Pennsylvania swing voters attempt the ancient ritual of stretching a paycheck in an economy allegedly fixed by a guy who thinks price controls are something you do on Truth Social.
Trump spent years promising that he alone could make everything cheaper, as if the economy were a late-night infomercial where you just shout "DEALS!" into a microphone and inflation taps out. NPR checks in with three swing voters in Pennsylvania who have made the shocking discovery that you cannot, in fact, pay for gas with campaign rhetoric or buy groceries using a rerun of a Trump rally.
As the midterms creep closer, these voters talk about "affordability" the way economists do: in terms of rent, food, and basic survival, not how many gold-plated NFTs the former president can unload in a week. The grand promise of lower prices has somehow translated into people doing math at the checkout line and wondering why the guy who said he’d fix everything with tariffs, deregulation, and vibes hasn’t delivered a magical rollback on their bills.
So the sales pitch is colliding with reality: Trumpworld keeps insisting the economy is thriving, while actual humans in swing states are staring at receipts like they’re reading a horror novel. Call it the Make America Affordable Again pledge: great slogan, terrible implementation, and absolutely no refunds.
Artist’s rendering of the Trump DOJ: a red carpet rolled straight into the pardon office, with career attorneys swept out like used popcorn bags.
The Trump-Blanche Department of Justice is once again pioneering bold new frontiers in turning law enforcement into a concierge service for the president’s friends. Former pardon attorney Elizabeth Oyer has filed a lawsuit saying she was pushed to "disregard her duties" and cook up an "independent" review recommending that Mel Gibson — convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor — get his gun rights back because of his "relationship with President Trump." When she declined to turn the pardon office into a celebrity gun lobby, she says Todd Blanche showed her the door.
According to Oyer, the assignment was simple: pretend the neutral career office magically concluded that a Trump-loving movie star with a domestic violence conviction was totally ready for more firearms, then slap a bow of institutional legitimacy on it. She refused, and — shocker — was allegedly fired the next day. DOJ, meanwhile, swears the Gibson issue had nothing to do with her dismissal, which is why, of course, the department then reportedly moved ahead to restore Gibson’s gun rights anyway. The coincidence is so pure it should come with its own Hallmark movie.
Oyer’s suit says her firing violated civil service protections, due process, the First Amendment, and those quaint "separation of powers" principles we used to teach in schools before the syllabus was replaced with loyalty oaths. She’s asking to be reinstated, paid what she’s owed, and protected from further retaliation — a tall order in an administration that treats the Justice Department like Trump’s personal HR and public relations shop. The message from Main Justice remains clear: the rule of law is optional, but star power and presidential fandom? Non-negotiable hiring criteria.
The National Museum of American History, seen moments before the White House demands an exhibit on the heroic struggles of persecuted Confederate statues.
The Trump administration has now moved from rewriting press releases to trying to rewrite the entire American story, threatening to yank federal support and cooperation from the Smithsonian unless it stops being so rude as to show people what actually happened. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and White House domestic policy aide Vince Haley fired off a letter accusing Smithsonian leadership of "radical ideology" and a "culture of ideological activism" — bold claims from an administration whose main interpretive framework for U.S. history is whatever makes Dear Leader look tall and infallible.
The letter helpfully explains that federal agencies "cannot in good conscience" keep loaning artifacts, helping with procurement, or making discretionary grants while the Smithsonian insists on presenting exhibits that might, say, mention racism, inequality, or institutional failure without first running them past the MAGA Ministry of Truth. A July White House report already declared that the National Museum of American History "cannot be trusted" to tell America's story because it "confronts visitors" with information that might undermine blind faith in American institutions — which, translated, means it acknowledges that bad things sometimes happened between 1776 and whatever year Trump thinks the Revolutionary War included airports.
Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch, still laboring under the outdated notion that museums should be driven by scholarship and accuracy, pushed back, saying the report misrepresents the museum's work and that the institution is committed to telling the "fullness" of America's story. The White House responded with a very serious policy intervention: Trump announced he was ordering "warning" signs outside the Museum of American History to alert visitors that they might encounter facts not approved by the cult. Because nothing screams "confident, thriving democracy" like the president slapping ideological warning labels on museums and threatening to choke off support until history agrees to be more flattering.
Trump signs yet another executive order attempting to edit the 14th Amendment by hand, while the Constitution quietly files for a restraining order.
The Trump White House, still speedrunning How To Break The 14th Amendment, has been told "no" yet again—this time by Judge Deborah Boardman, who apparently can read the Constitution, a niche skill in Trumpworld. After the Supreme Court already smacked down his first attempt to kill birthright citizenship, Trump tried a "narrower" sequel: an executive order denying citizenship to kids of so‑called "alien enemies," "birth tourists," and parents working for foreign governments in the US.
Boardman responded by basically stapling the Supreme Court’s June ruling to Trump’s forehead, calling the 2026 order "almost certainly unconstitutional" and issuing a preliminary injunction. Immigrant rights groups like CASA and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project dragged the order into court, where it joined the ever-growing pile of Trump immigration schemes that collapse on contact with actual law.
The administration, never missing a chance to cry victim, blamed an "activist" Biden judge and insisted their plan was totally consistent with Supreme Court precedent—if you squint hard enough and ignore the part where the Court already told them they can’t do this. All of this is part of Trump’s broader strategy: gut birthright citizenship, end protections, ramp up deportations, and then brag about record arrests while pretending this is "commonsense" policy rather than a long-running assault on the basic idea of American citizenship.
Stock photo of a concerned politician at a podium, bravely announcing budget cuts to the very programs that could stop the thing he’s pretending to care about.
US homicides are dropping, which would be good news if intimate partner killings hadn’t decided to stay at full horror levels. While cities like Chicago and Kansas City celebrate historic overall declines, domestic violence homicides are rising or hitting record highs, and the share of violent crime involving domestic violence has climbed nationally. The National Domestic Violence Hotline went from 637,000 calls in 2020 to a cool one million in 2025, because nothing says "things are getting better" like a 57% increase in people begging for help.
So what does the second Trump administration do with this information? It takes one look at the data and slams the brakes on funding for exactly the programs that keep people alive. Early in Trump 2.0, officials cut hundreds of millions in grants to research institutions and domestic violence nonprofits serving people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities, on the grounds that their work no longer "aligns with the administration’s goals"—which, to be fair, is technically true if the goal is "please stop helping vulnerable people survive." Some grants for things like pet-friendly shelters and hotlines were shamed into being restored, but Trump’s proposed 2027 budget still goes after transitional housing and legal assistance with a nearly $30m reduction, because apparently the real domestic threat is women with lawyers.
Asked about the "scourge of domestic violence," Trump heroically reframed it as a criminal and immigration issue, promising deportations and crackdowns on human trafficking while completely ignoring the actual risk factors—stalking, coercive control, threats, strangulation—that have nothing to do with immigration status. Experts are begging the government to focus on behavior, early warning signs, and education for young people; the White House responds by forwarding reporters to OMB, which responds by doing its best impression of a dead phone line. Survivors need housing and legal help; what they get instead is a lecture about border enforcement and a budget that treats their safety as a rounding error.
So yes, domestic violence homicides remain high, services are being gutted, and nonprofits are laying off staff while trying to answer a million calls a year. But rest easy: the administration has bravely declared domestic violence a deportation opportunity. Women and children may be dying, but the talking points are very, very tough on "bad hombres," so somewhere Stephen Miller is sleeping like a baby.
Trump gazes at a $40 trillion debt mountain and sees only one problem: the aircraft carriers on top of it aren’t pretty enough.
Donald Trump, the man who promised in 2016 to eliminate the federal debt in eight years, has now lovingly nurtured it past $40 trillion. Back when the debt was less than half today’s level, he vowed to wipe it out; instead, his "big, beautiful" tax cuts for the ultra-rich and corporations alone are slated to add $3.4 trillion, while total debt under his watch has ballooned by $11.6 trillion so far. Fiscal responsibility, Republican-style: shout about deficits on Fox, then pour the Treasury into the mouths of billionaires like it’s a foie gras operation.
The punchline is that all this deficit-financed generosity for people with yachts is making life worse for everyone else. Those giant tax cuts, plus Trump’s tariffs and his war in Iran, have helped push long-term interest rates to their highest levels in nearly two decades, jacking up mortgage rates and slamming young Americans trying to buy homes. Meanwhile, the government is on track to spend over $2 trillion a year just on interest by the mid-2030s — more than the Pentagon, and more than five times what we spend on education — so congratulations to the donor class on securing their eternal claim on your kids’ future paychecks.
Republicans once cosplayed as the party of "fiscal discipline"; now they’re just the party of "whatever the donors want." Nearly half of the $4.4 trillion in tax cuts from Trump’s mega-bill go to the richest 5%, who were already doing just fine without an extra Gulfstream. At the same time, Trump is pushing for a record $1.5 trillion annual defense budget, including redesigning aircraft carriers because he doesn’t like how they look. Roosevelt borrowed to defeat Nazi Germany; Trump borrows to fight a disastrous war in Iran and to underwrite private jets, stock buybacks, and his aesthetic preferences for floating runways. It’s not nation-building — it’s asset-stripping with flag pins.
Donald Trump, greatest president of all time according to a heavily edited 1948 magazine graphic and absolutely no one who has read a history book.
Donald Trump has once again logged on to inform the nation that reality is wrong and he is, in fact, the greatest U.S. president of all time. Using a doctored version of a 1948 Arthur Schlesinger Jr. presidential ranking chart, Trump promoted himself into a brand-new "greatest" tier, shoved Lincoln, FDR, and Washington down to mere "great" status, and then helpfully labeled Biden, Obama, and Carter as "failures". The man who couldn’t win the popular vote either time has now seized control of the historical record via Microsoft Paint.
Historians, rudely chained to evidence, are less impressed. The Presidential Greatness Project’s latest survey of 154 experts ranks Trump dead last, below James Buchanan — the guy widely blamed for sleepwalking the country into the Civil War. On a 0–100 scale, Lincoln clocks in at 93.87, while Trump limps in at 10.92, which feels generous for someone who tried to overturn an election, incited a violent assault on Congress, and then capped it off by becoming a convicted felon over hush money to a porn-star-turned-ghost-hunter. Siena’s 2022 poll backs this up, putting him 45th out of 45 in both "integrity" and "intelligence", a kind of anti-Mount Rushmore achievement.
The best part? Even Republican and conservative scholars in these surveys think he’s terrible. The one group that agrees with Trump’s self-ranking is the Trump campaign press office, where spokesperson Davis Ingle insists he’ll go down as "the most successful and consequential president in modern American history" — which is technically true if you count "consequential" as shattering democratic norms, mainstreaming white grievance politics, and teaching future coup-plotters exactly how far you can push the system before anyone in power does anything. As constitutional historian Barbara Perry notes, his insurrection cheerleading, election denial, and open racism will probably not age into greatness. But hey, he printed a chart, so checkmate, scholars.
Artist’s impression of a "shelter" that looks suspiciously like a kid-sized prison, brought to you by the people who think due process is optional for children.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that the best place for children is a locked facility where they can’t leave, can’t see their families, and just had their lawyers defunded. Roughly 1,900 unaccompanied kids are stuck in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody for an average of six months — some for over a year — despite having vetted sponsors in the US ready to take them in. ORR insists this is just like foster care, if foster care were run by ICE and designed by people whose primary exposure to children is using them as political props.
So now more than 50 legal organizations have formed the "Children’s Due Process Project" — a phrase that should not need to exist in a functioning democracy — and are filing individual habeas corpus petitions to convince federal judges that, yes, holding kids indefinitely in locked "shelters" while fast-tracking their deportation might be a problem. The administration’s response is to claim it’s just being "careful" while it rips up privacy protections for sponsors, coordinates with DHS to arrest parents during sponsorship appointments, and makes it effectively impossible in some states for children to reunite with their families. Child welfare, Trump-style: no lawyers, no exit, and every door out leads straight to ICE.
Advocates describe a system where kids eat, sleep, go to school, and do all activities inside what is functionally a detention center, with no contact with the outside world and no realistic path to release. Meanwhile, government lawyers race to deport them before they can access other legal protections, turning ORR into a convenient holding pen where the state has maximum control and minimum accountability. This isn’t immigration policy; it’s a test run for how far you can stretch state power over vulnerable people while still calling it "care."
David Richardson, seen here explaining to Congress why dismantling FEMA during overlapping climate disasters was actually genius if you hate people who own homes.
The Trump administration briefly flirted with the idea of not having a federal disaster agency at all, because when you’re facing historic fires, floods, and hurricanes, why wouldn’t you try to eliminate FEMA? Trump kicked off term two by declaring “FEMA is not good” and pushing to scrap it entirely, with loyalist Kristi Noem holding the budgetary pillow over its face while other agencies like the Department of Education, Voice of America, and USAID were successfully marched out back and shot.
Enter David Richardson, the acting FEMA administrator who now cheerfully admits in a new book that he tried very hard to shrink the agency into irrelevance or shut it down altogether, but alas, the bureaucracy survived his best efforts. He now insists the Trump team has "changed course" and that FEMA is in "go-along-to-get-along" mode, which is a poetic way of saying: the purge failed, so they’ll just starve it and overwork whoever’s left. Current staff say the existential terror of outright abolition has faded, but the sabotage left the usual calling cards of this administration’s governance style: understaffing, burnout, and slower aid for people whose homes are literally underwater or on fire.
So the good news is FEMA technically still exists. The bad news is it’s been run through the Trump second-term funhouse where agencies either get eliminated outright or left limping along, hollowed out and less able to help anyone. Disaster survivors get longer waits and more red tape; Trump gets to brag that he "did something" about the Deep State. Everyone’s a winner, assuming you define "winner" as a government that hates the idea of functioning in an emergency.
Republican lawmakers listen politely in the Rose Garden as Trump explains how their careers now depend on his frequent flyer miles and whatever MAGA Inc. hasn’t already spent on legal bills.
Donald Trump has announced he’ll spend the final 30 days before the midterms barnstorming the country for Republicans in 35 races, because if there’s one thing American democracy needed, it was a multi-state grievance tour sponsored by a $400 million super PAC. From the White House Rose Garden, Trump promised to personally visit each race that actually looks competitive, making it clear that if you’re winning by 40 points, his presence is reserved for candidates still clinging to the last shreds of their dignity and polling.
He’s heading to Alaska to boost Dan Sullivan against… Dan Sullivan, because the GOP has apparently entered the Spider-Verse of generic white guys, and then down to Texas to campaign for indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Senate run, just to really underline that the party is fully committed to being a legal defense fund with ballot access. All of this is powered by MAGA Inc.’s $400+ million war chest, a nice reminder that while Trump insists he’s “not affected by the election,” his money and personality cult are very much on the ballot — especially after he literally told supporters to pretend he is. Representative government, now with 35 bonus loyalty tests.
DOJ headquarters, where civil rights cases against ICE go to take a long, quiet nap behind sealed filings and carefully worded press statements.
The Trump DOJ has discovered a bold new theory of civil rights enforcement: if an ICE agent allegedly shoots a Venezuelan immigrant through a closed door into a house with kids inside, the real crime is…bad paperwork. Minneapolis federal prosecutor Matthew Evans says he was ready to charge ICE agent Christian Castro with deprivation of rights under color of law – the same kind of charge used in the George Floyd case – until “Main Justice” in D.C. swooped in and told him Castro would face, at most, a cozy little false statements charge, likely under seal. Evans says he objected “in the strongest possible terms,” which, under Trump, ranks somewhere between “delete this email” and “go work for DOJ leadership instead.”
The official DOJ line is that this is all a “collaborative and deliberative” process and they would never “rush” anything – except, of course, the part where DHS immediately branded the shooting victims “violent criminal illegal aliens” and charged them, only to later admit that video evidence showed their own agents’ sworn testimony “appeared to be false.” Castro is also facing state felony charges in Minnesota, but Texas Gov. Greg Abbott helpfully refused to extradite him, because the GOP’s pro-law-enforcement stance apparently stops the second the law tries to touch one of their favored gun-toting immigration warriors.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis prosecutors say they’re worried Castro will flee to Mexico now that he’s out of jail, and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty notes this isn’t DOJ’s first magic trick. A week before this shooting, ICE agents killed Renee Good, then claimed she drove at them; video showed her wheels turned away, and DOJ later decided a review of that killing was just…unnecessary. Under Trump, the civil rights division has been thinned out, federal oversight of law enforcement has been gutted, and immigration agents who shoot people are met with instant government sympathy and disappearing investigations. Rule of law is for poor people and immigrants; for ICE, there’s only the sacred right to shoot first and let Main Justice clean up the narrative later.
Artist’s impression of Trump pointing at 3 million acres of sacred landscape and asking, "But have we tried drilling all of it?"
Trump has once again looked at land sacred to Indigenous tribes, rich with dinosaur fossils and ancient cliff dwellings, and concluded the highest and best use is: letting oil and gas companies chew it up like a strip-mined chew toy. After slashing Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by a casual 90%, he declared the areas would be put to a "higher-priority use"—which is Republican for "someone in the extractive industries has my phone number".
Patagonia, apparently tired of just selling fleece to people who hike on weekends, is suing Trump (again) for what it calls illegal orders that "betray Tribal sovereignty" and try to do an end-run around the Antiquities Act, which allows presidents to create national monuments, not vaporize them for fun and drilling rights. The Natural Resources Defense Council calls this one of the largest rollbacks of public land protections in US history; Trump calls it "resource independence" and "national security", because nothing says security like turning 3 million acres of sacred and scientifically priceless land into a speculative mining portfolio.
Mining claims are already being filed in the newly unprotected areas, because of course they are. Once the drilling starts, the sacred sites, unique fossils, and million-year-old landscapes are gone for good—replaced with some patriotic slurry pit and a few campaign donations. Obama and Clinton created these monuments after years of tribal advocacy; Trump is trying to erase them with a pen and a press release. Protecting Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante is worth more than any amount of money, Patagonia’s CEO says. Unfortunately, this is an administration that hears that sentence and immediately checks if the minerals under it are already spoken for.
Donald Trump, moments before weighing in on which former royal he’d vote off the island next.
President Donald Trump, steward of nuclear codes and ostensible leader of a global superpower, took time out of his very busy schedule of golfing and posting to say he is "happy" Prince Harry and Meghan Markle left the US because he "was not a fan". America’s head of state, everyone: Yelp reviewer-in-chief.
He also scolded them for treating the Royal Family with "great disrespect", which is rich coming from the guy who tried to overthrow his own country’s government like it was a reality show finale. Still, priorities: democracy collapsing at home, authoritarianism on the rise abroad, but by all means, let’s get a presidential statement on the housing choices of two mildly annoying British celebrities.
So yes, the United States government continues to be run as a cross between a gossip blog and a grudge diary, while actual policy is something that happens in the background, presumably by accident.
Apple Maps proudly displaying 'Lake America,' the newest addition to Trump’s expanding universe of imaginary places where reality goes to drown.
Trump has officially upgraded from rewriting history to renaming geography. By executive order, he’s decided Lake Ontario is now "Lake America" – at least for Americans who rely on tech companies too scared of losing federal contracts to say, "this is stupid." Apple Maps has obediently rolled over and changed the name for US users, while pretending the rest of the planet – and Canada, which literally borders the lake – still lives in reality.
Google, never one to miss a chance to algorithmically enable authoritarian cosplay, already made the switch, citing the US Geographic Names Information System, which is apparently now just the presidential mood ring with a .gov URL. This is the same crew that rebranded the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America" for US users, a propaganda project so successful that no one outside Trumpworld uses it – but hey, why learn from failure when you can double down on cartographic fan fiction?
Canadian prime minister Mark Carney gently reminded everyone that "Ontario" is an Indigenous Wendat name that predates both countries, but Trump’s order claims the rename is about honoring "the rich heritage of our history" – by erasing the actual history and slapping "America" on someone else’s lake during a tariff slap-fight. It’s petulant trade policy by way of insecure branding exercise.
The only winner here? MapQuest, a website most people assumed died sometime around the second Bush administration, shot to No 1 on the App Store by posting a screenshot labeled "Lake Ontario" with the caption: "We’re not changing it." Turns out the fastest way to disrupt Big Tech in 2026 is to not participate in the president’s make-believe map game.
The new $1 Trump coin, seen here bravely testing how close you can get to a monarchy without changing the name on the stationery.
America is celebrating 250 years of supposedly not having a king by… putting the sitting president’s scowling face on a coin, because the man simply cannot see a flat surface without wondering how his head would look on it. The new $1 Trump coin, which historians and economists delicately describe as "probably illegal," is now legal tender anyway, because laws in this administration are more like suggestions. The Mint insists this zinc-and-manganese participation trophy will "honor 250 years of great American heritage" — mainly the part where powerful men ignore rules and put their own faces on the money.
There’s a 150-year-old tradition of not doing this monarch stuff, backed by an 1866 ban on living people on currency and reinforced by later laws about which presidents can appear on coins. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent’s airtight legal argument? Calvin Coolidge got away with it once for the 150th, so Trump gets a turn for the 250th. That’s it. That’s the precedent. A retired attorney tried to block the coin, but a judge shrugged and said he couldn’t prove he’d be personally harmed by the government turning the dollar into a commemorative ego token — while pointedly not saying the coin was actually legal.
The best part: this "one-dollar" coin costs $61 for a roll of 25. So for just $2.44 you too can own a single, questionably legal Trump dollar that spends for exactly $1, assuming anyone is willing to touch it. It looks gold but isn’t, is "legal" but maybe isn’t, and supposedly honors American democracy while starring the guy working overtime to turn it into a personality cult. If you’re wondering who dreamed up this bargain-bin imperial cosplay, just look at the coin. He made sure you can’t miss him.
Medical leaders stand at a podium explaining basic vaccine science because the federal government has wandered off to argue with YouTube comments.
America has officially reached the "please trust literally anyone but the federal government" stage of pandemic management. With the CDC advisory process tied up in court and Trump health officials quietly watering down long-standing vaccine recommendations without any new science, the grown-ups in medicine are bypassing the clown car and issuing their own flu and Covid guidance. When the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Infectious Diseases Society of America have to form a shadow public health government because the real one is busy appeasing anti-vaxx Facebook groups, things are going great.
Instead of clear CDC fall guidance, the public now gets a choose-your-own-adventure where the FDA says one thing, Trump appointees hint another, and medical groups frantically build a website called SpreadTheFacts.org to compete with the administration’s unofficial program, which appears to be SpreadTheChaos.gov. Doctors are left explaining that yes, vaccines still work, yes, pregnant people can get them, yes, your kid should probably not be a test case for "natural immunity" during a harsh flu season. Meanwhile, the advisory panel that shapes state and insurance policy is stuck in litigation purgatory, because nothing says "functioning democracy" like having your vaccine schedule decided by judges and political operatives instead of epidemiologists.
The result: professional medical societies are now doing the CDC’s job in public, while Trump’s health team does the political damage control for anti-vaxxers in private. Scientists are publishing data showing big drops in hospitalizations; the administration responds by shrinking recommendations and ghosting reporters. It’s a perfect distillation of Trump-era health policy: if evidence says one thing and the base wants another, guess which one gets tossed out of the briefing packet.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, bravely owning the libs by cyberbullying Canadian teenagers while NATO counts its remaining missile interceptors.
The US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, looked at an ongoing war with Iran, a "beyond critical" shortage of missile interceptors, and the resignation of the army chief after months of internal clashes and thought: time to body-shame some Canadian teenagers on main. He reposted a photo from a Canadian cadet summer camp on X with the caption "this is real," mocking what he implied were Canadian troops but were actually kids and a likely volunteer instructor. So yes, the man in charge of the Pentagon is now cyberbullying minors in a neighboring allied country as part of the Trump administration’s trade war cosplay.
Canada, understandably, is not thrilled that the world’s largest military is being run like a YouTube comment section. Prime minister Mark Carney called the post "beneath the office" of secretary of defense, British Columbia’s premier described US leadership as "amateur-hour, distracted, bizarre," and a Canadian veterans’ group had to issue a statement explaining that maybe the Pentagon shouldn’t harass teenagers who are "actively working to better themselves." Adam Kinzinger summed it up more directly: "our ass hat of a Secdef is making fun of children" and MAGA males "have to punch down to feel big"—a line that should probably be engraved over the West Wing entrance.
Back in Washington, the Pentagon bravely rushed to the microphones to say ... absolutely nothing useful. Deputy press secretary Jacob Bliss declared, "The X post speaks for itself," which it does: it says the US defense establishment is now fully comfortable with its chief engaging in public, cross-border, government-sanctioned bullying of kids while NATO allies worry about their missile defenses and Iran is accusing the US of war crimes over a strike that killed a four-year-old at a wedding. Hegseth, who previously complained that "fat troops are tiring to look at," has now expanded his war on body types to foreign cadet programs, because nothing says "serious global power" like a middle-aged man with the nuclear football negging teenagers for engagement.
Danish cover of *Betrayal*, also known as the user manual for understanding why the American president keeps acting like Putin’s very nervous life coach.
The Guardian is once again asking the timeless question: is Donald Trump a Russian asset, or does he just act like one for free? Luke Harding walks through the greatest mystery that’s somehow also the most obvious plotline in geopolitics: the US president who rolls out a red carpet for Vladimir Putin in Alaska, lets him speak first at their presser, and looks like a nervous contestant waiting for approval from the game show host who has his secrets.
The menu of explanations is a greatest hits of modern republicanism: an ideological crush on Putin’s "anti-woke" authoritarian cosplay, strongman envy (Fiona Hill’s phrase for Trump’s desire to make money and crush opponents with zero consequences), and the evergreen possibility of kompromat. Decades of intelligence attention, a 1987 Moscow trip arranged by the Soviets, the 2013 Ritz-Carlton stay with rumored FSB cameras, and a Senate report politely screaming "there are tapes" all hang over a president who keeps acting like the guy who knows his blackmailer’s Wi-Fi password by heart.
The result is a United States led by someone who publicly trashes European democratic leaders while fawning over an ex-KGB autocrat whose security services bug hotel rooms like it’s a national sport. Whether Trump is a literal asset or just spiritually outsourced, the consequences are the same: US foreign policy that looks less like "America First" and more like "Kremlin, what would you like on the menu today?"
Trump officials proudly unveiling their new refugee policy flowchart, which is just a giant color wheel that stops at ‘eggshell’ and says ‘everyone else: deport.’
The United States used to resettle refugees based on need. Under Trump 2.0, the new metric appears to be Pantone swatch. In FY 2025–26, the U.S. admitted 10,258 refugees: 10,255 white South Africans and three Afghans who must have slipped through quality control. At the exact same time, the administration is cancelling Temporary Protected Status for 350,000 Haitians, parading them in shackles, and spending billions to arrest, detain, and deport Black and brown people — while quietly doubling refugee cash assistance to $4,500 a head for the new white arrivals.
Refugees from Syria and other war zones spent years begging for enough support to not immediately plunge into U.S. poverty. The answer was always "sorry, budget constraints." Then a planeload of white beneficiaries of South African apartheid shows up and suddenly the couch cushions are bursting with Welcome Money, TANF eligibility, Refugee Cash Assistance, and a fast-track to citizenship. TPS holders like Haitians — who pay taxes into a system they’re barred from benefiting from — get no welfare, no pathway to citizenship, and a one-way ticket back to danger.
This isn’t policy, it’s a racial sorting algorithm with ICE agents. TPS was always designed as a political cul-de-sac; now 1.3 million people are exposed to deportation and potential death while the administration hands out visas and beefed-up benefits to white South Africans like party favors. The supposed fiscal hawks have proven there’s no spending cap when the recipients are white and the victims are Black and brown. The message from the self-styled guardians of "law and order" could not be clearer: the law is for deporting you, the order is for keeping the checks flowing to people who look like them.
Trump, furious that math is still legal, demands the FCC punish Kristen Welker for the crime of correctly using the words "mixed record."
Donald Trump’s poll numbers are circling the drain, his Iran adventure has turned into a flaming money pit, so naturally he’s focusing on the real national emergency: Kristen Welker accurately describing his endorsement record as "mixed." For this unforgivable act of basic arithmetic, Trump hopped on Truth Social to announce that Welker "will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment" and begged Chairman Brendan Carr and the "fine people" at his now-MAGA-fied commission to treat her words as a "Threat to our Country." Yes, the guy who tried to overturn an election thinks the danger is… a Sunday show host doing light political analysis.
The FCC, which is supposed to be independent and bipartisan, is now functioning as Trump’s personal media hit squad. Carr, apparently auditioning for the role of Minister of Information, has already bragged about using broadcast licenses to go after "fake news," while ABC is suing the agency for First Amendment violations over its sudden interest in reviewing eight local licenses. The law is pretty clear that you can’t yank licenses because the president got his feelings hurt, but this administration treats constitutional limits like Terms of Service pop-ups: click "accept" and ignore.
Trump’s attack on Welker also hits his favorite trifecta: targeting a Black female journalist, demanding government punishment for protected speech, and weaponizing supposedly neutral agencies (FCC, DOJ, pick your acronym) for personal revenge. Reporters from three major outlets have already been barred from G20 coverage, Stars and Stripes editors are getting canned, and the message is loud and clear: cover reality at your own risk. NBC is backing Welker and there’s a very solid First Amendment case if the FCC actually tries anything, but the point isn’t winning in court. The point is chilling everyone else who might dare to say the president’s record is anything less than perfect.
Kristen Welker did journalism. Trump did authoritarian cosplay with real agencies and real consequences. One of these is protected by the Constitution; the other is what you get when a president decides the federal government is just his content moderation team.
