Traders stare at a screen trying to price oil while Trump plays Battleship with real countries.
JP Morgan, a bank that confidently sold the entire world on mortgage-backed clown cars in 2008, has now thrown up its hands and admitted it cannot model the endgame of Trump's US–Iran war. Their analysts assumed there were "economic red lines" the administration wouldn't cross — oil above $100, 10-year yields at 5%, gas at $5, inflation at 4% — on the quaint theory that the White House cared about basic economic stability. Six months and several trampled red lines later, the only thing they've successfully modeled is presidential impulsivity with a side of oil shock.
Instead of a plan, we have vibes. The Strait of Hormuz is still a geopolitical choke point, the war is still on, and JP Morgan is publicly telling investors, "we simply don't know how to model the endgame" — a polite, finance-world way of saying "the commander-in-chief is winging it and we’re all strapped to the wing." Markets are "on edge," inflation risks are rising, borrowing costs are spiking, and the global economy is being held hostage to Trump's next 3am impulse. The world's largest superpower is conducting foreign policy like a meme stock pump-and-dump, and even Wall Street, which usually loves a good crisis, is starting to sound nervous.
So here we are: a forever-war with no exit strategy, a strategic waterway half-closed, and the global economy priced according to whatever Trump feels like doing on a given Tuesday. It's killing-democracy meets full-stupid: Congress sidelined, allies whiplashed, and the planet's energy market being used as a reality show prop. The only "model" that fits is authoritarian chaos with a strong chance of recession.
Trump prepares to confront Xi about Chinese aid to Iran by practicing his toughest move: a 3-hour state dinner and a compliment about "behaving reasonably well."
Sen. Elissa Slotkin would like Donald Trump, commander-in-chief in the same way a reality show host is a "business titan," to maybe mention to Xi Jinping that Chinese satellite companies allegedly helped Iran target a U.S. base in Jordan — you know, the one where three American service members were killed and four wounded. She politely suggests this should be a "centerpiece" of Trump's talks with Xi during his upcoming White House visit, because apparently "please stop helping our enemies kill our troops" didn't make it onto the original dinner menu.
Trump's response so far? Xi has "behaved reasonably well," and anyway, "they basically do what we do" because spying is just a fun, symmetrical hobby between pals now. This, after U.S. sanctions on three Chinese satellite firms for enabling Iranian strikes, and reporting that Tehran used Chinese imagery before and after the deadly July attack. Slotkin, bewildered that Trump keeps rolling out the red carpet for adversaries while punting allies into traffic, has to spell out that providing targeting data to help Iran kill American service members should be a line even he can't cross.
The White House, never missing a chance to insult reality, insists that "Iran has been decimated" and that nothing any outside actor does is "in any way increasing" Iran's ability to target Americans — a bold claim to make about an attack that already happened and killed three Americans. So Xi gets a lavish state dinner, Iran gets Chinese satellite support, and U.S. troops get housing hit by missiles and drones. American power, under Trump, means never letting dead service members get in the way of a good photo op with your favorite autocrat.
A crowd in pink shirts begs the government to let the post office deliver ballots, which is apparently a controversial idea now.
Trump signed a March executive order telling the US Postal Service it could refuse to deliver ballots to voters the administration unilaterally deemed "ineligible" using a DHS–Social Security list that somehow wasn’t carved directly onto a burning cross. Experts called it "wholly unconstitutional" because, tiny detail, the Constitution gives election rules to the states, not to whichever president is currently rage-posting on Truth Social.
The scheme was also a logistical dumpster fire: a USPS whistleblower told Congress the plan was "perilously rushed and potentially unlawful" and state election officials said there was no way to implement it with ballots already going out in places like Alabama, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. The supreme court, in a rare moment of "remembering what laws are", smacked the plan down — with even Trump appointees Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch declining to sign on to the constitutional arson. That sent Trump into a public tantrum, accusing his own justices of being "a shell of their original selves" for the crime of not burning mail-in voting to the ground.
Meanwhile, Trump has finished turning the Department of Justice into the world’s worst episode of "Better Call Saul" by making his former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, attorney general and then using him as his personal lawyer anyway. Blanche is now doing White House press briefings as de facto press secretary and then jetting off to grin and give thumbs-ups at Trump rallies, because why even pretend DOJ is independent when you can just staple it to the campaign bus? All this is in service of one goal: a president who openly believes he is the law, trying to sabotage mail-in voting — a method he personally uses — because it helps Democrats and once ended his little "red mirage" fantasy. The fraud rate for mail ballots is effectively zero, but the fraud rate for this presidency remains impressively, relentlessly off the charts.
Roderick Blair, having spent a decade contributing data to fight Alzheimer’s, contemplates the moment the Trump administration decided his brain health was just another line item in their war on science.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new treatment for Alzheimer’s: just cancel the studies, shred the data pipeline, and call it a victory for freedom. In Pittsburgh, a 15-year, community-trusted NIH-funded project following cognitive health in two low-income, mostly Black neighborhoods has been abruptly kneecapped, along with more than 5,700 other medical research grants nationwide. Participants like 70-year-old Roderick Blair spent years wearing monitors, answering invasive surveys, and building trust, only to find out that the White House’s latest science policy is basically: if it mentions racism, poverty, or public health, it’s either “DEI” or “fake.”
Researchers were given 90 days to shut everything down – not enough time to finish the neuropsychological reviews that would actually help diagnose early Alzheimer’s, but just enough time to make sure nobody gets useful results, and nobody gets paid to interpret them. The unique, long-term dataset on how discrimination, neighborhood neglect, and trauma shape brain health in Black communities? Labeled expendable in Trump’s crusade to remake science into something that never challenges power, racism, or corporate interests.
Blair calls it what it is: retribution. A government that already treats Black neighborhoods as disposable has now decided their brains are, too. Instead of confronting the uncomfortable reality that structural racism doubles Alzheimer’s risk for Black Americans, the administration is pulling the plug and walking away from years of work. Early diagnosis, life-saving interventions, and community trust are all collateral damage in an administration that views science as a loyalty test and human beings as props in a culture war.
Donald Trump confidently explaining why the people who invented the technology are wrong about its dangers, from the secure vantage point of having never read a briefing longer than a tweet.
Silicon Valley’s richest doomsday preppers are suddenly begging the US government for AI guardrails, which tells you how bad it is: the arsonists are asking for a fire code. Unfortunately, the man with the matches is Donald Trump, who has decided that warnings about AI wiping out jobs, democracy, or civilization are a "hoax" – presumably because they don’t fit on a campaign hat or an invoice line for his next donor dinner.
Trump’s "affection" for the AI industry looks a lot like his affection for fossil fuels and private jets: if it’s lucrative, unregulated, and dangerous to everyone else, he’s in love. While tech leaders mumble about existential risk, he hears only one thing: more chances to strip away oversight, shovel public power to private monopolies, and let algorithmic black boxes decide what’s true, who gets work, and which lies get boosted. What could go wrong when a man who calls basic safety a hoax is put in charge of the most powerful technology on earth?
Instead of building a framework to protect workers, elections, or national security, Trump is treating AI like another reality show prop – a shiny distraction he can use to flatter billionaires and punish critics. Democratic institutions are already wheezing; now we’re handing them over to systems trained on the worst of the internet and the best of corporate lobbying. If you were designing a roadmap to accelerate disinformation, automate oppression, and make oversight legally optional, you’d end up pretty close to Trump’s AI policy: full speed ahead, eyes closed, pockets open.
National guard troops patrol downtown Memphis, bravely defending the city from declining crime rates and inconvenient autopsy reports.
The Trump administration’s big tough-on-crime experiment in Memphis is going about as well as you’d expect when you hand domestic policing to a president who thinks ‘fascism’ is a branding opportunity. Trump signed an executive order to flood the city with federal agents and 1,500 Tennessee national guard troops, then took a victory lap when homicides dropped — never mind that murders were already falling before the deployment and are dropping in cities that didn’t get the camo cosplay treatment.
Independent analysis says the guard surge has had no measurable impact on violent crime, but it has produced four dead men, including Tyrin Johnson, who taskforce officials claimed was an armed robbery suspect and whom an autopsy inconveniently revealed was shot in the back. As the bodies pile up and the stats fall apart, the taskforce calls it a success; the White House calls it ‘Restoring Law and Order’; and Trump threatens to personally sue the thinktank that crunched the numbers for $5bn, because nothing screams confidence in your policies like trying to bankrupt the people who checked your math.
Meanwhile, Memphis residents are doing what their elected leaders mostly won’t: fighting back with the only weapon this administration truly fears — bad PR. Local businesses are refusing to serve national guard troops, conservatives tried to launch a boycott that turned into a buy-cott, and more than 50 shops have joined the lockout. While the city council tiptoes around the occupation, pizza joints and board game bars are out here leading the resistance to a federally backed street army that kills civilians, runs massive immigration raids, and can’t prove it’s reduced crime — but hey, at least it’s been ‘transparent as mud.’
Ashley Hinson, seen here beta-testing the revolutionary new GOP message: ‘I was Trump’s top ally, but please don’t hold that against me until after the election.’
Ashley Hinson, self-branded as a wholesome "minivan-driving mom" and very serious person, spent the last few years auditioning to be Trump’s "top ally" in the Senate—protecting his war powers, cheerleading his tariffs, and generally stapling her political future to his forehead.
Then Trump touched the sacred Iowa cow: beef tariffs. Suddenly, Hinson discovered policy nuance and went on Fox News to bravely whisper that maybe detonating American cattle ranchers’ livelihoods to score a cheap-grocery sound bite wasn’t ideal. Having spent a year wrapped in the MAGA flag, she’s now trying to tiptoe away from the stage while the band is still playing "Trump 2026" at full volume.
She skipped his big midterm convention in Dallas—unlike other red-state Senate hopefuls still fighting for space in the photo op line—because in an agriculture-heavy swing state, "I’ll do whatever Trump wants" polls slightly worse than "I personally shot your cow." Hinson’s pitch now appears to be: I supported his war powers, defended his tariffs, begged for his endorsement, but this one reckless economic idea? That’s where I draw the line. Democracy may be on fire, but at least someone finally noticed the beef.
Ken Paxton bravely asks Texas Republicans for prayers, votes, and also roughly nine figures in super PAC money, just like the Founders intended.
Republicans spent months pretending Ken Paxton’s biggest problem was James Talarico’s radical ideas, when it was actually Talarico’s terrifying advantage of not being under a permanent cloud of scandal and having money that voters could trace. That inconvenience is now solved: Trump’s MAGA Inc., a Texas GOP PAC, and a flock of anonymous checkbooks have parachuted in with a September ad tsunami worth more than $94 million to prop up the indicted state attorney general and drown his opponent in attack ads.
Nationally, it’s the same story in widescreen. Across the nine most competitive Senate races, Republicans and their billionaire-funded outside groups are dropping more than $557 million on ads to Democrats’ $343 million, with Trump-aligned outfits alone throwing down over $150 million in the last two weeks. GOP strategist Scott Jennings calls it the “cavalry” arriving so Republicans can “make an actual argument” — apparently the argument being that unlimited dark money and super PAC cash should decide who writes the laws you have to follow, while guys like Paxton get rescued from political consequences by a firehose of unaccountable spending.
So voters can relax: there may be ethics investigations, criminal probes, and scandals that would end careers in a functioning democracy, but thanks to super PACs and dark money groups, no Republican candidate is ever truly broke — just one Trump-branded bailout away from another term in office.
Maria Elvira Salazar, seen here attempting the dangerous GOP maneuver known as ‘mild disagreement with Dear Leader’ while representing a district Trump’s immigration policies are busy terrorizing.
Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican in a majority-Hispanic South Florida district, has done the unthinkable: she looked at Trump’s immigration enforcement regime and decided maybe openly cheering on family separation cosplay and mass deportation fantasies isn’t the vibe her voters are going for. So she’s running ads criticizing Trump’s immigration enforcement, which in today’s GOP is just one step short of confessing to reading the 14th Amendment.
This is billed as a “rare move,” because it still is. The party that spent years chanting "build the wall" is now discovering that some of their districts are full of the very people Trump’s policies treat as collateral damage. Salazar isn’t exactly storming ICE facilities with a copy of the Geneva Conventions, but she’s at least willing to say out loud that Trump’s immigrant-crushing spectacle might not be a winning strategy in a district where families actually know what those raids and crackdowns look like up close.
So no, this isn’t a moral awakening so much as a survival instinct. But every crack in the façade of lockstep support for Trump’s immigration cruelty is one more reminder that the “tough on the border” brand is built on real people’s fear and suffering—and that even some Republicans are starting to realize there’s only so much state-sanctioned harassment their own constituents will tolerate.
A voter in Denver bravely casts a ballot in what used to be a civic ritual and is now a Homeland Security thought experiment.
Denver election official Paul López says every meeting now includes the same cheerful question: what do we do when federal agents show up at the polls? That’s not paranoia; that’s just living in a country where the president keeps threatening to send armed officers to "protect" elections from the menace of... people voting.
Federal interference at polling places is already illegal, so naturally the Trump administration is workshopping ways to do it anyway. Trump mused in May that he'd do "anything necessary" to ensure "honest" elections — historically a phrase that translates to we will scare the hell out of anyone we think might vote against us. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin helpfully floated the idea that ICE could serve warrants at polling locations, while border czar Tom Homan did the classic strongman routine: insist there'll be no "sweeps" while also wondering why anyone would be worried about armed immigration cops hovering near ballot boxes.
Civil rights groups, unions, and local officials have responded the only way you can when the government starts test-driving soft martial law at the polls: with lawsuits. Multiple coalitions are in court trying to block federal officers from even pretending this is legal, citing longstanding federal protections against voter intimidation. DHS, doing its best "we're not doing a thing, but we totally might" impression, told NPR that ICE isn't planning operations at polling sites, but quickly added that if their "intelligence-driven" work just happened to lead them to a polling place, well, who can say what might happen. FBI Director Kash Patel refused to rule out agents at the polls either, but promised they'd "follow the law" — a comforting assurance from an administration whose whole project is seeing how far they can break democracy before the courts catch up.
So yes, it's illegal for federal agents to lurk around your polling place with guns. That’s why the Trump team keeps talking about it on TV: as a reminder that even if they can't yet turn voting into a crime, they can make it feel like one.
President squints at "Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED" poster on Air Force One, presumably checking if they spelled his name big enough on the rubble.
The Trump administration just got told by a federal judge that it can't casually "demolish" the Kennedy Center without a 30-day heads up, because apparently we now need court orders to stop the president from treating national landmarks like failed casinos. Judge Christopher Cooper is demanding a detailed report on the so-called "temporary closure" for emergency repairs, and written notice if this little weekend project somehow turns into, say, a crater on the Potomac.
Meanwhile, the board of trustees — which, tiny detail, is chaired by Trump and stacked with his cabinet and buddies — has now voted for the third time since February to close the venue for two years. Trump hopped on Truth Social to brag that the vote was "almost unanimous" for "safety reasons," which is a very polite way of saying, "We shut it down because I control the board and I wanted to." He insists the place is falling apart and that sticking his name on the building will magically unlock renovation money, as though the problem with American arts funding is insufficient Trump branding.
To really sell the subtlety of this plan, Trump was photographed on Air Force One staring at a placard reading "Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED," while telling reporters that if his name isn't plastered on it, the venue will be "ripped down." This is all happening after the same judge already ordered his name removed from the building in May. So the current situation is: a president who lost the naming fight now presiding over a board that keeps voting to close the place, floating demolition imagery on the plane, and getting legally leashed so he can't take a wrecking ball to a performing arts center without a 30-day cooling-off period. Totally normal democracy stuff.
Trump pondering whether Al Capone would have endorsed him, then deciding the safest answer is to deregulate his entire arsenal just in case.
Donald Trump has apparently decided that the real victims in America are people who can’t easily get their hands on short-barreled rifles, sawed-off shotguns, and silencers. According to CBS News, he personally ordered the Justice Department not to appeal a ruling from Trump-appointed Judge James Wesley Hendrix that blows giant holes in the National Firearms Act — the 90-year-old law that was written so regular citizens didn’t have the same toolkit as Al Capone.
Career DOJ lawyers across multiple offices reportedly said, "Hey, this is unconstitutional nonsense and it’s already wrecking federal gun prosecutions," and Trump responded by doing what he does best: ignoring law, precedent, and basic public safety so he can keep his base marinating in tactical cosplay. The DOJ is now preparing to tell Congress it just won’t bother defending the law it’s supposed to uphold, shredding the department’s long-standing duty to defend congressional statutes because the president likes the sound of more suppressors in the suburbs.
Meanwhile, ATF has been ordered to issue guidance on how to live in this new world where membership in the right gun group — a $25 annual fee, cheaper than Netflix — can get you out from under restrictions that have been on the books since FDR. Prosecutors are already dropping charges in cases involving silencers, as defense attorneys argue their clients simply joined one of the blessed gun organizations after the Texas injunction. The White House insists all the important criminal laws are "still in place," which is technically true, in the same way a stop sign is "still in place" after you turn off all the streetlights and hand out blindfolds.
So to recap: Trump’s Congress quietly nuked the NFA transfer tax in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, his judge then used that to declare most of the regulatory scheme unconstitutional, and now the president is forbidding an appeal while DOJ loyalists pretend this is all just healthy constitutional debate. America: where the federal government can’t reliably protect voting rights, but it will absolutely go to bat for your right to own a gangster weapons bundle with less oversight than buying a used car.
Trump officials carefully reviewing endangered species protections before feeding them into an industrial shredder labeled 'job creators'.
The Trump administration has decided the Endangered Species Act works better if it doesn’t actually protect endangered species. Fish and Wildlife Service director Brian Nesvik quietly sent a memo redefining what it means to "take" an endangered animal so narrowly that you basically have to look a whale in the eye, swear an oath that you’re trying to kill it, and then hit it with your ship before it counts. Accidentally mowing down bats, birds, or entire habitats with logging, mining, and industrial projects? Totally fine, as long as you pinky-promise you didn’t mean to turn them into roadkill.
This comes right after Interior secretary Doug Burgum helpfully deleted the ESA’s long-standing definition of "harm"—you know, the one that said you can’t just destroy an animal’s habitat and then act surprised when the animal dies. Burgum claimed federal agencies had been "abusing" the law by trying to stop corporations from bulldozing ecosystems into oblivion, so naturally the fix is to let corporations bulldoze ecosystems into oblivion with fewer consequences.
Legal groups like the Center for Biological Diversity and Earthjustice are pointing out that the Supreme Court already smacked down this exact logic in 1995, but the Trump team is undeterred by such trivialities as precedent or literacy. Their new position is that as long as you don’t intend to kill endangered species, the law can’t touch you—like a moral version of "I didn’t see them there" applied to entire food webs. Meanwhile, Trump is on stage asking if people can start shooting gray wolves "as of today," and Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins cheerfully says Burgum just has to "do a little magic" first. The magic, apparently, is making whole species disappear.
Pictured: a panel of experts carefully explaining that when you elect an aspiring autocrat, sometimes the vibes go bad later.
NBC’s new poll suggests that the once-mighty Trump coalition – that glorious alliance of tax-cut billionaires, election deniers, and people who think grocery prices are set personally by the president – is starting to chip and flake like a cheaply gold-plated Trump hotel sign. Voters who helped drag him back into the White House in 2024 are now noticing that, shockingly, four years of chaos, retribution politics, and economic whiplash haven’t actually made their lives better.
Instead of the promised permanent winning, the numbers show “real cracks” among key groups that powered his comeback: some working-class voters are tired of paying for his tariffs and vanity culture wars, suburbanites are not loving the permanent constitutional crisis aesthetic, and even a slice of his own base appears to be wondering whether the Justice Department should exist for something other than protecting Donald J. Trump’s feelings. When your brand is strongman authoritarian and the ‘strong’ part starts polling in the low 40s, that’s less a mandate and more a hostage situation with bad ratings.
None of this means democracy is out of the ICU; it just means some of the people who helped set the fire are now complaining about the smoke. But every point he loses in the polls is one more reminder that the coalition built on grievance, disinformation, and forever-grifting might not be as indestructible as the man who keeps insisting the crowd size was huge, everyone says so, the biggest ever, actually.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the nation’s top health official, reassuring anti-vaxxers that while measles is back, at least their conspiracy theories have never been healthier.
The Trump administration’s Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, just headlined the country’s biggest anti-vax pep rally while measles is literally killing Americans again. From the stage of Children’s Health Defense — the anti-vaccine outfit he ran for nearly 20 years — Kennedy promised activists they have a “strong and steadfast friend at the White House,” then mentioned the ongoing deadly measles outbreak roughly once before pivoting back to the real tragedy: vaccines existing.
Kennedy, now in charge of the agency that’s supposed to stop preventable disease, described “vaccine-injured” kids as “damaged” and helpfully blamed routine shots for everything from autism to SIDS to anorexia, casually discarding decades of research like yesterday’s QAnon meme. As polls show trust in the MMR vaccine dropping and deaths rising in Texas, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, the administration’s response is not "fix this" but "put Andrew Wakefield on stage twice" and let him giggle about how Trump is parroting his old plan to split the MMR shot into three separate ones.
Meanwhile, the conference agenda reads like a conspiracy theory tasting menu: dismantle school immunization requirements, fight 5G and 6G, study chemtrails, and elevate fringe Danish researchers under investigation as “deities of vaccine research.” Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul showed up to relive their Covid resentment tour, while Rep. Thomas Massie proudly recounted how Trump basically asked if Kennedy was “too much” for HHS and then nominated him anyway. Activists were advised to treat politicians like cattle and pack the “clown car” with people who’ll do their bidding, which is refreshingly honest for a movement now literally steering federal health policy.
To top it off, one Kennedy ally called media coverage of the measles outbreak a “psy op” designed to control what he thinks about Bobby, then celebrated that scientists consider Kennedy “dangerous” — which, given that he’s methodically dismantling vaccine confidence from inside the government during an active outbreak, is the first accurate medical statement anyone at this event has made in years.
Trump and Xi smile for the cameras at the White House, while somewhere offstage the actual hostages wait to find out if they made the cut for this season’s diplomatic trade-ins.
The wife of U Min Zin, a Myanmar scholar grabbed by China on bogus "national security" charges, is pinning her hopes on Donald Trump bringing him home during Xi Jinping’s White House visit. Because when you’re up against an authoritarian surveillance state, naturally you turn to the guy who calls Xi a "great leader" on live television.
Families of Americans detained in China are trekking to Washington to beg the president to mention their loved ones while he’s busy staging the next chapter of the Trump–Xi bromance. A House hearing is literally titled "Lives, Not Leverage" while everyone quietly acknowledges that Beijing is taking hostages as leverage and Washington is treating their release as a negotiable summit deliverable, right next to tariff waivers and flattering joint statements.
Congresswoman Young Kim warns Americans that China might seize them as bargaining chips, the State Department slaps a "wrongfully detained" label on the cases, and a nameless White House official dutifully assures the BBC that resolving these detentions is "always a top priority"—which is why it only happens when it can double as a campaign ad. Trump’s "historic record" on freeing detainees gets invoked, as if authoritarian hostage diplomacy becoming a recurring PR opportunity for the president is a sign of strength rather than a symptom of a global system where human lives are now just summit swag.
Trump has already bragged about raising Jimmy Lai’s case with Xi, who reportedly said that one would be "tough"—translation: not useful enough for Xi’s own leverage yet. Meanwhile, U Min Zin is interrogated for hours a day while his family waits for monthly consular visits to confirm he’s still alive, and Washington’s big strategic innovation is hoping Trump can squeeze a few prisoners out of Xi like he’s negotiating hotel financing. Hostage diplomacy is thriving; human rights policy is whatever fits in the press release.
Roy Cohn, seen here pioneering the ‘deny everything and send no emails’ school of public service that Trump would later franchise.
Kai Bird’s American Scoundrel helpfully reminds everyone that Donald Trump didn’t just wake up one day and invent shameless corruption; he had a tutor. Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy’s favorite attack dog and walking ethics violation, apparently spent years teaching Trump the sacred commandments of American kleptocracy: deny everything, delay forever, attack relentlessly, sue and countersue, never concede, stiff your creditors, and for the love of God, leave no paper trail.
So when Trump floods courts with garbage lawsuits, refuses to pay people who worked for him, screams “witch hunt” at every investigation, and mysteriously forgets to write anything down, that’s not chaos — that’s the Cohn curriculum in action. This is the throughline from McCarthyism to MAGA: weaponize the law, bury the truth, and treat accountability as an optional add-on for poor people.
Trump lovingly gazes at a stack of classified folders, pondering which ones to call ‘mine’ and which ones to flush.
The Trump administration just told a federal appeals court that the Presidential Records Act — the law that says a president’s official papers belong to the public, not to the guy rage‑tweeting from the Oval — is unconstitutional. Their theory: if Supreme Court justices get to hoard and shred their work papers like paranoid raccoons, then surely the president should get the same vibe. After all, why should Congress get to say that records of wars, pardons, coup attempts and classified briefings belong to the American people when they could instead be treated as Trump-branded collectibles?
Instead of arguing that the public has a right to know what its government did, the brief leans on Supreme Court secrecy as the gold standard. If the justices can bury their documents until decades after they’re dead, Trump wants to do them one better and turn the entire executive branch into a personal storage unit shielded from history, oversight, and subpoenas. The question the brief poses — why should presidents be treated differently from justices — somehow skips the obvious answer: because one of them commands the military, runs the entire federal bureaucracy, and has already tried to overturn an election. But yes, let’s make it easier for that guy to hide the paperwork.
UN headquarters, where the host country now reserves the right to decide which peoples are allowed to exist in the room.
The Trump administration has decided that the best way to showcase its respect for international institutions is to literally lock one side of a decades‑long conflict out of the United Nations. For the second year in a row, the State Department is denying visas to Palestinian Authority and PLO officials ahead of the UN General Assembly in New York, because they committed the unforgivable sin of… taking their case to the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. You know, those scary places where people talk about laws and war crimes instead of whatever Jared workshopped on a whiteboard.
Washington’s line is that the Palestinians "failed to live up to their commitments" and are "undermining the prospects for peace" by seeking accountability in actual courts. So the U.S. is extending sanctions that bar PLO members and PA officials from entering the country, including Mahmoud Abbas himself. The UN, now forced to improvise around America’s petty visa tantrum, is preparing to vote on a resolution just to let Abbas speak to the General Assembly by video, because the self‑proclaimed leader of the free world is too fragile to let him through JFK.
The Palestinian foreign ministry calls the move "unjustified" and notes that it "contradicts" all those supposed efforts to rebuild Palestinian‑U.S. relations and create a climate for a two‑state solution. But the Trump team has made its position crystal clear: diplomacy is fine as long as you don’t talk to international courts, don’t criticize Israel, and don’t expect the host country of the UN to honor the basic premise of hosting. It’s not foreign policy, it’s bouncer policy—America as the world’s doorman, deciding who gets into the building based on whether they promise not to mention international law once they’re inside.
Robert Kraft, bravely shielding a 65,000-seat concrete tax shelter from the mortal danger of a Macklemore verse.
Robert Kraft, longtime Good Billionaire cosplayer and friend of Donald Trump, has decided that the true threat to America isn’t cops sweeping protesters into unmarked vans or the president telling people to inject bleach — it’s Macklemore doing a set before Ed Sheeran while supporting Palestine. So Kraft reportedly banned Macklemore from Gillette Stadium and, according to the rapper, leaned on other NFL owners to shut him out of most of the tour’s stadium dates too. When you own the toy, you get to decide who talks.
The justification? Kraft says this is about Macklemore’s “recent actions” and a “broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery” — citing, among other things, a 2013 costume the artist apologized for years ago. Conveniently, the line between combating antisemitism and punishing pro-Palestinian speech keeps landing exactly where billionaires and NFL owners want it: anywhere that might threaten their comfort or their donor network.
This is the same Kraft who spent the Trump years polishing his halo: backing criminal justice reform, helping Meek Mill, flying Parkland students to DC, sending his jet for N95 masks while Trump was calling Covid a hoax. He positioned himself as the rare owner with a conscience… while being part of the same cartel that colluded to erase Colin Kaepernick from football for the crime of saying, “Cops are getting paid leave for killing people. That’s not right.” Apparently that was hate speech, but blackballing dissenters is just good business.
Now the mask slips. The self-styled everyman who once sat on the cold metal bleachers is just another oligarch deciding which opinions are allowed on his property and which artists get to work. The league that helped Trump turn protests into culture-war chum is still doing what it does best: protecting power, punishing speech, and calling it "values." The only thing more fragile than the NFL’s brand is the ego of the men who own it.
