senate gop debates whether trump’s ballroom grift should be gold-plated or just regular corrupt
Concept art of Trump’s proposed White House ballroom: half Versailles, half casino, all funded by the suckers formerly known as taxpayers.
Republicans are having a very solemn, serious debate over whether taxpayers should be forced to cough up $1bn so Donald Trump can have a lavish White House ballroom complex, tucked neatly into a Department of Homeland Security funding bill that’s supposedly about ICE and Border Patrol. The Secret Service asked, Trump pushed, and Senate Republicans tried to quietly staple it to a $70bn security package, because nothing screams ‘border security’ like underwriting the Mar-a-Lago-ization of the White House.
The problem? Some GOP senators are blinking at the sheer brazenness of the grift. John Thune is out here mumbling about “ongoing vote issues” and the parliamentarian, which is DC-speak for: even some Republicans are embarrassed to vote for Trump’s ballroom fever dream on C-SPAN. John Kennedy warns the bill is “back to square one” without the ballroom money, accidentally admitting that Trump’s personal luxury project is the beating heart of their ‘security’ legislation. Thom Tillis calls the add-on a bad idea, which is the closest thing this party has to a conscience: fear of a failed floor vote.
Meanwhile, this isn’t even Trump’s only corruption side quest of the week. The Justice Department under his control just rolled out a $1.776bn “anti-weaponization” fund that critics say can be used as a slush fund to compensate the people who literally attacked the Capitol to keep him in power. Two officers injured on January 6 are suing Trump over it, and Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick is vowing to “try to kill” the fund, because even a few Republicans realize paying off insurrectionists with federal money is maybe a tad on-the-nose authoritarian. Senator Bill Cassidy has gone full skunk-at-the-fascist-garden-party, denouncing both the billion-dollar ballroom and the billion-plus riot reward pool as Trump’s pet projects.
So while voters worry about rent, groceries, and healthcare, the Trump administration and its congressional helpers are locked in high drama over whether the federal government should bankroll a gaudy ballroom for the guy who already tried a coup, and whether they can legally cut seven-figure ‘sorry for your sedition charges’ checks to his shock troops. American democracy is hanging by a thread, but the chandeliers are going to look amazing.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
climate finance bro discovers oil money is also green
Mark Carney explains that climate risk is very serious as he ceremonially cuts the ribbon on another taxpayer-subsidized pipeline to nowhere.
Mark Carney, former central banker, UN climate envoy, Davos heart-throb and author of Very Serious Climate Words™, is now prime minister of Canada and has decided the best way to confront an "existential threat" is to, uh, set the climate plan on fire and throw a pipeline on top. Next to Donald Trump, he still looks like a responsible adult – which tells you more about Trump’s America than it does about Carney’s Canada.
After activists helped put him in power expecting a climate hawk, Carney’s first big move was to scrap the consumer carbon price and then systematically gut almost every meaningful mandate: methane rules weakened and delayed, a clean electricity standard pushed from 2035 to 2050 with new gas plants invited back in, the long-fought oil and gas emissions cap tossed, anti-greenwashing laws flagged for rollback, and zero-emission vehicle mandates kneecapped so hard EV sales cratered. It’s like watching someone take a carefully built climate Jenga tower and play it drunk, blindfolded, and sponsored by Suncor.
He’s also gone full petro-state cosplay: fast-tracking LNG terminals and pipelines, carving out deregulated "nation-building" zones, shoveling tax credits at carbon capture schemes that conveniently help frack more oil, and launching a so-called "sovereign wealth fund" that looks suspiciously like a public-money firehose for new fossil infrastructure. A windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies riding the Iran war to record profits? Absolutely not – can’t have the donors feeling pinched.
The climax came with a cozy deal with Alberta premier Danielle Smith – whose base includes a Trump-backed separatist movement – to clear the way for yet another bitumen pipeline while dramatically weakening Alberta’s industrial carbon price. The result: a carbon price that was supposed to hit $170/tonne by 2030 now limps to $130 by 2040, prompting even the mild-mannered Canadian Climate Institute to say net zero by 2050 is now fantasy. Carney’s defenders swear this is all 4D chess to keep Canada united; what it actually looks like is the familiar Trump-era formula: appease the loudest reactionaries, reward fossil oligarchs, and hope nobody notices the climate promises dissolving in a haze of PR and pipeline approvals.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
trump turns women’s history museum into yet another trump museum
Artist’s rendering of the future Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, pending final approval from Donald Trump, three handpicked architecture boards, and the Republican Party’s trans panic department.
A decade of bipartisan work to create a Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum was almost about honoring women, until House Republicans remembered their two true passions: giving Donald Trump more unilateral power and picking fights about trans people. The revised bill doesn’t just pick a site near the U.S. Holocaust Museum; it also lets President Trump personally swap it out for an “alternative site” within 180 days, then routes the design and construction through architectural boards conveniently stacked with Trump appointees who are already busy rubber‑stamping his White House ballroom and triumphal arch fantasies. So it’s less “women’s history” and more “state‑sponsored Trump branding opportunity, featuring a supporting cast of women.”
Democrats who originally backed the bill are now bailing en masse, pointing out that Republicans bolted on an “eleventh‑hour” amendment limiting the museum to “biological women” and unhooked it from a parallel Latino museum effort. The Democratic Women’s Caucus notes that this turns a straightforward museum bill into a two‑for‑one special: a vehicle for Trump to micromanage the National Mall like it’s one of his golf properties, and a fresh attack on trans women dressed up as “clarification.” Nicole Malliotakis insists Democrats are “hiding behind” concerns about Trump’s control and are really just mad they can’t include trans women, while Mike Johnson declares that adding exclusionary language is simply “common sense.”
So after ten years of planning, the big bipartisan tribute to women’s contributions to America has been upgraded to a culture‑war weapon and a Trump vanity infrastructure package, overseen by boards he handpicked during his second term. The museum might someday tell the story of women fighting for representation and autonomy; the founding chapter will now be about how a bunch of guys in Congress tried to turn it into a monument to their own power trips and purity tests.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump discovers you can auction off other people’s security
Trump and Xi at the Temple of Heaven, reportedly discussing which democracies are most negotiable this quarter.
Donald Trump, fresh off his two-day charm offensive in Beijing, is now musing about chatting with Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te — a move that would blow up decades of U.S. protocol. Taiwan is understandably thrilled at the prospect of being treated like a real country. Unfortunately, they’re dealing with a guy who just called their $14 billion U.S. arms package a "very good negotiating chip" with Xi Jinping, because nothing says "steadfast ally" like putting your friend’s self-defense on eBay.
While insisting U.S. policy on Taiwan is totally not changing, Trump has basically adopted Xi’s talking points, describing Taiwan as a "problem" to be solved and stressing he’s "not looking to have somebody go independent." Translation: democracy is nice, but have you tried a really sweet trade deal? U.S. policy has long barred discussing Taiwan arms sales with Beijing, but Trump is out here turning that firewall into a suggestion box.
Lai, labeled a "separatist" and "troublemaker" by China, is now stuck trying to convince Trump not to sell him out for a better photo op with Xi — all while Chinese warplanes and ships buzz Taiwan almost daily. As one political scientist notes, any Trump–Lai call would start with Taiwan in a "position of weakness" and a "relatively high" chance of ending badly for the island. So yes, Taiwan might finally get its coveted presidential call. It just comes with the small risk that Trump will treat their survival as a line item in his next Art of the (Xi’s) Deal rewrite.
Beijing, for its part, is demanding "utmost prudence" from Washington, which is adorable given they’re talking to the man who thinks foreign policy is just real estate with aircraft carriers.
#national-security#imperialism
trump administration discovers vapes cure $5 million deficits
FDA to Big Tobacco: after a brief pause, your regularly scheduled profit stream will now resume.
Reynolds American cut a tidy $5 million check to MAGA Inc., Trump’s favorite super PAC, on April 30. Within days, its executives were having a cozy lunch with Trump at his Jupiter golf club, alongside fellow nicotine enthusiasts from Altria. Because nothing says "public health policymaking" like a tobacco summit at a country club.
Mid-meal, Trump reportedly paused the industry gripe session about FDA vaping rules to speed-dial his own health officials like a mob boss checking on the status of a favor. First up: FDA commissioner Marty Makary. When he didn’t answer, Trump escalated to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CMS head Mehmet Oz, complaining about how mean the FDA was being to e-cigarettes. A week later, the administration rolled out new vape guidance that just happens to open the door for Big Tobacco to sell more flavored vapes.
Campaign finance reports now show Reynolds’ total giving to MAGA Inc. at $8 million, and the timeline reads less like coincidence and more like an itemized invoice. The White House line is surely that this is all perfectly legal, which is true in the same way that it’s perfectly legal to set democracy on fire as long as you file the paperwork on time. Regulatory capture has never been so on-the-nose.
#corruption#forever-grifting
nothing says 'rule of law' like emailing yourself the secret trump report
Pictured: the American justice system, disguised as a bundt cake recipe and quietly forwarded to a Hotmail account.
America’s elite law enforcement apparatus continues its long-running audition to be a Coen Brothers subplot. Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, a former managing assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida, has been indicted for allegedly emailing herself a confidential volume of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on whether Donald Trump mishandled classified documents. According to DOJ, she renamed the sensitive docs things like “chocolate cake recipe” and “bundt cake recipe,” because when you’re dealing with a potentially explosive report about a former president hoarding national secrets, the natural move is to cosplay as your aunt’s Pinterest board.
The indictment says Lineberger quietly shipped the disguised files from her DOJ account to her personal Hotmail and Gmail between September and December, and there’s no allegation (yet) that she shared them further. She now faces more than 20 years in prison for stealing, concealing, and altering government records — which is an impressive amount of potential jail time for a document that a Trump-appointed judge has already helpfully locked away from the public.
Enter Judge Aileen Cannon, patron saint of Trumpian impunity. Back in February, Cannon barred release of Jack Smith’s report on Trump’s classified-document adventures, claiming Smith’s appointment was unconstitutional because he kept working after she personally torched the case in July 2024. Conveniently, the very report she buried is the one Lineberger allegedly squirreled away under the sacred protection of baked goods. Meanwhile, DOJ has already told Congress that Smith’s team found evidence Trump hung onto classified materials — including those tied to his business interests — but the public isn’t allowed to see the full story, because that might be bad for the guy who appointed Cannon.
So we now have: a secret report about a former president allegedly hoarding classified documents, a Trump judge declaring the whole investigation illegal, and a former prosecutor allegedly smuggling the suppressed report out of DOJ under the label “cake.” The rule of law is doing amazing, if by “amazing” you mean “being slowly suffocated in a Florida courtroom and a Gmail outbox.”
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump slow-walks iran peace, fast-tracks $4.56 gas
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Trump at Joint Base Andrews, explaining that he’s in “no hurry” to stop the war that just turned your gas tank into a luxury item.
Trump’s foreign policy team — i.e., the voices in his head and whoever called last from Riyadh — has announced that the United States is in “no hurry” to make a deal with Iran, even as his three-month-old war shreds global energy markets and torches Americans’ paychecks at the pump. Standing at Joint Base Andrews, Trump bragged, “We’re going to give this one shot… I’m in no hurry,” casually treating a major shooting war like a reality show renewal decision. This came one day after he told lawmakers at the White House picnic that “we’re going to end the war very quickly,” proving that the administration’s strategic doctrine is whatever nonsense he said most recently into a microphone.
The president also claimed he delayed an attack on Iran at the request of leaders from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — a helpful reminder that U.S. war-and-peace decisions are now apparently made by the same Gulf monarchies that have Trump properties on speed dial. While he dithers, the Pentagon is boarding Iranian-flagged oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman to enforce a U.S. naval blockade, energy prices are detonating, and the national average for gas is about $4.56 a gallon headed into Memorial Day. But Trump insists he’s “in no hurry,” unless you count the hurry to use the war as a midterm prop while everyone else pays for his tough-guy cosplay.
Meanwhile, every state in the country is now over $4 a gallon, voters are furious, and Republicans are frantically trying to spin this as 4D chess rather than a one-man demolition derby of U.S. foreign policy and household budgets. Polls show Americans increasingly hate how he’s handling the conflict, which is inconvenient for a party that signed up for the full “strongman” package and instead got a guy treating a deadly international crisis like a gas-price-themed campaign rally. End the war quickly, don’t end the war, maybe end it later — who can say? Certainly not the commander in chief.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
pennsylvania guy promises government exorcism, calls it ‘de-trumpifying’
Chris Rabb, bravely volunteering to shovel out what’s left of the federal government after the Trump clown car finished doing donuts in it.
Chris Rabb, a progressive Pennsylvania candidate, went on NBC to calmly describe his first-day priority as “de-Trumpifying” the federal government, which is a very polite way of saying, "step one: fumigate the place for fascism and grift." Apparently, after nearly a decade of Trumpism, we now need a full-scale bureaucratic hazmat team just to get basic governance back.
Rabb talks about rooting out Trump’s lingering appointees, cronies, and the policies they left behind, like someone inheriting a hoarder house full of broken ethics rules, fake voter-fraud commissions, and Stephen Miller’s immigration files. He’s essentially proposing a New Deal for Decontamination: restore norms, re-empower career civil servants, and maybe stop treating the Justice Department like Trump’s personal law firm.
Of course, the fact that "de-Trumpify" is now a mainstream campaign slogan tells you everything about what Trump and his party did to the federal government: turned it into a loyalty cult, a patronage machine, and a reality show backdrop. Rabb’s pitch is simple: less autocracy cosplay, fewer grifters with security clearances, more people who can spell "Constitution" without checking Truth Social.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
trump saves money by letting ebola go platinum
Health worker in full gear, doing the job that used to be backed by U.S. funding before Trump decided epidemiology was just woke math.
The U.S. used to be the adult in the room during Ebola outbreaks. Now, thanks to Trump’s USAID shutdown and CDC brain drain, we’re the guy who shows up late, empty-handed, and demands credit for "monitoring the situation." Disease surveillance networks across East Africa that Washington once funded? Turned off. Emergency teams that used to deploy at the first suspicious fever? Disbanded. The virus got a weeks-long head start while the self-proclaimed "greatest country in the world" sat on the bench and fumbled its own pager.
Public health experts say this outbreak in Congo and Uganda was already spreading across borders before anyone outside noticed — the predictable result of smashing the surveillance systems that were built after the last time Ebola almost broke the world. Samples were even transported to Kinshasa at the wrong temperature, because the USAID teams who used to handle basic things like not ruining the test no longer exist. The World Health Organization learned about the outbreak nine days before the United States did, and almost a month after the first death. That gap is what you get when you replace global health security with a vibes-based foreign policy.
As of Wednesday, at least 600 people are sick and 139 are dead, with cases in Goma, Bunia, and Kampala — dense cities with millions of people and busy borders. This is what "America First" actually looks like in practice: dismantle global health defenses, walk away from the fire alarm, then act shocked when the house is engulfed. Trump got to brag about cutting "wasteful" foreign aid; East Africa got a faster-spreading Ebola outbreak; and the rest of the world gets to find out, again, that viruses love a power vacuum.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
trump fires the firefighters, shocked there’s a bigger ebola fire
Kyeshero Hospital in Goma, gamely prepping an isolation ward while Washington congratulates itself on having "reformed" the people who used to help with this sort of thing.
The Trump administration spent 2025 joyfully taking a sledgehammer to USAID – canceling most of its programs, firing most of its staff, and bragging about "reform" – and now, in 2026, everyone is shocked to discover that blowing up your global health infrastructure makes it harder to spot Ebola before it kills people. Former USAID, CDC, NIH and White House officials all say the quiet part out loud: if USAID still existed as something more than a branding exercise at State, this outbreak in Congo might have been caught earlier and some of those 139 suspected deaths and 600 cases might not exist.
Instead of trained community health workers and lab networks, you’ve got ex–Ebola responders driving taxis and selling fruit because U.S. funding vanished, clinics in the outbreak zone operating without basic protective gear, and the International Rescue Committee forced to gut surveillance and sanitation work. The State Department, having absorbed USAID like a snake swallowing a much more competent animal, insists that "reform" hasn’t hurt anything and proudly waves around $23 million and a promise of up to 50 clinics like it’s 2014 again. Meanwhile, people who actually know how outbreaks work point out that what we’ve really lost is speed, and in an Ebola outbreak, speed is the whole ballgame.
To really complete the disaster cosplay, Trump yanked the U.S. out of the World Health Organization last year, so the country that used to coordinate global health responses is now standing outside the system, shouting press releases at it. CDC is left trying to do USAID’s job on top of its own, despite not being built to coordinate broad field operations, while the administration pretends that nothing important has changed and that the absence of the very programs designed to hear about outbreaks early had absolutely nothing to do with the late detection. The White House, naturally, had no comment – presumably too busy congratulating itself on saving money as the cost is measured in human lives an ocean away.
#killing-democracy#anti-science#forever-grifting
little marco does big-boy imperialism
Marco Rubio, fresh from overthrowing Venezuela by remote control, practices his 'trust me while I starve you' face for the Cuban audience.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio celebrated Cuba’s independence from Spain and U.S. military occupation by… urging Cubans to get right back under Washington’s thumb, this time under the benevolent guidance of Donald J. Trump. In a slick State Department video, Rubio tells the Cuban people that Trump is offering them a "new path" — which, coincidentally, begins right after the part where the U.S. topples Venezuela’s government, seizes its oil industry, and cuts off Cuba’s fuel like a landlord turning off the heat to win an argument.
Rubio gravely explains that Cuba’s 22-hour blackouts have nothing to do with an American-enforced oil blockade and everything to do with Raúl Castro and GAESA plundering the country. The fact that Washington just took control of the region’s gas pump and slapped a "no oil for Havana" sign on it is, apparently, a minor footnote. While the Trump administration slaps new sanctions on top Cuban officials and tightens the economic screws, Rubio beams in Spanish subtitles about freedom and a "new Cuba" — the kind of freedom that arrives packaged with U.S. indictments, embargoes, and strategic starvation.
So on the anniversary of Cuba’s independence from foreign rule, the top U.S. diplomat appears on YouTube to say: your government is corrupt, your lights are out because of them, and your best bet is to side with the people blockading your oil. It’s less diplomacy and more protection racket: nice little island you’ve got there — shame if anything else happened to your fuel supply.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
20-year-old sues president for the right not to be slow‑roasted
The Yellowstone River, patiently waiting to find out if it’s a protected natural wonder or just future waterfront property for Exxon’s next drilling rig.
While most 20-year-olds are stressing over finals and whether their fake ID will work, Eva Lighthiser is busy suing the president of the United States for violating her constitutional rights by turning the federal government into a wholly owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel industry. Her case, Lighthiser v Trump, argues that Trump’s blizzard of pro–oil and gas executive orders is effectively sacrificing her generation’s lives so a few petro-oligarchs can buy their third yacht instead of just the second. The Ninth Circuit helpfully dismissed the case once, but the kids flew to Portland to ask the court to reconsider, because apparently someone in this country still believes the constitution means something beyond “whatever the president’s donors want.”
This is not Eva’s first rodeo with government-sponsored climate arson. At 14, she joined Held v Montana, a youth-led lawsuit arguing that the state’s fossil-fuel worship violated their state constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment.” A judge actually agreed – a rare moment where the judiciary remembered that “future generations” are not a poetic flourish but actual people who would prefer not to inhale wildfire smoke as a food group. State lawmakers responded by trying to jam through new laws that directly contradict the ruling, because when young people win a basic right to breathable air, the only responsible reaction is to pass legislation saying, "no, actually, choke."
By Trump’s second term, even the lawyers were like: yeah, this has gone full climate death cult, time for a federal case. Our Children’s Trust tapped Eva early as a plaintiff, because nothing says "functioning democracy" like teenagers begging the courts to stop their own government from cooking them alive. While Trump signs executive orders like they’re autographs at a golf club buffet, a 20-year-old from Montana is out here trying to convince a panel of lifetime appointees that the federal government should maybe not have a constitutional right to set the planet on fire for short-term shareholder value. Bold, radical stuff.
#killing-democracy#anti-science
trump replaces republican primaries with loyalty tribunals
Thomas Massie watches his career get deepfaked to death by a party that thinks AI smut is a governing philosophy.
The MAGA brain trust just spent a record amount of money to convince Kentucky Republicans that Thomas Massie is in a bisexual socialist love triangle with AOC and Ilhan Omar, because that’s where the party is now: AI porn fanfic as campaign strategy. The deep crime here wasn’t the cartoonish smear, though – it was Massie’s real offense: working to expose the Epstein files and crossing Dear Leader on war and Israel. Naturally, that made him a "moron," "nut job" and "major sleazebag" in Trump-speak, which is rich coming from a guy with more indictments than policy ideas.
Trump’s revenge tour is humming along nicely. He’s already helped kneecap Indiana state senators who defied him on redistricting, helped take out Bill Cassidy for daring to vote for his conviction after January 6, and now he’s installing loyalists like Ed Gallrein and Andy Barr as if the GOP were his personal HR department. The Supreme Court is pitching in, too, obligingly gutting the Voting Rights Act so Republicans can surgically remove Black and minority voters from competitive districts while solemnly pretending it’s all about “fair maps.” Minority rule isn’t a bug of Trumpism – it’s the operating system.
Outside the MAGA bubble, though, the country is less impressed. Trump’s approval is down to 37%, his Iran war is loathed by nearly two-thirds of voters, and Democrats are leading the generic ballot by double digits. So inside the party, he’s a cult leader with 82% approval; outside, he’s the guy 6 in 10 Americans wish would log off permanently. As Chris Hayes put it, the hardcore 35–37% is effectively holding the rest of the country hostage while the Supreme Court and GOP gerrymander engineers keep refilling the ammo.
The next test is Texas, where Trump just endorsed indicted cartoon villain Ken Paxton over John Cornyn, because why not strap more dynamite to the sinking ship? Republicans now live in the Trump Trap: you need him to survive a primary, and the very fact that you survived the primary makes you easier to beat in a general election. It’s a self-tightening knot of authoritarian loyalty tests, shrinking coalitions, and AI smear ads – the kind of system you’d design if your goal was to slowly immolate a political party while still doing maximum damage to democracy on the way down.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump’s epstein ‘reading room’: 3.5m pages, zero accountability
A tasteful gallery wall helpfully reminding everyone that the president spent years pretending he barely knew the guy he partied with while the FBI quietly misplaced the part where a survivor says he raped her.
The Department of Justice, that plucky little agency now moonlighting as Trump’s personal document shredder, somehow “forgot” to release the 2019 FBI interviews of a woman alleging she was sexually abused as a minor by Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump. No real explanation, just a bureaucratic shrug while Trump issues blanket denials and then helpfully launches a likely illegal war on Iran so the news cycle has something shinier to chase than his name in sex abuse files.
Into this vacuum of accountability strolls the Donald J Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room, a pop-up in Tribeca that printed out all 3.5 million pages of the released Epstein files and stacked them into 3,437 volumes. It’s billed as “radical transparency,” which is a nice way of saying: here’s the mountain of paper your government produced while still somehow managing to misplace the part where the sitting president is accused of raping a child. Visitors can’t even freely read most of it because DOJ apparently also couldn’t manage basic redactions that protect survivors.
The exhibit surrounds you with shelves of files, a wall-length timeline of Trump–Epstein allegations and their cozy relationship he’s been trying to memory-hole for years, and 1,400 artificial candles for the victims whose justice system was too busy protecting powerful men to protect them. It’s an art installation of American impunity: millions of pages, thousands of victims, one president, and a Justice Department that can’t find key interviews but can find the time to redact survivors’ lives into oblivion.
#lawlessness#forever-grifting
trump doj and musk heroically defend ai’s right to discriminate
Elon Musk and the Trump DOJ, bravely standing between vulnerable algorithms and the terrifying prospect of not being racist.
Colorado looked at AI deciding who gets jobs, housing, and healthcare and had the outrageous idea that maybe the algorithms shouldn’t quietly redline people. So they passed SB 205, a law that says: if your high-risk AI is making consequential decisions, you have to check if it’s discriminating and, if it is, maybe stop doing that. Naturally, this triggered Elon Musk’s xAI, which raced to court to complain that not denying Black people healthcare is a "state ideology" about racial justice. One of the bill’s sponsors, Brianna Titone, had to patiently explain that the law doesn’t stop Grok from being a jerk; it just asks that AI not be a racist jerk when deciding who gets medical care.
Enter the Trump administration, which took one look at "don’t build racist decision engines" and decided the real victim here was the algorithm. Trump’s DOJ not only joined xAI’s lawsuit, it rebranded anti-discrimination checks as "state-mandated discrimination" — an impressive bit of doublespeak even by this government’s standards. The same crew that signed an executive order on "preventing woke AI" — translating to "let the bias rip" — is now using federal power to kneecap Colorado and pre-empt other states from passing similar protections, all under the banner of winning the totally unrelated "AGI race" against China.
The business panic storyline doesn’t hold up either. The Wall Street Journal dutifully wept over Colorado "killing the entrepreneurial spirit" without citing a single company actually fleeing because of the law. Palantir muttered about regulatory burdens in an SEC filing, then left for Florida for its own reasons, while Microsoft is over here warning investors that biased AI is a material risk. Meanwhile, the actual research shows that supposedly "neutral" algorithms — like a hospital tool that quietly gave Black patients half the care of equally sick white patients — bake in discrimination unless someone forces them to be fixed. Colorado tried to be that someone; Trump’s DOJ and Musk teamed up to make sure the discrimination stays innovative, efficient, and fully protected by the federal government.
So yes, the federal government is now actively intervening on the side of billionaire AI labs to stop states from asking, "Could your product maybe not be a civil rights violation in a box?" The message from Trump and Musk is clear: your landlord, your boss, and your insurer may not be allowed to discriminate openly, but their algorithms? Those are an endangered species that must be saved.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
get out of jail free, terms and conditions (and six-figure fees) apply
Trump’s face lovingly nestled inside handcuffs, like a Hallmark card from a kleptocracy: ‘Thanks for making crime profitable again.’
Welcome to Donald Trump’s Washington, where the Constitution’s pardon power has been lovingly repurposed into a boutique concierge service for white-collar felons with deep pockets and even deeper guilt. The New York Times profiles Josh Nass, a 34-year-old lawyer-lobbyist who has discovered that in MAGA America, the most lucrative real estate isn’t on Fifth Avenue, it’s in the space between your client’s prison bunk and Trump’s ear.
Nass, who helpfully markets himself as a connector to Orthodox Jews, evangelicals and Republican donors, hit the jackpot by helping nursing home magnate and $38 million tax fraudster Joseph Schwartz score a Trump pardon — for a tidy $100,000 fee. Word spread through the Otisville white-collar resort, and suddenly Nass was fielding offers like a million dollars in cash from a frantic Russian family who treated him like a human ATM for presidential mercy. He says he turned that one down, presumably because even this ecosystem of influence peddlers occasionally remembers what too on the nose looks like.
The larger picture is exactly what you’d expect from an administration that treats public office as a cross between a clearance sale and a protection racket. Desperate inmates and their families are easy prey for fast-talking “pardon brokers” promising access to Trump’s royal thumb. The upside is enormous: erase your federal crimes if you can just pay the toll to the right fixer. The downside is reserved for everyone who thought the justice system was supposed to be about law instead of proximity to a guy rage-posting on social media from the Oval Office.
So no, the pardon process is not dead — it’s just been privatized, stripped for parts, and resold as a luxury service for people whose crimes involve balance sheets instead of broken windows. The Founders imagined a sober, rare exercise of mercy; Trump imagined a loyalty program. And around him has grown a thriving ecosystem of lawyers and lobbyists who discovered that the real American dream is monetizing presidential impunity, one desperate felon at a time.
#corruption#forever-grifting
god, guns, and deregulation: trump’s atf becomes the nra’s help desk
Behold the Holy Trinity of American collapse: God, Guns, and Trump, now with 34% fewer regulations and 100% more lobbyists on stage.
The Trump administration looked at a gunman opening fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and apparently concluded the real victim was paperwork. Just four days later, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and freshly installed ATF chief Robert Cekada rolled out 34 regulatory changes designed to make life easier for the firearms industry, while everyone else gets to play live-action "Thoughts and Prayers: The Sequel."
Blanche declared that the Second Amendment "will never be treated as a second-class right" while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with NRA and Gun Owners of America reps, who were basically functioning as unpaid (lol, who are we kidding, very paid) co-cabinet secretaries. ATF’s stated mission is to protect public safety, but under Trump’s second term it’s been reinterpreted as protect the gun lobby from inconvenience, with DOJ proudly announcing a "new era of reform" that mostly consists of shredding rules courts had already kneecapped and calling it principled constitutionalism.
Gun groups are calling this the "golden age of the Second Amendment," which is an interesting way to describe a government that responds to a high-profile shooting by asking the industry, "So what regulations would you like us to kill next?" Federal law enforcement has effectively been repurposed into a concierge service for manufacturers and absolutists, and if that means a few more bodies on the floor, well, at least the forms will be shorter.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting#national-security
china buys 200 planes, trump sells 100% bs
Trump and Xi on a red carpet in Beijing, each getting exactly what they came for: Xi gets leverage, Trump gets a banquet and a bragging tweet.
China’s Ministry of Commerce politely set fire to Trump’s version of reality, confirming that yes, tariffs were absolutely discussed during his big summit with Xi Jinping, despite Trump telling reporters, “We didn’t discuss tariffs.” Cool, so we’re now at the stage of diplomacy where foreign governments have to fact-check the President of the United States in official statements.
While they were at it, Beijing also confirmed it’s buying 200 Boeing planes and reopening the door to U.S. beef, which Trump has been bragging about like he personally wrestled the cattle and assembled the fuselages in his spare time. China framed it as part of a broader understanding not to escalate tariffs — and then immediately warned that if Washington hikes duties again, they’ll hit back. So the White House gets to wave around a big shiny airplane order for the cameras, and China gets leverage plus public documentation that Trump promised not to screw with tariffs beyond last fall’s so-called “truce.”
In other words, Xi Jinping walks away with a strategic paper trail and trade stability, and Trump walks away with talking points, a photo on a red carpet, and one more documented instance of saying something that the other side quickly, calmly, and officially calls false. Art of the Deal now apparently means: you brag, they bank.
#trade-war#full-stupid
bryson dechambeau takes a mulligan on the moon landing
Bryson DeChambeau, noted physics major, carefully lining up his next shot at the concept of objective reality.
Golf’s self-proclaimed science guy Bryson DeChambeau went on a podcast hosted by Katie Miller — yes, the wife of Trump’s favorite white nationalist wordsmith Stephen Miller — to announce that the moon landing footage is sketchy, but interdimensional beings? Absolutely real. Apparently the Venn diagram of LIV Golf, Trumpworld, and YouTube-brained conspiracy culture is now just a perfect circle drawn on a Mar-a-Lago scorecard.
DeChambeau, a former physics major who now treats evidence like a plugged lie in a bunker, says we probably went to the moon because Elon Musk told him so, but the actual footage? Eh, not buying it. However, UAPs and interdimensional visitors are a sure thing, and thousands of NASA scientists and astronauts might just be part of an elaborate decades-long performance art piece. Truly the perfect guest for the household that helped write Muslim bans and family-separation talking points.
When he’s not implying Neil Armstrong was method acting, Bryson gushes about his friendship with Donald Trump, whom the podcast dutifully refers to as "the most powerful man in the world" — because nothing says "healthy democracy" like treating a twice-impeached coup enthusiast as your permanent supreme leader. DeChambeau’s real dilemma, though, is whether to keep playing golf for the Saudis’ collapsing LIV project or go full-time into content creation. Given how well this little reality-detached media tour went, the propaganda ecosystem is clearly begging for his services.
#anti-science#trumps-america
alabama gop holds runoff to decide which trump guy hates freedom most
Alabama AG Steve Marshall, seen here auditioning for the role of 'most serious man alive' while campaigning on turning fetuses into criminal code and civil rights into a fond memory.
Alabama Republicans are holding a Senate primary runoff to determine which man can scream "America First" the loudest while making the Constitution cry. Rep. Barry Moore, proudly endorsed on Truth Social as an "America First Patriot," is leading the pack after running on such bold policy ideas as: arresting elected officials in "lawless Democrat sanctuary" cities and prosecuting them for not worshipping ICE hard enough. He also wants to strip federal funding from anyone who doesn't join his crusade against trans people and tried to crown the AR-15 as the official "National Gun of the United States." Because nothing says stable democracy like a government-mandated murder mascot.
Trying to catch him is Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, who’s built his brand on being aggressively anti-abortion, helping push the Brody Act to criminalize acts that "kill or injure" a fetus, and promising to fix gas and grocery prices through the time‑honored method of yelling about trans athletes. Also in the mix is former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson, who calls himself a "warrior" ready to "stand with President Trump" and runs a firearms training organization, just in case you were worried this ballot didn't have enough guns already. The winner will be heavily favored to replace Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is leaving the Senate — presumably after proving that one man can personally sabotage military readiness for months and still be considered a rising star in this party.
So the choice for Alabama Republicans is clear: do you want the guy who wants to arrest other elected officials for insufficient border fascism, the guy who wants to imprison people over fetal personhood while pretending he controls inflation, or the guy who promises to bring tactical cosplay and more guns to the world’s least deliberative body? No matter who wins, Trump gets another loyal soldier, democracy gets another headache, and the AR-15 gets closer to beating the bald eagle in the GOP’s national totem poll.
#fascism#trumps-america
