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, July 21, 2026

killing democracy

hegseth asks for another $87.6bn, swears this endless war is a bargain

Pete Hegseth explains that the war is totally under control, it just needs another $87.6bn and maybe a new rationale every 48 hours.

Pete Hegseth explains that the war is totally under control, it just needs another $87.6bn and maybe a new rationale every 48 hours.

Pete Hegseth shuffled into the Senate to explain why the Pentagon needs an extra $87.6bn for Trump’s US–Israel war on Iran, and somehow kept a straight face while doing it. Of that, $67.1bn is just to keep the war on life support, because nothing says "strong deterrence" like being stuck in a grinding conflict that has already killed 17 US troops, wounded nearly 100 more, and left America’s munitions cupboards looking like a Soviet grocery store. Patty Murray politely asked the obvious question: what has this war actually achieved besides draining stockpiles and setting money on fire? She walked through the administration’s ever-spinning Wheel of Justification: first imaginary threats, then regime change, then nukes, then Iran’s navy, and now, apparently, reopening the Strait of Hormuz – which was, minor detail, already open and toll‑free before Trump decided to cosplay as a wartime president. By "any objective measure," she said, Trump has failed. The Pentagon’s response? Please clap, and also please wire $87.6bn. Hegseth insisted this isn’t paying for a flailing war but for "deterrence" and a force so overwhelming it would be "absurd" for anyone to challenge it, which is a bold claim to make while admitting the department faces "critical shortfalls" and might struggle to even pay troops without another cash infusion. Meanwhile, Russell Vought previously told Congress the war was only costing about $30bn – a number experts regard as fantasy fanfic – and the Pentagon is missing deadlines to disclose basic facts like total costs and how many precision munitions are left after they burned through thousands in Iran. Transparency, Trump-style: you get a number, it’s probably fake, and if you ask for receipts, you get ghosted. Even Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are backing war-powers resolutions to yank the leash a little, complaining that the administration’s "strategy" changes almost daily. House Democrat Betty McCollum says the Pentagon is stonewalling on war costs and stockpiles. So the Trump administration is running a sprawling, undercounted, barely explained Middle East war, demanding tens of billions more to sustain it, ignoring legal reporting requirements, and treating congressional oversight as optional. But don’t worry: Hegseth swears the real "greatest threat" to the nation isn’t endless, unaccountable war – it’s failing to fund the Pentagon at $1.5 trillion.
theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: nbcnews.comAlso: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#imperialism#lawlessness
anti science

trump slashes food safety, america gets explosive diarrhea

RFK Jr at a podium insisting the outbreak is under control, while an invisible, underfunded CDC quietly screams in the background.

RFK Jr at a podium insisting the outbreak is under control, while an invisible, underfunded CDC quietly screams in the background.

Health secretary RFK Jr has announced that the nation’s record-breaking cyclospora outbreak is “under control,” which is a bold way to describe thousands of people experiencing literal explosive diarrhea while the data is such a mess that Michigan alone reports more cases than the CDC says exist in the entire country. The FDA just did a whiplash-inducing U-turn on a 27-state lettuce recall — first warning Taco Bell and Walmart customers that their shredded iceberg might be poop-adjacent, then declaring it was all a big “false positive” after re-checking the samples. Confidence-inspiring stuff. The fun part: experts say this disaster is exactly what you get after the Trump administration took a chainsaw to public health. They gutted the CDC’s FoodNet surveillance from eight pathogens down to two, making tracking parasites like cyclospora basically optional, then fired roughly a quarter of the CDC’s workforce for good measure. Toss in an $11.4bn cut to state and local health department grants, shrinking a key parasitic disease lab from 11 staff to three (and losing its director), and kneecapping USAID’s work on outbreaks, and you’ve got a national food safety system that now operates on vibes and wishful thinking. Kennedy gamely insists that the outbreak source has been identified and recalls are in place, while reassuring everyone that “there are cyclospora outbreaks every summer” and people can now make “healthy choices” — as though consumers can just look at a bag of lettuce and see the microscopic parasite waving back. Meanwhile, the CDC says cases will likely keep rising through August thanks to long incubation times and the minor detail that surveillance tools were deliberately smashed for short-term budget optics. The Trump White House saved some money on spreadsheets, and the country got a summer of weaponized salad.
theguardian.comSource Article
#anti-science#healthcare#killing-democracy
healthcare

rfk jr and dr. oz heroically crack down on disabled people stealing healthcare

RFK Jr and Dr. Oz explain that an algorithm has determined poor and disabled people are too expensive, so obviously the computer is right.

RFK Jr and Dr. Oz explain that an algorithm has determined poor and disabled people are too expensive, so obviously the computer is right.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, now running HHS like a crank podcast with subpoena power, has "paused" more than $1bn in Medicaid funding to California and Minnesota because an AI apparently smelled something funny. Over $867m for California and about $200m for Minnesota are on ice until the states prove their claims are legitimate, with Kennedy bragging about "AI, advanced analytics, and other cutting-edge tools" like he just discovered Excel. The core target? In‑home care that keeps disabled and chronically ill people alive and out of institutions.

Vice-president JD Vance already threatened states in March to play nice with his shiny new anti-fraud taskforce or risk losing money, and now the White House is making good on the extortion. HHS is also expanding its "exclusion authority" so it can override states and permanently ban alleged "bad actors" from federal healthcare programs — a fun new power when your definition of "bad actor" seems to include anyone whose care is expensive or politically inconvenient. Mehmet Oz, now improbably in charge of CMS, declared that payments have been "padding the pockets of criminals" and announced, "No más, no more. It stops," before implying that in‑home care is basically something your family should just do for free.

So the Trump–RFK–Vance–Oz brain trust is using black-box AI and executive orders to choke off healthcare funding to blue states, target services for disabled people, and centralize the power to decide who gets permanently cut off from federal money. Anti-fraud theater on the surface, structural sabotage of Medicaid and state authority underneath. The war on "waste, fraud, and abuse" has officially upgraded to a war on anyone unlucky enough to need help staying alive.
theguardian.comSource Article
#healthcare#killing-democracy
healthcare

trump solves hiv by defunding the people fighting it

Activists in New York beg the government not to defund programs that keep people with HIV alive; the Trump administration responds by changing the subject to drag queens.

Activists in New York beg the government not to defund programs that keep people with HIV alive; the Trump administration responds by changing the subject to drag queens.

The Trump administration looked at PEPFAR – the George W Bush-era HIV program credited with saving over 26 million lives – and apparently decided the real emergency was that too many poor, queer, pregnant, or otherwise inconvenient people were still alive. So in 2025 they yanked grants across the board, especially via the now-vaporized USAID, and a new report finds the impact has been "severe and devastating": more than 1,700 clinics and drop-in centers shuttered, over 16,000 full-time health workers fired, and prevention services gutted worldwide. But sure, tell us more about how this White House is "pro-life".

Even the parts of PEPFAR Trumpworld allegedly wanted to protect were wrecked, because – as the researchers gently put it – you can’t surgically cut funding without blowing up the whole system. Programs to prevent mothers passing HIV to their babies were disrupted at almost two-thirds of organizations, with a fifth just giving up entirely. Care and treatment services stopped at many sites, and clinics reported they couldn’t even get basic lab supplies, condoms, or drugs. Some organizations disappeared altogether – and that’s just the ones we can count, since when you kill an NGO, its email account dies too.

The cherry on this public health funeral cake is that groups lucky enough to keep any US money had to contort themselves to obey Trump’s anti-DEI crusade, an expanded "global gag rule," and bans on anything that might look like respect for LGBTQ people, sex workers, or victims of gender-based violence. Nearly 80% of surveyed organizations said they were told to restrict their work: no tailored services for sex workers, no real support for trans people, no gender-based violence programs – because the priority isn’t stopping HIV, it’s enforcing the culture war. The result? Fewer diagnoses, fewer prevention programs, and a very real risk of reversing two decades of progress against HIV so Trump can feel tough on pronouns from a golf cart.

theguardian.comSource Article
#healthcare#forever-grifting

Monday, July 20, 2026

imperialism

president 'retribution' discovers foreign policy

Trump, framed by flags and gravely reading off the teleprompter, preparing to convert other people’s children into his next talking point about being “tough on Iran.”

Trump, framed by flags and gravely reading off the teleprompter, preparing to convert other people’s children into his next talking point about being “tough on Iran.”

Trump is back on TV promising "revenge" on Iran for the killing of U.S. service members, because nothing says sober commander-in-chief like turning global conflict into a live-action sequel to his rally speeches. He’s not talking strategy, alliances, or de-escalation; he’s selling vengeance like it’s campaign merch, while the Pentagon quietly tries to translate "I WILL HIT THEM VERY HARD" into something that won't trigger Article 5 or a global oil shock. The segment notes that the Iran war has already helped push gas prices back over $4 a gallon, which is a neat trick: turn American troops into props, ignite a regional conflict, then hand the bill to everyone filling up a tank. Thoughts and prayers to the stock buybacks. The human cost? Folded into B-roll of flag-draped coffins and emotional funerals, while Trump treats the deaths as fresh justification to flex his "tough" brand for the cameras. This isn’t deterrence; it’s reality TV foreign policy with live ammunition. A president who already built his domestic platform on "retribution" is now exporting that instinct abroad, turning U.S. military power into a personal grievance machine. The troops are doing the dying, families are doing the mourning, and Trump is doing what he always does: using someone else’s tragedy as a backdrop for his next performative threat.
nbcnews.comSource ArticleAlso: npr.orgAlso: npr.org
#imperialism#national-security#killing-democracy
trade war

world’s dumbest trade war, canada edition

Trump studies a map of Canada to find out where the smoke tariffs go, gives up, and just circles the whole country with a Sharpie.

Trump studies a map of Canada to find out where the smoke tariffs go, gives up, and just circles the whole country with a Sharpie.

Donald Trump is slapping a 50% tariff on most Canadian goods because… Canada is mean to American cheese and won’t buy enough Jack Daniel’s, apparently. Also, he’s still mad they retaliated after his earlier tariffs, which were justified by accusing Ottawa of not doing enough about fentanyl and, more recently, about wildfire smoke drifting over the border. Yes, the president of the United States is essentially trying to bill Canada for the weather.

The White House says Trump signed three proclamations under Section 338 of the 1930 Trade Act, an antique little emergency lever Democrats already warned he could use to destabilize the economy. So naturally, he pulled it to punish a Nato ally over autos, booze, and dairy, while aides openly admit he also wants to "look into" extra tariffs because Canadian forests keep catching fire like it’s their hobby. Air quality policy, but make it a protectionist fever dream.

Canada’s alleged "discrimination" mostly consists of retaliatory tariffs and boycotts they imposed after Trump’s earlier trade hits and his casual threats to make Canada the 51st state. Mark Carney, now prime minister, had to sit through Trump complaining about "poisoned" American air at the World Cup final, because nothing says serious diplomacy like turning wildfire smoke into a trade grievance. Meanwhile, Americans can look forward to higher prices, supply chain chaos, and the joy of discovering that their president is running North American economic policy like a guy rage-bidding on eBay at 3am.
theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: bbc.co.ukAlso: nbcnews.com
#trade-war#full-stupid
oligarchy

south carolina invents the hereditary senate seat

Darline Graham Nordone, freshly sworn in and already measuring the Senate drapes for the full six-year family lease.

Darline Graham Nordone, freshly sworn in and already measuring the Senate drapes for the full six-year family lease.

South Carolina has apparently decided that the U.S. Senate is less a representative body and more a family heirloom. Days after Lindsey Graham dies, Gov. Henry McMaster appoints his sister Darline Graham to his seat, and before the funeral flowers have even wilted, she’s on Sean Hannity announcing that, yes, she’s running for the full six-year term. Somewhere, the concept of a cooling-off period is sobbing quietly into a copy of the Federalist Papers.

Trump, naturally, is already there with his trademark rubber stamp, issuing a "complete and total endorsement" of Graham as the proper vessel to "honor the legacy" of her brother — which in practice means keeping a reliable Trump vote in the Senate and reassuring the base that nothing will interrupt the flow of judicial nominations and authoritarian cosplay. Darline leans on prayer, family, and three decades of behind-the-scenes work in the state, while the rest of the GOP field (Reps. Russell Fry and Ralph Norman, plus perennial also-ran businessman Mark Lynch) gets to fight over who can lose most efficiently to the anointed sibling.

The winner of this special primary gets to face Democrat Annie Andrews, but the real contest here isn’t policy; it’s whether South Carolina Republicans want open competition or a dynastic relay race where you just pass the Senate seat down like grandma’s silver. Representative democracy, now with more bloodlines and fewer illusions.

nbcnews.comSource Article
#oligarchy#killing-democracy
killing democracy

white house replaces audits with youtube, freezes $10bn in childcare

Trump officials reviewing childcare policy by hitting refresh on a YouTube conspiracy video instead of reading their own agency’s reports.

Trump officials reviewing childcare policy by hitting refresh on a YouTube conspiracy video instead of reading their own agency’s reports.

The Trump administration watched one viral YouTube video from far-right influencer Nick Shirley, ignored the part where local reporters and state investigators immediately debunked it, and decided the obvious next step was to freeze over $10bn in childcare and social services funding to five mostly blue states. California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York suddenly found federal support for childcare, food, and basic assistance held hostage because a guy with a camera demanded proof of enrollment at Somali-run daycare centers and then yelled “fraud” on Elon Musk’s X.

Senior Trump officials actually cited Shirley’s video as the basis for the freeze, because why rely on audits, data, or law when you’ve got a racist internet stunt and Minnesota Republicans helping with the production schedule? A federal judge had to step in on 9 January to block the freeze, and when courts ordered the administration to cough up unredacted emails about how this brain-genius policy was born, the White House quietly backed off the freeze rather than let anyone see who wrote, "what if we cut poor kids’ daycare because a YouTuber said so?"

Now the ACLU, the National Women’s Law Center, and other civil rights groups are suing HHS for refusing to respond to a FOIA request seeking communications with Shirley and emails referencing “fraud” and “Somali.” They argue the restrictions and attempted freeze stoked panic among families, delayed childcare funding, and were driven by racist, anti-Somali, anti-immigrant rhetoric and a burning desire to punish Democratic states. The administration’s response so far? Silence. Because if your grand strategy is “govern by viral hoax, target immigrants, and starve blue states,” transparency is not your friend.

theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.comAlso: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#racism#forever-grifting
killing democracy

president still contesting 2020, now preemptively contesting 2026

Justin Heap, Arizona’s chief election skeptic, bravely posing for photos before overseeing an election system he keeps insisting you shouldn’t trust.

Justin Heap, Arizona’s chief election skeptic, bravely posing for photos before overseeing an election system he keeps insisting you shouldn’t trust.

Arizona, the place where democracy goes to get stress-tested and then gaslit, is back in the spotlight as Donald Trump – now in year six of his post-2020 tantrum – uses the White House bully pulpit to declare American elections "catastrophically" unfair. Local officials in Maricopa County, who once held the line against his 2020 coup cosplay, are now stuck with Justin Heap, a Trump ally and freshly minted county recorder who campaigned on the radical platform of not believing in the system he runs.

The Republican board of supervisors and Heap just ended a yearlong slap-fight over who controls elections, featuring a collapsed "handshake" deal, a legal circus, and an investigation into the alleged removal of election equipment, because of course there is. The truce arrives one week before the primary and awards Heap new election duties, prompting Democrats to express the exact opposite of confidence and Republicans to say they hope for "boring elections" – a bold aspiration given that the president is on TV telling his followers the whole thing is rigged.

Secretary of state Adrian Fontes helpfully clarifies what everyone can see: "The biggest threat is the president, who is lying." In a state that already lived through Alex Jones ranting outside the vote-count center and conspiracy theorists inventing chicken-farm ballot bonfires, Trump is once again priming the base to scream fraud if they lose. It’s less an election system than a live-fire drill for authoritarianism: the White House attacks the process, local election deniers gain power, and any result Trump dislikes is pre-labeled illegitimate. American democracy: now with built-in sabotage from the top.
theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: nbcnews.comAlso: nbcnews.com
#killing-democracy#fascism
killing democracy

trump’s integrity-free cabinet clearance sale

Trump reviews a lineup of nominees, checking for the only required qualification: a detectable allergy to truth.

Trump reviews a lineup of nominees, checking for the only required qualification: a detectable allergy to truth.

Trump’s latest round of nominees is basically a live-action stress test of how far you can push a constitutional system before it just packs a bag and leaves. Todd Blanche, auditioning to be attorney general, “accidentally” calls himself Trump’s lawyer in his confirmation hearing, then walks it back like that’s a normal slip for someone who’s supposed to run an independent Justice Department. Integrity? No, but he does seem very committed to the long-standing administration policy of treating the DOJ as Trump’s personal law firm with subpoena powers.

Over at public health, Erica Schwartz swears she’ll never compromise on science, then immediately reassures everyone that Donald Trump and RFK Jr will totally never implement policies that hurt public health. That’s like promising not to compromise on fire safety while handing the matches to a pyromaniac and his arson-curious friend. Meanwhile, Jay Clayton, angling to run the entire intelligence community, can’t bring himself to say out loud that Biden won the 2020 election, because acknowledging reality is apparently disqualifying in Trumpworld.

Lindsey Graham, already the cautionary tale of what happens when you trade your spine for a golf invite, is the template here: denounce Trump after January 6, then rebrand as his most devoted Senate hype man. The throughline is simple: you can have integrity, or you can have a future in Trump’s government, but you absolutely cannot have both. The regime is built on the big lie, and everyone in it is required to cosplay confusion about basic facts in exchange for power, status, and maybe a Fox News segment.

Trump once praised Roy Cohn not for ethics, but for loyalty without limits, which is exactly the job description for this new crop of nominees: people willing to bend law, science, and intelligence around one man’s grievances. The administration keeps calling this “public service,” but what it’s actually building is a government staffed with people who are structurally incapable of telling the truth to the public – or to Trump. Perfect qualifications for an administration whose core policy agenda is “never admit reality happened.”

theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: nbcnews.com
#killing-democracy#awful-nominations
forever grifting

trump epa decides poison is fine if it’s mostly on farms

EPA officials bravely defending America’s right to eat PFAS-laced sewage, as long as the waste industry’s profits stay clean.

EPA officials bravely defending America’s right to eat PFAS-laced sewage, as long as the waste industry’s profits stay clean.

The Trump EPA looked at scientific research showing that PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge used as fertilizer is sickening farmers, killing livestock, poisoning water, and contaminating food, and decided the real problem was… the science. So they helpfully threw out their own draft health risk assessment that said anything above 1 part per billion raises cancer and other health risks, because that would have basically ended the sludge gravy train. Instead, the agency now claims sludge isn’t a "wide threat" since it’s mostly used on farms and only on a "small" percentage of cropland — a statistic they pulled from somewhere between "we don’t track this" and "the waste management lobby’s wish list".

Having decided that farmers’ lives are a rounding error, EPA’s new guidance tells the public to "research" sludge companies themselves if they’re worried about buying PFAS-laced home fertilizer. You read that right: the federal government is openly saying, "We’re not going to regulate this toxic mess, so good luck, Google it." Meanwhile, states like Maine and Michigan keep finding PFAS in every sludge sample, public health groups calculate that dozens of kids out of every 1,000 drinking milk from sludge-contaminated farms could get cancer, and organic farmers discover their "clean" soil has been quietly marinating in forever chemicals for decades. But the waste industry hates regulation, so the Trump administration is obligingly tossing science, farmers, and rural communities under the nearest sludge truck.
theguardian.comSource Article
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
anti science

trump discovers a trillion reasons to hate science

Trump’s brain trust contemplates the farthest reaches of the galaxy: how to cancel a grant about racism using a 400-page PDF and a Fox News segment.

Trump’s brain trust contemplates the farthest reaches of the galaxy: how to cancel a grant about racism using a 400-page PDF and a Fox News segment.

Trump’s Office of Management and Budget quietly dropped a 400+ page bureaucratic pipe bomb that would put nearly $1 trillion in federal grants under the loving care of political appointees whose main credential is hating the word “equity”. The same crew that helped Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” yank NIH grants studying discrimination and public health now wants to scale that chaos from one agency to basically the entire federal government. Research on race, gender, equity, international collaboration, and anything that doesn’t flatter the Dear Leader’s “priorities” gets tossed on the bonfire of “anti-American values”.

Scientists, universities, hospitals, and pretty much everyone who can read are in open revolt: nearly half a million comments, about 95% opposed, plus 22 state attorneys general lining up to sue. Under any normal administration, that level of blowback would be a blinking red “withdraw this” sign; under Trump and OMB director Russell Vought, it’s just proof the rule is working as intended. The plan is simple: turn NIH, education, environmental protection, and social services into a patronage machine where your grant survives only if it serves Trump’s culture war and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 wish list.

The proposed rule lets the government cancel awards whenever they’re no longer in the “federal interest”, which, as researchers learned when their grants on gender and disparate impacts were abruptly axed in 2025, translates to “someone on Truth Social got mad”. Nonprofits objecting are dismissed as a leftist “freakout”, while the White House “fraud taskforce” bravely protects taxpayers from the scourge of funding cancer research that acknowledges racism exists. Notice-and-comment rulemaking is reduced to a 45‑day speedrun the administration fully intends to ignore. Who needs peer review when you have ideological purity and a delete key?

theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.comAlso: theguardian.com
#anti-science#killing-democracy
oligarchy

dnc discovers exciting new way to lose: gag your own staff over genocide

DNC leadership workshopping new messaging: “We hear your moral anguish about genocide, and we’re proud to announce stricter nondisclosure agreements.”

DNC leadership workshopping new messaging: “We hear your moral anguish about genocide, and we’re proud to announce stricter nondisclosure agreements.”

House Democrats are slowly discovering a radical new technology called "listening to your voters" as nearly half of them vote to block $3.3 billion in weapons and aid to Israel. This happens while a UN commission says genocide in Gaza is ongoing and that Israeli forces are deliberately targeting children, and while Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and genocide scholars all basically wave giant red "hey, this is genocide" flags. Naturally, party leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer respond by dusting off the same pro-Israel boilerplate from the bipartisan golden age of looking the other way.

Meanwhile, the DNC — allegedly a political party and not a shell corporation — is panicking over donors and cash flow, so leadership doubles down on the truly urgent issue: forcing staff to sign nondisclosure agreements. A finance co-chair helpfully explains this is "standard practice in the corporate world", which is exactly what you want to hear from the committee that’s supposed to defend democracy while the US bankrolls a state accused of genocide. Grassroots Democrats are overwhelmingly against more aid to Israel, but the leadership’s answer is to deep-six the issue inside the DNC and hope no one notices the bodies or the polling.

Pelosi, who once said that if the Capitol crumbled the one thing that would remain is America’s commitment to Israel, just voted to cut off the weapons — a weathervane so dramatic it might qualify as severe weather. Yet Jeffries, Schumer, and DNC chair Ken Martin still cling to the old donor-friendly script, then wonder why nobody’s inspired to show up for them. Their big 2026 strategy appears to be: ignore genocide, ignore your base, and slap NDAs on anyone who might talk about it. Bold move for a party that keeps insisting "democracy is on the ballot" while acting like a skittish hedge fund.
theguardian.comSource Article
#oligarchy#killing-democracy
forever grifting

qatar’s sky-palace gets sent to the chop shop

Trump’s Qatari sky-palace, seen here pretending to be an airplane and not a diplomatic bribe with wings.

Trump’s Qatari sky-palace, seen here pretending to be an airplane and not a diplomatic bribe with wings.

Donald Trump’s Qatari-gifted sky-yacht — excuse me, temporary Air Force One — is apparently headed back to the shop to get “maxed out,” because nothing says serious national security planning like treating the presidential aircraft as a tuner car from a reality show. After weeks of questions about whether the foreign-royal-family freebie has actual missile-defense systems or just extra gold trim, Trump now says it’ll be gone for about a month for unspecified upgrades. Very reassuring that the commander in chief describes hardening against surface-to-air missiles the same way people talk about upgrading their Xbox.

The Secret Service already forced a reality check earlier this month, quietly telling him to ditch the Qatar jet and fly home from Turkey on the older, actually-battle-tested Air Force One once hostilities with Iran resumed. Publicly, Trump insisted there were no security issues, while also bragging that he’s “No. 1 on the kill list for Iran” — a sentence that really makes you want the plane to be more than a flying casino with wings.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department helpfully reminded everyone where this administration’s real priorities lie by subpoenaing four New York Times reporters who wrote about the plane’s security problems. Can’t have the public knowing their president is cruising around in a foreign-donated jumbo jet that might be long on chandeliers and short on countermeasures. The Qatar 747 was already being sold as a “flying White House at a level of luxury no one has ever seen before”; turns out the only thing getting maxed out isn’t security — it’s the corruption, the conflicts of interest, and the war on anyone who points that out.

nbcnews.comSource ArticleAlso: npr.orgAlso: theguardian.com
#forever-grifting#national-security

Sunday, July 19, 2026

killing democracy

trump digs up a secret alien court, because regular deportations were too transparent

Artist’s impression of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court: a locked broom closet with a national security sticker slapped on the door.

Artist’s impression of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court: a locked broom closet with a national security sticker slapped on the door.

The Trump administration has decided that the regular deportation machine just wasn’t dystopian enough, so the Justice Department has dusted off the Alien Terrorist Removal Court – a little-known tribunal created in 1996 that has spent three decades doing absolutely nothing, which made it perfect for Trump’s second-term immigration project. For the first time ever, DOJ filed a petition asking this five-judge, chief-justice-picked court to deport an unnamed person as an “alien terrorist,” then immediately ran into a tiny problem: even this handpicked, national-security-friendly court wanted to know what the hell DOJ was talking about.

Chief Judge Joan Ericksen politely wrote that the government’s explanation of the supposed terrorism “nexus” needed, shall we say, more work, and gave them homework like an annoyed high school teacher confronting a plagiarized book report. Meanwhile, the statute’s definition of “alien terrorist” is broad enough to cover not just actual terrorists, but people who endorse or espouse the wrong things, or belong to the wrong political or social group – a dream tool for an administration that already tried to use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to kick out Venezuelan migrants it branded as gang “terrorists.”

Federal Judge James Boasberg basically pointed Trump’s people to this secret court last year as the “proper” venue for their national-security panic, and they took the hint like kids handed the keys to a haunted house. Now, with mass deportations ramping up and a revived, semi-secret tribunal that can run terrorism cases under seal, the administration has found a way to make immigration enforcement even less transparent and more ripe for abuse. Because if you’re going to weaponize fear of immigrants, why not do it in a courtroom no one has ever heard of?
theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.comAlso: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#anti-immigration
killing democracy

trump and rubio declare international law illegal

Marco Rubio and Donald Trump heroically defending freedom by trying to outlaw the concept of war crimes.

Marco Rubio and Donald Trump heroically defending freedom by trying to outlaw the concept of war crimes.

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani is publicly wondering whether he can have Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if the prime minister shows up in Manhattan for the UN General Assembly, what with that pesky International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza hanging over him. You know, the kind of warrant that usually means "don’t go sightseeing in countries that pretend to care about law." Mamdani’s asking the city’s lawyers what authority he actually has, which is a fun contrast with the federal government’s approach of just screaming "witch hunt" at The Hague and calling it a day. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is working hard to make the world safe for indicted leaders. Trump slapped economic sanctions on the ICC back in 2025 for the crime of existing near U.S. and Israeli conduct, and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has now promised to "dismantle" the court for waging war on America with the terrifying weapon of international law. Apparently if you can’t bomb it, sanction it, or yell at it on Fox News, it’s an existential threat to freedom. Netanyahu, facing a rough re-election and an actual ICC warrant, is playing the classic defense: accuse Mamdani of supporting Hamas and suggest that criticizing an indicted head of government is basically hating Jews and America at the same time. Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon insists Bibi will proudly address the UN to proclaim Israel’s "truth," while Trump’s UN ambassador Mike Waltz dismisses Mamdani’s talk of arrest as "pure political theater"—because in Trumpworld, only Washington gets to ignore binding legal processes. The message from the White House is clear: the rule of law stops where our favorite clients start.
theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: theguardian.comAlso: theguardian.com
#killing-democracy#imperialism
killing democracy

world cup final rebranded as trump security drill

Journalists and staff queue for hours to prove they are no threat to the man who’s been an active menace to democracy for a decade.

Journalists and staff queue for hours to prove they are no threat to the man who’s been an active menace to democracy for a decade.

The 2026 World Cup final in New Jersey was supposed to be Spain v Argentina. Instead, it’s Trump v Basic Functioning Society. Because the president insists on helicoptering in to hand over a trophy he didn’t win, the match has been declared a National Special Security Event, which in American translates to: nobody gets in on time and everything becomes a perimeter.

US Secret Service is individually searching all 82,500 fans, staff are funneled through a single entrance like cattle with lanyards, and even Jürgen Klopp is stuck in the world’s most expensive airport-security cosplay. Thousands of agents, helicopters overhead, and airport scanners everywhere so Trump can bask in the spotlight for five minutes and pretend the crowd’s roar isn’t for Messi.

To really honor the spirit of the beautiful game, New Jersey Transit has reportedly jacked train fares from Manhattan to $98, turning basic access to a public event into a paywall for the already well-off. FIFA’s logistical nightmare has been upgraded to a full-on presidential vanity siege, where public space, public transit, and a global tournament all bend around one man’s need to be the center of the universe. Democracy may be wobbling, but the security theater industry is doing great.

theguardian.comSource ArticleAlso: bbc.co.ukAlso: bbc.co.uk
#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
corruption

step right up for your trump-brand get-out-of-jail card

A stack of pardon applications next to a credit card reader, otherwise known as the Trump-era justice system.

A stack of pardon applications next to a credit card reader, otherwise known as the Trump-era justice system.

Turns out "equal justice under law" now comes with a price tag, and it starts around a cool six figures. NPR reports on a booming little side hustle of the second Trump administration: a growing industry of fixers and lobbyists who will, for up to $600,000, help you navigate the magical world of presidential pardons. Because why reform the criminal justice system when you can just sell VIP passes to the back door?

What used to be a solemn constitutional power is now basically a Black Friday sale for felons with cash. Instead of a transparent, principled clemency process, you get a shadow market where influence peddlers whisper your name into the right Mar-a-Lago ear. Poor people can keep rolling the dice with mandatory minimums; the well-connected can just hire a clemency concierge and wait for their golden autograph from Dear Leader.

And the best part? It’s all wrapped in the usual sanctimony about "second chances" and "fixing injustice" while Trump’s orbit turns mercy into a revenue stream. The pardon power was supposed to be a safety valve for a harsh system; under Trump 2.0 it’s a premium subscription service—justice, but make it pay-to-play.
npr.orgSource Article
#corruption#forever-grifting
forever grifting

trump airport rebrand stuck on the tarmac, still billing taxpayers

Artist’s rendering of Palm Beach airport’s new look: half "Donald Trump International," half "please don’t cut the safety budget for this."

Artist’s rendering of Palm Beach airport’s new look: half "Donald Trump International," half "please don’t cut the safety budget for this."

Florida has decided that what an aging, storm-prone state really needs isn’t resilient infrastructure or functioning public services, but a gold-plated shrine to Donald Trump. Ron DeSantis signed a law forcing Palm Beach County to rename its airport after Trump, then generously tossed in only half the $5.5m needed for the makeover. The county, which never wanted this in the first place and voted 4–3 under clear political pressure to approve a trademark deal with the Trump Organization, is now being told to dig into its own airport budget to finish the job. You know, the same budget that’s supposed to fund safety and capital improvements across four airports.

The result is a perfectly Trumpian compromise: the highway signs scream "President Donald J Trump International Airport" and the website is fully MAGA-fied, but inside the terminals you still see the old Palm Beach International name clinging on like a stubborn fact in a Fox News segment. Officials are talking about a "phased approach" while everyone else hears: we’re going to quietly raid operations and capital funds later and pray nobody notices. Meanwhile, a retired pilot is suing over the safety risks of changing the long-established PBI code to DJT, and a trademark attorney is challenging the whole scheme. So the public gets confusion, legal bills, and degraded infrastructure, while Trump gets a branded runway for "Trump Force One" and a fresh revenue stream. Truly, the people’s airport.

This is not governance, it’s state-mandated product placement. DeSantis uses the power of the state to force a local government to promote the sitting president’s private brand, county officials openly admit they feared the consequences of saying no, and now critical funds might be diverted from actual aviation needs to pay for Trump’s ego therapy. It’s the perfect encapsulation of the Trump era: the runway might be safe, but the line between public service and personal enrichment has completely crashed and burned.
theguardian.comSource Article
#forever-grifting#corruption
racism

dems go shopping for 'authenticity,' come home with nazi tattoo guy

Amanda Litman, patiently explaining that maybe – just maybe – the guy with the Nazi tattoo shouldn’t get more benefit of the doubt than every woman and candidate of color in the party combined.

Amanda Litman, patiently explaining that maybe – just maybe – the guy with the Nazi tattoo shouldn’t get more benefit of the doubt than every woman and candidate of color in the party combined.

Democrats, still in therapy from Kamala Harris losing to Donald Trump, went hunting for that mystical creature called "authenticity" and somehow ended up backing Graham Platner: a white guy whose resume reads like a content warning. We’ve got racist, sexist, homophobic posts, a tattoo widely recognized as a Nazi symbol he later covered up, sexually explicit messages to women while married, and ex-partners describing toxic and threatening behavior. Yet the train kept rolling right along until a rape allegation finally made everyone pretend to read the file.

Platner still bulldozed a sitting governor out of the primary, hoovered up grassroots cash, and cruised to the Democratic nomination, because if there’s one bipartisan value left in American politics, it’s the unshakeable belief that white men are endlessly "redeemable" and everyone else is on zero-tolerance probation. As organizer Amanda Litman points out, women and people of color know one minor screw-up can end their careers, while guys like Platner get treated like the political versions of the Fyre Fest fraudster and Adam Neumann: serial disasters who keep getting handed new piles of money and trust they absolutely have not earned.

Black progressive Chris Rabb spells it out: a Black candidate with a comparably "problematic" tattoo wouldn’t just lose donors – they’d never make it onto the stage. But Platner? He became the great white populist hope until the allegations got too loud to ignore. So the party that says it wants diversity and justice keeps structuring the system so that the riskiest bet you can make is not on a guy with a Nazi tattoo, but on a woman or a person of color with an actual conscience. American democracy: where the bar for white men is in the basement and still somehow considered a ladder.

theguardian.comSource Article
#racism#killing-democracy