Jamieson Greer explains that tariffs don’t raise prices, they just "liberate" dollars from American wallets.
The Trump White House is teeing up yet another round of mystery tariffs, because if the Supreme Court tells you your last trade stunt was illegal, the obvious response is to do it again, but with more suspense. After the court smacked down large chunks of Trump’s earlier tariffs in February, the administration slapped on a "temporary" 10% global tariff that conveniently expires on Friday. Now press secretary Karoline Leavitt is doing her best impression of a game show host, telling reporters to "stay tuned" for Jamieson Greer’s big reveal, as if the prize isn’t just higher prices and more chaos.
Trump’s crew still insists this is all about revitalizing the industrial heartland, presumably by making everything more expensive and hoping no one connects the dots. Inflation has already jumped to a three-year high, but Greer, the US trade representative, went before the Senate and flat-out told Elizabeth Warren that tariffs haven’t increased prices for American families. Then he pointed to core inflation — you know, the one that conveniently excludes food and energy, the stuff actual humans buy — to claim victory, while overall inflation sits higher than when Biden left office. It’s economic policy by vibes and gaslighting: break global trade, get slapped by the courts, jack up prices, then stare America in the face and say, "What inflation?"
Elon Musk explains that when he helped a president wreck the federal government, he was just having a little fun and everyone should relax because robots will fix it later.
Elon Musk, briefly the world’s first trillionaire and permanently the world’s neediest man, now says he "got carried away" with politics while helping Donald Trump back into the White House with a casual $200m and then moonlighting as the regime’s "financial axman" in the fake-sounding but very real Department of Government Efficiency, a.k.a. Doge. During his stint as Trump’s budget Terminator, he proudly oversaw $150bn in "harmful" cuts and shoved tens of thousands of federal workers out the door, then later mused on a podcast that, in hindsight, maybe he should’ve just stayed home and played with his companies instead of the U.S. government.
Any glimmer of remorse doesn’t last long. In his 90-minute Economist infomercial, Musk preens about his political influence, declares that "people don’t realize that what I’m saying will come to pass", and is obligingly described as a modern-day Cassandra—if Cassandra had stock options, a god complex, and a history of union-busting. He pivots from dismantling the civil service to predicting AI will soon outthink humanity, work will be "optional", money will be meaningless in 10 years, and yet he’ll heroically pay "trillions" in tax someday so governments can send people checks in the post-scarcity utopia he personally midwifed by… firing park rangers and USDA inspectors.
When not fantasizing about space datacenters that scientists warn will be catastrophic for Earth, Musk is busy laundering far-right politics as common sense. He rants about immigration and race in a country he barely visits, predicts a UK civil war, dodges questions about being anti-Muslim by accusing reporters of ignoring "rape and murder", and defends Europe’s far right as just "normal people" who want "safe cities" and "secure borders"—Stephen Miller with better branding and a rocket fetish. He also suggests Ukraine should hand Russia some land, because what’s a little territorial surrender between authoritarian-curious friends when your satellites are already in the mix?
By the end, Musk is musing that the universe might be a computer simulation and that his own projects are so "preposterous" it’s hard to believe they’re real. Unfortunately, the part where a mega-rich tech baron bought himself a president, gutted the federal workforce, mainstreamed bigotry to 240 million followers, and then shrugged it off as getting a bit "carried away" is very real. The simulation, apparently, is accountability.
Jim Jordan squints at a subpoena, furious it does not come with a built-in mind-reading feature.
Jim Jordan and the House Judiciary Republicans have helpfully clarified what “oversight” means in Trump’s second term: if you investigate the Dear Leader, you get investigated for investigating the Dear Leader. The GOP-controlled committee has sent a criminal referral for former special counsel Jack Smith to Trump’s acting attorney general Todd Blanche, accusing Smith of lying to Congress because he described getting lawmakers’ toll records and not, apparently, the magical text-message treasure trove Republicans now wish they had asked him about. The new standard appears to be: if the witness doesn’t answer the question you should have asked in your head, that’s a felony.
Smith’s lawyers pointed out the obvious — that he gave “truthful, responsive answers,” and that the real "crime" is that Trump has “repeatedly ordered that Mr Smith be prosecuted and jailed.” So yes, the House is now doing direct contract work for Trump’s revenge fantasies, and they even put it in writing. Jamie Raskin politely translated the stunt: Republicans are mad Jack Smith isn’t a mind reader, and this referral would get laughed out of any actual courtroom not staffed by Trump appointees auditioning for lifetime Fox contracts.
The punchline: Todd Blanche, architect of the Epstein cover-up and Trump’s “super pardon” slush fund, is up for permanent attorney general, and he’s the one who will decide whether to charge the guy who prosecuted Trump. The same Justice Department that already face-planted trying to criminally nail James Comey and Letitia James now promises to “investigate all evidence of criminal conduct” — which, under Trump, mostly means anyone who once made him look bad on cable news. Rule of law has officially been replaced with Rule of Trump, and the House GOP is racing to prove how fast they can fetch.
Brett Kavanaugh, seen here workshopping new ways to turn ‘because Trump wants it’ into binding constitutional law.
Brett Kavanaugh has finally found his calling: not as a neutral arbiter of law, but as Trump’s in-house idea factory for turning authoritarian fantasies into semi-plausible legal doctrines. While Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito do the full cosplay originalism routine, Kavanaugh skips the Latin and goes straight to the point: if Trump wants it, it’s just "common sense". Racial profiling by ICE? Totally reasonable. Tariffs by presidential tantrum? Historically normal, if you close your eyes and make up the history.
His solo concurrence in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo blessed what are now charmingly known as “Kavanaugh Stops” – a legal green light for ICE to grab anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and has the audacity to work a low-wage job. The result: U.S. citizens “dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot,” kids locked up, and multiple people killed, including citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Legal scholars called his reasoning “factual revisionism” and “preposterous”; the government called it a policy manual.
After getting roasted by everyone who can read, Kavanaugh tried to sneak a quiet walk-back into a random footnote in an unrelated case, suddenly discovering that maybe race-based immigration stops are bad actually. Unfortunately for him, Stephen Miller doesn’t govern by footnote, so the Kavanaugh Stops roll on, now with a higher body count and more shattered families. Meanwhile, on the trade front, Kavanaugh’s dissent in Learning Resources v. Trump helpfully rewrote decades of law so Trump could pretend emergency powers cover whatever tariffs he dreamed up on cable news.
When the Court told Trump no, Kavanaugh basically left a breadcrumb trail of alternative statutes he could abuse, and Trump followed it within hours, slapping on a global surcharge that was swiftly ruled illegal. Trump called the justices who stopped him “fools” and “lap dogs,” but reserved rare praise for Kavanaugh: the one guy on the Court willing to turn the Constitution into a choose-your-own-dictatorship adventure. The separation of powers is hanging by a thread, and Kavanaugh’s busy knitting Trump a safety net.
Amish Shah and Jay Feely, preparing to find out whether voters prefer the guy who keeps people breathing or the guy endorsed by the man who tried to suffocate the Constitution.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee looked at Arizona’s 1st district, saw two moderate Democrats with nearly identical politics, and heroically chose the one the voters didn’t want. Local Democrats scratched their heads, the DCCC boosted former Republican and TV personality Marlene Galán-Woods, and the electorate responded by handing the win to Amish Shah, the guy they’d already tried out once before. Voters: 1, NatDem Brain Trust: a strong, confident 0.
Now Shah, an emergency physician who literally intubates people on NFL sidelines, will face Jay Feely, a former NFL kicker and proud recipient of the coveted Donald Trump Endorsement Sticker. So the general election will be between the guy who keeps players alive and the guy who kicks the ball, backed by the guy who tried to kick democracy into a ditch. Naturally, Republicans immediately labeled Shah a "socialist" because he believes in functioning healthcare and not letting people die on the field or off it.
The DCCC, having just been pantsed by its own base for the second cycle in a row, put out a statement calling Feely an "extremist" and praising Shah, while delicately forgetting to mention that a few weeks ago they were busy pretending he didn’t exist. Meanwhile, anti-establishment candidates are knocking off DCCC favorites in California and Maine too, as grassroots Democrats keep yelling, "Stop treating us like a focus group" into a void filled with consultants and donor call sheets. The party infrastructure that was supposed to be the bulwark against Trumpism is now mostly serving as a very expensive cautionary tale.
So we head toward a key House race in a district that ping-pongs between Biden, Trump, and random Republicans, with one party running on "We swear we’re not as crazy as our nominee" and the other running on "Please ignore our own leadership, they don’t know what they’re doing." American democracy: now with more special teams and fewer adults.
Markwayne Mullin and DHS carefully studying a spreadsheet labeled ‘278,000???’ before sending it to the states as a national scandal.
New Jersey discovers that a software screw‑up in its automatic voter registration system accidentally signed up 6,600 noncitizens over two years, of whom fewer than 400 actually voted. That’s about 0.009% of ballots cast — or, in Trump math, proof that hordes of "illegals" are stealing elections for "Dumocrats". Election experts call it what it is: a rare administrative error in a system that mostly works, not a migrant-led coup against the ballot box.
Meanwhile in Washington, Trump and Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin are treating reality like a suggestion. DHS fires off "laughable" letters to four states claiming there could be 278,000 noncitizens on the rolls, offers basically no methodology, and then gives states two weeks to explain how they’ll fix this theoretical menace. Mullin and Trump happily cite the number on TV as fact, threaten state officials with prison if they don’t hand over sensitive voter data, and demand more proof-of-citizenship laws — despite years of evidence that noncitizen voting is vanishingly rare.
Election officials in the targeted states are politely screaming into the void: DHS won’t give them names, evidence, or even a coherent explanation. But that’s the point. As one expert notes, this isn’t about cleaning up voter rolls; it’s about manufacturing a ready-made excuse to call the next election stolen. The federal government is basically saying, "Some of your voters are poisonous. We won’t tell you which ones. Now panic, and also give us more power." It’s not election security; it’s a pre-written conspiracy theory with letterhead.
A helpful visual guide to how you turn Black neighborhoods into Republican seats using only a map, a pen, and a Supreme Court that hates the Voting Rights Act.
Trump demanded mid-decade redistricting, the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc weakened the Voting Rights Act for him, and Republican legislatures in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina said, "Say no more, fam." Majority- and plurality-Black districts are being sliced up like a corporate merger chart, with Black communities methodically scattered into majority-white districts where their voting power politely disappears.
Texas sprinted out of the gate, ramming through a map that shifts five seats toward Republicans and has already cost Black Houston a seat at the table by forcing two Black Democrats into the same district. Meanwhile, the Court helpfully branded Louisiana’s old map an "unconstitutional racial gerrymander" — not the new, surgically precise dilution of Black voters, of course, just the parts that still let them elect anyone. That ruling opened the floodgates for dismantling Black districts across the South, all while Republicans calmly insist this is just about "boosting their party" ahead of midterms. Very normal, healthy democracy stuff.
So Black voters, who went nearly 78% for Kamala Harris in these states in 2024, are discovering the modern GOP cure for that particular problem: redraw the lines until their votes are mathematically outnumbered. The franchise remains technically legal; its effectiveness has simply been reallocated. Jim Crow got a UX redesign and a GIS upgrade, and the Trump court is here to assure you it’s all perfectly constitutional now.
President Trump steps off his Qatari-sponsored Sky Yacht, freshly repainted in Strongman Chic, while the Secret Service quietly suggests maybe he take literally any other plane and the FBI goes hunting for whoever dared to mention that out loud.
The Trump White House has apparently decided that if you can't stop reporters from writing about your sketchy, Qatari-gifted luxury Air Force One, you can at least send the FBI to their front doors at night. The New York Times is in federal court arguing that the administration is abusing the justice system to shake down its reporters for sources after they published stories about security concerns on Trump's new flying ego complex. Because nothing says "we're totally confident in our retrofit" like trying to turn national-security journalism into a criminal conspiracy.
Instead of following long-standing practice and serving subpoenas on the newspaper's lawyers, FBI agents went straight to reporters' homes—within 48 hours of the first story—dragging in records for journalists and even their family members. The Times' legal team calls it a violation of basic First Amendment protections and part of "an escalating series of attacks on journalists" this administration can't stand. Reporters' spouses describe feeling like "enemies of the state," which is a neat way of saying the government is using grand juries as a mood-management tool for an angry president.
As a fun subplot, FBI Director Kash Patel reportedly helped oversee the effort from inside the White House, because why bother with even the illusion of separation between political revenge and federal law enforcement? The supposed emergency here isn't foreign espionage or terrorism—it's that someone told the press the president's rush-delivered, foreign-gifted jumbo toy might not have the missile defenses you'd want on a plane carrying America's most fragile ego. So the administration's response is to aim the legal system at reporters, not the security flaws. Free press, meet free-fall.
Michael Kratsios heroically defending America’s right to be the only one allowed to hoover up data and call it artificial intelligence.
Donald Trump’s science and tech guy, Michael Kratsios, has discovered a shocking new phenomenon: corporations protecting their intellectual property… when it’s American. He’s accusing China’s Moonshot AI of running a "large scale" scheme to siphon capabilities from Anthropic’s Fable AI model using distillation, which is basically when a weaker model pesters a stronger one with questions until it becomes a slightly less stupid version of itself. Moonshot allegedly also found its way onto restricted Nvidia servers, because nothing says "secure critical infrastructure" like putting the future of AI on hardware guarded with the digital equivalent of a sticky note password.
Kratsios claims Moonshot used Anthropic’s tech to build its shiny new Kimi K3 model, which Chinese state-linked cheerleaders are bragging can rival top US systems. Naturally, the Trump administration’s response is not "maybe we should regulate AI" but "maybe we should sanction it." Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went on Fox Business to float the idea of punishing overseas models that "steal from our great companies," carefully omitting the part where US firms happily scrape the entire internet and call it innovation.
All this moral outrage coincidentally ramps up just as Trump is prepping a September meeting with Xi Jinping, meaning AI theft is now another handy bargaining chip in the "art of the deal": protect our oligarchs’ models, threaten your oligarchs’ models, and hope nobody notices that the White House is turning the global AI race into a state-backed IP protection racket for a handful of powerful companies.
Trump in a Georgia high school gym explaining that national debt is bad, except when it’s his, and that the solution to unaffordable living costs is a branded investment account for babies.
Donald Trump went to a Georgia high school – a fitting venue, given the maturity level of his economic pitch – to announce that "affordability" is just a Democrat word, like "reality" or "math". He mocked the idea that voters care about being able to pay their bills, then spent the rest of the rally bragging about all the affordable wonders of his economic policies. Gas is back over $4 a gallon thanks to his Iran war, but don’t worry, he says prices are "coming down very rapidly actually" – somewhere, in some dimension, probably one with unicorns and a functioning ethics office.
The big rollout was "Trump accounts": federally seeded, tax-free investment accounts for every baby born through 2028, stocked with $1,000 of public money and a lifetime supply of branding. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent called it the "triumph of capitalism over socialism", which is an interesting way to describe the federal government cutting everyone a check and shoving it into Wall Street. Georgia GOP gubernatorial candidate and billionaire Rick Jackson heroically promised to personally match the state’s $1,000 contribution if the legislature balks, because nothing says small government like a $3bn medical staffing mogul buying the state’s baby policy.
Trump, who added about $8tn to the national debt in his first term and is cheerfully on pace to keep the tab running, solemnly declared that for decades Washington gave kids "absolutely nothing but debt" – then used that line to justify another $17bn program named after himself. At the same time, his allies in Congress were busy voting to fund his Iran adventure, which is driving those same gas prices he insists are someone else’s fault. And just to round out the fantasy, he repeated his claim that his policies have drawn $19.2tn in investment pledges, a number so fake even the Cato Institute is begging him to stop lying. But sure, the real problem is that Democrats said the word "affordability" out loud.
Steve Hilton explains how he’s totally different from Trump, except for the part where Trump picked him and he agrees with Trump on everything that matters.
Steve Hilton, a Fox News–branded populist cosplayer and proud Trump endorsee, is running for California governor on the bold new theory that if you slap a fresh logo on MAGA, coastal voters won’t notice the smell. He goes on national TV to explain how he’ll win over anti-Trump Californians while touting his Trump backing, which is a bit like opening a vegan restaurant and bragging that it’s sponsored by Arby’s.
The sales pitch is the usual: same hard-right agenda, just with softer lighting and fewer caps lock tweets. Hilton casts himself as a reasonable reformer while carefully avoiding the awkward details of what it means to be Trump’s guy in a state that watched the administration attack immigrants, the environment, and basic reality for years. Voters are supposed to forget the coup attempt and the kids in cages and just focus on his "outsider" vibes.
What this really is: yet another trial balloon for the post-coup Republican strategy — keep the authoritarian platform, swap in a friendlier face, and hope no one connects the dots between the "new" candidate and the old boss. If it works, the Trump machine gets a foothold in the country’s biggest blue state. If it fails, at least he’ll have boosted his Fox booking fee. Win-win, for everyone except democracy.
A child in immigration court, bravely representing themselves against the full weight of the U.S. government, because fiscal responsibility demands we stiff their lawyers.
The Trump administration has identified the true national emergency: immigrant children having attorneys. So they’re fixing it the old-fashioned way — by blowing up funding for nearly a hundred legal aid organizations, refusing to reimburse $65m in work already done, and demanding those groups violate client confidentiality by handing over kids’ unredacted medical and immigration files. You know, classic "rule of law" stuff. As a bonus, the contract providing legal counsel to more than 20,000 children is set to die on 31 July, because nothing says "family values" like forcing a 9-year-old to argue federal immigration law alone in court.
Immigration experts point out that children without lawyers win the right to stay less than 10% of the time and judges are nearly 100 times less likely to grant relief — which, of course, is the entire point. The system that was supposed to carefully assess kids’ legal claims is being rebuilt into a mass deportation conveyor belt, with children ordered deported before other agencies can even process their applications. Federal officials are reportedly planning to ship kids en masse to Texas, where friendly courts and politicians stand ready to rubber-stamp the agenda, after first trying to rope in Ken Paxton’s office and then the Texas Indigent Defense Commission to help launder this into something that vaguely resembles due process. Even major providers like Kids in Need of Defense are bailing because the government just doesn’t feel like paying the $20m it owes.
So legal nonprofits face layoffs and collapse, kids are marched into "fast-tracked" hearings without counsel, and the administration gets its cherished spreadsheet of deportation numbers. Advocates call it immoral and a betrayal of basic fairness; the White House seems to call it Tuesday. Due process for children fleeing trafficking, abuse, and persecution has been reimagined as a paperwork obstacle to be removed — preferably by starving it of cash and threatening anyone who tries to help.
Donald Trump, 45th and 47th President of the United States, seen here workshopping new ways to turn national security decisions into loyalty points for his personal balance sheet.
Democrats are being politely encouraged to maybe, possibly, mention that the sitting president has turned the Oval Office into a $2.2bn side hustle while everyone else is choosing between groceries and gas. Trump’s second term has been less a presidency and more a live‑action MasterClass in corruption, featuring everything from a $1.4bn crypto windfall to pardons handed out to families who just happen to shovel cash into his campaign.
The article walks through the highlight reel: Trump denounces crypto as a scam, then launches his own crypto empire with his sons, gets a secret $500m stake from a UAE royal, and promptly greenlights AI chip sales that national security officials hate. He mints $636m off $TRUMP meme coins while nearly a million of his own supporters lose $3.8bn as the token nukes 97% of its value. Meanwhile, his administration guts crypto oversight, shutters the enforcement unit, and drops fraud cases, because why regulate the casino when the house is the president? All this on top of foreign gifts that laugh in the face of the emoluments clause. Teapot Dome looks like a bake sale; this is full‑scale, pay‑to‑play government as personal enrichment fund.
The kicker: experts say it’s not just the most corrupt presidency in US history, it’s approaching world‑historical levels. But sure, let’s have another Very Serious Debate about whether it’s rude to call this what it is: a billionaire using state power to loot the country while his base buys his coins and his merch and watches their savings evaporate. Winning.
Dodgers fans outside the stadium holding boycott signs, because when your team’s owners are tied to detention profiteers and your president calls your city a trash heap, maybe you sit this World Series photo op out.
Los Angeles is watching its beloved Dodgers trot off to the White House to smile with the guy who calls their city a "trash heap" and their families "illegal aliens" and criminals. Fun twist: a huge chunk of that fanbase is Latino, and some of them—like Juan, whose dad was snatched off the street and deported after 30 years here—are now weighing whether a team that won’t even issue a basic statement of support for immigrants deserves their money, their loyalty, or their tattoos.
The vibes somehow get worse. The Dodgers’ ownership group, Guggenheim Partners, has had a stake in Geo Group, one of the private prison profiteers running immigration detention facilities—those same places where families are gouged $50 just to open a phone account and $80 for a thin long-sleeve shirt so they don’t freeze. So while Trump’s administration is conducting heavy-handed raids, sending in the National Guard and marines on protesters, and ripping apart communities, the hometown heroes are owned by people cashing checks off the misery.
Local soccer clubs managed to say, "Hey, maybe terrorizing immigrant families is bad"; the Dodgers, meanwhile, are polishing their bats for a photo op with the man "trying to tear this city apart", as LA Times columnist Bill Plaschke put it. Manager Dave Roberts has taken the bold stance of "I’m just a coach," while players are left to decide whether to grin through the photo line with a president who openly despises a huge portion of their fans. It’s billed as a celebration of unity and achievement; what it really looks like is another victory parade for Trump’s war on immigrants, sponsored by corporate America and served with Dodger Dogs.
Cody Coughenour, living proof that giving people Medicaid before they leave jail actually works — which is precisely why the Trump administration is trying to strangle it in the crib.
The Trump administration has apparently decided that if you survive incarceration, you should have to fight a paperwork boss battle before you can see a doctor. States like Washington have been quietly doing something radical and dangerous: using Medicaid to keep people alive when they get out of jail. You know, basic stuff like addiction treatment, meds for anxiety, continuity of care — the kind of boring, evidence-based policy that actually reduces overdoses and re-arrests. Cody Coughenour walked out of jail in 2025 with a Medicaid card, meds, and appointments already booked, and somehow did not immediately sprint back to his dealer. Truly terrifying outcome for the "tough on crime" crowd.
Enter the federal government, stage far-right. New Trump-era Medicaid rules and cuts are making it harder for states to keep this going, throwing up fresh barriers to covering people behind bars or as they reenter society. Instead of smoothing the process so people can transition straight into treatment, Washington and other states now get to navigate a bureaucratic obstacle course designed by people who think the real problem with mass incarceration is that prisoners might get a prescription filled on time. The message from Trump’s health brain trust: jail is for punishment, not for treating the addiction and mental illness that helped land you there.
The result? States trying to use Medicaid to lower overdose deaths and stabilize people after release are being kneecapped from DC, because nothing says "law and order" like ensuring people leave jail sick, uninsured, and one missed call away from relapsing. It’s cheaper, more humane, and more effective to give people coverage before they walk out the door, so naturally the administration is doing everything it can to make that harder. Why reduce crime and suffering when you can just manufacture more of both and call it victory?
President Trump pauses mid-rally to remember which endangered Republican he’s here to accidentally sink today.
Conventional wisdom says an unpopular president should quietly avoid swing districts in a midterm year. The Trump White House has examined this history, learned precisely nothing, and decided the solution to a historically low approval rating is more Trump, everywhere, all the time. He’s already logged more 2026 campaign trips than he had by this point in 2018, when Republicans lost the House in a 40-seat faceplant. Naturally, the lesson they drew from that disaster was: needs more cult of personality.
Past presidents like George W. Bush understood that sometimes the best thing you can do for an endangered incumbent is stay the hell away so they can run their own race. Trump, by contrast, is barnstorming toss-up districts, swinging through Georgia and New York to slap his brand on every vulnerable Republican like a clearance sticker. At rallies, he dutifully "supports" candidates by… not letting them on stage, because the midterms are explicitly being re-engineered as a national referendum on His Greatness. White House chief of staff Suzie Wiles openly brags that they’re tossing out the normal midterm playbook and making everything about the guy in the White House. Governing is for suckers; this is a personality cult road show now.
Trump and MBS reviewing blueprints labeled “totally peaceful uranium stuff, do not weaponize :)”
Trump has reportedly signed off on a 30-year nuclear cooperation deal that would let Saudi Arabia enrich its own uranium, because if there’s one regime you want flirting with the bomb, it’s the one that can’t tolerate a tweet about Jamal Khashoggi. The agreement would involve US firms helping build out the kingdom’s nuclear program and potentially a Saudi enrichment facility, all while not including the IAEA’s more intrusive “additional protocol” inspections. So yes, we’re handing centrifuge capability to Mohammed bin Salman and then politely agreeing not to look too closely.
This diplomatic tire fire is being prepped for Congress, where lawmakers who can still spell “non-proliferation” are expected to object to giving a monarchy with a casual attitude toward human rights a nuclear starter kit. Meanwhile, the US and Israel are at war with Iran, supposedly to stop Tehran from doing exactly what we’re now helping Riyadh get ready to do. Non-proliferation experts are screaming into the void that any Saudi centrifuges are a short hop from a weapons program, and MBS has already said he’ll chase the bomb if Iran gets one. Add in Saudi Arabia’s mutual defense pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan and you’ve got a region-wide nuclear Jenga tower, with Trump happily yanking out the bottom blocks for a quick geopolitical photo op.
For extra farce, the UAE previously signed a “gold standard” 123 agreement with the US that explicitly gave up enrichment, proving that regional allies can, in fact, have nuclear power without getting a weapons-ready pathway. Trump looked at that model of restraint and said: what if, instead, we did the opposite with the crown prince who buys our weapons, hosts our pageants, and loves our hotels? American foreign policy is now a choose-your-own-proliferation adventure.
A courthouse where free speech goes to get a quick procedural lecture and a one-way ticket out of the country.
The Second Circuit just sent a love letter to Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, reversing a lower court order that had freed pro-Palestinian Columbia organizer Mohsen Mahdawi. A Vermont judge previously compared the government’s efforts to deport him to McCarthyist repression, which was apparently the cue for the appeals panel to swoop in and say, actually, could we get a little more McCarthyism in here? Their unanimous ruling: the judge “overstepped” by using habeas to stop the administration from fast-tracking a dissident out of the country.
This decision neatly sidesteps the awkward question of whether Mahdawi is being unconstitutionally targeted for criticizing Israel. The court’s position is essentially: feel free to challenge your political purge after you’ve run the entire gauntlet of an immigration system run by Trump’s DOJ. Until then, enjoy the suspense. Meanwhile, Mahdawi – a legal permanent resident who was grabbed by ICE during his citizenship interview for the crime of organizing protests over Gaza – calls it a “grave setback” that hands the government power to “intimidate, censor, and punish dissent without meaningful restraint.” Which, to be fair, is the closest thing this administration has to a coherent immigration doctrine.
It’s not just Mahdawi. The ruling mirrors an earlier one against his former Columbia classmate Mahmoud Khalil, and the same court is now weighing the case of Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was detained by masked federal agents after co-signing an op-ed critical of Israel. The government insists people like them should be barred from using habeas corpus while their cases grind through Trump-controlled immigration courts, because nothing says “land of the free” like denying basic judicial relief to people you’re trying to deport for their opinions. DHS, naturally, did not respond to requests for comment – possibly too busy printing new “Criticize Israel, Get Deported” pamphlets for campus visits.
Trump legal team proudly presenting their discovery production: a stack of Google printouts and a prayer.
Donald Trump, a man who has allegedly written many books but apparently owns no documents, has been told by a US judge that he actually has to hand over real records in the BBC defamation case. The BBC coughed up 87,000 pages in discovery, while Team Trump produced a majestic 735 pages — mostly news clippings and stuff they printed off the internet, which is less a legal production and more a bored intern’s first day with Google.
Trump’s lawyer Alejandro Brito called the BBC’s requests “oppressive” and “sweeping,” which is MAGA legal code for “they asked for things that might prove something.” He also fought against turning over records about Trump’s conversations with aides over the Capitol riot and whined that subpoenas to former officials were just a “fishing expedition” to “harass” them. Translation: don’t look in the lake, you might find a whole school of crimes.
Instead of producing documents, Trump’s team is clinging to a letter from BBC chairman Samir Shah, who apologized that a Panorama clip may have given the “mistaken impression” that Trump directly called for violence. Brito is trying to spin that into a grand “admission,” as if one carefully worded British letter wipes out everything we saw on January 6th. Meanwhile, the BBC is still asking the court to toss the whole case because the documentary wasn’t even broadcast in the US, which would make this one of the most on-brand Trump lawsuits ever: complain loudly, sue internationally, and then get dragged into discovery about your finances and the coup you keep insisting wasn’t a coup.
Roger Rogoff, seen here moments before discovering that in Trump’s DOJ, "appointed by federal judges" is grounds for immediate termination.
Roger Rogoff managed to serve as U.S. attorney in the Western District of Washington for a glorious 54 minutes before Donald Trump fired him, presumably for the crime of being appointed by judges instead of by Mar-a-Lago brunch. A unanimous panel of federal judges followed federal law and installed Rogoff after the seat sat vacant for months. The Trump team responded by treating the statute — and the Appointments Clause — like one of those terms of service pop-ups you scroll past and ignore.
Now Rogoff is suing Trump, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and the Justice Department, asking a court to declare the firing unlawful and let him actually do the job Congress said judges could fill temporarily. DOJ’s defense is basically, "We weren’t consulted, therefore separation of powers is canceled" — with Blanche proudly posting on X that judges can appoint temporary U.S. attorneys and the president can fire them, like this is a normal civics-class fun fact and not an open declaration that judicial appointments exist only at the pleasure of Dear Leader.
This isn’t a one-off screwup; it’s a pattern. Trump’s DOJ has repeatedly tried to keep unconfirmed loyalists squatting in U.S. attorney roles after courts ruled their appointments illegal — from Pam Bondi’s handpicked prosecutors to Lindsey Halligan, who exited after a judge said her appointment was unlawful. Every time federal judges unanimously pick seasoned litigators like James Hundley or Donald Kinsella to clean up the mess, the Trump crew yanks them within hours. The message is crystal clear: Congress can pass laws, judges can follow them, but if the prosecutor doesn’t "have the support of POTUS," they get 54 minutes, tops.
So now we have the surreal spectacle of a fired U.S. attorney asking a federal court to remind the president that Congress is allowed to exist. Trump spent his first term attacking the independent judiciary; in his second, he’s just openly asserting that federal judges don’t get to staff the Justice Department even when the statute explicitly says they do. Why bother with Senate confirmations or statutory vacancy rules when you can run the country as an HR department for loyalists and treat the Constitution like an optional EULA?
