The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Documenting the chaos since day one — one awful day at a time.

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Tuesday, August 11, 2026

killing democracy

indiana recount commission helps trump finish his little purge

Spencer Deery, pictured here moments before discovering that in Trump’s GOP, opposing a gerrymander is a fireable offense adjudicated by a recount commission.

Spencer Deery, pictured here moments before discovering that in Trump’s GOP, opposing a gerrymander is a fireable offense adjudicated by a recount commission.

Indiana Republicans just learned the hard way that voting against a Trump-backed gerrymander is a limited time offer. State Sen. Spencer Deery, one of the few GOP legislators who dared oppose Trump’s dream congressional map, was barely hanging on to a three-vote primary lead. Then the Indiana Recount Commission kindly stepped in and threw out ten ballots over "minor errors" — eight for Deery, two for Trump-endorsed challenger Paula Copenhaver — and, what do you know, suddenly the Trump candidate is up by three. Pure coincidence, surely. Deery points out that voter intent on those ballots was never in doubt; the problems were technical mistakes by election officials. So the commission’s solution was to punish the voters for government errors and, as a bonus, realign the race with the president’s political goals. He calls it “an attempt to undermine the will of voters by treating ballots differently based on whether they furthered the president’s political goals,” which is a very polite way of saying: this looks like targeted voter nullification dressed up as process. If Copenhaver’s lead survives appeal, she’s favored in this blood-red district, and the new Trump-friendlier Senate can revisit redistricting before 2028. Conveniently, Indiana Senate President Rod Bray — another Republican who opposed Trump’s map — is already stepping aside, which Trump celebrated on Truth Social by thanking Indiana for “getting rid of wayward Senators” led by a “FOOL named Rodric Bray.” The message to GOP legislators is clear: cross Dear Leader on gerrymandering and you might find a recount commission discovering just enough "technicalities" to fix that problem for him. So while pundits will call this a "tight local primary," what’s really happening is a test-run for the next phase of Trumpism: weaponizing obscure state processes and election boards to purge insufficiently obedient Republicans, rig maps, and pre-clear the battlefield for 2028. Democracy dies not just in darkness, but in fluorescent-lit recount hearings where eight inconvenient ballots quietly vanish.
nbcnews.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#fascism

Monday, August 10, 2026

anti science

stable genius rewrites vaccine science with a sharpie

Trump signs an executive order to overrule the CDC, armed with nothing but a Sharpie, a microphone, and several decades of internet comment section medical training.

Trump signs an executive order to overrule the CDC, armed with nothing but a Sharpie, a microphone, and several decades of internet comment section medical training.

Donald Trump has signed an executive order trying to personally overrule the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule, because when you think "lifesaving immunization policy," you obviously think "guy who stares at eclipses." The order attempts to strip down routine recommendations, shove key vaccines into a vague "shared clinical decision-making" purgatory, and pretend the White House now outranks decades of epidemiology. Executive orders can’t magically erase science or state school requirements, but Trump is once again betting that chaos and intimidation can do what the law can’t.

The showpiece stunt: demanding the MMR vaccine be broken into three separate shots and spaced out across separate doctor visits, despite there being no such individual vaccines licensed in the US and zero evidence this does anything except cost families more time and money. Trump solemnly warned that combined vaccines are “quite lethal” and described a soda-bottle-sized injection being poured into children, which is not how medicine works but is a great preview of what happens when Facebook memes become federal policy. He also nodded to the long-debunked autism lie, because why not revive a conspiracy that already helped bring back measles?

To round out the authoritarian cosplay, the order tells the attorney general to go after state laws that conflict with Trump’s fantasy schedule, even though school mandates are set by states and executive orders don’t apply to the public. Vaccine law experts note this should have no direct operational effect, but that’s not really the point: the goal is to crank up political pressure on states, undermine trust in vaccines, and turn public health into another loyalty test. Herd immunity is out; herd delusion is the new official guideline.

theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: nbcnews.comAlso: bbc.co.uk
#anti-science#killing-democracy
killing democracy

trump & rfk jr bravely declare war on… paperwork

RFK Jr. and Trump’s FDA bravely confront America’s food crisis by drafting a strongly worded form and promising to define “ultra-processed” sometime before the next salmonella recall.

RFK Jr. and Trump’s FDA bravely confront America’s food crisis by drafting a strongly worded form and promising to define “ultra-processed” sometime before the next salmonella recall.

The Trump administration’s FDA has announced it will heroically close a decades-old loophole in the "Generally Recognized as Safe" (GRAS) system – the one that let companies decide their own ingredients were safe and then not bother telling the FDA. Now, under a proposed rule, they’d at least have to file the paperwork before feeding mystery chemicals to Americans. Bold stuff, only took 68 years and a historic foodborne illness outbreak. Naturally, the administration managed to do the smallest possible good thing while loudly abandoning the hard part. Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s HHS secretary and full-time wellness crusader, had promised a definition of "ultra-processed foods" by April. It’s August, the FDA chief is now saying that defining ultra-processed is "really hard", and the agencies have kicked the can into some vague "future" where research foundations are stronger and political courage exists. Translation: the White House wants the vibes of fighting Big Food without the inconvenience of actually doing it. Meanwhile, the FDA staff expected to review this new flood of mandatory notifications are working in an agency that’s been hollowed out by layoffs and low morale under Trump. Companies will still pay their own experts to declare their own additives safe, and the article notes there’s not even a clear plan for what happens when FDA disagrees. Perfect system: industry writes the science, a shrunken FDA tries to keep up, and the administration gets to brag about "reform" while changing as little as possible. All this is happening while more than 10,000 people are sick from cyclosporiasis in lettuce, and salmonella is partying in eggs and jalapeños across 26 states. The government’s response? Some new guidance documents, a paperwork tweak, and a promise to maybe define ultra-processed foods someday. The Trump-RFK Jr. health regime has essentially reinvented the food safety system as a vibes-based wellness podcast: lots of talk about toxins and risks, very little actual protection from the stuff that’s making people sick right now.
theguardian.comSource Article
#killing-democracy#anti-science#forever-grifting
corruption

perfectly normal president screams 'vandals' while admitting his no-bid pool job sucked

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, freshly repainted "American flag blue" and already disintegrating—seen here bravely attempting to hold its shape under the weight of one no-bid contract and about sixteen million taxpayer dollars.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, freshly repainted "American flag blue" and already disintegrating—seen here bravely attempting to hold its shape under the weight of one no-bid contract and about sixteen million taxpayer dollars.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has finally achieved its destiny as a metaphor for the Trump era: drained, repainted American flag blue, and then promptly falling apart. Trump is now grudgingly admitting the $14m (and counting) no-bid repaint was "rushed" and that the contractor "cut some corners"—but insists the real problem is mysterious vandals, one of whom is a former Olympic canoeist apparently moonlighting as Aquatic Antifa.

Jeanine Pirro, who Trump personally installed as US attorney for DC like a particularly shouty throw pillow from Fox News, looked at the evidence, realized the damage mostly came from a botched installation by Atlantic Industrial Coatings, and moved to drop the vandalism charges. For this act of basic prosecutorial integrity, Trump accused her of having "folded like a cheap umbrella" and publicly pressured her to "re-visit" her decision, while carefully not ruling out firing her. Nothing screams "independent justice system" like the president rage-posting that his own loyalist prosecutor choked by not jailing the scapegoat for his shoddy pool project.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum jumped into the loyalty Olympics, claiming his department handed over expert and eyewitness testimony proving vandalism. Pirro's office says they actually later got records showing the whole thing was mostly just bad work on a rushed, no-bid contract whose cost magically inflated from under $2m to over $16m. Meanwhile the pool remains fenced off, the administration is busy installing security cameras to catch future imaginary saboteurs, and Trump keeps inventing new explanations—fertilizer algae, 300ft box-cutter slits, and now a "highly credible" unnamed NPS witness who only seems to exist in his Truth Social posts.

So to recap: they bypassed competitive bidding, blew the budget by a factor of eight, delivered a failing product, then tried to pin the mess on a random guy with a paddle and some conveniently invisible vandals. The only thing really being reflected in that pool is the administration’s talent for grift, blame-shifting, and turning national monuments into crime-scene props for Trump’s victimhood narrative.
theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.com
#corruption#forever-grifting
killing democracy

trump’s immigration carnage echoes all the way to minnesota nice

Two Democrats smile politely while standing on the graveyard of Trump’s immigration policy, carefully avoiding eye contact with the body bags off-camera.

Two Democrats smile politely while standing on the graveyard of Trump’s immigration policy, carefully avoiding eye contact with the body bags off-camera.

Minnesota’s Democratic Senate primary is having a lovely, civil argument over how best to mop up after the Trump administration’s deadly immigration crackdown — you know, that little episode where "law and order" meant shattered families, dead migrants, and a permanent stain on whatever was left of America’s moral pretensions. The Times politely calls it a "major stop in the fight between moderate and progressive Democrats"; translated from Beltway, that’s: how much spine are we legally allowed to have while Trumpism is still roaming free. On one side you’ve got Representative Angie Craig, a self-branded moderate who boasts about being one of the most bipartisan members of the House, as if "worked with Republicans" hasn’t been the setup to every disaster since Mitch McConnell discovered the filibuster. She argues her across-the-aisle agriculture cred makes her the safest bet to hold Tina Smith’s seat, because nothing soothes a country brutalized by a nativist presidency like a soothing promise of incrementalism and bipartisan corn. Opposite her is Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, backed by Bernie Sanders and Tina Smith, running on the wild, fringe notion that after years of Trump-era state violence and democratic rot, maybe we should actually change things. Her sins include supporting Medicare for All and cutting military aid to Israel — positions that, in a functioning democracy, would be part of a normal policy debate, but in post-Trump America are treated as leftist witchcraft. The whole contest is basically the Democratic Party’s ongoing identity crisis: do you respond to authoritarian cruelty and systemic fraud with soothing centrist vibes, or with substantive policy that might offend the donors who were totally fine with Trump until he started losing?
nytimes.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.comAlso: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#trumps-america
killing democracy

trump & musk team up to speedrun louisiana’s extinction event

Artist’s impression of Pecan Island’s future: zero birds, fewer residents, one very happy billionaire, and a launch schedule that’s the only thing rising faster than the sea level.

Artist’s impression of Pecan Island’s future: zero birds, fewer residents, one very happy billionaire, and a launch schedule that’s the only thing rising faster than the sea level.

Louisiana’s Republican leadership is reportedly handing over 130,000 acres of rapidly vanishing coastline to Elon Musk so he can turn Pecan Island into a combo Starship blast zone and experimental playground for orbital AI datacenters, because nothing says “we learned from Exxon” like giving the coast to the next extractive billionaire. The land itself? Previously tied up in lawsuits accusing ExxonMobil of helping destroy the wetlands. So naturally, the solution is to swap out oil rigs for mega-rockets and call it innovation. Locals are understandably not thrilled that federal and state officials are trying to bulldoze past the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act to fast-track Musk’s launch site. Pecan Island is crucial habitat for hundreds of millions of migratory birds, including whooping cranes and 40% of North America’s waterfowl, but the new governing philosophy seems to be: if it can’t donate to Republicans or ride a rocket, it’s expendable. Residents who’ve survived a century of oil and gas are now being told that their final years on a drowning coastline should be spent under a barrage of test launches and exhaust plumes. All this is happening while Musk, a top GOP donor, enjoys the fruits of his unelected Trump-endorsed “reorganization” of the federal government, which coincidentally lines up perfectly with regulators tossing environmental rulebooks into the Gulf. People on Pecan Island openly admit “we’re probably doomed” from rising seas and worsening storms, yet even they’d prefer to go in peace rather than have Trump’s favorite oligarch turn their last habitable scraps into a privatized space carnival. If you were wondering what late-stage petro-capitalism plus authoritarian deregulation looks like, it’s this: convert climate sacrifice zones into launchpads and call it progress.
theguardian.comSource Article
#killing-democracy#oligarchy
killing democracy

wisconsin considers putting a coup guy in charge of certifying elections, what could go wrong

Francesca Hong pauses mid-speech while somewhere offstage Tom Tiffany quietly measures the governor’s office for a new set of shredded ballots.

Francesca Hong pauses mid-speech while somewhere offstage Tom Tiffany quietly measures the governor’s office for a new set of shredded ballots.

Wisconsin is having a normal one: Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist chef with a bike tattoo habit, is leading a "messy" Democratic primary while the press corps and party elders obsess over her old tweets about Thanksgiving like that’s the real threat to the republic. Meanwhile, quietly waiting on the other side is Tom Tiffany, a hard-core Trump loyalist who literally voted against certifying the 2020 election and now wants the governor’s job that, fun fact, signs off on the next presidential results.

The state’s outgoing Democratic governor Tony Evers is so spooked by the possibility of an actual grassroots candidate winning that he’s throwing his weight behind a guy who left the race, re-entered it, and is now waving around a memo about why polls can’t be trusted. The establishment’s panic at Hong’s karaoke-and-ramen organizing is framed as "serious electability concerns," while the GOP calmly lines up behind a man who participated in Trump’s attempted constitutional face-plant and is sitting on a pile of cash waiting for November.

So yes, Wisconsin voters are being told the real risk is a single mom pushing universal childcare and public school funding, not the election denier who already tried to help overturn their votes and is now one election away from holding the certification pen. American democracy: still being treated like a suggestion box at a failing chain restaurant.
theguardian.comSource Article
#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

supreme court, meet supreme petty

Pictured: a man who thinks Article III of the Constitution covers ballroom square footage and chandelier placement.

Pictured: a man who thinks Article III of the Constitution covers ballroom square footage and chandelier placement.

Donald Trump has announced that he’s ready to take his latest epic struggle — not over war, not over health care, not over voting rights, but over a ballroom ruling — all the way to the Supreme Court. Because when you’ve stacked the judiciary like a Jenga tower made of Federalist Society résumés, why wouldn’t you treat it as the customer service line for your event space grievances? Instead of accepting a mundane decision like a normal business owner, the sitting president is once again signaling that every personal slight, zoning squabble, and contract dispute is a potential federal case if it bruises his brand. The message to the country is clear: the nation’s highest court is no longer primarily about constitutional questions — it’s about whether Donald J. Trump gets his preferred dance floor. So while Americans juggle rent, healthcare, and the minor issue of preserving democracy, the White House is busy floating the idea that the Supreme Court should moonlight as Mar-a-Lago’s small-claims court. Separation of powers? No, no — it’s more of a VIP list now.
today.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.comAlso: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
national security

trump tries 'semi-negotiating' foreign policy, what could go wrong

Trump explains his bold new 'semi-negotiating' doctrine, presumably right after inventing semi-alliances and semi-war.

Trump explains his bold new 'semi-negotiating' doctrine, presumably right after inventing semi-alliances and semi-war.

Trump has discovered a bold new diplomatic doctrine: "semi-negotiating". Asked about talks with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz — you know, the narrow waterway where a fifth of the world’s oil passes and wars like to start — he announces that the U.S. is only kind of negotiating. Not fully. Just casually texting, seeing other crises, not ready to commit. American foreign policy has been downgraded from superpower strategy to a relationship status on Facebook. Instead of a coherent plan to keep the global economy from faceplanting, we get vibes and hedging from the guy who thinks "maximum pressure" is a substitute for an actual Iran policy. Iran has a list of concrete demands to reopen the Strait; Trump has a list of adjectives about how strong, tough, and very in-control he is. While serious governments are trying to avoid miscalculation in one of the most dangerous regions on Earth, Washington’s official position appears to be: we’ll kinda negotiate, unless Trump gets bored, distracted, or needs a new crisis for a rally line. So oil markets, allies, and U.S. sailors are all now living in the world’s worst group project, where the guy who didn’t read the brief insists on leading the presentation. Semi-negotiations over a potential flashpoint with Iran: it’s not quite diplomacy, not quite war, but it’s definitely fully reckless.
today.comSource ArticleAlso: nbcnews.comAlso: nbcnews.com
#national-security#full-stupid

Sunday, August 9, 2026

corruption

trump taps ballroom project fixer as america’s top in-house lawyer

Artist’s rendering of the new White House ballroom: half Versailles, half evidence exhibit.

Artist’s rendering of the new White House ballroom: half Versailles, half evidence exhibit.

Donald Trump has promoted Will Scharf, the staff secretary who helped push through his $400m White House ballroom vanity project, to be White House counsel and assistant to the president, because why separate the roles of "personal fixer" and "government lawyer" when you can just mash them together like a constitutional smoothie? Scharf, a former federal prosecutor who already represented Trump in multiple cases up to the supreme court, also chaired the National Capital Planning Commission — the same body that approved Trump’s palace-addition-before-appeals-court-said-stop-building-the-palace. The timing is almost subtle by Trump standards: just months before midterms that could hand Democrats subpoena power, he installs a loyalist in the office that coordinates with the DOJ, handles pardons, vets judicial nominations, and, crucially, manages congressional investigations and lawsuits against the president in his official capacity. So the guy who helped ram through the ballroom is now in charge of dealing with the fallout from the courtroom that just told Trump he can’t build it without Congress. Who better to advise on separation of powers than the dude who just tried to pour concrete on top of it? Trump is already vowing to take the ballroom case to the supreme court, meaning Scharf may soon get to reprise his role as Trump’s personal litigator — this time while drawing a taxpayer-funded salary explicitly meant for serving the institution of the presidency, not the ego of the current occupant. The east side of the White House is sprouting a half-built monument to self-dealing, and now the counsel’s office is getting its own renovation: from legal adviser to the executive branch to full-service damage-control shop for one guy’s construction hobby and looming investigations.
theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.comAlso: theguardian.com
#corruption#killing-democracy
forever grifting

trump helpfully posts racist attack ad for opponent, opponent says 'thanks'

Side-by-side photos of two couples: one that turned the White House into a cash register, and one that had pancakes and would like you to afford groceries.

Side-by-side photos of two couples: one that turned the White House into a cash register, and one that had pancakes and would like you to afford groceries.

Donald Trump logged onto Truth Social, squinted at two photos, and announced there are "Two VERY DIFFERENT America's [sic]": one showing him and Melania, the other showing Abdul El-Sayed and his hijab-wearing wife. Subtle. It’s the same old birther-era routine: slap a Muslim name and a headscarf on screen, crank up the base’s fear receptors, and call it a campaign strategy. This is what passes for policy in the Mar-a-Lago Politburo.

El-Sayed, inconveniently for Trump, can talk in complete sentences and decided to just… agree. Yes, there are two Americas: one where the "overlords" pretend to hate each other while actually uniting to make billions off public office, and one where people eat pancakes and would like to afford groceries, healthcare, and breathable air. He even put a number on it: $2.2bn hoovered up from Trump’s presidency, because nothing screams "populist champion" like using the Oval Office as your personal ATM.

Republicans are now branding El-Sayed "the most radical Senate candidate in America" for believing in clean water and not overturning elections, while Trump lovingly rolls out his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, the way he used to linger on "Hussein" for Obama. The message is clear: if your name doesn’t fit on a Bass Pro Shop rewards card, you’re a national security threat. El-Sayed’s response: it’s not radical to want health care, democracy, and non-poisoned lungs; it’s radical to torch elections and monetize the presidency like it’s another failed casino.

So yes, there are two Americas. One is a multiethnic democracy trying, badly, to function. The other is a geriatric reality-TV kleptocracy where the president calls opponents "full of shit" to roaring crowds while quietly converting public office into a $2.2bn side hustle. Trump keeps demanding voters choose which America they want. Abdul El-Sayed is just helpfully pointing out which one is currently draining their bank accounts.

theguardian.comSource Article
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
forever grifting

trump discovers even taylor swift has boundaries

Trump staring at a silent TikTok, wondering why the pop stars he publicly insults aren’t thrilled to be the soundtrack to ICE raids.

Trump staring at a silent TikTok, wondering why the pop stars he publicly insults aren’t thrilled to be the soundtrack to ICE raids.

The Trump White House’s latest propaganda innovation was to soundtrack ICE raids, fireworks photo-ops, and assorted strongman cosplay with songs from Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Katy Perry, Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, and even Kenny Loggins — all without consent, of course. The idea was simple: steal popular music, slap it over state and campaign videos, and then pretend the inevitable artist backlash is proof that Hollywood elites are persecuting Dear Leader. State media, but make it TikTok. This time, the clown car screeched to a halt when Swift songs mysteriously vanished from Trump and White House social posts, leaving the videos blessedly silent. The campaign had used Swift’s "August" to mock her and bragged that she’d be “super excited” — a bold claim about a woman Trump has publicly declared he “HATES” and then creepily insisted is no longer "HOT" because he said so. Authoritarian vibes with middle school bully energy is quite a combo. Other artists actually did respond, and they didn’t exactly thank the president for the exposure. Ariana Grande asked the administration to stop using her music for “barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense” after it was plastered over a montage of ICE agents handcuffing people, while Sabrina Carpenter called an immigration raid video “evil and disgusting” and demanded her work not be used to “benefit your inhumane agenda.” The White House, having discovered that copyright and basic human decency still technically exist, now has a growing archive of silent propaganda clips — which, to be fair, is the most honest they’ve ever been.
theguardian.comSource Article
#forever-grifting#trumps-america
killing democracy

democrats wargame how to stop the guy already bragging about rigging it

Democrats huddle in a windowless room to simulate election doomsday scenarios while Trump just skips the simulation phase and goes straight to threatening TV licenses and demanding control of everyone’s voter rolls.

Democrats huddle in a windowless room to simulate election doomsday scenarios while Trump just skips the simulation phase and goes straight to threatening TV licenses and demanding control of everyone’s voter rolls.

Democrats are now literally wargaming how to keep elections functioning because the sitting president won’t stop screaming that democracy is fake unless he wins. In a DC conference room, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, Raphael Warnock, Elissa Slotkin and friends sat through tabletop scenarios featuring AI deepfakes, death threats to election workers, and armed guys in tactical cosplay showing up at polling places – also known as "the Republican base, but with better filters."

While experts walk senators through synthetic videos and firebombed drop boxes, Donald Trump is out on primetime TV insisting China stole voter data for 220 million Americans, that 2020 was rigged against him, and that only his "Save America Act" (banning mail-in ballots nationwide and jacking up ID requirements) can fix it. Intelligence reports? His own government already said China didn’t interfere, but Trump’s solution is to threaten broadcast licenses of networks that won’t air his rant live and to push federal oversight of state voter rolls via OMB and potential FCC punishment for inconvenient coverage. Totally normal stuff from a guy who swears the real threat is "election fraud."

Protect Democracy, Democracy Forward, Marc Elias, Eric Holder and others are basically running a democracy disaster drill: what if Trump withholds funds from states that won’t hand over voter rolls, what if DHS and the National Guard suddenly materialize at polling places, what if vigilantes stake out ballot boxes and start doxxing license plates? The cheery takeaway: this is an "all-hands-on-deck" moment. Translation: the Constitution is still technically there, but the president is busy treating it like a suggestion while his allies test how far they can push fascism before someone in Congress finds a spine.

theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.comAlso: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#fascism
imperialism

netanyahu rejects trump’s 15-point fantasy fanfic for gaza

Trump unveils his Gaza 'Board of Peace' plan while the actual parties to the conflict quietly mark it "return to sender."

Trump unveils his Gaza 'Board of Peace' plan while the actual parties to the conflict quietly mark it "return to sender."

Donald Trump proudly rolled out a 15-point "monumental" Gaza peace plan featuring his very serious-sounding "Board of Peace" – a sort of HOA for war zones that apparently declared Hamas and other groups "completely disarmed" by sheer power of press release. Hamas, for its part, said it would hand over heavy weapons if Israel stopped bombing Gaza and pulled its forces out, which is a bit of a snag when the bombs are still falling. Benjamin Netanyahu has now formally torched the whole thing, announcing that Israel "rejects the 15-point document" and will not withdraw a single soldier until Hamas is "genuinely" disarmed – not just the imaginary disarmament Trump already took a victory lap for. So Trump’s big foreign policy win lasted about as long as a Truth Social post before the lawyers call, and his closest ally is openly saying, "Yeah, we’re not doing that." While Trump’s team floats ideas and Netanyahu politely explains which ones belong in the shredder, far-right members of Israel’s coalition like Itamar Ben Gvir are demanding the plan be killed outright and sneering that the draft is "not acceptable." So the Trump White House has managed the rare feat of producing a Gaza plan that Hamas says it’s ready to implement, Israel’s far right wants to burn, and Netanyahu is slow-walking into oblivion. Diplomacy, Trump-style: declare peace, invent a board, ignore reality, and then watch your "historic" deal get rejected on live TV by the very government you keep calling your greatest success story.
bbc.co.ukSource ArticleAlso: bbc.co.ukAlso: theguardian.com
#imperialism#full-stupid

Saturday, August 8, 2026

anti science

super el niño to stress-test all the climate denial

Waves audition for the role of ‘future coastline’ while policymakers continue to debate whether water is real.

Waves audition for the role of ‘future coastline’ while policymakers continue to debate whether water is real.

Climate scientists are politely screaming that a "super" El Niño – likely the strongest of the century – is lining up to dump a wet, flood-prone winter on the US west and south-east coasts. California’s shoreline, already chewed away by past storms and rising seas, is now looking at 70%-100% odds of above-average rainfall, higher coastal flooding risk, and a fun new round of cliff-under-cutting just in case beachfront McMansions were feeling secure.

History says this goes badly: 1982-83 wrecked homes up and down the coast, 1997-98 brought massive flooding and deaths, 2015-16 shredded beaches. Scientists are crystal clear that this El Niño won’t magically fix the south-west drought – it would have to be so wet it causes destructive flooding to even make a dent. Florida and the Gulf/east coasts are queued up for more tornadoes and flood events, because of course they are.

Researchers keep stressing that El Niño is a natural cycle, but what it’s about to do is act as a live-fire drill for the climate future Republicans and Trump spent years pretending doesn’t exist. Temporary sea-level rise, overwhelmed infrastructure, and exposed vulnerabilities are the preview; unchecked warming is the full feature. The experts call it a "stress test" for California. The political translation: this is what happens when you let oil lobbyists write climate policy and treat NOAA like an optional extra.
theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.comAlso: theguardian.com
#anti-science#killing-democracy
killing democracy

senate passes 'please stop wrecking everything until after the election' bill

Mitch McConnell and friends bravely voting to keep the government running just long enough to get through the election before the next shutdown cliff they scheduled themselves.

Mitch McConnell and friends bravely voting to keep the government running just long enough to get through the election before the next shutdown cliff they scheduled themselves.

The Senate just passed a 90-6 continuing resolution whose main purpose is not to fund bold new programs, but to slap child locks on the Trump administration’s favorite toys. The bill keeps the lights on until 11 December and, crucially, blocks a White House OMB rule that Democrats say would let Trump yank federal grants whenever he feels like it—you know, like a normal functioning democracy definitely doesn’t do. It also shuts down a handy "loophole" that would have let the White House siphon money from other programs and quietly shovel it to Border Patrol. This sudden outbreak of bipartisan sanity comes after a year of shutdown cosplay: Democrats triggered the longest funding lapse in US history trying (and failing) to save ACA subsidies, then partially shut DHS in protest after federal agents killed two US citizens during an immigration dragnet in Minneapolis. That standoff ended with a "compromise" where Congress funded DHS except the worst deportation outfits—only for Republicans to then ram through a party-line bill handing ICE and CBP guaranteed funding for the rest of Trump’s presidency, no reforms allowed. So now the Senate is patting itself on the back for passing a bill whose big achievement is slightly slowing Trump’s grant-cancellation spree and border-cop slush fund for a few months, while the permanent mass-deportation budget hums along in the background. Truly, the system works.
theguardian.comSource Article
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#lawlessness
killing democracy

cdc pivots from disease control to womb control

The CDC’s new logo concept: a microscope, a fetus, and Josh Hawley peering through your medical records.

The CDC’s new logo concept: a microscope, a fetus, and Josh Hawley peering through your medical records.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a new mission: less ‘controlling and preventing diseases,’ more counting how many uteruses have displeased Josh Hawley this quarter. Newly confirmed CDC director Erica Schwartz — praised by Trump as a “STAR,” which in this administration reads like a warning label — told Hawley that “abortion surveillance is absolutely a critical component” of the agency’s work and promised to make sure states aren’t “hiding” abortions and that the CDC can identify “true abortions.” Because nothing says evidence-based public health like treating pregnancy as a potential crime scene. Schwartz, a former deputy surgeon general, insists she’ll “never betray the science,” but she’s already speaking fluent theocratic cop: adopting Hawley’s framing of abortions being “committed,” fretting about blue states not feeding enough data into the federal womb database, and happily endorsing the idea that the CDC should help distinguish between acceptable emergency care and punishable reproductive choices. Meanwhile, pregnant people are already dying preventable deaths because doctors in ban states are terrified of being prosecuted — so obviously the solution is more surveillance and more fear. Over at the Justice Department, acting attorney general Todd Blanche hopped on a private call with religious groups to promise a nationwide rollback of abortion access, complaining that dismantling what’s left of reproductive rights is “taking longer than we want.” He vowed “victory… soon… and permanent,” describing a plan to restrict abortion pills nationwide like he’s selling a timeshare in Gilead. Put it together and you get the Trump administration’s latest public health innovation: a federally assisted, data-driven, permanently surveilled pregnancy regime where the CDC tracks your uterus and the DOJ stands by to prosecute it. Welcome to the new “pro-life” America, where the fetus gets privacy and the pregnant person gets a case number.
theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#pro-life#forever-grifting
killing democracy

minnesota gop considers electing a mypillow to public office

Mike Lindell, seen here auditioning to be the first governor whose policy platform is 60% foam density and 40% voter-fraud PowerPoints.

Mike Lindell, seen here auditioning to be the first governor whose policy platform is 60% foam density and 40% voter-fraud PowerPoints.

The Minnesota GOP is reportedly torn over whether to hand its gubernatorial nomination to Mike Lindell, the "MyPillow" CEO who turned mass-election-denial into a full-time performance art piece. He's running on a straight Trump platform, because of course the party that tried to overturn an election is now workshopping a sequel: January 6, But Make It Scandinavian.

Some Republicans are worried that Lindell’s very public devotion to Trump might hurt them in November, which is adorable, since that same devotion has been the party’s entire personality for six years. The internal debate boils down to this: do they want a normal extremist who quietly undermines democracy, or the guy who live-streams it from a hotel ballroom next to a stack of discount pillows?

Either way, Minnesota voters are being asked to choose between ordinary conservative dysfunction and a man who spent the last election cycle trying to prove that Excel spreadsheets are a deep-state psyop. The Trump movement keeps insisting it’s not a cult, yet here we are, watching a major party seriously consider putting the MyPillow guy in charge of a state government. Sweet dreams, democracy.

npr.orgSource ArticleAlso: npr.orgAlso: npr.org
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
imperialism

trump state department discovers british politics, starts paying to ruin it

The US embassy in London, pausing briefly from hosting receptions to see how much MAGA you can cram into a Magna Carta anniversary grant.

The US embassy in London, pausing briefly from hosting receptions to see how much MAGA you can cram into a Magna Carta anniversary grant.

The Trump administration has decided that wrecking American democracy just isn’t a big enough canvas, so the US embassy in London is now dangling up to $500,000 a pop for "public education" projects that celebrate "shared civilizational values" like freedom of speech, limited government, and—very specifically—MAGA talking points. The scheme, cutely branded “Liberty Under Law: The Shared Anglo-American Tradition,” is supposedly about the Magna Carta, which famously limited tyrants—something Trump has treated more as a to-do list than a warning label. Even better, the program’s priority is projects that can measurably move "public discourse" and media coverage, i.e. government-funded narrative engineering dressed up as civics class. This new initiative comes on top of a separate $12m pot the State Department is planning to funnel to UK outfits founded by Jacob Rees-Mogg and Toby Young, because if you’re building a transatlantic reactionary alliance, why not go straight to the discount bin of British conservatism. Current and former US diplomats are quietly horrified, noting that it’s not normal for "public diplomacy" to be this openly tailored to America First culture-war obsessions, or for the embassy to brag about creating "UK-originated narratives" to sell MAGA propaganda back home. Meanwhile, the same embassy is also offering grants to "ensure support for Israel’s right to defend itself" and to counter China, with language that skips the usual polite fiction of "understanding US policy" and jumps straight to "persuade them to agree with us." When accused of meddling in British democracy, the embassy helpfully responded that it had shut down all that terrible Biden-era "climate justice" and LGBTQ stuff, which apparently wasn’t meddling, and replaced it with ideologically purified MAGA-flavored influence ops, which somehow is. So yes: the administration being sued by the American Bar Association for lawyer intimidation is now lecturing the UK about the "rule of law" and "ordered liberty," while European legal groups compare Trump’s attacks on attorneys to the road to fascism. Nothing says "shared values" like exporting your creeping authoritarian project as a heritage-themed grant opportunity.
theguardian.comSource Article
#imperialism#killing-democracy

Friday, August 7, 2026

killing democracy

trump doj to prosecutors: nice career you had there, shame about the first amendment

Pam Bondi hits send on an email firing a prosecutor over a six‑year‑old blog post, bravely defending the president from the mortal threat of archived WordPress takes.

Pam Bondi hits send on an email firing a prosecutor over a six‑year‑old blog post, bravely defending the president from the mortal threat of archived WordPress takes.

Donald Trump’s justice department has once again discovered a bold new legal theory: the First Amendment is adorable, but only for people who praise Dear Leader. Federal prosecutor Will Rosenzweig was two weeks away from trying a multimillion‑dollar Medicare fraud case when conservative influencer and part‑time informant Natalie Winters dug up his long‑dead personal blog – a mix of travel, sports, and the unforgivable crime of criticizing Donald Trump – and blasted it out on social media, helpfully tagging senior DOJ officials like she was filing a customer service complaint with an authoritarian regime.

Less than three hours later, while Rosenzweig was out of town with his family observing Rosh Hashanah, he got an email personally signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi firing him. No hearing, no process, just straight from "Happy New Year" to "you’re fired for thoughtcrime." This, mind you, was a prosecutor who had returned millions to taxpayers fighting healthcare fraud and was doing so well they’d just promised him a special parking spot. In Trumpworld, that apparently translates to: excellent at your job, but insufficiently worshipful of the guy who lost the popular vote twice.

The lawsuit makes the subtext explicit: the firing was part of a broader purge of prosecutors who worked on Trump-related investigations or were insufficiently loyal to the MAGA line. Rosenzweig’s complaint torches the idea that Americans must muzzle themselves forever on the off chance they might one day work for the government, noting that conditioning public employment on political loyalty is more Havana and Caracas than Hamilton and Madison. The current DOJ, of course, declined to comment, presumably because "we fired him for hurting the president’s feelings" doesn’t test well in front of a federal judge.

So here we are: a Justice Department that treats old blog posts as disqualifying heresy, while actual Medicare fraudsters were about to go on trial thanks to the guy they just canned. Rule of law under Trump means the law rules you, and Trump rules the law. Everyone else can choose: keep your job, or keep your opinions.

theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.comAlso: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#fascism