trump discovers infrastructure, immediately builds triumphal arch to himself
Artist’s impression of Washington, D.C., after Trump finishes "renovating" it into a personality cult theme park.
Trump has apparently decided that if he can’t rewrite the Constitution, he’ll just rewrite the skyline. The White House is pushing ahead with a grand "renovation" of Washington, D.C., centered on a triumphal arch project straight out of the Strongman Starter Kit, and veterans groups are now suing to stop it. Because when you think "honor service and sacrifice," you obviously think, "let’s bulldoze some history and put up a giant marble participation trophy for Donald J. Trump."
The lawsuit argues that the administration is steamrolling federal preservation rules, veterans’ memorial protections, and basic democratic process to rush through a monument that looks less like civic improvement and more like a campaign logo you can see from space. While Trump world sells it as patriotic beautification, critics note it’s really about branding the nation’s capital with one man’s ego, on public land, with public money, for political gain. Authoritarian aesthetics, now available in taxpayer-funded jumbo size.
So instead of fixing VA wait times, housing, or mental health services, this White House is fighting veterans in court for the right to build a victory arch for a culture war. It’s a perfect distillation of the Trump era: maximum spectacle, minimal governance, and an endless search for new surfaces to engrave his name on—even if it means turning the capital into a discount version of Rome with worse lawyers.
#fascism#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
rfk jr uses junk science, trump admin rewrites reality anyway
RFK Jr explains vaccine policy using a stack of retracted papers, while measles does the actual peer review outside.
The Trump administration’s war on reality has hit the peer-review phase. Three anti-vaccine papers that RFK Jr and friends used as the scientific backbone for gutting US vaccine policy are now being retracted, removed, or formally investigated by the journals that published them. These were the studies Team RFK waved around to claim vaccinated kids are sicker, to prop up his 2023 book "Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak" (subtitle: "After We Strangle It"), and to persuade the CDC to walk back its long-standing position that vaccines don’t cause autism – a position still held by, you know, actual science.
While measles and whooping cough make their glamorous comeback tour across the US, scientists have been pointing out for years that these papers were methodological garbage: bad data, bad analysis, and conclusions reverse-engineered to fit the "vaccines are evil" narrative. Naturally, that made them perfect for Trump’s HHS, which happily used them to justify "controversial" policy changes that just happen to align with RFK Jr’s decades-long anti-vax crusade. An anti-vaccine lawyer and RFK ally, Aaron Siri, even cited all three at a federal vaccine advisory committee meeting and now calls the journals’ scrutiny a "targeted assassination" – because nothing says "robust evidence" like collapsing the moment someone actually reads the methods section.
Journals are finally slapping expressions of concern and retractions on the studies, years after pediatricians and researchers begged them to do something while anti-vax activists harassed critics into anonymity. Meanwhile, HHS won’t say a word about whether RFK Jr plans to update his book now that its "crucial pillar" is wobbling like a Jenga tower in an earthquake. So the Trump administration used debunked, fringe studies to rewrite national vaccine policy, helped tank immunization rates, and fueled outbreaks of preventable diseases. But sure, tell us more about how this was all about "letting the science speak" and not about turning public health into another partisan demolition project.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
cbs discovers the real enemy is… journalism
Scott Pelley, moments before discovering that at CBS the only unacceptable bias is toward the truth.
America’s most famous ticking stopwatch just got tossed in the trash because Scott Pelley made the mistake of treating CBS like it was still a news organization and not a subsidiary of the Trump 2028 Brand Management Committee. After three decades at the network and years as the public face of 60 Minutes, Pelley told management what everyone in the building already knew: Bari Weiss, handpicked by tech heir and Trump-praised owner David Ellison, is “murdering 60 Minutes” by demanding falsehoods and partisan spin in politically sensitive stories. Management responded to this bold act of honesty the way any healthy democracy-adjacent media conglomerate would: they fired him “for cause.”
This slow-motion execution of a storied newsroom didn’t start with Pelley. Weiss — whose broadcast experience could fit on a Post-it — has been busy purging respected reporters, yanking an investigation into brutal conditions at an El Salvador prison holding Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration (while CBS’s parent company had business before that same administration), and generally turning the show rightward until Donald Trump started praising the new ownership. When you’re getting rave reviews from the guy whose allies benefit from your corporate censorship, you’re not doing journalism; you’re running PR.
The staff literally stood up and applauded when Pelley called out Weiss and the new executive producer to their faces, which tells you how bad it’s gotten inside the building. Leadership’s takeaway from that moment of collective conscience was not “maybe we’re destroying an institution,” but “time to make an example of the guy with integrity.” So Pelley walks out as a symbol of what journalism used to be, while CBS News settles comfortably into its new role as a glossy, ad-supported reminder that when corporations and presidents need protection, truth is always the first budget cut.
#killing-democracy#oligarchy#forever-grifting
rubio discovers the 'easy-assimilating' refugee: they’re white
Marco Rubio, bravely explaining that it’s not about race while literally making it about race.
The Trump Administration has apparently solved the refugee crisis by the radical innovation of not admitting refugees and instead rolling out a special program for white South Africans. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, now fully evolved into his final form as a Heritage Foundation push notification, reassured Congress that this is fine because they supposedly "assimilate" more easily. By a wild coincidence, this new humanitarian priority just happens to exclude the overwhelmingly brown and Black people fleeing wars, famines, and dictators we helped arm.
Rubio’s “assimilation” line is the genteel Beltway version of saying the quiet part out loud: refugees are out, the right kind of immigrants are in. The administration has effectively turned U.S. refugee policy into a whites-only fast track while pretending it’s about culture, not color. Refugees from Syria, Sudan, or Central America get a closed door; white South Africans get a red carpet and a talking-point about how nicely they’ll blend in. America’s longstanding promise to protect the persecuted has been downgraded to a vibe check for maintaining the right aesthetic.
#racism#anti-immigration#killing-democracy
trump’s $1.8 billion feelings fund hits a speed bump
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, seen here trying to convince Congress that a $1.8B MAGA slush fund is totally normal DOJ behavior and not at all a protection racket with letterhead.
The Trump administration’s latest innovation in public finance is the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund — a DOJ-crafted MAGA pity pot designed to shower taxpayer money on Trump allies who feel emotionally wounded by law enforcement. The fund emerged from a settlement between the IRS, Trump, the Trump Organization, and his two failsons after Trump agreed to drop a $10 billion lawsuit over his leaked tax documents. In a truly breathtaking coincidence, this government fund just happens to be tailored to reward the guy who’s been screaming “witch hunt” into a camera for eight years and the people who helped him.
A federal judge temporarily blocked the slush pile, DOJ told the court it would “abide” by the ruling, and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress the department is “not moving forward with the fund, period” — but still refused to put that in writing, because nothing says totally aboveboard like a verbal promise from Trump’s handpicked criminal defense lawyer-turned-AG. Then Trump waddled into the Oval Office cameras to say he doesn’t actually know if the fund is dead and will have to “ask the lawyers,” before adding that the weaponization fund is “a beautiful thing” that he “loves.” Of course he does. It’s basically GoFundMe for authoritarian cosplay.
Both Democrats and a noticeable number of Republicans are recoiling from this thing, which was so corrupt that even the House GOP’s usual “back the blue, but also the people who beat the blue with flagpoles” caucus got squeamish when officials wouldn’t rule out using it to compensate pardoned Jan. 6 rioters who assaulted cops. Chuck Schumer is now pushing a vote to kill the fund permanently, and Ed Markey helpfully clarified that he is “not taking Blanche’s word for it,” which is D.C.-speak for: we’ve all seen this movie and it ends with Trump looting the set. The administration keeps trying to launder revenge politics through the federal budget, and the courts and Congress keep having to explain that the Treasury is not, in fact, Donald Trump’s emotional support wallet.
#corruption#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump’s war on boats continues to not find the drugs
US military vessel enforcing Trump’s new maritime policy: shoot first, never ask questions.
The Trump administration’s months‑long hobby of blowing up boats in the eastern Pacific racked up two more dead men, bringing the body count from these floating execution demos to at least 207. US Southern Command once again insisted the vessel was part of a drug smuggling route, and once again declined to provide any actual evidence of drugs, trafficking, or anything beyond "trust us, that speedboat looked sketchy." A video posted on X shows a boat, some water, and then a fireball – which, in the Trump era, apparently doubles as both probable cause and judicial review.
Trump has helpfully announced that the US is in "armed conflict" with Latin American cartels, a phrase that conveniently lets him treat the high seas like his personal Call of Duty server. The problem? The fentanyl crisis he claims to be stopping is largely driven by drugs crossing over land from Mexico, made with chemicals from China and India. So the administration’s grand strategy is: ignore the real supply chain, and instead vaporize random boats and call the dead "narcoterrorists" after the fact.
Legal scholars and some Democrats, still clinging to the quaint notion that laws matter, are pointing out that this might be wildly illegal. They were especially alarmed by the first strike back in September, when two survivors clinging to wreckage were killed in a second strike that the White House claimed was done "in self-defense" – from what, exactly, floating? Even military law experts say that would be illegal under basically any framework, armed conflict or not. The Pentagon’s inspector general has bravely stepped up to announce an evaluation of whether the military followed the proper six-phase targeting cycle – not whether the entire campaign is an extrajudicial, unconstitutional kill program run on vibes and presidential catchphrases.
So to recap: Trump unilaterally declares a new "armed conflict," the US starts killing people at sea with zero public evidence, survivors get bombed again, and the oversight mechanism is checking the PowerPoint process, not the war crimes question. American rule of law remains safely locked in the trunk while the commander-in-chief plays pirate.
#killing-democracy#imperialism#lawlessness
ceasefire, but make it missiles
U.S. foreign policy, now in convenient missile form: just add "self-defense" and stir.
The U.S. and Iran are thoughtfully honoring a "shaky ceasefire" by exchanging more attacks, because nothing says de-escalation like lighting a match in a fireworks factory. Washington calls it "defensive" and "targeted," which is Pentagon-speak for "we really wanted to blow something up and the lawyers found a comma in the AUMF we could abuse."
Iran fires, the U.S. fires back, and the civilians trapped in between get to be background characters in yet another episode of America’s forever-war spin-off series. Officials talk solemnly about preserving the ceasefire while simultaneously authorizing new strikes, like arsonists insisting they’re committed to fire safety as they hose the neighborhood down in gasoline.
What started as a fragile pause in violence is now being carefully, methodically undermined by the same crowd that’s spent two decades redefining "self-defense" as "anywhere on Earth we feel like dropping ordinance." The ceasefire isn’t collapsing on its own; it’s being strangled with legal memos and precision-guided hypocrisy.
#imperialism#national-security#killing-democracy
trumpworld invents the tax-deductible insurrection fund
Trump, briefly pausing his pitch for a $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded hug for insurrectionists, while donors quietly build the tax-deductible version in the background.
An obscure little nonprofit with a very loud purpose, the "Lawfare Defense Fund," has quietly vacuumed up at least $36 million from Trump donors to bankroll lawsuits and legal defenses for people who think they've been wronged by the justice system — conveniently overlapping with the Venn diagram of "Trump allies" and "folks facing charges for doing crimes." It has no website, no public presence, and no transparency, which is exactly what you want from a group that plans to spray money at people suing the government for daring to prosecute them.
Trump just had to back away (for now) from his dream of a $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded compensation pool for the "unjustly prosecuted" — a category that, amazingly, was expected to include Jan. 6 rioters. So instead, his orbit has cooked up the private-sector version: a charity that sells the story of brave patriots persecuted by "lawfare" and then hands out grants for litigation, all while donors get a nice tax deduction for underwriting the counter-revolution. The group even converted itself this spring from a more openly political nonprofit into a full-fledged charity, trading advocacy restrictions for the sweet, sweet ability to let rich allies write off their contributions.
Charles Gantt — treasurer of the fund and frequent flier in Trump-adjacent money vehicles — naturally isn’t answering questions, but the IRS filings tell the story: Trumpworld is professionalizing its grievance-industrial complex. The administration couldn’t (yet) ram through a public $1.8 billion martyr fund, so the movement is building a private, tax-advantaged one in the shadows. Equal justice under law was fun while it lasted.
#forever-grifting#corruption
commander-in-cage match
The People’s House, now available in three finishes: gold leaf, poured concrete, and industrial fight cage.
Donald Trump has apparently looked at the White House – a public institution, paid for and maintained by taxpayers – and concluded that what it’s really missing is a permanent UFC octagon on the South Lawn. On TikTok, because of course it’s on TikTok, he compared the temporary UFC structure for his 80th birthday bash to the Eiffel Tower, implying that maybe, just maybe, the big steel cage for punching people in the face should also become a beloved national monument. Gustave Eiffel built a global landmark; Trump is building a 90-foot steel claw with cameras so Dana White can livestream from America’s front yard like it’s a Vegas parking lot.
The UFC is reportedly spending at least $60m on the whole spectacle – construction, fighter pay, fan events – while claiming it won’t even turn a profit, which is definitely reassuring and not at all the kind of thing you’d say about a giant in-kind branding exercise centered on the sitting president. Trump says the arena will seat 4,500 people, mostly military members, with up to 100,000 more watching from the Ellipse, because nothing says "healthy civil-military relations" like using service members as a live studio audience for your birthday cage fights. Public tickets? Don’t be ridiculous – this is Freedom 250, not democracy.
This UFC cage is just the latest installment in Trump’s ongoing HGTV special, Dictator Chic: White House Edition. Since winning reelection he’s slathered the Oval Office in gold, paved over part of the Rose Garden, and literally bulldozed the East Wing to install a ballroom, turning a historic seat of government into Mar-a-Lago: DC. Now he’s musing about never taking down a corporate-branded fight arena on the South Lawn. The Founders definitely envisioned the executive mansion as a cross between Versailles and a pay-per-view weigh-in stage; we just finally found the one guy shameless enough to go ahead and build it.
#fascism#forever-grifting
trump gets ‘a little bit perturbed’ about iran, foreign policy trembles
Trump explains his Iran strategy: if he gets ‘perturbed’ on the phone, that’s basically a sanctions regime.
Donald Trump went on TV to recount a tense call with Benjamin Netanyahu about Iran, describing himself as ‘a little bit perturbed,’ which is one way to frame casually escalating tensions in the Middle East like it’s a minor customer-service complaint. The discussion, centered on Iran policy, sounded less like coordinated diplomacy between allies and more like a vibes-based foreign policy seminar run by a guy whose main credential is yelling at cable news.
Instead of quiet, strategic talks, we get the president publicly narrating his irritation with a foreign leader as if he’s live‑blogging world events. Serious national security issues about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and regional conflict are reduced to Trump’s personal mood ring, where the big takeaway is how annoyed he felt on the phone. The message to allies and adversaries alike: U.S. policy is whatever Trump’s emotional weather report says it is that morning.
So once again, the country’s approach to one of the most volatile flashpoints on earth is filtered through Trump’s favorite metric: whether someone on the other end of the line sufficiently flattered him. Diplomatic strategy, deterrence, long‑term planning? Those are for suckers who don’t understand that the real cornerstone of global security is making sure the president doesn’t get ‘perturbed.’
#national-security#full-stupid
gop discovers there’s a limit to how much ballroom you can cram into a deportation bill
Artist’s rendering of Trump’s $400m East Wing ballroom: half Versailles, half ICE field office, all taxpayer-funded security perimeter.
Republicans have reluctantly abandoned their plan to stuff $1bn in "security upgrades" for Trump’s brand-new White House ballroom into a reconciliation bill that already shovels $70bn at his mass deportation machine. The Senate parliamentarian pointed out that maybe, just maybe, turning the East Wing into Trump Tower: DC Edition doesn’t quite fit in a budget maneuver meant for, you know, actual governance. So the ballroom cash quietly vanished from the revised text, like a hush payment on a different set of Trump books.
Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer, are taking a victory lap for killing the ballroom slush fund while correctly noting that the rest of the bill is still rotten: $13bn for Customs and Border Protection, $31bn for ICE, and $2.5bn for DHS, all ring-fenced for immigration enforcement. This is the GOP’s response to Democrats briefly cutting ICE’s allowance after federal agents killed two US citizens in Minneapolis: lock in a long-term pile of money so future Congresses can’t yank the plug on the deportation-industrial complex again. Accountability is for poor people and immigrants; ICE gets a multi-year trust fund.
The White House, naturally, insists this isn’t a retreat, just a technicality forced by the parliamentarian, while Trump still claims the $400m construction tab for his ballroom is covered by "private donors"—a phrase that in Trumpworld tends to mean oligarchs, dark-money groups, and whoever’s currently auditioning for a pardon. Meanwhile, Republicans started to notice that voting to bankroll Trump’s party palace while voters choke on high gas prices from his Iran war might not be the campaign ad of their dreams. So the ballroom goes on the back burner, and the deportation spree stays front and center. The grift can wait; the crackdown cannot.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#forever-grifting
trump admin discovers new ebola protocol: vibes
Health workers in full protective gear doing the job; somewhere far away, the Trump administration is doing the opposite of that.
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is on track to become the largest on record, so naturally the Trump administration has responded by… shrugging aggressively and announcing that it will "not allow" Ebola into the United States, as if viruses are stopped by Marco Rubio yelling at a press conference. For decades, the plan for exposed Americans has been clear: fly them home to one of 13 specialized U.S. facilities built specifically for this situation. Instead, Trump’s team is pretending they can just magic away constitutional rights and international law by declaring Americans can’t come home if they’ve been near the wrong germs.
Public health experts point out a small problem with this tough-guy cosplay: the U.S. government cannot legally quarantine its own citizens in other countries and cannot bar them from reentering. So the administration is improvising a workaround where sick or exposed Americans get shipped to Germany and the Czech Republic like defective products, while the White House insists it’s being "strong" on disease. The grand plan was to build a 50-bed quarantine unit in Kenya for future cases, but a Kenyan court just slammed the brakes on that, leaving everyone to wonder what happens to the next aid worker or journalist who gets exposed.
So we have: an escalating Ebola outbreak, hundreds of Americans in the danger zone, a fully stocked domestic infrastructure ready to handle this, and a president whose administration is choosing optics over medicine and constitutional rights. Instead of using the existing system, Trump and Rubio are busy LARPing as border warriors against a virus, outsourcing our responsibilities to European hospitals and hoping no one notices that the "plan" is just don’t bring them here and pray. Public health, meet Trump-era governance: if it can’t be turned into a xenophobic talking point, it doesn’t exist.
#killing-democracy#anti-science
hegseth builds his very own frat house fleet
Pete Hegseth, hard at work transforming the U.S. military from a fighting force into a live-action PragerU recruitment poster.
Pete Hegseth, self-branded "secretary of war" and actual secretary of defense, personally scrubbed nine officers – including every woman and several Black service members – from a Navy promotion list so that the one-star admiral slate could better reflect his core values: male, white, and Trump-adjacent. The original list, drawn up by a board of admirals, had the radical flaw of resembling the actual Navy, where more than 21% are women and almost 40% are people of color. Hegseth fixed that problem by turning it into an all-male, overwhelmingly white lineup that looks less like a modern military and more like a Heritage Foundation happy hour.
Naturally, the Pentagon insists this has nothing to do with race or gender. Spokesman Sean Parnell straight-facedly declared that "meritocracy reigns supreme at the war department" under Trump and Hegseth, which is a bold statement in a world where Trump’s White House doctor, Sean Barbabella – who just pronounced the visibly unwell almost-80-year-old president in "excellent health" – somehow lands on the promotion list while multiple highly qualified women and Black officers mysteriously vanish. Meritocracy, it seems, now means "loyalty first, demographics later."
This isn’t a one-off tantrum; it’s a pattern. Hegseth already meddled in an Army promotion slate to knock off women and Black officers, has fired or sidelined nearly three dozen senior officers (a majority of them women or Black), and has systematically removed high-ranking women like Adm Lisa Franchetti, V Adm Yvette Davids, Shoshana Chatfield, and Coast Guard commandant Linda Fagan. A former military official notes that the defense secretary is supposed to give a simple up-or-down on promotion lists, not play segregationist HR manager from his Fox News fever dream. But Hegseth is stripping autonomy from the services the same way this administration strips rights from anyone who isn’t a straight white man in a campaign hat.
Meanwhile, a federal appeals court just ruled that the administration acted illegally in trying to boot transgender troops, a small speed bump on the regime’s highway to a 1950s cosplay military. The Navy is left with a leadership slate that looks nothing like the force it commands, the courts are busy cleaning up the illegal orders, and Trump’s team is still shouting "woke" at anyone who can find Ukraine on a map. Outstanding work all around.
#killing-democracy#racism#fascism
trumpcare for cancer patients: get a job or get lost
Dr. Mehmet Oz explains that if cancer patients really wanted treatment, they’d stop watching TV and start filling out 37-page work verification forms.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new frontier in "health care reform": telling people with cancer and HIV to go get a job or lose their chemotherapy and antiretrovirals. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, now helmed by daytime TV supplement salesman Dr. Mehmet Oz, just rolled out a nearly 400-page Medicaid work-requirement rule that says you’re only exempt if your disease is actively stopping you from working. Early-stage cancer? Daily radiation but you can technically stand upright? HIV that’s controlled with meds? Congrats, you’re “able-bodied.”
States are now ordered to jam this bureaucratic nightmare into their systems by January 1, on a timeline health policy experts say usually takes years. Advocates are already warning that people newly diagnosed with cancer or living with HIV will lose coverage over paperwork errors or confusing rules — precisely when they need continuous treatment to stay alive. But Oz assures us this is really just about a "path to prosperity," explaining that millions on Medicaid are supposedly just sitting at home watching 6.1 hours of TV a day, so naturally the solution is to dangle their chemotherapy over a shredder until they clock more hours at work.
Republicans jammed these rules into their July 4, 2025 budget bill that not a single Democrat supported, and their think tank friends at the Paragon Health Institute are already applauding the "appropriate balance" between program integrity and accommodating those who "genuinely" need help. Translation: if your illness doesn’t neatly fit their spreadsheet definition of incapacity, your lifeline is now a work-reporting form you can lose in the mail. Sixty-eight million low-income Americans rely on Medicaid, but sure, let’s see how many of them we can knock off the rolls by forcing cancer patients to prove they’re sick enough for Republicans to care.
#healthcare#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump’s $205bn epstein-adjacent investment club
Ben Black, bravely shouldering the burden of managing $205bn in public money despite the terrible handicap of being rich, connected, and Epstein-adjacent.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that the best person to oversee a now-$205bn taxpayer-backed global investment agency is Ben Black, a man whose family’s idea of wealth management once involved outsourcing morality to Jeffrey Epstein. Newly released DOJ records and a Guardian review of thousands of Epstein’s emails show Ben Black not only invested alongside Epstein back in 2011, but also had a personal relationship with him that included Epstein attending Black’s 30th birthday, advising him on an $11.5m townhouse, and even coaching a woman on how to text him after they kissed. So naturally, this guy now runs the US International Development Finance Corporation.
DFC was sold as a bipartisan tool to counter China and support development, but under Trump it’s morphed into a prestige toy for his friends and their roommates. First Jared Kushner’s college buddy Adam Boehler gets the keys; now Black — whose international development experience appears to be “being very rich” and co-writing a Palantir-adjacent blog post about turning foreign aid into a VC playground and maybe buying Greenland because Trump had a bit. A White House spokesperson insists Black has "elite" experience, which is one way to describe having Leon Black — Epstein’s highest-paying client, according to reporting — as your dad.
The administration’s response is the usual performance art. DFC won’t comment, Leon Black’s lawyers answer questions for father and son, and Ben Black’s personal spokesperson boldly claims he had "no personal or professional relationship" with Epstein, a fascinating take given the birthday parties, shared investments, and real estate help in the emails. Meanwhile, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick — another Trump pick with documented Epstein ties, who admits he visited the island but swears he did nothing wrong — sits with Black on the DFC board approving how all that taxpayer money gets sprayed around the globe. Trump promised to drain the swamp; instead he’s stocking a $205bn overseas investment fund with guys whose names keep turning up in Epstein’s inbox.
#corruption#forever-grifting#trumps-america
se250quincentennial: bread, circuses, and a blue reflecting pool
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, now apparently sponsored by Blue Gatorade and executive ego, awaits its 250th birthday cage match and fireworks world record attempt.
For America’s 250th birthday, Congress created America250 to plan nonpartisan events, and Donald Trump responded by creating his own shadow party-planning state, Freedom 250 — a "public-private partnership," which is Washington-speak for "we stapled a flag to a branding exercise and pointed it at the Treasury." While America250 does things like time capsules and concerts, Freedom 250 is busy turning the National Mall into a 16‑day state fair and the South Lawn into a UFC octagon, because nothing says "constitutional republic" like a cage fight outside the Oval Office scheduled to coincide with the president’s 80th birthday.
The music lineup is going great: once artists realized the fair was tied to Freedom 250 and the White House, a bunch of them bailed, prompting Trump to threaten on social media to cancel the whole thing and replace it with a giant MAGA rally. So the 250th anniversary of American independence is now held together by Vanilla Ice and Flo Rida, which feels less like a celebration of liberty and more like a county fair booked by a YouTube algorithm. Meanwhile, Freedom 250 hijacked the traditional National Park Service 4 July fireworks to stage an 860,000‑shell record attempt, because the only thing bigger than the explosions must be the president’s need for a Guinness entry.
Out in the rest of the country, America250 is trying to act like adults — Times Square ball drops in every time zone, a time capsule in Philadelphia, block parties in Milwaukee — while Trump focuses on "beautification" projects in DC that range from tacky to potentially illegal. Workers have started painting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue, with Trump promising the paint will last "40 or 50 years" and fix leaks, which is exactly how you talk about a 620‑meter historic landmark when you think it’s a hotel fountain. A nonprofit has sued, arguing he blew past laws protecting historic sites, so the semiquincentennial now includes a side quest where the president tries to legally rebrand the nation’s most famous reflecting pool as the world’s classiest above‑ground swimming pool. Happy birthday, America — you made it 250 years, and your reward is a cage match and a can of Sherwin‑Williams.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
retired judges form 'we're tired of your crap' caucus
Former judges, having tried retirement and found it incompatible with open kleptocracy, dust off their gavels and aim them squarely at Trump’s $1.8 billion friend-protection fund.
America has finally discovered the boomer version of Antifa: 35 retired federal judges who are so "infuriated" with Trump’s latest stunt that they’ve taken off the kid gloves and put on their reading glasses. These former judges filed a motion calling out a supposed $1.8 billion “settlement” the Trump administration cooked up — a fund apparently designed to shower his allies with cash while conveniently shielding Trump from pesky little things like tax audits and legal liability.
A federal judge in Florida, rather than laughing this off as the world’s saddest legal GoFundMe, actually took it seriously and ordered President Trump to respond. The retirees accused the administration of collusion and fraud, which is exactly what everyone else has been saying for months, but this time it’s coming from people who spent decades in robes instead of on cable news. As they gently reminded the court, they “have dedicated their professional lives to the administration of justice,” which is a polite, judicial way of saying: we know what corruption looks like, and this is it.
Conservative critics are already clutching pearls about retired judges “trading on their prestige,” as if the real scandal here is decorum, not the sitting president allegedly using the federal courts as an ATM for friends and a shield for his own finances. Trump gets a bespoke $1.8 billion legal force field, and the outrage brigade is mad that the people calling it out used the wrong fork at dinner. The judiciary, long treated by this administration as a suggestion box, is starting to push back — and it’s not a great sign for your presidency when the people who usually write footnotes are now writing amicus briefs calling you a fraud.
#corruption#lawlessness#killing-democracy
trump discovers stealing is easy, giving the money back is hard
Behold: $166 billion in illegal tariffs, currently being held hostage by an administration that treats court orders like spam emails.
The Trump administration illegally vacuumed up $166 billion in tariffs, got slapped down by the Supreme Court in February, and is now doing what any self-respecting grift operation would do: fighting like hell to not return the money. Importers were told the duties were unlawful and must be refunded; the administration has responded by slow-walking repayments and signaling it will make it harder for certain businesses to claim the full amounts they’re owed. Rule of law is for suckers, apparently.
Instead of just obeying the Court of International Trade, Trump’s team is trying to hide its own customs chief, Rodney S. Scott, behind a legal couch cushion. Judge Richard K. Eaton ordered Scott to testify about the refund process; DOJ immediately fired off an "emergency" appeal to send literally anyone else. The judge, unimpressed, reminded them there’s "$166 billion at stake" — which, to be fair, is a lot of golf course memberships and golden toilets to part with.
As businesses wonder if they’ll ever see their money again, the White House is already cooking up a fresh batch of tariffs to replace the illegal ones, including at least 10% duties on more than 80 countries. So while the courts try to unwind last year’s unlawful cash grab, Trump is busy constructing the next one. The message to American companies is clear: the government can break the law, keep your money, and then charge you again for the privilege of doing business in Trump’s America.
#lawlessness#trade-war
trump hosts 'the apprentice: successor edition'
JD Vance and Marco Rubio practice sitting obediently on a couch while awaiting further instructions from the guy who "studies" them like show ponies.
Trump went on the New York Post’s "Pod Force One" — because of course that’s the name — to publicly workshop his favorite parlor game: who gets to inherit the cult. He floated a JD Vance–Marco Rubio 2028 ticket, carefully refusing to say who should be on top, like a bored monarch teasing which courtier he’ll let hold the scepter when he’s done playing with it.
Rather than backing his own vice president as the obvious heir, Trump is keeping the endorsement as an open question, on purpose, repeatedly polling his hangers-on about whether they prefer Vance or Rubio. The result is a permanent loyalty audition where the sitting VP and Secretary of State are reduced to contestants scrambling for the golden MAGA rose.
Trump bragged that he “watches them all the time” and “studies them as they’re with each other,” which is a totally normal thing for a president to say about his would-be successors and not at all the language of a guy running a personality cult. He insists they’re “very talented” and “similar,” which tracks: both have completed the full spine-removal surgery required to go from Trump critic to Trump understudy. American democracy, meanwhile, is stuck as the background extra on Trump’s never-ending casting couch of power.
#killing-democracy#oligarchy
homebuilder heir put in charge of spying on the country, what could go wrong
Bill Pulte, freshly promoted from regulating mortgages to regulating who gets spied on, presumably checking if the Constitution has a demolition clause.
Trump has decided that the perfect person to run America’s spy agencies at a critical surveillance crossroads is… Bill Pulte, a homebuilding heir and housing finance bureaucrat whose main qualification is being a major donor and Trump loyalist. Intelligence background? None. Proven willingness to do "anything that President Trump wants, legal or otherwise" according to Sen. Mark Warner? Absolutely. Naturally, this surprise appointment lands just days before Congress has to decide whether to renew Section 702, the warrantless surveillance program that hoovers up foreign communications and plenty of Americans’ messages along the way.
Lawmakers were already trying to duct-tape together a fragile bipartisan deal to extend 702 through 2029 with a few cosmetic restraints. Then Trump tossed Pulte into the DNI chair, prompting Warner to admit his confidence in the deal "evaporated overnight" and warning that someone with "a history of misusing private information" is about to inherit one of the most powerful surveillance toys on Earth. Even Senate majority leader John Thune, who usually rolls over on command, is suddenly discovering the concept of "professionals" in top intelligence jobs and gently hinting that turning the DNI into a political hitman might be bad.
Pulte, for his part, comes with a fun little track record: at the Federal Housing Finance Agency he allegedly used his perch to launch unproven fraud accusations at Trump critics like Fed governor Lisa Cook, which Trump then tried to use as a pretext to kick her off the Fed board. Cook refused to go, and now the Supreme Court gets to decide how far the president can go in purging independent regulators who displease him. So Congress is being asked to hand a sweeping surveillance program to a man who already weaponized financial oversight against political enemies, while the courts simultaneously debate how much unchecked power Trump gets over independent institutions. Sure, what could possibly go sideways here.
To sweeten the pot, the "compromise" 702 renewal bill from Tom Cotton and Chuck Grassley tosses in a three-year ban on a Fed digital currency as a treat for the House conspiracy caucus, because when you’re rewriting national surveillance authorities, why not also legislate around whatever YouTube video the Freedom Caucus watched last week. The bottom line: Trump is trying to bolt a loyalist with no intel experience onto the top of the spy apparatus right as Congress decides whether that apparatus can keep vacuuming up everyone’s communications. It’s less "checks and balances" and more "hand the arsonist a bigger gas can".
#killing-democracy#fascism
