project freedom pauses, global economy continues screaming into a pillow
Map helpfully showing where President Trump and Marco Rubio decided to rerun the Iraq War DLC as a maritime choke-point minigame.
Trump has "paused" Project Freedom — the US operation to escort stranded ships through the Strait of Hormuz — for a "short period of time", allegedly by "mutual agreement" with Iran and at the request of Pakistan, which is now apparently our State Department. Iranian state media is calling it a victory, because when you launch Operation Epic Fury with Israel, help shut down 20% of the world’s oil flow, then quietly hit the pause button while keeping your own blockade in place, it does look a lot like you picked a fight with the global economy and lost the rematch to reality.
#killing-democracy#imperialism#national-security
trump discovers you can kill science without technically cutting the budget
The Trump-era NIH funding process, seen here in the wild: a shiny budget line on paper and a lab bench sitting empty in real life.
The Trump administration has apparently unlocked a new level of sabotage: fund the NIH on paper, starve it in practice. After Congress — in a rare moment of bipartisanship and basic human decency — restored billions in research money for 2026, the administration responded by just... not really giving it out. Former NIH officials say the agency is now handing out fewer grants, stretched over more years with bigger dollar amounts, so everything looks fine in a pie chart while entire fields of research quietly flatline.
Instead of openly attacking the "crown jewel" of the federal government, they're running a passive-aggressive demolition. NIH "forecasts" for future research funding are being left up like ghost listings on a dead real estate site — 205 of 336 are past their promised posting dates, never turned into real grant calls. To scientists, it looks like opportunity; to the administration, it's just a screensaver.
On the ground, this means cancer labs like Rachael Sirianni’s are laying people off, closing down promising pediatric brain cancer projects, and leaving once-busy benches as little memorials to the research that could have been. Years of taxpayer-funded progress toward saving kids with metastatic tumors are now politely driven into a brick wall, while HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon shrugs and insists everything is just back to "typical funding patterns" — if by typical you mean weaponizing bureaucracy so children’s cancer therapies lose a race against the calendar.
#anti-science#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
eeoc bravely defends oppressed white guy from new york times
The Trump-era EEOC heroically charging into battle to protect America’s most vulnerable population: white male editors at the New York Times.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new use for civil-rights law: protecting a faceless white male editor at the New York Times from the unspeakable horror of not getting promoted. The EEOC, which traditionally exists to fight discrimination, has now been repurposed as a sort of taxpayer-funded anti-DEI SWAT team, suing the NYT because its diversity efforts allegedly hurt one guy’s shot at becoming deputy real estate editor. Yes, democracy is crumbling, but the real emergency is who edits the condo listings.
The lawsuit reads like a Fox News chyron with legal citations, solemnly informing us that by trying to increase the percentage of non-white leaders, the Times would, tragically, reduce the percentage of white ones. This mathematical breakthrough apparently constitutes “malice” and “reckless indifference” to the editor’s federally protected right to stay on top of the office food chain. The Times calls the whole thing a politically motivated stunt and notes that the EEOC “deviated from standard practices in highly unusual ways” to build its case — translation: the civil-rights cops showed up with a Trump-branded script and went looking for a defendant.
This isn’t happening in a vacuum. FCC chair Brendan Carr just tried to use an investigation into Disney’s DEI programs as a pretext to yank ABC station licenses early — conveniently right after Donald and Melania Trump demanded Jimmy Kimmel’s head for telling a bad joke. So now we’ve got the EEOC and FCC functioning as the president’s personal media complaint department, where “free speech” means Trump can say anything and news organizations can say only what keeps them out of regulatory crosshairs. Authoritarianism doesn’t always arrive with tanks; sometimes it shows up as a lawsuit about who gets to be deputy real estate editor.
#killing-democracy#fascism
white house debates whether to turbo‑charge the deportation machine or just floor it
DHS officials thoughtfully deciding which communities to terrorize first, all in the name of "law and order."
The Trump team is reportedly locked in "heated clashes" over how exactly to supercharge mass deportations, which is a bit like arguing over whether your police state should come in matte black or glossy. DHS officials, ICE brass, and White House loyalists are busy workshopping logistics for rounding up and expelling as many people as possible, as fast as possible, while pretending this is just normal "law enforcement" and not a campaign promise to turn cruelty into a governing philosophy.
While they bicker over tactics, the fallout is already visible: kids in detention centers with "heart wrenching" stories, an ICE director bailing out, agents getting charged for allegedly pointing guns at random drivers in Minneapolis, a Hmong American man’s arrest being investigated as a possible kidnapping, and a family in California mourning a man shot by ICE. So yes, the deportation agenda is going great: the bureaucracy is a mess, the human rights record reads like a warning label, and the only real disagreement inside the administration is how hard to hit the gas on turning the country into a fear factory.
The public line remains that this is about "security" and "order"; the observable reality is a sprawling enforcement apparatus that keeps racking up civil-rights complaints, violence, and resignations. But as long as the base gets its televised perp walks and Trump gets to brag about record deportations, the internal chaos and collateral damage are just background noise in the latest episode of America’s longest-running reality show: Trumps-America™, now with more raids, more guns, and fewer due-process vibes.
#anti-immigration#killing-democracy#lawlessness
the crime now is seashells
Trump listens intently, possibly trying to hear what the seashell is saying about him.
The Secret Service arrested an FAA contractor who allegedly used his work computer to Google "I am going to kill Donald John Trump" and how to sneak a gun into a federal facility, then politely asked IT to delete his search history like this was a bad day on Pornhub, not a federal crime. He also allegedly emailed the White House from his personal computer to announce his intent to "neutralize/kill" Trump, because subtlety is dead and so are competent plots.
On its own this is just one unhinged guy with three guns and zero operational security. The bigger picture: the DOJ says there have been three other prosecutions for Trump threats this week, including former FBI director James Comey being charged over an Instagram photo of seashells that prosecutors claim was a threat. So yes, we’ve hit the part of the authoritarian arc where the president’s Justice Department is hunting for coded messages in beach decor while bragging about "zero tolerance" and "maximum punishments" for speech, even as actual violent extremists marinate happily in the background.
Meanwhile, a South Carolina man was arrested after literally writing "Headed to Wsh to kill the pres" on his car like a rolling confession, and a Florida man pleaded guilty to threatening Trump and other officials. All this comes less than two weeks after a gunman stormed the White House Correspondents’ Dinner allegedly trying to kill Trump and other government officials. The country is spiraling, the temperature is off the charts, and the administration’s answer is to turn threat prosecutions into a loyalty spectacle where an ex-FBI director’s seashell post gets treated like the Zapruder film.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
rfk jr to america: have you tried yoga instead of serotonin
RFK Jr thoughtfully explaining that America’s real problem isn’t poverty, trauma, or lack of care—it’s serotonin, obviously.
The Trump administration has decided that what America’s mental health crisis really needs is less medicine and more Make America Healthy Again branding, letting RFK Jr turn federal health policy into his personal TED Talk on vibes. As Trump’s health secretary, Kennedy is rolling out a plan to "curb psychiatric overprescribing" of antidepressants, a category of drugs he’s been publicly attacking for years while claiming, without a shred of credible evidence, that they’re linked to school shootings. Nothing says "serious evidence-based reform" like building national health policy around the YouTube comments section.
According to HHS, this is all about "deprescribing when clinically indicated" and making sure meds aren’t the "default"—which sounds reasonable right up until you remember the guy in charge keeps implying SSRIs are the secret sauce behind mass shootings. Providers are getting letters nudging them toward non-drug options like therapy, diet, exercise and social connection, while the administration quietly makes it easier to get paid for tapering people off meds. Meanwhile, a 2025 survey says nearly 17% of Americans use antidepressants and a "significant proportion" oppose restricting access—so naturally the government is sprinting toward restricting access.
The American Psychiatric Association is doing that strained, professional version of screaming into a pillow, politely "welcoming" the attention to mental health while pointing out that the real crisis is lack of access to care, workforce shortages and not enough beds, not hordes of doctors recklessly throwing Zoloft at people for sport. They warn that "deprescribing alone" is nowhere near a solution and that stigmatizing psychiatric meds isn’t medicine, it’s politics in a lab coat. But in Trump’s Washington, as long as the press release says "evidence-based" enough times, you can launder a culture-war crusade into health policy and call it reform.
#healthcare#anti-science
congress to spend $1 billion securing trump’s free* ballroom
Artist’s rendering of Trump’s new taxpayer-assisted panic ballroom, where the chandeliers are bulletproof and the accountability is not.
Donald Trump’s "gift" to the American people — a 90,000 square-foot White House ballroom he swore would use “not one penny” of government money — has now magically produced a $1 billion taxpayer tab for "security enhancements." Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley quietly tucked the billion-dollar ballroom booster shot into a Republican-only reconciliation bill supposedly about immigration and border security, because nothing screams border enforcement like underwriting Trump’s party bunker.
The bill earmarks the money for "security adjustments and upgrades" inside the White House perimeter fence, conveniently tied to the East Wing Modernization Project — which Trump already bulldozed to make room for his mega-ballroom, financed by a who’s-who of corporate donors eager to impress the guy who hands out regulatory favors. Now, after an assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the administration insists the ballroom is "vital" to national security, complete with drone-resistant materials, underground medical facilities, and a bomb shelter. From "no cost to taxpayers" to "pay for my hardened gala bunker" in under a year.
Democrats like Richard Blumenthal and Chris Coons are calling it what it is — a bait-and-switch wrapped in a security briefing, with the public kept conveniently in the dark about why this glorified panic room costs more than some countries' defense budgets. Senate Democrats plan to force an up-or-down vote on the ballroom line item, which at least means Republicans will have to go on record explaining why border security now includes underwriting Trump’s luxury apocalypse event space. America may not get universal health care, but the president’s ballroom will apparently survive a drone strike.
#corruption#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
schrödinger’s nukes: rubio pretends israel’s arsenal is hypothetical
Marco Rubio carefully not seeing Israel’s nuclear weapons, as required by centuries-old Washington tradition and this administration’s allergy to telling Congress anything useful.
House Democrats have discovered a shocking new Trump-era innovation in foreign policy: waging a war "to stop Iran from getting a nuke" while refusing to admit that the country you're fighting alongside already has them. Joaquin Castro and 29 other Democrats politely informed Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Congress might, just possibly, need to know who in the Middle East actually has nuclear weapons before rubber-stamping whatever escalation the White House dreams up.
Rubio and the rest of Trump’s diplomacy-by-cosplay crew are clinging to Washington’s decades-long game of "Israel’s nuclear arsenal doesn’t exist if I squint hard enough," even as former US officials like Robert Gates and Israeli ministers have basically said the quiet part out loud. One Israeli minister even floated nuking Gaza as "one of the possibilities" – but sure, let’s pretend we’re in an epistemological fog. Meanwhile, the administration openly acknowledges nukes in the UK, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, China, and North Korea, but when it comes to Israel, everyone suddenly develops amnesia and a classification fetish.
The Democrats point out that this officially sanctioned pretending isn’t just insulting; it shreds any pretense of a coherent nonproliferation policy. Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman is already on record saying he’ll chase the bomb if Iran gets one, but the Trump-Rubio line is that transparency would be the real problem here. So Congress is left trying to oversee a nuclear tinderbox while the executive branch insists the matches are classified.
#killing-democracy#national-security
secret service adds 'public masturbation' to elite skill set
Secret Service perimeter security, now with 100% more "please avert your eyes".
The Secret Service, that storied guardian of presidents and norms, has branched out into hallway masturbation at the Miami DoubleTree. Officer John Andrew Spillman, fresh off an external screening detail at a Trump-attended PGA event, was allegedly found naked and "masturbating at the end of the hallway" on the sixth floor, after reportedly following a woman from the lobby to her room area. Guests, understandably not thrilled by the surprise security exhibition, retreated to their room "in fear of their lives" while hotel security and deputies confirmed the world's least reassuring protective detail.
Agency brass quickly announced that this is not the sort of vigorous self-initiative they encourage, calling the conduct "unacceptable" and placing Spillman on administrative leave while they conduct a "complete and thorough" investigation. Translation: paperwork will be generated. Spillman was booked on a $1,000 bond and expected to walk shortly thereafter, because of course the guy who allegedly turned a convention center floor into his personal adult theater gets out faster than someone who shoplifts groceries.
This little episode arrives just over a week after a separate incident where another man allegedly shot a Secret Service agent while trying to storm the White House Correspondents' Dinner where Trump was present. So yes, the agency responsible for shielding the president from danger is currently juggling getting shot at fancy dinners and public indecency arrests at airport hotels. The phrase "professionalism and integrity" is doing a heroic amount of work in their press statements.
#perverts#lawlessness
trumpworld insists barron isn’t a time traveler, just surrounded by people stuck in 2016
Lara Trump carefully explaining that time travel isn’t real, unlike UFO murder plots, illegal wars, and her career in Republican leadership.
Lara Trump has bravely stepped forward to debunk the real threat to the republic: a meme that Barron Trump is a time traveler. On her podcast episode "Is Barron Trump a Time Traveler" (spoiler: no), she concludes he can't be one because she can't "name one time traveller". With forensic reasoning like that, it’s no mystery how she got a Fox News show and a top RNC job—pure merit, definitely not at all the byproduct of being married to Eric Trump.
Once she's finished scolding the internet for loving "conspiracies or things that are very far-fetched like that", the column politely notes that her father-in-law’s entire rise was powered by conspiracy culture: birtherism, UFO-tinged plots about dead nuclear and space scientists, and now a House Oversight investigation led by James Comer chasing a "sinister connection" that falls apart faster than a Truth Social SPAC. Meanwhile, the same administration flogging this nonsense is quietly running an expensive and illegal war on Iran, driving up the cost of living, sending health insurance costs soaring, and hoping everyone stares at UFO fanfic instead of the Epstein files where Trump’s name keeps popping up.
Authoritarian leaders using conspiracies to attack enemies, distract from policy disasters, and undermine institutions isn’t a bug; it’s the operating system. As one study notes, this is standard strongman behavior—Trumpworld just wraps it in Fox hits and bad children’s books. So no, Barron isn’t a time traveler. But his family has absolutely mastered bending reality, law, and basic cause-and-effect into something that looks a lot like a World Within a World—where accountability is imaginary and the only science that matters is how fast you can launder a scandal into a hashtag.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump turns dc golf course into his own toxic waste bunker
East Potomac Golf Links, now featuring Trump’s signature course hazards: sand traps, water hazards, and trace amounts of lead and chromium.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that if it’s going to poison democracy, it might as well poison the fairways too. Rubble from Trump’s $400m White House East Wing demolition — the one he bulldozed to build a mega-ballroom for himself — was dumped at DC’s public East Potomac golf course and, shockingly, tests show it’s laced with lead, chromium, and other toxic metals. So the East Wing was so contaminated it had to be destroyed…but the debris is somehow safe enough to sprinkle over a municipal course where kids play. Very normal government decision-making here.
A federal judge, Ana Reyes, compared the whole mess to an episode of Parks and Recreation, except this is the version where Leslie Knope is replaced by a guy who terminates a 50-year lease with a nonprofit steward of public courses so he can "dramatically remake" the waterfront into an exclusive championship course and a "national garden of American heroes" slash donor magnet. The National Park Service is insisting there’s no big renovation imminent, while simultaneously doing “safety assessments” and watching fundraising documents go out with glossy renderings and cash-begging copy. The judge politely noted that when you’re already sending out pledge packets, you’re a bit past the "we’re just thinking about it" stage.
Meanwhile, preservation advocates are pointing out the obvious: the administration first claimed the East Wing had to be demolished because it was full of contaminants, and now the line is that the contaminated debris they trucked to a public course isn’t a problem. The course is supposed to be open and accessible to everyone; instead, it’s becoming a toxic billboard for Trump’s ongoing effort to privatize public space into luxury playgrounds for his friends — with the added bonus of possibly poisoning the locals. It’s infrastructure week, but make it radioactive.
#forever-grifting#corruption
title ix becomes title nope: trump doj hunts trans women at smith
The Department of Education bravely shields America’s young women from the unspeakable horror of inclusive admissions policies.
The Trump education department has decided that the real crisis in American schools isn’t guns, crumbling buildings, or student debt – it’s Smith College letting trans women exist. The Office for Civil Rights proudly announced it is investigating the women’s college for the crime of admitting, quote, “biological males into women’s intimate spaces,” because nothing says “limited government” like Washington micromanaging who can pee in a Northampton dorm bathroom.
Assistant secretary for civil rights Kimberly Richey helpfully clarified that Title IX’s single-sex exemption only applies to "biological sex difference, not subjective gender identity" – a legally creative way of saying: we will rewrite civil-rights law on the fly to match the vibes of the Christian right. Smith, which has admitted trans women since 2015 after, you know, actually talking to students and alumnae, is now being told that educating women of all kinds means it might not count as a women’s college anymore. Schrödinger’s woman: female enough for discrimination, not female enough for protection.
This latest stunt slots neatly into the administration’s ongoing project of driving trans people out of every public space: bans on trans military service, lawsuits against states that let trans kids play sports, attempts to kill gender‑affirming care, and passport rules that must match birth sex. Now, with an assist from rightwing group “Defending Education” – whose entire business model is screaming “indoctrination” at any school that acknowledges marginalized people exist – the federal government is using Title IX, a law meant to fight sex discrimination, as a weapon to enforce it instead. Truly a bold new era of civil rights: everyone is equal, as long as they’re the right kind of woman.
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration#full-stupid
trump burns the planet, lefties bring a coupon book
A neat stack of glossy "Stop Greed, Build Green" booklets, bravely attempting to counter an administration whose climate plan is basically "Stop Rules, Build Floodplains."
While Trump’s EPA is out back chainsawing what’s left of environmental protections, a bunch of progressives are doing something wildly off-brand for Washington: connecting climate policy to whether people can actually afford to live. The Climate and Community Institute (CCI) rolled out a "Stop Greed, Build Green" agenda that says the quiet part out loud — the climate crisis is directly jacking up rent, food, power bills and general economic misery, while Trump’s donors swim in record profits and deregulation champagne.
Instead of the usual "sorry about the floods, here’s a tax credit in 2037" routine, they’re pitching green economic populism: public power, union jobs, and using decarbonization to cut everyday costs instead of padding shareholder yachts. Their polling shows that 70% of voters — including a solid chunk of Republicans Trump pretends to speak for — think climate action can lower the cost of living. So naturally, the Trump braintrust’s climate strategy is to torch regulations, supercharge corporate price-gouging, and then scream about gas stoves on Fox while people choose between rent and an electric bill.
Naomi Klein, union leaders, DSA folks, and assorted lefty policy nerds are running around New York and DC trying to build a working-class climate agenda that doesn’t end with Exxon writing the bill. Meanwhile, the administration’s contribution to climate "policy" is to weaponize the cost-of-living crisis against any green measure, then blame "woke environmentalists" for the disasters its own deregulation is making worse. One side is trying to rewire the economy; the other is busy yanking out the smoke detectors and selling them for parts.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
doj discovers drugs-for-votes, quickly prescribes ‘look away’
DOJ officials carefully examining evidence of a drugs-for-votes scheme before filing it directly in the ‘too politically awkward’ shred bin.
Puerto Rico investigators thought they were working a normal prison drug ring — you know, the usual: gangs, smuggling, overdoses. Then they found out the gang was also handing out drugs to inmates in exchange for their votes for now-Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón, a loyal Republican and Trump fan. Inmates addicted to narcotics were told their supply – and possibly their safety – depended on filling in the right oval. It’s textbook vote-buying, except the currency is heroin instead of $20 bills and a T-shirt.
Things were moving, evidence was stacking up, and prosecutors were looking not just at inmates and corrupt prison staff, but at whether González-Colón’s campaign was involved. Then Trump wins in November 2024, González-Colón wins, and suddenly the Justice Department’s enthusiasm for both drug enforcement and election integrity develops a mysterious medical condition. Prosecutors are ordered to strip out the voting-fraud charges and drop everything against the prison officials. The indictment mentions the drugs-for-votes scheme in passing, then bravely refuses to charge anyone for it. The lead prosecutor is later told to stop digging altogether. Mission accomplished.
Meanwhile, Trump is sending her a gushy congratulatory letter about her “resounding victory,” she’s trying to put up a statue of him in San Juan, and the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney W. Stephen Muldrow insists that charging corrupt officials is a “top priority.” So top, in fact, that when a judge later references an investigation involving the governor, Muldrow’s office sprints into court to clarify that, no, absolutely not, there is no investigation of Jenniffer González-Colón. To round out the carnival, Tulsi Gabbard’s ODNI swoops in and seizes Puerto Rico’s voting machines in 2025 over vague “vulnerabilities” — at the request of the same U.S. attorney’s office that quietly killed the prison vote-buying probe. Election integrity theater on the outside, drugs-for-votes impunity on the inside. Perfect symmetry.
#killing-democracy#corruption#lawlessness
trump’s floating firing squad hits 188 ‘maybe drug dealers’
The US military helpfully demonstrates its new probable-cause standard: if it floats, it explodes.
The Trump administration’s favorite new pastime—blowing up boats it swears are full of drugs but refuses to prove—has claimed at least 188 lives so far, including two more in the Caribbean on Monday. US Southern Command proudly posted a video of a small vessel on the water followed by a giant fireball, like a recruitment ad for people who hate due process and love explosions. Evidence that these were actually drug boats remains classified under the strict doctrine of "trust us, bro".
This little maritime snuff-film franchise has been running since early September, conveniently alongside the largest US military buildup in the region in generations and just months before the raid that snatched former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and flew him to New York on narco-terrorism charges. Trump now claims the US is in "armed conflict" with Latin American cartels, which is a very polite way of saying he’s unilaterally declaring a borderless, forever war where the standard of proof is: boat exists.
Even as the Iran war churns along, the administration is ramping up these strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, insisting it’s all about stopping overdoses in the US—by vaporizing people at sea, far from any courtroom, any jury, or any confirmed contraband. Critics, i.e. anyone who can read the UN Charter or the Constitution, are pointing out that this whole "narco boat" campaign looks less like law enforcement and more like state-sanctioned murder with better PR. But hey, when you label everyone a "narcoterrorist", every patch of ocean becomes a battlefield and every dead body a victory metric.
#killing-democracy#imperialism
trump, tech bros, and the campaign to punish australia for liking journalism
Trump and the tech billionaires, carefully considering whether Australian democracy can be monetized or should just be punished.
Australia’s Labor government dares to suggest that Meta, Google, and TikTok should pay for siphoning off value from Australian news outlets, and suddenly the American tech oligarchy is clutching its pearls and speed-dialing the one man who hates journalists even more than they do: Donald Trump. The plan: turn Trump’s festering rage at the “enemy of the people” into US foreign policy, and use America’s trade and diplomatic muscle to smack Australia until it stops trying to keep its media alive.
Trump, already furious that Australia didn’t enthusiastically join his Iran adventure in the Strait of Hormuz, has made it clear the country is on his naughty list. That just happens to coincide beautifully with the interests of Meta, Google, and the newly Trump-compliant TikTok (now with its algorithm babysat by Larry Ellison’s Oracle, because oligarchy is a full-service industry). These companies are shoveling hundreds of billions into US projects, buying up media companies, and collecting White House dinner invites—while preparing to lean on the next US ambassador to Australia to help kill Canberra’s media tax. The message is simple: back your journalists and your democracy, and Washington—under Trump and his tech patrons—might just punish you for it.
Meanwhile, Albanese is out here saying quaint things like “journalists are the lifeblood” of democracy, while Trump sues the BBC for reporting on January 6 and screams at CBS for reading from a shooter’s manifesto. Australia is trying to keep local news alive; Trump and his tech allies are trying to make sure that any country that protects independent media learns what happens when you offend a man who prefers his coverage fawning and his oligarchs happy. Democratic values vs. billionaire feelings—guess which side US foreign policy is drifting toward.
#oligarchy#killing-democracy
trump spends millions to protect his favorite gerrymander
Trump gestures majestically in Indiana while super PACs light $12 million on fire to teach local Republicans the dangers of insufficient gerrymander worship.
Indiana used to have quiet little state Senate primaries where candidates shook hands, kissed babies, and maybe bought a yard sign if they were feeling wild. Now, thanks to Donald Trump’s personal revenge tour, those same sleepy races are drowning in nearly $12 million of ad spending so he can punish seven GOP incumbents who dared to vote against his dream redistricting plan. For context: the entire 2024 cycle saw under $500,000 in Indiana state Senate ads. Democracy is supposed to be about voters picking their politicians; Trump’s project is to spend eight figures making sure politicians pick their voters — and then destroy any Republican who objects.
Instead of just saying, “these guys crossed Dear Leader on the map,” Trump-aligned groups are carpet-bombing the airwaves with deranged culture-war nonsense and straight-up misinformation. One ad calls longtime GOP state Sen. Jim Buck “old, pathetic, liberal” — because nothing says principled conservatism like age-shaming your own 80-year-old foot soldier for insufficient loyalty. Another masterpiece of post-truth politics shows a bunny and toilet paper, then slaps Sen. Greg Walker’s face on the roll and screeches that he “betrayed Hoosiers” by helping China buy Indiana farmland. Tiny issue: Walker and every state senator voted to ban foreign adversaries, including China, from buying that land. The attack isn’t just misleading; it’s a tantrum that the ban wasn’t fascist enough.
The real story is who’s paying for this circus. Hoosier Leadership for America and American Leadership PAC — both aligned with Jim Banks and overseen by Andrew Surabian, a top adviser to Donald Trump Jr. and VP JD Vance — have already dumped more than $8 million into these races to replace insufficiently obedient Republicans with MAGA loyalists. The incumbents, fighting for part-time jobs that pay about $33,000 a year, have scraped together $2.6 million just to avoid being flushed by a toilet-paper ad backed by the Trump family political machine. This isn’t normal primary politics; it’s a nationalized loyalty purge of a state legislature so Trump can lock in rigged maps and a rubber-stamp caucus. The title says “Indiana revenge tour,” but the itinerary reads like the prequel to the next round of democracy sabotage.
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
diplomacy is for losers, says real estate government
A row of empty State Department offices, recently vacated to make room for the president’s third-favorite fundraiser’s cousin.
The State Department is discovering a fun new HR trend: when you replace career diplomats with golf buddies and campaign donors, the people who actually know how to run foreign policy start sprinting for the exits. Normally, about two-thirds of U.S. ambassadors come from the career foreign service; under Trump, that ratio has been flipped into a loyalty test with a flag pin.
Senior career diplomats, seeing their jobs handed to politically connected amateurs whose main qualification is writing big checks and praising Trump on TV, are taking the hint and retiring early. Why spend decades learning languages, negotiating treaties, and managing crises when you can be passed over for the guy whose main international experience is owning a condo in Cancun?
This isn’t just petty patronage; it’s systematic hollowing-out. By sidelining professionals in favor of donors and sycophants, the administration is turning the State Department from a diplomatic corps into a networking event for rich people who like ambassadorships more than tax brackets. American foreign policy gets weaker and more chaotic, but hey, at least the cocktail parties are great.
#killing-democracy#corruption#oligarchy
trump rage-quits nato, accidentally reboots german militarism
Four European leaders outside Downing Street trying to pretend they still live in a world where the American president isn’t blowing up NATO because someone hurt his feelings.
Europe spends eight decades building institutions so Germany never again becomes the continent’s dominant standalone military power, and then along comes Donald Trump, who decides to speedrun the Weimar-to-rearmament arc because he’s mad at Friedrich Merz. The US president is openly questioning America’s commitment to NATO, threatening withdrawal, and now pulling thousands of troops out of Germany because the chancellor dared to call his Iran war disastrous. Nuclear strategy by wounded ego: what could go wrong?
Instead of a stable US security umbrella, Europe gets a crash course in "you’re on your own, kids." Germany, spooked by Russian aggression and abandoned by its supposed ally, is racing to build the strongest conventional army in Europe and pour hundreds of billions into its defense industry. France is panicking about losing arms-export dominance, Poland’s right wing is screaming about German power again, and everyone else is quietly wondering whether it’s a good idea to hand a supercharged military to a country where the AfD currently tops the polls. All this because Trump treats NATO like a golf club membership he can cancel when someone is mean to him on TV.
The net result: the US, once the stabilizing hegemon, is now the chaos engine pushing Europe back toward the exact balance-of-power nightmares NATO was invented to prevent. Trump gets to posture as the tough guy who won’t "subsidize" European defense, while the actual outcome is a fragmented arms race, a turbocharged German defense sector, and a weaker, more brittle alliance facing a nuclear-armed Russia. Truly, the art of the deal: alienate allies, empower adversaries, and accidentally reboot the one European historical storyline everyone swore they were done with.
#national-security#killing-democracy
trump discovers new axis of evil: the pope and italy
Marco Rubio heads to the Vatican to explain that US foreign policy is totally stable and normal, aside from the part where his boss is threatening Italy and subtweeting the pope with AI Jesus fan art.
Donald Trump has now expanded the axis of evil to include: Iran, the pope, and Italy. After Pope Leo dared to condemn the US-Israeli war on Iran, Trump called the first US-born pontiff "weak" and "not doing a very good job" — bold words from a man whose spiritual practice consists of rage-posting and confusing an AI Jesus selfie with a medical headshot. He blasted out an AI-generated image depicting himself as Christ, then tried to claim it was actually him as a doctor, because nothing says humility like, "I’m either your savior or your surgeon, I forget which."
Vice-president JD Vance helpfully joined the clown mass, telling the Vatican to stick to "matters of morality" while also warning the pope to be careful when talking about theology and war — a neat trick that boils down to: talk about morality, unless it makes our war look bad. Meanwhile, Trump turned on one of his loudest European fans, Giorgia Meloni, threatening to yank US troops from Italy because her government wouldn’t cheerlead his Iran strikes or his tantrum at Leo. US basing rights and NATO posture are now just another item on the Mar-a-Lago grievance menu.
Into this holy tire fire walks Secretary of State Marco Rubio, dispatched to Rome to "thaw" relations with the Vatican and Italy — which is diplomatic code for, "Sorry the president screamed at you and compared himself to Jesus again." Rubio will privately meet Pope Leo and Italian leaders while pretending the administration’s foreign policy is something other than a loyalty test for worshipping Trump’s image, AI-enhanced or otherwise. The pope, for his part, says he doesn’t fear the US administration and will keep speaking out against the war, which in Trump’s America now counts as both a moral act and a national security risk.
#killing-democracy#imperialism
