congressman removed from state of the union for controversial stance that black people are human
House security escorts Al Green out for the crime of holding a sign that says Black people are human, while the guy who shared the racist ape video keeps his primetime slot.
The Trump era keeps finding new floors to crash through. At Trump’s State of the Union, Rep. Al Green was physically removed from the House chamber for the radical, deeply disruptive act of…holding a sign that said, “Black People Aren’t Apes.” In case you lost track of the timeline of American decline, that’s a reference to the video Trump himself posted this month depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as cartoon apes.
As Green was escorted out just minutes into the speech, he waved the sign toward the Republican side while Texas GOP Rep. Troy Nehls lunged to grab it away, because nothing screams "party of free speech" like trying to wrestle a sign that says Black people are human out of a Black man’s hands on the House floor. This is Green’s second year in a row getting tossed during a Trump address — last year it was for shaking his cane at the president. Trump, meanwhile, still hasn’t apologized for the racist video, instead offering the very statesmanlike defense that he “condemns its racist parts” after quietly deleting it.
So to recap: the president shares a racist ape video about the first Black president and first lady, faces a mild scolding, deletes it, and keeps the mic. The Black lawmaker who responds by literally stating that Black people are not apes? He’s the one dragged out of the chamber. American democracy remains, technically speaking, a going concern; American dignity, however, has left the building.
#racism#killing-democracy
democrats host the 'real' state of the union while trump cosplays president on tv
Democrats hold a pop-up democracy clinic on the National Mall while Trump delivers his fan fiction version of America down the street.
While Donald Trump delivers his carefully focus-grouped fantasy novel to Congress, Democrats and activists are a few blocks away holding the "People’s State of the Union" and describing what’s actually on fire. Lawmakers boycott the official spectacle as protesters wave signs like "No Money for ICE" and "Healthcare Not Warfare", plus a giant poster of more than 30 people killed in encounters with ICE since Trump’s glorious return to power. Senator Chris Murphy sums it up: "these are not normal times, and Democrats have to stop behaving normally"—which, translated, means maybe don’t clap politely for authoritarianism on live television.
Because it’s Trump’s America, a MAGA guy of course tries to rush the stage, gets peeled off by organizers, and Joy Reid has to remind the faithful that "Your bullshit is not welcome here"—a standard that, if applied on Capitol Hill, would leave about twelve people in the chamber. Representative Summer Lee leads chants of "Release the files!" and announces she’s introducing articles of impeachment against Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose big legal innovation is refusing to comply with a subpoena for the full unredacted Epstein files. The crowd points out the obvious: the government seems much more interested in protecting powerful men named in those documents than the women and girls they abused.
Across town at "State of the Swamp"—because subtlety is dead—politicians, activists, and Robert De Niro gather to list all the ways the Constitution is now treated as a suggestion: abortion rights gutted, foreign policy as temper tantrum, environmental protections as corporate party favors. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey calls it a room full of people "trying to stand up for democracy" and "frustrated by the lack of abiding to the United States constitution"—which is a very polite way of saying the president is busy shredding norms while Pam Bondi sits on subpoenaed files and ICE racks up a body count. Trump gets the cameras; the opposition gets YouTube. One of these feeds is describing the actual state of the union, and it’s not the one with the fancy seal.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump demands loyalty oath from the supreme court
Trump, moments before demanding the Supreme Court change its name to the Supreme Loyalty Committee.
Trump is heading into the State of the Union like a guy walking into HR after calling everyone there traitors on Facebook. Days after the Supreme Court ruled that most of his tariffs were unlawful in a 6-3 decision, he’ll be staring down Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and Justice Elena Kagan — three of the justices he just branded a “disgrace to our nation” and “very unpatriotic and disloyal to the Constitution.”
Unlike Barack Obama, who criticized a decision and not the justices themselves, Trump went full strongman fanfic, accusing the Court majority of being swayed by “foreign interests” because they dared suggest that the president can’t just slap tariffs on everything like he’s rage-clicking Amazon Prime. Awkward twist: two of the justices in that majority, Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, are his appointees, which means even the handpicked judges are failing the Dear Leader loyalty test.
Naturally, the justices who did vote to let him keep his legally-flimsy tariffs — Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas — got a presidential gold star and public praise. So the message from the podium this year is clear: judicial independence is for losers, and the Supreme Court’s job is to be a fan section that never claps but always rules his way.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump doj forgets there’s a first amendment, gets bench-slapped
Trump’s Justice Department, seen here trying to remember what the Privacy Protection Act is while clutching a hard drive full of a reporter’s sources.
A federal magistrate judge just yanked the Trump administration’s permission slip to rummage through a Washington Post reporter’s seized data, and you can practically hear the DOJ’s sad trombone from here. Judge William B. Porter said he’ll do an independent judicial review of the material taken from reporter Hannah Natanson, because when the government raids a journalist’s home and walks off with all her devices, someone should probably make sure we’re still pretending to have a free press.
The judge very politely wrote that it’s his “genuine hope” the Trump DOJ was really just trying to investigate a single national defense information case and not fishing for confidential sources from a reporter who wrote critical stories about the administration. He then added that he “further hopes” the evidence will support those claims, which is federal judge-speak for: I don’t believe you, but I’m giving you one last chance not to perjure yourselves.
Porter also discovered that the Justice Department somehow “forgot” to mention the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 — a law that explicitly limits the government’s ability to search or seize journalists’ work product. Multiple DOJ lawyers, including people “from the highest levels” (hi, Attorney General Pam Bondi), had chances to bring it up. None did. The judge said this “seriously undermined” his confidence in the government’s honesty and “disturbed” his usual deference to prosecutors, which is about as close as a magistrate gets to screaming, Are you kidding me? in open court.
While he stopped short of ordering everything immediately returned, Porter noted that Natanson’s rights were “restrained” when the Trump DOJ seized all her work product and devices, cutting her off from her confidential sources and the basic tools of her job. The government’s suggestion that she just “start from scratch” as a journalist earned a judicial eye-roll in writing, with Porter pointing out that this is not how either journalism or the First Amendment works. The bottom line: the court will sift out anything legitimately responsive to the warrant and the rest of the data hoard goes back, leaving Trump’s DOJ with a lot less surveillance loot and a lot more explaining to do.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
trump shuts down dhs, but relax, ice still gets to shoot people
Artist’s impression of DHS during a World Cup security briefing: the lights are off, FEMA’s missing, and ICE is the only one still getting paid.
The Trump administration’s latest DHS-only shutdown is doing what it was clearly designed to do: starve everything that vaguely resembles public safety or competent governance, while carefully bubble-wrapping ICE so it can keep doing whatever it wants. Congress already appropriated $625m for World Cup security through Trump’s "big beautiful" slush-bucket of a bill, but because DHS funding has been shut off in a standoff over immigration abuses — specifically, ICE agents killing Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis — the money is stuck in FEMA limbo. TSA, Coast Guard, Secret Service, local cops trying to secure five million visiting fans? On hold. ICE? Fully funded, essential, and untouched. Of course.
Host cities like Miami, Kansas City, and New Jersey are 100 days from kickoff and still waiting for the checks Trump already bragged about. Miami says losing the funding would be "catastrophic" for planning, Kansas City cops are warning that decisions will be made based on budget instead of threat, and New Jersey already had to kill a major Liberty State Park fan festival. Foxborough, population 18,000, is staring at a $7.8m security hole big enough to drive a FIFA motorcade through, and is now threatening to withhold the entertainment license for matches featuring England and France unless someone finds the money. The town is literally shaking down the Kraft family to cover the gap while DHS sits in the dark.
So the United States is hosting a global mega-event with millions of visitors, multiple high-value targets, and four national teams training in Kansas City alone — and the federal government’s message is: we can’t fund your security, but we made absolutely sure the agency that just shot two people in Minneapolis has cash for days. It’s a perfect Trump-era tableau: international spectacle, local governments begging for basic safety resources, Congress using the homeland security budget as a hostage, and the only part of DHS that never, ever misses a meal is the one that keeps leaving bodies on the ground.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump’s fcc discovers late-night comedy is a national security threat
Stephen Colbert, apparently now a national security risk, prepares to say something the Trump FCC thinks should only be available on YouTube and in FBI files.
Senate Democrats are poking around CBS and the Trump-stacked FCC after Stephen Colbert revealed that his network’s lawyers blocked an interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. Richard Blumenthal wants to know whether FCC chair Brendan Carr – a man who treats the First Amendment like a speed bump – and Paramount Skydance leaned on Colbert to keep anything critical of Donald Trump off the air. He’s asking for all the receipts, including any cozy backchannel chatter with Trump’s White House.
Paramount, now run by David Ellison – son of Trump pal and Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison – is trying to swallow Warner Bros Discovery in a $108bn merger that needs federal approval, so the timing of this sudden concern about "equal-time" rules is extremely convenient. CBS swears it’s just following new Trump FCC “guidance” that magically extends equal-time rules to late-night comedy, something nobody thought applied before. Meanwhile, Ellison has installed Bari Weiss to run CBS News, where she’s already killed a 60 Minutes piece on the brutal Salvadoran prison Trump’s been deporting people to. Colbert’s show is being shut down in May after more than three decades, but sure, tell us again how the real censorship is people saying "Happy Holidays."
So to recap: the Trump administration rewrites media rules to muzzle critics, a Trump-friendly media CEO allegedly censors satire while chasing a mega-merger, the FCC chair runs what Blumenthal calls a "partisan censorship scheme," and one of the last big broadcast platforms for mocking the president is being quietly taken off the board. Authoritarianism usually starts with jokes that suddenly aren’t allowed to air; the punchline this time is a corporate merger application.
#killing-democracy#corruption#fascism
trump heroically defends stonewall from the terrifying threat of a rainbow
Stonewall National Monument, now proudly commemorating the 1969 uprising by pretending the people who led it never existed.
The Trump administration looked at Stonewall – the site of a historic queer uprising led by Black and brown trans women – and decided the real emergency was… a Pride flag. So the National Park Service quietly yanked the rainbow flag, shoved an American flag up the pole, and waved a decades-old “policy clarification” memo like it wasn’t just state-sanctioned homophobia with letterhead. This follows their earlier downgrade from the inclusive Progress Pride flag back to the old-school rainbow, plus scrubbing references to trans people from the monument’s website, because why preserve history when you can whitewash it and call it "interpretation"?
While Trump signs executive orders declaring the government will only recognize sex assigned at birth, thousands of people are freezing outside Stonewall to re-raise a flag that their own government keeps trying to erase. Democratic lawmakers show up for the photo op, restore the less inclusive flag, and call it a win, while trans activists point out that maybe the people who were actually shot at and beaten in 1969 should be visible in the monument that allegedly honors them. Nonprofits are now suing the administration over the flag removal, because apparently we need federal litigation to let a national monument to a queer riot fly a queer flag.
Trans organizers are very clear this isn’t some petty “flag war” – it’s about survival and visibility while Black and brown trans women are being murdered and the federal government pretends they don’t exist. Meanwhile, Interior insists everything is fine, the policy is neutral, and Stonewall’s history is still being "preserved" – just without the people who started it, the flag that represents them, or any acknowledgment that the current administration’s agenda is to erase them from public life entirely. American greatness, now with fewer colors.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#full-stupid
trump repeals climate science, may accidentally repeal big oil’s legal shield too
Trump and EPA chief Lee Zeldin stroll past a sign bragging about “largest deregulation in US history,” helpfully documenting Exhibit A for future climate lawsuits.
The Trump EPA just torched the 2009 climate "endangerment finding" – the basic legal conclusion that greenhouse gases threaten public health – so that oil companies who dumped record cash into Trump’s campaign can enjoy a beautiful, regulation-free apocalypse. By revoking the finding, the administration wiped out federal limits on climate pollution from vehicles and is gearing up to do the same for power plants and other sources, because what is asthma compared to a quarterly earnings call.
The fun twist: that same act of climate vandalism also blows a hole in Big Oil’s favorite legal shield. For years, fossil fuel companies have argued that state climate lawsuits and "climate superfund" laws in places like Vermont and New York are preempted by the Clean Air Act, because the EPA supposedly has this covered. Now Trump’s EPA is standing in court saying, essentially, "Greenhouse gases? Never heard of her." Legal experts are pointing out that if the federal government refuses to regulate, it’s a lot harder for Exxon and friends to claim that federal law blocks states and cities from making them pay for the damage.
The supreme court is about to weigh a key case out of Boulder, Colorado, where oil companies are begging the justices to rescue them from state climate liability while the Trump administration simultaneously argues that the main federal climate hook no longer applies. Corporate trade groups are suddenly very nervous that their bought-and-paid-for deregulation might backfire into a litigation bonanza. When even the American Petroleum Institute is like, "Uh, maybe don’t repeal all of it," you know the grift has entered the "oops, we broke our own legal defense" phase of governance.
#forever-grifting#anti-science
dems pick ex-cia governor to subtweet trump on live tv
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger prepares to explain that no, actually, the country is not supposed to be run like a reality show with nuclear codes.
Democrats have tapped newly sworn-in Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer and six-term House member, to deliver the official response to President Trump’s State of the Union — because when the president keeps flirting with authoritarianism, you send someone whose old job was literally monitoring unstable regimes.
Spanberger, the first woman elected governor of Virginia after flipping the office from red to blue, is expected to talk about “rising costs, chaos in their communities, and a real fear of what each day might bring,” which is a polite, NPR-ready way of saying: this second Trump administration is going great, thanks for asking. Chuck Schumer framed her as someone who “puts service over politics,” a sharp contrast to a president who puts self-pity over everything, including the Constitution.
The party clearly hopes her purple-state, moderate-turned-"maybe-too-liberal" profile will sell a message of normal governance to a country currently being governed by Truth Social posts and revenge fantasies. Of course, history suggests her speech will be remembered less for its content and more for whether she sips water like Marco Rubio or accidentally recreates Katie Britt’s hostage-video-in-a-kitchen aesthetic. Still, if you’re going to answer Trump’s made-for-TV strongman monologue, a calm ex-spy talking into an empty room is probably the healthiest thing American democracy can hope for right now.
#killing-democracy#trumps-america#losses
rio grande valley learns you can't deport half your workforce and still pour concrete
Behold: one of the last remaining guys actually building anything while Trump’s deportation machine tries to shut down the entire housing market by handcuffing the workforce.
The Rio Grande Valley helped flip Texas for Donald Trump, and now the region is discovering that when you vote for mass deportations, you sometimes get mass deportations. Construction companies are watching their framing crews, foundation teams and stucco workers disappear into ICE vans, then acting shocked that houses do not, in fact, build themselves. One builder says this could "put us out of business" if it continues, as if the basic math of "no workers, no houses" was some kind of deep-state plot.
Local businesses are suddenly very interested in nuance: yes to "strong borders," but also yes to the undocumented workers who have quietly built the region for years. Realtors are stalling big land deals, tile warehouses are sitting on unpaid orders because there’s nobody left to install them, and families like Maria Vasquez’s are cutting food so they can keep the lights on while hours dry up. The same crowd that cheered Trump’s deportation agenda is now flying to Washington to beg the administration to please stop arresting their "non-serious-crime" workers — because apparently it was all supposed to be theoretical cruelty, not the kind that interrupts mortgage payments.
The White House, naturally, responds by waving an executive order about future "workforce preparedness" and apprenticeships, as though you can replace a decade of skilled immigrant labor with a press release and a hardhat photo op. Meanwhile, on the ground, builders keep discovering that every experienced stucco worker they try to hire has already been "taken". Trump promised to crack down on undocumented workers; the Rio Grande Valley is now finding out what happens when a president actually follows through on his worst ideas.
#anti-immigration#trumps-america
president pardons money launderer, is shocked when laundering continues
Changpeng Zhao smiles at Mar-a-Lago, presumably delighted to be back in a country where laundering billions only becomes a problem if you forget to donate to the right politician.
Donald Trump pardoned Binance founder and convicted money launderer Changpeng Zhao because, as he helpfully explained, "what he did was not even a crime" — unless you count the part where he pled guilty in federal court and agreed to pay $50m. Now internal Binance investigators say the exchange may have helped move billions to Iranian-linked entities, including Houthi militants, via more than 1,500 Iran-accessed accounts in 2024–2025. Two accounts alone allegedly shuffled $1.7bn to groups tied to a country the Trump administration is reportedly planning to strike. Truly a seamless integration of foreign policy and organized crime.
The Binance staffers who found this pesky "possible sanctions violation" problem say they dutifully reported it up the chain — and then found themselves disciplined, fired, or suspended for supposed "violations of company protocol" over how they handled client data. Binance, naturally, denies both violating sanctions and punishing whistleblowers, which should reassure everyone who also believes in honest crypto billionaires and the Tooth Fairy’s NFT collection.
Crucially, all this was allegedly discovered before Trump decided Zhao was an innocent victim of the Biden deep state and gifted him a pardon at the request of "a lot of very good people" — a category that apparently includes business partners. Trump’s family crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, has been working with Binance, and Zhao just recently swanned through a Mar-a-Lago conference like a VIP rewards member in the Money Launderers Club. The White House, shockingly, had no comment on why the president pardoned a guy whose platform may have been shoveling cash to militants his own administration might soon bomb.
#forever-grifting#national-security#corruption
trump discovers statistics, immediately lies about them
Trump poses with law enforcement in the Oval Office, bravely taking credit for global crime trends and public health data he’s never read.
Donald Trump is standing in the Oval Office declaring that US crime is at its lowest level in 125 years, personally brought to heel by his "unwavering commitment to restoring law and order" — a bold claim, especially given the minor complication that reliable federal crime stats don’t actually exist going back that far. Homicides probably are heading toward a 125-year low, according to serious researchers who use actual data, but violent crime overall is merely at its lowest level in decades, not since the McKinley administration. Small distinction, unless you’re using it as a campaign slogan and substitute for governance.
The White House, never one to let facts interrupt a good culture-war press release, insists the drop is the "direct result" of Trump’s genius policies: flooding "Democrat-run war zones" with federal resources, deporting "savage criminal illegals," and cheering on cops and prosecutors. Crime experts, meanwhile, gently point out that the decline started before Trump’s second term, follows a post-pandemic normalization after the 2020 spike, and is also happening in other Western countries that somehow manage it without Trump, ICE cosplay, or daily fascist rallies.
Researchers talk about things like renewed violence-prevention programs, focused policing, social skills training, CBT, schools and institutions stabilizing after Covid, and even less drinking leading to fewer assaults. The administration hears all that and translates it to: "Trump fixed crime with vibes and deportations." So yes, homicides might soon hit a historic low. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the level of shameless propaganda coming out of the Oval Office lectern, where every positive trend is retroactively turned into proof that the dear leader’s iron-fisted "law and order" crusade is working — and therefore must be expanded.
#killing-democracy#fascism#full-stupid
trump’s france ambassador gets ghosted by the french government
Charles Kushner leaving the Élysée Palace, smiling like a man who just learned that diplomatic immunity doesn’t cover being an international embarrassment.
Charles Kushner – yes, Jared’s dad, fresh off the ‘federal felon to diplomat’ career track – has managed to do what generations of American diplomats failed to accomplish: convince France to try to block a US ambassador from talking to its government. The French foreign ministry says Kushner should be denied direct access to ministers after he refused to show up when summoned and instead sent a deputy, apparently under the impression that being Trump’s in‑law emeritus outranks basic diplomatic protocol.
This all started when the US embassy in France used its official account to turn the murder of far-right nationalist Quentin Deranque into a campaign ad for the global reactionary movement, warning that "violent left-wing extremism is on the rise" in France. Paris, which notably did not ask the Trump family crime syndicate for public-safety advice, responded that it would not be using a grieving family’s tragedy for political ends and that it needed no lectures on violence from the "international reactionary movement" that Kushner represents.
So now America’s ambassador to France is being treated like a particularly obnoxious YouTube pundit: technically still there, but nobody in government is required to take his calls. The Trump administration has successfully converted a key diplomatic post into a Fox News remote studio, and the host just got put on mute by an entire allied state. American soft power has never looked so soft.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
majority of americans notice raging dumpster fire, remain unconvinced it’s fine actually
Trump preparing for the State of the Union by practicing his favorite line: “Checks and balances are for losers.”
Turns out when you re‑elect the guy who tried to overturn an election, people don’t feel super bullish about the direction of the country. A new NPR/PBS/Marist poll finds 55% of US adults think Trump is changing the country for the worse — a 13‑point jump from his first go-round in the Oval Office Reality Show. So yes, he’s technically delivering on his promise of “more” Trump; it’s just that most people have decided that’s bad.
The vibes are so off that Americans are starting to notice the Constitution bleeding out in the corner. Only 32% now say the system of checks and balances is “working well,” down from 43% at the start of Trump 2: The Indictening. When you spend a year screaming at judges, treating Congress like a suggestion box, and governing via revenge cosplay, people begin to suspect the whole “coequal branches” thing is more marketing slogan than reality.
Even inside the cult, the gold paint is chipping. Support for Trump’s policies sits at 27%, and among Republicans, belief that he’s mentally fit dropped from 75% to 66%, while the share who say he acts ethically slid from 55% to 42%. So we’ve reached the stage where a meaningful chunk of his own party thinks he’s unethical and maybe not all there but still perfectly acceptable as the guy with the nuclear codes. American democracy isn’t just under strain; it’s the passenger in the car quietly realizing the driver thinks the guardrails are a suggestion.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
stephen miller, assistant deputy undersecretary of fountains and fascism
Anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis, shortly before the administration decided the First Amendment is optional if Stephen Miller disapproves of your existence.
America’s least favorite immigration ghoul has expanded his portfolio. Stephen Miller is no longer just the face of deportation cruelty; he’s now Trump’s Homeland Security Adviser and policy czar, a combo role that basically lets him stick his clammy fingers into anything from "fixing" D.C. fountains to orchestrating federal crackdowns. At 10 a.m. he’s running meetings about sinking suspicious boats in the Caribbean and breaking up cartels; by lunch he’s plotting how to purge ‘embedded liberal culture’ from universities, because nothing says limited government like the White House micromanaging campus ideology.
The part where federal agents killed two Americans protesting Miller’s immigration agenda in Minnesota? Just a speed bump on his career path. After Renee Good was shot, Miller went on Fox to reassure ICE agents they had “federal immunity.” When Alex Pretti was killed days later, Miller jumped on X to label him a “domestic terrorist” and “would-be assassin,” despite a DHS preliminary report to Congress that somehow forgot to include any evidence he attacked officers or even had a gun. Those posts are still up, reality be damned, because propaganda ages better than facts in MAGA-land.
Even some Republicans have noticed the vibe is less ‘public servant’ and more ‘authoritarian fanfic.’ Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis compared Miller to Wormtongue from Tolkien, which is generous to Wormtongue. The White House response was to roll out a parade of GOP praise, with Ted Cruz calling Miller “a great American” and blaming “haters” for a “deadly invasion” of the country, because when federal agents kill protesters, the real problem is still… the protesters. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt bragged that Miller “brings together all corners of the government” to implement Trump’s agenda at “record speed,” which is a poetic way of saying the guy who helped design the immigration crackdown is now effectively running a good chunk of the security state and culture war machine, answerable mainly to Trump and his own worst instincts.
So yes, Stephen Miller is fixing fountains and cameras in D.C. — presumably so the surveillance works better the next time federal agents need to shoot someone and then call them a terrorist online.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
u.s. women’s hockey pulls a hard pass on trump’s state of the union
U.S. women’s hockey team celebrates gold, moments before collectively deciding they’ve suffered enough and don’t need to attend the State of the Union too.
Trump invited the U.S. men's Olympic hockey team to his State of the Union and then, in a moment of rare self-awareness, joked that he’d probably be impeached if he didn’t invite the women too. The U.S. Women’s Hockey Team responded by doing what Congress never quite managed: politely declining to participate in his spectacle.
USA Hockey put out a very nice statement saying the gold medal–winning women are "sincerely grateful" for the invitation but, tragically, have prior commitments like school, jobs, and presumably not sitting through a campaign rally disguised as a constitutional ritual. They were "honored" and "grateful"—the diplomatic phrasing athletes now use when they mean "absolutely not, but thanks."
The White House, shockingly, had nothing to say. The men's team might still show up, but the women—fresh off beating Canada for gold—have already demonstrated superior defense, successfully blocking Trump from using them as patriotic set dressing for another primetime grievance monologue. Stick-handling his ego may be the toughest sport of all, and they wisely declined to compete.
#trumps-america#full-stupid
trump solves child separation by jailing the parents too
CoreCivic’s latest family-friendly attraction: come for the asylum claim, stay for the measles outbreak and indefinite detention.
The Trump administration heard the public outcry over ripping kids from their parents at the border and, in a bold new innovation in cruelty, decided the fix was to just lock them up together. Welcome back to Dilley, Texas, a family detention center so humane it features a measles outbreak, reports of no clean drinking water, and a five-year-old asylum seeker in a Spider-Man backpack becoming the country’s newest symbol of state-sponsored child abuse. Since Trump returned to office, the daily number of kids in ICE detention has jumped sixfold, because nothing says "family values" like expanding the baby prison sector.
Local organizers and faith groups are literally standing outside the fence screaming so the kids inside know they’re not forgotten, while CoreCivic – the private prison company cashing the checks – assures us that everything is fine and the health and safety of detainees is their "top priority." Fun fact: their top priority also appears on the NYSE. ICE, naturally, declined to comment, presumably too busy planning how to spend the $38bn DHS wants to blow on buying warehouses and converting them into even more detention centers. Why invest in schools when you can build climate-controlled trauma factories?
Meanwhile, a growing national coalition is pointing out that all of this horror is perfectly legal because Congress hasn’t bothered to outlaw jailing entire families. Advocates call it what it is – "state-sponsored child abuse" – while public opinion finally starts to notice that maybe ICE has "gone too far" when it’s arresting kindergartners in bunny hats. A few states like New Mexico and Illinois are trying to slam the door on ICE detention and private lockups, and local developers are backing out of detention deals under public pressure. The administration’s response so far: double down on the warehouse gulag strategy and hope Americans get bored of watching children beg for "libertad" from behind barbed wire.
#anti-immigration#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
aileen cannon, chief archivist of the trump crime files
Judge Aileen Cannon, bravely protecting America from the grave threat of knowing what Donald Trump did with the classified files in his ballroom bathroom.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — the Mar-a-Lago HOA’s favorite federal employee — has now formally declared that the American public is not allowed to see what former Special Counsel Jack Smith dug up about Donald Trump hoarding classified documents in his country club bathroom. Cannon blocked the release of Smith’s report, arguing it can’t leave the Justice Department because, according to her, Smith’s appointment was unlawful and the AG’s internal deliberations are just too delicate for democracy.
Recall that Cannon already tossed the entire classified documents case in 2024 by deciding that the special counsel role suddenly violated the Constitution once it inconvenienced the guy who gave her the robe. An appeals court had previously smacked her down for “improperly” grabbing jurisdiction in the Mar-a-Lago search, but she’s back at it, now using a protective order to keep discovery materials — and the report built on them — locked away from both the public and Congress. Transparency is for losers; Trump gets judicial non-disclosure agreements.
Smith told lawmakers in a closed-door session that his team had “powerful evidence” Trump willfully kept highly classified documents after leaving office, stashing them among the golf tees and wedding centerpieces, and then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice when the FBI came calling. So naturally, Cannon ruled that it’s “not customary” to release a report with all that evidence after a case is dismissed — a dismissal she engineered by declaring the prosecutor himself illegitimate. It’s a neat little circle: Trump gets his judge, the judge kills the case, then uses the dead body as proof that no autopsy is allowed.
For extra protection, Cannon had already barred DOJ from even sending the report to select members of Congress in January 2025, just as Trump was sliding back into the Oval Office. The result: a sitting president accused of willfully retaining classified documents and obstructing justice, shielded from public scrutiny by a judge whose opinions are “extraordinarily deferential” to him. Checks and balances have been replaced by one simple standard: if it hurts Trump, it’s unconstitutional.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#forever-grifting
trump fires the cop, the cop runs for congress
David Sundberg, seen here applying for a new job after Trump decided the FBI should only employ people who think the rule of law is optional.
Trump’s second-term FBI purge is apparently the gift that keeps on giving. David Sundberg, the former head of the FBI’s Washington field office who was dumped just days after Trump retook office, is now running for Congress in Maryland. His alleged crime? Doing his job and not letting MAGA politics rewrite federal investigations like they’re Truth Social posts.
Sundberg’s platform is basically: remember the Constitution? He says he was forced out for refusing to let politics corrupt justice, and now he’s running because he believes in the rule of law, not the rule of one man. Bold concept in 2026. He’s also calling out the White House for weaponizing the DOJ to go after Trump’s enemies list — James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton — while using the National Guard as a domestic intimidation squad. You know, the kind of stuff we used to point at in other countries and call authoritarian.
This is the guy who ran the Jan. 6 investigation, the pipe bomb probe, counterterrorism, SWAT, hostage rescue — basically the sort of résumé you’d want in government if you weren’t trying to turn it into a personal protection racket for Donald J. Trump. Now he’s trying to get into Congress to make it a co-equal branch of government again, which is a polite way of saying: maybe the legislature should stop acting like Trump’s HOA board and start acting like it read Article I.
Meanwhile, the race to replace Steny Hoyer features a retiring party leader’s chosen successor, a former Capitol Police officer who faced the mob Trump unleashed, and now the FBI official Trump fired after he investigated that same mob. The 5th District ballot is starting to look less like a primary and more like a support group for people who’ve personally experienced what happens when you let an aspiring autocrat treat federal power like a family business.
#killing-democracy#fascism
fbi director now available for beer league celebrations
US captain Auston Matthews, seen here wondering if accepting a free ride on Air Obstruction of Justice with the FBI director on beer detail is really worth missing NHL practice.
The men’s Olympic hockey team wins gold over Canada, and Trump immediately dials into the locker room like a divorced dad who just remembered visitation week. He offers them a military plane to attend his State of the Union — because why not use taxpayer-funded hardware as a VIP shuttle service — and promises a White House party and medals like he’s running a carnivals-for-autocrats rewards program. He even jokes he might be impeached if he doesn’t invite the women’s team, a punchline that hits a little differently when you’ve already treated impeachment like a loyalty test.
The real star of this civics horror-comedy, though, is FBI director Kash Patel, whose job description apparently now includes "arrange presidential FaceTime," "hang in the hospitality suite," and "shotgun beers in the locker room while pounding his chest to Toby Keith." The nation’s top domestic law enforcement official is literally spraying beer around with the boys while serving as a glorified team liaison, because nothing says independent justice system like your FBI chief doubling as the president’s Olympic hype squad.
Official Pentagon bio? Check. Lifetime hockey fan? Check. Guardian footage of him partying like a frat social chair while holding one of the most sensitive posts in the federal government? Also check. The line between public service and presidential fan club keeps getting erased, one locker-room celebration and military-plane photo op at a time.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
