The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

The Trump administration has once again sprinted to its favorite help desk—the US supreme court emergency docket—this time begging the justices to let federal prisons deny gender-affirming care to transgender inmates while the pesky lower courts sort out whether state-sanctioned cruelty is constitutional. Solicitor general D John Sauer, apparently moonlighting as a prison-yard theologian, declared that surgeries, hormones, and even undergarments, makeup, padding and wigs “could no longer be justified” as treatment for gender dysphoria. Medical consensus? Human dignity? Not part of this administration’s formulary. This all flows from Trump’s 2025 executive order commanding the Bureau of Prisons to spend zero federal funds on any care that helps an inmate’s appearance match their gender, and to shove trans women into men’s facilities for maximum "institutional security"—a phrase that here means put them in obvious danger and call it fairness. Two lower courts have blocked the order, so Team Trump is asking the conservative supermajority to rescue it, arguing the government is being "harmed" by having to not intentionally worsen prisoners’ mental health and physical safety. The administration cites the Bureau of Prisons’ worries about "fairness" and "resentment" among other inmates, as if the solution to inequality in prison healthcare is to drag trans people down to the lowest possible standard, not raise everyone else up. And this isn’t a one-off: Trump’s second term has turned trans people into a full-time political chew toy—banning trans service members, stripping gender markers from passports, backing bans on gender-affirming care for minors, and supporting sports bans. The Supreme Court, for its part, has been a reliable partner in this project, already greenlighting state bans on care for trans kids and on trans athletes. Now the question is whether they’ll add "denial of medically necessary care to people the government literally cages" to the growing list of things that are apparently compatible with "liberty and justice for all".

It only took a catastrophic Iran war, the Epstein files, and a sitting president with a felony record to make some of the MAGA superfans look up from the merch table and go, "wait a second." Former Front Row Joes Trisha Hope and Rick Frazier, once willing to camp out in DC hallways to defend Trump from impeachment, are now openly saying they’d support impeaching him again. Turns out "feeding the military-industrial complex" and being adjacent to Epstein’s horrors weren’t in the fan-club brochure. The disillusionment isn’t limited to the rally diehards. Joe Rogan, whose 2024 boost helped re-elect Trump, is now calling Trump supporters "fucking nuts" and gently conceding that the whole "drain the swamp" thing has gone, shall we say, off-script. Meanwhile, Trump’s approval ratings are circling the drain, nearly half the electorate is motivated to vote against him in the midterms, and his $5,000 "Trump dividend" vote-buying scheme is so laughably transparent that only 13% of voters claim to believe it. That’s not a base; that’s a clearance rack. Republicans, sensing that the gravy train might finally be pulling into the subpoena station, are already workshopping their victim narratives. Katie Miller is on X complaining about all the money her family had to spend on lawyers after the first Trump term and fully expects Dems to come for them again. Which, yes, is the point. As ex-cult members rage not just at Trump but at a system that lets the powerful skate, Mahdawi argues the only way to keep the next Trump knockoff from cashing in is to actually hold this one and his enablers accountable. Make MAGA’s legal bills high again.

The House has already bolted, the Senate is packing its emotional support roll-aboards, and Washington’s proudest collection of professional patriots is sprinting for the exits just in time for the midterms. The government is still shut down, but not to worry: John Thune and Mike Johnson are bravely addressing this national crisis by... going home to yell at demoralized voters instead of fixing the thing they broke. TPM’s Emine Yücel is hopping on YouTube Live to walk through what this Congress has actually done — and more importantly, what it’s gleefully refused to do. Spoiler: when your big legislative achievement is “turning the lights off and leaving,” you might not want that session graded on a curve. Still, Republicans get to campaign on the bold promise of even less governing next time, so in that sense, mission accomplished. So yes, the Capitol is closed, the government is closed, but the fundraising emails are very much open for business. Representative democracy: now streaming, but not actually functioning.

Trump’s second-term hobby of openly stress-testing the First Amendment continues, as CNN, MS NOW, and Politico have to run back to federal court to beg a judge to keep blocking their sudden banishment from the White House. Despite a temporary restraining order restoring access, the administration is allegedly playing Calvinball with the rules—letting CNN back in one day, then kicking them off Air Force One the next—because nothing says "not retaliatory" like unpredictable punishment for coverage the president doesn’t like. Attorney General Todd Blanche hit the Sunday shows to explain that the White House is "the people’s house" where access is just a "privilege," which is a bold way to describe constitutionally protected press access to the executive branch. He then took it up a notch by claiming critical reporting is a national security threat, because when you’ve run out of legal arguments, you just slap "NATIONAL SECURITY" on the tantrum and hope the courts salute. Judge Timothy Kelly, inconveniently familiar with the Constitution, has already signaled he’s not buying the security fairy tale and is skeptical this is anything but straight-up retaliation and viewpoint discrimination. Meanwhile, the broadcast pool is turning into a low-budget labor strike. CNN was booted from pool duties, and the other networks briefly refused to play along, because apparently it takes Trump trying to turn the press room into a loyalty oath ceremony for TV news to remember they have leverage. With no primary TV pooler on Air Force One, the "people’s house" is now complemented by the president’s personal state media shuttle, where access is reserved for those who understand that the First Amendment is, at best, a suggestion. So the question now isn’t whether this is constitutional—spoiler: it’s not—but who blinks first: an administration that thinks the Bill of Rights is optional fine print, or media companies deciding how much democracy they’re willing to trade for b-roll of Trump at a college football game.

Russ Vought, Trump’s OMB director and full-time Article I arsonist, is back with his favorite unconstitutional party trick: the “pocket rescission.” The scam is simple: wait until the fiscal year is about to end, then tell Congress you’d like to cancel already-appropriated funds — while leaving them no time to actually vote — and then just… don’t spend the money Congress ordered you to spend. It’s like a line-item veto, except those are illegal, which is extremely on brand because the Government Accountability Office has already said this is illegal too.

Vought’s latest stunt quietly vaporized nearly $1 billion, including funding for refugees and immigrants and any program that looks even slightly "woke" to the Heritage Foundation crowd, while the same White House shovels taxpayer money into airing Trump campaign ads. Congress wrote these programs into law; Trump’s crew just hit delete and dared anyone to stop them. Sen. Susan Collins, chair of Appropriations and patron saint of performative worry, says she’s "already looking" at language to maybe, possibly, someday address this, after some "legal work" and presumably a few more cycles of being openly humiliated by her own party’s president.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader John Thune responds to this direct assault on Congress’ constitutional power of the purse with a word salad about "good stewards" and "discussion" and "probably some litigation" — the legislative equivalent of shrugging and asking the arsonist if he at least recycled the gasoline can. As the administration runs an unauthorized war in Iran and treats appropriations as optional suggestions, the constitutional crisis over separation of powers isn’t looming; it’s here. Congress technically has tools to fight back. It just doesn’t have the spine.

The Trump administration’s deportation machine has quietly rolled out its latest metric of success: body count per calendar day. In a single 24-hour stretch, three men in three different states ended up dead thanks to the White House’s favorite paramilitary cosplay troupe, ICE. In Maine and Florida, the victims weren’t even the people agents were looking for – just "collaterals", which is what you call human beings once you’ve fully replaced policy with a Call of Duty loadout. The administration used 2025 to stage loud, camera-ready raids in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and beyond – full tactical gear, crowd-control sprays, and enough weapons to invade a mid-sized country – until federal agents shot and killed two US citizens protesting what local leaders literally called an "invasion" by immigration officers. That bit of bad optics prompted a pivot: no less brutality, just less B-roll. Now DHS leans on low-visibility arrest teams, 287(g) deals that turn local cops and sheriffs into part-time deportation squads, and fast-tracked immigration courts where representation is treated like a luxury item. So the mass raids have "all but disappeared" from TV, but the deaths haven’t. Instead, the system has been optimized: quieter operations, more deputized locals, less due process, and more people collapsing on buses, getting shot in parking lots, or running into traffic while fleeing agents. Andrew Free, who has spent years tracking ICE-related deaths, spells it out: the choices Trump’s crew has made since 2025 are driving up fatalities in the field and in custody. The cruelty isn’t a bug; it’s the feature, now with better messaging and fewer inconvenient protest videos.

Donald Trump lost his mail‑in ballot case, so naturally the next step is to poke around the fine print of the Constitution to see where democracy can be quietly strangled in a hallway. The plan: flood close House races with fake fraud claims, turn them into congressional election "contests," and then let a GOP‑controlled House decide who actually gets a seat. Courts and evidence were a problem in 2020; fortunately for Trump, Congress can operate on vibes, conspiracy theories, and whatever "expert" Mike Lindell found on Telegram last night. The key pressure point is 3 January 2027, when the new House gets sworn in. Until they take the oath, nobody is actually a member, and a single House clerk prepares the official roll of "Representatives‑elect" who get sworn. Legal scholars are now gaming out what happens when that clerk is a Trump‑approved barnacle willing to "interpret" statutes so only the right kind of winners get listed. Add in red‑state election deniers refusing to certify Democratic wins, DHS compiling glitchy "approved voter" lists in at least 27 states, and local officials manufacturing chaos over mismatches, and you’ve got a midterm where the outcome is less about votes and more about who can weaponize bureaucracy the fastest. Lurking in the background is the Supreme Court, which has spent the last several years auditioning for the role of partisan election referee and has already ruled for Trump in cases that should have been law‑school exam jokes. The article’s core point: the danger isn’t subtle. Between rogue county officials, federal agents who might just wander off with a few boxes of ballots, and a House that’s constitutionally allowed to judge the elections of its own members, Trump doesn’t need to "steal" the midterms in the old‑fashioned way. He just has to create enough chaos that Republicans in Congress can claim the power to "resolve" it. You know, by coincidentally seating themselves.

President Trump, Vice President Vance, Mike Johnson and a conga line of tech billionaires are gathering in D.C. to celebrate the start of a "Golden Age" of AI, which is a poetic way of saying: we’ve decided the robots can do whatever they want. As OpenAI and friends quietly admit their models are slipping past safety controls, the administration’s big policy response is… to host a party and tell the companies, essentially, "if you’re scared, just regulate yourselves." Bold strategy to outsource the entire concept of public safety to the same people building the thing everyone’s scared of. Across the country, OpenAI is holding DevDay, promising 20+ shiny new toys, including an always-on AI agent, while simultaneously scrapping its most powerful model over safety concerns. So the message is: this stuff might be too dangerous to release, but also here’s a perpetual software stalker for your phone. On the Hill, lawmakers are realizing that tech execs love to talk about regulation in the abstract but vanish when it’s time to put actual rules on paper — leading even normally diplomatic staffers to summarize the industry’s approach as: "either help write laws or get off the pot." Meanwhile, Trump and Johnson are crystal clear: they have "little appetite" for legislation, preferring vibes-based governance and a Fox Business soundbite about "a little oversight, a little transparency" instead of, you know, laws. The bottom line: the people in charge of protecting the public are treating AI like a campaign backdrop and a China talking point, while the companies building the doomsday machine are having an identity crisis over whether they want real rules or just more photo ops. America’s AI safety strategy is now: hope the corporations grow a conscience before the models grow an agenda.

Senate Republicans are hauling former special counsel Jack Smith in for a good old-fashioned show trial, officially titled “Oversight of Jack Smith’s Abuse of Authority and the Targeting of Republicans and Related Matters,” because nothing screams rule of law like putting the prosecutor in the dock while the alleged criminal sits in the Oval Office. Chuck Grassley, now moonlighting as Trump’s grievance therapist, insists Smith “must answer” for the horror of investigating an attempted coup and a stash of classified souvenirs at Mar-a-Lago. Meanwhile, the Trump Justice Department is busy doing what it always accused everyone else of: weaponizing the government. They launched a grand conspiracy investigation that conveniently reaches all the way back to 2016 — outside the normal five-year statute of limitations — to go after the law enforcement officials who dared touch Trump world. FBI and DOJ officials tied to past Trump probes have been purged, defense attorneys say DOJ is sniffing around the Mar-a-Lago search itself, and Jim Jordan is demanding a criminal case against Smith for the high crime of answering questions in a way he didn’t like. Smith has already said he expected Trump would have been convicted in the Jan. 6 case, and his report flatly stated that Trump inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence at the Capitol. Trump’s response was to call the rioters “hostages,” grant them mass clemency, and then set his loyalists on the people who investigated him. To ice the cake, Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon has helpfully blocked public release of parts of Smith’s classified-documents report, and DOJ now says it can’t even talk about that investigation. So yes, the message from Trump’s America is clear: overturning an election is fine; investigating the overturning of an election is what might get you indicted.

The Intercept is suing the city of Alvarado, Texas, because the local government has apparently discovered a cutting-edge legal doctrine: if you never cash the check, you never have to obey the Public Information Act. After a journalist requested emails about the Prairieland ICE protest that turned into a violent confrontation, the city named its price — $854.17 — The Intercept paid up, and then Alvarado responded with a brave stance of total silence.

Veteran transparency lawyer Terry Mutchler, who has seen three decades of government foot-dragging, calls this “stonewalling on steroids,” which is polite legalese for these people know exactly what they’re hiding. The records cover police communications around a July 4, 2025 protest that escalated into gunfire and became a showcase trial in Trump’s war on the activist left, handing out massive sentences including a 100-year term for Benjamin Song. Now, as those convictions head to appeal, the same city that helped feed the narrative is pretending the emails either don’t exist or exist in some quantum state where they can’t be released until the sun burns out.

Instead of complying with basic transparency laws — produce the records, say they don’t exist, or get an attorney general ruling — Alvarado chose option four: ghost the press and the public. For a case that helped justify draconian sentences against protesters, the refusal to release internal communications isn’t just bureaucratic laziness; it’s yet another reminder that when the state wants to make an example of you, the evidence is public only when it helps the prosecution. Open government, Trump-era style: pay first, ask never.