Fuck The USA

So instead of thinking about how we all might prosper together in the future, Trump would see us cast into different competing groups, fighting over scraps, trying to feel less relative pain.

Today, this explains why red state legislators can continue to focus on oppressing women and LGBTQ+ people instead of improving conditions for their states’ residents, while the poorest whites among them continue to re-elect them.

As Professor Jason Stanley of the University of Toronto explained, “What you have is this desire to get people to buy into the fun of sadism.” It’s the U.S. government itself saying, “This is something we’re doing together, we’re having a blast, we’re laughing and those wimpy liberals are saying it’s scandalous. We’re going to show our power over them by having as much fun as possible.”

Culture has often been used by fascist regimes to prepare the ground for later atrocities. Anna Merlin, who interviewed Prof. Stanley in Mother Jones, noted that the Nazis used cartoons depicting Jews as rats to provoke visceral loathing and disgust, associating them with disease and contagion, something that the social body must reject.

Hate masquerading as humor is also a key component. The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, laid bare its own game plan on how to deploy “humor” to spread violent hate. Reporter Ashley Feinberg, then writing for Gawker, got a copy of its style guide. It advised, “The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not,” while admitting his real objective was to “gas” Jews. The author further counseled that “whenever someone does something violent, it should be made light of.”

DHS itself understands well that it is asking ICE to do things that morally centered and good people would not do. That is precisely why it is offering new recruits huge sign-on bonuses of $50,000 and is permitting them to operate without revealing their identities.

The need to instill a governing ideology to overcome personal morality explains the Department’s recent overt support of white supremacy, Nazi ideology and the days of racial segregation from decades past. These are now present everywhere in the Department’s public statements.

DHS’s recruitment poster iconography and imagery now also project a fascist aesthetic: All of its portrayed agents are white and male. Yet the entirety of the White House’s deplorable public list of alleged “criminals” arrested as part of “OPERATION MAKING D.C. SAFE AND BEAUTIFUL” are racial minorities, as is nearly every image of a person under detention or arrest on DHS’s Twitter feed.

The Trump regime wants the U.S. public to buy into and even delight in the horrors inflicted by ICE, as many MAGA cultists currently do. It wants its program of mass deportation to become more popular, for citizens to sport “Alligator Alcatraz” merch proudly, and for “woke culture” celebrating the broad diversity of our nation to be stamped out completely.

We could be seeing a self-solving problem, the USA is killing off their own people at a faster rate than any other developed country.

The blend of nostalgia, aggression and calls to "Save America," "Secure the Golden Age" and "Protect. Serve. Deport." evoke a nationalist, white-centered view of who the American homeland is for, said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

The images conjure a narrative that "we had a wonderful white civilization and culture that has been decimated by these people who don't belong here, who just happen to not be white people for the most part," Beirich said. They contribute to the idea that "those people are violent invaders who need to be repelled by military force, need to be dragged in the streets, taken away, put in vans, removed — if we want that white culture to ever flourish again," she said.

She added that with posts like these, DHS is "just saying the quiet part out loud, and it's the sort of baldness of doing it that's amazing to me."

In response to NPR's questions about the agency's social media posts, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin called the inquiry "deranged and delusional." She continued: "If the media needs a history lesson on the brave men and women who blazed the trails, forded the rivers, and forged this Republic from the sweat of their brow, we are happy to send them a history textbook."

She added, "This administration is unapologetically proud of American history and American heritage. Get used to it."

President Trump didn’t like what he was seeing on his TV screens these past few weeks, so he decided to change the story.

President Donald Trump successfully hijacked the news cycle, using a staged, high-profile “crime crackdown” in Washington, D.C., to push coverage of the Epstein files and the unpopular Republican budget bill out of the spotlight. During the critical 72-hour window from August 11 to 13, nearly two-thirds of all broadcast mentions (65%) amplified and parroted Trump’s preferred frame of chaos, disorder, and crime, while only 27.7% characterized his actions as authoritarian overreach.

Our review of 19,363 broadcast mentions found that, despite the unprecedented federal takeover of a local police force, outlets across the political spectrum rarely engaged in sustained scrutiny of its legality, historical precedent, or the racialized targeting at its core. When news coverage did include authoritarian framing—highlighting Trump’s overreach or the move’s use as a distraction—it was typically limited to brief quotes from local officials or short editorial asides, overshadowed by the frequent repetition of the administration’s talking points. This reflects not only individual editorial choices but a broader structural failure in the press to identify and describe democratic erosion when it is presented in the familiar language of “law and order” and reinforced by carefully staged displays of state power.

This report examines both the mechanics of that diversion and the effects of the media’s framing: two major accountability stories—the handling of the Epstein files and the Republican budget bill—were pushed aside, an extraordinary use of executive power was normalized, and the residents of Washington, D.C., most of them Black and Latino, were positioned as the backdrop for a display that served neither public safety nor democratic governance.

With a background as a US Congressman, reality TV star, and television commentator, Duffy did not come to the position with a deep well of knowledge about spaceflight. He also already had a lot on his plate, serving as the secretary of transportation, a Cabinet-level position that oversees 55,000 employees across 13 agencies.

Nevertheless, Duffy is putting his imprint on the space agency, seeking to emphasize the agency's human exploration plans, including the development of a lunar base, and ending NASA's efforts to study planet Earth and its changing climate.

Duffy has not spoken much with reporters who cover the space industry, but he has been a frequent presence on Fox News networks, where he previously worked as a host. On Thursday, he made an 11-minute appearance on "Mornings with Maria," a FOX Business show hosted by Maria Bartiromo to discuss NASA.

The White House’s recently-unveiled “AI Action Plan” wages war on so-called “woke AI”—including large language models (LLMs) that provide information inconsistent with the administration’s views on climate change, gender, and other issues. It also targets measures designed to mitigate the generation of racial and gender biased content and even hate speech. The reproduction of this bias is a pernicious problem that AI developers have struggled to solve for over a decade.

A new executive order called “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government,” released alongside the AI Action Plan, seeks to strong-arm AI companies into modifying their models to conform with the Trump Administration’s ideological agenda.

Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious death occurred six years ago this month — but the National Enquirer has discovered 22 people in the sketchy billionaire’s orbit have also died under murky circumstances, fueling fears of a cover-up by powerful figures seeking to erase potential witnesses.

From the predator’s alleged victims to house managers, lawyers, accountants, investigative journalists and pimps, the list of unexplained fatalities traces a dark money trail that leads straight to Epstein’s inner circle, sources say.

Financier Steven Hoffenberg confessed in a final account before his death to the Enquirer’s Doug Montero that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted pedophile’s now-imprisoned recruiting madam, were “taping” honey-trap videos of sleazy VIPs with underage girls for a cabal of deep-state blackmailing power brokers.

Hoffenberg, the former Towers Financial CEO and Epstein associate — who died in 2022 at 77 after serving 18 years for a $475 million Ponzi scheme — cooperated with the FBI and spoke out about his former protégé’s alleged connections to Israel’s national intelligence agency Mossad.

While Maxwell, 63, is serving 20 years for sex trafficking, Epstein himself became part of the growing body count in August 2019 when he was found hanged inside his New York City jail cell at 66 in what officials deemed a suicide — but his brother, Mark, calls “murder.”

Epstein’s final cellmate, Efrain “Stone” Reyes, 51, died of COVID in November 2020 just weeks after talking with federal investigators probing the monstrous moneyman’s death. Reyes was transferred out of Epstein’s cell just one day before the bigwig’s death, per Daily Mail.

By Will Bunch

But Trump 2.0 has worked hard at perfecting the art of what the experts call “competitive authoritarianism,” in which an ostensibly democratic opposition is allowed to exist as long as it’s guaranteed they can never succeed. The CBS Evening News still comes on at 6:30 p.m., and the Washington Post is still sending you push alerts, but pro-Trump billionaires have made them zombie newsrooms. The federal courts still rule against the White House’s accelerating erasure of the Constitution, but the regime just hides its secret police in a Penske rental truck and ignores them.

But everything is bigger in Texas, including the assaults on democracy. The Trump-driven redistricting scheme is a way to hold the 2026 midterms, yet effectively cancel them by canceling out your vote. As the gerrymandering war goes nuclear and spreads uncontrollably like a Canadian wildfire from state to state, millions of Americans will cast votes on Nov. 3, 2026, that won’t mean a dadgum thing, because the outcome of the election would have basically been predetermined by a computer.

The Trump administration has proposed curbing the government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases by unwinding rules that control emissions from fossil fuel drilling, power plants, and cars.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Tuesday announced the proposed rollback of a 2009 declaration that determined carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are a danger to public health and welfare.

“With this proposal, the Trump EPA is proposing to end 16 years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers,” said Zeldin.

Earlier in the day, Zeldin said on the conservative “Ruthless” podcast that the rescission would be the “largest deregulatory action in the history of America,” which will “driv[e] a dagger into the heart of the climate change religion.”

The move is the latest effort by the Trump administration to pare back environmental standards, which it has framed as antithetical to economic growth and consumer choice.

Since returning to office in January, President Donald Trump has withdrawn the US from the Paris Agreement for the second time and ended all accompanying financial commitments. He has also suspended methane leak detection and cut electric vehicle incentives.

If you thought going to a Pride event or drag show was just another night out, think again. If you were in Florida, it might land your name in a government database.

That’s what’s happening in Vero Beach, FL, where the Florida Attorney General’s office has subpoenaed a local restaurant, The Kilted Mermaid, demanding surveillance video, guest lists, reservation logs, and contracts of performers and other staff—all because the venue hosted an LGBTQ+ Pride event.

To be clear: no one has been charged with a crime, and the law Florida is likely leaning on here—the so-called “Protection of Children Act” (which was designed to be a drag show ban)—has already been blocked by federal courts as likely unconstitutional. But that didn’t stop Attorney General James Uthmeier from pushing forward anyway. Without naming a specific law that was violated, the AG’s press release used pointed and accusatory language, stating that "In Florida, we don't sacrifice the innocence of children for the perversions of some demented adults.” His office is now fishing for personal data about everyone who attended or performed at the event. This should set off every civil liberties alarm bell we have.

Just like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and other bills with misleading names, this isn’t about protecting children. It’s about using the power of the state to intimidate people government officials disagree with, and to censor speech that is both lawful and fundamental to American democracy.

But Paramount’s future aside, the end of Colbert signals a dark new chapter in Trump’s authoritarian slide. Though his second term has already produced a string of stunning capitulations by some of the most powerful forces in the country, one could argue that Trump’s attacks had yet to take down our actual culture. I’m talking about the literal content we consume—the television, art, movies, literature, music—no matter how much Trump complained. That it remained protected and free-willed, a rare area of control for a public that otherwise feels powerless to take action. Clearly, that was magical thinking. If this can happen to Colbert and a storied franchise, this can happen to anyone.

The only upside is that Colbert will soon be free to go scorched earth against a president he detests. Every other network stands to gain enormously right now. Here’s to hoping a spine emerges.

WASHINGTON, July 15 (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the removal of half of the 4,000 National Guard troops who had been sent to Los Angeles to protect federal property and personnel during a spate of protests last month, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

I added the bold

On 27 May, an official document calling for regime change in European countries was published in Washington DC.

It considers elections in Europe — recently in Romania and Poland, and soon in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and, as some speculate, France too — as an opportunity to get European countries governed by far-right leaders with Trumpian agendas.

With those leaders, it wants to forge a ‘civilizational alliance’, one “forged in common culture, faith, family ties, mutual assistance in times of strife, and above all, a shared Western civilizational heritage”.

The State Department document, however, goes a step further. It states that “Europe’s democratic backsliding” harms American security, economic interests and freedom of speech. Because of this, it implies it is time for the US to act: far-right forces in Europe must transform their political systems so that Washington can form an alliance of civilization with “Christian nations like Hungary”.