Bananas, Bombs, and the Bleaching of the Republic

From Trump’s tariff tango to Florida’s dying reefs, the empire keeps finding new ways to sink.

Good morning! The great empire awoke this morning to the sweet scent of economic genius, or maybe just overripe bananas. The Trump administration, ever the master of performative backpedaling, announced plans to cut tariffs on bananas, coffee, beef, and textiles from Ecuador, Argentina, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

If you feel dizzy trying to recall which hemisphere today’s betrayal is happening in, you’re not alone. This is the same administration that spent years swearing by “reciprocal tariffs,” only to quietly admit that perhaps, just perhaps, taxing bananas wasn’t the hill to die on. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News the move would “bring prices down very quickly,” as if shaving 3¢ off your morning coffee is going to fix the economy they spent years detonating.

But this wasn’t just a random trade gesture, it was the second act in the Great Latin American Loyalty Program. Yesterday, the Financial Times revealed that $900 million mysteriously vanished from U.S. IMF reserves and reappeared in Argentina’s account, just in time for President Javier Milei to pay his IMF bill. Today, that same Argentina gets a tariff break. Funny how the math works when you’re laundering global capitalism through the tropics.

The White House insists this is about “lowering costs for consumers.” Right. And the IMF transfer was about “supporting regional stability.” The truth is simpler: it’s about propping up allies who flatter Trump and pretending it’s economic policy. First the secret bailout, now the banana diplomacy. “America First” has officially become “America Funds Everyone.”

The Justice Department is writing a new chapter in authoritarian absurdity, declaring that U.S. troops who blow up boats in the Caribbean can’t be prosecuted. The July memo, exposed by the Washington Post, claims these deadly “boat strikes”, which have killed 76 people, including a Colombian fisherman, are lawful acts of war.

The DOJ’s logic is elegant in its insanity: since the President declared drug trafficking part of a “non-international armed conflict,” anyone he points to can be vaporized without trial. In other words, the War on Drugs has literally gone naval.

The Pentagon assures us that “lawyers up and down the chain of command reviewed these operations.” Sure, the same way HR reviews your resignation letter after you’ve already quit. Congress wasn’t asked, international law wasn’t consulted, and due process wasn’t invited. The President now claims the authority to judge, jury, and torpedo anyone he deems suspicious. Somewhere, the late Dick Cheney is beaming with professional pride.

Senate Democrats, in a rare moment of clarity, warned that this puts service members in an impossible bind: follow an unlawful order and risk war crimes, or disobey and get court-martialed. The DOJ resolved that tension by simply declaring all orders lawful. Problem solved, legality by executive decree. It’s the kind of circular reasoning only a collapsing democracy could admire.

While Washington drowns in its own hubris, the literal seas are rising, and they’re done waiting for subpoenas. The Climate Prediction Center announced that La Niña will dominate winter weather across the U.S., bringing droughts, floods, and meteorological chaos with all the impartiality of a cosmic referee. The Pacific, it turns out, doesn’t care who’s in the Oval Office.

This La Niña may be weak, but she’s still the planet’s preferred reminder that physics always wins. The South bakes, the Northwest freezes, and the rest of us pretend that “meteorological winter” sounds less biblical than it is. A marine heatwave spanning the Pacific is now so vast it may rewrite the forecast entirely. Climate scientists call it a “complicating factor.” Ordinary people call it “the apocalypse, but moist.”

And if you think that’s bad, wait until you get to Florida, where the Atlantic is literally removing the state from the map. According to a new National Geographic report, last year’s heatwave cooked the coral reefs so thoroughly that staghorn and elkhorn corals, once the sentinels of Florida’s coast, are now functionally extinct.

Down off Key Largo, researcher Katey Lesneski watched a reef that had taken centuries to grow turn ghost white in real time. “I was crying underwater into my mask,” she said. Imagine weeping into an ocean that’s too warm to notice.

Those reefs weren’t decoration; they were defense. Hard coral walls that reduced wave energy by 97 percent, protecting Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Key West from storm surge. Without them, every hurricane’s punch will land harder and farther inland. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that losing three feet of reef height will expose 24,000 more Floridians and $2.9 billion in property during a major storm.

Scientists are now breeding “Flonduran” corals, hybrids between Florida and Honduran survivors, in a last-ditch attempt to outwit the ocean. It’s a little like crossing a hamster and a toaster to build a better ark. Admirable, yes. Hopeless, probably.

As Miami Waterkeeper’s Rachel Silverstein put it: “This reef has been here for thousands of years, and in just a few decades, we’re seeing it disappear.” Translation: the climate timeline has synced with the political one. You can practically measure the bleaching in presidential terms.

So, while Trump’s Treasury juggles IMF ledgers and the DOJ rewrites maritime law, the Atlantic keeps rising, the Pacific keeps shifting, and Florida’s last coral sentinels dissolve into foam. You can rename the Department of Defense the Department of War, but the real war’s already begun, and the enemy doesn’t need lawyers or talking points.

Mother Nature doesn’t hold press conferences, but she does keep receipts. Part one of my sustainability essay will publish here later today.