But that’s all it took for the Colicky Piss Baby to swing his favorite weapon against our neighbors to the North, the country that I grew up in and was, until recently, the USA’s best friend in the world.

Well best friends no longer. Thanks to the Colicky Piss Baby’s completely unreasonable last minute demands, the USA no longer has any friends left in the world.

Trump sent one of his favorite lackeys, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, to negotiate a trade deal with Canada. Now keep in mind that during his last term Trump ripped up an already existing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in 1994 and that had resulted in over $300 billion in goods and services to flow both ways across the border. Things were working perfecty well but Trump just loves to destroy perfectly good deals as long as his name isn’t slapped all over them.

So that perfectly good trade deal was ripped up and replaced with his own deal, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?

Fast forward to the present and the Colicky Piss Baby suddenly decided that even THAT trade deal wasn’t good enough for him because Canada was refusing to give up their entire sovereignty and become a vassal state.

Because that is how Trump views the world. Winners and losers. Us and Them. America First, USA! USA! USA!

Even though Howard Lutnick was completetly out of his depth Canada was willing to play along and negotiate another trade deal until the Colicky Piss Baby rang him up and issued another set of demands at the last minute.

And you will NOT believe what those demands entailed. In a nutshell “If you want to trade with us you must give up your rights to trade with other nations AND get rid of your bilingual status AND adopt US style immigration policies.”

In essence, Trump gets veto power over your international trade deals and you must destroy your Constitutionally-mandated bilingual status.

PM Mark Carney, ever the steady bureaucrat, told Trump to eat shit in the most polite and reasonable way possible.

King Mierdas does it again. “Art of the Deal” my ass. Trump has never met a deal that he hasn’t pissed all over just so he can call himself a winner. Well Canada ain’t playing anymore and PM Carney said it best when he said “American deals are signed with a pencil.”

Canada, the USA’s last friend in the world, is now turning its back to the USA. Canada will now be slapping 50% tariffs on all US imports and Americans will pay the price for all this madness. Prices are going to rise yet again, and the USA’s largest trading partner is looking overseas for more rational trading partners of their own. And now they’re even talking about raising energy prices that supply most of the northern US states.

Meanwhile the entire planet looks at the USA as a nation that is destroying itself from the inside. Nobody is going to trust this country anymore. Exactly as I predicted back in 2024 before the election.

America has officially become a pariah nation. And yet again, everything Trump touches turns to shit.

You know the scene. It’s comedy gold because it perfectly encapsulated the rampant Islamophobic paranoia that America was facing at the time.

That woman is the current Republican Party.

Case in point: Republicans today are STILL insisting that Mayor Mamdani of New York City is a closet terrorist, a one man sleeper cell who apparently wants to spread Sharia Law by lowering the cost of living for New Yorkers. What a monster.

But now they’ve switched their focus onto Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan born doctor who just won the Democratic Party’s candidacy for the Senate.

Now take a look at this guy’s CV. It literally reads like an all-American success story:

Early Life and Education

• Born in Rochester Hills, Michigan, to Egyptian immigrant parents.

• Graduated with high honors from the University of Michigan, playing varsity lacrosse.

• Earned a doctorate at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

• Received his medical degree from Columbia University on an NIH-funded fellowship.

Public Health Career

• Served as the executive director of the Detroit Health Department from 2015 to 2017.

• Led Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services from 2023 to 2025.

• Implemented community health programs like child vision care and air quality monitoring.

• Hosts the public health podcast America Dissected and co-authored books including Healing Politics.

But when Republicans look at Dr. El-Sayed they see this:

In fact Trump himself is leaning into Islamophobia and just posted this disgusting image on his Truth Social feed:

I mean he’s not even subtle here. Trump absolutely loves using foreign names to somehow “prove” that someone isn’t even American. He constantly uses Barack Obama’s middle name to keep hammering the idea that he’s not a real American. Republicans insisted that Obama was secretly a Muslim way back in 2007 and they haven’t ever stopped.

And that’s not all. From Time Magazine:

During a campaign-like event in Las Vegas on Wednesday afternoon, Trump accused the 41-year-old progressive Democrat seeking to become the first Muslim U.S. Senator of being a “communist” who “hates” Israel and Jewish people.

“This guy hates Jews. Somebody said, ‘Oh that’s a little strong.’ No, he hates Jews and he hates Israel,” Trump said.

Trump continued: “He’s a man of hate, and now he’s going around saying, ‘No, I love everybody.’ He doesn’t love everybody. Put him in office, you’re going to find out what he loves.”

There’s that “Communist” slur again. Remind me again exactly when in history Communism was ever associated with Islam?

Not to be outdone, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) falsely accused El-Sayed of belonging to the Muslim Brotherood.

From Truthout:

The statement refers to El-Sayed as Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed and attempts to smear him as a “radical.” The press release links to the NRSC’s new ad against the Democratic candidate in which a voiceover also uses his full name.

The ad further goes on to repeat a baseless conspiracy theory that El-Sayed is supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood, and flashes excerpts of an op-ed he wrote in 2011 where he does not express any such opinion.

El-Sayed’s opponent, Mike Rogers, also referenced such debunked claims in a bigoted statement on the primary results. Rogers’s statement was even more overt in its Islamophobia, making claims about El-Sayed that are demonstrably untrue and even throwing in a seemingly violent threat.

“I spent years hunting terrorists and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice,” said Rogers, potentially referring to his time as chair of the House Intelligence Committee in the 2010s. “Never in a million years did I think that I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11.”

Wait, I don’t remember reading about famous terrorist hunter Mike Rogers. Who knew?

Republicans have made a habit of accusing any and all Muslims of being closet terrorists, supporting 9/11, hating America (and Israel of course), and belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood without a SINGLE shred of evidence. And that makes the Republican Party a bona fide hate group.

A hate group is an organized body or social group that promotes malice, hostility, animosity, or violence against people based on protected characteristics like race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, or gender identity. Their core beliefs and actions attack or malign an entire class of people.

This is what we’re facing heading into the Midterms this November. Republicans have nothing to run on other than hate, fear, loathing, and paranoia. Because they certainly can’t run on their economic accomplishments or making America a better place. Recent polling for the GOP is absolutely ATROCIOUS. They are facing an absolute shellacking at the polls which is why they’re doubling down on the only thing they know how to run on: fear.

Abdul El-Sayed’s is running on getting big money out of politics, Medicare for all, affordable education, clean air and water, and sensible foreign policy. Apparently that makes him an “extremist” in Republican eyes.

It was only a few months ago that this country witnessed the biggest sham to hit Washington DC. Trump famously drained the Reflective Pool, hired one of his own pals on a no-bid contract, who seriously comes straight out of Central Casting as a cartoon villain and who runs a company called, I shit you not, “Green Water Solutions”, to paint the bottom “American Flag Blue” in time for the 250th Anniversary Celebrations.

Oh yeah, you would be shocked to learn that he really is a criminal as well.

Well we all witnessed what happened next. Trump spent weeks hyping the painting job, claiming it would be “best ever” in typical Trumpian fashion. He was so proud of the work that he gathered up an entire Presidential Motorcade and drove the entire length of the pool. Actual experts at this stuff claimed that the job was rushed, totally botched, and would not last a few weeks, let alone the decades that Trump claimed it would last.

Then we got the algae blooms, the floating chunks of paint that peeled off and floated to the surface. All the people saying “We told you so”. But Trump being Trump could not admit that he could have botched THIS job. Oh no. It HAD to be vandals who mysteriously cut 250, no, 350 foot long gashes! In the dead of night! With box cutters even!

I mean it was a story so outlandish that only the most hardcore MAGA cultist would swallow it. But swallow it they did, and the right wing media kept pushing out the narrative of unseen vandals wrecking the job that Trump accomplished because they hate him so much.

And then it happened. They literally arrested a man who happened to be a former Team USA Olympian canoeist who just happened to be out on a bike ride around the reflecting pool. He was curious about the paint material that was floating on the surface of the pool so he touched it to see what it felt like.

Well like a scene out of a bad cop movie he was suddenly surrounded by Park Police, slapped into a pair of handcuffs and hauled off to jail for the “crime” of vandalizing government property. The DOJ then rushed a grand jury indictment and suddenly a former Olympian is facing 10 years in prison.

“We got our guy!” the MAGA sycophants crowed on whatever news channel would push their propaganda. “We’ve got tons of evidence!” they loudly proclaimed. TONS of evidence!

Well it all fell apart yesterday. Because the thing about the court system is that they rely upon REAL evidence, not fabricated bullshit that only looks good on MAGA TV. And just yesterday the DOJ was forced to admit that no, David Hearn did not actually vandalize the pool, and yes, it was ENTIRELY due to the job that was completed too quickly, no time was given to cure the paint job before the pool was refilled, and the company Trump hired didn’t know what they were doing.

But instead of actually admitting wrongdoing, Jeanine Pirro has chosen to blame the Department of Interior.

Federal prosecutors moved Friday to dismiss a felony vandalism case against former U.S. Olympian David Hearn, after he was accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., as seen in a court filing obtained by Fox News Digital.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office said the Department of the Interior initially provided prosecutors with “barebones” reports and failed to disclose records documenting extensive problems with the coating’s installation. “Had DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment,” prosecutors wrote.

Yeah right. And if you believe that I have a bridge in Greenland to sell you.

Because we ALL know what really happened. Unable to admit wrongdoing, Trump insisted that innocent people be arrested and thrown in jail for simply touching the floating paint chunks. At least 7 people were arrested and charged for vandalizing government property, including David Hearn. And now that his case has been dropped, I imagine their cases will be dropped as well.

But it’s not over for the DOJ. Hearn’s lawyers are demanding an apology from the government for his arrest. I’m pretty sure that apology will not be forthcoming so I’m hoping the next bit of news is the inevitable lawsuit against the DOJ for the recovery of all the legal fees and the slander that David Hearn had to endure.

Meanwhile it looks like their case against James Comey is falling apart as well. And Todd Blanche’s nomination to be Attorney General was just withdrawn because Trump could not bully enough Senators to approve him. Womp womp. Just another humiliating defeat for Team Trump.

And of course since the atmosphere does not respect national borders, a lot of that smoke is drifting into the United States right now.

A rational person would think “Gee, maybe we should, I dunno, help the Canadians fight all those forest fires with some of our own resources”. But MAGAs have proven again and again that rationality is not one of their strong suits.

Oh no, instead Trump and his MAGA minions are literally BLAMING CANADA for the wildfire smoke. In yet another one of his completely unhinged and utterly divorced from reality Truth screeds he announced that he is “holding Canada responsible” for polluting the USA’s presumably pristine air with “filthy, polluted, unhealthy” air.

As if Canadians are sitting at the border blowing fans southwards or something. I mean you really have to wonder what goes on in his demented brain.

Not to be outdone by Dear Leader, other MAGAs have piled on, some even drafting legislation to “sanction” Canada, such as Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno just proposed today.

“I’ll be introducing a bill next week to sanction Canada and the responsible Canadian government officials for this atrocity,” Moreno screeched on social media. The Ohio Republican reposted an image of a deserted boulevard in Cleveland with buildings shrouded in haze.

You know, before the USA officially became a kaki-idiocracy, these kinds of moronic words would have been laughed out of the Senate. But not today. Trump truly did Make America Stupid Again.

Oh, let’s check in with Obergrüppenführer Stephen Miller’s wife Stephanie, shall we? Apparently to her all this smoke coming from north of the border is “proof” that Canada needs to become the 51st state. Because apparently only Americans know how to rake the forest floor.

She posted Friday, “This is why Canada should be the 51st state.” Miller was responding to a post from a D.C. meteorologist team that revealed air quality in the capital has reached “very unhealthy and hazardous levels.” It is unclear how Canada’s being part of the U.S. would have prevented this week’s fires.

I mean you just have to sit back and marvel at the unmitigated GALL of these people. The gobsmacking, in-your-face CHUTZPAH. Everything the Republican Party has done over the last 30 or 40 years has made climate change worse. And ever since Trump darkened the White House, climate denial has become national policy.

Meanwhile the planet bakes, Texas experiences yet another thousand year flood, their SECOND IN TWO YEARS. Heat domes kill hundreds in Europe, and the GOP continues to insist that nope, it’s all our imagination. Climate change is a “hoax”. Fake news. Not happening. Everything is perfectly normal. Keep buying those gas-guzzling pickup trucks because nothing says FREEDOM like pumping excessive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Prime Minister Mark Carney had words to say about all this “Blame Canada” bullshit circulating around the right wing.

In their letter, the four members of Congress said their constituents in Michigan were living under air quality alerts.

“Our hospitals are once again treating children, dialysis patients, and older residents for the effects of smoke that did not originate anywhere near them,” the letter said.

“This is the third consecutive year we have had to write to Canadian officials about a crisis that Canada has the tools to prevent and has chosen not to.”

One of those members of Congress, John James, wrote in a post Thursday: “FINAL WARNING TO CANADA: Manage your forests to prevent these fires. American lungs are paying the price for Canadian inaction, year after year.”

Asked about the U.S. criticism during a Thursday news conference in London, Ont., Carney brushed it off. He said Canada is pursuing investments in clean energy, while the U.S. is actively working against clean energy.

“Fighting climate change is the responsibility of all countries, including the United States,” Carney said in French.

Well said, sir. Well said.

The mind absolutely reels at the sheer idiocy of these people. They seem to think that it’s so easy to fight massive fires across millions of square miles in the second largest country on the planet and that Canada is simply refusing to do so. If they pulled their heads out of their asses for just one minute they would realize that it would literally take THOUSANDS of water bombers and MILLIONS of firefighters to control those fires. And they’re raging in some of the most remote places in the country. Places that are so remote that there is literally no road access.

But instead of understanding a thing or two about climate science or forest management, MAGA Republicans just prove how gobsmackingly stupid they are.

And since 3 Democratic Socialists in New York State swept their primaries, the entire GOP has received their marching orders.

We all saw it when Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani was running for mayor of New York City. Trump constantly smeared him as a Communist, which is, of course, absurd to anyone with two functioning brain cells to rub together. Mamdani has never espoused Communism as a political ideology. But that never matters to Republicans, who see the word “Socialist” in their name and automatically tie it to Communism.

And of course not a single Republican can actually define Communism in the first place. Doesn’t matter. Communism is whatever they say it is. In fact, Trump has leaned so hard into painting Democrats as “Godless Communists” that he’s starting to become a parody of himself.

Trump has painted the rise of these Democratic Socialists as an “existential crisis” for this nation and said this in his July 4th speech in front of Mount Rushmore:

“These are hard core, godless Communists,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post earlier on Friday, an accusation he repeated during remarks to a gathering of social conservatives. “This is the Greatest Threat to our Country since its Founding 250 years ago!”

Steve Scalise goes even farther and actually invokes the Bolshevik Revolution:

It’s insane to see how far left the Democrat Party has moved to where now literally it’s a Bolshevik Revolution. I mean, the Communists have taken over. This is not your father’s Democrat Party, and it’s really the candidates that they’re nominating that are the far-left extremist lunatics.

Of course to anybody not steeped in MAGA, Communism has a fairly precise definition. Per Encyclopedia Brittanica:

Communism is a political and economic system that seeks to create a classless society in which the major means of production, such as mines and factories, are owned and controlled by the public. There is no government or private property or currency, and the wealth is divided among citizens equally or according to individual need. Many of communism’s tenets derive from the works of German revolutionary Karl Marx, who (with Friedrich Engels) wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848). However, over the years others have made contributions—or corruptions, depending on one’s perspective—to Marxist thought. Perhaps the most influential changes were proposed by Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, who notably supported authoritarianism.

Needless to say, not a single Democratic Socialist has ever proposed such drastic economic or political measures. Per CNN:

The democratic socialists rising within the Democratic Party are advocating for major policy changes within the US’ already established capitalist system, chiefly through a significant bolstering of the social safety net. That includes directing greater public funding toward guaranteeing health care for all citizens, providing far more in housing assistance and relying on the government to a much greater degree to lift peoples’ quality of life.

The main tradeoff for those benefits is higher taxes, especially on the wealthy, which democratic socialists contend is necessary to ensure a more balanced and equal society.

That’s a view that has raised the ire of Republicans, and even factions within the Democratic Party, who are opposed to such change — or believe that it’s more prudent to make change incrementally.

There is a reason why Democratic Socialists are doing well these days. And that reason is because people have grown sick and tired of the Democratic Establishment that believes incremental change is the best way to move forward. And in this age of MAGA fascism, that incremental change is not resonating with voters.

As Ben Davis, who worked on Bernie Sanders’ campaign in 2016, wrote in The Guardian:

After the last month, Democratic leadership should be seriously taking stock of their position. The energy is on their left. The people are on their left. Democrats want fighters, and they want a politics rooted in the collective struggles of the masses, not decided in smoke-filled rooms. We still need moderate Democrats to win those pesky median voters, for now. But the party’s leadership is deeply out of touch with its base. A leftist wave is cresting across the country.

Any student of history knows that Communism rose in Europe during the early part of the 20th century as a direct result of the labor class feeling screwed over by the elites and the oligarchies that ran those countries. The Bolshevik Revolution was itself a popular uprising of the working class against the elites of Russian society, who profited off the labors of the working class that did not benefit from their labors.

Sound familiar?

Communists are, of course, the natural enemies to fascists. Hitler famously imprisoned and killed hundreds of thousands of Socialists and Communists in Germany after he took power. And anyone to the left of MAGA have been labeled as Communists for years which is why this latest attack isn’t resonating with American voters, who have grown increasingly disgusted with the Trump regime.

It’s beyond obvious by now that the Republican Party is facing an electoral wipeout in November, as Trump’s policies and the war in Iran have only driven inflation to obscene levels while more and more billionaires (plus one trillionaire) become stupidly wealthy off the backs of the ever shrinking middle class. AI is threatening to wipe out entire industries and massive job losses are on the horizon which is prompting the public to sharpen its pitchforks and light its torches.

And the GOP is scared. Why else would Trump be pushing to radically alter the electoral system to ensure they never lose again?

So when your back is against the wall, do what has always worked in the past: invoke the Red Scare.

No, the news was dominated by a group of white supremacists marching in DC wearing matching blue polo shirts, matching hats, matching khaki pants, and matching white face gaiters. All carrying upside-down US flags, Confederate flags, and shields bearing the Patriot Front logo and colors.

Their message: America is for white people ONLY. Diversity is code for “white genocide”, and other slogans that are popular with the neo-Nazi right wing.

Who are Patriot Front? From the George Washington Program on Extremism:

Patriot Front is a white nationalist organization founded in 2017 by Thomas Rousseau following the deadly "Unite the Right" rally on August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia. The group promotes an ultra-nationalist ideology centered on the idea of creating a white ethnostate in the United States, rejecting multiculturalism and diversity. Patriot Front is known for its propaganda campaigns, including distributing flyers, staging marches, and defacing public art, all aimed at spreading its white nationalist message. Their ultimate goal is to reshape American society to align with their vision of racial and cultural homogeneity.

Ffiteen years ago it would have been unthinkable to see actual neo-Nazis marching in DC, or any major city for that matter. But ever since Trump and his racist MAGA movement entered the scene, this has become normal. And predictably, Republicans are silent and refuse to condemn their presence.

And the fact that this happened just days after the Supreme Court affirmed the fact that the 14th Amendment applies to all people, no matter where their parents came from and no matter what their current immigration status is only demonstrated just how anti-American these people truly are.

They call themselves “Patriot Front” but the LAST word that should apply to them is “patriot”.

Because on this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, America is being forced to confront what it means to be an American. Is it a nation where all people are declared equal, as the Declaration of Independence states, or a nation of exclusion where only a certain class of people are deemed “real” Americans and everyone else is a second class citizen, as Trump and MAGA seem to believe?

Because we’ve seen the evidence with our own eyes and heard their speeches with our own ears. And MAGA has given license to the likes of Patriot Front to openly exist and show their colors. Meanwhile MAGA Republicans have created policies designed to turn back the clock on diversity efforts by literally turning DEI into a dirty word and writing laws that turn the mere existence of diversity efforts illegal. And Trump has literally banned all asylum seekers from these shores EXCEPT one specific class of people: white “refugees” from South Africa.

And let’s not forget what uber racist and uber misogynist Pete Hegseth is doing at the Pentagon. His efforts are literally designed to erase decades of progress by removing women and people of color from high ranking positions and erasing their accomplishments from the historical record. All in the name of elevating white people, or more specifically, white men.

Exactly what Patriot Front is trying to do.

Zohran Mamdani spelled it out clearly in his 250th Anniversary speech: “how small they are, how weak, how unoriginal”. America is not a nation where only white men get to contribute to society. America is a nation of IMMIGRANTS who came here from other countries to make a better life for themselves and their families.

“At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another,” Mamdani said. “Time and again, including 250 years ago, those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress.”

But that’s not how these small, weak, and unoriginal white supremacists see them. Oh no. All they see are brown-skinned foreigners who are “polluting” the blood of America and “ruining” the country. And it’s not just neo-Nazis making these arguments either. These are the arguments of mainstream Republicans who have are now full-on neo-Nazis themselves. The very same Republicans who are now decrying the Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship. The same Republicans who insist everyone must be exactly like they are: straight, white, and Christian.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

And now these people are trying to parse the words “All persons”, as though there is ANY ambiguity therein. But when the 14th Amendment was ratified, the country had emerged from a brutal civil war and remnants of the attitudes that had led to that war still remained in many Southern states that refused to accept that former slaves would now be considered American citizens. The authors wrote “All persons” and they meant it.

And thirty years later those words were put to the test in the case that had remained precedence until very recently. In United States vs Wong Kim Ark of 1898, the Supreme Court affirmed that the 14th Amendment applied to ALL PERSONS, not just some people. That case was settled law until Trump tried to write an Executive Order stating that the children of undocumented citizens did not qualify.

Trump, MAGA, Patriot Front, neo-Nazis. These people are all cut from the same racist cloth. They are the new KKK. The new Confederacy. And yesterday they certainly got everyone’s attention.

How small they are. How weak they are. How unoriginal.

Folks, the “Great American State Fair” is open on the National Mall in DC and by all indications, it’s yet another example of Trump overpromising and under-delivering.

Ever the huckster, Trump promised the “greatest state fair in the history of state fairs”, the “biggest and best celebration of America in the history of America”. Because everything Trump does is the “biggest”, and the “best”, and the “most beautiful” in the history of forever.

It opened on Thursday and it’s been plagued by power issues, melting ice cream, and thin crowds. Because that’s what you get when a con-man hijacks the celebration of America’s 250th anniversary and turns it into a celebration to himself.

We already had a bipartisan America 250 celebration committee that was formed by Congress way back in 2016. But it was a BIPARTISAN committee, hosting non-partisan events designed to celebrate AMERICA, not Trump. So Trump created his own “Freedom 250” event and muddied the water enough to confuse everyone.

Because what is sitting on the National Mall right now is the Conservative version of America. A celebration of America’s biggest corporations like SpaceX, John Deere, Budweiser, Boeing, Uber, and of course, Fox News.

And yes, Fox News has their own booth, complete with face painting and a mock studio with their famous curvy couch so you too can spew your own right wing propaganda while looking like a gibbering moron.

There are whole rows of vinyl event tents clad in mock Classical architecture facades containing “exhibits” of all 50 states. To say these exhibits are half-assed is an insult to half asses.

Many states actually opted out of delivering an exhibit once it became clear that this event was being organized by Trump himself and not by the Congressional committee that was supposed to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.

But the piece de resistance? The crowning achievement that Trump insisted must be front and center? A plywood scale model of his “Arc du Trump” that he’s been insisting must be built between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial.

I mean this thing looks like it was made of Lego. They didn’t even follow the original design that Trump keeps hawking to whomever will listen.

And of course no Trump-organized event would be complete without an expensive military flyover. The guy absolutely LOVES his military flyovers. If he had his way there would be military flyovers every single day.

Trump, of course, promises massive crowds and is hyping up this event on his Truth Social account, just as he hyped up his speech on the opening night and claimed “45,000” people showed up even though real photos showed barely 1000 people attended his rally.

But by the third day of this even those “massive crowds” have failed to materialize. Because it’s pretty obvious that Americans have better things to do than experience Trump’s version of America.

Womp womp.

But you CAN visit the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda (neither of which I’ve actually been to), or the Bill Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, among many others going all the way back to Herbert Hoover. Heck, even Gerald Ford has one even though he was only in office for two and a half years.

And now you can finally visit the Barack Obama Presidential Center (that actually includes a real public library) in Chicago. And I don’t recall the same level of celebration and joy at the opening of any one of the previous Presidential Libraries.

The guest list for this celebration was certainly a Who’s Who of American politics and culture. You had every living past President in attendance (save one notable exception). You had The Roots, Bruce Springsteen, Christina Aguilera, Common, Eddie Vedder, Stevie Wonder, Bono, and The Edge as performers. And check out these A-listers:

• Oprah Winfrey

• Billie Jean King

• George Lucas

• Steven Spielberg

• Tom Hanks

• Conan O’Brien

• Gabrielle Union

• Quinta Brunson

• LL Cool J

• Mark Hamill

• Jon Batiste

• Stephen Colbert

• David Letterman

• Tyler Perry

And many of them wore tan suits.

But the highlight of the day had to be Michelle’s speech. A speech that reminded this country what we once had and what we’ve lost since then.

She didn’t even mention Trump by name but everyone certainly knew exactly who she was talking about. And President Obama did not hold back either.

And after all the pomp and circumstance, the new Center finally opened to the public as the Obamas personally greeted the first 100 attendees.

The Obama Presidential Center is a vast complex located in South Chicago’s Jackson Park along the shores of Lake Michigan and it includes a public gym, a basketball court, a branch of the Chicago Public Library, and a large public playground.

But the centerpiece is the multi-level museum building. Designed by a collaboration of architects, designers, and engineers led by New York City based Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the massive granite clad tower rises four stories and is meant to evoke four hands coming together.

Less of a library that contains a President’s papers, as in past Presidential Libraries (there is actually a real Obama Presidential Library located in Maryland where you can read his digitized documents if you so choose), the museum is a collection of art and artifacts from Obama’s Presidency, a timeline of his rise from his boyhood in Hawaii and Indonesia culminating to the White HOuse, along with interactive exhibits meant to evoke “a hope that people will come here and not just passively engage but be inspired and motivated to do their part to make the world a better place,” says Valerie Jarrett, former White House adviser and the chief executive officer of the Obama Foundation, the nonprofit that built the center.

The museum also features the history of the United States as told through the progress of social movements, from slavery and emancipation to the campaign of women’s suffrage to the Civil Rights movement. Objects used to relate history in the museum add emotion to history, from the cane used in the 1940s by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the 1884 medal given to Thomas Mundy Peterson, the first Black man to vote after the passage of the 15th Amendment.

It also features the wedding ring of Jim Obergefell, whose landmark who filed a lawsuit after Ohio refused to recognize his marriage to his dying husband John Arthur, which led to the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationally. Obama, who initially supported only civil unions, described his shift in support of marriage equality as an evolution based on his relationships with same-sex couples. The ring fuses together both men’s rings with the ashes of Arthur, who died in 2013, and is part of an exhibit entitled “A More Inclusive America.”

It is, quite literally, a celebration of diversity, equity, AND inclusion.

Along the south west corner of the tower you can read the speech that Obama made at the 50th anniversary of the Selma march.

And if you travel to the free Sky Room on the eighth floor, you can look out over South Chicago through the six foot high letters, or stand inside the entire speech which rises to the sky.

Being the community organizer that he was, President Obama made sure his Presidential Library would become a landmark for Chicago’s South Side. The central area between the museum on the north side and the gym/library complex on the south side features a public plaza that will host live music and festivals. The public library also features a rooftop community garden and teaching kitchen.

In fact, education infuses the entire Obama Presidential Center as classes on media production, songwriting, and podcasting will be offered at the Media Suite. Generous lobby spaces filled with monumental art offer free Wi-Fi and encourage visitors and the community to gather to study, hold a book club or take a break from the Chicago weather.

And Tafari’s Kitchen features Obama family favorites such as turkey chili and red rice with shrimp. The name of the restaurant honors the late White House chef Tafari Campbell who served the Obama’s during their tenure.

The Obama Presidential Center is a vast, sprawling destination that reminds Americans of a time when America truly was great and that despite all we’ve experienced in the past decade that greatness can still be achieved if we all work together instead of allowing ourselves to be divided by our national leaders. And as a testament to its importance in the fabric of this country, the Center is sold out until the end of October.

The one show that stood out to me and the one I remember most clearly was the concert by the Boston Pops. I had very little knowledge about music but I do remember it being a grand celebration culminating with the firing of cannons at the end of the 1812 Overture.

That was then. This is now.

This year we get a national spectacle that makes “Idiocracy” look like high-brow art. We get grunting, drooling, vomiting men who exemplify toxic masculinity beating each other senseless under a massive steel structure nicknamed “The Claw” built on the White House lawn.

We were SUPPOSED to get a national celebration of America’s 250th birthday but instead we get glorification of Donald Trump.

And to top it all off we get gutter-level transphobia and racism all wrapped up into a tidy package and presented to the entire world. This is what America has descended to. A cage match spectacle featuring the worst fucking people in the world, performing for the worst fucking people in the world.

And this guy calls himself a Christian. He wouldn’t know Jesus if Jesus walked up and slapped him upside the head. These are the very same people who have rejected the ACTUAL words of Jesus as being too “woke”. Apparently this moron has made transphobia central to his entire identity, posting AI slop videos where he beats up trans women (which would be a hate crime, of course) and ending every interview with “Michelle Obama is a man!”

Dude, who broke you so badly?

But Trump loves all of it. He loves the bloody spectacle. He loves the sweaty man bodies, the grunting violence, the culture war bullshit. THIS is what he wants America to represent. Not her scientific achievements, not her foreign aid that kept millions of people alive around the world. Nope. None of that. America to Donald Trump is a gigantic bully standing on top of the world with guns blazing, stomping on the little guy and daring anybody to do something about it.

Oh, you can’t afford gas or groceries thanks to his policies? Well fuck you, Donald LOVES inflation. Oh, your healthcare is about to disappear thanks to his policies? Well fuck you, you should have been born wealthy like he was.

America under Trump is cruel, violent, and sociopathic. And on her 250th birthday, that is nothing to celebrate.

Enjoy your bread and circuses, America. Except the bread will cost you and you’ll need to subscribe to Paramount+ in order to enjoy the circuses.

And the majority of the country is sick of it.

Because culture wars don’t lower costs. They don’t improve the lives of ordinary Americans whatsoever. Demonizing trans people doesn’t put gas in your vehicle or food on your table.

In fact less than 10% of this country even considers trans issues to be important.

Here are the numbers:

• 44% of registered voters say “Increasing Costs or Inflation” is their number one concern

• 74% of registered voters are more likely to support a midterm candidate who says “we all deserve the freedom to live our lives without fear of discrimination.”

• 70% of registered voters are more likely to support a midterm candidate who says: “We should focus more on lowering the cost of living and creating jobs, than on issues about transgender people, like restricting government IDs or healthcare for transgender people.”

• 65% of registered voters believe politicians are often using transgender issues as a distraction from more important priorities.

• Only 8% of registered voters say: “Transgender issues are a top concern.”

• 68% agree brands/companies should be able to show support to the LGBTQ community during Pride if they want to.

Meanwhile many companies are abandoning Pride and DEI efforts as right wing demonization has reached a fever pitch since Trump’s victory. As a result this year’s Pride celebrations are smaller and more intimate.

From The Advocate:

When corporations got rid of their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, many also axed their commitments to LGBTQ+ Pride Month.

Even before Donald Trump’s executive orders terminating all DEI positions in the federal government, dozens of major companies had already abandoned their practices. Many made their decisions after conservatives online specifically targeted them for their policies and threatened boycotts, with failed filmmaker turned failed congressional candidate Robby Starbuck taking credit for spearheading the movement.

This withdrawal didn’t just encompass inclusive work environments and hiring practices, or participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index — in abandoning DEI, companies also ceased many of their community partnerships. This included small businesses, minority- and women-owned businesses, and organizations supporting underserved groups: veterans, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people.

Republicans, of course, are leaning hard into anti-trans issues and making women’s sports and healthcare restrictions the centerpieces of their midterm campaigns. Pro-LGBTQ+ groups like the Human Rights Campaign are pouring millions of dollars into countering these narratives.

From Politico:

Two years after anti-transgender attacks flooded the airwaves, the country’s leading LGBTQ+ rights group is gearing up for a major response this November.

The Human Rights Campaign is pouring $15 million into the midterms, its largest investment ever into a non-presidential cycle. The group eyes eight battleground House districts currently represented by Republicans, and it anticipates kitchen-table issues — not the culture war — will ultimately decide the races.

“It doesn’t matter what party people subscribe to. It doesn’t matter where they live. Most Americans are concerned about the exact same things,” said HRC President Kelley Robinson. “The trans issues are just not on the top of any of those lists.”

And that poll from GLAAD proves that she’s right and Republicans are barking up the wrong tree. In fact recent polling proves that despite all the “blame Biden” rhetoric from Trump, Americans largely blame him for their economic woes.

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON, April 24 (Reuters) - A clear majority of Americans blame President Donald Trump for surging gasoline prices, which is weighing on his Republican Party ​ahead of November’s congressional midterm elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Some 77% of registered voters in the poll, which concluded early this week, ‌said Trump bears at least a fair amount of responsibility for the recent rise in gas prices, which was sparked by his decision to launch a war on Iran along with U.S. ally Israel.

The message is clear and the writing is on the wall. Republicans refuse to admit that their culture wars have failed and that nothing Trump promised in 2024 has come to pass. His distrous reign will be weighing heavily on voters’ minds as they head to the polls this November. And that spells VERY bad news for the GOP.

Republicans are throwing everything they can at Democrat James Talarico, referring to him as “Tala-freako”, claiming he is a transgender vegan, impugning his masculinity, and generally proving that they are no better than middle school bullies.

However, despite these attack, recent polling has Talarico in the lead.

Who is James Talarico?

James Talarico is an eighth-generation Texan and Democratic politician who serves as the lead candidate for the U.S. Senate in Texas. A former middle school teacher and Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary student, he previously served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives, known for his progressive advocacy for public education and healthcare access.

Early Life and Education

• Background: Born on May 17, 1989, in Round Rock, Texas.

• Education: Earned a bachelor’s degree in government from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree in education policy from Harvard University.

• Early Career: Joined Teach For America and spent two years teaching sixth-grade Language Arts at Rhodes Middle School in San Antonio.

Texas House of Representatives

• Election: First elected in 2018 to represent District 52, he flipped a district previously held by Republicans. At age 29, he was the youngest member of the Texas Legislature.

• Education Advocacy: Using his background as a public school teacher, he championed public education and helped pass legislation to establish the first-ever cap on Pre-K class sizes. He was also a leading opponent of Gov. Greg Abbott’s school voucher push.

• Healthcare & Insulin: Diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, he passed historic legislation capping monthly insulin copays for Texans.

• National Profile: Frequently went viral online for his passionate defenses of public education, opposition to book bans, and critiques of GOP attempts to inject Christian nationalism into public classrooms.

Current Status

• Theology: Talarico is a student at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, working toward a Master of Divinity and openly speaks about how his Christian faith drives his progressive policies.

• U.S. Senate Run: Stepping into the federal political arena, he emerged from a highly publicized primary to become the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senator in Texas.

Who is Ken Paxton?

Ken Paxton is a prominent American conservative politician and attorney who has served as the Attorney General of Texas since 2015. A staple of the MAGA movement, his tenure has been marked by a blend of major legal victories against federal policies and a succession of high-profile political scandals and legal battles.

Legislative Career

• 2003–2013: Represented District 70 in the Texas House of Representatives.

• 2013–2015: Served in the Texas State Senate for the 8th District.

• During his time in the Texas Legislature, he established a staunchly conservative record, advocating for state sovereignty and challenging the moderate leadership of his own party.

Attorney General of Texas

First elected in 2014, Paxton cemented himself as a national leader in conservative legal battles.

• Federal Lawsuits: He led dozens of coalitions to successfully block Biden and Obama-era federal policies, ranging from environmental and overtime rules to transgender guidelines. He also famously filed the unsuccessful Supreme Court lawsuit to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

• State Initiatives: He formed a special unit to combat human trafficking in his first term and has consistently fought to restrict abortion access in the state.

Scandals and Legal Controversies

Despite his popularity with the Republican base, Paxton’s history is heavily defined by a series of long-running personal and legal scandals:

• Securities Fraud Charges: Just months after taking office as Attorney General in 2015, he was indicted on felony securities fraud charges. The almost decade-long case was ultimately settled in 2024 through a pretrial agreement requiring him to complete community service and pay restitution, avoiding jail time.

• Whistleblower & Bribery Allegations: In 2020, top aides accused Paxton of abusing his office to benefit an Austin real estate investor and political donor, which led to a whistleblower lawsuit and FBI investigation.

• Impeachment: In May 2023, the Republican-led Texas House voted 121–23 to impeach Paxton on 16 articles relating to bribery and abuse of office. He was suspended during the proceedings but was ultimately acquitted by the Texas Senate in September 2023.

• Personal Life: In July 2025, his wife, Angela Paxton, filed for a “Biblical” divorce, concluding their nearly 40-year marriage.

Ken Paxton is, in other words, a scumbag. Which is, of course, why Trump endorsed him over John Cornyn, who tried to kiss Trump’s ass but was insufficiently deferential during the 2024 election. And Trump NEVER forgets a slight. But clearly like attracts like and Trump sees himself in Ken Paxton.

And let’s not forget the biggest scandal that is weighing down his campaign right now: his plea deal as Attorney General for Adam Hoffman, a Waco TX lawyer who repeatedly sexually abused a young boy over the course of three years.

For that horrific crime, Hoffman received one day in jail and was not forced to register as a sex offender. So much for being tough on crime.

“The most corrupt politician in America just became the Republican nominee for the United States Senate,” Talarico said in a video posted to social media. “For 50 years, megadonors and their puppet politicians like Ken Paxton have stolen from us, with their bribes, bailouts and billionaire tax breaks. Ken Paxton has gotten away with it — they’ve all gotten away with it. But that ends this year, in this state, in this race.”

“I ran for office not to be served, but to serve. And then there’s Ken Paxton.” Talarico said. “I have a legislative record — Ken Paxton has a criminal record.”

In response Republicans simply lie that Talarico claims there are “six genders”. Talarico never said this, of course. What he did point out is that there are six chromosomal variations (X, XX, XY, XXY, XYY, and XXXY), but Republicans are clearly too stupid to understand this point so “six genders” it is.

Republicans laughably then go on to claim that Talarico is “too low-T for Texas”, apparently meaning his testosterone levels are too low for Texas. And how would they know this, exactly? Did Texas Senate candidates submit themselves to a hormone test before running? The entire premise is beyond absurd.

Stephen Miller then proved how they is the worst person in the world by claiming Democrats had “nominated their first transgender Senate candidate”. Enter Talarico’s sassy Latina girlfriend who responded “Shut up, you ugly fuck”.

MAGAs online, of course, melted TF down, claiming she was “threatening Stephen Miller’s life” with that tweet. Because bullies can always dish it out in spades but cannot EVER tolerate even one iota of pushback.

This Senate race was not supposed to be competitive because this IS Texas, after all. But Trump is polling at the lowest level he’s been in his entire political life and voters nationwide are sick of Republican policies, corruption, and incompetence. And the Democrats have the best chance of taking back the Senate that they’ve had in years, starting with Texas.

The Treaty of Tripoli, written in 1787 and signed by President John Adams in order to stop attacks on US shipping by Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean Sea, was crystal clear: America was not founded to be a Christian state. It is often used by opponents of Christian Nationalism to prove that America was never intended to be founded as a Christian state, a theocracy, or a religious nation in any way.

In fact, the Founding Fathers were quite clear about this fact. During the ratification of the Constitution many letters were written, speeches given, and debates occurred over this very question. And though these Christian Nationalists, who currently infest our government, control our airwaves, and pump Christian propaganda into the eyes and ears of Americans 24 hours per day, insist that the Founding Fathers were Christians, many of them didn’t even believe in the divinity of Jesus, which in fact, makes them Deists and not actual Christians.

In Europe, religious sectarian warfare began after the Protestant Reformation in 16th Century and continued into the 18th Century. These wars devastated much of Europe as the power of the Holy Roman Empire was contested by the rising power of the Protestant Reformation, culminating in the Thirty Years War that killed nearly one third of the German Population.

The Founding Fathers, having lived in the 17th and 18th Century, would have had the Thirty Years War fresh in their minds as they wrote the Constitution after gaining independence from the British Crown. In fact religious freedom was so important to them that they wrote the Establishment Clause as the very first Amendment to the Constitution, alongside Freedom of Speech. And in so doing they ensured that the newly formed United States of America would have a secular government that was not allowed to establish any form of religion as a national government.

But none of that matters to the Evangelical Protestant Christians that make up the current regime, nor does it matter to the Heritage Foundation that provides them with the written plan to literally turn America into Gilead from The Handmaid’s Tale. The Heritage Foundation, as you surely must know, was the think tank behind Project 2025. And Russel Vought, Project 2025’s author, now sits in charge of the Office of Management and Budget.

Now before the 2024 election, alarm bells were ringing all over the country about Project 2025, and Trump being Trump, he denied having anything to do with it. Yet his regime has followed the Project 2025 playbook to a T. In fact we wrote about Project 2025 back in July 2024.

But following the Project 2025 plan is still not good enough for the Christofascists at the Heritage Foundation, who recently released yet another manifesto for Christian Nationalism called “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years”.

And if you thought Project 2025 was bad, well hold onto your hat.

These people literally believe that the traditional American family (one man, one woman, 2.3 kids) has been “dissolved” in the past 60 years and their solution is to:

• Criminalize gay sex

• Eradicate transgender people once and for all

• Force women back into the home

• Take away women’s right to vote

• Criminalize sex out of wedlock, especially sex between consenting but non-married adults

• Eliminate the Civil Rights Act so women, minorities, and LGBTQ+ people can be discriminated against by “every institution in America”.

In other words, it’s an attempt to drag this country back to the 19th century. And it’s all rooted in the fear that white women are not pumping out enough white babies in order to maintain a white majority in this country. In fact Dr. Mehmet Oz, Trump’s Medicare and Medicaid administer (and the man who lost to John Fetterman) recently had this to say:

“So, let me speak a little bit about the reality that one in three Americans are under-babied,” Dr Oz said.

“What does under-babied mean?” he asked. “That means that you either don’t have any children or you have less children than you would normally want to have.

“We have a crisis that’s causing our fertility rate to drop below 1.5. Replacement rate is 2.1. So, we’re way below what we need just to even replace the people that we have in America.

“And one of the challenges is that rural America, where there’s 60 million people, has a maternal mortality rate, when they have babies, that’s about 30 percent higher than if you live in an urban area.”

“The fundamental creative force in society is about making babies,” he said.

The solution to declining birth rates is, of course, immigration. But as we all know this regime is entirely hostile to immigration and is currently conducting one of the most draconian and brutal mass deportation efforts in history. Because if you read between the lines what Oz is talking about are white babies.

And it’s chart like these that make the Christian Nationalists at the Heritage Foundation to declare the “dissolving” of the family.

The Heritage Foundation has been a oligarch-funded organization utterly hostile to a changing and diversifying America and it began in 1971 when Lewis Powell, a lawyer for the tobacco industry, wrote his infamous “Powell Memo” and sent it confidentially to the US Chamber of Commerce.

In this memo he stated that the American system of Free Enterprise was under attack from the Left, specifically in the form of “college campuses, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians.”

The antidote to this attack would be for Conservatives to form their own intellectual infrastructure in the form of think tanks and university programs, legal centers, and media outlets that would shift the country’s political center hard to the right and protect billionaire wealth from democratic accountability.

Nixon then appointed Powell to the Supreme Court two months after the memo was sent, and in 1973 Joseph Coors (yes, that Coors), alongside Paul Weyrich (the man who coined the phrase “Moral Majority) wrote a check for $250,000 and the Heritage Foundation was born.

Since then the Heritage Foundation has been bankrolled by six wealthy oligarch families: Joseph Coors, the Bradley Brothers, Charles Koch, the Mellon Scaifes, Barre Seid, and the Uihleins.

And it is absolutely their goal to transform the United States into their own vision of a Christian Oligarchy while at the same time loosening environmental regulations and promoting climate change denial. All things the Trump regime eagerly enacts.

The Heritage Foundation clearly believes that American society is best run by the rich and powerful while using Christian Nationalism as a weapon to enact their destructive theocratic agenda. And in order to maintain the USA as a free nation, we must do everything in our power to stop them, and that includes voting in every election.

And gas prices are the key reason why their messaging is failing. Turns out you can’t convince people to distrust their lying eyes when their wallets are telling the truth.

The national average for gas prices today, per AAA, is $4.44 per gallon. Prices range from $4.00/gallon in parts of the South and Midwest, all the way up to over $6.00/gallon on the West Coast. Here in my neck of the woods north of Downtown LA, prices range from $5.85/gallon to $6.75/gallon.

Americans are hurting. And the only thing we get from Trump are lies. At a rally at The Villages in Florida the other day he claimed that affordability is a “Democrat scam”, as he has done multiple times in the past. He claims that Republicans brought prices “way down” and that it’s their fault that prices are high.

Nobody is buying that bullshit any longer. You cannot continue to blame Democrats for your own problems when you’ve been in office for almost a year and a half. And everyone, EVERYONE knows the number one reason why prices are high right now: Operation Epic Clusterfuck.

And voters are sending the same message: we blame YOU, you orange-stained, cotton candy headed nincompoop.

From The Guardian:

Six months out from November’s midterm US elections, Donald Trump’s disapproval rating has reached 62% – the worst of his two terms in office – according to a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.

The US president received his worst ratings on the cost of living and other economic issues since launching his deeply unpopular war against Iran in February, which has plunged the global economy into an oil crisis and sent gas prices rocketing to a four-year high.

Trump achieved majority disapproval on his management of every issue measured, including Americans disapproved of his handling of that war by 66% to 32%, while a staggering 76% disapproved and only 23% approved of his handling of the cost of living. Two-thirds of Americans now feel the country is headed in the wrong direction.

The poll found Trump’s overall approval now stands at 37%, which isn’t much movement from 39% in February. But his disapproval rose to 62%, a record high across his two terms in office.

But what’s really telling are all the MAGAs who are now expressing their regret. They’ve finally been slapped in the face enough times by high gas prices, job losses, tariffs, and a terrible economy that many of them have finally put away the Kool-Aid and emerged from their bubble.

From CNN:

In April 2025, 74% of Trump voters scorned any of those options and said they were “very confident” in their vote. But today, that number has declined to 62%.

The 38% of Trump voters who chose a less-resolute option was double the 19% of Kamala Harris voters who did the same.

Of that 38%, 21% of Trump voters said they were still “confident” in their votes but had “some concerns.”

And the percentage who declined to express confidence in their vote — and said they at least had “mixed feelings” — has gone from 8% in April 2025 to 17% today.

Here are the percentages of 2024 Trump voters who disapproved of him in each of these areas:

• Overall: 22%

• Immigration: 15%

• Foreign affairs: 25%

• Iran: 28%

• Economy: 30%

• Inflation: 39%

• Gas prices: 45%

I mean those numbers still aren’t great but they do show a trend away from Trump. And those numbers also show that gas prices are their biggest concern. Because if there’s one thing you can say about MAGAs and Conservatives in general, it’s that they don’t care about things until they are personally affected. And any number of MAGA voters who refuse to vote for Republicans in November can only help the Democrats in what is shaping up to be a wave election.

Even hardcore MAGA personalities like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Tayor Green and Megyn Kelly have left the cult due to the Iran War. And what’s most startling is that since the war began, Carlson’s viewership online has absolutely exploded. He is now averaging 56.8 million views per episode online, while on Fox he peaked at 5.3 million viewers. That is a tenfold increase in viewership and it shows that anti-war podcasters are gaining a far greater reach than cable news.

All signs are pointing to an absolute shellacking at the polls come November. Which is, of course, why the Supreme Court decided to do Republicans a solid and basically gut the Voting Rights Act once and for all this week, giving Republicans the green light to use racial gerrymandering all they want.

From Democracy Docket:

In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court kneecapped the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the landmark civil rights law that restricted racial gerrymandering and racial discrimination in voting for sixty years.

Writing for the majority in Callais v. Louisiana, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the court was not striking down Section 2 of the VRA, but rather “properly” interpreting it as “impos[ing] liability only when circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.”

Justice Elena Kagan, in dissent, accused the majority of making changes that “eviscerate the law.”

The ruling effectively invalidates Section 2 of the VRA as it has been understood for four decades without explicitly striking down the statute. It now will require proof of intentional discrimination — something Congress did not write into the law and that’s extremely difficult for plaintiffs to show.

Requiring proof of intentional discrimination raises the bar on the VRA so as to make it completely ineffective, of course. This has been the goal of at least three SCOTUS Justices for decades.

Wasting no time, Governor Landry of Louisiana announced the suspension of their US House primary election, even AFTER ballots had been mailed out, so they could enact an even more gerrymandered map and wipe out Black representation in that state. This, of course, is completely illegal.

Republicans play dirty and they play for keeps. And with a SCOTUS so heavily tilted in their favor the Rule of Law is effectively dead. But wait a minute, don’t partisan gerrymanders typically work against the party during wave elections?

Why yes, they do. That is, in fact, why they are sometimes referred to as “dummymanders”. Because it turns out when you pack voters based on racial gerrymandering and then repack them again, it ends up diluting those voters and making what were solid Republican districts into competitive districts.

From The Conversation:

When parties gerrymander districts, they don’t usually try to make them all as lopsided as possible for their own side. Instead, they try to make as many districts as possible that they are likely to win. They do this by spreading groups of supportive voters across several districts so they can help the party win more of these districts.

But sometimes the effort backfires: In trying to maximize their seats, a party spreads its voters too thin and fails to make some districts safe enough. These vulnerable districts can then flip to the other party in future elections, and the opposing party ends up winning more seats than expected.

This phenomenon, commonly referred to as “dummymandering,” has happened before. It even happened in Texas, where Republicans lost a large handful of poorly drawn state legislative districts in the Dallas suburbs in 2018, a strong year for Democrats nationwide.

With Democrats poised for a strong 2026 midterm election against an unpopular president, this is a lesson Republicans might need to pay attention to.

And one of the main reasons why this is the case is because these Republican states are ALREADY heavily gerrymandered. They’ve been doing this for decades in order to maintain complete control over those states and it generally works in their favor.

But this year is different. A very unpopular war, rising prices, a faltering economy, and an out of control immigration agency will do that.

1 informal

a: to refuse to serve (a customer)
b: to eject or ban (a customer)

2 informal

a: to remove (an item) from a menu : to no longer offer (an item) to customers
b: to reject, discontinue, or get rid of (something)

If you work in a restaurant or bar, you might eighty-six (or “eliminate”) a menu item when you run out of it, or you might eighty-six (or “cut off”) a customer who should no longer be served. Eighty-six is still used in this specific context, but it has also entered the general language. These days, you don't have to be a worker in a restaurant or bar to eighty-six something—you just have to have something to get rid of or discard. There are many popular but unsubstantiated theories about the origin of eighty-six. The explanation judged most probable according to Merriam-Webster's research is that the word was created as a rhyming slang word for nix, which means “to veto” or “to reject.”

Notice what it doesn’t say? To kill, assassinate, or murder.

Yet two days ago a grand jury in North Carolina handed down an indictment of former FBI Director James Comey for the crime of posting a photo of seashells spelling “8647” to his Instagram over a YEAR ago.

From the DOJ indictment:

The Indictment includes two counts, first in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 871, alleging that James Comey, 65, knowingly and willfully made a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States. This charge alleges that on May 15, 2025, by publicly posting an image over the internet via Instagram depicting “86 47”, which a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States.

The Indictment also charges Comey in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 875(c), that James Comey consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communication would be viewed as threatening violence, and that he knowingly transmitted a communication in interstate commerce that contained a threat to injure the person of another, which a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to a person.

Now I am not a lawyer, though I consider myself a reasonable person, and I would, in no way, interpret that as a threat to the President. Yet three days after the latest “assassination attempt” at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, Todd Blanche and the DOJ announced their indictment against Comey.

Trump, of course, has decided to extract maximum political capital out of this indictment and went on to smear Comey on Truth Social, which will most definitely be used by Comey’s lawyer to establish the fact that this indictment is the very ESSENCE of a malicious and selective prosecution. Trump also claims that it’s a “Mob term” for “murder” and claims that you see it in every Mob movie.

YouTube searches for “86” in Mob movies, of course, come up empty. Perhaps he’s thinking of “deep six”? Because that makes a lot more sense.

And restaurant workers are, of course, shocked to learn that their common slang is being used to establish a crime of threatening the President with death.

From NBC:

David Brungoli, the owner and chef at Pavin 86, an upscale New York City Italian eatery on Manhattan’s 86th Street, called that interpretation "ridiculous."

“It connects with restaurants,” he said.

“The term ‘86,’ we use only when the staff runs out of an item,” Brungoli said, and it has “been used forever.”

He said he never equated the term with death or murder.

“If it’s 86, the next day we order more. It’s 86 for now,” he said.

Reyes said he was surprised by the charge, as well. “It’s weird, because it’s a term used so often and without malice,” he said.

He said he had heard the term used in relation to people before, but only in a joking manner. “We’d have that as a joke. ‘Where’s Raoul? He got 86ed’ — meaning he got fired or died,” he said.

Obviously threatening the President or Vice President is a crime. But in order to rise to the level of criminality a court must determine that Comey actually intended his Instagram post to be a true threat.

Key Aspects of 18 U.S.C. § 871:

The statute protects the President, President-elect, Vice President, Vice President-elect, and other officers next in line to succeed the Presidency. It covers written threats sent via mail (or letter carrier), electronically, and oral threats made directly. The law does not require proof that the speaker actually intended to carry out the threat, only that they intended to make a statement that a reasonable person would interpret as a serious expression of intent to harm.

Courts distinguish true threats from “political hyperbole,” “idle talk,” or “jest,” which are protected under the First Amendment.

Key Details Regarding 18 U.S.C. § 875(c):

The statute prohibits sending threats to injure or kidnap via phone, internet, social media, or other communication methods that cross state/national lines. To secure a conviction, the government must prove the defendant: (1) transmitted a communication in interstate/foreign commerce; and (2) acted with the purpose of issuing a threat, or with knowledge that it would be viewed as a threat. According to Elonis v. United States (2015), the speaker must subjectively intend the statement to be a threat or know it will be taken as one.

The communication must be a “true threat,” not mere hyperbole or jest.

So now it will be up to the government to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt in court that Comey’s Instagram post represented a “true threat” and not mere hyperbole or jest. And Todd Blanche insists that “reasonable” people would, in fact, see this as a true threat.

Now have they actually SPOKEN to reasonable people or are they simply making that assumption based on Trump’s own hatred of James Comey? Because even some Republicans don’t agree that Comey broke the law. But Todd Blanche is so eager to prove his bona fides as Trump’s personal fixer that he’s willing to bend reality to fit Trump’s desire to punish his enemies. He is currently the top candidate to replace Pam Bondi and he is using this case to gain favor with Trump.

And that is what this is ALL about. Trump even admits it when he rails against Comey, who investigated his campaign’s links to Russia during his first term and was fired by Trump for failing to persecute his enemies. He calls Comey a “dirty cop” and accuses him of political bias even though Comey was a Republican and was personally responsible for Trump’s victory back in 2016, as we all clearly remember.

In fact Trump himself has provided all the ammunition Comey’s lawyers need to have this case thrown out of court. Because unless the judge is the highly biased Aileen Cannon, any other judge will use the “reasonable person” standard to determine that Comey’s post was, in fact, made in jest and is First Amendment protect speech. And that same ammunition can be used to countersue Trump and the DOJ for malicious prosecution. Because the DOJ is not going after all the people who posted “8646” during Biden’s term, are they?

Oh no, that’s different, says Todd Blanche. Why? “Trust me, bro”.

Asked if the DOJ would pursue charges against anybody who posts “86 47” and whether that would impinge their First Amendment rights, Blanche said that “every case is different” and it “would be ill advised for anybody to compare a particular statement to another statement that appears similar.”

“Every time that’s posted, that number is posted, you know that every time there’s a threat against the president, it doesn’t necessarily lead to an indictment. It depends on the investigation. It depends on all kinds of factors,” said Blanche, who was previously Trump’s personal attorney and was elevated this month to acting attorney general following Trump’s ouster of Pam Bondi.

Uh huh. To this day Jack Posobiec’s “8646” tweet remains online. Clearly different rules apply.

Threats to the President

Blanche directly compared to the case to the guilty plea of a Florida man, Diego Villavicencio, who made multiple threats against Trump, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and Rep. Eric Swalwell. Among the threats, Villavicencio wrote, "I'll kill you and your family."

Prosecutors also arrested a man in Massachusetts on the same charges they’re throwing at Comey. Among his threats, the man wrote about Trump, "I'll make sure you're at Mar-a-Lago when I burn it to the f------ ground." The man also allegedly brandished a sword when agents attempted to arrest him.

Federal prosecutors in Kentucky earlier this month also brought charges of interstate threatening communication when they charged a 23-year-old man for posting a series of violent anti-Trump messages on social media.

According to prosecutors, the man threatened to cut Trump’s face with a razor, among other violent acts. Prosecutors said the man began making the posts after declaring online, “I’m filled with political violence.” He was arrested this month and has not yet entered a plea.

But would ANY reasonable person put the former DIRECTOR OF THE FBI’s Instagram post showing “8647” on the same level as “I’ll kill you and your family” or threatening to cut Trump’s face or burn Mar-A-Lago to the ground with Trump in it?

Look, I know we’re living in dangerous times and there are a LOT of violent lunatics out there, and some of them have tried to take a shot at Trump or tried to do him harm. But come the fuck on. This is nothing like that. And when this case is thrown out of court, Todd Blanche AND Trump will have egg on their faces.

Not that it matters. Because the cruelty is always the point.

Well now we have our answer. To stage yet another assassination attempt.

Another poorly planned and poorly executed assassination attempt by another lone wolf gunman. This time one who supposedly traveled across the entire country, gave up his stellar career, and decided to flush his life away by taking a shot at the President.

But this time he didn’t even get close. Oh no. According to the manifesto that just conveniently appeared today, he was planning on running through several layers of security with guns a-blazing in order to take out some of the top leaders in this country. He didn’t even make it past the second floor before being taken down by Secret Service.

And within 30 minutes of being captured they apparently had all the details of his life ready for Trump to make an announcement while surrounded by all his sycophants who were smiling, laughing, and yukking it up with each other.

They knew he was a teacher in California. They knew he had a Masters degree from CalTech. They knew he once donated $25 to ActBlue. Everything perfectly written to build their narrative. Everything perfectly crafted to give Trump the opportunity to brag about surviving yet another assassination attempt, to claim that only important Presidents have their life threatened, and most of all, to demand that his ballroom be built IMMEDIATELY. In fact today he literally will not shut up about it.

And right on cue, MAGAs online are chanting “BUILD THE BALLROOM! BUILD THE BALLROOM!” Because apparently what America needs the most right now is not cheaper groceries or cheaper gas, but a gigantic ugly fucking ballroom that puts the Palace of Versailles to shame.

Oh but it will be drone proof! It will have bulletproof windows! You hear? BULLETPROOF WINDOWS!

And you that just as day follows night Trump’s DOJ will announce further crackdowns on the Left as they capitalize this event even further. We know Palantir is scraping all of our social media right now, looking for potential left-wing terrorists and assassins. They will treat this as another Reichstag Fire event because that is what fascists do. Just as predictably the media is insisting Democrats “tone down the rhetoric”.

While the right wing blogosphere continues to claim that all the violence comes from the Left.

And can we talk about the fact that within 30 minutes they somehow knew the shooter had no association with Iran? That he had no links to Iranian terrorist cells? Don’t look over there, look over here!

This whole assassination attempt stinks to high Heaven. This is Authoritarianism 101. Straight out of the Dictator’s Playbook. Poll numbers cratering? People asking uncomfortable questions? Time for another False Flag, baby!

Meanwhile the entire Legacy Media is appalled, APPALLED at how ordinary Americans aren’t buying the bullshit being spewed and are rightfully questioning the official narrative of this yet another assassination attempt. People are still asking how Trump’s ear magically grew back and how a shooter was allowed to sit unnoticed for over an hour while only 150 feet away from the podium where Trump was speaking.

But at the end of the day, this disgusting show must go on.

And now his MAGA minions in Congress and Fox News have settled on the argument that this falls under the Catholic concept of the “Just War Theory”, which is the doctrine behind military ethics that guides nations to ensure when warfare is morally justifiable.

What is Just War Doctrine?

The concept of Just War can be traced back to Ancient Egypt, India, the Zhou Dynasty, as well as Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. The theory was first codified in Western thought by Saint Augustine of Hippo, whose philosophical writings in the 4th and 5th century AD formed the basis of Western Catholicism.

The theory outlines strict moral and ethical conditions for which military force is permissible, primarily for defensive and peace restoration purposes. Just War Doctrine is outlined in Catholic Church Cathechism 2309:

(2309) The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

1. The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

2. All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

3. There must be serious prospects of success;

4. The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

And in evaluating Trump’s aggression against Iran using these criteria, it becomes clear that this attack fails under Just War Doctrine.

1. Iran did not attack the US so there is no grave damage inflicted and Iran was not an aggressor, even though Trump insists they were and refers to their “47 year program of terrorism” as justification.

2. Iran had already negotiated an end to their nuclear weapons program under President Obama and this agreement was ripped up by Trump. However, Iran was willing to negotiate and Trump chose to remove the entire negotiating team from the face of the Earth, including their President.

3. There does not seem to be any chance of success with this war as there have not been any clear end goals stated other than “regime change”.

4. The destruction of civilian infrastructure and the high number of civilian casualties including over 150 children at the Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab, Hormozgan province

Pope Leo weighs in

Given the failure of Trump’s war to follow Just War Doctrine, and after Pete Hegseth regularly invoked God in his Pentagon speeches, Pope Leo XIV, who originally comes from the south side of Chicago and is the first American-born Pope, decided to weigh in on the conflict by stating:

“God does not bless any conflict,” Leo wrote on X. “Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”

“Military force will not result in peace or freedom — that comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples.”

He did not mention President Donald Trump or other leaders by name in the post on X.

This, of course, enraged Trump, who lashed out against Pope Leo in a series of Truth Social rants that I will not include here out of respect for your emotional wellbeing. This caused the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine to issue the following statement:

“For over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory and it is that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war. A constant tenet of that thousand-year tradition is a nation can only legitimately take up the sword ‘in self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2308). That is, to be a just war it must be a defense against another who actively wages war, which is what the Holy Father actually said: ‘He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.’

“When Pope Leo XIV speaks as supreme pastor of the universal Church, he is not merely offering opinions on theology, he is preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ. The consistent teaching of the Church is insistent that all people of good will must pray and work toward lasting peace while avoiding the evils and injustices that accompany all wars.”

Trump’s sycophants such as Baby Catholic JD Vance also decided to weigh in on the subject, laughably suggesting that Trump knows more about theology than the Pope himself, and that the Pope should stay out of politics and stick to morality. You know, the usual “shut up and dribble” response you get from the Right whenever someone famous speaks out against them.

The Pope, it should be mentioned, belonged to the Augustinian Order of the Catholic Church and is an expert on Augustinian philosophy. I mean the freaking gall of these people, right?

Trump then did the unthinkable and posted an AI-generated image of himself wearing white and red robes, surrounded by loving sychophants, healing someone with his hands aglow. Most people with two braincells to rub together could clearly see this image as truly blasphemous as Jesus is often portrayed wearing red and white robes, as described in the Bible. After being called out on his blasphemy, Trump took the image down and then doubled down with an image of Jesus embracing Trump with a US flag in the background.

This, of course, led the Pope, who is on an 11 day tour of Africa, to issue his strongest and most forceful statement to date:

“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” Leo told a gathering at Saint Joseph Cathedral in the western city of Bamenda.

“They turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation, yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found.

“The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet it is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters”

Furthermore:

“I do not see my role as that of a politician. I am not a politician and I do not want to enter a debate with him,” he said.

“I continue to speak strongly against war, seeking to promote peace, dialogue and multilateralism among states to find solutions to problems.”

The White House fights back

Never to let a slight against him pass, Trump has canceled an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities, whose work in Miami offers shelter to immigrant children without parents.

From The Guardian:

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami said the White House had pulled a longstanding $11m contract from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for a program that provides specialized services for unaccompanied and undocumented minors who have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“The US government has abruptly decided to end more than 60 years of relationship … and [the services] will be forced to shut down within three months,” Thomas Wenski, the archbishop of Miami, said in a statement to the newspaper.

“[The] services for unaccompanied minors have been recognized for their excellence and have served as a model for other agencies throughout the country. Our track record in serving this vulnerable population is unmatched.”

Just beyond malicious and petty.

This latest fight against the Pope does nothing to improve Trump’s polling among Catholics, and among Americans in general. In fact recent polling from Pew Research shows 70% of Americans believe Trump to not be religious while 24% say he is somewhat religious and only 5% believe him to be very religious.

This, despite Trump’s own Spiritual Advisor Paula White laughably claiming him to be a “very religious man” who attends church “three times per week” and can quote “so many sermons”.

American Catholics make up 20% of the voting electorate and are rapidly falling away due to Trump’s comments about the Pope and about the war in Iran, even though 59% voted for him in 2024.

From ABC News:

Trump's unapologetic and belligerent attitude toward Leo, the first American pope, and his now-removed social media post depicting himself as a Christ-like figure have been met with widespread criticism from Catholics on both sides of the aisle, according to Ryan Burge, a professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis.

"The majority of Catholics adore Leo and are appalled that anyone would go after him like this, especially with that meme," Burge, a former Baptist pastor who has researched voting trends for American religious groups, said of Trump's rhetoric.

Burge predicts Trump's words will have an impact on the midterm elections and beyond.

Trump is really proving himself to be his own worst enemy. Meanwhile US sailors and Marines are sending photos home of their meager rations as it appears the US Military failed to properly supply their ships prior to deployment to the Middle East. They also cannot receive the thousands of care packages that their loved ones are sending as USPS has suspended deliveries to a war zone.

Operation Epic Clusterfuck continues.

And just yesterday it was all over. Over 78% of Hungarians showed up to the polls and LOUDLY proclaimed their disgust with Orbán, giving Péter Magyar and his Tisza Party an overwhelming victory with 138 seats. Hungary’s experiment in fascism is over.

We all know Viktor Orbán. And we all know about his rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ agenda, his sucking up to Vladimir Putin, his takeover of Hungary’s media, their judiciary system, and his rewriting of Hungary’s Constitution to ensure he never lost another election. And for 16 years it worked. Until it didn’t.

This is a massive wakeup call for MAGA. Conservatives in the USA looked at Hungary as the model for their own fascist takeover of this country, so much so that they kept inviting him to be a keynote speaker at CPAC, even going so far as to create a CPAC Hungary. And visiting their website shows just how delusional they really were.

Well that certainly didn’t age well.

And now Orbán’s loss is rippling around the world as his allies in Russia and America wonder what the hell went wrong. The big winner is, of course, Ukraine as Hungary was the lone holdout in the EU preventing them from issuing a €90 billion loan to make up for the loss of American support under Trump. Both the Kremlin and the White House have attempted to put their thumbs on the scales of European elections and have failed in a truly epic fashion.

From the Atlantic Council:

The decisive defeat of populist, pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party signals significant new openings not just for Hungary but for Europe as a whole. A Magyar-led government is widely expected to cast off its outcast role at the EU table. Most importantly, it will remove the Hungarian veto on the EU’s ninety-billion euro support package for Ukraine. Even if Hungary remains a conservative voice on issues from migration to enlargement, Budapest will return to a more constructive stance on other European issues. Hungarians widely rejected Orbán’s weaponization of relations with Brussels in the election campaign, hoping to become a normal member of the union. On election night, Magyar confirmed that he will heed that message as a member of the mainstream center-right political family at the EU level.

Moscow, the Trump administration, and Europe’s far-right populists have lost a Manchurian ally inside the EU with this election outcome. The lack of any significant impact of Vance’s and Rubio’s visits to boost Orbán’s electoral fortunes underlines that, even for Europe’s far right, support from the Trump movement may now be a burden rather than a benefit. It will be interesting to see how European populists adjust to the loss of Orbán as their ideological patron and ally. The Kremlin has lost more than just a useful disruptor and obstructionist in Europe, if recent leaks of the Orbán regime passing on internal information about EU deliberations and offering direct intervention in Moscow’s interests are true. What’s more, a Magyar-led government is unlikely to continue Budapest’s meddling role from Ukraine to the Western Balkans that often aligned with Russian interests.

However the biggest winners are the Hungarian LGBTQ+ community who found themselves outlawed by Orbán’s overt queerphobia and hate. Orbán rewrote the Hungarian Constitution in March of last year to ban Pride events throughout the country, though Hungarians defied those bans and showed up in record numbers.

Whether or not Magyar follows through on his promise to restore LGBTQ+ rights to be more in line with EU policy remains to be seen, of course. The man has a tremendous job ahead of him and must undo a decade and a half of Orbán’s policies while Orbán’s cronies remain entrenched in Hungary’s government system (a real Deep State). With a supermajority at his back, Magyar can now amend Hungary’s Constitution to deconstruct Orbán’s empire brick by brick. And once Hungary’s reforms start to take hold, the EU can release €18 billion in frozen funds.

However, despite the tremendous job ahead of him, what Magyar has done has shown the world that it is possible to untangle a country from the grip of fascist rule as long as people are willing to stay politically motivated and active enough to vote. Orbán had corrupted every aspect of Hungarian society yet it was not enough to keep him in power.

This is a lesson that the United States, with its historically poor voting numbers, needs to learn.

What is the Seven Mountains Mandate?

Put simply, the Seven Mountains Mandate (or 7MM) is a Christian Nationalist recipe for the destruction of the US Constitution and the imposition of a theocracy in the United States. Created in 1975 by a supposed “vision from God” delivered to evangelicals Loren Cunningham, Bill Bright (founder of Campus Crusade for Christ), and Francis Schaeffer that ordered them to “invade” the seven spheres of American society where they could exert the most influence. Those seven spheres became known as “mountains” after Revelations 17:9 that says "And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains.”

Those seven mountains were defined as:

• Religion

• Family

• Education

• Media

• Arts & Entertainment

• Business

• Government

And we can see today just how successful they have become with the election of Donald Trump and the elevation of Seven Mountain Dominionist Paula White as his spiritual advisor.

Believers in 7MM call for the end of secular democracy in America and the imposition of a Christian theocracy in order to bring about the Rapture. And the use of violence is absolutely seen as a method towards those goals.

Since 1996, Bill Johnson, a senior leader of Bethel Church, and Johnny Enlow, a self-described prophet and Seven Mountains advocate, among others, have taken the original idea of the Seven Mountains Mandate and reshaped it into a more aggressive, political and spiritually militant approach. Spiritual militancy reflects an aggressive, us-vs.-them mindset that blurs the line between faith and authoritarianism, promoting dominion over society in the name of spiritual warfare.

Their version doesn’t just aim to influence culture; it frames the effort as a spiritual battle to reclaim and reshape the nation according to their vision of God’s will.

The list of prominent 7MM followers reads like a who’s who of the Republican Party. You have Michelle Bachmann, Lauren Boebert, Ted Cruz, Mike Johnson, Charlie Kirk, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker, Evangelical leader Andrew Wommack, Secretary of War Crimes Pete Hegseth, and of course Paula White herself.

However many Biblical scholars consider this to be an aberration of Biblical teachings and a distortion of Gospel which teaches Christians to use witnessing and discipleship rather than cultural takeover to spread their religion.

At this point they may as well be shouting into a hurricane because it’s beyond obvious that what is driving the Right’s culture war nonsense these days comes straight from the Seven Mountains Mandate.

The New Apostolic Reformation

The New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, is a loosely organized charismatic Christian movement that shares similarities with Pentecostalism, especially the belief that God actively communicates with believers through the Holy Spirit. However it differs from traditional Pentecostalism in that it tasks “prophets” and “apostles” to transform society in order to usher God’s kingdom on Earth.

Vance Boelter, who shot and killed Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, studied at an offshoot of the NAR called Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas. After his arrest it was discovered that Boelter possessed a list of 70 politicians, primarily Democrats and abortion rights supporters.

After the shooting, the Christ for the Nations Institute issued a statement “unequivocally” denouncing “any and all forms of violence and extremism.” It stated: “Our organization’s mission is to educate and equip students to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ through compassion, love, prayer, service, worship, and value for human life.” (Nudge nudge, wink wink.)

But Boelter was not alone. Many leaders of the NAR were instrumental in fomenting the violence we all witnessed on January 6th, and the Christian Nationalist “Appeal to Heaven” flag was figured prominently during that attack. The same flag that flies outside of Sam Alito’s house, by the way.

Because adherents to the NAR believe that they are fighting spiritual warfare against the “demons” that have infested civil government, education, other churches, and society itself, and that they must “cleanse” the nation of those demons. Thus the Seven Mountains Mandate and an end to secular life in America.

NAR-aligned leaders have framed electoral contests as struggles between “godly” candidates and those under the sway of “satanic” influence.

Similarly, NAR “prophet” Cindy Jacobs has repeatedly emphasized the need for “spiritual warfare” in schools to combat what she characterizes as “demonic ideologies” such as sex education, LGBTQ+ inclusion or discussions of systemic racism.

And the Seven Mountains Mandate is very much a real world parallel to the Sons of Jacob portrayed in the book “The Handmaid’s Tale”. That is exactly where we are headed unless we figure out how to stop these people.

Thankfully they no longer exist in the shadows and we can all clearly see who they are and what their agenda is. They have been pushing secular public school systems to hang the Ten Commandments in classrooms, to shove Biblical teachings into public school curricula, and to openly groom children into Christian ideologies. They have been buying up American media companies and pushing them rightwards. And they have been actively destroying much of the progress that this country has seen in the past 50 years.

Their laws are blatantly unconstitutional, yet their goal is to get these new laws into the Supreme Court where they will be supported by six Theocrats in black robes.

However, according to PRRI, Christian Nationalism does not poll strongly in the US, with 64% of respondents rejecting Christian Nationalism and 29% being hard rejectors. Around half of white Christians (16% Adherents and 30% Sympathizers) and four in ten Christians of color (14% Adherents and 25% Sympathizers) qualify as Christian Nationalists, compared with around one in ten non-Christians (3% Adherents and 10% Sympathizers) and unaffiliated Americans (2% Adherents and 8% Sympathizers).

It is clear that even though adherents to the Seven Mountains Mandate are a minority, they are having an outsized influence on American society. And the only way to stop them is to take this country back in November.

However, I will say that the Iran war debacle and subsequent massive increases in gas prices have finally ripped a hole in the SS Trumptanic’s hull and it’s taking on water, fast.

Let’s take a look at his job approval numbers, shall we?

Oh dear. The news this week is about how Trump’s 2024 voters are largely abandoning him. From Newsweek:

According to CNN’s analysis of multiple national polls, Trump won male voters by 13 points in the 2024 presidential election. That advantage has since flipped. Enten said Trump is now seven points underwater in net approval among men overall—a roughly 20‑point swing in just over a year.

From Yahoo News:

The primary catalyst for this reversal is of course the economy.

“We’ve spoken about it over and over and over again. The cost of living. It’s inflation. In October 2024 … Trump was trusted more than Kamala Harris by 10 points on this issue. Now we’ve got a 40-point switcheroo in the other direction,” Enten said. “His net approval rating on the cost of living among men is underwater by 30 percentage points.”

Remember George H.W. Bush’s famous campaign line? “It’s the economy, stupid”.

Another core group that went for Trump in 2024 are Latinos. From Pew Research:

Latinos have grown pessimistic in the year since the 2024 presidential election. Most say their situation in the United States has worsened. And as Donald Trump’s second term unfolds, Latinos are increasingly critical of his job performance and his administration’s immigration and economic policies – two key issues for Latino voters in last year’s election.

• 70% of Latinos disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president.

• 65% disapprove of the administration’s approach to immigration.

• 61% say Trump’s economic policies have made economic conditions worse.

I’m sure ICE raids and the general atmosphere of fear in the Latino community can’t be helping things either. Entire neighborhoods are ghost towns and the normal hustle and bustle of Latino businesses have stopped.

In heavily Trump supporting South Texas, for example, ICE raids are having a serious effect on the economy, especially in the construction industry that relies upon immigrant labor. The economic impact on cities targeted by ICE have been also been severe. From NPR:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement deployments to American cities are a central part of President Trump's immigration crackdown. Yet, according to data analyzed by NPR — and interviews with law enforcement and city officials — these actions stretched local police departments thin, disrupted businesses and left city budgets struggling to absorb the fallout.

In Los Angeles, where the financial situation is already dire, LAPD overtime spending climbed to $41 million in June 2025, when immigration raids sparked weeks of protests — well above the department’s typical monthly range of $18 to $30 million, according to the city controller’s office.

In Minneapolis, the police department reported more than $6 million in overtime and standby pay in less than a month, from Jan. 7 to Feb. 8, according to the city’s police chief. That’s more than double the city’s entire annual police overtime budget of $2.3 million.

And Republicans know that they’re in big trouble which is why an unprecedented number of Congressional Republicans are retiring at the end of their term rather than face the wrath of an angry public.

Meanwhile Trump’s White House continues to live in a fantasy world where he is extraordinarily popular and where nearly 100% of MAGAs approve of him. He continues to remain completely out of touch as to the realities of his Iran war on the ground as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, the Iranian regime remains in power, and bad polling is dismissed as “fake news”.

Roughly 7 months to go until the Midterms. They cannot come soon enough.

And this is only the beginning.

The entire world is about to see massive economic shocks as the ripples of Trump’s attack on Iran reverberate around the planet. And in case there was any doubt as to how utterly incompetent Trump and his merry band of warmongering misfits are, it was reported this week that they had no plan in case Iran close those Straits.

From The Atlantic:

Astonishingly, President Trump and his aides were caught unprepared when Iran, under air assault from the United States and Israel, retaliated by targeting shipping in the Persian Gulf region and specifically through the Strait of Hormuz. Military planners have pointed out for decades that the waterway—through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes—is highly vulnerable to Iranian assault. But the Trump administration acknowledged in classified briefings, CNN reported last night, that it did not make provisions for a closure because officials assumed that such a move would hurt Iran more than the United States.

“Astonishing” is putting it lightly. Ever since the Revolution that threw the Western-backed Shah out of power and elevated the repressive Islamic Regime of Ayatollahs, Iran has expected the USA, and her Western allies, to strike back one day. And they’ve always maintained that they could very easily stop shipping through that narrow chokepoint using mines and land-based missiles.

But no. Trump was too stupid and arrogant to plan for such an eventuality. Nobody tells THAT guy how things work. Trump knows more than the Generals and Admirals, after all.

And to make matters worse, it was also revealed that Director of Beer Pong Kash Patel fired all of the Iranian counterterrorism experts before the attacks began. For the stupidest reason, of course.

Just days before the United States launched a major military operation in Iran, FBI Director Kash Patel fired a dozen agents and staff members from a counterintelligence unit tasked with monitoring threats from Iran, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

They were ousted for a simple reason: Each was involved in the investigation of President Donald Trump’s alleged retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

As a result, Patel hamstrung the Washington, DC-based FBI counterintelligence unit, known as CI-12, which handles cases ranging from mishandling of classified documents to tracking foreign spies operating on US soil.

I mean who needs experts anyways, right? Experts are so overrated.

Vote for a clown, expect a circus. A cadre of evil, stupid clowns. Clowns that consider the consequences of their actions. Clowns that love to break things, love to kill people, love to ruin entire economies just so they can feel powerful. Evil, demented clowns whose sole purpose is to make everything suck.

But don’t worry, America. Don’t worry, world. Oil companies are raking in record profits so at least someone is benefiting. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it. Gas prices might come down sometime in mid-2027. Just hold your horses.

Those midterms cannot come soon enough.