Trump beams at a podium celebrating the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ while, off camera, a million kids learn that dinner is now a partisan luxury item.
The Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act is really living up to the name, assuming your definition of “beautiful” is “over a million children losing access to food.” A new CBPP analysis finds more than 4 million people kicked off SNAP between July 2025 and March 2026, with kids making up a huge chunk of the collateral damage. Arizona went for the high score: over 450,000 people dropped, slicing the state’s SNAP enrollment in half because nothing says fiscal responsibility like telling hungry children to go negotiate with the free market.
The law’s brilliant innovation was to shove SNAP costs onto states based on their “payment error rates,” effectively turning feeding people into a budget booby trap. States responded by doing what Republican lawmakers quietly wanted all along: purging the rolls and tightening eligibility until families fall off. Louisiana shed nearly one in four kids on SNAP; Massachusetts and Texas each axed close to a fifth. That’s not a safety net, that’s a tripwire.
While Ilhan Omar tried to reverse the cuts with an amendment (rejected by the Republican majority, naturally), and more than 200 mayors begged Congress to stop actively worsening a “deepening food security crisis,” the Trump bloc remains committed to its core governing principle: protect tax cuts and culture wars at all costs, and if a million children lose dinner in the process, well, at least the bill title sounds nice on Fox News. SNAP is still the country’s most effective anti-hunger program—so of course this administration treated it like an enemy combatant.
FDA officials carefully studying a map of Taco Bells and hoping the parasite just gets bored and leaves on its own.
America’s food safety system has officially entered its "try turning the country off and back on again" phase. Former FDA deputy commissioner Frank Yiannas — who served under both Trump and Biden, so he’s seen some things — is now saying the Trump administration’s handling of the cyclospora outbreak is approaching catastrophic levels of mismanagement. Thousands have been sickened by a microscopic parasite that causes explosive diarrhea, and the federal response has basically been: vibes, press releases, and finger-pointing.
The FDA rushed out to blame lettuce from Taylor Farms, a Taco Bell supplier, then started quietly walking that back while simultaneously insisting they still have “strong evidence.” Taylor Farms says the FDA apologized; the FDA says absolutely not, which is reassuring, because when you’re dealing with a nationwide foodborne parasite outbreak, what you really want is a public he-said/she-said between the regulator and the salad people.
Meanwhile, Health Secretary RFK Jr is out here declaring the outbreak “under control” while the FDA is expanding its investigation to 7,400 potential cases across nine states. So either the parasite is under control or the press releases are; it’s definitely not both. Yiannas is now calling for an independent review with congressional oversight, because when your national food safety strategy boils down to "guess, retract, deny, repeat," you might want someone to check the math.
What we’re left with is a federal response that can’t clearly explain what’s happening, who’s responsible, or how they’ll stop it next time — but is extremely confident about not answering questions. The Trump-era food safety legacy: you might not know what’s in your lettuce, but you can be absolutely sure nobody competent is in charge of finding out.
The president of the United States cosplays as a four-term strongman with a 'TRUMP 2028' hat, because nothing screams "healthy democracy" like joking about ignoring the Constitution on live TV.
Donald Trump returned to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, that annual ritual where politicians pretend to like the press, and decided the best way to celebrate "press freedom" was to joke about not leaving office. He pulled out a bright red "TRUMP 2028" hat and announced he was running for a fourth term, calling it a "scoop" for the journalists in the room, as if casually erasing the 22nd Amendment is just premium content for the media-industrial complex.
The gag landed exactly as intended: half the room nervously laughed, the other half mentally googled "how do term limits work again," and Trump got to float the idea that maybe, possibly, hypothetically, he should just keep going forever. This is the same guy whose "rambling" gala speech was already packed with insults and potshots at the press, so treating the Constitution like a suggestion menu is just a natural sequel. Authoritarians don’t start with tanks; they start with jokes everyone decides to treat as harmless.
So we now have the president turning a dinner supposedly honoring the First Amendment into a soft-launch for "What if I just didn’t leave?" merch. The hat really says it all: campaign branding for a year he is not legally allowed to run, waved around in front of the very people who are supposed to sound the alarm when leaders start play-testing ways around democracy. Relax, though, it's all just a bit… until it isn’t.
Trump eyeing a flowchart of the H-1B program and deciding the missing piece is a $100,000 paywall.
The Trump administration looked at the H-1B visa program, saw a way to both demonize immigrants and shake down employers for cash, and decided to impose a cool $100,000 "fee" per new visa. A federal judge pointed out that this was not so much a fee as an illegal tax Congress never authorized, and the First Circuit just backed that up by refusing to let Trump keep charging it while the case crawls through appeals.
Naturally, the administration argued that, no, this wasn’t a massive executive power grab, it was just them responsibly fixing a supposedly "exploited" program. The three-judge panel (all Democratic appointees, cue the Fox News chyron) responded with the legal equivalent of: you've got to be kidding me, finding Trump’s team hadn’t shown even a decent chance that this naked money grab was within their authority. Employers used to pay $2,000–$5,000 in H-1B fees; Trump tried to crank that up to $100,000 for new foreign workers, while conveniently exempting many already in the US on student visas so the policy looked less like a total economic self-own.
Very few employers actually paid the Trump tax before the courts yanked the plug, proving that "America First" apparently includes "jobs last" and "basic math never." The White House, shockingly, had no immediate comment—possibly because it’s hard to spin "we tried to invent a six-figure immigration toll booth without Congress" as anything other than a failed authoritarian side quest.
Trump arrives at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, ready to deliver a "unifying yet vicious" speech, because nothing honors press freedom like threatening the people holding the microphones.
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner has finally been rescheduled after the original one was interrupted by a man firing a shotgun near the ballroom — a level of chaos that, to be fair, still counts as a metaphorical downgrade from Trump’s Twitter feed. The rebooted gala at the Waldorf Astoria is smaller, more intimate, and dedicated to Secret Service officer Victor Gonzales and the hotel staff who helped guests during the April attack, because this is America now: your annual celebration of press freedom comes with an active shooter prelude.
Karoline Leavitt, whose job description is apparently "press secretary and aspiring dystopian copywriter," promised Trump’s remarks would be “a combination of unifying yet vicious, and serious yet hilarious, all at the same time if you can imagine that.” So the official White House messaging now openly advertises viciousness as part of the brand, while everyone pretends that’s perfectly normal in a democracy and not, say, the trailer for a regime that thinks the First Amendment is optional content.
Meanwhile, Secret Service director Sean Curran says they "expect bad people to show up" at a black-tie dinner, which is a pretty brutal thing to say about the guest list, though in his defense Trump is there. This is the first time Trump has ever bothered to attend the event in either of his two terms, and he’s walking into a room full of reporters he’s spent years suing, banning, and smearing as "fake news" — including literally barring the Associated Press from the White House press pool and tightening media access to the Pentagon. So yes, gather round for the great "unifying" speech from the guy who treats a free press like a hostile foreign power.
Also missing from the guest list this time: Melania Trump, JD Vance, and Marco Rubio — presumably busy workshopping new ways to praise Trump’s "hilarious yet authoritarian" leadership or explaining to donors why attacking the press is actually a bold, disruptive innovation in constitutional law.
Photo of the National Museum of American History with a new government warning sign: 'Caution: Objects in this museum may contain facts.'
Donald Trump, a man whose relationship with facts is purely theoretical, has now ordered warning labels slapped on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to alert visitors to alleged “inaccurate information.” Yes, the guy who tried to Sharpie a hurricane map is accusing the historians of lying. The executive order instructs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the National Park Service to put up official U.S. government signage outside the museum basically saying, “Don’t believe the museum, believe the White House report we wrote about how the museum is bad.”
This is the latest episode in Trump’s campaign to turn the Smithsonian into a taxpayer-funded MAGA Heritage Foundation gift shop. After a July 4 White House report declared that museum leaders are “radical activists” who can’t be trusted to tell America’s story “honestly and in a way that is inspiring,” Trump is now using federal agencies and “all available authorities” to enforce his March 2025 order targeting funding for exhibits with “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology.” Translation: history that mentions racism, inequality, or non-triumphalist reality must be punished.
Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch politely replied that the institution is actually driven by “scholarship, accuracy and an uncompromising commitment to tell the fullness of America’s story,” which is exactly the kind of dangerous extremism this White House cannot abide. Instead, visitors will now be helpfully directed to government-approved “locations and resources for accurate information regarding America’s history” — presumably somewhere between Trump’s Truth Social feed and the gift shop’s new Dear Leader: A Totally Not Divisive History of America coloring book.
Trump’s Qatari-gifted jumbo jet, seen here auditioning for the role of ‘cheapest possible way to transport a nuclear launch authority through a war zone.’
Donald Trump’s traveling circus of security malpractice hit a new stop in Turkey, where he quietly ditched his shiny Qatari-gifted 747-8 for the older, actually-defended Air Force One after U.S. officials picked up what they considered a credible threat from Iranian proxy forces targeting him and his plane. Publicly, Trump claimed he was flying the old jet “for old time’s sake”; privately, it turns out the Secret Service was doing the radical, woke thing of not wanting the president blown out of the sky in his favorite foreign-donated status symbol.
The episode helpfully underlines what everyone but Trump already knew: the Qatar plane doesn’t have the same advanced defensive systems as the real Air Force One, but he pushed to get it into service anyway because nothing says "America First" like flying the commander-in-chief around in a gift from a Gulf monarchy. When reporters at the New York Times started asking inconvenient questions about the security risks, Trump’s Justice Department responded in the time-honored authoritarian fashion: subpoena the journalists over their coverage and try to scare them into silence. Those subpoenas have now been dropped "for now," which is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Meanwhile, Trump is out here bragging about his alleged "standing orders" to level Iran "at levels they’ve never seen before" if they kill him, while also insisting he’s open to diplomacy and that Tehran is being the "most serious" he’s ever seen them. So he’s simultaneously dangling apocalypse, flying around in a lightly armored Gulfstream ego project, and siccing the DOJ on reporters who point out the obvious security problems. The only consistent doctrine is that the U.S. government exists to protect one man’s body and one man’s brand, with the Constitution and press freedom strapped into the overhead bin as unsecured baggage.
Trump officials studying an electoral map with a red marker and a giant eraser labeled "fiscal responsibility."
The Trump administration has now helpfully put in writing what everyone with a functioning prefrontal cortex already knew: more than $7.5bn in clean energy grants were canceled "based solely" on whether a state voted for Kamala Harris instead of Donald Trump. The Department of Energy reviewed over 600 Biden-era projects in both red and blue states, but once the file reached Russell Vought at the White House budget office, magically only 284 grants in blue states were executed — and Vought proudly bragged on X about axing "Green New Scam" money in CA, NY, WA, and the rest of the usual Fox News villains. The court filing spells it out: with one lonely exception, every terminated grant was in a Harris-voting, Democratic-senator-having state. Subtlety is for cowards.
Naturally, after admitting in court that politics drove the list of victims, the Energy Department then rushed out a statement insisting that, actually, none of the decisions were based on politics and the filing is being "misrepresented" — the political considerations, you see, only applied to the timing of the announcement, not the decisions themselves. So the grants were chosen for execution because they were in blue states, but that doesn’t count as politics because… reasons. Meanwhile, the administration is rolling out a 400-page rule to ensure that all future federal grants must "demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities" and avoid such dangerous sins as "denial of the sex binary" and "anti-American values." So yes, they’re openly building a federal funding system where loyalty to Trump, ideological purity, and culture-war compliance determine whether your state gets clean energy money — or gets its projects shot in the head on X for likes.
While Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Congress that "no decisions were made on politics," the actual paperwork says the quiet part in bold, underlined font. Blue states got their climate projects canceled because they were blue; red states with equally "wasteful" grants somehow survived the great fiscal cleansing. This is not budget discipline, it’s a protection racket: vote for Trump, get infrastructure; vote for someone else, enjoy your floods, wildfires, and collapsing grid. The administration has essentially turned federal climate policy into a mob movie, where the White House is the guy leaning on your state and asking, "Nice little research program you got there. Be a shame if something… happened to it."
The FDA, bravely protecting Americans from a 25-year-old safe pill while approving whatever the political wing of the GOP prescribes.
The Trump-era FDA has been lovingly wrapping mifepristone in so much pointless red tape you’d think the pill was plutonium instead of one of the most studied and safest medications in reproductive healthcare. A federal judge in Virginia, Robert S Ballou, just pointed out the awkward truth: the agency’s restrictions are "arbitrary and capricious"—legalese for "you made this up because politics told you to"—and ordered the FDA to go back and actually reconsider them like a real regulatory body and not a subsidiary of the Federalist Society.
This all lands while the FDA has no permanent commissioner and is busy "reviewing" abortion pill rules at the urging of conservative lawmakers whose medical expertise begins and ends with campaign donations. Meanwhile, abortion providers in Virginia, Kansas, and Montana are stuck navigating special registration schemes and duplicative, inaccurate, and confusing paperwork that serve exactly zero medical purpose but do a fantastic job of slowing care and scaring patients. As clinics become lifelines for people forced to cross state lines for basic healthcare, a federal court has now gently suggested that maybe science and 25 years of safety data should matter more than the Trump administration’s ongoing war on bodily autonomy.
Advocates are calling the ruling "a win for science"—which, in Trump’s America, is basically an extremist position. While Louisiana runs to the Fifth Circuit begging judges to kill mail-order access and pharmacy prescriptions, this case is a reminder that the mifepristone fight has never been about safety. It’s about using the machinery of the state to make abortion as humiliating, delayed, and inaccessible as possible, then calling that "pro-life" and going to a fundraiser.
Pete Hegseth explains that taxpayer-funded hormones are patriotic when they’re for sad middle-aged guys, but a national security threat when they’re for the troops already doing the job.
Pete Hegseth, Trump’s favorite Fox News cosplayer now LARPing as defense secretary, has decided the key to American military dominance is not strategy, logistics, or alliances, but checking every man over 30 for low T and juicing them up. Welcome to the High-T Department of War, where the solution to every problem is more hormone gel and a war crimes vibe check. If your testosterone is a little droopy, Uncle Sam is thrilled to subsidize your midlife crisis.
There’s just one tiny snag: a federal judge noticed that this same Pentagon insists hormone treatment is a fatal flaw that justifies banning transgender troops. Judge Ana Reyes, apparently still capable of basic logic, has ordered Hegseth & friends to explain why cis soldiers get taxpayer-funded testosterone replacement therapy, while trans troops are told that needing hormones makes them unfit for service. Trump’s own executive order is on the record demanding troops meet standards “without the benefit of routine medical treatment” – unless, apparently, that treatment is part of the administration’s masculinity pageant.
Medical experts, meanwhile, are standing off to the side like, "Hi, yes, just to be clear, blasting unnecessary testosterone into thousands of people can actually harm readiness, fertility, and long-term health." The Pentagon, which has spent years clutching its pearls about the supposed cost of gender-affirming care, is now tripping over itself to bankroll mass TRT for cis men because it polls well with the Joe Rogan demographic. Equal protection, military cohesion, evidence-based medicine – all sacrificed so the commander in chief can turn the armed forces into a taxpayer-funded podcast comment section.
Two presidents sit on a marble floor at the Vatican, as the fate of a European war and U.S. foreign policy is quietly negotiated somewhere between Trump’s ego and Zelenskyy’s patience.
Laura Loomer, professional outrage dispenser and Trump barnacle, flew to Kyiv, heard one (1) air raid siren, and suddenly realized that maybe Russia’s full-scale invasion is not, in fact, a Based Anti-Woke Liberation Tour. After years of calling Ukraine a land of “Nazi apologists” and recycling Kremlin fanfic for her followers, she is now posting about “moral clarity” and endorsing crushing Russian sanctions because, crucial detail, Iran wants Trump dead. Foreign policy, brought to you by the “will this hurt Dear Leader personally?” school of geopolitics.
The best part? Loomer’s new line is being treated as a major diplomatic development, because Zelenskyy says he’ll likely meet Trump in Washington while he’s in town for Lindsey Graham’s funeral. Trump jumped on Truth Social to grunt out a “Very good!!!!” about Loomer’s interview, which Kyiv commentators are reading as a sign the White House’s anti-Ukraine stance is softening. US strategy toward a live war zone now runs through a woman who just filmed herself eating a cheeseburger outside a missile-shredded McDonald’s to own… Vladimir Putin? Evangelicals get a bespoke message too: Loomer toured a bombed cathedral and explained you can’t really “protect Christianity” by, as she put it, trying to drone-strike Jesus.
Ukrainian officials, staring down ballistic missiles and daily civilian deaths, are understandably grateful for any crack in the MAGA-Russia bromance, so they’re rolling out the red carpet for Loomer and thanking her for her “courage” on social media. A former government adviser even calls this a historic break with Russian propaganda by part of the MAGA movement, which is a polite way of saying: we now depend on Trumpworld’s least hinged influencers to talk the base out of cheering for war crimes. American foreign policy has officially become a spin-off of the Trump Extended Universe, where a 15-minute Vatican chat and a Guardian write-up count as a “historic moment” in US-Ukraine relations.
The Sonoyta pupfish, whose survival unfortunately depends on winning a policy fight against a guy who thought you could nuke hurricanes.
The Sonoran desert has this tiny miracle called Quitobaquito Springs, a sacred oasis to the O’odham people and the only wild home on Earth for the Sonoyta pupfish and springsnails, plus the last US habitat for the Sonoyta mud turtle. So naturally, the Trump administration looked at this irreplaceable biological wonder and said: perfect spot for a 30ft steel tantrum.
Back in 2020, Trump’s crew jammed a border wall through Organ Pipe Cactus national monument, cracked the pond lining, and watched the spring flow crash to an all-time low while the habitat partially dried up. Now a second 30ft wall is planned just 90–150 feet north of the first one, which would likely bulldoze part of the pond and level federally recognized critical habitat for the mud turtle – all to "secure" a stretch of border where crossings are now basically nonexistent.
The punchline: even when crossings were higher in 2023–24, people just went through the wall and turned themselves in to seek asylum, proving the barrier is environmentally catastrophic but functionally useless. Researchers, Indigenous leaders, and environmentalists are warning that this sequel project could wipe out multiple imperiled species so Trump can preserve the one truly thriving organism in his orbit: the border-security grift ecosystem.
Artist’s rendering of Trump’s transportation policy: a gleaming express train from the luxury condo district to the private terminal, passing straight over the neighborhoods where the tracks never stop.
The Trump administration has decided that racism in transit is perfectly fine as long as you don’t say the quiet part out loud on paper. The Department of Transportation just shredded disparate impact protections, announcing it will no longer hold agencies accountable when their decisions have massively discriminatory effects — so long as those effects are "unintentional." Translation: if your bus cuts, rail extensions, and highway routes just happen to screw over Black, Latino, and disabled riders, Uncle Sam will keep the checks flowing.
Previously, DOT could yank federal funds when agencies built glossy airport trains through Black and Latino neighborhoods while refusing to add stops for the people who actually live there — like it did with BART’s infamous airport connector. That was the law working: discrimination exposed, money pulled, accountability achieved. Now that tool is gone, tossed onto the same bonfire where Trump has been methodically burning civil-rights protections in housing, lending, employment, and anywhere else rich white donors might feel mildly inconvenienced.
The new doctrine is simple: infrastructure for wealthy commuters, pollution and transit deserts for everyone else. Eliminate a bus line through a Black neighborhood? That’s just “efficiency.” Ram a highway through a Latino community so they choke on exhaust? That’s “progress.” Without disparate impact rules, communities lose one of the few levers they had to challenge being literally cut off from jobs, healthcare, and basic participation in society. But hey, at least the administration can brag about “cutting red tape” — if you define civil rights as red tape and human beings as traffic obstacles.
While Congresswoman Lateefah Simon and civil-rights lawyers are out here begging DOT not to funnel tax dollars into discrimination, Trump’s team is quietly proving that you don’t need Bull Connor and fire hoses when you’ve got notice-and-comment rulemaking. Freedom of movement is a civil right — unless you’re poor, disabled, or a person of color, in which case the Trump administration has a clear message: you can’t get there from here.
Two guys who really hate the idea of an impartial court, photographed at the Mar-a-Lago Impunity Summit.
America’s self-described law-and-order president has now upgraded from attacking US courts to trying to burn down the entire concept of international justice. The Trump State Department has made it official policy to dismantle the International Criminal Court “brick by brick” – not a late-night tantrum on Truth Social, but a formal campaign to erase any institution that might one day ask awkward questions like, “So about those war crimes…”.
Instead of just refusing to cooperate, the administration is going full mob-boss: punishing countries that don’t abandon the ICC, threatening allies who “enjoy the benefits of the US security umbrella,” and slapping travel bans and sanctions on judges and staff so severe they’re digitally exiled from modern life. Can’t use your bank account, can’t use Uber, can’t use booking.com – Trump has essentially reinvented medieval banishment, but with fewer ethics.
The White House is also flirting with a cute little anti-justice alliance with Russia and China, because nothing says “leader of the democratic West” like teaming up with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping to protect anyone accused of genocide, ethnic cleansing, or war crimes from ever seeing the inside of a courtroom. All this while the ICC is already busy sabotaging itself with internal scandals and botched prosecutions, proving that Trump’s unique talent is looking at a failing institution and deciding the real problem is that it might still hold him or his friends accountable.
So the US, which once helped set up Nuremberg, is now working to make sure there will never be another Nuremberg – at least not one that could touch Trump, Netanyahu, or any future American president who thinks international law is for suckers and small countries.
RFK Jr.’s science advisory process, seen here: a ring light, a podcast mic, and a syringe full of vibes.
The FDA’s outside advisory panel just voted 8-6 to relax restrictions on trendy injectable peptides like BPC-157, TB-500 and KPV, because who needs robust safety data when you’ve got Joe Rogan vibes and Instagram before-and-after photos? Government scientists warned there’s little evidence these compounds are safe or effective, but the panel bravely followed the science of: "my chiropractor’s podcast says it’s fine."
This nail-biter vote just happens to follow a quiet makeover of the panel’s membership, where more than half a dozen people with ties to the peptide industry were parachuted in — doctors, pharmacists, and consultants who directly work in the field and somehow all landed on the side of “let’s sell more peptides.” Meanwhile, the academics with no financial stake mostly voted no, apparently still clinging to the outdated notion that medicine should be based on data instead of TikTok trends.
Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., self-described “big fan” of peptides and architect of the "Make America Healthy Again" influencer rebrand, now gets political cover to undo Biden-era restrictions and supercharge a market experts describe as a “wild west” of unregulated drugs. Telehealth grifters and longevity gurus like Gary Brecka — who literally sells this stuff — are poised to cash in as FDA policy conveniently aligns with their online storefronts. Regulation capture level: wellness MLM.
So the federal government is inching toward putting these compounds on the FDA’s "generally safe for pharmacies to make and sell" list, over the objections of its own scientists, to satisfy a market whipped up by celebrity podcasters and supplement pushers. America’s new health policy model is here: if you can’t prove it works, just lobby your way onto the panel and vote yourself a business plan.
White House officials stare at their phones, waiting to find out from Trump's latest post what US nuclear policy is *today*.
Less than a day after the US-Saudi nuclear deal was signed, Donald Trump jumped on social media to announce that, surprise, the whole thing is actually contingent on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords and formally recognising Israel. You thought nuclear policy went through Congress, non-proliferation experts, and boring old treaties? Cute. Apparently it now runs through whatever Trump decides to post after dessert.
The White House is busy pretending this is all part of some master diplomatic strategy rather than the president treating nuclear cooperation like a loyalty program: collect one reactor, redeem for one geopolitical concession. Meanwhile, the tiny detail that we're tying nuclear capabilities to last-minute, off-the-cuff political demands from a guy live-tweeting foreign policy barely registers. What could possibly go wrong when you hand a crown prince nuclear goodies and then start improvising the terms on the internet?
So the US-Saudi deal is no longer just a high-risk bet on an authoritarian regime; it's now also a lever in Trump's personal Middle East legacy project. Non-proliferation norms, congressional oversight, and long-term security planning are, as usual, the hostages in the back seat while the president floors it toward "deal" territory and hopes nobody notices the uranium rattling around in the trunk.
Blake Miguez, bravely auditioning for Congress on the theory that a vanished district and a rape allegation are just paperwork problems between him and another Trump endorsement.
Louisiana state senator Blake Miguez, who was the subject of a 2007 police report accusing him of rape (which he denies and for which he was never charged), is out here trying to figure out which congressional district he doesn’t live in that he should run for — while humbly hoping to once again “earn” Donald Trump’s endorsement. His campaign website is now password-protected and blank, which is always exactly what you do when everything is totally fine and extremely normal. The original Trump endorsement was for a district that literally no longer exists after the supreme court’s Callais v Louisiana decision, so the campaign is blaming redistricting for the awkwardness rather than the whole "unmentioned rape allegation in the background check" situation.
The White House line is that Trump hasn’t technically rescinded his endorsement and has no current "intent" to do so, but might "cross that bridge" if some unspecified "new information" appears — you know, beyond the already public police report and multiple national stories about it. Meanwhile, Miguez’s team has been busy distributing statements from the accuser’s family calling her a liar with drug problems, while a rival Republican-aligned PAC openly mocks the idea that redistricting is the real issue here. As other politicians from both parties resign or drop out over sexual misconduct allegations, Trump’s self-described MAGA "warrior" is shopping for a district and a recycled endorsement, because in this party, accountability is optional but loyalty to the Dear Leader is non-negotiable.
Mock-up of Trump's 250-foot triumphal arch, seen here moments before it demands Congress be replaced with a gift shop.
The Trump administration has discovered a bold new way to honor American history: by making it dramatically easier to demolish it. To clear the path for Trump's proposed 250-foot triumphal arch on the National Mall, his allies are moving to weaken Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act — the boring little rule that currently forces federal agencies to consider whether they're about to pave over sacred tribal land, Black neighborhoods, or, say, anything older than a Trump casino bankruptcy.
The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, which oversees this process, just happens to be stacked with Trump loyalists — he controls 21 of its 24 seats — and is now poised to "reinterpret" the law in a way that would make decades of preservation protections about as sturdy as a Trump University diploma. The council chair seat is conveniently vacant, so acting vice chair Travis Voyles is running the show while pushing through draft language to water down what counts as an "adverse effect" and what agencies actually have to do about it.
Preservation experts warn this isn't just about one gaudy arch; it's an open invitation to blast through historic neighborhoods, cultural landmarks, burial grounds, and tribal sites nationwide with fewer guardrails and less input from the people most affected. The White House and Interior Department, naturally, had nothing to say to NPR — presumably too busy designing the font for the gold-plated plaque on Trump's future arch while the rest of the country’s heritage gets put on the clearance rack.
Trump, flanked by utility execs and tech lobbyists, proudly unveils his new policy tool: wishing really hard that corporations don’t raise your bill.
Donald Trump marched into the Environmental Protection Agency – remember when that used to regulate things? – to unveil his latest consumer protection masterstroke: a non-binding "Ratepayer Protection Pledge" in which about 200 utilities, datacenter developers, and tech giants solemnly swear they definitely, totally, pinky-promise not to stick Americans with the power bill for the AI gold rush. Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, xAI and friends – the people driving the surge in electricity demand – are now also the people writing the rules about who pays for it. What could possibly go wrong.
Trump bragged that electricity rates for "80% of the power distributed in America" are being "kept in check" by this plan, which is a bold claim for a document with all the legal force of a change.org petition. Utility prices are already up 4% year-over-year, but the White House insists this voluntary vibes-based framework will ensure everyone building and powering datacenters covers their own costs instead of passing them on to families. Environmental groups, who have met a pledge or two before, describe it as a photo op with Big Tech that "won’t lower a single family’s electric bill" – a "paper-thin" promise from companies that haven’t bothered to show how any of this supposedly lowers costs.
As communities across the country revolt against water-guzzling, grid-straining AI datacenters – with New York passing a moratorium and even Greg Abbott calling for a rural Texas ban – Trump is out here yelling about "radical left communists" who want to "shut down all new development" while handing those same developers a regulatory participation trophy. Twenty-three GOP governors signed on, because nothing says "tough on corporate abuse" like asking Nextera and Duke Energy to self-regulate with a handshake and a press release. The Sierra Club and Evergreen Action are unimpressed, mostly because you can’t pay your electric bill with aspirational corporate promises, no matter how many times the president calls it "bold action".
The U.S. Capitol, bravely attempting to remember it’s supposed to declare wars, not just watch them on C-SPAN.
The House has once again tried to break up with Trump's deeply illegal Iran war, passing a resolution 214–208 to remove U.S. forces from hostilities that Congress never actually authorized. This is the second time they've done this, because nothing says "functioning republic" like repeatedly reminding the president that wars are not supposed to be a solo project. Naturally, the measure is nonbinding, because the only thing more symbolic than congressional oversight is congressional backbone.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal calls it an "illegal war" with no mission, no strategy, and no end goal — so basically the foreign policy version of Trump's Twitter feed, but with 18 dead U.S. troops and nearly 500 injured since February. Trump, who campaigned on ending "forever wars," is now fully committed to starring in one, dismissing war powers votes as "meaningless" and blaming it all on "Trump Derangement Syndrome," which is a bold way of describing Congress reading the War Powers Resolution out loud.
Over in the Senate, Democrats tried their own war powers move and lost 47–49, because a few Republicans are still deeply committed to the radical notion that the president should be able to lob the country into war like it's a reality show season finale. The Senate even briefly passed a war powers resolution last month, then reversed itself after Trump complained — a helpful live demonstration of how separation of powers becomes separation of spine the moment the Dear Leader tweets.
