Secret Service’s innovative new strategy: protect the president, let the crowd fend for itself.
James Copenhaver, 76, has died two years after being shot at Trump’s 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania rally, where a 20-year-old gunman managed to get on a nearby rooftop and open fire on a former president and current candidate like it was the easiest side quest in American history. Trump got a grazed ear; Copenhaver got bullets in the arm and abdomen, a shredded colon, kidney damage, nerve loss, and a permanent cane. The Secret Service got… a lawsuit.
Copenhaver and his wife had already sued the federal government, accusing the Secret Service and DHS of having “utterly failed” to provide even basic security. You know it’s bad when the complaint is basically: why was the presidential candidate in line-of-sight of some random rooftop sniper perch in the first place? The medical examiner hasn’t explicitly tied his death to the rally injuries, but multiple surgeries, organ damage, and permanent disability don’t exactly scream "unrelated."
The White House, naturally, had no immediate comment, because why rush to say anything when a citizen wounded at a presidential campaign event dies after years of suffering tied to a preventable security failure? The government’s message remains consistent: we will absolutely put you through metal detectors to see your preferred candidate, but we can’t promise we’ve checked the literal roof.
DHS officials carefully reviewing a spreadsheet of random numbers and declaring democracy compromised.
The Department of Homeland Security proudly announced it had helped Donald Trump spin up a scary 278,000 alleged non-citizens on voter rolls in four states, including up to 15,903 in Nevada. After the headlines and the stump speeches, DHS quietly shuffled back and told Nevada officials that actually, they’d only confirmed 185 supposed non-citizens. Nevada checked those 185 one by one and discovered a shocking truth: every single one of them is a US citizen. So the only fraud uncovered so far is the federal government’s data work.
The punchline gets dumber. When Nevada asked DHS to share the basic information they allegedly matched — you know, like names — DHS said it would only provide voter ID numbers. Minor hitch: in Nevada, a single voter ID number can belong to multiple people over time, thanks to a system transition. So DHS essentially ran a witch hunt off the data equivalent of a smudged Post-it note, then refused to show their work while Trump went onstage to scream about hordes of illegal voters.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania officials are also asking DHS what planet their numbers came from, after being told there could be 14,576 non-citizens on the rolls and, in the same breath, that DHS didn’t have “high confidence” in that figure. So the federal government is throwing around massive voter-fraud numbers it doesn’t trust, targeting heavily scrutinized swing states, just before the midterms, and then clamming up when asked for proof. It’s less a law-enforcement effort than a taxpayer-funded propaganda machine aimed squarely at Americans who had the audacity to register to vote.
A DHS plane, presumably loaded with people who thought they were going to court and instead got a surprise one-way ticket to Wherever Will Take Them.
The Trump administration is back at the Supreme Court, begging for permission to keep playing its favorite game show: Deportation Roulette. After a federal judge — and then an appeals court — pointed out that you actually have to give people notice and a chance to challenge being exiled to a country they’ve never set foot in, the Justice Department rushed in with an emergency request to revive the policy. Due process, meet the emergency of "we had to cancel a deportation flight" for 70 people, some with criminal records, many without, all apparently expendable.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer helpfully explained that the policy has already been used to remove "thousands" of people to so‑called third countries, and that "thousands more" are ready to be shipped out — including "the worst of the worst" whose home countries won’t take them back. The solution? Dump them on other nations that signed blanket assurances that they definitely, totally, pinky-swear won’t persecute or torture them. Some of these countries: Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic, South Sudan — places famous for repression, conflict, and human rights reports you wouldn’t read after dark.
Meanwhile, CBS talked to migrants from Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Venezuela who woke up in Liberia — not their home, not their region, not even their continent — after being deported there without warning or any chance to object. Many had no criminal records beyond immigration violations. The administration insists that court rulings requiring basic notice and a hearing are causing "irreparable harm" to U.S. foreign policy, because judges are rudely interfering with the delicate diplomatic art of paying other countries to take people we don’t want.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has given lawyers for the deportees until Monday to respond to the government’s emergency plea for the right to continue outsourcing human beings like defective merchandise. The White House calls it an efficient immigration crackdown; everyone else recognizes a due-process-free deportation pipeline that treats people as cargo and the Constitution as optional fine print.
Texas ranchers gaze across their land, wondering when exactly 'America First' got redefined as 'whoever sells it cheapest to Tyson.'
Texas cattle ranchers are discovering that when Donald Trump said he’d put America first, he apparently meant "after imported beef." NBC reports that Trump’s push to expand beef imports is colliding head-on with the people who spent years cheering for his trade wars, his tariffs, and his big sweaty promises to protect American agriculture. Shockingly, it turns out that when corporate meatpackers want cheaper product, the populist cosplay stops at the ranch gate.
Instead of backing the folks actually raising cattle in Texas, the administration is clearing the way for more foreign beef to roll in while rural producers watch their prices get trampled. The same politicians who once staged photo ops in cowboy hats to rail against "globalist elites" are now quietly fine with those elites squeezing U.S. ranchers, as long as the checks keep clearing and the base keeps getting distracted by culture-war rodeos.
This is the MAGA economic model in action: scream about "border security" while importing the livelihoods of your own voters, then act shocked when the people who believed you start doing the political equivalent of open-carrying their anger on cable news. The cattle may be branded, but the ranchers are the ones getting burned.
Artist’s rendering of Congress exercising its war powers: 535 people staring at their shoes while one guy presses all the missile buttons.
Seven months into Donald Trump’s not-a-war-just-a-"military operation" against Iran, a diplomacy group had to march into federal court and remind everyone that the Constitution is not, in fact, a suggestion box. National Iranian American Council Action is suing to have Trump’s Iran adventure declared illegal under the Declare War Clause, on the radical theory that one guy rage-posting on Truth Social does not equal congressional authorization. Meanwhile, the Senate bravely failed to stop the war by a 49–50 vote, proving once again that when it comes to their core constitutional duty, Congress is fully committed to almost doing something.
While lawmakers rehearse their concern-face for cable news, the reality looks less like "limited strikes" and more like a regional catastrophe. Trump and the Israeli military kicked this off in February with airstrikes and missile attacks that killed top Iranian leaders and hundreds of civilians, including more than 100 children in a school the U.N. now politely calls a "possible war crime." The conflict has since spilled across the region, shuttered the Strait of Hormuz, wrecked global fuel markets, and drawn in everyone from the Houthis to the Saudis, all without a single actual declaration of war. But sure, let’s keep arguing about what counts as an "excursion" while Iranian families dig relatives out of rubble and American service members come home in body bags.
Trump helpfully undermined his own lawyers by repeatedly calling it a "war" in public, while his speech at the U.N. casually threatened to "annihilate" a country of 90 million people, because nothing says "stable commander in chief" like flirting with genocidal language on the world stage. So NIAC’s attorneys are now asking a judge to do the job Congress abdicated: enforce the tiny, obscure, rarely mentioned principle that only Congress can take the country to war. Their plaintiffs include Iranian Americans whose relatives have been killed or maimed by U.S. and allied airstrikes, watching from thousands of miles away as Trump plays real-time Risk with their families’ lives. This is what a "full-blown constitutional crisis" looks like: one man waging war, a legislature hiding under its desk, and the courts being asked to remind everyone that Article I still exists.
ICE officials proudly touring another empty, overpaid warehouse, explaining that the real detainee is fiscal responsibility.
Donald Trump demanded a mass-detention state, Congress handed ICE a $45bn blank check in the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act", and – you will never guess – the agency immediately started setting taxpayer cash on fire like it was trying to signal passing aircraft. The Government Accountability Office found tens of millions already wasted: nearly $3m on Guantánamo tent camps that were never used, $20m on detention warehouses that never saw a single human being, and premium rates for the now-closed Florida hellhole charmingly nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz. America: come for the freedom, stay for the carceral money pit.
While ICE was buying empty buildings like a drunk landlord with a Pentagon credit card, the detainee population jumped from 39,000 to 67,000, targeting not just "the worst of the worst" but people with no criminal history, long-term residents with civil immigration violations, asylum seekers, and even green card holders guilty of saying things this administration doesn’t like. That’s not border security; that’s a loyalty purge with paperwork.
The agency spent $1.5bn to buy private detention facilities without bothering to check if owning them is even sustainable, sank $426m into renovations now frozen by lawsuits, and cut a FEMA-backed deal to reimburse Florida at 171% higher than normal detention rates – $249 per person per day for cages so bad they had to be shut down. DHS is also overpaying the Bureau of Prisons at $182 a head while promising to maybe, possibly, someday have a plan by August 2027. Authoritarian theater is apparently expensive when you run it like a scammy WeWork for prison beds.
Senators courageously voting to keep an undeclared war going while pretending they’ve never heard of Article I, Section 8.
The Senate just took a long, hard look at the Constitution, public opinion, and the human cost of Trump’s Iran adventure and said: nah. A resolution that merely asked Trump to stop waging an undeclared, wildly unpopular war with Iran lost 49-50, because most Republicans decided that defending the president’s feelings was more important than defending Congress’ war powers. Only four GOP senators — Rand Paul, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Thom Tillis — could briefly remember that Article I exists. John Fetterman, for reasons known only to him and his political consultant’s Excel sheet, joined Republicans in voting no.
The House had already passed the measure 214-208, while voters are screaming into every available pollster’s microphone that this war is a terrible idea: just 33% think it was worth it, 62% say it wasn’t, and candidates who oppose the war are more popular by more than two-to-one. Meanwhile, prices for gas, diesel, fertilizer, and food are up, the Strait of Hormuz is a shooting gallery, 19 U.S. service members are dead, and eight sailors on the USS Lincoln got such an extended deployment for this genius plan that they attempted suicide. Congress’ response? A nonbinding resolution that still couldn’t pass.
Tim Kaine patiently explained that Congress, not Trump, has the power to declare war, reminding everyone that the White House can’t veto the Constitution — a cute theory that clearly has no application in 2026 America. Trump, for his part, stood at the U.N. and justified the whole thing as a noble project to stop Iran from getting nukes, lecturing the world on “vile regimes” using terror while he runs a forever war without a formal authorization and his party in the Senate nods along like a row of dashboard bobbleheads. The message from the GOP caucus is clear: if you wanted coequal branches, you should have written that into the founding doc—oh, wait.
Behold: the brave new green economy, where we save the planet by bulldozing it before the tax credits run out.
Out in the Mojave, the new gold rush doesn’t glitter, it glints: thousands of acres of public land about to be carpeted in industrial solar so private companies can cash in before Trump’s slashed-but-not-yet-dead subsidies expire in 2027. The Bureau of Land Management — that trusty federal real estate office for whichever industry shows up with a check — is cheerfully greenlighting mega-projects that bulldoze carbon-sequestering desert crust, crush habitat, and steamroll 10,000 years of Indigenous history, all so we can call it clean energy and slap it on a campaign ad.
Local activists and tribes keep pointing out that deserts actually store carbon, host threatened species, and contain hundreds of cultural sites, but the "climate leadership" model under Trump is apparently: gut long-term support for renewables, keep just enough incentives alive to trigger a panicked corporate land grab, and then let companies race to scrape every "empty" inch of public land before the tax credits vanish. BLM, which already manages one-tenth of the country like a clearance aisle for mining and drilling, is now doing the same for solar — proving that under this administration, we don’t transition away from extractive capitalism, we just swap the logo on the bulldozer.
So yes, the U.S. is technically building green energy, but it’s the same old imperial land-use story with a fresh coat of sustainability marketing: tribes fighting to protect sacred sites, rural communities getting bypassed on benefits, and ecosystems treated as collateral damage in the great investor stampede. Call it the Trump climate plan: weaponize policy chaos, hand public land to corporations, and then brag that the market is "innovating".
UN headquarters, where everyone is welcome to speak—unless the Trump State Department decides you’re bad for the narrative.
The Trump administration has decided that if you can't win the argument at the UN, you can always just ban the other side from entering the building. For the second year in a row, the State Department denied visas to Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority delegation, then slapped on some sanctions for good measure, accusing them of undermining peace while Washington arms and shields the government currently turning Gaza into rubble. Hosting the United Nations comes with legal obligations, but the Trump team treats treaties the way Trump treats NDAs: something you wave around until they become inconvenient.
Abbas, barred from New York, had to beam himself into the General Assembly like a war-crimes Cassandra on Zoom, condemning Israel’s "malicious colonial plan" and warning against another Nakba, while outside hundreds of protesters filled Manhattan streets with "End the Genocide" signs and shirts demanding "Fund people not bombs". Inside the US government, however, the priority is crystal clear: protect Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-hour PR stopover, punish Palestinians for existing, and dare anyone to mention that preventing a UN member’s representatives from reaching UN headquarters is wildly inconsistent with US host-country obligations.
New York’s mayor Zohran Mamdani briefly flirted with the radical idea that maybe a leader under ICC warrant shouldn’t get the red-carpet treatment, then dutifully walked it back to a safe "we respect the right to protest" stance, prompting Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon to complain that this was "too little and too late"—because nothing says moral clarity like demanding more aggressive hospitality for an accused war criminal. Meanwhile, Trump is busy in Washington hosting Xi Jinping, because why limit yourself to backing one authoritarian project when you can network.
Palestinian representatives are urging diplomatic missions to stage a walkout during Netanyahu’s speech to show they won’t be complicit in what they call genocide and war crimes. The Trump administration’s contribution to this grand moment of international diplomacy? Turning US soil into a gated community where only the right kind of occupiers get keycards, and the people warning about ethnic cleansing get hit with travel bans and lectures about "undermining peace".
California firefighters attempt to put out the literal flames while Washington argues over whether saying the word "climate" will poll badly in Wisconsin.
Gavin Newsom popped by the UN and New York Climate Week to deliver a truly radical message for 2026: maybe Democrats should actually talk about climate change while the country is both literally and figuratively on fire. He calls it an end to "climate hushing" — the party’s current strategy of whispering about the apocalypse while Trump’s White House treats the atmosphere like a rented car. According to global polling, up to 89% of humans want stronger climate action, which is an awkward data point for Democrats who’ve spent the last year acting like mentioning greenhouse gases might offend some mythical swing voter in a Cheesecake Factory parking lot.
Newsom also laid out the civics-class version of how to stop Trump from stealing the midterms: voters turn out in such overwhelming numbers that he "couldn’t possibly contest" the outcome, and if (when) he tries anyway — say, by declaring a national emergency or trying to invalidate results — then "we the people" step up, the courts intervene, and Congress does its job. Adorable. He’s basically describing a functioning constitutional order to a country currently being governed like a reality show where the host keeps threatening to cancel the finale if he doesn’t win.
He knocks Democrats for passing big climate policy under Biden and then marketing it with all the enthusiasm of a C-SPAN rerun. While Trump’s crew is busy deregulating the planet into a Mad Max sequel, Democrats are over here proving the "Enlightenment Fallacy" — assuming good ideas sell themselves without bothering to explain to anyone that, yes, the price of beef, coffee, housing, insurance and your electric bill might have something to do with the sky being on fire. Newsom, meanwhile, is declaring a state of emergency in California to pre-position assets for a supercharged El Niño, while Trump’s national plan is still, essentially: "What if we just pretended the ocean was fine?"
And because this is America, the whole conversation is framed around 2028 horse-race speculation. Newsom says he won’t run if Kamala Harris does, but notably doesn’t rule out running if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez jumps in. So while Trump toys with emergency powers and election subversion, the supposed resistance is already workshopping the sequel series. The planet is melting, democracy is wobbling, and everyone’s main takeaway is: wow, 2028 is gonna be lit.
Xi Jinping carefully explains how to avoid a catastrophic great‑power war while Trump workshopped the phrase “super intelligence” and called it foreign policy.
Xi Jinping shows up at the White House with a PowerPoint on "how to avoid World War III," and Trump’s main takeaway is that they’ve formed "a truly great friendship" and maybe China will buy more beef. Xi talks about crisis communication mechanisms and preventing military conflict between nuclear powers; Trump responds by renaming AI as "super intelligence" like he’s beta-testing a Marvel movie script.
While Xi invokes the Thucydides trap – the classic "rising power vs established power, try not to blow up the planet" problem – Trump is busy bragging that Xi is the first Chinese leader to get a second state visit and that they’ve made "tremendous strides" on trade. Translation: tariffs are still flying, competition over AI is escalating, but we invited 100,000 American students to China so everything’s fine.
Instead of a sober strategy to manage two militaries on a hair trigger, we get Trump world-building a buzzword (“super intelligence”) at the UN and pretending that a few handshakes and promises of market access for ranchers equal a grand geopolitical plan. The Chinese side is gaming out the next century. The American side is gaming out the next news cycle.
Todd Blanche explains that tossing asylum seekers into random conflict zones is actually the humane option, if you squint hard enough and turn off all the human rights treaties.
The Trump administration is sprinting back to its favorite branch of government – the Roberts-Alito-Barrett Court – to ask permission to keep exporting migrants to countries they’ve never lived in, never been to, and in some cases can’t even safely survive in. Attorney General Todd Blanche went on X to complain that a federal appeals court had the gall to block the Department of Homeland Security’s third-country deportation scheme "in the dark of night", which is a bold accusation from an administration that has turned midnight rule-by-emergency-memo into an art form.
Under a web of quiet deals with other governments, Trump officials have already shipped more than 25,000 people to at least 29 third countries – frequently Mexico, but also places like the Central African Republic and South Sudan, where ongoing conflict, terrorism, and humanitarian collapse are apparently just features, not bugs, of US immigration policy. Human rights groups call the program "machiavellian" and describe migrants being disappeared into legal limbo, while DHS general counsel James Percival insists the real cruelty is not sending people to war-torn states they’ve never set foot in. The administration now wants the Supreme Court to rescue its signature policy of "deport first, ask no questions ever" and to help rewrite due process so that the government can legally punt human beings around the globe like unwanted packages.
BP station sign helpfully displays the price of getting caught between Trump’s reelection strategy and the global diesel market.
The EU woke up to discover that Donald Trump has a new idea to fix high fuel prices before the midterms: just stop exporting US diesel to the rest of the planet for 90 days and hope no one notices the global economy catching fire. Trump proudly announced he’s told "my people" not to "send out the diesel," because nothing says serious energy policy like a vibes-based embargo designed around the Fox News graphics calendar.
Europe, which now gets up to half of its imported diesel from the US thanks to war-damaged refineries in the Middle East and Russia, is politely screaming into a pillow. Brussels warned that this stunt would "negatively impact both sides," which is diplomatic code for are you out of your mind. Energy experts describe the proposed ban as "devastating" for Europe and a "blunt tool" that could wreck US fuel supplies in the long run. So naturally, it’s on the table.
Traders are quietly panicking, the UK is already flirting with record diesel prices, and analysts say Europe would be forced into a bidding war with Asia for the scraps left from the Middle East and India. But hey, as long as American pump prices dip for a few weeks and Trump gets a campaign talking point, who cares if allied economies get kneecapped and the global market is thrown into chaos? It’s not energy policy; it’s a 90-day election ad with a refinery attached.
Greenland leaders return home to cheers after signing the classic deal: you bring the land and minerals, America brings the bases and press release about freedom.
Greenland's leaders came home to applause in Nuuk after signing a "security agreement" in New York with Donald Trump and Danish PM Mette Frederiksen, giving the U.S. an expanded military presence on the strategically important, mineral-rich island. In exchange, the document very generously "reaffirms" Greenland's right to self-determination — a right they theoretically already had, but now comes laminated with a Pentagon logo.
This is the culmination of that long-running standoff where Trump wanted to buy Greenland like it was a foreclosed golf course, got laughed at, and then quietly pivoted to the more traditional American approach: park more troops there and call it partnership. The U.S. gets a beefed-up footprint in the Arctic, Denmark gets to keep pretending it's fully in charge, and Greenland gets told this is all about their freedom while sitting on a pile of strategically vital minerals Washington would very much like to "help manage."
So yes, technically it's about security and self-determination. And not at all about locking down Arctic routes, rare earths, and a handy launchpad for the next Cold War cosplay. Absolutely no historical pattern here of big powers wrapping resource grabs in the language of protection and respect. None whatsoever.
Trump hands a coal miner a pen, symbolizing his administration’s bold commitment to using writing instruments as weapons of mass pollution.
Trump told fossil fuel CEOs at Mar-a-Lago to cough up $1bn and, shockingly, they discovered that bribing the government is still the best investment on Earth. The industry poured about $201m into his re-election, tossed another $19m at his inaugural slush fund, and in return got an estimated $190bn in tax breaks and subsidies over the next decade, plus a long-term policy package designed to keep Americans chained to gas pumps and coal stacks. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Chuck Schumer’s new report basically reads like the receipts for a giant pay-to-pollute loyalty program.
Instead of draining the swamp, Trump restocked it with crude. Twenty-six senior officials with fossil fuel and chemical industry résumés were sprinkled across EPA, Energy, and Interior like toxic confetti, while the One Big Beautiful Bill Act delivered a permanent 20% business income deduction for oil and gas — a neat little $737bn hit to federal revenue — and a $1bn subsidy fund using the Defense Production Act to rescue projects so risky even Wall Street said "no thanks". That’s not national defense, that’s national arson.
On the regulatory side, the administration went full "polluters’ rights" movement: exempting more than 180 facilities from pollution controls under a creatively abused Clean Air Act, rolling back vehicle greenhouse gas rules, and loosening power plant and oil and gas emissions standards. While Trumpworld claimed this would save Americans $1.3tn, EPA’s own numbers say it sticks consumers with roughly $1.5tn in extra fuel, repair, and maintenance costs — plus at least $580bn in added fuel costs over three decades. The environment gets wrecked, your lungs get wrecked, and your wallet gets wrecked, but Exxon’s quarterly earnings look fantastic.
And just in case any clean energy dared to compete, the administration paid companies $1.8bn in taxpayer money to cancel more than 160 wind projects — about 30 gigawatts of capacity and enough power for 8.5 million homes — while Trump personally vowed: “My goal is to not let any windmill be built.” So the government is now literally buying out cheap clean power so fossil fuels don’t have to face the horror of the free market. It’s not energy policy; it’s a protection racket with hurricanes as a side effect.
Trump contemplating which amendment to ignore next, moments after discovering judges also have TVs.
Donald Trump, ever the aspiring cable-news censor, tried to ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from White House access, because nothing says "confident, legitimate president" like using the government to punish media outlets that hurt your feelings. A federal judge has now stepped in to remind him that the First Amendment is not a suggestion, a loyalty oath, or a Truth Social terms-of-service pop-up.
Instead of the White House briefing room turning into a hand-picked fan club of Newsmax interns and OAN conspiracy interns, the court hit pause on Trump's blackout list, blocking the ban and restoring access for the outlets he personally loathes. It’s almost like the Constitution was designed specifically to stop this kind of petty authoritarian stunt.
The ruling doesn’t just save a few press passes; it underscores what Trump is trying to build: a government where coverage is either flattering propaganda or banned by decree. The judiciary, for now, has responded with a gentle but firm "no, you can’t do open fascism on live TV."
Donald Trump marched into an Iowa courtroom demanding that the Des Moines Register, USA Today Co., and pollster Ann Selzer be punished because their pre-election poll hurt his feelings and, allegedly, democracy. Judge Scott Beattie responded by gently explaining that the First Amendment exists, political speech is protected, and you can't just slap a "consumer fraud" sticker on journalism you don't like and call it a day.
The court tossed the case, noting that Trump's lawsuit tried to "stretch" Iowa law so far that it would turn core political speech into a liability—translation: the president attempted to convert basic press freedoms into a tort because the numbers were mean. USA Today’s lawyer politely celebrated the ruling as a win for a free press, while also pointing out that screaming "fake news" in legalese is still just an effort to punish coverage those in power dislike.
The Trump team, undeterred by reality, insists it will take this "powerful case" to the Iowa Supreme Court, because nothing says confidence like getting laughed out of one court and sprinting to the next. Meanwhile, this fits neatly into the administration’s larger hobby: using lawsuits as a blunt instrument against media organizations, and then discovering, again and again, that the Constitution is still more powerful than the president’s ego.
Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, seen here making the radical demand that the Department of Justice occasionally do justice.
The Trump Department of Justice has apparently updated the federal criminal code to include a new defense: "I promise to invest $10bn, your honor." Prosecutors abruptly ditched a fraud and bribery case against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani after he hired a new legal dream team and, according to reports, dangled a ten-figure US investment while represented by one of Donald Trump’s personal lawyers. A federal judge signed off on the dismissal while openly noting "irregularities" and calling the whole thing "highly unusual," which is judicial code for "what in the actual hell are you people doing."
Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, apparently still under the quaint impression that the Justice Department is supposed to prosecute white-collar crime, are now demanding answers from Attorney General Todd Blanche. They want to know who was in the room when Adani allegedly floated his $10bn get-out-of-jail-free card, what the terms were, and whether DOJ officials realized they’d wandered into a live-action tutorial on how oligarchs purchase impunity. They’re also asking about reports that Boris Epshteyn, yet another Trump personal lawyer-cum-fixer, and Donald Trump Jr both had contact with Adani while the case was pending — contacts that, according to their spokespeople, of course had "zero" to do with DOJ’s actions. Pure coincidence, like a fire sale at a match factory the day the forest burns down.
Now Democrats want a paper trail: which DOJ employees dealt with Adani, whether anyone understood Epshteyn was allegedly helping him, and if Don Jr or his emissaries chatted with prosecutors about this pesky bribery indictment. Blanche’s DOJ has so far responded with the traditional Trump-era transparency package: silence, stonewalling, and hoping the news cycle forgets faster than a congressional subpoena can be drafted. Meanwhile, the message to the world’s billionaires is loud and clear: bring your money, bring your lawyers, and under President Trump, justice is just another asset class to be privatized.
MAGA’s new vision of ‘family values’: one hand on the Bible, the other on the Pornhub search bar.
The Christian right spent decades scolding America about "decency" and "family values"—no sex before marriage, missionary only, think of the children. Then Donald Trump said "grab 'em by the pussy" on tape and, like a televangelist spotting an unlocked collection plate, the moral panic vanished overnight. Now you've got Kash Patel's FBI apparently chill with candidates who have hired prostitutes or had sex with animals, MAGA influencers hosting chats about wives providing sex on demand, and the Trump orbit cozying up to the Tate brothers, whose side hustle is allegedly sex trafficking wrapped in a Hustle Bro webinar.
Meanwhile, conservative elites are still thick in the social orbit of a "pedophile financier," Mar-a-Lago women are literally a plastic-surgery aesthetic, and right-wing authors who built careers moralizing about trans kids are pivoting to scolding young women for not having enough sex. The style guide has changed from "sexual prohibition" to "pornhub cosplay," but the policy agenda is the same: make non-procreative, premarital sex as dangerous and costly as possible for women while men are encouraged to treat domination as masculinity and porn as scripture.
So the old sermon about chastity has been replaced with a new liturgy of raunch, vulgarity, and surgically-optimized Stepford wives—but the core project never moved an inch. Whether it's abstinence-only shame or locker-room-brag rape culture, the goal is identical: use sex as a weapon to keep women subordinate, then call it "freedom" and "tradition" while the guys in charge cash in and lawyer up.
The Smithsonian Museum of American History, soon to feature a federally mandated warning label: "Caution: May Contain Actual History."
The Trump White House has discovered a new national security threat: the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where the real danger is apparently context. After an exhibit dared to mention that Benjamin Franklin’s scientific breakthroughs might have been helped along by the enslaved people in his household — and that, yes, the Founders owned human beings — Trump’s team produced a 162-page ideological Yelp review accusing the museum of "extreme political activism" and "ideological capture." Nothing says serious governance like the president rage-reading exhibit labels.
From there, the culture war cosplay turned into actual state pressure. Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 declaring the Smithsonian infected by "divisive, race-centered ideology," then followed it up on July 4 with a White House report timed to the Declaration’s 250th birthday, because if you’re going to sanitize history, you might as well do it on the anniversary. House Republicans then held hearings where they grilled museum director Anthea Hartig about a "chrome and rubber crotch harness" used for sadomasochistic sex, proving once again that the party of family values spends an extraordinary amount of time reading museum placards about BDSM.
The punchline gets darker. Trump issued another executive order directing the Interior Department to install warning signs outside the museum, literally telling visitors that history inside has been ideologically captured — a government-mandated content warning on reality. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum then warned the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents that federal agencies "cannot in good conscience" keep supporting the institution under its current leadership, while 62% of the Smithsonian’s budget comes from federal money. That kind of "conscience" looks a lot like political extortion dressed up as fiscal responsibility.
By early September, Lonnie Bunch — the Smithsonian’s first Black secretary and a respected historian — announced he was stepping down at 73, politely citing that "it has been stressful." Translation: having the federal government threaten your funding and independence because you mentioned slavery and modern sexuality in a history museum is not the retirement plan most scholars signed up for. What used to be a bipartisan national treasure is now one more battlefield where Trump tries to replace honest history with patriotic fan fiction, backed by executive orders and budget knives. This isn’t a debate about "wokeness"; it’s the state leaning on museums to stop telling the truth.
