Rep. John Rose arrives at the Capitol, $13 million lighter and still somehow not the Trumpiest person in the race.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn has won the GOP primary for governor of Tennessee, proving that if you spend enough money stapling Trump’s compliments to every available surface, Republican voters will happily promote you from sabotaging the Senate to potentially running an entire state. At 74, Blackburn is poised to become Tennessee’s first female governor, which would be a milestone for women everywhere who dream of smashing glass ceilings while rolling back abortion rights and attacking trans people for sport.
The race was a Trumpist purity pageant where the only real disagreement was which candidate he liked more on Air Force One. Trump publicly gushed that Blackburn is “an incredible person” and did a “fantastic job,” then privately refused to endorse her because he’s also buddies with Rep. John Rose, who tried to buy the governor’s mansion with $13 million of his own money. So Tennessee got the rare experience of a Republican primary where Trump didn’t officially pick a favorite — he just let them fight over who could hug his shadow the tightest.
Blackburn’s win keeps the MAGA pipeline fully operational: from House backbencher to Senate culture-war attack drone to likely governor of a deep-red state. On deck: more crusades against reproductive rights, more performative China-bashing, and more demonization of trans people, all wrapped in the language of “freedom” that somehow never extends to anyone with a uterus or the wrong gender marker. Tennessee may be getting its first woman governor; democracy and civil rights, however, will not be getting their first break.
Trump officials proudly unveiling their bold new plan to help poor children: fewer teachers, less healthcare, more regulation bonfires.
The Trump administration has finally taken bold action against America’s most dangerous scourge: preschool regulations. Health and Human Services is proposing to shred roughly 1,400 Head Start rules – the ones that require low staff-to-child ratios, developmental screenings, lead protections, and that outrageous socialist mandate that poor kids get to brush their teeth at school. Don’t worry though, they’ll still serve the same vulnerable kids – it’ll just be with bigger classes, fewer services, and a lot more "local flexibility" to quietly cut corners.
Robert F Kennedy Jr gamely shows up to insist he loves Head Start, a program his own family helped create, while standing next to an administration that already axed half its regional offices and much of its support staff. Now they’re promising $2bn in "savings" without adding a single extra dollar to the $12bn budget, which Head Start operators are supposed to interpret as: magically serve more kids with fewer staff, weaker safety standards, and no guaranteed family support. Totally realistic.
To keep things from looking like a pure demolition job, the rule adds a few shiny distractions: mandatory English-only instruction (except for a small tribal carve-out), a 5% cap on admin costs that will kneecap management and oversight, and 30 minutes of physical activity so kids can jog around the crumbling, uninspected, possibly-lead-filled playground. Plus new nutrition lectures scolding poor families about sugar, while the government simultaneously strips away the services that actually help them climb out of poverty. It’s the Trump policy model in miniature: less protection, more blame, and a press release about efficiency.
A lone tourist contemplates the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, now serving as both a monument to American ideals and a $15m exhibit on how to blame physics on protesters.
Donald Trump is livid that his own handpicked US attorney for DC, Jeanine Pirro, briefly remembered what evidence is. After the justice department conceded that the damage to the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool was caused by a "botched" $15m renovation — courtesy of a no-bid contractor from Interior — Pirro moved to dismiss felony vandalism charges against 67-year-old former Olympian David Hearn and others. Their alleged crime? Hearn touched a chunk of the peeling coating that was already failing on its own. For that, he was staring down up to 10 years in prison and a $1,000 fine, because this administration treats tourist curiosity like a capital offense and contractor incompetence like a state secret.
Trump, who has never met a petty grievance he didn’t want federally prosecuted, is now attacking Pirro on TV for having "folded like an umbrella" and "choked" by dropping a case that was built on his fantasy of "tremendous vandalism" that somehow only the contractor’s shoddy work could see. In a heated Oval Office meeting, Pirro reportedly blamed interior secretary Doug Burgum for misleading Trump about the rushed, no-bid job, while Trump now muses about whether to fire her for the crime of not railroading an innocent man to protect his talking point. Meanwhile Hearn’s lawyers are weighing civil suits and bar complaints, politely describing the whole saga as an "abuse of government power" — which is one way to phrase the president trying to turn the reflecting pool into a stage for authoritarian cosplay.
The White House, naturally, has nothing to say about the no-bid contract, the flawed installation, or why a tourist attraction’s peeling finish turned into a federal show trial. The only real damage here isn’t to the concrete; it’s to the idea that federal prosecutors answer to the law instead of to whatever story Donald Trump wants to tell on NBC that day.
Trump signs another stack of executive orders, bravely attempting to overrule the 14th Amendment with a Sharpie and some resentment.
Fresh off the supreme court telling him that the constitution still technically exists, Donald Trump signed two new executive orders trying to kneecap birthright citizenship anyway. The White House claims it’s about tightening eligibility and stopping "birth tourism"; the constitution calls it "that thing we explicitly settled in 1868". Trump’s solution to losing in court is apparently to just keep signing pieces of paper until reality gives up.
The orders expand who the administration deems ineligible for birthright citizenship and go after so‑called "birth tourism," which Trump insists involves "hundreds of thousands" of people. Actual data from the Migration Policy Institute suggests more like 9,600 births in 2024, but why let numbers get in the way of a good nativist panic? Meanwhile, a fun historical footnote: Fred Trump was born a U.S. citizen to a non‑citizen mother who arrived in New York five months pregnant. So yes, the guy trying to blow up birthright citizenship is literally the heir to what he now brands as the problem.
This is not policy; it’s a long-running fantasy cosplay where Trump pretends the 14th Amendment is optional and the executive branch can just edit the constitution by press release. The supreme court already rejected his first try, but the second-term project appears to be: keep attacking the very idea of equal citizenship until the law, or the country, breaks first.
Todd Blanche and Donald Trump metaphorically running the IRS like a VIP lounge: regular taxpayers wait in line, the Trumps go in through the side door marked “No Audits Ever.”
Career IRS employees have now entered the chat, joining a lawsuit to stop Donald Trump from cashing in on an IRS audit immunity carveout that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche quietly slipped into a settlement. The deal would give Trump, his family, and their "affiliates" a special tax forcefield that no other American gets, because of course the guy who screamed the loudest about weaponized government wants the power to personally disarm it when it points in his direction.
This whole mess grew out of Trump suing his own government over the leak of his tax returns, then somehow alchemizing that into (1) a promise not to pursue tax claims against him and (2) a proposed $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" that could shovel cash to his allies and even Jan. 6 rioters who claim they were victims of the big bad deep state. A federal judge already hit pause on the fund, but Democracy Forward and the National Treasury Employees Union say Blanche’s "settlement" is still a live grenade of unconstitutional, breathtakingly corrupt self-dealing.
Blanche, whose nomination to permanently run the Justice Department is currently winding through the Senate, insists the slush fund is over while, per the lawsuit, preserving every legal escape hatch needed to revive it later — like a loyalty rewards program for insurrectionists. Meanwhile, DOJ lawyers are telling another court to toss Jan. 6 rioters’ claims on statute-of-limitations grounds, proving that in Trump’s America the law is very consistent: it always expires faster for the foot soldiers than for the guy trying to buy himself lifetime audit immunity from the Oval Office.
Doug Burgum smiles beside a PowerPoint slide labeled "How to Set $4 Billion on Fire and Call It Energy Policy."
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new climate strategy: paying foreign corporations $1.22 billion of your money to not build offshore wind and to invest in fossil fuels instead. German energy giant RWE is the latest lucky winner of the "kill renewables, buy gas" sweepstakes, agreeing to surrender offshore wind leases off New York, California, and Louisiana after deciding there was "no path forward" for permits in the US — a problem that mysteriously appeared right after Trump came back and started lighting climate policy on fire.
This is the fifth such deal, bringing the tab to nearly $4 billion in taxpayer cash spent to cancel clean energy projects. In return, RWE will put $900m into a Louisiana LNG project and line up 15 new natural gas peaker plants, because nothing says "long-term energy future" like doubling down on infrastructure that will be obsolete right around the time Florida finishes sinking. Interior secretary Doug Burgum dutifully called this a win for "energy security" and "affordable" power, which is an interesting spin while the administration’s war on Iran is helping jack up fuel prices at the pump.
States are already calling foul: after a previous $928m payoff to TotalEnergies to ditch a New York offshore wind lease, seven states sued, with New York AG Letitia James labeling it a "sham deal" and "illegal agreement". Meanwhile, the same federal government shoveling cash at coal and gas is also working to slash public input on fossil fuel drilling and shift cleanup risks onto taxpayers, as if the grift wasn’t obvious enough. And just to round out the disaster, every fully operational LNG facility in the US has been caught violating pollution limits, dumping illegal levels of bacteria, metals, oil, and assorted toxic party favors into waterways. Truly, a golden age for "energy dominance" – if you’re the one cashing the checks.
Trump admires scale models of his proposed arch, seen here bravely fighting for dominance over taste, history, and the concept of shame.
The National Park Service has gently informed President Trump that his 250-foot ego prosthetic — the proposed "Trump Arch" jammed into Memorial Circle by Arlington National Cemetery — would, technically speaking, trash the historic core of the capital. NPS identified 37 historic properties that would be adversely affected, because apparently dropping a giant golden participation trophy between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House slightly disrupts the whole "solemn national memory" vibe.
The report notes that the existing landscape was designed to symbolically unite North and South, a subtlety lost on a president whose aesthetic runs more "Vegas off-ramp" than "careful civic planning." The arch would sever the ceremonial axis between the Lincoln Memorial and Robert E. Lee’s former home and loom over the cemetery like a branded billboard for American decline.
Meanwhile, a group of Vietnam War veterans has already sued, arguing the structure is a visual insult to the dead and requires congressional approval — which Trump both denies and, naturally, has not sought. So we’ve arrived at the logical endpoint of this presidency: the commander in chief trying to muscle a giant campaign logo into protected federal land over the objections of veterans, historians, and his own park service, all so tourists can gaze upon the republic’s first federally subsidized vanity arch.
Trump, flanked by his Secretary of War and a rapidly vanishing pile of missiles, bravely declares the only real shortage is of loyalty.
Donald Trump, currently busy losing a munitions logistics war to basic arithmetic, is furiously denying reports that the US is running low on key missiles in his Iran adventure. Rather than admit that maybe you can’t fight an endless, performative conflict on cable-news settings, he’s declared that anyone leaking uncomfortable facts about depleted stocks is committing "treason" and should face "long term jail sentences". Because nothing says "healthy democracy" like threatening to imprison people for confirming the Pentagon can’t count past 20 without taking off its boots.
On Truth Social, Trump boasted that the US has "massive amounts" of ammunition and that defense companies are building the largest number of plants and factories in American history, which is a fascinating claim given the total absence of evidence and the minor detail that CNN and the Washington Post say we’ve burned through nearly 80% of THAAD interceptors. At a Camp David meeting, he reportedly screamed at his Fox-News-turned-Secretary-of-War, Pete Hegseth, for not fixing the problem, while Hegseth tried to pin it on his deputy, private equity ghoul Stephen Feinberg. The White House and Pentagon have responded with the usual script: FAKE NEWS!, total denial, and a warm public statement that Trump "loves" Hegseth, which in this administration is usually the last thing you hear before the push notification announcing your resignation to spend more time with your lawyers.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is under fire for manipulating US casualty figures and refusing regular briefings, but is proudly rolling out a "testosterone deficiency" screening program for troops, because if you can’t give them functioning missile interceptors, you can at least give them a vibes-based masculinity audit. Trump also bragged that he ordered then canceled "the biggest attack since World War II" over supposed negotiations with Iran that Iran says do not exist. So the country is stuck with a war that’s chewing through munitions, a president threatening to jail truth-tellers, a Defense Secretary who thinks he’s a Fox monologue with a parking spot, and a Pentagon that can’t be bothered to tell the public how many people are dying—but rest assured, everyone’s manliness levels are being thoroughly evaluated.
Congress, as represented by Joe Scarborough yelling on MS Now, is considering doing something about this, which is adorable. Until then, the official policy remains: lie about the stockpiles, hide the casualties, scream "treason" at anyone who notices, and pray the war holds together long enough to get through the next news cycle.
Latinos for Trump: because every thriving authoritarian movement needs a diverse marketing department.
Trump’s glorious second-term deportation renaissance is going so well that over 60 people have died at the hands of or in the custody of ICE since his return to power, including two Latino immigrants in one week: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. Brown people are right to feel hunted — the numbers say they’re not paranoid, just observant.
The twist: a whole lot of the people doing the hunting are also brown. Latinos now make up a majority of Border Patrol and roughly 20–30% of ICE agents, and the officers who killed Alex Pretti in January? Two Hispanic men. The comforting liberal fantasy that Latinos are naturally opposed to restrictionist immigration policies runs straight into history: from Latino leaders backing Operation Wetback in the 1950s to the United Farm Workers harassing and reporting undocumented workers, there’s a long tradition of joining the system that targets your own community for the low, low price of a paycheck and a whiff of status.
This isn’t new; it’s the same old American story of a group stuck in an uneasy middle, facing discrimination while being told that if they just help police the border hard enough, maybe they’ll finally be let into the club. Economic security, “serving the community”, and proximity to whiteness all mix together into a pipeline from marginalized neighborhoods to federal agencies that put kids in cages and bodies in detention center morgues. Trumpism didn’t invent that dynamic; it just weaponized it and slapped a red hat on top.
“Latinos for Trump” factions helped build the Maga machine in 2016 and then expanded their support for him by 2024, especially among Latino men and in heavily Latino border counties — the very places now supplying manpower to ICE and Border Patrol. So the administration gets to point to brown faces enforcing its anti-immigrant crusade as proof it’s not racist, while the death toll climbs and the machinery of state repression hums along more “diverse” than ever. Truly, a multicultural police state for the 21st century.
RFK Jr gazes thoughtfully at a vial of vaccine, wondering how to balance decades of conspiracy branding with the awkward persistence of clinical data.
The FDA has approved Moderna’s new mRNA flu shot, mFlusiva, for people 50 and up, which is great news for anyone who enjoys not dying of respiratory viruses. The shot reduced flu cases by about 27% compared with a standard vaccine and showed no major safety issues, just the usual "your immune system is working" side effects. In a functional country, that would be the whole story.
Instead, we get the RFK Jr Cinematic Universe. A top FDA official, operating under America’s first anti-vaccine health secretary, initially blocked Moderna’s application in what experts politely call “heightened scrutiny” and everyone else calls “letting Facebook comments run federal health policy.” Days later, after Moderna publicly called them out and an independent advisory panel unanimously backed the vaccine, the FDA suddenly rediscovered evidence-based medicine and changed course.
So yes, the shot is finally approved and could help protect older Americans from a virus that kills tens of thousands every year. But the real breakthrough isn’t mRNA technology; it’s that a public health decision briefly escaped the gravitational pull of RFK Jr’s conspiracy brain and landed, however shakily, back on the planet Science. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Rand Paul studies Fauci’s notes, searching for the part where science apologizes for making him look ridiculous.
Republicans have finally found the real culprit behind Trump’s catastrophic Covid response: the 83-year-old immunologist who told people to wear masks. The GOP-led Senate is gearing up to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress because he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights in a hearing run by Rand Paul, a man whose medical specialty is eye surgery and YouTube rage. The hearing, ostensibly about the origins of Covid, has instead become therapy hour for Trump-world, where Fauci’s contemporaneous notes describing Trump as “rambling”, “crazy”, “incompetent” and “totally nuts” are treated as a greater crime than the mass death event those adjectives were documenting.
Across town, RFK Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services helpfully handed over Fauci’s phone to the same Senate inquisitors, while the guy who wrote a conspiratorial book calling Fauci a supervillain now runs federal health policy. At the same time, the administration is busy cutting public health infrastructure, mainstreaming anti-vaccine propaganda, and watching measles, whooping cough, cyclosporiasis and Ebola make a comeback like it’s a nostalgia tour for preventable diseases. Scientists and Democrats are warning that turning Fauci into a cartoon villain will scare real experts away from public service, which, to be fair, appears to be the point.
Meanwhile, Katie Miller — who once leaned on Fauci’s advice to get through Covid — has pivoted to calling for his imprisonment, because nothing says “personal responsibility” like jailing the doctor who tried to stop your boss from killing more people. As Duke’s Gavin Yamey notes, this whole circus is an extraordinarily efficient way to distract from the deliberate wrecking of America’s public health system and to wash Republican hands of any culpability for Trump’s pandemic carnage. Why fund epidemiology when you can stage a show trial and call it oversight?
Palmer Luckey, dressed like he’s headed to a beach barbecue, pausing between Senate fundraisers and no-bid weapons contracts to explain that this is all just about innovation and totally not about buying a Golden Dome with campaign checks.
Palmer Luckey, the VR bro who went from garage tinkerer to Facebook billionaire to "secretly funding a pro-Trump shitposting operation," has apparently unlocked the real endgame: becoming the “godfather of Republican fundraising on the west coast” while his defense startup Anduril hoovers up gigantic government contracts from the Trump administration. Emails obtained by the Guardian show him running high-dollar "Keep the Senate" fundraisers where $50,000 buys you a cozy seat next to GOP leadership, all while Anduril quietly lands a $20 billion sole-source Army drone contract and a slot on Trump’s fantasy "Golden Dome" space interceptor project, conveniently priced somewhere between $185 billion and $1.2 trillion.
On one side of the ledger, Luckey and his CEO Brian Schimpf pose as just two regular executives with "different political views"; on the other, FEC records show Luckey pumping nearly $6 million into Republicans and working as a bundler who delivers other people’s money directly to the same politicians overseeing his contracts. Schimpf sprinkles a much smaller amount on Democrats, so management can claim "bipartisan" virtue while they build drones and orbital anti-missile toys for a government that keeps writing them checks without bothering with pesky competition. The media dutifully brands Luckey the "It Guy" of defense tech because he wears Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops, as if dressing like a beach bum while monetizing permanent war and MAGA politics somehow makes this look less like old-school pay-to-play and more like disruption.
So yes, the VR kid who funded anti-Hillary meme warfare is now a central node in the Trump-era military-industrial complex, raising money to keep Republicans in power while cashing in on their trillion-dollar space shield dreams. Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex; he just forgot to mention it would eventually show up in cargo shorts, quoting Reddit, and asking for a no-bid contract with its Golden Dome.
Nintendo counting illegal Trump tariff refunds like extra lives, while the US economy keeps hearing ‘Game Over’ music.
Trump’s glorious ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs—his big-brain plan to rescue the US economy by slapping taxes on everything that moves—have now officially been upgraded from ‘bad policy’ to illegal, courtesy of the US supreme court. The administration has been forced to refund about $100bn, including a fat chunk to Nintendo, which just posted a 53.5% profit spike because the White House had to give back the money it never should’ve taken in the first place. Truly, a jobs program for corporate accounting departments.
The best part? Trump is still out there selling tariffs as the cure for the deficit, manufacturing, and probably male pattern baldness, even as his own illegal levies are turning into a worldwide cashback rewards program. Nintendo sued to get its full refund plus interest, is getting hammered by a class action for jacking up prices during the tariff era, and is now quietly enjoying the windfall while consumers are told they already got exactly what they ‘bargained and paid for’. The only consistent winner here is corporate profit; US trade policy is just the loot box mechanic.
Undeterred by the small inconvenience of having his last mega-tariff spree declared unlawful, Trump has already rolled out a fresh round of tariffs on more than 80 countries, including Japan. Twenty-five US states are now suing the administration over the new levies, which means we’ve essentially turned international trade into a subscription service for constitutional litigation. Trump’s America: where the rule of law, global supply chains, and your console prices all depend on how fast the courts can keep up with a guy who thinks tariffs are a personality type.
Todd Blanche, Marco Rubio, and Mike Huckabee bravely defending American lives by doing absolutely nothing while cheering on someone else’s extremists.
On day one of his comeback tour, Trump helpfully rescinded sanctions on more than 30 violent West Bank settlers and their organizations, and the results are in: surprise, the violence exploded. Nineteen Democrats are now writing very stern letters to Acting AG Todd Blanche, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, pointing out that when you tell extremist settlers there are no consequences, they tend to act like there are no consequences—for Palestinians and for U.S. citizens. UN data shows a record 1,835 attacks on Palestinian communities and property in 2025, with 2026 on pace to outdo even that, because if there's one thing the Trump administration excels at, it's turning already-bad situations into historic records.
The letter notes that since Trump returned to office, four more U.S. citizens have been killed by Israeli settlers or security forces in the West Bank—bringing the total since 2022 to nine—including journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and multiple teenagers. The Justice Department, which absolutely has the authority to investigate Americans killed abroad, has reportedly opened zero new investigations since 2025, while Israel has indicted no one connected to any of the killings. Meanwhile, Palestinian American towns with heavy U.S. citizenship like Turmus Ayya are getting their homes burned, Taybeh—"the last entirely Christian village in the West Bank"—is being attacked, and U.S. citizens like Sama Safi and Mohammed Ibrahim are being detained by the Israeli military in conditions that would normally trigger bipartisan outrage, if the president’s base didn’t consider this all part of God’s zoning plan.
Even Mike Huckabee, now U.S. ambassador to Israel and full-time eschatology influencer, briefly called one attack on Taybeh "an act of terror" and promised prosecutions—after which, predictably, no one was arrested and policy went right back to "unbridled violence" plus photo ops. The Democrats politely observe that Washington’s total deference to Netanyahu has helped create a "climate of impunity" for settlers and security forces, which is a very diplomatic way of saying the Trump team looked at a volatile occupation, removed the last tiny shred of accountability, and then acted confused when Americans started coming home in coffins and Palestinian villages kept going up in flames. Law and order, but make it foreign and selectively optional.
Marine One prepares to land on the South Lawn, carefully avoiding the only patch of grass not yet turned into Trump-branded granite décor.
The White House is ripping up a brand-new helipad on the South Lawn because Donald Trump reportedly decided he didn’t like how it looked and the lawn’s slope offended his sense of geometry. After weeks of “around the clock” construction to prep for Xi Jinping’s visit, workers are now back out there redoing the whole thing so Marine One — a supersized VH-92A Patriot — can land on a pad that sits perfectly level with the horizon and the president’s ego.
The first design featured a 100-foot-wide granite presidential seal that started to take shape and then, like most Trump projects that aren’t directly about Trump, was promptly dug back up. The new helipad, expected to cost $5m to $6m, will also feature a carved granite seal and is being paid for entirely by Sikorsky, the helicopter manufacturer — because nothing says healthy democracy like a defense contractor underwriting the president’s personal landing strip on the people’s front lawn.
This is just the latest entry in Trump’s "beautification" spree, which so far includes a White House ballroom slapped onto the East Wing, a new lining for the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, and draft plans for a "garden of heroes" plus a triumphal arch with a 60-foot gilded winged Lady Liberty and enormous golden eagles. So yes, we’ve moved from subtle authoritarian vibes to full-scale imperial fantasy park. As press secretary Davis Ingle helpfully explained, “thanks to President Trump, the White House has never looked better” — if you’ve always thought America’s problem was not enough granite seals and not enough things gilded.
Trump staring at a stack of subpoenas and balance sheets like he’s just learned that suing people for $10bn sometimes requires math.
Donald Trump has discovered the one weird trick lawyers hate: if you file a multibillion-dollar defamation suit over a BBC documentary, the other side gets to ask for your financial records. Shockingly, the Miami judge in charge of the case followed actual law and ordered Trump to start handing over details on the hundreds of businesses in his family trust by 6 August. Having remembered how discovery works approximately five minutes before the deadline, Trump’s legal team is now begging the court to hit pause, calling the BBC’s request “shockingly broad” and “clearly political” — unlike the president of the United States suing a foreign public broadcaster over his feelings, which is apparently just statesmanlike governance.
Realizing that opening the books might reveal how he managed to rake in more than $2.2bn in his first year back in office, Trump’s lawyers are also trying to rewrite their own lawsuit on the fly, pivoting from business damages to vague “reputation harm” so they can shrink the disclosures to something less likely to expose how the grift sausage is made. This is part of a broader tantrum against the press: they’re simultaneously pushing a $10bn defamation case over the Wall Street Journal reporting on a “bawdy” Jeffrey Epstein birthday-book letter, and Trump’s justice department helpfully issued — then hastily yanked — subpoenas for New York Times reporters who wrote about security issues with Air Force One. Free press, meet free-fire zone.
The BBC, for its part, already apologized for a misleading edit in its January 6 documentary but says the defamation claims are garbage. Trump has upgraded the conspiracy by alleging the BBC used AI to insert words into his speech, because of course the network didn’t just mis-edit; it unleashed Skynet on his teleprompter. So we now have the president of the United States suing foreign and domestic media, trying to hide his financials in a case he started, and using the machinery of the federal government to harass reporters — all while insisting he’s the real victim whose only crime is being too rich, too honest, and too unfairly edited.
A lone migrant child in court, bravely represented by a $150 million invoice and a law firm that lists "Trump-adjacent" under specialties.
The Biden-era fantasy that Trumpworld would quietly fade into the private sector and just sell gold sneakers has hit another wall: a small Texas law firm with ties to the Trump administration just scored a $150 million federal contract to "represent" unaccompanied migrant children. Because when you think "defenseless kids alone in court," you obviously think, "let's call the people who cheered on family separation."
This is the sort of deal you get when child welfare is treated like a franchise opportunity. A niche firm with political connections lands a massive, taxpayer-funded contract to be the last line of defense for kids who don’t speak the language, don’t know the law, and don’t have parents in the courtroom — but hey, they do have a direct line to Trumpworld, so that’s something. Instead of building a robust, independent network of child advocates, the government is apparently workshopping a new model: outsource basic human rights to friends of the guy who turned border cruelty into a campaign plank.
Good news, though: at $150 million, there’s plenty of room in the budget for billable hours, consulting fees, and whatever other creative line items a politically connected shop can dream up. Whether migrant kids get meaningful representation is, as always, a secondary concern in America’s thriving border-industrial complex.
Artist’s rendering of the U.S.S. Defiant, seen here sailing majestically through an ocean of taxpayer cash toward its natural home port: a cost overrun spreadsheet.
The "golden fleet" is turning out to be less "shining armada" and more floating Mar-a-Lago invoice. The Congressional Budget Office reports that Trump’s beloved Trump-class warships — yes, he’s literally naming a weapons system after himself — are now projected to cost at least 50 percent more than advertised. The first one, the U.S.S. Defiant, is expected to run a cool $23.4 billion, up $8 billion from the Navy’s original fairy tale. The rest of the 14 ships are jumping from $10.2 billion each to just over $18 billion, bringing the total tab to about $275 billion so Trump can cosplay as Admiral of the Gold-Plated Navy.
Trump had previously promised that two of these ships would be built in two and a half years, because of course he did. The CBO, which lives in the boring world of math and physics, says the first one might take eight years or longer to build. So while Trump is out there talking about a "golden fleet" that will "revive the American shipbuilding industry" and "inspire fear in America’s enemies," the only people truly trembling right now are anyone who pays federal taxes — and maybe the poor Pentagon budget officer who has to explain how a single ship somehow costs more than the GDP of several U.N. member states.
So to recap: a president obsessed with slapping his name on things has greenlit a Trump-branded, massively over-budget, behind-schedule weapons program that funnels hundreds of billions into contractors and prestige projects while being sold as patriotic necessity. Shockingly, the "golden fleet" is turning out to be exactly what it sounds like: a monument to ego, paid for with public money, that mostly benefits the people cashing the checks.
The CDC building, patiently waiting to find out how long this director lasts before being fired for believing in vaccines.
The Senate has confirmed Trump’s third attempt at a CDC director, Dr Erica Schwartz, in a 51–44 vote, giving the administration a “rare win” in the same way surviving Russian roulette is technically a win. Schwartz will be the first permanent CDC director since Susan Monarez — who was fired by Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr after less than a month for the unforgivable crime of disagreeing with him on vaccines.
This is the leadership pipeline now: first pick Dave Weldon gets yanked before a hearing, second pick Monarez gets launched into the sun for not vibing with RFK Jr’s science fanfic, and now we’re on to Schwartz, whose main qualification appears to be surviving the administration’s loyalty obstacle course. The CDC, once known for boring things like epidemiology and evidence, is now basically a revolving door where directors are tested on how quickly they’ll bend to the latest crank in charge of health policy.
So yes, Trump finally got someone confirmed. The question is not whether she’s qualified on paper, but whether she’s been hired to run a public health agency or to politely applaud while the anti-vax health secretary and the president keep turning disease control into a culture-war game show.
Trump walks away from the press after delivering another episode of ‘I’m Just Asking Questions About My Own Presidency.’
Donald Trump has apparently decided that being president is too much work, so he’s trying out a new gig: color commentator for his own authoritarian soap opera. Instead of saying "I decided," he goes with "people are saying" and "I hear" while narrating everything from algae in the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool to his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, as if he’s some poor bystander forced to watch the Trump administration from the couch like the rest of us.
When his own DOJ and nominees do things he doesn’t want to own – like AG nominee Todd Blanche backing away from Trump’s $1.8bn “anti‑weaponisation fund” (translation: a taxpayer‑funded MAGA grievance reparations program) – Trump shrugs on camera like a guest analyst: All I know is Todd Blanche is great, he sighs, while still demanding that his supporters get compensated by the Justice Department for the crime of facing consequences. He’s simultaneously the head of the executive branch and the guy on Truth Social yelling about how unfair the executive branch is to him.
Press gaggles in the Oval Office and on Air Force One have turned into a kind of postmodern fascist talk show, where he breaks the fourth wall to insult reporters as “piggy” and “very obnoxious,” rewrite the premise of every question, and spin an alternate reality in real time. On the Epstein files, instead of letting DOJ speak, he jumps in to sympathize with the powerful people who “innocently met” a convicted paedophile and urges everyone to move on, because accountability is for other people. The result is a president who refuses to be the responsible actor in his own government, preferring to heckle from the booth while still holding all the power – a neat little trick for anyone trying to dissolve democratic responsibility into pure vibes and victimhood.
