omb discovers science is easier when you just defund the parts you don’t like
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Russell Vought, bravely protecting America from the grave threat of peer-reviewed science and international collaboration.
The Trump OMB quietly rolled out a "grant reform" plan that translates to: science is fine as long as it worships Dear Leader. The proposed rule would sideline peer review, hand political appointees veto power over what gets funded, and let agencies terminate grants whenever they feel like it, so long as they mutter the magic words "national interest" or "agency priorities." Congressional intent? That’s adorable.
As a bonus, the rule would outright ban research tied to diversity, equity, inclusion, and gender as grant conditions, and slap a big, dumb "NO" on wide swaths of international scientific collaboration. Because nothing says "global competitiveness" like walling off U.S. researchers from the rest of the planet and purging any work that acknowledges marginalized humans exist.
Susan Collins, who usually responds to authoritarian overreach with a sternly worded sigh, actually wrote to OMB Director Russell Vought to object to the whole "we can kill your grant whenever we want" provision and the forced political review of awards already cleared by scientific peer review. Democrats led by Chuck Schumer are demanding the entire proposal be torched. Vought insists this is all about "waste, fraud and abuse" and aligning spending with the president’s agenda "on behalf of the entirety of the American people" — a poetic way of saying: if your research doesn’t serve Trump’s politics, it doesn’t get funded.
#killing-democracy#anti-science
trump turns rusty oil rigs into billionaire space piñatas
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Artist’s impression of Trump’s ocean policy: a rusting oil rig, three exploding rockets, and a whale filling out its own environmental impact statement.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new frontier for deregulation: turning the ocean into a SpaceX parking lot. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management put out a Request for Information asking how we might repurpose the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf — you know, the part already abused by oil and gas drilling — for offshore space launches and reentry. Why clean up decaying rigs when you can slap a launch pad on them and call it innovation?
All of this is wrapped in an executive order titled “Ensuring American Space Superiority,” because of course it is. Environmental advocates like Miyoko Sakashita point out that rockets are already blasting wildlife refuges and now Trump wants to push the debris field out to sea, where whales, sea turtles, and marine ecosystems can enjoy front-row seats to billionaire hobby rockets and abandoned fossil fuel junk. It’s the perfect Trump-era compromise: don’t make Big Oil clean up its mess, just strap rockets to the trash and pretend it’s a space program.
#anti-science#forever-grifting
trump celebrates america by turning dc’s lungs into a smoke machine
Freedom 250 helpfully demonstrates what it would look like if the Clean Air Act were replaced with a fog machine and a campaign rally.
Washington DC briefly achieved its dream of being #1 at something: worst air quality of any major city on Earth, courtesy of an 850,000-shot fireworks tantrum over the National Mall. The Trump-backed "Freedom 250" nonprofit turned the capital into a live-action asthma test, while the president helpfully reviewed his own disaster as “spectacular” on social media. Hourly particulate levels jumped to 6.7 times normal, every sensor in the city hit "unhealthy for sensitive groups," and officials issued a Code Red alert politely suggesting people try not to breathe.
This toxic light show was staged during an extreme heatwave and as the Trump administration is busily dismantling pollution controls, because of course it was. The only thing standing between DC and a full-on dystopian smog event was a Sunday thunderstorm, meaning the city’s de facto environmental policy is now "pray for rain." A White House spokesperson bragged that it was the “largest and greatest firework display in the history of our country” and insisted the choking smoke was totally normal, just your standard patriotic lung damage. Regulatory rollback plus performative pollution – truly a masterclass in anti-science governance.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
state department goes full snitch for tehran
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, seen here preparing to explain why handing asylum files to a hostile regime is actually freedom or something.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that refuge is overrated, so now it's allegedly mailing asylum files of Iranian detainees straight to the Iranian government. According to a new lawsuit filed in D.C. by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and Public Citizen, U.S. officials have been "periodically" mailing or hand-delivering immigration files of Iranians in custody to Tehran's representatives since March 2025. You flee a repressive regime, beg the United States for protection, and the Marco Rubio State Department allegedly responds by forwarding your deepest fears to the people you’re hiding from. Bold strategy.
Federal law is extremely clear that asylum applications are confidential and especially not to be shared with the government persecuting you, but the complaint says ICE and the Iranian Interests Section have been holding cozy monthly meetings where deportation relief and asylum files were passed along like party favors. Those meetings reportedly stopped after the U.S. attacked Iran in February, but the document pipeline allegedly kept flowing, because why let a little thing like war interrupt your data-sharing program with an adversarial regime?
Lawyers say detainees report being summoned to meetings with senior Iranian officials who already know details from their asylum claims — details that could get them detained, imprisoned, or tortured, along with putting their families at risk back home. The lawsuit even cites confidential confirmation from an Iranian government official that this is policy. Homeland Security and the Iranian mission to the U.N. responded with the traditional Trump-era statement: absolute silence. Meanwhile, the regulations say asylum records must be protected; the administration’s apparent position is more along the lines of: what if we weaponized them instead.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
trump cuts off medicaid to planned parenthood, calls it 'pro-life' when clinics close
Trump-era "pro-life" policy at work: fewer cancer screenings, less birth control, more clinic closures—and a big victory for the right to suffer quietly without medical care.
Medicaid billing for Planned Parenthood and a couple of other family planning nonprofits has been turned back on after Trump’s 2025 tax-and-policy joyride shut it off for nearly a year. The great "pro-life" innovation? Clinics closing, screenings plummeting, and poor patients in rural states waiting four to six months to see a new provider—if they managed to get care at all. Breast cancer exams down 20%, birth control pill packs down 25%. Truly a golden age for "family values" where the family mostly values hoping they don’t get sick.
This wasn’t about abortion funding—federal Medicaid still doesn’t pay for that in most places. Trump’s law went after non-abortion services too, yanking reimbursements from any nonprofit that both provided abortions and took in more than $800,000 in Medicaid. So primary care clinics in Maine shut down, a Planned Parenthood clinic in Lakeland, Florida, is staying closed out of fear the administration will just smash the funding piñata again, and providers had to drop "essential community provider" status just to keep the lights on. The abortions? In some states, they stayed steady. The collateral damage was cancer checks, STI tests, and contraception. Really showing that deep commitment to reducing abortions by…making birth control harder to get.
Even now, with Medicaid billing grudgingly restored, the damage is baked in. Maine Family Planning isn’t reopening its shuttered primary care sites, and affiliates are rebuilding with expanded telehealth and longer hours because that’s cheaper than resurrecting what Trump’s policy bulldozed. Meanwhile, anti-abortion groups like Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America are loudly demanding Congress "do it again"—because why stop at one round of sabotaging basic healthcare for low-income women when you can keep hitting repeat on the cruelty playlist? Planned Parenthood points out that most general-election voters don’t want them defunded, but the GOP base does, and in Trump’s America, public health is just another hostage in the culture war.
#pro-life#healthcare#killing-democracy
trump brings america’s ‘maybe i’ll show up’ energy to nato
Trump prepares to explain NATO to NATO, armed with confidence, ignorance, and a deep respect for Vladimir Putin’s opinions.
Donald Trump is heading to a high-stakes NATO summit in Turkey while every allied capital plays the same game: Is he going to defend Europe, or audition for a job on Russian state TV? The official agenda is unity and deterrence; the unofficial agenda is everyone quietly gaming out what happens if the guy who keeps calling NATO a bad real-estate deal decides to treat Article 5 like a gym membership he forgot to cancel.
Allies are reportedly anxious about his "commitment" to the alliance, which is a polite diplomatic way of saying, "we’ve seen the rallies where he threatens to let Russia do ‘whatever the hell they want’ to countries that don’t pay up." So while NATO leaders talk about collective defense, Trump is expected to talk about invoices, imaginary arrears, and how he alone can fix an alliance he clearly doesn’t understand and openly resents.
The result: Putin gets a free morale boost, authoritarian regimes get another signal that Western security guarantees are now subject to the mood swings of a guy live-tweeting cable news, and U.S. credibility gets treated like another Trump casino: leveraged, hollowed out, and left for someone else to clean up. American leadership has rarely looked this much like a timeshare presentation with nukes.
#national-security#killing-democracy
trump closes usaids, opens pawn shop for african health systems
Marco Rubio smiles in front of a giant US flag, explaining that American generosity now comes with a small service fee, some light resource extraction, and your nation’s pathogen library in perpetuity.
First, Trump torched USAID and kneecapped health programmes across Africa. Now, like a particularly malevolent payday lender, the administration is back offering "hundreds of millions" in health money—provided countries hand over their data, their pathogens, their mineral wealth, and their dignity. Marco Rubio, now cosplaying as Secretary of State, proudly unveiled a $2.5bn health deal with Kenya, only for Kenyan courts and activists to point out that maybe, just maybe, turning your citizens' medical data and biological samples into a US corporate asset isn't the height of sovereignty.
The old model of working through the WHO and global partnerships? Scrapped. Trump yanked the US out of the WHO, then switched to one‑on‑one deals that openly prioritize US pharma and "strategic and commercial" interests. Zambia was told health funding and access to its critical minerals should be treated as a single package—because nothing says "we care about your sick children" like bundling HIV treatment with a mining concession. Ghana and Zimbabwe balked at demands to funnel patient data and pathogens to Washington with no real privacy guarantees, no reciprocal protections, and no promise their people would even get access to whatever vaccines or drugs get developed.
Then there’s South Africa, where the US decided to fully withdraw HIV/Aids funding after Pretoria failed to comply with Washington’s "policy requests"—including indulging the administration’s fantasy about a "white genocide" against Afrikaners, a claim that has been widely debunked. Health aid is now a blunt political weapon: toe the line on Trumpworld’s race‑baiting narratives or watch your HIV programmes collapse. A State Department spokesperson helpfully clarified that this isn’t charity, it’s "strategic capital"—a polite way of saying the US will trade your pathogens, your minerals, and your citizens’ medical records for the privilege of maybe not dying.
Global health experts note that data‑sharing used to be an unequal but tolerable arrangement because it was wrapped in the language of altruism. Under Trump, the mask is off: it’s a transactional protection racket. Sign the MOU, feed US pharma, sweeten the pot with cobalt and copper, and surrender your health data—or walk away and hope your people can survive without the world’s most powerful country turning their blood samples into a futures market.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
presidential historian confirms: trump wants mccarthyism, but make it fascist-chic
Presidential historian calmly explains that the president is flirting with McCarthyism 2.0 while everyone pretends this is just another normal Sunday show segment.
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley went on TV to deliver the kind of history lesson you don’t usually get outside a late-stage republic: Trump isn’t just fearmongering, he’s trying to build a ‘Red Scare on steroids’—a 1950s-style purge of political enemies, but updated for the age of Truth Social tantrums and weaponized grievance. Instead of Soviet infiltrators, today’s “subversives” are Democrats, journalists, civil servants, and anyone who thinks the Constitution is more binding than a Trump NDA.
Brinkley walks through the greatest hits of creeping authoritarianism: labeling opponents as existential threats to the nation, floating mass roundups and deportations, fantasizing about using the Justice Department as a personal hit squad, and treating loyalty to Trump as the only legitimate form of American identity. It’s McCarthyism, except this time the guy waving the blacklist also controls the nuclear codes and thinks ‘checks and balances’ is a reality show about his bank accounts.
The historian’s core point: Trump isn’t just running against a candidate, he’s running against the idea that opposition is allowed at all. The goal is to turn policy disagreement into suspected treason, elections into loyalty tests, and the federal government into a sprawling revenge machine. So yes, we’re doing the Red Scare again—only now the demagogue at the center of it already tried to overturn an election once and learned exactly how many institutions will shrug and call it ‘controversial’ instead of ‘authoritarian power grab.’
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
welcome to the trump™ children’s mutual fund republic
Trump rings the NYSE bell from the Oval Office, helpfully reminding everyone that in this administration even children’s savings accounts come with a logo and a sales pitch.
Donald Trump celebrated the first trading day of federally funded Trump accounts by ringing the New York Stock Exchange bell from the Oval Office, because why merely run the government when you can co‑brand it. A bipartisan child-savings program, created by Congress in the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," somehow emerged from the legislative birth canal wearing Trump’s name like a casino sign. Trump insists he "did not ask" for the branding, which is a fascinating claim from a man who would put his name on the nuclear codes if the font kerning looked right.
The accounts are simple enough: every kid born between 2025 and 2028 gets $1,000 from the federal government, defaulted into a diversified index fund, with parents able to kick in up to $5,000 a year through the IRS. On paper, it’s a decent policy; in practice, the president just turned a public wealth-building tool into a lifetime product-placement campaign. He even tried to keep the NYSE bell as décor for his new White House ballroom, because naturally the country’s premier stock exchange is now a theme-park prop for his personal Versailles cosplay.
America’s billionaires are lining up to tack their philanthropy onto the Great Leader’s Kid Fund. Michael and Susan Dell are dropping $6.25bn so 25 million low-income kids get an extra $250, and Ray and Barbara Dalio are tossing some spare change at Connecticut. Trump’s response? A mob-boss promise that "we’re going to get him that money back one way or another" while urging Americans to buy Dell computers. The president of the United States is on live mic using a federal program to shill for a donor’s company like a late-night infomercial host in nuclear launch codes’ clothing.
SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell joined in with $350m for kids near SpaceX’s Texas playground, framed as inspiring humanity to "live and fly amongst the stars"—which is a poetic way of saying your kid’s college fund now doubles as a marketing opportunity for defense contractors and launch providers. The underlying idea—help kids build assets—is solid. The execution—slap Trump’s name on it, funnel it through Wall Street, and publicly vow to repay donors via consumer spending—is a masterclass in how to turn public policy into a branded loyalty program for oligarchs and their favorite president.
#forever-grifting#money
tennessee sends in the troops, kills a 20‑year‑old, calls it ‘safety’
Tyrin Johnson, who got to be an unwilling extra in Trump and Bill Lee’s "Democrat cities are war zones" propaganda film.
The Trump-backed “crime surge” cosplay in Democratic cities just claimed a life in Memphis. Tennessee National Guard troops, deployed by Republican governor Bill Lee to help the president prove blue cities are war zones, shot and killed 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson at 4am after a chase. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation says Johnson "turned and pulled a gun" and that two soldiers opened fire, but curiously, no one is volunteering names or details. The Guard won’t identify the shooters, the TBI is punting questions back to “the respective department,” and we’re all supposed to accept that as transparency.
Memphis mayor Paul Young opposed turning his city into a live-fire campaign ad, noting that crime was already falling before Lee rolled in the troops, but the governor and the courts overruled local control anyway. Now the same Trump-aligned “safe taskforce” has racked up at least four officer-involved shootings since October, and the body count is starting to look less like safety and more like a demonstration project in how to militarize domestic policing while shredding home rule. Johnson leaves behind a young child and a family business he was preparing to help lead, but hey, at least the governor and Trump got their tough-on-crime photo op without having to show the photos.
#killing-democracy#fascism
michigan democrats hold primary, donors choose senator
Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens smile for the cameras while $16 million in Super PAC cash quietly fills out the ballot behind them.
Michigan Democrats are being offered the usual exciting choice between a Medicare for All Muslim progressive who calls Israeli policy "genocide and apartheid" – Abdul El-Sayed – and an "establishment" candidate, Haley Stevens, whose main policy innovation is being backed by Chuck Schumer and at least $16m in Super PAC money, including AIPAC, which is furious that El-Sayed won’t recite the magic words about Israel’s "right to exist as a Jewish state." El-Sayed’s position is that Israel obviously exists and maybe the US shouldn’t bankroll war crimes instead of schools. Naturally, this has triggered the bipartisan Washington reflex: deploy the donor air force.
Mallory McMorrow has dropped out, taking with her the last pretense of a center-left, non–Super PAC–engineered option for the seat Gary Peters is vacating. Now it’s a clean test: can a candidate backed by Sanders and AOC survive a tidal wave of outside cash designed to teach Democrats that criticizing an allied government’s apartheid system is hazardous to one’s career prospects?
Meanwhile, in the background noise of late-stage American democracy: Congress is advancing a "Ratepayer Protection Act" for the data center boom that consumer advocates say won’t actually protect ratepayers, but does make Big Tech feel very seen; a Republican, Carlos Giménez, is begging the Trump White House not to deport 350,000 Haitians into chaos after the Supreme Court blessed the TPS cut-off; and The Atlantic has kindly re-upped JD Vance’s 10-year-old essay calling Trump "cultural heroin" so everyone can fully appreciate how completely he sold out to become vice president. It’s a helpful reminder that in this system, principles are mostly what you trade in for a shot at power and a bigger Super PAC.
#oligarchy#killing-democracy
trump’s fcc discovers the fairness doctrine, but only for enemies
Brendan Carr examines ABC’s licenses to see if they contain enough praise for Dear Leader; finds dangerous traces of Jimmy Kimmel instead.
Conservative legal mills are lining up at the FCC like it’s Black Friday at an authoritarian Best Buy, all demanding that Trump appointee Brendan Carr yank the licenses of ABC’s eight owned-and-operated stations. The pretext? That ABC is biased, woke, soft on China, mean to Melania, and insufficiently deferential to the delicate feelings of one very whiny ex-president. The FCC, which mysteriously found the time to force ABC into an early license renewal process after the White House threw a tantrum over a Jimmy Kimmel joke, swears this is just about a neutral "DEI investigation" and not, say, weaponizing federal power to smack a disfavored news outlet.
Petitions are flying in from the usual Trumpworld constellation of outrage factories. The Center for American Rights complains that ABC’s programming shows a "consistent and overt partisan bias" and is disrespectful to the Commission’s "integrity of the news" standards, which apparently now live somewhere between Newsmax and a Truth Social post. The Media Research Center accuses ABC of "electioneering", "misinformation", and "promotion of violence" — bold charges from a movement that watched January 6 on live TV and decided the real threat to democracy was Whoopi Goldberg. Mike Davis’s Article III Project insists Disney’s attempts to hire a diverse workforce are basically a crime spree, while Stephen Miller’s America First Legal helpfully explains that ABC lacks the "character qualifications" to use the public airwaves, unlike, say, a twice-impeached coup enthusiast.
While this circus rolls on, Carr’s FCC is also investigating The View for allegedly violating equal-time rules after a Democratic Senate candidate appeared on the show and had the nerve to poll well against Republican Ken Paxton, who is… Ken Paxton. The commission has set deadlines for responses, after which an administrative law judge may hold a full trial over whether ABC is sufficiently pro-MAGA to remain on the air, or the commissioners can just run the show themselves. As Carr put it, "If it’s short, great. If it’s long, great" — a wonderfully casual way to describe turning broadcast licensing into a loyalty test for media outlets that won’t kiss the ring.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump spends billions to stop wind, somehow still full of hot air
A nearly finished offshore wind farm, moments before the Trump administration tries to pay it to stop existing.
Donald Trump has finally found a kind of green energy he supports: shoveling $2.6 billion in taxpayer cash into the pockets of energy companies so they’ll cancel wind projects and kill union jobs. After courts repeatedly told him he can’t just freeze all wind leasing and slap stop-work orders on nearly finished projects because he’s mad about whales, birds, and that one time Scotland wouldn’t protect his golf course view, the administration pivoted to the classic Republican solution: just buy your way out of the law.
Union workers like Thomas Kilday and Will Gonzalez built their lives around long, dangerous offshore shifts to power hundreds of thousands of homes. In return, the Trump administration has given them chaos, court fights, and the constant fear that some guy in the White House with a personal vendetta against turbines will vaporize their next paycheck. Projects that are 90% done and already delivering power are being jerked around while Interior signs massive checks to Invenergy, Bluepoint Wind, and Garden State Wind for the privilege of not building clean energy.
Labor leaders in Rhode Island point out that they’re 5–0 against Trump in court on these stop-work orders, but the administration just keeps lighting money on fire to prove that owning the libs is more important than stable union jobs or a livable climate. The message from Trump’s America is crystal clear: if you’re a billionaire energy company, the government will pay you handsomely to do nothing. If you’re a trained worker ready to build the future, you can sit on your unused certifications and pray the next court ruling comes before your bills do.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
ncaa proudly complies with bigotry, calls it ‘clarity’
Woman holds signs saying “inclusion makes us stronger” and “let kids play!!!” while six justices and one ex–game show host respond, “Have you tried not being included?”
The NCAA’s Charlie Baker went on national TV to calmly explain that, no, the organization will absolutely not be rethinking its effective ban on trans women in college sports, especially now that Trump’s Supreme Court fan club has given states the green light to exclude them. Why reconsider discrimination when the federal government has helpfully turned it into a “national standard”?
Baker cheerfully reminded everyone that the NCAA rewrote its rules in 2025 to lock trans women out of women’s sports, all to “comply” with Trump’s second-term executive order about “men in women’s sports” – a policy crusade aimed at roughly ten trans athletes out of more than 500,000 NCAA competitors. When you’re running a multi-billion-dollar cartel built on unpaid labor, nothing screams courage like punching down at a microscopic minority to keep the base riled up.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling that bans on trans girls and women don’t violate Title IX gave West Virginia, Idaho, and at least 25 other states a judicial permission slip to keep kids off teams for the crime of existing. Baker’s response? Call men’s sports the “open network,” insist the current policy is “inclusive enough,” and assure everyone that schools are fine with it. When the government weaponizes civil rights law to narrow who counts as fully human, there’s always a line of institutions like the NCAA ready to call it "clarity" and move on to selling more March Madness ads.
#killing-democracy#trumps-america
netanyahu schedules war-time fan meetup with trump
Netanyahu, between airstrikes, eagerly refreshing his phone to see if Trump has finally liked his request for a meeting.
Benjamin Netanyahu is busy overseeing airstrikes in Lebanon, but don't worry, he’s making time for what really matters: a photo-op with Donald Trump. Tens of millions are mourning the Ayatollah, the region is a live wire, and Netanyahu’s priority is apparently checking in with the twice-impeached, felony-convicted former guy like he’s booking a podcast guest spot.
While bombs fall and civilians scramble for shelter, Bibi is out here trying to sync calendars with a man whose foreign policy experience consists of Jared’s WhatsApp messages and yelling "tremendous" at maps. Actual U.S. diplomacy is supposed to be happening through the current administration, but Netanyahu clearly prefers the guy who treated Middle East policy like a real estate branding exercise and a campaign prop.
So as regional tensions spike and the rule of law continues its long vacation, an indicted prime minister and a convicted ex-president circle each other for yet another mutually beneficial PR stunt. It’s not peace they’re chasing, it’s relevance — and maybe a joint press conference where they can both pretend they’re still running the world instead of just running from accountability.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
uk debates how best to handle its unstable orange landlord
Keir Starmer, future former prime minister, rehearses the traditional role of UK leaders in the Trump era: human paperweight for the president’s half-baked trade deal props.
Britain is about to swap Keir Starmer for Andy Burnham, and the first item on Burnham’s to‑do list is apparently figuring out how to manage a US president who thinks foreign policy is a loyalty test and NATO is a cover band. Trump, whose mother was Scottish and whose ego is stateless, has already cycled through three UK prime ministers in five and a half years, trashing British troops, demanding help with his Iran adventure, and workshopping the line "this is not Winston Churchill we're dealing with" like it’s his new standup closer.
Starmer tried everything to keep the "special relationship" alive – second state visit, Oval Office grins, literal photo‑ops of him picking up Trump’s dropped trade papers like a particularly overqualified valet – and still ended up on the receiving end of public tantrums because he wouldn’t turn the UK into a forward operating base for whatever war Trump wanted next. Now Burnham, a guy Trump dismisses as "the mayor of a town" and "extremely liberal," gets to decide how much groveling is required to stop the world’s loudest landlord from rage‑tweeting about the North Sea.
Diplomats politely describe Trump as "erratic" and "transactional," which is a genteel way of saying the health of the transatlantic alliance depends on whether anyone has told him he looks presidential that morning. The great strategic question for Britain is no longer how to balance Europe, America, and global security – it’s how to navigate a US president who wants to be treated like royalty, minus the work, the dignity, or the reading. The "special relationship" has officially been downgraded to emotional support role for an aspiring autocrat.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump wants to deport your nurse
Carlos Giménez, seen here in the rare GOP ritual of publicly acknowledging that immigrants are humans and also keep your grandparents alive.
The Trump administration, freshly empowered by a friendly supreme court, is racing to end Temporary Protected Status for more than 350,000 Haitians (plus thousands of Syrians) because nothing says "law and order" like forcibly shipping people back to a failed state and a war zone. The Department of Homeland Security has already issued guidance bragging that TPS holders get to keep their status only until the lower courts fall in line with the supreme court’s "favorable" decision. Justice, apparently, now means "we’ll ruin your life as soon as the paperwork catches up."
Even some Republicans have noticed this is both monstrous and wildly impractical. Florida’s Carlos Giménez, whose district actually contains Haitian human beings instead of just Fox News talking points, is begging the White House to stop trying to deport his constituents back into chaos. Ohio governor Mike DeWine chimed in too, pointing out that the Haitians Trump wants gone are the ones staffing factories, working in food service, and taking care of your parents with Alzheimer’s. New York Republican Mike Lawler is also suddenly discovering that when one-third of Haitian TPS holders in your area work in healthcare, mass deportation is less "own the libs" and more "collapse the nursing homes."
So while Trump and JD Vance spent 2024 inventing horror stories about Haitian communities to juice their anti-immigration base, Republicans who live in the real world are now quietly explaining that deporting nurses, caregivers, and small-business owners en masse from a country that literally tells Americans "do not travel there" might be a "huge mistake." Bold stance: maybe don’t use U.S. immigration policy as a live-action cruelty experiment.
#anti-immigration#killing-democracy
trump thanks fifa for doing the right whine
Former president and part-time assistant VAR official Donald Trump, seen here spiritually drawing the offside lines on Truth Social.
Donald Trump has discovered a new branch of government: FIFA’s disciplinary committee. The former president waddled onto Truth Social to thank FIFA for rescinding Folarin Balogun’s red card, praising them for “reversing a great injustice!” Because when you think impartial sports governance, you obviously think a guy who tried to overturn an election and once threatened to pull the US out of NATO like it was a golf club membership.
While Mexico fans were outside England’s hotel banging drums and blowing horns, Trump was doing his own late‑night noise pollution, inserting himself into a refereeing decision for the home team at a World Cup being co-hosted by the United States. The Guardian’s readers are already wondering if the Orange One called in a favor from his buddy Gianni Infantino, because nothing says rule‑based sport like a man who sees every institution as another thing to lean on for personal "wins."
FIFA, already famous for corruption, arbitrary rulings, and Qatar, now gets a public pat on the head from Trump for its newfound commitment to justice. Totally reassuring that a body under constant suspicion of backroom dealing is now being congratulated by the guy who thought the Justice Department was his personal law firm. American democracy is still on fire, but at least the striker is available for selection.
#corruption#forever-grifting
jd vance celebrates 10 years clean from having a spine
JD Vance and Donald Trump salute at Arlington, honoring those who died defending democracy while actively workshopping ways to make sure it doesn't survive their careers.
The Atlantic decided to celebrate America's 250th birthday by republishing JD Vance's 10-year-old essay where he correctly diagnosed Donald Trump as "cultural heroin" and "the needle in America's collective vein"—before he decided to open a franchise and start dealing the product himself. Back then, Vance warned that Trump offered "an easy escape from the pain" with fake solutions and no details, and predicted supporters would one day realize he couldn't fix what ails them. Fast-forward a decade and he's standing next to Trump at Arlington, saluting like a man hoping no one remembers he used to call the boss "America's Hitler."
The essay is going viral now, just as Trump's approval ratings crater under the weight of his mass deportation campaign, his failure to lower prices, and that pesky little war in Iran he helped launch after promising no more foreign adventures. While Trump rants about a "golden age" and a "communist menace" because democratic socialists keep winning elections, his vice-president is busy pretending his entire public record before 2022 was performance art. The guy who once said Trump was "leading the white working class to a very dark place" now wants to inherit the keys to the bunker.
Vance's journey from "never Trump guy" to Trump-backed Senate candidate to vice-president and aspiring 2028 heir apparent is less a political evolution and more a live demonstration of what happens when ambition hits the off switch on moral limits. As David Frum politely put it, Vance told everyone where his line was, then "walked across it." He didn't just cross the Rubicon; he set up a merch table on the far bank and started selling MAGA-branded life jackets to the people he once warned were drowning.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
presidency now available as a premium subscription service
Behold the Trump Corporate Governance Committee, otherwise known as "the boys who make sure dad gets paid while he's busy dismantling what’s left of democracy."
Donald Trump looked at the American presidency, a 230-year-old public institution, and said: "What if this was a QVC channel with nukes?" His latest financial disclosure shows that in the first year of his second term alone, he vacuumed up more than $2bn from Trump hotels, Trump golf courses, Trump crypto, Trump watches, Trump cologne, Trump Bibles and whatever else his kids could slap a logo on while pretending to be a "blind trust".
Ethics rules used to be a thing; now they're more of a vintage aesthetic. Human rights lawyer Tutu Alicante calls it what it is: the old assumption that openly looting public office carried reputational risk has collapsed. The new model politician is a political grifter whose job description is 10% governance, 90% merch drop. From Nigel Farage cashing in as Westminster's best-paid man while pushing dubious crypto and taking billionaire-funded jet rides, to Pauline Hanson repeatedly "forgetting" to declare her own oligarch air miles, Trumpism has gone global: it's aspirational kleptocracy with a Union Jack or Southern Cross slapped on top.
Trump even pulled a full 180 on crypto: after calling it a scam, he launched his own meme coin when he got back into the White House. Supporters bought the digital Trump trading cards, watched the price crater, and learned an important lesson about markets: the only guaranteed winner is the guy whose face is on the token. He cleared $635m while his fans ate the losses. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren is out here using phrases like "brazen crypto corruption" to describe the obvious — that these Trump-branded coins and ventures look a lot like a convenient way to buy political favor without the inconvenience of campaign-finance law.
So yes, living standards are falling, public services are crumbling, and young people are told to hustle harder — but the president is minting billions off perfume, NFTs-with-extra-steps, and foreign deals managed by Don Jr and Eric on a "global moneymaking blitz". Western democracy always feared turning into a banana republic. Trump just asked why stop at bananas when you can add cologne, golf memberships, and a meme coin.
#forever-grifting#corruption
