{"version":"https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1","title":"The Trump Presidency Is Going Great","home_page_url":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com","feed_url":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/feed.json","description":"A satirical timeline documenting the chaos of the Trump administration","items":[{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae7213971a068f4e56ab5dd","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/nov/01/barack-obama-midterms-democrats-trump","title":"obama shows up, trump breaks down over interior decorating","content_text":"Barack Obama has re-entered the chat, and Donald Trump is losing his mind over ballroom renovations while American democracy tries to remember where it left its spine. With days to go before the midterms that will decide whether Trump’s second term gets any meaningful oversight at all, Democrats have rolled out their best closer: the guy who can still form complete sentences and, crucially, inspire crowds without promising to jail anyone.Obama is barnstorming swing states for candidates like Abdul El-Sayed, calmly acknowledging past criticism from the left while focusing on the more pressing problem: the current president with autocratic fantasies and a Middle East policy that looks like it was workshopped on Truth Social. He calls the election a “circuit-breaker” on Trump’s “foolishness,” which is a very polite way of saying, “this may be your last off-ramp before full-blown strongman cosplay becomes the operating system.”Trump, naturally, is responding with the dignity of a stable genius. Rather than talk about policy or accomplishments, he’s apparently fixated on Obama joking that his gold-plated White House looks like “Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.” So while Obama talks about saving democratic institutions, Trump is out there rage-rallying about interior design criticism, proving yet again that the most fragile thing in American politics is the ego of a man with nuclear codes.","date_published":"2026-11-01T11:00:10.000Z","image":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/17c290241a88cba96cce5521e29dc2655bcbfc2b/0_0_6880_5504/master/6880.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&s=1c0d9f854280d45793b7e18af2a3c674","authors":[{"name":"theguardian.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae7218471a068f4e56ab622","url":"https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6185794-vance-hones-2028-campaign-message-midterms/","title":"jd vance test-drives the post-trump autocracy","content_text":"Vice President J.D. Vance is touring the country like a man who just discovered Air Force Two comes with free campaign stops. While Trump does his usual stadium therapy sessions, Vance is quietly workshopping his 2028 \"please don’t call it a dynasty\" pitch — the message discipline of a man who knows the entire federal government is now a glorified campaign committee.\n\nInstead of doing the boring parts of the job — governing, overseeing agencies, not collapsing democracy — Vance is treating the midterms as a live focus group for how best to market Trumpism 2.0: same authoritarian project, new book-jacket photo. The rallies are nominally about helping GOP candidates, but somehow the spotlight keeps drifting toward the guy practicing his future \"I alone can fix what he broke\" speech.\n\nWhat we’re watching is the normalization phase of the coup: Trump as the main act, Vance as the heir-apparent workshopping slogans about \"saving America\" from problems this administration either created or gleefully inflamed. It’s less a campaign cycle than a product rollout — the regime is just deciding which flavor of strongman branding polls best before they start stamping it on the Constitution.","date_published":"2026-11-01T11:00:00.000Z","authors":[{"name":"thehill.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae7227171a068f4e56ab68e","url":"https://theintercept.com/2026/11/01/marco-rubio-cuba-cia-recruitment/","title":"cia launches cuba coup casting call, rubio plays talent scout","content_text":"Trump’s second-term foreign policy is now just fan fiction performed live. At a Florida rally, Trump promised that once he’s done \"neutralizing\" Iran, those \"beautiful ships\" will swing by Cuba, park 50 yards off the coast, and then he’ll send in Secretary of State Marco Rubio to \"finish up the deal\" — because nothing screams responsible diplomacy like teasing a sequel coup between campaign chants.Rubio, whose family actually left Batista’s Cuba but who once tried to retcon them into heroic Castro-era exiles, is now openly moonlighting as the CIA’s HR department. On X, he invited people who want \"positive change in Cuba\" to pursue a \"discrete [sic] partnership with the CIA\" — yes, he both publicly advertised covert work and misspelled it. U.S. officials and members of Congress dutifully boosted the post, turning what used to be illegal covert meddling into a kind of public influencer campaign for regime change.This isn’t some one-off brain fart; it’s the logical next step of a security state that now treats foreign countries like stages and coups like branded content. The CIA has already been doing open recruitment for Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreans online; under Trump 2.0 and Rubio, that quiet creep has become a megaphone. Intelligence work that was once at least embarrassed enough to hide is now a midterm messaging strategy — and a reminder that for this crowd, sovereignty is optional, but self-promotion is non-negotiable.","date_published":"2026-11-01T11:00:00.000Z","image":"https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2302160586-e1793392269211.jpg?fit=6000%2C3000&w=1200&h=800","authors":[{"name":"theintercept.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae711f771a068f4e56aaea5","url":"https://www.npr.org/2026/11/01/nx-s1-6022128/trump-rally-2026-midterms-republicans","title":"trump closes 2026 with a farewell tour and imaginary checks","content_text":"Donald Trump is barnstorming red states like a washed-up rock star on a farewell tour, telling crowds they’re witnessing something so historic it will never happen again — which, for the sake of democracy, let’s hope is finally true. He’s allegedly there to help his handpicked Senate candidates Darline Graham and Michael Whatley, who are thrilling voters about as much as a C-SPAN rerun, but the rallies are transparently about the one thing Trump always campaigns for: himself.\n\nHe begs supporters to \"pretend I'm on the ballot\" while cycling through his usual setlist — tariffs made us rich, his crowds are the biggest in history, etc. — then adds a new, deeply statesmanlike bit about studying Sen. Jon Husted’s ass, which he insists boosted Husted 12 points in the polls because of course reality is whatever he says into a microphone. He even drags Ken Paxton into the body-shaming routine, because nothing says serious governing agenda like the president roasting senators’ glutes on stage.\n\nThe grand closing argument? A promised $5,000 \"Trump dividend\" for every American adult if Republicans take both chambers — a campaign-season fantasy payout that sounds suspiciously like trying to buy votes with Monopoly money. He then immediately undercuts his own bribe by joking that at Mar-a-Lago, where he invites everyone to be his guest, five grand might only get you a hamburger and a small dessert. So the pitch is: re-elect my party, I’ll totally get you a check that doesn’t exist, and you can come blow it at my overpriced resort. Subtle.","date_published":"2026-11-01T10:00:00.000Z","image":"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/7690x4326+0+401/resize/1400/quality/85/format/webp/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F23%2Fd0%2F3ab546124d3c9ff5b12888acf754%2Fgettyimages-2302578997.jpg","authors":[{"name":"npr.org"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae6a5ff71a068f4e56a9045","url":"https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/alaska-officials-ask-judge-deny-trump-administrations-impossible-deman-rcna606765","title":"trump doj discovers new legal standard: gop or it doesn’t count","content_text":"The Republican-run government of Alaska just asked a federal judge to put the Trump administration’s latest democracy-shredding stunt out of its misery. Trump’s Justice Department wants the court to block certification of Alaska’s Senate race unless GOP Sen. Dan S. Sullivan wins, and to somehow \"segregate\" ballots that rank a different Dan J. Sullivan — a plan state officials politely describe as \"disturbing and impossible\" and less politely translate as: you’re asking us to blow up ballot secrecy so your guy doesn’t lose.\n\nThis is not a dispute between parties so much as a hostage situation where even the Republican-led state is begging the feds to put down the constitutional chainsaw. Alaska’s filing reminds the Trump DOJ of some inconvenient trivia: states run elections, the Alaska Supreme Court already approved the other Sullivan on the ballot, and the ballot was specifically designed to limit confusion. The DOJ’s fix? A magical ballot-sorting scheme that would, by definition, require identifying how people voted in a secret-ballot system. Totally normal stuff from an administration that treats the Constitution like a user agreement you scroll past.\n\nMeanwhile, the Trump administration has updated its lawsuit with a New York Times story built on a former campaign manager’s statements that she then tried to retract — the legal equivalent of basing federal election policy on a half-deleted Facebook post. Mary Peltola calls the whole thing offensive and points out she doesn’t need help beating Sullivan; Sullivan goes on Fox to insist there’s \"no way\" she didn’t mastermind this dastardly plot of… having a common last name on a ranked-choice ballot. Alaska’s attorney general is now explicitly asking the judge to dismiss the case with prejudice so the state can count votes and certify an election without Washington ordering them to keep counting until the Republican wins. Bold stance in Trump’s America.","date_published":"2026-11-01T02:00:50.887Z","image":"https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_nbcnews-fp-1024-512,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2026-10/261030-dan-sullivan-alaska-w-1507-797575.jpg","authors":[{"name":"nbcnews.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae65c2a71a068f4e56a7dfd","url":"https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/judge-dismisses-trump-10-billion-defamation-suit-jeffrey-epstein-wsj-rcna591049","title":"trump demands $10 billion because the first amendment hurt his feelings","content_text":"Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation tantrum against The Wall Street Journal has been drop-kicked out of federal court for the second — and final — time. Judge Darrin Gayles politely explained that, yet again, Trump failed to clear the very high “actual malice” bar, then less politely slammed the door with a dismissal with prejudice. Translation: stop trying to turn defamation law into your own presidential Safe Space.The lawsuit claimed the Journal invented a grotesquely on-brand birthday card Trump allegedly sent Jeffrey Epstein in 2003: a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman with “Donald” signed in the pubic area. Trump swore it was all fake, the Journal was lying, and his reputation had suffered “overwhelming financial and reputational harm” — as if the man who bragged about sexual assault on tape was doing just fine until the cartoon boobs showed up.Then Epstein’s estate calmly produced the actual card, the House Oversight Committee released it, and the Journal noted it had investigated the story and even included Trump’s denial. Trump’s legal theory boiled down to: the story is false because I say it’s false, the card doesn’t exist because you didn’t print it yet, and also you should’ve interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell from prison to clear my name. The judge, shockingly, was unconvinced.WSJ’s lawyers pointed out that sending a bawdy card to a “friend” isn’t inherently defamatory, that the article emphasized this was pre-Epstein-arrest, and that the public record shows the story is “substantially true.” Meanwhile, Democrats lined up samples of Trump’s first-name-only signature that look suspiciously like the one on the card. So once again, Trump tried to use the courts as a censorship machine, and once again, the First Amendment replied: no, you don’t get $10 billion just because reality is bad for your brand.","date_published":"2026-10-31T21:09:34.382Z","image":"https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_nbcnews-fp-1024-512,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2026-07/260731-president-trump-vsb-1806-87d55f.jpg","authors":[{"name":"nbcnews.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae62b6271a068f4e56a7578","url":"https://thehill.com/policy/international/6186192-oleshky-residents-return-ukraine/","title":"america’s top diplomat is… melania now","content_text":"The United States now apparently conducts wartime diplomacy via whoever happens to share a bathroom with the president. A localized ceasefire in Russian-occupied Oleshky was \"secured\" by First Lady Melania Trump, because when you think complex European security architecture and rules of engagement between nuclear powers, you obviously think former jewelry salesperson turned Christmas-decoration nihilist.\nWhile it’s genuinely good that evacuees could cross back into Ukraine without being shelled, the way we got there is its own little constitutional horror show. The Trump administration has effectively turned foreign policy into a family side hustle: Kushner plays Middle East cosplay diplomat, Don Jr. LARPs as a geopolitical strategist on podcasts, and now Melania is brokering ceasefires like she’s comping upgrades at a Trump hotel. The State Department, meanwhile, continues its starring role as an empty building where democracy used to live.\nSo yes, lives were helped for a few days — because an unelected, unconfirmed Trump family member could personally cut a deal with foreign combatants. If that sounds less like normal diplomacy and more like a soft-launch for hereditary rule, that’s because it is. Welcome to American foreign policy, now available as a family brand extension.","date_published":"2026-10-31T17:22:03.000Z","authors":[{"name":"thehill.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae61c9171a068f4e56a72f7","url":"https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/10/david-flippo-nevada-misrepresented-military-record-desert-storm-gulf-war/","title":"desert stormed: nevada trump guy forgets where the war was","content_text":"David Flippo, Trump-endorsed Republican hopeful in Nevada, has discovered a bold new theater of operations: his imagination. Though he’s fond of telling voters he was in the desert for Desert Storm and struts around in a \"DESERT STORM VETERAN\" hat, the US Air Force says he didn’t even go on active duty as an officer until December 10, 1991—nine months after the shooting stopped. Contemporary records put him not in the Persian Gulf but in the exotic combat zone of Montana State University’s ROTC program, bravely facing the cafeteria line.The fake Desert Storm cosplay isn’t even his only stolen valor side quest. Flippo’s campaign previously falsely claimed he had a Bronze Star with valor he never earned, and he was relieved of squadron command in 2008 before exiting the Air Force entirely. Off the battlefield, he reports pumping more than $2.5 million of mystery money into his campaigns while somehow failing, for years, to file legally required financial disclosures. He’s tied to a sketchy Arizona land venture promising \"constant\" 20 percent returns for 20 years—always a totally normal thing—and his campaign has even reported contributions from two dead people, which they assure us is just a clerical oopsie and not, say, light electoral necromancy.So the résumé reads: not in Desert Storm, not a Bronze Star hero, booted from command, missing financial disclosures, magic high-yield land scheme, and donations from beyond the grave. Naturally, this makes him an ideal Trump-era Republican candidate for Congress: part fake war story, part Ponzi brochure, all accountability optional.","date_published":"2026-10-31T16:38:03.000Z","image":"https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/20261030_flippo-desert-storm_2000.png?w=1200&h=630&crop=1","authors":[{"name":"motherjones.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae608f271a068f4e56a6a31","url":"https://www.axios.com/2026/10/31/trump-arch-dc-virginia","title":"trump builds a triumphal arch for losing the popular vote (twice)","content_text":"The governments of D.C. and Virginia have finally snapped and gone to federal court to stop Trump’s 250-foot \"triumphal arch\" — because when your administration is collapsing, the natural response is to build yourself a giant concrete participation trophy on the Potomac. The lawsuit says the project is \"flagrantly unlawful,\" rushed through by the National Park Service and Interior without proper consultation, and guaranteed to choke traffic, foul the river, and screw up emergency services for at least three years. So, basically, it’s the Trump presidency, but in infrastructure form.\n\nFederal and local officials have already warned the thing would have \"adverse effects\" on nearby monuments and views, but the administration insists it’ll be a \"major tourist attraction\" and, of course, a key national security asset — because nothing says serious counterterrorism like turning your dictator cosplay arch into a sniper perch and drone hub. Even the FAA had to come in and reassure everyone that the Shrine to One Man’s Ego won’t take down airplanes. A separate challenge is already in court, and the judge has hinted she might pause construction, so stay tuned to see whether the rule of law can still beat a 250-foot middle finger to the concept of republican government.\n\nSome countries get solemn memorials to shared sacrifice; we get a militarized toll gate to one guy’s feelings.","date_published":"2026-10-31T15:21:02.000Z","authors":[{"name":"axios.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae603b971a068f4e56a6949","url":"https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/the-most-extreme-toxic-bizarre-scandal-plagued-candidates-of-the-2026-midterms","title":"2026 midterms: america’s got fascist talent","content_text":"American democracy’s favorite game show is back: Primary the Sociopath! This year’s lineup includes a Texas congressional nominee, Jace Yarbough, who cheerfully describes his politics as “Nazi-ish” while calling for rolling back the Hart-Celler Act so immigration law can be racist again, like the Founders (and his donors) intended. He’s bankrolled by Peter Thiel, currently on a world tour warning about the “antichrist,” and neo-fascist wannabe warlord Charles Haywood, who openly fantasizes about leading an “armed patronage network” against the federal government. Naturally, Trump endorsed him. The GOP calls this a ‘big tent’; historically we’ve called it something else.\nMichigan offers Tom Smith, a retired engineer who literally tried to drop out, only to win a primary anyway because GOP voters apparently took one look at his opponent’s Arabic name and said “absolutely not.” Smith attended the Jan. 6 rally, pushed the “FBI did it” line, and used his salsa company’s social media to call for executing Dr. Fauci in the electric chair and abolishing the Department of Education to stop the alleged Queer Indoctrination Conspiracy. So yes, the party of ‘law and order’ and ‘parental rights’ is now running a guy whose brand strategy is: murder the epidemiologist, defund schools.\nZoom out and it’s a full parade: candidates who marched with Nazis in Charlottesville, a Florida hopeful who wants to nuke Gaza, a Colorado gubernatorial candidate who hunts demons and won’t say how many people he’s killed, plus a self-styled “goth groypette” congressional candidate cheering him on. This isn’t fringe anymore; it’s the pipeline from Telegram channel to statehouse. The article is very clear this is not a complete list, which is the most chilling part: this is just the highlight reel from a political movement that has turned extremism, stochastic terrorism, and open bigotry into standard resume lines. But sure, the real threat to democracy is college kids chanting too loudly on campus.","date_published":"2026-10-31T15:05:27.591Z","image":"https://talkingpointsmemo.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/toxic-candidates-2026-midterms.jpg?w=1200","authors":[{"name":"talkingpointsmemo.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae612d371a068f4e56a6e83","url":"https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6186030-trump-afghan-refugees-afghanistan/","title":"trump admin speedruns 'war crimes but make it paperwork'","content_text":"The Trump administration, never one to let laws or basic human decency get in the way of a good cruelty binge, is reportedly moving ahead with plans to ship Afghan refugees back to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. You remember Afghanistan: the country we spent two decades turning into a war zone, then promised to help the people who helped us survive it. Now, dozens of Afghans are being detained in Louisiana, with over 150 facing deportation in what looks less like immigration policy and more like a federally coordinated \"send them back to their executioners\" program.\n\nRather than admit that deporting refugees into the arms of the Taliban might be a war-crime-adjacent bad idea, the administration is apparently trying to bypass restrictions that are supposed to prevent exactly this kind of state-sanctioned abandonment. The message could not be clearer: if you risked your life helping U.S. forces, congratulations, your prize is a one-way ticket to the people hunting you. It's an almost elegant combination of cowardice, bureaucracy, and sadism — a reminder that for this White House, the cruelty isn’t a bug, it’s the whole operating system.\n\nAmerica First has officially entered the \"betray our allies and pretend it's policy\" phase. Refugee protections are being treated like optional EULAs you just scroll past and click \"agree\" on, except this time the penalty for not reading the fine print is that other people die.","date_published":"2026-10-31T13:26:26.000Z","authors":[{"name":"thehill.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae61ae071a068f4e56a71f9","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/31/trump-coal-plants-taxpayer-dollars","title":"trump shovels taxpayer cash into coal furnaces, calls it energy policy","content_text":"Trump’s EPA has apparently decided that if you can’t beat climate change, you should just bill taxpayers to supercharge it. According to a new Environmental Defense Fund analysis, the administration has propped up 90 out of 184 US coal plants with a magical combo of nearly $1 billion in cash, regulatory get-out-of-jail-free cards, and orders to stay online past their retirement dates. The coal industry said pollution rules might cost them money, and the White House replied: no worries, we’ll just make the public pay instead and let you keep dumping poison into their lungs.\n\nRegulations that cut mercury and toxic metals by more than 90%? Strengthened in 2024, then quietly turned into optional guidelines for Trump’s fossil fuel friends. Coal companies were literally invited to email the administration to request exemptions from the updated Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, and – shocking twist – they did. Colstrip in Montana, one of the dirtiest coal plants in the country, has been hammering nearby communities, including the Northern Cheyenne reservation, with mercury, arsenic, lead, and nickel for decades. Rather than force them to finally install modern pollution controls, the administration gave them a regulatory hall pass and then helpfully repealed the tougher 2024 standards altogether.\n\nNorthWestern Energy’s CEO whined in a 2025 email that spending $500m to go from 99.6% to 99.8% particulate capture was “ludicrous” – not the poisoning part, just the paying-for-filters part. Trump’s team responded by granting an exemption and then nuking the rule, so communities keep breathing extra toxins while the company markets Colstrip as a “dependable bridge to a cleaner energy future,” which is a poetic way of saying we’ll stop polluting once we’ve squeezed the last subsidy out of this smokestack. Meanwhile, plants like WA Parish in Texas, already infamous for their CO2 and hazardous particulates, also got free passes to keep churning out pollution. Americans are, as EDF dryly notes, getting hit twice: once on their power bills and again in their lungs. Coal executives, however, seem to be breathing just fine.","date_published":"2026-10-31T13:00:42.000Z","image":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/41dec70ec2cd4b6574d1f5c01d4c18d598c1b3fd/80_0_2502_2002/master/2502.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&s=854d07df7e0c2bf568fe419a655c6f82","authors":[{"name":"theguardian.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae5e15071a068f4e56a5c7e","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/31/lance-wallnau-donald-trump-evangelicals","title":"trump’s prophet king needs a new cult leader","content_text":"Lance Wallnau, the guy who branded Trump an “actual Old Testament prophet king,” just hosted a closed-door \"As One\" weekend where, with the midterms three weeks away, he somehow forgot to mention the midterms even once. Instead, he told his paying flock to look to El Salvador’s mega-prisons, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland for inspiration, and to go seize school boards and city councils at home. So not so much \"render unto Caesar\" as \"replace Caesar with a theocratic HOA.\" \n\nPublicly, Wallnau is still out there swooning over Trump’s divine genius. Privately, he’s workshopping the post-Trump theocracy: lamenting that MAGA can’t reach young people, auditioning himself as God’s casting director to find the next Charlie Kirk, and plotting how to turn an “ageing demographic” of angry boomers into a permanent governing class. He urges followers to copy Southlake, Texas, where right-wing churchgoers purged the school board of \"progressive Marxist liberals and demonic ideologies,\" and tells people upset about a nearby mosque to vote out the city council and even \"infiltrate Islam.\" Religious freedom, but make it espionage.\n\nThe real action, naturally, is in the dark-money back room. Wallnau is a key player in Ziklag, a secretive Texas dominionist club that requires a $25m net worth to get in the door and then help \"save\" America. In leaked videos, he cheerfully lays out their 2024 ops plan: \"Checkmate\" to juice \"election integrity\" groups, \"Steeplechase\" to weaponize churches, and \"Watchtower\" to crank up panic over sex, gender, and \"parental rights.\" His \"Courage Tour\" for Trump in 2024 conveniently pulled in over a million dollars for his ministry, but he’s not repeating it this cycle — apparently the new model is quieter, more targeted, and even less accountable.\n\nSo the guy who literally wrote Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate — a handbook for Christians to seize control of government, media, education, and business — is now telling followers that you can’t \"be responsible for the whole nation\" while he helps design a stealth, billionaire-backed theocracy pipeline. Trump gets to play \"Cyrus\" and \"prophet king\" onstage; behind the curtain, the Christian nationalist donor class is building the replacement parts for when the current idol finally tips over.","date_published":"2026-10-31T12:00:41.000Z","image":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c0214fff0b5f3ab5e0c054957b03fe3c3b0650c7/688_0_6880_5504/master/6880.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&s=e89a176bf114fbc0211f60c884a1e469","authors":[{"name":"theguardian.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae5d7b871a068f4e56a5a7c","url":"https://www.axios.com/2026/10/31/irans-supreme-leader-maximum-response-us-attack","title":"trump dangles another war for sweeps week","content_text":"Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has reportedly told his top commanders that any renewed U.S.-Israeli attack should be met with a \"maximum\" response, with no geographical limitations. So while Trump paces around Mar-a-Lago deciding whether to launch major strikes on Iran after the midterms, Tehran is busy updating a \"target bank\" of American and Israeli assets. Cool, calm, stable stuff from everyone involved.\n\nThis is Khamenei’s first disclosed meeting with all top commanders since he was wounded in an Israeli strike on day one of the war, and he’s using it to promise that Iran, not the U.S., will decide when and how hostilities end. Meanwhile, Qatari mediators are pulling 12-hour shifts trying to keep Trump’s post-election mood swing from turning into a regional fireball, as Iran boasts of \"several-fold\" increases in ammo and weapons production and praises the \"unity\" of its proxy forces across the region.\n\nSo on one side, you have an authoritarian theocracy openly planning a region-wide escalation. On the other, a twice-impeached game show host teasing large-scale strikes like they’re a season finale twist. Congress, naturally, is mostly sitting in the corner, watching war powers drift further into the hands of a man whose impulse control could be outmatched by a Roomba.","date_published":"2026-10-31T11:48:31.000Z","authors":[{"name":"axios.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae5c1ba71a068f4e56a553d","url":"https://theintercept.com/2026/10/31/trump-south-africa-hiv-aids-funding-cuts/","title":"trump cures aids by defunding the patients","content_text":"Engage Men’s Health Clinic in Johannesburg used to be the kind of place you’d put on a brochure when you wanted to pretend the phrase \"from the American people\" still meant something. Free PrEP, HIV testing and treatment, gender-affirming care, a rainbow mural of Simon Nkoli, and a PEPFAR logo announcing that the U.S. had briefly decided not to be a complete menace to global health. Then Trump’s second term began, and the clinic shut down during the first hours of the new administration, replaced by a volunteer outfit open four hours a week that can test you for HIV but can’t actually treat you. It’s like opening a fire station that only diagnoses fires.\n\nSouth Africa has roughly 8 million people living with HIV — about 1 in 8 people, and 20 percent of the world’s HIV-positive population — which is why the U.S. had been sending about $455 million a year in HIV/AIDS funding. That money didn’t just keep people alive; it kept viral loads low, slowed transmission, and reduced the odds of dangerous mutations that could come back to bite everyone, including the Fox News demographic that thinks Africa is a plotline on National Geographic. Once Trump came back, the CDC money that supported contact tracing and treatment dried up. Outreach workers who used to go find patients who missed appointments are gone, and groups have already lost track of around 20,000 people with HIV in just the Johannesburg–Pretoria area. But hey, at least the culture warriors don’t have to worry about American tax dollars paying for gender-affirming care anymore, right?\n\nThe cuts don’t just wreck clinics; they also gut jobs for Black LGBTQ+ workers, who are now unemployed and more at risk of HIV themselves. Gender-affirming care — which, inconveniently for the theocrats, is an evidence-based HIV prevention tool — has \"disappeared almost entirely.\" The U.S. then chose Pride Month to announce it will end all HIV funding in South Africa, because if you’re going to torch a global health program, you might as well do it with maximum spite and branding synergy. The same South Africa that hosts more HIV-related clinical trials than any other country, helping U.S. pharma make its profits, is now being told to manage a massive epidemic with a pat on the head and some leftover signage.\n\nSo the second Trump administration has achieved a rare trifecta: sabotaging global pandemic preparedness, destabilizing a critical HIV research hub, and condemning millions of poor, queer, trans, and migrant South Africans to harder, riskier lives — all while pretending this is fiscally responsible or morally principled. The PEPFAR logo still hangs on shuttered buildings as a museum exhibit of what U.S. leadership used to look like before we decided \"America First\" meant \"everyone else can get sick and die, and we’ll deal with the super-mutated fallout later.\" Winning.","date_published":"2026-10-31T10:00:00.000Z","image":"https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-2249366511.jpg?fit=6720%2C4480&w=1200&h=800","authors":[{"name":"theintercept.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae5d13171a068f4e56a5921","url":"https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/6184086-maternal-health-autism-study/","title":"trump admin still trying to science its way to facebook meme","content_text":"The new study from NYU Grossman and Kaiser Permanente looks at maternal health conditions and autism diagnoses across racial and ethnic groups and, shockingly, does not conclude \"it's the vaccines, Karen.\" Instead, it finds complex associations that highlight how much we still don’t know — which is deeply inconvenient for an administration that prefers its medical science to fit on a red hat or a Facebook jpeg.\n\nWhile actual researchers are painstakingly teasing out nuanced links between pregnancy health and autism, the Trump administration is apparently on its own \"search for a cause,\" a phrase that here means rummaging through science until they find something that sounds good at a rally. The study’s real takeaway — that autism is multi-factorial, complicated, and tied up with broader maternal health and inequities — runs headfirst into a political machine that has spent years flirting with anti-vax conspiracy theorists and turning public health into a culture war prop.\n\nSo on one side: scientists conducting large, multi-ethnic cohort studies to better understand autism and maternal health. On the other: an administration that helped normalize vaccine skepticism and thinks \"doing your own research\" means watching a YouTube video with ominous music. The data says \"it’s complicated\"; the Trump orbit wants \"it’s whatever keeps the base angry.\" Guess which one usually wins in policy meetings.","date_published":"2026-10-31T10:00:00.000Z","authors":[{"name":"thehill.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae5b13f71a068f4e56a51a1","url":"https://www.npr.org/2026/10/31/g-s1-149981/listener-questions-npr-midterms-2026-election","title":"america asks: can i trust polls in a country that can’t keep local newspapers alive?","content_text":"NPR, bless their public-radio hearts, is patiently explaining to listeners that polls are not, in fact, magic prophecy sticks but statistical ranges in a country where every election is a coin flip and half the coin is gerrymandered. They walk through the radical idea that some polls are good and some are flaming trash, especially at the state level where serious survey work has been replaced by whatever partisan intern just discovered Google Forms.The piece quietly drops the real horror story: the explosion of junk and even fake polls is tied to the death of local journalism. Local outlets no longer have the cash for credible polling, so the information vacuum gets filled by cheap partisan noise while campaigns and corporations hoard the high-quality data behind closed doors. Public gets vibes, donors get crosstabs, and democracy gets a migraine.Reporters, NPR insists, are supposed to treat polling as one tool among many — context, on-the-ground reporting, history, all that old-fashioned stuff from before politics became a content farm. Meanwhile, the same political class that screams that polls are rigged is spending millions on those very same pollsters to decide where to fly the private jet and which culture-war panic to test next. Truly a healthy information ecosystem we’ve built here.","date_published":"2026-10-31T09:00:00.000Z","image":"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/5500x3094+0+297/resize/1400/quality/85/format/webp/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fc6%2Ff4%2F74db819942a285f0286cd2ab727c%2Fgettyimages-2301917855.jpg","authors":[{"name":"npr.org"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae55f7271a068f4e56a3f58","url":"https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmly016ep243o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss","title":"trump’s tariff cosplay turns quebec town into collateral damage","content_text":"Trump’s trade war LARP has reached Témiscaming, Quebec, where a century-old paper mill now sits idle because the president needed another round of applause for \"tough on Canada\" tariffs. RYAM, the American owner, called it an \"economic shutdown\"—which is a very polite way of saying we’re out, good luck with the ghost town. Three hundred and sixty workers are suddenly on partial government life support while property values fall faster than Trump’s attention span in a briefing.\n\nAt the national level, Canada’s economy is holding together, which is great news if you live on a spreadsheet. On the ground, industries targeted by Trump’s up-to-50% tariffs—steel, aluminum, autos, lumber, pulp and paper—are quietly bleeding out. Témiscaming’s mill is the town’s economic heart; kill that, and you don’t just lose jobs, you lose the grocery clerks, the hospital staff, the whole ecosystem. But sure, this is all about \"America First\"—as long as you don’t look too closely at the Americans and Canadians both getting screwed.\n\nLocals are trying to pull a 1973 reboot: buy the mill back themselves, just like workers did when an earlier American owner threatened to walk away. They turned it into Tembec back then; now they’re hoping lightning strikes twice, with a little help from Prime Minister Mark Carney and Quebec. Meanwhile, Trump’s tariffs keep grinding along, a monument to performative economic nationalism where the only real winners are politicians bragging on cable news while entire towns are left hunting moose to stretch the family budget. Peak trade strategy: wreck a century-old community to prove you can sign your name on a tariff order.","date_published":"2026-10-31T02:39:25.910Z","image":"https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/branded_news/1200/cpsprodpb/b7be/live/dab6afd0-d223-11f1-93e1-3b657b665bcf.jpg","authors":[{"name":"bbc.co.uk"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae5247171a068f4e56a2a13","url":"https://www.nbcnews.com/world/ukraine/us-approves-21-billion-sale-patriot-interceptors-ukraine-rcna606641","title":"patriots for sale, democracy sold separately","content_text":"The Trump administration has graciously approved a $2.1 billion sale of Patriot interceptor missiles to Ukraine, paid for by Canada, Germany, and Norway so that Trump can brag about \"no American funds\" like it's a charity telethon he heroically attended but didn't donate to. The State Department insists this supports U.S. national security and European stability, which is an interesting pitch given that the same president keeps calling Ukraine’s president an obstacle to peace while slow-walking the very weapons meant to keep the country from getting flattened.\n\nUkraine gets 500 Patriot missiles, but only after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spends weeks publicly complaining that the Pentagon was mysteriously dragging its feet on delivering missiles other countries already bought. Meanwhile, the country’s air defenses are also at the mercy of Elon Musk, whose Starlink and Starshield systems suffered a \"long outage\" until Trump reportedly asked Musk to \"put it back\", like he’s toggling the Wi‑Fi at Mar‑a‑Lago. So Ukraine’s survival now runs through a U.S. president who openly undermines its leader and a tech oligarch who turns battlefield connectivity into a customer-service ticket.\n\nThe result is a foreign policy where critical wartime infrastructure depends on whether Trump is mad at Zelenskyy this week and whether Musk is bored enough to play warlord via satellite settings. But sure, the Patriots will \"improve security\"—mostly for the narrative that Trump can both publicly trash Ukraine and still take a victory lap for arming it, all while outsourcing life-or-death decisions to his favorite billionaire sidekick.","date_published":"2026-10-30T22:44:38.551Z","image":"https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_nbcnews-fp-1024-512,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2026-10/261030-Zelenskyy-aa-554-7f0133.jpg","authors":[{"name":"nbcnews.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae53da071a068f4e56a3445","url":"https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6184682-trump-daylight-saving-clocks-fallback/","title":"strongman wants strong sun","content_text":"Donald Trump has discovered a new enemy of the people: the clock. With America set to \"fall back\" on Sunday, the president is furious that the sun refuses to respect his brand, loudly backing the Sunshine Protection Act to make daylight saving time permanent. Because when you’ve already tried to bend the Justice Department, NATO, and the Constitution to your will, the next logical step is astronomy.Republicans, naturally, are divided – not on whether this is a ridiculous use of presidential energy, but on which version of government-mandated time reality they prefer. Some are lining up behind Trump’s \"more evening TV time\" agenda, others timidly suggest maybe we shouldn’t rewire the entire country’s sleep cycle around his golf schedule. Meanwhile, the actual policy debate about health, safety, and workers gets buried under another round of presidential tantrums about something literally no one can escape: the passage of time.So yes, the administration that couldn’t competently roll out a travel ban now wants to permanently reprogram the clock for 330 million people. If they pull it off, historians will be able to say that under Trump, America didn’t just slide toward authoritarianism – it did it with an official, government-approved golden hour.","date_published":"2026-10-30T22:43:31.000Z","authors":[{"name":"thehill.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae5442771a068f4e56a3734","url":"https://www.axios.com/local/charlotte/2026/10/30/jonestown-fox-news-viral-clip-madpark-designs","title":"local guy calls trump rally jonestown on fox, immediately monetizes the cult","content_text":"Fox News went hunting for some wholesome MAGA B-roll at a Trump rally in Rock Hill and instead booked a live, on-air intervention. Local screen printer Tom Hoyle looked at the red-hat crowd, thought \"Jonestown, but with worse merch,\" and said the quiet part out loud: he compared the rally to the 1978 Jonestown massacre while a visibly panicking Lucas Tomlinson tried to steer the broadcast back to Dear Leader.\n\nThe best part? Before Fox could scuttle off to find a more obedient worshipper, Hoyle slipped in a plug for his business — \"MadPark Designs\" — like a QVC host who’s just realized the cult camera is rolling. Secret Service then escorted him out, presumably for the crime of breaking kayfabe. By the time he hit the Rock Hill city limits, the clip was viral on Mother Jones, TMZ, and every timeline that enjoys seeing the propaganda machine trip over its own shoelaces.\n\nNow MadPark is selling $28 T-shirts with his Jonestown quote and a skeleton graphic, because if America is going to function like a death cult, you might as well get a cut of the merch. Hoyle’s pondering a follow-up design but doesn’t want to overdo it — which already puts him several levels above the Trump campaign, where the business model is infinite grift, zero shame and absolutely no refunds.","date_published":"2026-10-30T20:15:39.000Z","authors":[{"name":"axios.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4e9e771a068f4e56a1e8f","url":"https://www.axios.com/2026/10/30/ice-agent-indicted-mario-morales-houston","title":"texas finally discovers ice agents are not licensed to vehicular-manslaughter-lite","content_text":"Texas has achieved a historic milestone: a Harris County grand jury has actually indicted an ICE officer, Mario Alberto Morales, for allegedly turning his government-issued SUV into a weapon and plowing into a fleeing immigrant. Prosecutors say Morales deliberately ran down Miguel Parra Hernandez, a Mexican national who has lived in the county for over 30 years, had no criminal record, and wasn't even in any active immigration proceedings. So, naturally, the Trump-era enforcement machine had him hospitalized and now in ICE custody. Public safety, baby.\n\nHarris County DA Sean Teare charged Morales with second-degree aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and politely reminded everyone that a shiny badge does not come with a constitutional rights exemption. ICE, meanwhile, responded like a parody of itself, calling the indictment a \"political stunt\" by \"sanctuary politicians\" and asserting that only federal agencies may investigate federal officers — a delightful theory that exists mainly in the fan fiction section of authoritarian cop dramas. They also called the allegation that Morales hit Parra Hernandez intentionally \"RECKLESS and FALSE,\" and then did the usual \"highest standards of professionalism\" press-release cosplay.\n\nThe fun backstory: Morales was one of the \"surge hires\" brought in to turbocharge President Trump’s mass deportation agenda. The DA, after looking at his file, basically said no normal law enforcement agency would have hired this guy and added that he has \"concerns\" about the quality and training of a whole batch of these Trump-era recruits. Translation: when you build a deportation machine on fast-forward, you get exactly the kind of people who think a Ford SUV is an acceptable substitute for due process. Now Morales may try to drag the case into federal court and claim immunity, and the DA says he’s ready to fight that too. Rule of law vs. deportation cosplay, round one.","date_published":"2026-10-30T18:32:06.000Z","authors":[{"name":"axios.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4e52771a068f4e56a1e28","url":"https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-golf-course-east-potomac-judge-inquiry/","title":"trump turns doj into department of golf justice","content_text":"The Trump administration has apparently decided that if you’re going to shred norms, you might as well do it for something truly sacred: a fancier golf course. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes has opened an inquiry into whether officials at the Departments of Justice and Interior misled her court about plans to bulldoze D.C.’s historic East Potomac Golf Links so Donald Trump can get his very own \"World Class Championship\" playground.The judge wants to know if government lawyers told National Park Service officials what to leave out of sworn declarations, what to put in about budgets, and whether the last-minute notice that hundreds of trees were about to be chainsawed was filed in bad faith. While DOJ and Interior kept assuring the court there was no finalized plan, Trump was on Truth Social bragging that Interior and celebrity course architect Tom Fazio had already cooked one up and that the course would close November 15 so work could begin. Government lawyers then helpfully showed the court the shiny new Fazio rendering they supposedly don’t really have a plan for.Judge Reyes hasn’t found wrongdoing yet, but she’s bringing in a special master to help figure out whether the nation’s top law enforcement agency and the Interior Department have been functioning as Trump’s personal real-estate development shop, complete with creative writing exercises for sworn statements. The case was brought by a preservation league and a couple of local golfers who thought they were just defending a 1920s-era public course, not accidentally exposing a possible scheme where the federal government lies to a judge to protect the president’s latest vanity fairway.","date_published":"2026-10-30T18:23:16.000Z","image":"https://assets2.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2026/10/30/38651af2-b1d5-4fd2-8af5-5b8c16c539ee/thumbnail/1200x630/6f8642d355ccd4297a3c0529a8e353e7/gettyimages-2301844335.jpg","authors":[{"name":"cbsnews.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4dcf371a068f4e56a1c70","url":"https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-meeting-stephen-hubbard-white-house-russia-release/","title":"trump trades russia sanctions for a photo op, swears it’s not a swap","content_text":"President Trump is meeting at the White House with Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old retired teacher just released from a Russian prison, and he’s treating it like the season finale of The Art of the Deal: Hostage Edition. Hubbard spent more than four years in Russian custody after being accused of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine. His release was announced after a meeting between Trump’s “special envoy” Steve Witkoff and Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, because nothing says robust, institutional diplomacy like outsourcing U.S. foreign policy to your developer buddy.\n\nTrump insists there was no \"swap\" for Hubbard, which is an interesting claim given that he then immediately bragged that Hubbard’s freedom was tied to his decision to exempt Russia from sanctions passed by Congress. He called critics \"stupid people\" who \"don't know how life works\" for suggesting he should have imposed those sanctions while trying to get Hubbard back. Translation: Trump openly admits he shelved bipartisan sanctions on Russia during negotiations and, now that Hubbard’s home, he still hasn’t put them back in place. A president casually treating congressionally mandated punishment for an authoritarian adversary as a bargaining chip for a domestic hero photo op? Absolutely nothing to worry about there for the rule of law or separation of powers.\n\nSo Hubbard gets freedom, which is good and should have happened years ago. Russia gets a sanctions holiday, which is great—for Putin. And Trump gets to stand in the White House basking in cameras, explaining that if he’d listened to Congress and imposed sanctions, Hubbard would still be rotting in a Russian cell. The clear message to every hostile regime on Earth: take Americans, wait for Trump to need a distraction, and prepare your wish list. It’s less foreign policy than a hostage rewards program.","date_published":"2026-10-30T18:07:08.000Z","image":"https://assets3.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2026/10/21/2d02f066-bc23-4bd2-8685-46b66d7d6ab3/thumbnail/1200x630/2c5b5113012c91d788021b0446362d35/hubbard-plane-promo.jpg","authors":[{"name":"cbsnews.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4e34471a068f4e56a1d59","url":"https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/6184780-comey-criminal-case-dismissal-hearing/","title":"trump doj speedruns double jeopardy against comey","content_text":"The Trump Justice Department is back at it, attempting a third criminal prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey for allegedly disclosing national defense information, because nothing says \"independent law enforcement\" like endlessly rerunning the same case until you get the ending Dear Leader wants. Comey’s lawyers are now in federal court arguing that DOJ blew the statute of limitations, which is what happens when you’re too busy rage-tweeting and holding rallies to file your paperwork on time.\n\nU.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, is the one deciding whether this latest legal fanfic survives. So we’ve got a president who demanded loyalty from Comey, fired him when he didn’t get it, publicly raged about him for years, and now his handpicked judiciary is weighing whether the third swing at criminal charges can go forward. Totally normal, healthy democracy stuff, not at all the vibes of a petty autocrat trying to jail the guy who wouldn’t kiss the ring.\n\nIf this case gets tossed for being too late, it will be because basic rule-of-law guardrails still barely function, not because the Trump crowd suddenly discovered restraint. And if it doesn’t? Then we’re just openly admitting that federal prosecutions are now a subscription service for presidential grudges. Law and order, but make it personal vendetta.","date_published":"2026-10-30T18:00:55.000Z","authors":[{"name":"thehill.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4d2db71a068f4e56a1982","url":"https://thehill.com/video-clips/6184399-watch-live-bessent-oz-patel-fraud-crackdown-minnesota/","title":"america’s premier fraudsters launch an anti-fraud task force","content_text":"The Trump White House has rolled out its new anti-fraud crusade in Minnesota, headlined by a lineup that reads like a casting call for a dystopian game show: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, FBI Director Kash Patel, CMS czar Mehmet Oz, and FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson. When this many ethically flexible men in expensive suits gather to talk about \"cracking down\" on fraud in federal assistance and healthcare programs, you can safely assume the only people in danger are patients, the poor, and whoever still believes Medicaid is supposed to help people.\n\nInstead of, say, investigating the bottomless pit of Trump-world self-dealing, they’re pointing the federal sledgehammer at benefit recipients and providers, under the banner of \"integrity\". Kash Patel gets to dress up his long-running loyalty-to-Trump routine as law enforcement, Mehmet Oz finally finds a medical role where he doesn’t have to prove his claims with science, and Bessent can pretend the real threat to the Treasury isn’t billionaire tax evasion but some clinic in Minneapolis. Nothing reassures the public about fraud like putting the foxes in charge of auditing the henhouse, then billing the hens for the privilege.","date_published":"2026-10-30T17:06:09.000Z","authors":[{"name":"thehill.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4d3d171a068f4e56a1aa8","url":"https://theintercept.com/2026/10/30/texas-christian-left-democrats-haynes-talarico-hinojosa/","title":"texas discovers christians can read the whole bible, not just leviticus","content_text":"Texas Republicans are throwing another glitter-soaked pep rally for permanent minority rule, but across town an awkward thing is happening: some pastors are reading the New Testament and noticing it keeps talking about feeding people instead of jailing them. Rev. Frederick Douglass Haynes III and Senate candidate/seminarian James Talarico are out in South Dallas running a food drive and talking about health care and housing as Christian obligations — which is very rude to a GOP that prefers its Jesus as a prop for tax cuts and bombing campaigns.\n\nWhile Trump-world is busy staging Oval Office prayer circles and letting Pete Hegseth LARP the Crusades from the Pentagon, churches like Haynes’s Friendship-West are quietly doing the things a functioning government is supposed to do: legal aid, immigration advocacy, counseling, and food policy in a state where nearly 1 in 5 people are food insecure and millions are being shoved off Medicaid. The Christian Right spent decades branding itself as the only religious game in town; now a \"Christian Left\" is emerging to point out that maybe, just maybe, Christ wasn’t actually calling for work requirements and child hunger.\n\nSo as Republicans wrap themselves in crosses and AR-15s, this new bloc of Texas clergy is treating \"moral resistance\" as something more than a Fox News chyron. They’re essentially asking: if far-right policy is literally breaking your congregants, at what point does opposing it stop being \"partisan\" and start being basic theology? For an administration that fused state power with a particular brand of white evangelical politics, a rising Christian Left isn’t just a nuisance — it’s a theological recall notice.","date_published":"2026-10-30T16:55:07.000Z","image":"https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/AP26253145767145-e1793305948446.jpg?fit=6240%2C3120&w=1200&h=800","authors":[{"name":"theintercept.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4c40171a068f4e56a1790","url":"https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/10/why-is-this-albanian-politician-hanging-out-with-ken-paxton/","title":"ken paxton, now offering full‑service legal support for indicted foreigners","content_text":"Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who treats ethics rules like optional EULAs, has acquired an exciting new international side quest: palling around with Fatmir Mediu, Albania’s former defense minister who just happened to be in office when a munitions depot exploded, killing 26 people and injuring hundreds. Mediu was charged with abuse of office, accused of looking the other way while untrained workers — including kids — dismantled live ammunition. Allegations of kickbacks, a US arms contractor later convicted of fraud, and a disaster cinematic enough to become the movie War Dogs? Naturally, that résumé gets you a VIP badge at the GOP midterm convention in Dallas and a photo-op with Paxton.\n\nFar from being radioactive, Mediu is now the Albanian opposition’s concierge to the American right: National Prayer Breakfasts, NatCon conferences, schmoozing with Trump campaign co-chair Chris LaCivita, Justice Department officials, and assorted Texas lawmakers. But his tightest bond seems to be with Paxton, who has met him multiple times — including in Albania — and benefited from Mediu and Sali Berisha helping him tap Albanian American donors for campaign cash. In return, Mediu appears to be using his shiny new MAGA friendships to lean on the US government to pressure Albanian prosecutors to drop that pesky, long-running case against him. It’s not foreign influence, it’s just mutual legal defense, but make it transnational.\n\nAll of this folds neatly into Paxton’s own greatest hits reel: allegedly lifting a $1,000 Montblanc pen and calling it a misunderstanding, a securities fraud indictment he escaped by cutting a $300,000 restitution check, a 2023 impeachment he survived thanks to a very forgiving Texas Senate, and a string of sketchy investments and dubious associates. So when a foreign politician facing abuse-of-office allegations needs help leaning on prosecutors back home, who better to stand next to in photos than the guy who’s turned surviving scandal into a full-time brand? It’s rule of law as interpreted by the MAGA foreign exchange program: you bring the alleged corruption, they’ll bring the campaign finance forms.","date_published":"2026-10-30T16:19:25.000Z","image":"https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/20261029_paxton-mediu_2000.png?w=1200&h=630&crop=1","authors":[{"name":"motherjones.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4fba871a068f4e56a21c0","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/30/fda-remove-warnings-menopause-treatments","title":"trump fda discovers women’s health is cheaper without data","content_text":"The Trump FDA has decided that the real menopause crisis isn’t cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, or dementia – it’s annoying warning labels and those pesky outside experts who keep asking for evidence. So the agency quietly yanked black-box warnings from three more menopause hormone patches, again skipping its own advisory committees and offering almost no scientific justification beyond, essentially, “trust us, we’ll email the citations later.” When reporters asked for the data, officials promised they could provide it sometime in the future, presumably right after they finish dismantling what’s left of evidence-based medicine.Instead of convening standard advisory panels, the FDA created a 2025 “expert” group of doctors and influencers who just happen to be loud MHT boosters, some with direct financial ties to clinics selling hormone therapy. Public testimony was barred, including from the lead investigator of the Women’s Health Initiative – the landmark research that originally justified the very warnings the agency is now shredding. Outside researchers are warning that erasing blanket cautions, especially for women with hormone-sensitive cancers or cardiovascular risk, glosses over real dangers in favor of a clean marketing message and a quick supply-side win.Officials insist previous warnings “overstated” risk for many healthy women under 60 and paint this as an access story, while Trump appointees continue making grand, data-free claims that MHT boosts longevity. Meanwhile, the agency is racing to change labels on remaining menopause hormone products and exploring over-the-counter vaginal estrogen – all while treating independent science like a hostile witness and turning regulation into a vibes-based recommendation engine. The message from the Trump administration to women: we hear your frustration, and we’re responding by lowering the bar on safety instead of raising the bar on honesty.","date_published":"2026-10-30T16:15:07.000Z","image":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2deca19054d8eb24909943f6e795841c4267458e/369_0_3566_2852/master/3566.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&s=c31fb4d02030d1d1a3aae7d6210aff15","authors":[{"name":"theguardian.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4bbe871a068f4e56a1658","url":"https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/10/the-final-countdown-magas-racist-blitz-and-trumps-next-big-lie/","title":"gop closes campaign with racism, voter suppression, and preemptive whining","content_text":"With four days to go before the midterms, the Trump-Vance GOP has stopped pretending it’s about \"economic anxiety\" and gone full white-Christian grievance pageant. The party’s closing argument is a synchronized smear campaign against Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, casting him as a \"cancer,\" a \"theocratic zealot,\" and a secret Muslim Brotherhood operative who will apparently cancel Christmas by importing \"hordes of jihadists.\" Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, JD Vance, Donald Trump, and even RFK Jr. line up to deliver a greatest-hits reel of Islamophobia and Great Replacement panic, while Vance cosplays as a gas-station regular who somehow picked up a Yale Law degree and a Peter Thiel sponsorship on the way to the pump.\nMeanwhile, the structural racism is doing its quiet, efficient work. Voting rights reporter Ari Berman walks through how the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision gutted what was left of the Voting Rights Act, greenlighting GOP legislatures across the South to carve up majority-Black districts like a congressional charcuterie board. Black voters, noticing that their political power only seems to be \"accidentally\" erased, respond with a surge in early voting, helpfully answering their own question: \"If our votes didn’t matter, why are they trying so hard to dilute our power?\"\nTrump, sensing that the usual mix of racism and gerrymandering might not be enough, is already soft-launching the sequel to Stop the Steal. The plan is the same MAGA three-step: suppress the vote, light the base on fire with bigotry, then scream fraud when too many non-white, non-Christian, non-fascist Americans show up anyway. As Berman notes, you can’t overturn an election on Truth Social – you still need courts, chaos, and a party willing to torch democracy on command. Luckily for Trump, he’s already built that part.","date_published":"2026-10-30T15:32:22.000Z","image":"https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/10302026-StressTestEp9_Web_v2.jpg?w=1200&h=630&crop=1","authors":[{"name":"motherjones.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4ba4471a068f4e56a15ae","url":"https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/6184172-trump-dol-pbm-transparency-rule/","title":"trump labor department bravely takes on someone else’s grift","content_text":"The Trump Department of Labor has discovered a shocking new scandal: someone else is making opaque money off the health-care system. A new rule will require pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) — the delightful middlemen who sit between drug companies, insurers, and your wallet — to tell their employer clients how they’re getting paid. Rebates, fees, side deals, creative accounting sorcery: employers are supposed to finally see the itemized menu of “why your employees still can’t afford insulin.”\n\nThis is being sold as a bold transparency move to protect workers from hidden conflicts of interest, which is a fascinating vibe coming from an administration that treated conflicts of interest like Pokémon: gotta collect ’em all. While PBMs are absolutely running their own racket in the drug-pricing carnival, the Trump team is positioning itself as the crusading reformer — the arsonist lecturing the fire about safety protocols. Will this rule actually lower drug prices or just generate longer, more decorative disclosures while everyone keeps looting the system from different angles? The smart money says the grift doesn’t disappear; it just has to file more paperwork.\n\nStill, it’s on brand: a government stacked with pharma- and insurance-adjacent appointees cracking down on other middlemen so they can claim a win on “transparency” while doing precisely nothing about the actual structural robbery. American workers may not get cheaper prescriptions, but at least their employers will receive a glossy, fully compliant explanation of how everyone is getting paid to keep healthcare unaffordable.","date_published":"2026-10-30T15:28:12.000Z","authors":[{"name":"thehill.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4b36a71a068f4e56a1464","url":"https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/former-census-directors-issue-rare-rebuke-of-controversial-rule-proposed-by-trumps-bureau","title":"trump’s census bureau tries ‘count every republican twice’ rule","content_text":"The Trump 2.0 Census Bureau has decided that the 200+ year-old idea of “count every person once, only once, and in the right place” is just too woke, and is proposing a rule that would turn the 2030 count into a partisan gerrymander with spreadsheets. Six former Census Bureau directors — appointed by both parties and apparently still clinging to the radical notion of accurate data — have issued a rare public rebuke, warning that the scheme would \"dramatically\" undermine the count and put the 2030 Census at risk.\n\nInstead of counting people where they actually live, Commerce wants to lean on tax records (which is great if you think people live at their accountant’s office, P.O. box, or old address forever) and stretch a new “enumeration period” from January 3 to April 1. Experts say that conveniently helps red states by counting snowbirds at their winter condos in MAGA-land, not at the homes where they actually spend most of the year. As a bonus, the rule would stop collecting race, ethnicity, and gender-related data and exclude most immigrants from the apportionment count altogether — surgically shrinking diverse blue states and inflating Republican representation and Electoral College votes.\n\nTreasury officials reportedly raised concerns about using tax data this way, so naturally Commerce overruled them, because why let the people who understand the data get in the way of a perfectly good power grab? As one former IRS stats official put it, he assumed it was a mistake because it was such a bad idea. Joke’s on him: it’s not a mistake, it’s the plan. When you can’t win over the electorate, you just redesign the population.","date_published":"2026-10-30T15:10:32.628Z","image":"https://talkingpointsmemo.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/GettyImages-1308681995.jpg?w=1200","authors":[{"name":"talkingpointsmemo.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4c24e71a068f4e56a16d4","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/oct/30/california-billionaire-tax","title":"billionaires spend $356m to prove they can't afford a 5% tax","content_text":"Donald Trump signs the \"One Big Beautiful Bill Act\" to slash a trillion dollars from Medicaid, ACA, and other healthcare funding so the wealthy can enjoy fresh tax cuts, and California responds by asking its billionaires for a one-time 5% tax to keep 3.4 million people from losing coverage. In a stunning coincidence, the people who just got showered in federal goodies are now treating this as an extinction-level event, while everyone else is mostly trying not to die or go bankrupt.\n\nOn one side: a healthcare union, SEIU-UHW, and a grab bag of lefty politicians, actors, and artists trying to patch the crater Trump blew in the safety net with Proposition 40. On the other: tech billionaires emptying their couch cushions to the tune of at least $356m into Super PACs, consultants, lobbyists, and targeted op-eds to explain that taxing their fortunes is tyranny, but stripping healthcare from children is fiscal responsibility. As California becomes ground zero for whether the ultra-rich can ever be mildly inconvenienced to fix damage Trump caused, the billionaire class is helpfully demonstrating that if there’s one thing they’ll fight harder than inequality, it’s the idea of paying even a tiny surcharge to keep hospitals open.","date_published":"2026-10-30T15:00:19.000Z","image":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f84e43fdfd782096ab7cda1b19640357b6b43cb3/299_52_2305_1844/master/2305.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&s=cd07a3d81c7539d0b7a4d46e6582ed47","authors":[{"name":"theguardian.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4b2ec71a068f4e56a1408","url":"https://www.npr.org/2026/10/30/nx-s1-6008113/npr-special-swing-voter-focus-groups","title":"focus group democracy, featuring people who voted for both reality and its cancellation","content_text":"NPR spent a year listening to the most powerful people in America: the handful of voters who went from Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024 and now can’t understand why everything feels like a slow-motion constitutional house fire. These are the folks who ‘soured’ on Trump shockingly fast, as if the man who staged a coup attempt, hoarded classified documents, and promised ‘retribution’ didn’t come with a very loud, all-caps warning label.The focus groups reveal that these voters draw a neat, straight line from Trump’s chaos to their feelings about the economy, are unimpressed with Democrats, and are suddenly very into ‘economic populism’—just, you know, the kind that keeps handing power to billionaires and indicted ex-presidents. They’re also worried about AI and giant data centers, which is adorable given that they already helped install a glitchy strongman update to the operating system of American democracy.The big takeaway? Our political future hinges on a tiny bloc of people who keep toggling between ‘basic rule of law’ and ‘let’s try the guy who threatens the DOJ on social media.’ Pollsters call them swing voters. History may go with something closer to “the tie-breakers for whether we still have elections in 2030.”","date_published":"2026-10-30T15:00:00.000Z","image":"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3000x1688+0+0/resize/1400/quality/85/format/webp/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F34%2F31%2Fe7754b44405cb3fcde4b584d54f3%2Fgettyimages-2301268276.jpg","authors":[{"name":"npr.org"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae49b5871a068f4e56a0fad","url":"https://www.cbsnews.com/news/women-national-security-trump-democrats/","title":"trump’s national security boys club: now with 83% more dudes","content_text":"Trump’s second term has apparently decided that women in national security are like climate science: inconvenient, empirically useful, and therefore to be eliminated. A new report from Senate Democrats finds that women now make up just 17.4% of Cabinet and Cabinet-level positions, down from Biden’s 52%, while the Pentagon has managed the impressive feat of producing exactly zero active-duty four-star women. Only 8 of 201 senior military nominees this year are women, which is what happens when your talent strategy is just yelling “MERIT!” while stapling résumés to a Fox News guest list.Diplomacy isn’t faring much better. Nearly half of Senate-confirmed ambassadors were women when Trump 2.0 began in 2025; now fewer than 25 missions worldwide are led by women, and 93 of 196 ambassadorships are simply… vacant. The administration also quietly took Ivanka’s old Women’s Global Development show pony out back and shot it, killed off the offices implementing the Women, Peace, and Security Act that Trump himself signed, and then watched Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth brag on X that he had “ENDED” the Pentagon’s part of the program because it was allegedly some Biden “woke” plot — which is a fascinating take on a bipartisan 2017 law Trump is still legally obligated to follow.The White House, of course, insists he’s a “champion for women and moms,” citing his “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order, a savings account branding exercise called “Trump Accounts,” and a Women’s Health Task Force that presumably ensures women have high-quality access to whatever care is still legal. State and Pentagon flacks chirp that everything is now “colorblind, gender-neutral, and merit-based,” coincidentally right after they dismantled diversity and inclusion programs and tanked women’s representation. But don’t worry: Susie Wiles is the first female chief of staff, so the war on women in national security clearly doesn’t count if there’s one woman at the top of the loyalty pyramid.","date_published":"2026-10-30T13:00:03.000Z","image":"https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2026/10/29/2e1993f6-1d74-4670-9ea9-f302abc92001/thumbnail/1200x630g3/57c55f6dd5d661b72a19c4f9c96a0718/gettyimages-2302566480.jpg","authors":[{"name":"cbsnews.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae489e971a068f4e56a0c31","url":"https://www.npr.org/2026/10/30/nx-s1-6023106/cheesecake-factory-culture-war-affordability-trump-obama","title":"obama compares trump’s white house to a cheesecake factory, nation briefly unites in agreement","content_text":"Barack Obama went to Ohio, made one (1) joke about Trump’s gaudy White House remodel — saying it looked like “Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory” — and the entire right-wing outrage machine immediately put down its copies of The Art of the Deal to defend the honor of a mall restaurant chain. Trump’s aesthetic, which has always hovered somewhere between “dictator starter kit” and “Vegas pawn shop explosion,” is suddenly sacred national heritage.\n\nConservatives spent the week howling that coastal elites were sneering at ordinary Americans who enjoy 47-page menus and $18 slices of cheesecake, while somehow skipping the part where the actual issue is a president turning the people’s house into a gold-plated ego shrine. Obama’s joke about Trump supergluing medallions to the Oval Office mantel and paving over the Rose Garden for a ballroom hit a little too close to the truth for a guy who already lives in a literal gilded tower.\n\nSo instead of talking about corruption, self-worship, or the minor detail that regular people can barely afford chain-restaurant prices in Trump’s economy, we’re debating whether Cheesecake Factory is “for the working class” or for snobs. Perfect encapsulation of Trump’s America: the president governs like a bargain-bin autocrat, and the political system responds by launching a holy war over cheesecake.","date_published":"2026-10-30T12:00:31.000Z","image":"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/1024x576+0+54/resize/1400/quality/85/format/webp/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F17%2F5b%2Fe7ad0f394e5ca990073747bcaa6b%2Fgettyimages-2213067117.jpg","authors":[{"name":"npr.org"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae488c271a068f4e56a0b19","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/30/first-thing-alaska-senate-race-doj-subpoenas-lawsuit-second-dan-sullivan","title":"trump files lawsuit against future he doesn’t like","content_text":"The Alaska Senate race has gone from \"ranked-choice quirky\" to \"constitutional crisis fan fiction\" after reports that Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign may have helped nudge a second Dan Sullivan onto the ballot to siphon votes from the Republican Dan Sullivan. That tactic, ballot stacking, is sleazy but legal. Which is exactly why the Trump administration and his ever-loyal justice department are doing the logical thing: filing a pre-emptive federal lawsuit to block certification of the race if the incumbent Republican loses. Why wait for voters or facts when you can just sue the future until it behaves?","date_published":"2026-10-30T11:54:22.000Z","image":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6df5220c0af78cfbbbc19f5ff5ff9166a5245d8c/164_0_2500_2000/master/2500.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&s=3f724eeb468aa0fecb9a16c51096a0a4","authors":[{"name":"theguardian.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae482b871a068f4e56a0a4e","url":"https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/iran-war-us-trump-diplomacy-threat-resume-attacks/","title":"trump dangles ‘more strikes’ while qatar tries to stop his midterm war","content_text":"Qatar is shuttling back to Tehran trying to patch together a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, while Trump stands off to the side like a reality show producer threatening to \"resume major strikes\" if the ratings dip. Iranian officials say the Qatari proposal is \"unacceptable\" and refuse to budge on the nuclear issue; Trump, ever the dealmaker, responds by keeping the port blockade and sanctions in place and insisting this is all just about getting \"medical aid\" into Iran. Because nothing says humanitarian outreach like choking a country’s economy and then bombing it.\nOut in the Strait of Hormuz, tankers are hitting mines, getting \"brought to a halt\" by the IRGC, and occasionally being nailed by projectiles while everyone argues over which shipping lane is legal this week. The U.S. promotes a southern route, Iran calls it illegal, and commercial shipping gets to play live-action Minesweeper while F-16s pose for CENTCOM glamour shots. Meanwhile, the Pentagon quietly updates the casualty portal: 23 U.S. service members dead in a war that was supposed to be a quick bit of \"maximum pressure\" theater. Trump gets his war footing for election season; troops and tankers get to find out how much that costs.\nVice President JD Vance has apparently discovered pen and paper, sending a letter to Iranian security chief Mohsen Rezaei that multiple outlets report as a peace overture. Trump immediately undercuts it, claiming it’s only about medical supplies, because this administration can’t even run a coherent back-channel without turning it into a factional food fight. Tehran hasn’t bothered to respond yet, possibly because they’re busy dodging sanctions, mines, and American political timelines. The White House keeps pretending this is controlled strategy; from the outside it looks a lot more like killing-democracy meets forever-grifting foreign policy cosplay with actual human casualties.","date_published":"2026-10-30T11:33:21.000Z","image":"https://assets3.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2026/10/30/6861dff3-34d6-496b-a11f-ad14b9228936/thumbnail/1200x630/865a67ecaaffb5727a37fc942110b0ff/hvy6j5dwyaajcje.jpg","authors":[{"name":"cbsnews.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4827171a068f4e56a0a39","url":"https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/10/two-navy-veterans-one-flooding-district-why-sea-level-rise-matters-in-kiggans-vs-luria/","title":"trump calls climate a hoax, navy district tries not to drown","content_text":"In Virginia’s 2nd District, home to Naval Station Norfolk and a front-row seat to the Atlantic slowly reclaiming real estate, voters are choosing between two Navy veterans who agree on one awkward fact: the water is getting higher. Unfortunately, the guy in the White House still insists climate change is a “hoax”, which is a bold strategy when your coastal bases are doing their best impression of Atlantis.\n\nFormer Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria is running on the wild idea that maybe military readiness should include \"not having piers underwater\" and \"roads that don’t turn into canals every high tide.\" She’s pushed for coordinated climate resilience, backed offshore wind, and generally behaved like a person who has seen a tide chart before. Republican incumbent Jennifer Kiggans, also a Navy vet, is trying to have it both ways: voting for defense and infrastructure money and even signing a letter opposing Trump’s attempt to pause the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project—while still caucusing with the party whose official environmental position is basically \"have you tried thoughts and prayers?\"\n\nThe district’s voters, a majority of whom understand that global warming might be related to the whole 'water in the streets on sunny days' problem, now get to decide whether their next member of Congress will keep pushing the administration to fund climate resilience, or just keep mopping the deck while Captain Hoax steers directly into the iceberg. The world’s largest naval base is literally sinking, and the big strategic debate in Trump’s America is whether acknowledging physics is partisan.","date_published":"2026-10-30T11:30:00.000Z","image":"https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/20240126_zaf_m67_001-fotor-20261029164542.png?w=1200&h=630&crop=1","authors":[{"name":"motherjones.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4827d71a068f4e56a0a40","url":"https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/10/floridas-gop-senator-is-barely-campaigning-and-still-leading/","title":"florida senator discovers winning strategy: hide from voters, reroute kids’ health money","content_text":"Florida’s Republican Sen. Ashley Moody has pioneered a bold new theory of democracy: why talk to voters or the press when you can just glide to reelection on gerrymandered vibes and Fox hits? She’s refusing to debate Democratic socialist Angie Nixon, ducking reporters so aggressively that her security literally bodies them away, and holding “Get Out The Vote” rallies where the press is allowed by invitation only. Then her campaign posts carefully curated photos afterward, like a hostage tape with better lighting.\n\nThe shyness really kicked in after a leaked grand jury report found that Ron DeSantis’ administration diverted $10 million earmarked for poor kids’ health care and laundered it through “multiple organizations” until it magically landed in the bank accounts of two GOP PACs and the Republican Party of Florida. The report says Moody’s office, back when she was Attorney General, was involved in the transfer. Her defense? She claims her office had no idea how the money would be used — they just helped move the cash from sick children to Republican slush funds, who among us hasn’t. Naturally, she’s now running as a champion of “freedom” and “affordability,” while hiding from any unscripted questions like they’re subpoenas.\n\nInstead of open events, Moody sticks to safe spaces: Trump rallies, closed-door GOP gatherings, and rooms full of handpicked supporters where no one dares ask about $10 million in missing kids’ health care money. The press gets barricades; the base gets culture-war soundbites about stopping a “socialist” from walking onto the Senate floor. And somehow, polls still show her leading. Florida politics has officially reached the stage where you can help preside over the rerouting of children’s health funds into party coffers, refuse to debate, dodge scrutiny, and still be the frontrunner — a useful reminder that the cruelty is the point, the corruption is the feature, and accountability is strictly by invite only.","date_published":"2026-10-30T11:30:00.000Z","image":"https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/20261030_Ashley-Moody_2000px.png?w=1200&h=630&crop=1","authors":[{"name":"motherjones.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae481b671a068f4e56a0947","url":"https://www.npr.org/2026/10/30/g-s1-150889/up-first-newsletter-midterm-elections-iran-war-veteran-affairs-loans","title":"dems try ratf*cking in alaska while trump’s doj menaces elections","content_text":"Alaska’s Senate race is now a live-action ethics seminar. Democratic operatives allegedly tried to recruit a Dan Sullivan to run against GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, presumably in the hope that confused voters would treat the ballot like a scratch-off ticket and accidentally flip the seat to Democrat Mary Peltola. Election law experts say there’s no clear statute against this, but agree it blasts straight through the \"sure, but are we still human beings?\" line. Apparently, the new bipartisan consensus is that if you can’t persuade voters, just trick them.Down in the Lower 48, Trump is frantically dialing into 19 telerallies like a QVC host for authoritarianism, trying to juice turnout in Republican-leaning states while also risking the side effect of waking up Democratic voters who’d like to keep having elections that don’t look like a prank show. Meanwhile, his Department of Justice is subpoenaing election workers in Los Angeles, escalating tensions with California officials and sending a very clear message: the federal government is less interested in protecting voting than in making local election administrators wish they’d chosen another career.So we’ve got Democrats experimenting with name-based voter confusion, Republicans leaning on federal power like it’s a crowbar, and Trump beaming himself into living rooms to remind everyone why democracy is on life support. American elections: now with more schemes, fewer guardrails, and absolutely no one in charge of the ethics department.","date_published":"2026-10-30T11:20:26.000Z","image":"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/8192x4608+0+428/resize/1400/quality/85/format/webp/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F5b%2Fb3%2Ff61edb374245b81e9c39ed97c098%2Fgettyimages-2302087268.jpg","authors":[{"name":"npr.org"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae545aa71a068f4e56a3850","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/oct/30/trump-tariffs-inflation-election-promise","title":"trump promised cheap groceries, delivered a war and a 10% tax on everything","content_text":"Trump ran in 2024 on the Hallmark-movie promise that he’d \"reduce prices on day one\" and get gas \"below $2 a gallon.\" Two years later we’re at $4.28 a gallon, food is pricier, and his idea of \"cost relief\" is a war with Iran plus serially illegal tariffs that function as a 10% sales tax on the entire planet. The Supreme Court tossed his first \"liberation day\" tariff stunt as illegal, so naturally he just slapped on new across-the-board tariffs that another court also found unlawful. Rule of law is for poor people, not for a guy who thinks economics is when you yell \"AMERICA FIRST\" at a spreadsheet.\n\nThe bill for all this economic patriot cosplay is landing right where you’d expect: Yale’s Budget Lab says his tariffs alone will cost the average household $1,100 this year, while Moody’s pegs the Iran war tab at another $2,000 via higher fuel, transport and interest rates. Wages and prices have risen at the same 5.4% since he came back, meaning workers’ real pay is going exactly nowhere while Trump’s spokesguy Matthew Middleton goes on TV to recite fan fiction about \"blunting Biden’s inflation\" and delivering \"economic wins.\" Fox News’ own poll says 77% of Americans hate his tariff circus, and more than one in five of his own voters now think he’s doing a bad job. Tough crowd when even the base notices the grocery bill.\n\nNot content with just tariffs and war, Trump also decided electricity should cosplay as a luxury good. He helped kill subsidies for cheap wind and solar, fast-tracked power-hungry data centers, and ended EV credits — a neat little trifecta that raises electric bills by an estimated $6 billion and slaps up to $7,500 back onto many electric cars. Meanwhile, the Iran war predictably squeezed the Strait of Hormuz, sent gas up 40%, diesel nearly 70%, and fertilizer 20%, hammering farmers and blowing up airfares. When confronted, Trump shrugged it off with \"I love the inflation\" — a bold line to take when the people paying for your bravado are the same working families you promised to rescue from high prices.\n\nSo yes, he promised to \"cut energy prices in half\" and \"lower the cost of living.\" What he actually delivered is a live-fire economics experiment where courts keep calling his tariffs illegal, wars jack up oil, and the White House insists this is all a giant affordability \"win.\" If this is the largest working-class tax cut in history, it’s the kind where the tax cut goes to the press releases and everyone else just gets the bill.","date_published":"2026-10-30T10:00:50.000Z","image":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f8b012e056cb4c3eaf05a08afcfd8f63aa71c90b/231_0_6739_5393/master/6739.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctb3BpbmlvbnMucG5n&s=f26aea4e80b7dde9d75b1dce230e770e","authors":[{"name":"theguardian.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4725271a068f4e56a039c","url":"https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-arch-arguments-judge-hearing/","title":"trump wants a triumphal arch. between lincoln and arlington. with snipers.","content_text":"The Justice Department is in court defending President Trump's dream of a 250-foot \"triumphal arch\" jammed between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, because apparently the only thing missing from the capital's skyline was a giant, weaponized ego problem. Three Vietnam veterans and a historian are begging Judge Tanya Chutkan to hit pause, arguing the project has been rushed, lacks clear congressional approval, and would wreck the carefully planned sightline between the Lincoln Memorial and the Robert E. Lee Memorial — you know, the one about post–Civil War unity, not post-democracy branding opportunities.\n\nThe plaintiffs warn the administration is trying to pour concrete fast enough to make the arch a fait accompli before the courts can rule, while DOJ lawyers clutch their pearls about \"breathless\" filings and insist that veterans' \"aesthetic and emotional displeasure\" over desecrating Arlington doesn't count as real harm. Trump, never missing a chance to say the quiet part on Truth Social, bragged that he \"converted\" the design into a \"top grade Military Complex\" with snipers and drones. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dutifully signed declarations calling this thing a \"generational national defense opportunity\" — because nothing says homeland security like turning the approach to the nation’s most sacred military cemetery into a paramilitary tourist trap.\n\nArlington County is separately suing over the impact on flight paths at Reagan National, while the FAA has already waved it through as no hazard, proving that when it comes to Trump-era infrastructure, the only thing that really needs clearance is the Dear Leader's self-esteem. So now we wait to see whether the courts will stop the president from dropping a giant armed monument to himself between Lincoln and the graves of the people who actually served, or whether Washington’s next landmark will be a 250-foot reminder that the line between capital city and cult compound is getting very, very thin.","date_published":"2026-10-30T10:00:06.000Z","image":"https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2026/06/11/0751905a-3df4-4e0c-8238-74a74d6325f3/thumbnail/1200x630/3f238bf2a7aa148fbad92ff1aa0b5add/arch1.jpg","authors":[{"name":"cbsnews.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae478a171a068f4e56a0693","url":"https://thehill.com/policy/technology/6182574-ai-data-centers-threaten-gop-votes/","title":"trump’s ai gold rush is poisoning the well in maga country","content_text":"Republicans spent years cosplaying as defenders of rural America, then quietly handed those same towns over to AI data center developers like a clearance-bin sacrifice to the gods of cloud computing. Now in places across Texas and Ohio where Trump won by double digits, residents are discovering that \"job creation\" apparently means a handful of tech gigs, a mountain of corporate tax breaks, and enough water and electricity consumption to make a Bitcoin mine blush. Trump’s AI boom is looking less like innovation and more like a giant industrial straw jammed straight into the local aquifer.\n\nThe backlash is getting loud enough that GOP incumbents are finally noticing that their voters don’t love skyrocketing utility bills, drained wells, and massive power lines so Google and friends can train models to write bad marketing emails faster. Grassroots groups in deep-red towns are organizing, suing, and turning these data centers into campaign issues, which is awkward for a party that’s been busy stapling itself to Trump’s \"AI leadership\" branding while quietly socializing the environmental damage. If the GOP loses chunks of its rural base over this, it won’t be because Democrats out-organized them — it’ll be because Republicans helped Big Tech literally suck their voters dry, then called it \"freedom\" and \"growth\".\n\nThe punchline: the same people who were told immigrants were coming to steal their jobs are now watching server farms steal their water, their grid capacity, and their tax base, all with the enthusiastic blessing of the party they’ve been voting for. Call it the latest installment of the leopards-ate-my-face cinematic universe, now featuring AI, corporate welfare, and a fresh chance for Republicans to learn that you can’t run a movement on resentment forever while your donors are busy strip-mining your own voters’ backyards.","date_published":"2026-10-30T10:00:00.000Z","authors":[{"name":"thehill.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae4669b71a068f4e569ff2e","url":"https://www.axios.com/2026/10/30/democrat-subpoenas-investigations-corporate-trump","title":"ceos discover the downside of feeding the alligator","content_text":"America’s CEOs spent 2024 throwing cash, stock, and their remaining dignity at Donald Trump’s \"Golden Age\" fantasy, and now Democrats are standing by with subpoenas like it’s Black Friday at the corruption outlet mall. The same executives who raced to dismantle DEI, bankroll Trump’s $333 million White House ballroom, and pledge $940 million in \"free\" legal help are suddenly rediscovering the timeless corporate value of bipartisanship — also known as \"please don’t put me under oath.\"\n\nElon Musk, naturally, is choosing the subtle approach: threatening Democrats while sitting on $445 million in GOP super PAC spending, a gutted USAID, mass federal layoffs, access to sensitive government systems, and a Ukraine Starlink chokehold that just happens to interest people who read words like \"war crimes\" for fun. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg helped turn AI regulation into a choose-your-own-adventure for industry, Larry and David Ellison built a MAGA-friendly media empire while Paramount quietly paid off Trump, and fossil fuel giants cashed in on the president’s billion-dollar fundraising ask with tax breaks and environmental rollbacks that smell like crude and quid pro quo.\n\nNot to be left out, Trump’s government-turned-venture-fund has thrown about $30 billion into equity and warrant deals for more than 40 companies, while elite law firms bent the knee for access and oil executives got the regulatory wish list of their dreams. The punchline: all these titans of industry who thought backing Trump was a savvy investment strategy may now spend the rest of his presidency explaining, under penalty of perjury, how they managed to turn the federal government into their personal hedge fund — and why the returns were so spectacularly one-sided.","date_published":"2026-10-30T09:32:18.000Z","authors":[{"name":"axios.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae466a771a068f4e569ff35","url":"https://www.axios.com/2026/10/30/trump-bukele-haiti-troop-surge","title":"trump outsources haiti policy to bukele & blackwater guy, what could go wrong","content_text":"Donald Trump has apparently decided that U.S. foreign policy in the Caribbean should be run like a freelance gig on Upwork. El Salvador’s authoritarian president Nayib Bukele called Trump to ask if he could flood Haiti with thousands of troops and special forces in response to a gang ambush that captured four Salvadoran personnel. The leader of the free world reportedly replied with the rigorous strategic guidance of a drunk HOA president: “Do what you have to do.”\n\nThis isn’t just one strongman helping another; it’s also a demo reel for Erik Prince’s latest Blackwater sequel, Vectus Global, and a test of the new Trump-era model: public-private death squads as proxies for U.S. muscle, but without those annoying things like oversight, Congress, or a paper trail. Bukele’s forces are operating parallel to the UN-backed Gang Suppression Force, while a Republican committee chair openly cheers for a mission of “revenge, retribution and destruction” so the U.S. can keep its hands clean and its budget untouched. Imperialism, but make it subcontracted.\n\nBukele—fresh off turning El Salvador into a prison state with mass incarcerations and a mega-jail—is now exporting his brand, promising Haitian gangs that El Salvador “finished” its gangs and can “finish” them too. Trump, meanwhile, mostly cares that Haiti takes back people whose temporary protected status he already canceled, and is happy to let Colombia allegedly funnel gear to Bukele so there are “no U.S. fingerprints” on the mission. So the hemisphere’s most fragile democracy gets postponed elections, parallel armed forces, and a mercenary-adjacent proxy war on its soil, while Trump and Rubio get to pretend they’re not involved. U.S. power, now available in deniable, off-the-books form.","date_published":"2026-10-30T09:25:05.000Z","authors":[{"name":"axios.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae466b371a068f4e569ff3c","url":"https://www.axios.com/2026/10/30/key-house-democrat-permitting-bill-gold-rush-gas","title":"trump tries to fossilize energy policy — literally","content_text":"Congress has discovered a bold new way to fight climate change: enshrine Donald Trump’s second-term war on renewables as the legal gold standard for fairness. A bipartisan permitting bill, allegedly designed to prevent political favoritism, would let developers challenge \"discriminatory\" treatment by comparing it to permitting decisions from the last five years — which just happen to be packed with Trump’s open hostility to wind and solar and love letters to natural gas. Call it the \"What Would Donald Do?\" clause.\nRep. Sean Casten, who has the rare combination of understanding both energy markets and math, points out that when you ask developers what this bill would incentivize, the answer is: \"a lot of gas.\" So naturally, the White House is enthusiastically backing it, while Democrats split between \"please pass it now,\" \"fix the parts that turn climate policy into a fossil-fuel sweepstakes,\" and \"maybe don’t codify Trump’s tantrums as federal precedent.\" Somewhere between Jennifer Granholm and Rashida Tlaib, the Senate is racing to lock in a framework that could turn Trump-era sabotage of clean energy into the new normal — all under the branding of speeding up clean power. Regulatory capture, but make it bipartisan.","date_published":"2026-10-30T09:15:05.000Z","authors":[{"name":"axios.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae45f9371a068f4e569fcfc","url":"https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/james-comey-team-court-seeking-toss-third-doj-case-longtime-trump-foe-rcna606394","title":"trump doj speedruns banana republic prosecution","content_text":"The Trump Justice Department is back in court trying to defend its third criminal case in 13 months against James Comey, because when you’ve turned DOJ into the president’s personal revenge squad, you don’t stop just because the first two attempts faceplanted. This latest masterpiece accuses Comey of authorizing FBI staff in 2016 to talk to a New York Times reporter about classified info — and was filed as a bare \"criminal information\" with no grand jury, no judge sign-off, and timed for the exact last day before the 10-year statute of limitations expired. Prosecutors allegedly planned a Friday-before-a-long-weekend after-hours arrest, because nothing says \"rule of law\" like trying to stick the former FBI director in a holiday holding cell for the crime of being mean to Donald Trump a decade ago.\n\nThe earlier efforts went just as well. First, a Trump-aligned lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, played cosplay-fed-prosecutor in Virginia, got an indictment, and then watched a judge vaporize the whole case after discovering she was unlawfully acting as a federal prosecutor. Then came the legendary \"seashells case\" in North Carolina, where DOJ tried to argue that Comey arranging shells to spell \"8647\" on Instagram was a coded threat to the president, rather than, say, a dad-level beach post that restaurants would recognize as \"we’re out of this dish.\" That trial is punted to 2027, presumably to give the government more time to Google what words mean.\n\nLegal experts are politely describing DOJ’s latest effort as \"disturbing,\" which is lawyer-speak for \"what the hell are you people doing.\" Former federal prosecutor Sarah Krissoff notes that if they had an actual case, they’d go to a grand jury or a judge like normal prosecutors instead of speed-running the process through a sketchy criminal information on the last possible day. Meanwhile in D.C., a federal grand jury has already refused to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, and a magistrate judge is grilling Trump’s DOJ over similarly flimsy charges against other ex-FBI officials targeted by Trump’s allies. As Krissoff puts it, grand juries and judges are basically all that’s left between the United States and a full-time cable reboot of \"Authoritarian Regimes: Origins.\" Thank goodness for the federal judiciary accidentally becoming the last functioning guardrail.","date_published":"2026-10-30T09:00:00.000Z","image":"https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_nbcnews-fp-1024-512,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2026-04/260428-james-comey-ew-245p-7b3432.jpg","authors":[{"name":"nbcnews.com"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae460f271a068f4e569fd87","url":"https://www.npr.org/2026/10/30/nx-s1-6019325/elon-musk-power-moguls-politics","title":"the trillionaire who privatized foreign policy","content_text":"Elon Musk has now reached the \"why bother with democracy when you can just buy it\" stage of wealth. NPR notes he’s dropped over $400 million on Republican causes for the midterms — more than Bloomberg and Soros gave Democrats combined — while his companies have feasted on more than $30 billion in federal contracts, subsidies, loans and tax credits. Truly a heartwarming story of the government investing in small business, then watching that small business turn around and fund the politicians who’ll keep the gravy hose on full blast.On the side, Musk’s SpaceX casually restricted Ukraine’s access to Starlink, knocking drones out of the sky in an active war, because nothing says responsible global leadership like letting one guy’s vibes determine battlefield communications. This is the same guy who oversaw DOGE, the Trump-era wrecking ball that dismantled USAID, a congressionally created foreign aid agency, and replaced it with whatever half-baked techno-libertarian fever dream he was having that week.Historian David Nasaw calls Musk’s setup an “unholy alliance”: he hoovers up public money, then uses it to bankroll the politicians who protect him — a perpetual motion machine of oligarchy. Another historian tries to reassure us by saying, don’t worry, J.P. Morgan was worse. Comforting! Democracy may be in a “death spiral towards oligarchy,” but at least this time the robber baron is live-tweeting it and selling flamethrowers.","date_published":"2026-10-30T09:00:00.000Z","image":"https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/5616x3159+0+293/resize/1400/quality/85/format/webp/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F7f%2Ff4%2Fd4d949d84118ab050e7b61b7b7a5%2Fap26272766678511.jpg","authors":[{"name":"npr.org"}]},{"id":"https://thetrumppresidencyisgoinggreat.com/?entry=6ae415bf71a068f4e569cf22","url":"https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/trump-cancels-weekend-rallies-iowa-kansas-favor-holding-numerous-teler-rcna606487","title":"telethon for one: trump cancels rallies, keeps ego on the air","content_text":"Trump has decided that actually going to Iowa and Kansas to help Republicans in competitive races is for suckers, and will instead hold a bunch of tele-rallies from the comfort of his taxpayer-funded bunker. After bragging for weeks that his physical presence is electoral fairy dust, he’s now discovered that the real secret to victory is dialing in like a robocall with better hair.The official RNC line is that canceling in-person rallies will \"maximize opportunities\" for Trump to speak to voters, which is a poetic way of saying, we found a cheaper way to mainline his voice into your ears without risking another hoarse, sweaty meltdown on live TV. GOP operatives in Iowa quietly admit they actually wanted the in-person circus, but are now stuck pretending a tele-rally is just as good as a stadium full of red hats and merch tables.Pressed on whether his health played a role, Trump assured everyone he feels \"perfect\" and then pivoted to verbally assaulting a reporter’s appearance, because nothing reassures the nation about presidential stamina like screaming \"you look like hell\" at the press. He promptly canceled Iowa a few hours later, but don’t worry: he’s still making time for a comfy event in safely Republican Daytona Beach, where the only competitive thing on the ballot is which donor gets the best photo op.So the midterm \"blitz\" has evolved into the midterm \"conference call,\" with Trump planning more than 20 tele-rallies before Election Day. Republicans in real swing districts get a dial tone; solid-red Florida gets the live show. As always, the party of strength and winning is bravely retreating to the safest possible stage, as long as the cameras are on and the Wi-Fi works.","date_published":"2026-10-30T03:19:48.470Z","image":"https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_nbcnews-fp-1024-512,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2026-10/261029-trump-vsb-2230-252116.jpg","authors":[{"name":"nbcnews.com"}]}]}