rfk jr discovers fentanyl crisis is bad optics, temporarily
Robert F Kennedy Jr, moments before learning that openly defunding overdose prevention in the middle of a fentanyl crisis polls slightly worse than lead paint in baby formula.
The Trump administration’s favorite antivax conspiracy theorist turned health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, spent Tuesday casually nuking nearly $2 billion in mental health and substance use funding — including overdose prevention, support for kids, first responders, pregnant women, and recovery programs — because nothing says "Administration for a Healthy America" like pulling the plug on everyone keeping people alive.
Then, after a day of nationwide fury, panic at treatment centers, and first responders planning layoffs instead of saving overdose victims, HHS quietly started un‑canceling the money late Wednesday night. No explanation, no apology, just a classic Trump‑era "we’re restoring what we just set on fire, you’re welcome" move. Lawmakers like Rosa DeLauro and Patty Murray called it exactly what it was: illegal power games with Congress’s purse strings and "absurd, pointless chaos" from Kennedy and Trump.
Experts point out that this isn’t a one‑off mistake; it’s the project. As Dr Sunny Patel notes, the administration is systematically dismantling the behavioral health system, slashing budgets and staff while creating rolling instability that will hammer children’s mental health for years. The tiny good news: public outrage forced a retreat this time. The bad news: the arsonists are still in charge of the fire department and very committed to "reimagining" it as a smoking crater.
#healthcare#killing-democracy#full-stupid
trump slaps 'national security' sticker on nvidia, calls it industrial policy
Donald Trump gestures at a chart of AI chips he doesn’t understand, while staffers quietly draw dollar signs over Taiwan on the map.
Donald Trump has discovered a bold new approach to industrial strategy: slap a 25% tariff on Nvidia and AMD’s top AI chips, yell "national security" into a Section 232 proclamation from 1962, and hope nobody notices that this is less about safeguarding the republic and more about shaking down the supply chain. The order targets high-end AI semiconductors like Nvidia’s H200 and AMD’s MI325X, but—very coincidentally—carefully exempts huge domestic buyers like U.S. datacenters, big startups, and public sector applications. In other words: tough-on-trade photo op for Trump, minimal pain for his favorite corporate customers.
Even better, the administration just required China-bound Nvidia chips to take a scenic detour through the United States for “third-party testing,” where—what do you know—they get hit with the new 25% tariff. This comes after Trump already announced he’d let Nvidia sell H200s to China in exchange for a cut of the sales, a move legal experts politely described as "possibly unconstitutional" and less politely as "the president trying to personally tax exports." But sure, this is all about national security, not the president turning the U.S. government into a toll booth for global chip flows.
The White House insists this is a "narrowly focused" move to boost domestic manufacturing and reduce reliance on Taiwan, while quietly giving Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick broad discretion to hand out exemptions like party favors. Meanwhile, Trump is dangling broader semiconductor tariffs in the near future and has already splattered tariffs across everything from branded drugs to heavy-duty trucks. Because nothing says "carefully calibrated economic strategy" like weaponizing obscure trade statutes, destabilizing supply chains, and maybe violating the Constitution in the process—then calling it a win for American workers.
#trade-war#forever-grifting
trump kids invent $100 down, zero phone
Artist’s impression of the Trump T1: a golden rectangle of pure vibes and no hardware, proudly designed in America and manufactured in the imagination.
The presidential failsons are back with a bold new innovation in American tech: a phone that doesn’t exist but will happily take your $100 anyway. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump rolled out Trump Mobile’s gold "T1" phone — allegedly "Made in the USA" — and then, like every other Trump business promise, it somehow got lost between the press conference and reality. The company quietly scrubbed the "Made in the USA" claim from its website and downgraded it to an "American-proud design," which is what you call something that’s absolutely being made somewhere else but still needs to trigger the base.
There’s now a letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and 10 other Democrats asking the FTC to look into whether this whole thing is, you know, fraud — including possible false advertising and "bait-and-switch tactics" involving deposits for phones that never show up. NBC News even put down a $100 deposit and was rewarded with a shifting series of ship dates (November, then December, now "sometime in Q1 2026") and an excuse that somehow involved the government shutdown, because nothing says "cutting-edge consumer electronics" like blaming Congress for your nonexistent supply chain.
Lawmakers are also very pointedly asking whether the FTC has actually done anything or spoken to Trump or his businesses about this little presidential side hustle, noting that how the agency responds will be a "critical test" of its independence. Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom’s office has already skipped to the last page of the book and called it what it looks like: "like FRAUD!" In other words, the Trump brand has finally produced the perfect Trump product: a shiny, flag-wrapped, "Made in the USA" nothingburger that exists mainly to vacuum $100 bills out of supporters’ wallets — forever-grifting as a service.
#forever-grifting#corruption#money
trump discovers the 'raid the journalist' button, finds it well‑worn
FBI agents leaving a journalist’s home with boxes of notebooks and hard drives, bravely protecting America from the mortal threat of people finding out what their government actually did.
The FBI raiding Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home and jailing her alleged source is being treated like some wild new Trump innovation, but the truth is way darker: he’s just using the same loaded gun every "defender of democracy" helpfully left on the table. From Nixon’s Espionage Act crusade against Daniel Ellsberg to Obama’s record-breaking prosecutions of whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, and John Kiriakou, both parties spent decades normalizing the idea that revealing government crimes is the real crime.
By the time Trump’s DOJ dragged Julian Assange into an Espionage Act indictment for the act of publishing, the line between "journalism" and "espionage" was already shredded. Biden’s DOJ then lovingly finished the job with a plea deal that formally labels receiving and publishing evidence of US war crimes as a criminal conspiracy. In other words, the bipartisan establishment built the cage; Trump is just enthusiastic about slamming the door on any reporter who annoys him.
Meanwhile, the supposed safeguard against this nonsense—the Privacy Protection Act of 1980—turns out to be less a shield and more a sad suggestion. Cops and feds keep raiding newsrooms and homes anyway, from the Marion County Record raid that literally helped kill the paper’s 98-year-old co-owner, to the FBI trashing journalist Tim Burke’s home office, and now Natanson. Congress, having learned absolutely nothing, is busy subpoenaing reporter Seth Harp for doing journalism, while pretending that reporting on government secrets is illegal "leaking" and naming officials is illegal "doxxing." But sure, tell us again how America is a shining beacon of press freedom.
So when Trump’s people send armed agents into a reporter’s house, it’s not a bug, it’s the long-awaited feature. Decades of "respectable" Democrats and Republicans turned whistleblowers into spies, publishers into criminals, and press protections into punchlines. Trump just took the bipartisan war on journalism, slapped his name on it, and cranked it up to raid-your-living-room mode.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
joe rogan discovers the gestapo vibes were not a bit
Joe Rogan, mid‑podcast epiphany, realizing the deportation state he boosted is starting to sound less like ‘owning the libs’ and more like ‘papers, please.’
Joe Rogan, America’s favorite confused focus group in human form, has finally noticed that Trump’s immigration machine is starting to look a little Gestapo‑adjacent. On a three‑hour podcast with Rand Paul, Rogan reacted to the ICE killing of Renee Nicole Good — a legal observer shot through her car window in Minneapolis — by asking whether the U.S. is really going to be “the Gestapo” demanding “Where’s your papers?” Because nothing says land of the free like federal agents turning traffic stops and parking lots into immigration checkpoints with live ammunition.
The Trump administration, naturally, insists the agent acted in self‑defense, while video of Good’s death bounces around the internet and public opinion turns against the president’s hardline deportation fetish. Rogan tries to both‑sides it — he “sees both perspectives” on mass raids that routinely sweep up U.S. citizens who simply don’t have their documents on them — but somehow still manages to repeat right‑wing fairy tales about Biden secretly importing Democratic voters. In other words, he’s halfway to realizing this is all horrifying, but still clinging to the comforting conspiracy fanfic.
Meanwhile, the comic‑bro podcaster class that helped sell Trump 2.0 to millions of young men is slowly backing away from the deportation death cult. Rogan is appalled that Trump’s DHS deported a gay stylist seeking asylum and tossed him into a Salvadoran prison, and Theo Von is furious that DHS used his face in a rah‑rah deportation video without permission — asking them to take it down and, at the very least, cut him a check. Because nothing captures the moral rot of Trump’s immigration regime like influencers discovering that the same government terrorizing migrants is also casually stealing their content for propaganda — and only really getting mad about the second part.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump doj builds a voter purge database, calls it 'confidence'
Trump’s Justice Department, seen here carefully protecting voting rights by suing states that refuse to hand over millions of voters’ Social Security numbers.
The Trump Justice Department has decided that what American democracy really needs is a massive, unauthorized database of voters’ personal information—because nothing says "free and fair elections" like the federal government demanding your address, full date of birth, and last four of your Social Security number. At least 43 states got the ask; eight obediently handed it over, and 23 states plus DC got sued for having the nerve to care about privacy and state law. And in a wild coincidence, nearly every target just happens to have Democratic election officials. Totally about "integrity," not politics at all.
The DOJ insists it’s just checking for ineligible voters, while quietly shoveling this data to DHS so it can be run through the SAVE immigration database—now upgraded to let them run bulk checks with the last four digits of a Social Security number. Experts say the system is riddled with errors and already falsely flags citizens as non-citizens, but sure, let’s use it to decide who gets to stay on the voter rolls. After running 50 million registrations, DHS has referred about 10,000 people for further investigation: roughly 0.02%. In other words, they’re building an error-prone federal voter surveillance machine to chase statistical rounding errors.
States that try to comply by redacting sensitive data still get sued, because the point isn’t clean rolls, it’s control. As one election lawyer notes, once the feds start deciding who “belongs” on the rolls, they can shape who’s allowed to vote—and then scream fraud whenever Trump-aligned candidates lose. Harmeet Dhillon, now running the DOJ civil rights division in the most ironic job assignment since putting arsonists in charge of the fire department, calls this a "top priority" for public confidence. Nothing boosts confidence like an administration that lost the popular vote twice building a national voter list it has no constitutional authority to create.
#killing-democracy#fascism#lawlessness
trump takes on his toughest opponent yet: kids with brain cancer
Nothing says ‘world’s greatest healthcare system’ like a mom and her four-year-old clinging to each other while the president fights harder against insurance mandates than against a universally fatal childhood brain tumor.
In a country where childhood brain cancer already has a near-100% fatality rate, the Trump administration apparently looked at that and said: “hold my golf cart.” Families like nurse-turned-cancer-mom Jenn Janosko are fighting DIPG, a brutal brainstem tumor with an 11‑month median survival, while also navigating the policy genius of a White House that treats medical research and healthcare coverage as optional line items to be slashed whenever a donor needs a tax cut.
Under normal circumstances, you’d think the federal government might respond to a universally fatal childhood cancer by pouring money into research, fast‑tracking trials, and strengthening insurance protections so parents don’t go bankrupt while their kid is dying. Under Trump, the move is more: gut the ACA, undermine Medicaid, play games with NIH funding, and let families beg on GoFundMe for access to clinical trials – because nothing says “pro-life” like forcing parents to choose between experimental treatment and keeping the lights on.
The kids on the pediatric cancer floor are pushing IV poles in circles, while the administration runs its own grim relay race: from sabotaging coverage, to destabilizing hospitals, to starving research that might actually keep some of these children alive. In other words, the state of the art in American pediatric oncology is still doing laps around a hospital ward – and the state of the art in Trump policy is making sure those laps are as underfunded, precarious, and traumatizing as possible. But sure, tell us more about how this is the “greatest healthcare” system in the world.
#healthcare#killing-democracy
the crisis whisperer explains how the adults in the room lost the country
Former Biden officials explaining, with great seriousness, how their meticulously curated policy vibes tragically failed to stop the guy actively dismantling democracy… again.
Adam Tooze logs on to a Brussels panel of Biden-world exiles and, instead of joining the group therapy session about their noble scars, reminds them of a tiny inconvenient fact: they failed at their one job, which was stopping a second Trump term. While Katherine Tai is quoting Martin Sheen and reenacting The West Wing at an EU conference, Trump is back in Washington with his wrecking crew, taking a blowtorch to what’s left of Biden’s agenda and the liberal order. But sure, let’s talk about how hard everyone tried and how many white papers they heroically drafted while American democracy face-planted.
Tooze, the historian of financial crises turned full-time “your faves blew it” explainer, points out that these self-styled guardians of liberalism didn’t just lose; they helped speed up the unraveling by doubling down on great-power confrontation and Biden-branded technocracy. In other words, the people who were supposed to be the last line of defense against authoritarianism were too busy workshopping model negotiating texts and mainlining prestige TV morality tales to notice they were getting steamrolled. They see themselves as scarred warriors; he sees a bunch of sentimental schmucks who lost the country and still think they deserve a panel, a microphone, and a round of applause.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
manifest destiny but make it mars and greenland
Trump stares at a map of Greenland like a toddler eyeing someone else’s toy and calls it foreign policy.
Donald Trump has decided that international law is for losers, declaring "I don’t need international law" and basically upgrading himself from president to new king emperor of the Western hemisphere. It’s the Donroe Doctrine: the hemisphere is his personal strip mall, available for looting by him and his loyal courtiers, because nothing says "rule of law" like announcing you’re above it.
Mira Kamdar, whose family history runs through Danish colonialism, British empire, and American "we’re totally the good guys" mythology, watches Trump resurrect imperialism with the subtlety of a wrecking ball. Her 95‑year‑old Indian father, a naturalized American who helped put a man on the moon, now fears ICE will roll into his care home and deport him from his wheelchair—because under Trump’s white‑supremacist manifest destiny, being brown is probable cause. Meanwhile, Greenland—already scarred by Danish colonial projects like forced sterilizations and child removals—gets to look forward to the day when US ICE units, finally on brand, show up in the Arctic to "protect" native people the way America always has.
Denmark’s own imperial past and its present "ghetto law" targeting dark‑skinned immigrants blend seamlessly into Trump’s vision: break the law to get rid of the wrong kind of people, then call it security. In other words, the old European empires are now the warm‑up act for Trump’s neo‑imperial cosplay, where the US trades in democracy talk for open plunder and racial hierarchy—and Europe’s far right is lining up to import the model. But sure, tell us again how this is all about sovereignty and not a reheated colonial project with worse branding.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
making america small again (china sends thank-you card)
Trump stares at a map of the world while China quietly highlights everything now returning its calls.
Turns out when you put an erratic strongman back in the White House and let him run foreign policy like a reality show, the rest of the planet doesn’t respond with awe and gratitude. A 21-country survey for the European Council on Foreign Relations finds that Trump’s big “Make America Great Again” reboot is mostly making China look like the rising adult in the room. Majorities across almost every country polled expect China’s global influence to grow, and they’re largely fine with it—because nothing says strategic genius like driving your allies away while your main rival sells them EVs and solar panels.
In Europe, confidence in the US as a reliable ally has basically fallen through the floor: only 16% of EU citizens now see the US as an ally, while 20% already file it under “rival or enemy.” Ukrainians trust Brussels more than Washington, Russians increasingly see the EU—not the US—as the main adversary, and even Americans don’t really think their own country’s influence is going anywhere but sideways. Meanwhile, in places like South Africa, Brazil, and Russia, comfy majorities see China as either a partner or an ally. In other words, Trump’s “America First” strategy is functionally “America Alone, China in the Fast Lane.”
The poll’s authors delicately conclude that US actions are “boosting China,” citing Trump’s Venezuela antics and Greenland cosplay as signs he’d rather be feared than loved. Mission accomplished: nobody loves the US, and they’re not especially afraid of it either—they’re just quietly rearming, drifting toward China, and treating the EU as the last semi-sane actor in the room. Europeans get that the old order is over and now worry about major war, Russian aggression, and their own irrelevance, while Trump continues to reenact a 1980s power fantasy that mostly ends with Xi Jinping measuring for new curtains in the vacuum Washington left behind. But sure, tell us again how the adults are back in charge.
#killing-democracy#imperialism
senate decides trump absolutely deserves surprise wars now
Donald Trump on Air Force One, presumably explaining that he doesn’t need Congress’s permission for war when he has Marco Rubio’s letterhead and JD Vance’s rubber stamp.
The Senate just voted 51-50 to make sure Donald Trump keeps his favorite toy: the ability to start a war without Congress getting in the way. A bipartisan resolution by Sen. Tim Kaine that would have required Trump to seek congressional approval before striking Venezuela was cruising toward passage—until Trump publicly threatened the Republicans who supported it, and, like clockwork, Josh Hawley and Todd Young folded faster than a Trump casino.
Hawley and Young had already voted to advance the resolution last week, but after Trump raged that the five GOP defectors “should never be elected to office again,” they suddenly discovered new information: letters and “assurances” from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials that there are no U.S. troops in Venezuela and, pinky swear, they’ll totally come to Congress first if they ever decide to put some there. In other words: Congress just killed its own constitutional war powers based on a Marco Rubio promise, because nothing says serious oversight like trusting a guy whose geopolitical strategy is mostly Fox News clips and regime-change fan fiction.
The vote deadlocked 50-50, and Vice President JD Vance happily delivered the tiebreaker to sink the measure, cementing the Trump administration’s ability to treat the Caribbean like its personal live-fire sandbox while also “dialing up” threats against Iran and, naturally, Greenland. Chuck Schumer pointed out that the American people don’t want Trump sending troops into harm’s way without debate; Senate Republicans responded by making sure he can do exactly that. So yes, the Constitution technically still exists—but only as long as it doesn’t annoy Donald Trump.
#killing-democracy#imperialism#lawlessness
trump to be personally briefed on who runs venezuela, because elections are for losers
NBC chyron: Venezuela in crisis, Trump considering who gets to be president there while daydreaming about annexing Greenland, because maps are just vision boards now.
In the latest episode of "Who Wants to Be a President?" the Venezuela edition, House Republican María Elvira Salazar confidently announces that opposition leader María Corina Machado will personally "explain" to Donald Trump that she is the leader of Venezuela. Because nothing says "respect for sovereignty" like needing to pitch your country's leadership to a U.S. ex-president as if you're auditioning for a cabinet role at Mar-a-Lago.
This little diplomatic cosplay is happening while the NBC chyron cheerfully reminds us that Trump is busy renewing his vow to annex Greenland and the Pentagon is dusting off plans on Iran. In other words, we’ve fully moved from "America First" to "America Decides Who Runs Your Country and Maybe Buys an Island on the Side." It's not foreign policy, it’s a hostile takeover spree with nukes.
The underlying message is simple: Venezuelans can risk their lives, organize, and vote, but Trump’s blessing is treated like the real certification of who counts as a leader. Democratic legitimacy? Cute. What really matters is who can get a meeting at Trump’s favorite TV studio disguised as a country. But sure, tell us again how this is about freedom and not about Washington—and specifically Trump—playing imperial casting director for the hemisphere.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
california responds to trump’s texas rigging with artisanal, farm-to-table gerrymander
California’s legendary independent redistricting commission, watching voters enthusiastically replace it with a limited-time partisan cheat code "to save democracy."
California voters passed Prop 50, a ballot initiative that lets the state temporarily toss its vaunted independent maps in the trash and replace them with very partisan ones designed to flip five GOP House seats—explicitly as a response to Trump-backed Texas Republicans carving their own congressional playground. Because nothing says "defending democracy" like answering one state’s gerrymander with your own, but with better branding and a coastal zip code.
Republicans sued, claiming the new maps were an illegal racial gerrymander meant to advantage Latino and Hispanic voters. A 2–1 federal appeals panel basically replied: nice try, but you didn’t prove racist intent, just nakedly partisan intent, which the Supreme Court has already ruled is totally fine and absolutely none of the judiciary’s business. In other words, as long as you’re discriminating based on party and not race, you’re good to go in America’s advanced constitutional gerrymander simulator.
Democrats leaned on an independent analysis showing no increase in Latino-majority districts and loudly insisted that the real goal was to offset Trump’s Texas rigging, not to target voters by race. Two Democratic-appointed judges nodded along; Trump appointee Kenneth K. Lee dissented, accusing Dems of trying to keep Latinos from "drifting away" from the party—translation: this is my team’s gerrymander turf, get your own. The maps will now govern the 2026, 2028, and 2030 elections, while California’s much-celebrated independent redistricting commission sits in the corner, learning in real time that in Trump’s America, the only truly bipartisan principle is: if they cheat, we cheat back.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
make school lunches great again (with extra fat)
Donald Trump proudly sporting a staged milk mustache while federal nutrition policy quietly gets rewritten to match a dairy industry wish list.
Trump has signed the "Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act," a bill that does exactly what it sounds like: brings whole and 2% milk back to school cafeterias while taking a victory lap over Michelle Obama’s nutrition standards. Because nothing says serious governance like centering federal policy around getting revenge on the woman who tried to make your kid eat a vegetable. The law lets schools pour full-fat dairy for the roughly 30 million kids in the National School Lunch Program and, in a helpful twist for the dairy lobby, exempts milk fat from counting toward saturated fat limits. Science, meet tractor.
The administration is selling this as a bipartisan health triumph—Trump literally posed with a “milk mustache” and declared, “Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, whole milk is a great thing,” which is definitely how evidence-based nutrition guidelines work now. Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins dutifully framed this as a “long-overdue correction” and a fix to Michelle Obama’s “short-sighted campaign,” while the new Dietary Guidelines conveniently pivot to praising full-fat dairy just in time. Some experts do argue that whole milk isn’t the villain it was made out to be, others point out that Obama-era rules actually helped slow childhood obesity, but the law simply sidesteps the debate by rewriting the rules so milk fat doesn’t count.
In other words, it’s the perfect Trump-era compromise: gesture at science, ignore the inconvenient parts, give an industry exactly what it’s been lobbying for, and package it as a populist crusade for “healthy kids.” But sure, this is all about the children, not about torching Obama’s legacy and handing the dairy industry a federally mandated customer base with a side of culture-war whipped cream.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid#forever-grifting
ice to america: background checks are for losers
ICE recruiters bravely proving that the real border crisis is between "hired" and "actually filled out the paperwork."
Laura Jedeed, a Slate reporter who literally describes herself as anti-ICE, went to an ICE career fair to see what the recruitment process was like and accidentally discovered the answer: there basically isn’t one. After a "job interview" that could generously be described as "five and a half minutes of vibes" — no signatures, no background check authorization, no domestic violence affidavit, not even full ID info — she walked away, did none of the follow-up paperwork, and still ended up in the system as “Entered on Duty.” Because nothing says "elite law enforcement agency" like hiring people who never actually applied.
Jedeed, a veteran and vocal Trump critic, reasonably wondered what else ICE might be missing if they can’t catch "didn’t fill out forms" or "publicly anti-ICE journalist". Maybe things like domestic abusers, or people with white supremacist ties who really, really want a government gun and a badge to "hit the streets" and "indiscriminately target minorities," as she put it. The deportation officer she spoke to confirmed the mission: put as many guns and badges out in the field as possible. Public safety, meet the shredder.
The Department of Homeland Security, in peak Trump-era damage-control style, hopped on X to call the whole thing a “lazy lie,” insisting it was just a harmless "Tentative Selection Letter" and definitely not a job offer. Unfortunately for them, Jedeed brought receipts: video of her USAJobs portal showing a final offer and onboarding date. Slate backed her up, saying she’d clearly advanced well beyond the tentative stage. DHS’s response boils down to: "Who are you going to believe, our PR account or your own lying screenshots?"
All of this shines a lovely harsh light on ICE’s Trump-era recruitment overhaul, which loosened hiring and training standards in the name of speed and "toughness." The result: an agency with massive power over people’s lives apparently running a "click here to get a gun" pipeline through USAJobs. But sure, tell us again how militarized immigration cops with almost no vetting are what keeps America safe.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
marco rubio shuts the golden door for 75 countries
Marco Rubio’s State Department, bravely protecting America from the grave threat of families who filled out all the paperwork correctly.
The Trump administration has discovered an exciting new twist on the classic travel ban: just hit pause on immigrant visas from 75 countries and never say when you’ll press play again. The State Department, now run by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in his final form as a Heritage Foundation blog post, says this indefinite freeze is needed to stop "abuse" by people who might checks notes legally immigrate and someday use public benefits. Because nothing says fiscal responsibility like blaming the federal budget on a hypothetical Somali grandmother who hasn’t even gotten a visa interview yet.
Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott proudly announced that State will use its "long-standing authority" to deem people a "public charge" and shut the door, while conveniently skipping over the part where the administration is just inventing a mass presumption of welfare fraud for entire nations. The ban hits immigrant visas only—tourist and business visas are still fine—because if you’re coming to actually live, work, and build a life here, Trump and Rubio would prefer you didn’t. Meanwhile, asylum cases, citizenship processing, and green cards from the original 19 banned countries are also on ice, expanded to even more nations and anyone with Palestinian Authority documents. In other words: the "legal pathway" they keep telling people to use is being bricked over in real time, but sure, this is all about "security" and "generosity."
#anti-immigration#killing-democracy
congress begs arsonist-in-chief to fix the fire he helped start
Marco Rubio and friends asking Donald Trump to safeguard digital freedom in Iran, like asking a pyromaniac to run the fire department because he’s got ‘experience with flames.’
In a heartwarming display of bipartisan delusion, a group of House members is politely asking Donald Trump to restore internet access in Iran—the same Iran where protests exploded after the US president ordered the bombing of three nuclear installations and helped usher in a wave of state killings. Because nothing says defending human rights like first escalating a regional war, then swooping in to offer VPNs as a consolation prize.
Democrats and Republicans alike want Trump to let the State Department team up again with the Open Technology Fund to help Iranians bypass regime censorship, effectively fast‑tracking a not-yet-passed bill, the very on-brand “Freedom Act”. They openly admit they’d like to skip that pesky legislative process and just have the executive branch improvise its own foreign cyber-ops policy—because if there’s one thing this administration has proven, it’s that nothing can possibly go wrong when Trump is given more unilateral power over shadowy tech tools abroad.
Meanwhile, human rights groups say around 2,500 people have already been killed in the crackdown, with some estimates hitting 12,000, and executions in Iran surged in 2025 after Trump’s 12-day war with Israel and those US-ordered bombings. Trump, for his part, has promised that “help is on its way” and threatened “very strong action” if Tehran executes protesters—this from the guy whose foreign policy strategy is basically sanctions, airstrikes, and Fox News hits. In other words: the guy who helped pour gasoline all over the region is now being begged to ship in fire extinguishers he’ll probably aim at the cameras instead of the flames.
#imperialism#national-security#killing-democracy
fbi raids reporter’s house to protect government from embarrassment
Pictured: American press freedom, right before the FBI asks it to step outside for a ‘quick chat’ with a warrant.
The FBI has reportedly searched the home of a Washington Post reporter as part of an investigation into a contractor leak, because nothing says "land of the free" like federal agents rummaging through a journalist’s stuff to figure out who told the public what their government is actually doing.
In classic modern American fashion, the target isn’t the people who might have abused power, wasted money, or lied to the public, but the people who talked about it. The message to sources and reporters is clear: if you expose inconvenient truths, we’ll bring a battering ram to your First Amendment. But sure, let’s keep lecturing other countries about press freedom while we turn leak investigations into a full-contact sport.
So now, contractors know they risk prosecution, journalists know they risk raids, and the only thing truly safe is the government’s ability to operate in the dark. In other words: a huge win for secrecy, intimidation, and the ongoing project of killing any remaining illusion of a free and independent press.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#fascism
trump’s epa solves air pollution by deleting the column where people die
EPA economists heroically protect industry from the crippling burden of acknowledging that dead people are a cost.
The Trump EPA has discovered a bold new way to make deadly air pollution look less bad: just stop counting the money and lives saved by rules that reduce it. The agency announced it will no longer monetize the health benefits of curbing fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone, but will still carefully tally the costs to industry—because nothing says “protecting human health” like only counting the part where corporations have to spend money.
Under Biden, EPA estimated up to 4,500 premature deaths prevented and a 77-to-1 health benefit payoff for every dollar spent cutting soot. Under Trump’s Lee Zeldin–run EPA, those benefits are now too “uncertain” to count, but the asthma attacks, heart disease, and premature deaths are still very real. Environmental and health groups are calling the move “reckless, dangerous and illegal,” which in this administration is less a criticism and more of a mission statement.
To showcase this new math, EPA rolled out a weaker rule for nitrogen oxide pollution from gas-burning turbines—actually loosening protections that have been in place for two decades for some plants—and then proudly declined to estimate the economic value of the health benefits it’s sacrificing. In other words, the agency created to stop companies from poisoning people is now arguing that the problem isn’t the pollution, it’s the spreadsheets that make it look bad. But sure, they “absolutely remain committed” to protecting human health—just not in any way you can measure, compare, or use to stop them.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
little marco completes full spine-removal surgery
Marco Rubio, pictured here in his natural habitat: standing behind Trump, nodding vigorously, and pretending this is all totally fine.
Marco Rubio once said Trump was a 'con artist.' Now he’s his Secretary of State and professional character witness, because nothing says 'deeply held principles' like immediately torching them for a Cabinet seat.
According to Dexter Filkins, Rubio’s journey from Trump critic to Trump champion is less a 'political evolution' and more a live-action demonstration of how fast a Republican can shed a conscience when there’s an office, a motorcade, and proximity to power on the line. The man who warned America about Trump now spends his days defending the same behavior he used to call dangerous—but don’t worry, he insists it’s all very serious and patriotic.
In other words, the former anti-Trump crusader has rebranded as the regime’s hype man abroad, laundering Trump’s image on the world stage while pretending this is all normal diplomacy and not an ongoing experiment in soft authoritarianism. Rubio didn’t change Trump; Trump changed Rubio—right into the kind of ambitious, pliable loyalist you want when you’re busy testing how far you can push the boundaries of democracy.
#killing-democracy#fascism
