trying to run consumer protection out of a regulatory haunted house that Donald Trump has already stripped for copper wiring. The FTC is down two Democratic commissioners because Trump fired them, the supreme court politely applauded, and nearly 300 staff have vanished from the payroll. Meanwhile, the administration is busy defunding the CFPB, carving out sweet deals for Trump-friendly firms, pardoning white-collar crooks, and turning the phrase "tough on corporate abuse" into pure performance art.
Mufarrige insists his job is totally unaffected by the fact that his boss is simultaneously raking in stock and crypto windfalls while the agency pretends to crack down on scams and market manipulation. He dutifully points to big settlements with Amazon, StubHub, Instacart, Shutterstock and others, plus a right-to-repair win against Deere & Co that Biden’s team actually set in motion. So yes, the FTC is technically still doing things, as long as those things don’t interfere with the president’s own financial side quests or the donor class’ need to keep auto-renewing your misery.
The legal authority he leans on, section five of the 1914 FTC Act, is supposed to stop "unfair or deceptive" practices. In Trump’s Washington, that now translates to: you can go after deceptive subscriptions and junk fees, but don’t you dare suggest that a president trading on inside political knowledge while kneecapping his own regulators might be slightly unfair to the public. The message is clear: protect consumers from corporations – just not this corporation, headquartered at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and heavily invested in crypto.
#corruption#killing-democracy
welcome to president donald j. trump international, please lower your standards
Workers install a giant "President Donald J. Trump International Airport" sign, proving that even the highway now has to swear loyalty to the brand.
Palm Beach International Airport is dead; long live President Donald J. Trump International Airport, where your flight might be delayed but the cult of personality is running right on time. Thanks to legislation signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis back in March, workers are now swapping out highway signs and the Federal Aviation Administration is changing the airport code from the neutral "PBI" to the full-on fan merch version: DJT. Subtlety has clearly been grounded indefinitely.
Some travelers told the BBC the sitting president deserves to be honored this way, because nothing says "healthy democracy" like plastering a current leader’s name on public infrastructure while he’s still in office and actively campaigning. Others politely expressed that they liked the old name better, presumably because it didn’t scream "personality cult" every time they checked their boarding pass. Florida has essentially turned a normal airport into a rolling campaign ad and loyalty test, and we’re all just supposed to pretend this is a standard tourism branding decision rather than another step in the ongoing project of Trumpifying every public space that can’t run away.
#killing-democracy#fascism
ice adds 'summary execution' to deportation toolkit
Ronaldo Salgado learns that in Trump’s America, your dad can be executed on the way to work and the government calls it a ‘targeted enforcement operation’ with a straight face.
The Trump administration’s mass deportation fantasy is now fully upgraded to the live ammunition edition. ICE agents shot and killed 52-year-old construction worker Lorenzo Salgado Araujo on his way to a job site, then helpfully claimed he had "weaponized" his van — because nothing says due process like redefining your commute as an act of war. His three co-workers were hauled off, while his family and civil rights groups are begging for an independent investigation from the same government that keeps insisting this is all perfectly normal.
This isn’t a one-off horror; it’s body number 10 shot dead by federal immigration officials since Trump 2.0 kicked off, stacked on top of 52 people dead in ICE custody in just the first 500 days of this sequel presidency. The UN high commissioner for human rights is sounding alarms, which the administration is treating as background noise while Congress shovels $70 billion to ICE and CBP with approximately zero accountability. Call it the "Blue Lives Matter, Brown Lives Optional" appropriations act.
Two of the most famous victims, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were US citizens killed in Minnesota during the great enforcement surge, because when you unleash militarized agencies with a racism-forward mission and no oversight, "oops, we shot Americans" is just a rounding error. At least four victims, including Salgado, were driving when they were killed, despite federal training that officers should get out of the way of cars, not reenact an action movie. But under Trump’s immigration regime, every traffic stop is a potential execution and every grieving family gets the same script: vague DHS statements, shifting blame, and absolutely no consequences for the people pulling the trigger.
#anti-immigration#lawlessness#killing-democracy
trump finally finds greenland’s oil, still can’t find the permit
Jeff Landry in Nuuk, helpfully explaining that his mission is to "make Greenland a part of the US" — because nothing reassures a small Arctic democracy like a guy from Louisiana announcing he’s there to annex it on live TV.
The Trump crowd has discovered a fun new game in Greenland: show up in a tiny Arctic hamlet, announce you’re going to drill for billions of barrels of oil, and then let the government you’re supposedly dealing with find out from the press. Robert Price of "Greenland Energy" — a Texas oil outfit with Trump-world fingerprints — told locals they already had permission to move in 300 shipping containers of drilling gear and were just waiting on the final thumbs-up to drill.
There’s only one problem: Greenland’s own resources ministry says there are no active permissions for exploration or even prep work. Minor detail, easily fixed once your special envoy is a hard-right Louisiana governor, Jeff Landry, who goes on Fox News to announce that his job is to "make Greenland a part of the US" and that the place could be pumping 2m barrels a day within 10 months. Nothing says "partnership" like treating a Danish territory as an underperforming shale patch you forgot to frack.
While Halliburton (because of course it’s Halliburton) lines up the logistics to haul gear 4,000km through Arctic waters without actual authorization, Trump is at a Nato summit in Turkey publicly demanding that the US wrest control of Greenland from Denmark. This follows his little proof‑of‑concept in Venezuela, where he used special forces to grab the country’s leader and then quietly siphoned off about $8bn in oil revenue with "scant oversight" — which is polite diplomatic language for straight-up looting. Greenlanders, meanwhile, are looking at Jameson Land and wondering why their supposedly peaceful home is suddenly the next backdrop for an American resource heist.
So the model is clear: send in the envoy to talk annexation, send in the companies to pretend they already have permits, send in Halliburton to bolt it all down, and let Trump shout on TV about how "we do need Greenland, absolutely" because of the oil. It’s not foreign policy, it’s a hostile corporate takeover with a side of imperial cosplay.
#imperialism#forever-grifting
trump turns america into a nationwide chemistry experiment
Nippon’s Longview paper mill, now offering complimentary toxic exposure with every shift—OSHA and EPA participation not required under the Trump Freedom To Explode Act.
US chemical accidents are up 51% since 2021 and deaths and injuries are up at least 20%, so naturally the Trump administration has looked at this flaming industrial hellscape and decided the real problem is…too many safety rules. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) pulled federal data from the Chemical Safety Board and found serious chemical accidents are now "an almost daily occurrence"—which is one way to describe a country where the air keeps trying to kill you.
While malfunctioning and collapsing chemical tanks are forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands in California and killing 11 workers in Washington, Trump’s crew is busy dismantling the EPA’s Risk Management Program. You know, the one that requires 12,500 high‑risk facilities to have things like leak detection, fire suppression, and plans so workers don’t just run around screaming when a tank explodes. The Biden-era 2024 rules that required modern technology, backup systems, safer chemicals, and even plans for double disasters (like when a hurricane hits a chemical plant) are being lovingly fed into the shredder so industry doesn’t have to suffer the indignity of a kill switch.
PEER only got this data because it sued in 2017 to force the government to follow the Clean Air Act and actually track chemical releases. Even then, the numbers are an undercount because they don’t include plants that, as PEER’s Jeff Ruch puts it, just "poison their workers inside" and keep the mess indoors. Between 2004 and 2025, the US averaged a chemical accident that harmed people or the environment every other day, and the Trump administration’s response is to treat disaster prevention like woke overreach. Regulatory capture is out, chemical roulette is in.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
