Roundup: One month of authoritarianism. Plus: Obama cites The Watch! (sort of)
Here's what happened in just one month of the Trump administration's dizzying push toward autocracy
UPDATE: In one of the bullet points below, I noted that deportations dropped off in Los Angeles after a federal judge issued a temporary injunction barring ICE from detaining people suspected of being undocumented immigrants based on their ethnicity, accent, or presence in spaces like bus stops or Home Depot parking lots. An hour after I published this post, the Supreme Court overturned that injunction 6-3. ICE is now permitted to detain and harass people simply because of some combination of their ethnicity, accent, native language, occupation, use of public transportation, or other perfectly legal activities or characteristics. The conservative majority did not offer an opinion, though Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence. In it, the justice argued this:
In other words, if you’re Latino or just look foreign, keep your papers on you. Otherwise, the government can detain you until you can prove your citizenship to their satisfaction.
The ruling lifts the injunction while the broader issues are litigated, though Kavanaugh suggests the administration is likely to win on the merits.
Also, in the hour since this post went up, President Trump defended domestic abusers during a speech at something called the Museum of the Bible. Said the president: "Things that take place in the home, they call crime ... If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime, see?" Earlier this morning, he also celebrated West Point’s cancellation of Tom Hanks as a commencement speaker over Hanks’s “wokeness.”
Finally, this happened:
(End of update)
One uncomfortable reality of my beat is that I tend to get a bump in my professional profile — readers, book sales, TV and radio appearances — when terrible things happen. This is one of those times.
Late last month, the New York Times published an interview I did with Ezra Klein. We talked about Trump’s attempted military takeover of Washington and his vow to take similar action in other cities. The interview pretty quickly went viral. (Or maybe that’s just how all of Ezra’s interviews go.)
The day after the interview went up, this happened:
Obama posted this across all his social media accounts, which brought a typically hyperbolic reaction from the White house.
Okay, so maybe “useful overview” isn’t the most enthusiastic endorsement. But still, after 20 years of covering these issues, it’s gratifying to get a shout from a former president.
As I wrote in the most recent edition of Rise of the Warrior Cop, Obama was the first president to actually acknowledge that police militarization is a problem (as opposed to something to be celebrated and incentivized) — and to actually take some steps to rein it in. That came late in his presidency, and I wish he had done a lot more. But even conceding the problem was a sea change from every president before him.
More importantly, the interview seems to have hit a nerve. Part of that was probably the massive NYT platform and its ability to reach people who, say, can’t recite the history of the Posse Comitatus Act. But given the timid response we’ve seen from most Democratic leaders to Trump’s push to militarize American cities — and the oddly anodyne way it’s being covered in much of the media — it’s encouraging that so many people resonated with an interview that expresses the alarm a lot of us are feeling right now.
The interview also brought a nice surge in new readers. So to the new folks — welcome. If you stick around, you’ll get a mix of commentary and reporting on what’s happening nationally, along with reporting and long-form investigations on the criminal justice system. I don’t paywall any of my work. Instead, I rely on subscribers to support what I do. So if you like what you read, I hope you’ll consider a paid subscription.
That out of the way, let’s move on to the long, grim roundup of this administration’s push to consolidate its power. Given the dizzying speed with which Trump is assaulting our institutions, it’s easy to be overwhelmed and then numbed to what’s happening. In my last post, I wrote about a conference I attended in Washington last month that addressed the current threat to liberal democracy. So what follows is an attempt to document this administration’s authoritarian power grabs in just the month since I attended that conference.
Some of these bullet points are more serious than others. Some may have happened more than a month ago, but were only recently reported. One frustrating challenge to a post like this: I’ve spent about a couple weeks putting it together, and every day I spend writing it brings another dozen or more examples I need to add to it. It all paints an increasingly dire picture of a spiraling democracy.
If you can manage to make it to the end, I’ve rewarded you with some adorable dog content.
Corruption
A conservative New Yorker analysis finds that Trump and his family have made at least $3.4 billion off his presidency, with the vast majority of that coming just in the last year. Most of the money has come from cryptocurrency, including schemes that essentially allow foreign governments and people seeking favors and pardons to straight up give him money.
Even that analysis came before the Trump family launched yet another crypto coin that netted them another $5 billion on paper. By these estimates, Trump himself has tripled or quadrupled his net worth just in the eight months since he was inaugurated.
Trump also threatened to impose new tariffs on countries that impose new taxes or regulatory policies that could affect his crypto fortune.
The Army Corps of Engineers raised the water level of a river so that JD Vance and his family could go kayaking. This is apparently Vance’s eighth vacation since he became vice president. During his family trip to Italy, he had the Roman Coliseum shut down, barring tourists who had booked slots months in advance. Real man-of-the-people stuff!
Trump has made it legal for U.S. weapons manufacturers to bribe officials in foreign governments. This is of a piece with the administration’s general policy of not bothering to investigate public corruption. But if you’re a progressive prosecutor who fails to sufficiently incarcerate shoplifters, the DOJ is coming for you.
The head of an influential technology agency in the General Services Administration has retained his ties to Tesla. The agency plays a big role in government contracting, which of course is a huge part of Elon Musk’s business.
Democrats in the Senate have demanded an investigation into Trump and Pam Bondi’s gutting of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section and the FBI’s public corruption investigators.
CREW finds that Trump is still making hundreds of thousands of dollars by having Republican and conservative political groups host fundraisers at Trump- owned properties. In other words, he’s making hundreds of thousands of dollars while raising millions of dollars to elect people who support him. As with nearly every other item on this list, this would be a potentially administration-ending scandal in any other era. Here, the $900,000 he’s made barely registers against the billions he’s made through other varieties of corruption.
As the administration works to end all immigration — legal and otherwise — it continues to make exceptions for political donors to hire foreign workers — and for Trump’s own businesses, of course.
A whistleblower alleges that the DOJ is letting companies buy their way out of antitrust regulations by paying off MAGA friends and influencers . . . or by hiring them as lobbyists.
Trump’s “sovereign wealth fund” is just another way of shaking down private companies and foreign governments to do his bidding.
Trump will host the 2026 G20 summit at his Doral Golf Resort. If you’ll remember, he tried to do this during his first term, but walked the idea when it was deemed to be too corrupt. (Or at least that the public reaction is that it was too corrupt.) Not anymore.
Here’s a sobering read at Foreign Affairs about why the corruption we’ve seen over the last half year is different from typical corruption, and why it’s especially dangerous.
Free speech and the free press
If you’ll recall, CBS inexplicably settled with Trump after he filed a transparently frivolous and ridiculous lawsuit over 60 Minutes’ completely anodyne editing of its interview with Kamala Harris. The settlement came after Trump’s corrupt FCC chair threatened to scuttle CBS owner Paramount’s attempted merger with Skydance. CBS gave Trump a bunch of money, and the merger was approved. Then CBS fired Stephen Colbert. More recently, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem complained about how the network edited an interview in which she made unfounded, probably slanderous accusations about Kilmar Abrego-Garcia. CBS edited out those unsupported accusations, as it should have. Now, in response to Noem’s complaints, CBS has promised to stop airing edited interviews with Trump officials.
Meanwhile, the new owner of CBS is reportedly preparing to hand editorial control of the network’s news division over to Free Press founder Bari Weiss. Regular readers can probably guess how I feel about that.
A federal judge has blocked the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation of Media Matters. The judge also wrote that Stephen Miller may have ordered the attorneys general of two states to open their own criminal investigations of Media Matters. This was all over the progressive advocacy group’s report that neo-Nazi content was appearing on mainstream X accounts. As multiple courts have now ruled, what Media Matters did in this case is basic journalism. It’s protected speech. And this administration’s harassment on Musk’s behalf is clear censorship.
Trump has since appointed one of the state AGs who harassed Media Matters — Andrew Bailey of Missouri — to the second highest position at the FBI. Bailey is also known for fighting to keep innocent men in prison, blaming a fight between two public school students on “DEI” (which resulted in a bomb threat), suing Starbucks for discriminating against white men, suing the state of New York for its prosecution of Trump, and attempting to intervene in the federal case against Trump for stealing classified documents. He also tried to charge a journalist with “hacking” for exposing security flaws on a state website.
Trump again instructed the FCC to “revoke the licenses” of NBC and ABC stations because he doesn’t like how those company’s news programs cover his administration. So far, the only network Trump hasn’t threatened — the only major network for which FCC Chair Brendan Carr has yet to open a “bias” investigation — is Fox. This can only mean that Fox is the most unbiased network of them all.
Trump also said recently that MSBNC journalists are “real scum” who are “worse than Tren de Aragua.”
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are now bullying Wikipedia, calling what has become one of the most trusted repositories of public information “propaganda.”
Trump “immigration czar” Tom Homan said over the weekend that people who fund protests against mass deportation will be prosecuted. Funding protests is protected by the First Amendment. It is not a crime.
The Department of Education has proposed a rule that would deny public interest student loan forgiveness for graduates who work for groups “found to be engaging in certain illegal activities.” This may sound reasonable at first blush, but this administration has made clear that it considers DEI initiatives, defending and advocating for undocumented people, and defending and advocating for people accused of crimes (or at least some crimes) as “illegal” activities.
The Trump administration announced it will begin screening citizenship applicants for “anti-America ideologies or activities.” How those terms are defined will be left to the discretion of the administration. In other contexts, they’ve claimed that criticism of Republicans, Trump himself, and Israel are “anti-American.”
Oh, also, the new head of the office that will conduct those reviews has espoused the racist “Great Replacement Theory.”
Chaya Raichik, who runs the obscenely nutty and bigoted “Libs of TikTok” X account, called for a Connecticut state representative to be criminally prosecuted for “helping illegals evade arrest and aiding ICE.” His alleged crime? Encouraging his constituents to “look out for each other” in the face of ICE raids, and to “seek trusted legal support” if raided. The official ICE account then reposted her demand and tagged the Justice Department. Earlier this year, ICE let Raichik wear a badge and tag along on immigration raids.
The administration arrested and detained a journalist and legal resident as he covered an immigration protest in Georgia. He has been held in solitary confinement since June, and they’re now trying to deport him. At his bond hearing, the government explicitly argued that the immigration reporting he had been doing made him a “threat” to the community. A judge granted the man bond, but the government got a higher court to stay that ruling. He’s still in detention.
The State Department announced that it will review the eligibility of all 55 million visa holders in the U.S. The administration has previously said that such vetting would include scouring social media content for “anti-American” activity, which they’ve made clear includes any criticism of Trump. Visa holders have also been instructed to turn off privacy settings on their phones so the administration can thoroughly snoop for signs of wrongthink.
Trump signed a blatantly unconstitutional order criminalizing the burning of the American flag. I presume this will not affect the “patriot” status he conferred on the January 6th rioters who beat police officers with American flags. I think we can also safely say that the administration would not consider this photo “desecration.”
Weaponization of government
Trump threatened to withhold over $1 billion in federal invasive species aid to Illinois because Governor JB Pritzker criticized his plan to send the National Guard to Chicago.
Trump also posted on social media that he would “deny funding” to any California public school that does not “adhere to our Transgender policies.”
After Maryland Governor Wes Moore criticized Trump’s threats to deploy the National Guard in Baltimore, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding for the Frances Scott Key Bridge, which was destroyed after a boat struck it last year.
After former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie criticized Trump’s weaponization of the DOJ, Trump said he was offended by Christie’s accusation and that the DOJ should always be free of politics. Just kidding! Trump threatened to have the DOJ investigate Christie, too.
Trump also canceled Joe Biden’s order to extend Kamala Harris’s Secret Service protection. This is also part of a pattern. He canceled John Bolton’s protection shortly after Bolton was allegedly targeted by Iran for assassination.
Trump said that George Soros and his son should be investigated for corruption. It’s important to emphasize here that even if his administration never follows up on statements like this, they are themselves an unacceptable abuse of power. Even if the DOJ had rock-solid evidence to back up those claims — and there’s no indication they do — the democratic, due process-grounded, non-abusive thing to do would be to investigate, charge, and prosecute. A president’s public threat to prosecute a critic is a stand-alone breach of the First Amendment.
Trump threatened to seize Harvard University’s patents unless the school caves to his wildly unconstitutional list of demands.
Trump fired dozens of FEMA employees and 140 EPA employees who signed a letter protesting his administration’s cuts and poor management of those agencies.
Trump ordered a halt to construction of a nearly-completed wind farm offshore from Rhode Island, citing “national security concerns.” It’s hard to fathom what the “national security” issues are here. What we do know is that Trump famously, obsessively, and viscerally hates windmills. His contempts stems from an offshore wind farm that infuriated Trump because it ruined the ocean view from his golf course in Scotland. We also know that the Rhode Island wind farm was a project of a Danish company — and Denmark has of course selfishly refused to let Trump take over Greenland.
Trump has also ordered a government-wide campaign against wind energy that apparently even includes HHS (!). The president has literally ordered the federal government to expend time, energy, and public money to tilt at windmills. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if we soon see an RFK, Jr.-sponsored study confirming Trump’s batshit claim that windmills cause cancer.
Trump ordered an unprecedented mid-decade census, to be overseen by his own political appointees, because he doesn’t trust the last census, and doesn’t want undocumented people to be counted.
Tulsi Gabbard fired hundreds of intelligence officials and revoked the security clearances of 37 other senior analysts for “politicizing intelligence.” In doing so, she also appears to have outed an undercover CIA operative. This comes just a few weeks after Kash Patel and Gabbard herself publicly accused Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of treason while selectively releasing intelligence information — over the objections of the CIA.
The supposed smoking gun cited by Patel to prove that the “Russia hoax” was an attempted coup was an email that Trump-appointed special counsel John Durham had already concluded was itself— wait for it — manufactured by Russian intelligence. In response to Patel’s absurd claims, Trump posted a batshit insane AI-generated video of Obama being arrested and hauled off to prison.
Bill Pulte, Trump’s Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, won that appointment by lavishing praise on Trump and attacking his critics on social media. Shortly after taking the position, Pulte announced investigations of Trump antagonists New York AG Letitia James and California Sen. Adam Schiff for alleged mortgage fraud for designating more than one home as their “primary residence.”
Pulte then went after Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Citing Pulte’s accusations, Trump is now attempting to fire Cook. The mortgage fraud accusation is just pretext, of course. Trump has been demanding the power to tell the Federal Reserve what to do since his first term. And for whatever qualms one may have with the Federal Reserve, putting monetary policy decisions in the hands of a man who said — repeatedly — that if we merely stopped testing for Covid, Covid would go away, seems like a death wish. This the first time in U.S. history that a U.S. president has tried to fire a Federal Reserve governor.
Oddly, Pulte’s crusade against people who claim more than one “primary residence” on mortgage applications failed to rope in Texas Republican attorney general and senate candidate Ken Paxton, who did so on three. When asked why he hasn’t publicly criticized Paxton as well, Pulte replied, “Unless it’s been made public, I’m not going to comment on any specific situation.” Pulte is the person who made the other investigations public.
It then came out that Pulte’s own father and stepmother also designated more than one primary residence on mortgage forms. As have three members of Trump’s own cabinet. Neither Trump nor Pulte has called for the prosecution of Pulte’s relatives or Trump’s cabinet secretaries, or demanded that they resign.
Trump’s attempt to fire Cook also sets up a showdown with the Supreme Court’s conservatives. While apparently okay with Trump and his administration ignoring lower court rulings, weaponizing the Justice Department against his enemies, brazenly lying to federal judges, and generally using the presidency to increase his net worth, the court’s conservative wing has at least suggested that they might draw the line at letting Trump drive the U.S. economy into the ground by taking over the Federal Reserve. I guess we’ll see if they have spine to back it up.
Disinformation
In its annual report on human rights around the world, the State Department papered over mass abuses by Trump-supporting authoritarian regimes in countries like El Salvador, while exaggerating abuses by Trump-opposing governments in Brazil, France, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. The report also essentially erased Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, and glossed over documented corruption and abuses of LGBTQ people. Just for comparison: The entry on alleged human rights abuses in Germany was significantly longer than the entry on abuses in El Salvador.
Pete Hegseth fired Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Kruse’s offense? He refused to immediately confirm Trump’s public pronouncement that the military strikes Iran “obliterated” the country’s nuclear program.
Last month, 750 employees from the Department of Health and Human Services signed a letter demanding that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stop spreading disinformation about vaccines and basic public health. This comes after a gunman opened fire on the CDC headquarters in Atlanta because of misinformed anger over the Covid vaccine. Later, another 1,000 current and former HHS workers called for RFK’s resignation.
RFK, Jr. fired the head of the CDC, Susan Monarez, reportedly because she refused to support his recklessly dangerous nonsense about vaccines. Three other top CDC officials resigned in support of Monarez. Hundreds of CDC employees then staged a protest of Monarez’s termination.
Trump appointed Jim O’Neill to take over the CDC. O’Neill is a venture capitalist and longtime acolyte of Peter Thiel. He’s a vaccine skeptic who advocated the use of Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid. He’ll be the first-ever CDC head with no scientific or medical training.
The DOJ has opened a criminal investigation into the D.C. Metro Police Department over allegations of “fake” crime data. Yes, there were reports that at least one senior-ranking officer in the department was juking crime stats. But this has happened in other cities too. It does not mean the current statistics are compromised. It has never been the subject of a federal criminal investigation. It’s part of this administration’s attempt to discredit any data that doesn’t comport with its agenda.
Trump’s North Korea-like lies about his own accomplishments in D.C. have become ever more unhinged. Last month he claimed that D.C. was “perhaps” the most dangerous city in the world. For context, last April, then-acting D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin put out a press release touting a 25 percent drop in crime in D.C. (crediting Trump, of course). Days later, after he deployed National Guard troops, Trump proclaimed it to be “perhaps the safest.” He has since claimed that his deployment has ended crime in the city.
Trump claimed because he sent in the Guard, “People who haven’t gone out to dinner in Washington D.C. in two years are going out to dinner.” At the time, reservations at city restaurants were down 30 percent since National Guard troops arrived. Trump and his apologists have also claimed that D.C. residents are grateful for the privilege of being occupied. A poll showed that 79 percent of respondents opposed deploying the troops, with 69 percent “strongly opposed.” Solid majorities also opposed shutting down homeless camps and local police assisting in deportations. Just 31 percent said crime is “an ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ serious problem in the city.
Criminal justice and police abuse
As previously noted, Trump signed a series of criminal justice-related executive orders last month. The first would make flag burning a federal crime. This is blatantly unconstitutional. The second order attempts to deny federal funding to cities and states that have implemented bail reform. This, too, is unconstitutional, though I’m less confident the current Supreme Court would see it that way. It’s also a break from the norm of leaving cities and states to set their own criminal justice policy, and it’s just plain ignorant about what bail reform actually does.
Trump’s other order would further expand the use of the National Guard for domestic policing. It calls on Pete Hegseth to create “quick reaction forces” within the National Guard to be “resourced, trained, and available for rapid nationwide deployment.” As I wrote recently for Rolling Stone, this might be the most dangerous order to date. Specialized police units have a long history of violence and abuse, and that’s when they’re populated with police officers and assembled by police officials. Hegseth knows nothing about law enforcement. His favorite word is lethality. He defends war criminals. And he is the person Trump has tasked with assembling and populating these “specialized units.” Moreover, National Guard troops aren’t trained in law enforcement, either. Our criminal justice system, flawed as it is when it comes to holding police officers accountable, is utterly powerless to address any abuses by perpetrated by military deployed in U.S. cities.
Trump also said he’d reinstate the death penalty for all murders in D.C. He probably can’t do that, either, though the issue is somewhat complicated.
Militarizing American cities
Back in D.C., masked ICE agents tore down a sign supporting immigrants and replaced it with a dildo. They also beat the hell out of a delivery driver in front of a brunch spot while telling horrified bystanders that “liberals ruined America.”
After the now-famous Sandwich Guy threw a sub at a federal officer, he offered to turn himself in voluntarily. Instead, the administration send a SWAT team to his home — with a camera crew — to generate content for social media. The administration tried to charge this guy with a felony for throwing a sandwich. For comparison: The guy who told his fellow rioters to “kill the cops” during an insurrection to overturn an election is now a senior-ranking official at the Justice Department.
The good news: A D.C. grand jury refused to indict Sandwich Guy on a felony charge. D.C. grand juries have also refused to indict in other dubious cases. Judges have also been excoriating the U.S. Attorney’s Office for bringing ridiculous cases. One judge recently dismissed a criminal charge after telling prosecutors it had resulted from “without a doubt, the most illegal search I’ve ever seen in my life.”
More incidents of gratuitous brutality and intimidation of residents in D.C. and other cities here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. One encouraging thing we are seeing is that people are recording these incidents. Even in the videos themselves, you often see two or three other people also recording. Keep those cell phone cameras rolling.
Another incident here:
More footage from D.C.:
The D.C. takeover means FBI, DEA, DHS, and ATF agents, along with the National Guard troops, are arresting people for crimes like open container violations and subway fare evasion. Which means they’re no longer investigating things like terrorism or corruption.
Federal agents have also been setting up illegal “traffic safety compliance checkpoints.” There have been other videos of federal officers harassing residents for infractions like drinking on their own stoops or smoking pot in public.
At a press event, JD Vance candidly admitted that he expects federal troops deployed to U.S. cities to treat homelessness as a crime.
From the start, the administration sent camera crews with federal agents and National Guard troops to generate content for social media.
Six red state governors have agreed to send their own National Guard divisions to D.C. and other cities, despite all having cities where crime is worse than it is in Washington. (By this account, there are at least 56 such cities across the six states.)
Trump said he planned to send the National Guard to Chicago next, and then to Los Angeles and New York. More recently, he has also mentioned Baltimore, San Francisco, New Orleans, Oakland, and Seattle. He also said he’d send in active duty troops if he’s not satisfied with the results of deploying the Guard. Crime in all of these cities is down significantly.
Reuters reported that the National Guard troops in D.C. have been stationed in the safest areas of the city — demonstrating, again, that this has nothing to do with fighting crime.
Pete Hegseth ordered that the Guard troops in D.C. be armed.
The federal occupation of D.C. is costing about $1 million per day. The occupation of Chicago is expected to cost about 50 percent more.
A federal judge ruled this week that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles over the objection of Governor Gavin Newsom violated the Posse Comitatus Act.
In response to that ruling, the administration appeared to alter its strategy. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker announced that Trump may be sending the National Guard from Texas, but attempting a legal end-around that would have the Guard still officially under the command of Texas Governor Gregg Abbott. If this is accurate, it would basically mean that at the request of Trump, Texas will invade Illinois. (This, by the way, is a scenario that Stephen Miller has been advocating since last year.)
Chicago, by the way, is currently on pace for a 60-year-low in homicides, and a 40-year low for violent crime in general.
The administration appears to be sending federal law enforcement into Chicago to target Mexican Independence Day celebrations on September 16th. Doing so ticks a lot of boxes for them. They get to clamp down on an “un-American” celebration, there will be more Latino people out and about to target, and their thuggery is more likely to provoke the sort of resistance they can exploit for a harsher crackdown.
Trump has already sent out fundraising letters asking supporters to give him $15 “to join the MAGA Blitz” to “liberate Chicago.”
At a White House event announcing the administration’s plan to change the Department of Defense to the Department of War, Pete Hegseth rattled off a little rap for reporters: "We're going to go on offense, not just on defense,” he said. “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.” It’s worth remembering that for Hegseth, lethality is more important than legality.
Trump posted this over the weekend:
The MAGA cult
A group of tech billionaires had dinner with Trump, during which they took turns debasing themselves by showering him with praise. At one point, Trump asked Mark Zuckerberg how much money Facebook was planning to spend on AI investment. Zuckerberg said $600 billion, then was caught on a not mic telling Trump, “Sorry, I wasn't ready . . . I wasn't sure what number you wanted to go with.” A year ago — almost to the day on the night of the dinner — Trump threatened to put Zuckerberg in prison for life for supporting Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
But that dinner looked like a resistance protest in comparison to the three-and-a-half-hour televised cabinet meeting Trump held late last month. In a tongue-bathing session that exceeded the run time of Dances With Wolves, the most powerful people in government lavished their leader with effusive compliments and adulation. They compared him to Lincoln and the Founders, complimented his “beautiful face,” and preemptively damned the Nobel Peace Prize committee for refusing to honor him. Remember: Never be the first to stop clapping.
Here’s an image posted by the Department of Homeland Security:
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, when asked if he supports green energy: “I am for whatever President Trump is advocating for.”
Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles: "The president is a true leader ... I think he should be eligible for a third term." Ogles has been caught lying about his education, his work history, his law enforcement background, and just about every other line on his resume. He was under federal investigation for violating campaign finance laws until DOJ abruptly dropped the case when Trump took office. Ogles has also have misplaced the $25,000 he raised to build a cemetery for stillborn children. Ogles has called for Trump to be put on Mt. Rushmore, co-sponsored a bill to create a new $250 bill featuring Trump’s face, and sponsored another endorsing Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland. He recently called for Trump to send National Guard troops to Nashville.
ICE has shortened the training regimen for new recruits from five months to 47 days. Why 47 days? “Because Trump is the 47th president.” (ICE claims the length of the new training regimen is a coincidence.)
Here’s an image posted by the White House:
The Republican legislatures in Texas, Missouri, Indiana, Louisiana, Alabama, Utah, Ohio, and Florida have heeded Trump’s call for an unprecedented re-drawing of Congressional maps mid-decade in order to protect the Republicans’ majority in the House. Democrats in California, Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, and New York are trying to respond in kind.
The U.S. Open asked broadcasters not to air any possible booing of Trump as he attended the tournament final. (He was booed.)
Energy Secretary Chris Wright: “God bless the First Lady. She of course is wiser than all of us."
Trump “immigration czar” Tom Homan: “President Trump doesn't have a limitation on his authority to make this country safe again. There's no limitation on that."
Racism, extremism, and bigotry
The DOJ lawyer who leading the administration’s lawsuit against Harvard for “antisemitism” . . . has a record of expressing his fondness for Hitler. No, really. More here.
Trump appointed one of the internet’s most conspicuous 2020 election deniers and nutty election conspiracists to be “deputy assistant secretary for elections integrity” at DHS. She will be overseeing election security for the midterms.
The woman Trump is trying install as the permanent U.S. attorney for Nevada — by dodging Senate confirmation — has a long history of pro-genocide social media posts, including calling for Israel to “wipe Gaza off the map.”
Laura Loomer, an admitted “Muslim hater” and white nationalist who has already persuaded Trump to fire members of his national security team, apparently learned that the U.S. had allowed a small number of children wounded by Israeli bombings in Gaza to be treated in U.S. hospitals. So she called up Marco Rubio (as one does) and persuaded him to end the policy.
Loomer also got an Iranian-American State Department official fired after publicly questioning his loyalty to both Trump and Israel. The official’s transgressions reportedly included not referring to the West Bank by the Biblical name “Judea and Samaria” preferred by far right Israelis, evangelical Christians, and Trump’s ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner says a routine oversight meeting he was scheduled to have with intelligence officials was abruptly canceled after public complaints by Loomer.
Trump’s pick to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics isn’t just uniquely unqualified, he was also present at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. (The White House says he was a mere bystander who happened to be in town for meetings. What a coincidence!) He also “has a giant picture of Adolf Hitler’s favorite battleship in his office—and he isn’t afraid to show it.”
But that’s not all! He also apparently ran an anonymous Twitter account that posted Covid conspiracies, 2020 election lies, and anti-gay and sexually degrading comments about Kamala Harris and other women in politics.
The administration has begun recruiting new immigration enforcement officers by touting the job as a chance to “defend your culture,” and by deploying Christian nationalist and white nationalist imagery.
Podcaster, Turning Point USA founder, Trump campaign official, and Trump administration unofficial advisor Charlie Kirk referred to D.C. residents as “cockroaches.”
Missouri Sen Eric Schmitt delivered a gobsmacking speech at a conservative conference in which he declared that the real America is a nation for the ancestors of white Europeans.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said a gay CDC official who recently resigned in protest is “unfit for government” because of his “lifestyle,” apparently referring to the man’s multiple sex partners and interest in S&M. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the current head of HHS — which oversees the CDC and whom Paul voted to confirm — is a man who boasts about his sexual conquests, documented in his diary his affairs with 37 women in a single year (while he was married), was having an affair with at least four women simultaneously as recently as last year (still while married), is a former heroin addict and reported former heroin dealer, and is open about the fact that he eats roadkill.
After the recent mass shooting at at a Minneapolis Catholic school, right-wing influencers — many who wield considerable influence with the White House — began openly calling for violence against, the elimination of, and mass arrests of trans people. Others cited bullshit statistics claiming trans people are extraordinarily violent (they aren’t).
At a White House press conference, one “journalist” from the Daily Wire — a far-right outlet handpicked by the administration for the press pool — asked Caroline Leavitt if the FBI would classify “trans ideology” as a “new class of terrorism.”
A sitting member of Congress then declared that transgenderism is a “disease,” a dark distortion of natural order and God-ordained gender.”
And the DOJ is reportedly considering ways to prohibit trans people from owning guns. Horrific as this is, it’s darkly amusing to ponder how they plan to enforce it. Will gun sellers be required to check their customers’ genitals?
A man just hired to be a speechwriter for the Department of Homeland Security has a history of bigoted social media posts and celebrating the January 6th insurrection. At this point, a history of racism almost seems like a prerequisite to work in this administration.
A new report from CBS News finds that Kash Patel’s purge of veteran FBI agents was informed by a former FBI agent turned far-right social media and podcast personality.
The White House has again given Pizzagate conspiracist, unapologetic defender of fascism, and author of the book Unhumans Jack Posobiec — the “unhuman” refers to progressives, and the book’s forward was written by JD Vance — its “new media” seat in the press corps. Posobiec also has a history of spreading antisemitism on social media. Also, he’s been advising and traveling with Vance and Trump cabinet officials on overseas trips.
Trump’s second term has been a recruiting boon for neo-Nazi groups.
Texas Attorney General and senate candidate Ken Paxton will headline a political event with “lectern guy,” a January 6th insurrectionist who was shown in numerous videos lugging the House speaker’s lectern like a trophy.
Darren Beattie, who was fired from Trump’s first administration for attending a white supremacist conference, is now serving in a top position at the State Department.
The Senate approved yet another man with ties to white supremacists to lead the National Counterterrorism Center. He was previously an aide to Tulsi Gabbard, the person with unfettered access to the most sensitive information in government.
Speaking of which, DHS has been posting white supremacist memes for weeks. Like this, for example:
Here’s one from the Department of Labor:
Immigration
The administration raided a new Hyundai plant in Georgia, arresting 475 people. Nearly all of them were South Korean nationals. The administration then released video of shackled workers being loaded onto a bus. It’s the largest workplace raid in U.S. history. But there have been no criminal charges. It appears that some of those arrested were U.S. citizens or people in the country on a legal visa. Sounds like a great way to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., no?
The 9th Circuit allowed the Trump administration to revoke the protected status of 60,000 immigrants, which means they will immediately change from legal residents to undocumented people eligible for deportation. Some have been here for decades, or came here as children. None came here illegally. Most were fleeing violence, political instability, famine, or natural disasters. They now have 60 days to leave. It’s unspeakably cruel.
We’re also seeing more reports on the inhumane conditions in immigration detention facilities, including tuberculosis outbreaks (which of course could affect all of us), temperatures near or over 100 degrees, illegally cramming dozens of people into small cells, and “contaminated food, bug infestations, overflowing toilets, and lack of medical care.” Many facilities are also not letting detainees contact their lawyers.
More than 100 immigration judges have been fired or quit since Trump took office. In response, the administration has lowered the requirements for the position, including the requirement that judges have prior experience in immigration law. (It seems pretty clear at this point that there’s really only one requirement to work in this administration.) They’re now trying to fill the positions with military lawyers.
After a federal court ordered ICE to stop using racial profiling to enforce immigration laws in Los Angeles, arrests dropped by 66 percent.
The administration tried to illegally deport 600 Guatemalan children in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday weekend. A federal judge stopped them.
ICE agents in Portland used so much tear gas against protesters that a local elementary school had to evacuate.
Kristi Noem wants ICE to buy its own airplanes to facilitate mass deportations.
The administration is planning a massive expansion of its detention facilities. The Washington Post obtained a plan to spend billions to facilitate 107,000 beds, including in coopted prisons, warehouses, and tents.
A lawsuit claims ICE deported three American citizen children, including one with cancer, to Honduras despite the objections of their parents.
ICE arrested and detained a 20-year-old Honduran woman who was brought to the U.S. at the age of eight because her family had been subjected to gang violence. She graduated high school, earned a scholarship, and hoped to become a nurse. She had no criminal record. After ICE arrested her, she was held in a detention center for six months. The conditions were so bad that she has volunteered to self-deport back to Honduras, a country she has never known.
“Alligator Alactraz” now appears to be in peril, but due to environmental issues not its inhumane treatment of prisoners. But Florida is already preparing a backup facility, dubbed “Deportation Depot.” Republicans in other red states are rushing to open their own alliteratively-named, performatively cruel camps, including the “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska, the “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana,” and the “Coyote Compound” in Nevada.
The administration continues to plunder Pentagon resources to achieve Trump’s mass deportation resources, further bluring the line between the military and domestic law enforcement.
An Imam says he refused to become an informant for the FBI, so the administration is trying to deport him.
ICE continues to claim people detained for deportations are “gang members” without providing any proof.
The League of Women Voters will no longer be permitted to register new U.S. citizens to vote after their citizenship ceremonies.
After a judge ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia to be released, his attorneys say, the Trump administration offered him a deal: Plead guilty to criminal charges, and they’d deport him to Costa Rica. If he refused, they’d deport him to Uganda. He refused the deal. And so after a moving reunification with supporters and family, he was arrested again after showing up for a hearing. The government now says they’re going to send him to Eswatini. Just a couple months ago, Pam Bondi accused Abrego Garcia — without evidence — of complicity in murder, sexual assault, and child trafficking and vowed to prove those allegations in court. Now they’re trying to get rid of him as quickly as possible.
The lawyer for a high school kid who was detained by ICE while walking his dog says that during his time in detention, “he could not change, he was in his pajama shorts and slippers. He couldn't bathe. He couldn't brush his teeth. He was sleeping next to a toilet where he had to wake up every time someone went so that he wouldn't get urinated on.” A teacher who visited him in detention center said agents boasted about a bounty they’d earned from the administration for arresting him. After his family went public, he was secretly transferred to a detainment center in Arizona. His family and attorney were not notified of the transfer. He has no criminal record. He was arrested for overstaying his visa.
Also among the “worst of the worst” ICE has arrested and deported recently: A six year old Ecuadoran girl and her mother. Her siblings, who are in different stages of their asylum claims, were left behind, breaking up the family.
Attorney General Pam Bondi sent letters to the leaders of blue cities threatening to arrest and prosecute public officials and to withhold federal funding unless those cities fully cooperate with mass deportations. Here’s the letter Boston Mayor Michelle Wu sent back.
ICE agents arrested two allegedly undocumented men off the firefighting line as they worked to contain wildfires in Washington State. One of the men was brought to the U.S. at age 4, has been here 19 years, has no criminal record, and was on track to obtain legal status. When one firefighter said that when he asked the agents to let one of the arrested men say goodbye to his family, the agent told him, “You need to get the fuck out of here.”
Here’s video of ICE agents violently detaining the son of a decorated veteran, a man who is living in the U.S. legally and has no criminal record.
The Trump administration is refusing to release information about the contract it granted to a small company to run a $1.3 billion immigration detention center, which would be the largest incarceration facility of any kind in the country. The company’s largest previous federal contract was $17 million, and is headquartered in a small residential in home in suburban Richmond, Virginia.
Foreign policy
The U.S. military shot and killed 11 people in a boat in the south Caribbean. Trump and Sec. State Marco Rubio immediately boasted on social media that they had taken out a “drug boat” filled with “Tren de Aragua” members. Trump himself boasted about giving the order. The people in the boat were given no opportunity to surrender. The killing was almost certainly illegal, and possibly a war crime. It is illegal to use lethal force in international waters except in self-defense. We have only the administration’s word that these were drug smugglers or cartel members, and they don’t even have their story straight — Trump said the boat was headed to the U.S., while Rubio said it was headed for Trinidad. Even if both were true, neither is a capital crime. But remember that this is the administration that tried to claim an autism awareness tattoo was proof of gang membership. The Intercept has since reported that according to a high-ranking source in the administration, the boat was likely filled with migrants.
The Vice President of the United States:
Here’s how the White House responded when Sen. Rand Paul criticized Vance for this exchange. It’s not the most important point, here — the administration’s mad claim that is has the power to assassinate anyone it claims to be involved in the drug trade without due process is — but Trump appointed a reputed former heroin dealer to lead HHS, pardoned the man who created the largest black market for illicit drugs in history*, and recently restored the military rank of the former White House physician who reportedly dispensed controlled substances like parade candy.)
(*I’m aware of the claim that Ross Ulbricht did not receive a fair trial. I don’t know enough about hte case to have a strong opinion. But even if that’ true, there’s a massive disconnect between pardoning the creator of Silk Road and claiming that illicit drugs are such a threat that the president should have the power to unilaterally assassinate private citizens.)
The Washington Post reports that the administration plans to use digital currency and AI to purge Gaza of Palestinians, then convert the rubble into Trump’s playground of resorts for rich people. It may be the most inhumane, utterly immoral foreign policy plan to come out of a U.S. administration since Operation Menu.
The “peace president,” in perspective.
Trump called the finance minister of Norway and threatened him with sanctions unless he is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. (The government of Norway has no say in who gets the prize.)
In his meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump “joked” about possibly going to war in three-and-a-half years so he’d have an excuse to cancel U.S. elections.
JD Vance, who famously berated and humiliated Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky, recently said this about Russian President Vladimir Putin: "He's more soft spoken than you'd necessarily expect. The American media has a particular image of him. He's soft spoken in a certain way. He's very deliberate, he's very careful. Fundamentally, he's a person who looks out for the interests as he sees it of Russia.”
As Trump continues to claim he has "resolved” four or six or ten wars, and as he shamelessly lobbies for a Nobel Peace Prize, he also appears to be preparing to invade Mexico — and also Venezuela.
Trump and/or his supporters also appear to be conducting some sort of covert influence operation in support of his bid to take over Greenland.
The administration continues to punish Brazil for its prosecution of former president and Trump ally Javier Bolsonaro for conspiring to commit a violent coup. Trump has already imposed tariffs on Brazil and imposed sanctions on one of its supreme court justices over the prosecution.
The administration also continues to impose personal sanctions on officials at the International Criminal Court for pursuing war crimes charges against Israeli leaders for the slaughter of Palestinians.
Public health
According to a new poll, 40 percent of Republicans now believe that the Covid vaccines caused more deaths than they prevented.
Another poll finds that support for vaccinating children against preventable infectious disease has dropped from 81 percent to just 51 percent
A pro-vaccine critic of RFJ Jr. has been banned from the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee.
Vinay Prassad, the FDA’s top vaccine regulator under RFK Jr., abused copyright law to persuade YouTube to delete the account of one of his critics. The critic’s offense? Assembling clips of nutty things Prassad has said about vaccines.
Because of the uncertainty surrounding Kennedy’s new restrictions, CVS pharmacies in three states no longer offer the Covid vaccine, and in 13 others, you may need a prescription.
For the first time in 45 years, a state is removing vaccine requirements for school children. Florida will remove all vaccinations requirements for schools. The state will also prohibit businesses from requiring employees to be vaccinated. A lot of people are going to die.
Other bad stuff
Here’s a useful overview of how this administration has exploited loopholes in U.S. law to assume autocratic powers by declaring fake emergencies.
The DOJ has subpoenaed the names, addresses, medical records and doctor’s notes from hospitals nationwide for patients under the age of 19 who received gender affirming care. This is unprecedented.
The Pentagon restored the rank of Texas congressman, Trump sycophant, and former White House physician Ronny Jackson. He had been demoted after allegations of sexual harassment, drinking on the job, and abuse of subordinates. There are also outstanding allegations that he freely dispensed controlled substances while running the White House Medical Unit.
The DOJ has also requested sensitive voter information from the states, likely in violation of both state and federal law.
Pete Hegseth ordered that insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt be given full military honors.
A dozen federal judges gave interviews to NBC News to criticize how the Supreme Court has handled cases involving Trump and executive power. It’s hard to overstate how rare it is for a federal judge to speak out in public like this.
Hegseth’s demands for a massive security detail covering multiple residences is straining the Army’s ability to protect him. Recall that Dan Bongino demanded a similarly large, similarly unprecedented 24-hour protection detail at the FBI, including while he was in the FBI building. Just the epitome of masculinity, these guys. But paranoia is a hallmark of authoritarianism.
DOGE staffers stored the Social Security data of 300 million American on an insecure server, prompting the agency’s chief data officer to resign in protest.
After a purge of agents who worked on January 6th investigations, other investigations of Trump and his allies, and giving lie detector tests to gauge agents’ loyalty to Kash Patel, the FBI announced that it too will be lowering its hiring standards.
After calling for the CEO of Intel — a private company — to resign, Trump announced that the company has agreed to sign over 10 percent of its shares to the U.S. government. After the announcement, Trump praised the CEO he had previously demanded resign. Trump economic advisor Kevin Hassett, who once warned that Joe Biden was turning the country socialist, said we can expect the government to take ownership stakes in more private companies under Trump.
ProPublica reports that an Afghan man’s family was abducted by the Taliban after DOGE exposed his cooperation with the USAID to promote pro-democracy efforts in his country.
The Pentagon ordered a portrait of Robert E. Lee reinstated at West Point, as part of Hegseth’s broader campaign to honor military leaders and politicians who tried to overthrow the U.S. government.
The administration continues its effort to install unqualified but loyalist U.S. attorneys like Alina Habba without Senate confirmation, over the objections of the federal courts, and defiance of federal law. Meanwhile, Habba — who is prosecuting a Democratic congresswoman for attempting to enter an ICE detention facility (which she is permitted by law to do) — recently told Fox News that the “job” of federal judges is “respecting the president.”
In cases involving a challenge to executive power, the U.S. Supreme Court has now ruled for the Trump administration 16 times in a row, often while overturning a lower court.
Trump has said several times over the last month that the American people “want a dictator.”
The administration has targetet multiple Smithsonian exhibits for “woke ideology,” which the president has helpfully defined as too much discussion of “how bad slavery was.” The administration already pressured the Smithsonian over exhibits mentioning Trump’s two impeachments. Here’s one exhibit they’re particularly mad about. It sounds interesting!
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to allow the administration to refuse funding for NIH grants it has deemed to be related to “DEI.”
DHS is now openly flouting federal open records laws.
Really — they’re just brazenly defying the law. Because they know they won’t be held accountable.
The DOJ recently submitted a brief in a federal case arguing that that “viewpoint discrimination” by news outlets is a restraint on trade under the Sherman Act.
Because of Trump’s tariffs, 30 countries no longer ship packages to the U.S. through their mail services — and the list is growing.
After his meeting with Putin, Trump said he’s going to end mail-in voting in U.S. elections. This is allegedly on the advice of Putin. Trump says the Russian dictator told him he would have won in 2020 were not for said mail-in voting. This, coincidentally, is the same argument Trump has making for years. The more interesting question is why Trump thinks Putin would know this, and why he thinks Putin should be a trusted authority on how the U.S. runs its elections.
Florida officials painted over a rainbow crosswalk commemorating the 49 people murdered in 2016 during the mass shooting at the Orlando gay nightclub Pulse. The order came shortly after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on X, “Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks.” Each time private citizens have spent their own time and money repainting the rainbow, Florida officials have spent taxpayer dollars to paint over it again.
Finally, here’s a tidy summary from Chris Hayes on why all of the crime talk from this administration is hard to swallow:
Hey, you made it!
Take a deep breath. Keep fighting. Keep writing. Keep litigating. Keep protesting. And keep those cell phone cameras rolling.
But just as importantly, take some time to find the joy in life. As promised, here’s some footage of our pups Oscar and Fiona engaged in a spirited game of King of the Sandbox.
My God, that was a looooooong list...
Gee, Barry, don’t break a sweat trying to save our democracy. You might miss your tee-off time. Or worse, have to postpone your Netflix pitch meeting about that animated series on civic virtue.
One former president is screaming about treason and dragging the country toward an irreversible plunge into kleptocracy. The other is offering a “useful overview” and a thousand-watt smile from the Vineyard. It’s like watching a hostage video filmed at a TED Talk.
The machinery of American government is being retrofitted into a loyalty racket, the DOJ is a vending machine for vendettas, and the census is being hijacked for voter suppression. But Barry—Barry’s disappointed. Barry wishes things were different. Barry likes long walks on the beach and measured institutional reform that never arrives.
At this point, the only thing separating “No Drama Obama” from “No Response Obama” is a Spotify playlist and a memoir contract.