america flirts with the radical idea of checks and balances again
Americans briefly remember that they are, in fact, the consumers and not the billionaires’ emotional support animals.
Trump’s second-term fun ride may hit an awkward bump this November: voters deciding they’d like a Congress that does something other than rubber-stamp his tantrums. All 435 House seats and 33 Senate seats are up, and Democrats are four seats away from taking the House gavel – and with it, subpoena power, public hearings, and the ability to ask awkward questions like, "So about that economy you said would be so easy."
Analysts are spotting another potential "blue wave" as the engaged, midterm-regular voters tilt Democratic while Trump’s casual authoritarians seem less eager to show up when he’s not literally on the ballot screaming at them. Trump’s approval numbers are underwater, his economic ratings are worse than in 2018, inflation is still elevated despite his tariff cosplay, and job growth is patchy. Republicans now get to campaign on the thrilling message: "Yes, things are bad, but imagine how much worse it would be if we weren’t in charge."
If Democrats grab the House, Trump’s legislative wish list becomes a museum exhibit. If they somehow take the Senate too, his pipeline of judges and cabinet loyalists slows to a drip, and the dream of stacking every institution with unqualified sycophants takes a hit. Gerrymandered maps and structural bias still give the GOP a nice autocracy starter kit, but for now, the big question is whether Americans want a functioning oversight branch or another two years of watching Trump try to govern the country like it’s his personal streaming channel.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness
trump, rfk jr, and the great measles comeback tour
Surgeon General tries to explain basic vaccines on live TV while the administration’s anti-vax arsonists hose the CDC down with gasoline just off-camera.
The Trump administration handed the CDC’s vaccine program to RFK Jr., an anti-vaccine crusader whose medical expertise begins and ends with YouTube comments. He promptly fired all 17 members of the agency’s vaccine advisory committee and replaced them with vaccine skeptics, then helped the CDC quietly drop recommendations that babies be protected against hepatitis A, hepatitis B, RSV, dengue and multiple forms of meningitis. Because if there’s one thing America needed in 2026, it’s more viruses and fewer scientists.
Now states are sprinting away from the federal government like it’s coughing on them in a crowded elevator. At least 28 states have broken from the new CDC guidance, with places like Colorado, Alaska, California, Illinois, Maryland and Vermont trying to keep childhood shots free and protect doctors from being sued into oblivion by anti-vax lawfare groups. Colorado’s bill would even let providers follow the American Academy of Pediatrics instead of RFK Jr.’s Science Denial Fan Club, while expanding liability protections so health workers aren’t punished for giving, you know, proven vaccines.
The result: the country’s vaccine policy is fracturing because the federal government has decided that decades of evidence-based medicine should take a back seat to Trump’s favorite conspiracy podcaster. Major medical groups are begging people to keep vaccinating their kids against 18 diseases, Mehmet Oz is on CNN pleading “take the vaccine, please,” and states are trying to duct-tape together a functioning public health system while the White House promotes an "Eat Real Food" campaign as if organic broccoli can stop measles. This administration has essentially turned childhood immunization into a 50-state choose-your-own-adventure, except the wrong choice ends with a PICU bed.
#anti-science#killing-democracy
trump unlocks ‘major combat operations’ dlc
Tehran skyline, now with 100% more ‘major combat operations’ and 0% exit strategy.
Donald Trump has apparently speedrun the Bush years and gone straight to the “major combat operations” part, announcing a joint US-Israel attack on Iran while explosions light up central Tehran. One apparent strike hit near the offices of Iran’s supreme leader, because nothing cools global tensions like lobbing missiles at the political nerve center of a regional power.
Having helped start a shooting war, Trump then did what every responsible statesman does: he opened his mouth. The president called on Iranians to rise up against their government while US and Israeli forces were bombing their capital, because nothing says “we’re here to help” like coordinating your regime-change pep talk with incoming ordnance. Tehran, meanwhile, is promising a “crushing retaliation,” which sounds totally fine and not at all like the prelude to yet another endless Middle East disaster authored by American ego and Israeli hawks.
So we’ve got Trump playing Xbox geopolitics with real cities, Israel getting its long-dreamed-of green light, and the rest of the world strapped into the backseat of a car hurtling toward a cliff while the driver screams about freedom. But don’t worry, the adults in the room will definitely… oh right, they either resigned, were fired, or are now on Fox explaining why this is actually good for stability.
#imperialism#national-security#killing-democracy
trump discovers gun rights are mostly for press releases
Trump signs yet another executive order about gun rights while DOJ lawyers in the background quietly highlight all the footnotes where it doesn’t actually mean what he says it means.
Trump signed a big, flag-waving executive order in 2025 declaring the Second Amendment "foundational" and too sacred to ever be infringed, then turned around and sent his Justice Department into court to defend long-standing federal gun restrictions — including the ban on illegal drug users possessing firearms now at the Supreme Court. So on paper, you get "shall not be infringed"; in practice, you get "well, some of it can be infringed, depending on the news cycle and who’s getting indicted."
The administration has turned the DOJ’s civil rights division into a Second Amendment fan club, with Harmeet Dhillon announcing a special gun unit and proclaiming that "Gun rights are civil rights" while the division’s traditional focus on racial discrimination and voting rights quietly gets shoved in the basement. At the same time, DOJ is suing D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department for alleged gun infringements, all while defending federal restrictions and occasionally admitting that maybe, just maybe, a guy like Alex Pretti "shouldn’t have been carrying a gun" right before a federal agent kills him.
The result is a spectacularly incoherent policy where Trump’s people stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Brady Center in some cases, then pivot to appease gun absolutists who are furious that their Second Amendment hero keeps sounding… not that absolute. The White House insists Trump has been "consistent for many years" in supporting gun rights for "law-abiding" citizens, which is a neat trick when the administration can’t decide from week to week who counts as law-abiding or what counts as a right. It’s less a constitutional philosophy than a vibes-based approach to firearms.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
trump considers nukes and war, decides to ‘wait and see’
President Trump, pausing on the stairs of Air Force One to ponder whether to extend diplomacy or just speedrun another Middle East war.
Trump, fresh off the steps of Air Force One and apparently still mad that physics exists, announced he’s “not happy” with the Iran nuclear talks but will graciously allow negotiators a little more time before he decides whether to start another war. U.S. envoys just finished another round of indirect talks in Geneva, while American forces quietly stack up in the region like Chekhov’s missile batteries. Trump keeps insisting Iran “cannot have nuclear weapons” while also rejecting the idea they should be allowed to enrich any uranium, including for civilian energy, because why have a nonproliferation framework when you can have vibes.
Oman’s foreign minister Badr al-Busaidi went on TV to politely beg Trump to let the professionals keep working, suggesting a deal is actually within reach if the White House would stop treating diplomacy like a reality show cliffhanger. Trump, naturally, sounded more pessimistic on his Texas photo-op tour, complaining that Iran “doesn’t want to quite go far enough” and dodging questions about how close he is to launching a strike with a very reassuring “I’d rather not tell you.” Asked about the risk of a drawn-out conflict, he explained that “when there’s war, there’s a risk of anything, both good and bad,” which is certainly one way to describe mass casualties and regional destabilization.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is headed to Israel for a quick cameo, while the U.S. Embassy quietly tells staff they can leave if they want — a classic tell that the administration is absolutely not preparing for war, except for the evacuations, the troops, and the president doing nuclear brinkmanship as improv. So the world once again waits to see whether U.S. Middle East policy will be guided by careful diplomacy or by whatever Trump blurts out the next time someone hands him a microphone.
#national-security#killing-democracy#imperialism
trump loses tariff fight, demands to keep the loot anyway
Trump staring at a giant refund check labeled "ILLEGAL TARIFFS" like someone just suggested paying back the bank after robbing it.
The Supreme Court tells Donald Trump that, no, he cannot just slap tariffs on everything that moves like a raccoon loose in a Costco, and suddenly the administration discovers that refunding unlawfully collected billions will "take time." Translation: yes, the tariffs were illegal, but have you considered how inconvenient it is to give the money back?
Trump runs to Truth Social to explain that countries and companies who were illegally charged are somehow getting an "undeserved windfall" by… receiving refunds of money the government was never allowed to take in the first place. He even publicly wonders if a "Rehearing or Readjudication" is possible, while his own Justice Department notably does not tell the Court it plans to ask for one. The strongman routine loses a step when your own lawyers quietly back away from the podium.
Meanwhile, dozens of companies are sprinting to court to join the hundreds already suing for refunds, because when a president’s trade war is built on sand and vibes instead of law, the only winners are the litigators. The administration’s position appears to be: we broke the rules, the Court caught us, and now we’d like to delay the consequences as long as humanly possible while pretending that returning stolen cash is some kind of cosmic injustice.
#lawlessness#forever-grifting
trump’s immigration thugs kill, smear, then go radio silent
Kristi Noem explains how an unarmed mom and an ICU nurse were actually terrifying threats to national security, as the administration that killed them can’t be reached for comment.
The Trump administration’s immigration machine just added another entry to its growing ledger of state-sanctioned cruelty. Renee Good, a 37-year-old unarmed US citizen and mother of three, was shot and killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis. Her family says no one from the Trump administration has bothered to call, write, or pretend to care. Instead, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem jumped straight to branding Good a “domestic terrorist”, because why investigate when you can just slander the dead on national TV?
Good’s family has had to hire their own investigators and request a private autopsy, which found she was shot three times – forearm, breast, and head – while Trump’s people pumped out false claims and moved on to the next talking point. Her parents and brothers describe a gentle mother devoted to her kids, while the government that killed her can’t even muster a boilerplate condolence call. Accountability has been outsourced to grieving relatives, because the state is too busy defending the shooter and preserving its narrative.
And if one killing by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis wasn’t dystopian enough, a few weeks later they fatally shot 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti. His parents say he was horrified by Trump’s immigration crackdown and the kidnapping of children. Now he’s dead too – another citizen gunned down by federal officers in a city that’s supposedly not a war zone. The administration’s message is clear: they’ll shoot you, lie about you, call you a terrorist, and then disappear, leaving families and communities to bury the dead while the machinery of repression rolls on.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
trump admin discovers refugees come with an expiration date now
DHS calendar showing refugees turning from "welcome" to "arrestable" at midnight on day 366, because nothing says rule of law like magic deportation anniversaries.
The Trump administration has been running a fun little experiment in Minnesota where refugees apparently turn into arrestable contraband on day 366 of living legally in the United States. DHS decided that once refugees hit their one-year mark — the point when they can apply for a green card — immigration agents could suddenly scoop them up and toss them into detention for "days, weeks or even months" despite no criminal charges, no removal proceedings, and no public safety issues. Just vibes and paperwork.
A federal judge, rudely insisting on reading the actual statute, blocked the policy and noted that the government was effectively "terrorizing" people who had already been rigorously vetted and lawfully admitted. The opinion dryly points out that Congress never gave DHS the power to treat the one-year anniversary of safety as the start date for a dystopian hostage program, and that turning the refugee program into a bait-and-switch raises "serious constitutional concerns" — which is lawyer-speak for what the hell are you people doing.
Under the injunction, the administration is barred from arresting and detaining refugees in Minnesota solely because they haven’t yet been converted from "lawful human beings" to "properly documented human beings". For now, refugees from Africa, Asia, and Latin America who followed every rule can go back to their normal American lives, secure in the knowledge that their government only tried to retroactively criminalize their existence, not successfully.
#killing-democracy#lawlessness#anti-immigration
93,000 dollars for a trump selfie and some light election fraud
When you drop $93,000 to stand next to Trump and it turns out the only thing you really bought was evidence for a federal indictment.
Federal prosecutors just shut down one of the Trump era’s favorite side quests: the pay-to-play selfie grift. New York businesswoman Sherry Xue Li is headed to prison for nine years after stealing more than $30m from foreign investors, promising them a fake development project and a magic green card, then laundering some of the loot into US political campaigns. Among the perks: charging investors $93,000 a head for entry to a 2017 Trump fundraiser and using the cash to make $600,000 in illegal donations.
The scam was basically EB-5 meets Mar-a-Lago photo line. Li and her partner, Lianbo Wang, allegedly blew investor money on luxury shopping, housing, vacations, and fine dining, then sold "access" to US politicians like it was a timeshare presentation with a Secret Service detail. Li even scored a photo with Donald and Melania and then used that image as marketing collateral for her totally-not-real development project. American democracy: now with VIP package pricing.
Prosecutors stress that the campaigns and committees were "unaware" of the scheme and face no charges, which is a polite way of saying our campaign finance system is so broken you can shove $600,000 of illegally sourced cash through it and everyone just shrugs as long as the checks clear. Li forfeits $31.5m and some properties; the politicians keep the money and the plausible deniability. The house always wins, even when the casino finally jails one of the dealers.
#corruption#forever-grifting#money
fbi director takes olympic beer bong, trump pretends to care about ethics
Kash Patel, hard at work safeguarding America by testing the structural integrity of a locker-room table with a beer in hand and a government jet on the tarmac.
Kash Patel, the man currently cosplaying as FBI Director, went viral for shotgunning a beer and pounding a locker-room table with the U.S. men’s hockey team after their gold-medal win over Canada in Milan. The video was fun, the context less so: Patel was there on what he swears was an "official" trip, conveniently using government aircraft while also taking in one of the hottest tickets of the Winter Olympics. Now a watchdog group wants FOIA records to see whether this was national security or just taxpayer-funded sports tourism.
Trump, who famously doesn’t drink but is absolutely hammered on power, reportedly told Patel he didn’t like the optics — both the beer-chugging and the jet usage. The White House then rolled out spokeswoman Abigail Jackson to insist crime is down and that this is all proof of Trump’s glorious "law and order" agenda, which is a curious way to describe an FBI director under investigation for potential misuse of government resources who just fired at least 10 employees tied to the Mar-a-Lago documents search. Patel also revealed his own phone toll records were scooped up during the earlier Trump probes, so naturally he’s now in charge of cleaning house.
While Patel was living his best Olympic locker-room life in Italy, an armed man was shot and killed after breaching the security perimeter at Mar-a-Lago. But don’t worry: the president wasn’t there, and his top law enforcement official was very busy networking with Italian cops and celebrating gold medals. Meanwhile, Sen. Dick Durbin has asked the DOJ inspector general to investigate Patel’s alleged "joyriding" with the FBI jet, and Democracy Defenders Fund wants to know if he also scored free game tickets and other goodies. America’s premier law enforcement agency is starting to look less like the FBI and more like a frequent-flyer rewards program for Trump loyalists.
#corruption#killing-democracy
trump to texas: your lying grocery bills are wrong
Trump, confidently explaining to Texans that their wallets are wrong and only he knows what groceries really cost.
Trump is down in Texas trying to "sell" the idea that prices are coming down, which is an interesting verb choice for a guy whose economic policy has always been one part fantasy, two parts tax cuts for his donors, and a garnish of rage tweets. Instead of addressing why people still feel crushed by housing, healthcare, and food costs, he’s just rebranding reality like it’s another failed Trump steak line.
Reporters describe him leaning hard on the message that inflation is yesterday’s problem and that Americans should basically stop believing their receipts, rent checks, and bank accounts. The strategy is simple: if people are still struggling, it’s not because his policies are failing — it’s because they haven’t heard the right story yet. Why fix structural problems when you can just shout "things are cheaper!" into a microphone and hope Fox & Friends turns it into a jobs report?
So while families juggle bills and wonder why every trip to the store feels like a hostage negotiation, the president is on the road insisting everything is fine now, thank you very much, and also please remember to clap. It’s not economic relief, it’s an information war: if he can’t lower prices, he’ll try to lower expectations — and then blame you for noticing the difference.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
trump saves america from the menace of affordable child care
Trump officials studying how to protect America from the existential threat of stable child care, but not from literally anything else.
The Biden administration tried a radical experiment in civilization: paying child care subsidies in a way that might actually stabilize child care. This, of course, could not stand. The Trump administration is now gearing up to roll it back, clutching its pearls about “fraud concerns” like that one friend who only discovers fiscal conservatism when the money’s going to poor families instead of defense contractors.
Rather than seriously tackle any documented abuse, the White House is floating the usual solution: make it harder for providers to get paid and easier for the system to collapse. The result? Parents get squeezed, child care centers wobble closer to shutting their doors, and the administration gets to pose as guardians of taxpayer dollars while quietly sabotaging one of the few supports keeping working families afloat. Fraud may be hypothetical, but the damage will be very real.
#killing-democracy#full-stupid
north carolina gop holds primaries for 'most obedient trump footstool'
North Carolina GOP voters thoughtfully evaluating which candidate can nod hardest whenever Trump’s name is mentioned.
North Carolina Republicans are holding a Senate primary, but don’t be fooled by the quaint word "election" — this is a loyalty audition. With Sen. Thom Tillis wandering off the MAGA reservation one too many times and deciding not to run again after disagreements with Trump, GOP voters are now shopping for someone who will support the president first and maybe glance at the Constitution if there’s time between rallies.
Policy? Experience? Basic attachment to reality? Adorable, but no. The stated job requirement is fealty to one man who doesn’t even live in the state. The message to would-be senators is clear: you are not being hired to represent North Carolina; you’re being hired to be Trump’s in-state franchisee. Representative democracy is out, personal cult subcontracting is in.
Tillis’ sin was disagreeing with the Dear Leader, so he’s exiting stage right while the base hunts for someone who will never make that mistake. The Senate is supposed to be the "world’s greatest deliberative body," but the North Carolina GOP is treating it like a casting call for background characters in a never-ending Trump reboot. Deliberation is overrated when you can just ask yourself, "What would the guy on Truth Social post?" and vote accordingly.
#killing-democracy#fascism
trump pitches 'friendly' imperialism timeshare in cuba
Trump explains that when he says 'friendly takeover of Cuba,' he means the kind of friendship where you block the oil, grab the allies, and then offer to help rebuild what you just destroyed.
Trump, on his way to a campaign event — because of course this is campaign patter now — mused that the US might stage a "friendly takeover" of Cuba, the kind of thing you say when you’ve confused international law with a real estate seminar. Having already helped snatch Nicolás Maduro, pressured Venezuela’s leadership to open its oil reserves to foreign companies, and choked off Cuba’s fuel supply, Trump is now framing economic strangulation plus regime leverage as a very positive opportunity for Cuban exiles who "want to go back" and presumably reclaim the island like it’s a foreclosed condo.
Rather than deny any interest in old-school yankee imperialism, the administration is basically workshopping taglines for it. US officials have been chatting up Raúl Castro’s grandson on the sidelines of regional summits while Marco Rubio, now secretary of state and apparently LARPing as a Cold War mastermind, gets credit for orchestrating what one historian calls a "very impressive take down." Meanwhile, a US-registered speedboat full of heavily armed exiles just tried to storm Cuba’s coast, ending in a deadly gunfight at sea — and somehow this is all just background noise to the president openly spitballing regime change as a branding exercise.
Cuban leaders keep insisting any talks must respect sovereignty and equality, which is adorable given Washington is currently testing how far you can push an oil blockade before you can call the resulting collapse a "Berlin Wall moment." US financial domination helped trigger the 1959 revolution, so naturally the Trump-Rubio brain trust has decided the winning strategy is: run it back, but with more sanctions and better TV hits. Friendly takeover is doing a lot of work here; when you’re starving a country into submission while promising exiles a triumphant return, "friendly" starts to look like the world’s darkest rebrand of gunboat diplomacy.
#imperialism#killing-democracy
trump to anthropic: build my panopticon or else
Trump, pausing between threats to private companies and the Constitution, waves cheerfully on the tarmac like he didn’t just try to turn AI into a domestic surveillance and murder machine.
Trump hopped on Truth Social to announce that every federal agency must stop using Anthropic’s AI tools, because CEO Dario Amodei committed the unforgivable sin of not wanting his products used for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. The White House line is basically: "nice $200m Pentagon contract you’ve got there, shame if the Department of War used the Defense Production Act to turn your safety policies into toilet paper."
The administration’s new hobby is threatening companies that won’t help them algorithmically track everyone and automate killing decisions. Trump vowed to use the "Full Power of the Presidency" to impose "major civil and criminal consequences" on Anthropic if they don’t "be helpful" during the forced phase-out — a charming way of saying: obey or we criminalize you. Meanwhile, officials like Emil Michael are on X accusing Amodei of "overriding Congress" for… insisting his tools not be used for domestic spying and robot war.
Out in the real world, tech workers at Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are begging their bosses not to turn cloud infrastructure into a murder-as-a-service platform, while Sam Altman — hardly a poster child for restraint — is now the guy saying he also has "red lines" against domestic surveillance and autonomous offensive weapons. When Sam Altman is the one arguing for limits and the U.S. government is rebranding the Pentagon as the Department of War and demanding "any lawful use" in a country with almost no AI laws, you don’t need an LLM to classify this as authoritarian creep.
#killing-democracy#fascism#national-security
rubio discovers 'message discipline' 20 years and one mike huckabee too late
Marco Rubio bravely attempts to impose 'message discipline' on an administration whose Iran team consists of Jared Kushner, a casino developer, and Mike Huckabee’s Old Testament cosplay.
Marco Rubio, now apparently LARPing as a serious secretary of state, has sent a cable ordering US ambassadors in the Middle East to stop saying things that might, and this is a direct quote from reality, inflame tensions or confuse people about US policy on Iran. Translation: please, for the love of God, no more Bible-based land-grab fantasies on Tucker Carlson’s podcast while we’re pretending to do diplomacy.
The memo is widely read as a subtweet of Mike Huckabee, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, who went on Tucker’s show and announced that Israel has a biblical claim to a landmass roughly the size of a mid-tier empire, then helpfully added that he’d be fine if Israel just "took it all." Arab and Muslim countries responded with the shock and horror one usually reserves for discovering your nuclear-armed negotiating partner is being advised by people whose main foreign policy credential is "once hosted a Fox show."
Back in the clown car’s front seat, Trump is "starting to get pissed" at Huckabee for stepping on his big boy Iran talks, led by his favorite real-estate failson Jared Kushner and casino developer Steve Witkoff. These two non-proliferation experts spent an evening in Geneva trying to convince Iran to permanently dismantle its nuclear sites that Trump already bombed and hand over its enriched uranium to the US, then flew home "disappointed" when Iran declined to surrender on-camera. Whether Trump orders more airstrikes now depends on whether his son-in-law and his developer buddy decide Tehran is "stalling"—a totally normal way for a superpower to make war-and-peace decisions.
Rubio is headed to Israel to meet Benjamin Netanyahu, presumably to reassure him that US policy is not, officially, "Mike Huckabee’s Book of Genesis fanfic," even though that’s what half the administration is saying on podcasts. So yes, America’s Iran strategy currently rests on: a president nursing a grudge against Huckabee’s daughter, a Bible literalist ambassador, Kushner’s vibes-based diplomacy, and a real-estate guy eyeballing nuclear facilities like they’re distressed assets. What could possibly go wrong.
#killing-democracy#imperialism#forever-grifting
detroit cops violate city law, get gofundme and federal fan club
Detroit police and Border Patrol, bravely teaming up to investigate the serious crime of not speaking English in public.
Detroit passed a clear ordinance: local cops are not supposed to play Uber for Border Patrol. So when two officers allegedly violated that law – including calling CBP on a crime victim who is now in deportation proceedings – the department initially did the unthinkable and flirted with actual accountability. There was even a 10-0 vote to suspend them without pay and talk of firing, which in American policing terms is basically a war crime.
Then the Trump ecosystem noticed. ICE jumped in on X to offer the officers jobs – "We have a place for you, patriots," because nothing says "public safety" like deporting the victim. DHS chimed in to declare them "American heroes" for flagging a "criminal illegal alien", and Michigan Republicans, including gubernatorial hopeful Mike Cox, turned the whole thing into a culture-war telethon, raising nearly $28,000 on GoFundMe so the suspended officers wouldn’t have to suffer the unbearable hardship of consequences.
Bodycam footage helpfully leaked, featuring the officers joking that the Venezuelan man might be "Pablo Escobar Jr" and telling him he "better start" speaking English because he’s "going to jail, buddy" – all while the department pretends this was about translation services in a city that already provides those. Faced with right-wing outrage, a lawsuit from a 27-year veteran, and federal agencies openly encouraging defiance of local law, Detroit’s police chief abruptly decided that, actually, termination might be a bit much and declared himself "satisfied" with the 30-day suspension. The message to immigrants is crystal clear: Detroit’s official policy may say "we’re not in the immigration business" – but if you’re not a citizen, calling the cops might just mean calling Border Patrol with extra racism and a GoFundMe on top.
#anti-immigration#killing-democracy
supreme court briefly remembers bribery is bad
Trump staring at a tariff chart like it’s a wine list, trying to remember which donors paid for the good exemptions.
For the first time in what feels like several geological eras, the Supreme Court has remembered that presidents are not supposed to run the U.S. economy like a mob protection racket. By cutting back Trump’s ability to unilaterally slap tariffs on whoever hurt his feelings that morning, the court has accidentally taken a swing at the tariff-for-sale operation that’s been enriching donors, lobbyists, and, of course, the Trump family business.
Trump’s scheme was simple enough for even Peter Navarro to understand: cite the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, declare everything an emergency, and then hand out tariff exemptions like party favors to anyone who wrote a big enough check or swallowed their pride hard enough to avoid criticizing him in public. Tim Cook keeps quiet and drops $1m? Apple gets exemptions. GOP megadonor brothers? Their thermoplastic magically escapes tariffs. Elon Musk bankrolls Trump’s reelection? Tesla’s electronics glide right through. Sugar giant Florida Crystals and Reynolds American shovel millions into MAGA Inc, and suddenly foreign sugar and Chinese tobacco are the ones getting punished, not the companies buying policy like it’s on Amazon Prime.
The corruption isn’t subtle; it’s a spreadsheet. AMD gives $1m, and export controls relax. Vietnam greenlights a $1.5bn Trump golf-and-real-estate boondoggle, and—what do you know—tariffs go down and export controls disappear. Trade associations and fossil fuel companies line up with million-dollar offerings while Trump’s friends in lobbying and law firms gorge themselves on fees to secure exemptions. Big corporations, terrified of angering the thin-skinned autocrat with a tariff button, mostly skip court challenges and instead quietly kiss the ring in back rooms, demonstrating how you turn a trade law into an authoritarian loyalty test.
So yes, the Supreme Court’s decision is a rare speed bump on the golden escalator of graft. It doesn’t end the bribe-based tariff economy, but it does make it harder for Trump—or any future aspiring caudillo—to use emergency powers as a personal cash register and censorship tool. When even this court thinks you’ve gone too far with your corruption machine, you might really be overdoing it.
#corruption#killing-democracy
trump epa to americans: have you tried not living near explosions?
Firefighters bravely responding to yet another preventable inferno, brought to you by the Free Market and friends at the Trump EPA.
The Trump administration is lovingly taking a sledgehammer to the federal system designed to stop chemical plants from turning neighborhoods into real-time disaster movies. The EPA’s Risk Management Program, which covers over 12,500 high-risk facilities and was supposed to protect workers, first responders, and the people who had the bad luck to be born near a refinery, is being "streamlined" in the same way a building is "remodeled" by arson.
Industry whined in 2025 that Biden’s 2024 strengthened rules were too expensive, and the Trump EPA — stacked with former industry lobbyists, because of course it is — is now racing to kill most of those protections. They already shut down the public website that let communities and first responders know which toxic chemicals are stored nearby, because if there’s one thing this crowd hates, it’s people having information that might keep them alive. The White House is also targeting the Chemical Safety Board, the tiny agency that investigates disasters and suggests ways not to blow up the same town twice. Too effective, clearly.
This is all happening in a country that’s had a chemical accident harming humans or the environment about every other day for two decades, featuring fun highlights like a steel plant explosion in Clairton, Pennsylvania, and an oil facility blast in Louisiana that redecorated homes with crude oil from 20 miles away. Biden’s rules would have required basic stuff like leak-detection tech, fire suppression, accessible kill switches, automatic shutoffs, safer chemicals, and plans for when hurricanes hit chemical plants — you know, the thing that actually already happened at Arkema during Hurricane Harvey, when first responders were doused in toxic fumes they weren’t warned about.
The Trump EPA insists it’s "strengthening" the law by making it more "workable" for industry, keeping "core protections" while cutting "duplicative" and "unproven" requirements — which is a poetic way of saying: we’re keeping the press release and throwing out the safety measures. About 180 million people live within a few miles of these facilities, but the administration has done the math and decided that explosions are cheaper than prevention, as long as the people breathing the smoke aren’t donors.
#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
white christian nationalism discovers 'biology', immediately flunks it
Trump health officials bravely standing up to decades of medical research armed with a Bible, a vibes-based definition of chromosomes, and a Facebook infographic about 'biological reality'.
The Trump administration has decided that if you can’t win on facts, you can always just rewrite human biology and call it policy. HHS is finalizing a rule to block Medicaid and Medicare payments to any health system that provides gender-affirming care to people under 18, and to bar Medicaid and CHIP from covering that care at all. Major clinics like Mount Sinai, NYU Langone, Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital, and University of Utah Health are already preemptively cutting off pediatric gender care, because nothing says "pro-life" like telling trans kids their options are untreated dysphoria or the grave.
The crackdown doesn’t stop at kids. The administration has announced that trans people in prisons will be denied gender-affirming care, forced off hormones, and barred from clothing or toiletries that match their gender. The new policy insists gender identity is "disconnected from biological reality" while simultaneously redefining biology with all the rigor of a Facebook meme, renaming gender-affirming care as "sex trait modification surgery" and "sex-rejecting procedures" – language conveniently lifted from a conservative religious group. Actual scientists point out that sex and gender are complex, intersex people exist, chromosomes aren’t a neat binary, and you can’t have fully formed reproductive cells "at conception" unless you’re writing fanfic about zygotes.
Experts warn this isn’t just an attack on trans people; it’s a broader project to gut science, expertise, and bodily autonomy. The same machinery of lies can – and likely will – be pointed at abortion, vaccines, disability rights, and anything else that offends white Christian nationalist vibes. Meanwhile, CMS chief Mehmet Oz is onstage fearmongering about six-figure phalloplasties for minors that don’t actually exist, while ignoring that most teen breast surgeries are for cis kids. The message from Trump’s health bureaucracy is clear: your chromosomes, your body, and your medical decisions all belong to the state – and the state subcontracted its science homework to a church newsletter.
#killing-democracy#anti-science#trumps-america
