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Your Human Rights Money
Read more . . . →The State Department just spent $177 million of human rights money on far-right pet projects. Afrikaner rights in South Africa, “Western civilizational norms,” and $2 million specifically earmarked for groups that reject what the grant documents call “gender ideology.” They burned through the money on the last day of the fiscal year so it wouldn’t lapse. That’s not governance, that’s a smash-and-grab at closing time. One of the biggest recipients is the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, run by a former Trump policy adviser. So human rights funds are now paying a Trump ally’s org to fight communism, which in...
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Table for Three
Read more . . . →The United States just left the international anti-corruption watchdog. The only other countries to have done that are Russia and Belarus. That’s the full list. Three countries, and we’re one of them now. GRECO, the Group of States against Corruption, has been monitoring government accountability since 1999. The US joined in 2000 and stayed through every administration since. The State Department’s official reason for leaving: it “does not provide tangible benefits to U.S. national security.” Translation: accountability is inconvenient when you’re the one being watched. Same week, the administration declined to invite international election observers for November’s midterms. First you...
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Shipped to Nowhere
Read more . . . →The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the Trump administration can keep deporting people to countries they’ve never set foot in. No notice of where they’re going, no chance to argue. Just a one-way ticket to wherever some foreign government signed a blanket promise not to torture them. Twenty-five thousand people have already been processed this way since March 2025. The lower courts called it unconstitutional. A federal judge said the bare minimum is telling someone where you’re sending them. The Supreme Court looked at that and said: actually, let’s let it keep happening while we think about it. Full arguments...
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The Fork Led to a Ditch
Read more . . . →DOGE paid 144,000 federal workers $6.7 billion to sit at home and do nothing. That was the efficiency plan. A 435 percent spike in paid administrative leave. Six times the salary cost of the year before. The program was called “Fork in the Road,” and it was sold as a way to trim the fat. The GAO just showed everyone what it actually trimmed: seven billion dollars from the treasury, for the privilege of having fewer people do the work. Then the agencies started rehiring. Over 20,000 new hires by June, same kinds of roles they’d just paid people to...
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Thirty Billion and a Soccer Ball
Read more . . . →The US and China just released their big tariff deal. Seventy-seven items get relief. The list includes fireworks, Christmas ornaments, tableware, and soccer balls. That’s the headline from the summit: you can buy a cheaper soccer ball now. Meanwhile, tariffs have cost the average American household over $2,500 this year. Congratulations, you got about nine percent back. Mostly in ornaments. This is the cycle. Break something big, fix something small, hold a press conference. The Supreme Court ruled the IEEPA tariffs unconstitutional back in February. Didn’t matter. Trump kept collecting and now wants a standing ovation for agreeing to stop...
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Eight Hundred Million and a Loophole
Read more . . . →Eight hundred and ten million dollars. That’s how much Congress voted to spend on refugee services, children’s programs, and domestic aid. The president decided he’d rather keep it. Not through a veto, not through any process involving another branch of government. He used something called a “pocket rescission,” which is a fancy way of saying he let the money expire in a drawer. The GAO already ruled it illegal. Lawmakers in both parties said the same thing. He did it anyway, because consequences are for people who can’t afford lawyers. Over $567 million of that was earmarked for the Office...
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Chinese State TV Had a Better Seat
Read more . . . →Trump banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House for writing things he didn’t like. A federal judge told him that was unconstitutional. The White House kept barring reporters anyway. And while American journalists stood outside on the sidewalk, Chinese state media walked right in to cover Xi Jinping’s state dinner. The President of the United States gave a propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party more access to his own house than the American press. This is the same man who spent a decade calling China the greatest threat to American security. The same guy who slapped...
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Four Days Until Your Whisky Disappears
Read more . . . →In four days, it becomes illegal to import Canadian whisky into the United States. Also banned: Canadian beer, wine, vodka, cider, motorcycles, and whey protein. Trump signed the executive orders as retaliation for Canada’s retaliatory tariffs, which were retaliation for his original tariffs, which were retaliation for Canada having the nerve to exist next door. The circle of punishment lands, as it always does, on the person holding the receipt. This is what a trade war looks like when one side runs out of ideas. You can’t negotiate your way to a win, so you take the other country’s beer...
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Obsolete Since 1980
Read more . . . →The Labor Department just repealed protections for migrant farmworkers that have existed since 1980. Forty-six years of requiring OSHA and the Wage and Hour Division to actually coordinate on enforcing the rights of the people who pick your food. Gone. The official reason: the rules are “obsolete” and don’t reflect “modern, effective, and flexible coordination models.” Which is a beautiful way to say nobody’s watching anymore. This takes effect September 30. One week from now, the already threadbare safety net for seasonal farmworkers gets thinner. These are people who work in 100-degree heat for wages most Americans would reject on...
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Five Hundred Dollars and a Closed Hospital
Read more . . . →Trump is mailing $500 “Obamacare refund” checks to about a million people while the bill he signed last year cut a trillion dollars from Medicaid. Read that again. A trillion. Three hundred and eighty rural hospitals are now at risk of closing, and the guy who killed their funding is sending out rebate checks like a car dealership running a Labor Day sale. The total payout is $500 million. He cut two thousand times that from the program that keeps those hospitals open. The math is not complicated. The check is a prop. It is a photo op with an...
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