Cruelty Is the Point. Resistance Is the Answer

Trump’s tantrums, Orbán’s bans, Alligator Alcatraz, and the global “No Kings” wave reminding us who’s really in charge when people show up.

Good morning! First, let’s clear up a small but popular point: Yes, I mixed up Vienna with Venice in yesterday’s roundup. Vienna is a beautiful city I’ve spent time in. Venice is a beautiful city I hope to visit someday, before it sinks, preferably. And someday, I hope to afford a copy editor so you don’t have to keep me honest before I’ve had enough coffee. Thank you for reminding me I am still right here in Oregon even when my head is in Austria, truly.

Donald Trump got a rude awakening from Budapest this week, where over 100,000 people defied Viktor Orbán’s Pride parade ban and threats of “massive consequences.” They showed up anyway. While Orbán tries to criminalize LGBTQ people, and Trump dreams of ruling like him, the people keep showing up, rainbow flags waving across Budapest bridges, declaring “No Kings” in a world where strongmen want to write the rules.

Meanwhile, Canada is doing what functioning adults do. After Trump threw a tantrum, halting trade talks over a digital tax he just discovered (a year late), Prime Minister Carney coolly responded: “We’ll continue to conduct these negotiations in the best interest of Canadians.” But behind that calm is a real pivot: Canada is rearming, rebuilding its defense industries, and deepening ties with Europe under a new Canada-EU defense pact signed just before the NATO summit. Canadian shipyards are expanding, munitions factories are scaling up production, and joint exercises with European forces are becoming the norm as Canada positions itself to protect its sovereignty, yes, from Trump’s America, in addition to the usual Russian and Chinese threats. This is the quiet, strategic shift of 2025: a Canada no longer assuming the neighbor to the south is stable or friendly, but preparing for a world where the United States under Trump is just another danger to manage.

In this new reality, it’s not just Canada making moves. Germany and Italy are in the process of repatriating significant portions of their gold reserves from vaults in the United States, citing “financial sovereignty” and “strategic contingency planning” in increasingly uncertain times. For decades, storing gold in New York was seen as safe and practical; now, with Trump rattling sabers at allies, threatening trade wars on a whim, and undermining global financial norms, even NATO partners are taking steps to ensure that if the American empire falters, or turns on them, their assets won’t be frozen in a fit of presidential rage tweet. It’s a small but telling sign of the new world Trump has created: even your allies don’t trust you anymore.

Over in Israel, Trump decided it was the perfect week to post open extortion threats, demanding the Israeli judiciary drop corruption charges against Netanyahu while reminding them how much military aid the U.S. sends. It’s Ukraine impeachment déjà vu, but this time the target is Israel’s judiciary, and the crime is happening in daylight while corporate media scrolls past to the next horse race poll. Netanyahu, for the record, is on trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in three separate cases. He’s accused of accepting lavish gifts, cigars, champagne, jewelry, from billionaires in exchange for political favors and pushing regulatory changes benefiting powerful media executives in exchange for positive coverage. The charges aren’t minor; they’re allegations of a sitting leader selling out his country’s policies for personal gain, the kind of corruption that would topple any ordinary government. But instead of letting Israel’s courts do their job, Trump is openly threatening to withhold billions in military aid if Netanyahu faces accountability, proving once again that in Trump’s world, the rule of law is just another bargaining chip.

All of this while Trump’s “Murder Bill” slouches toward passage. The Medicaid cuts alone will rip healthcare from 15 million Americans. One in four nursing homes warns they will shut down. The nation’s only federal after-school program? Gone. Hospitals in Louisiana and North Carolina warn these cuts will cause “historic devastation,” but billionaires get tax breaks and the coal industry gets subsidies because Trump hates windmills and loves cruelty. Even Elon Musk, in between feuds, admits the bill will “destroy millions of jobs” while propping up industries stuck in the past.

Meanwhile, Biden and Harris stood quietly at the funeral of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, comforting a state still reeling from recent political assassinations that Trump dismissed with a sneer. “Why would I call him?” Trump said of Minnesota’s governor. In MAGA politics, kindness is weakness, and cruelty is the brand.

Speaking of cruelty, Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” is now operational, formally an ICE detention site on a swamp‑surrounded airstrip where migrants stripped of protected status are held in tents surrounded by alligators and pythons. It’s dystopian, but it gets worse: the Department of Homeland Security actually shared a meme on X featuring AI‑generated alligators wearing ICE caps in front of the facility, cheekily captioned “Coming soon!” That’s right, DHS is trolling this cruelty. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem praised the plan, saying it’s a “cost‑effective” expansion of mass deportation capacity and tapping FEMA funds to build it at “turbo‑speed”. Imagine mocking people with images of animals guarding camps, and federal agencies are doing just that. We are talking cruelty packaged as comedy.

While authoritarian cruelty expands, so does resistance. This week, Pope Leo called Ukraine a “martyred nation” under Russia’s “senseless war” as he met with Ukrainian Greek Catholic pilgrims at the Vatican, standing with families who have lost children, siblings, parents. In a world where strongmen rarely face moral pushback, the clarity of that statement matters.

And even as Ukrainian soldiers hold the line, Ukrainians at home are dreaming beyond war. On Constitution Day, they told the Kyiv Post what they want to change in their Constitution once the war ends: protections for equality, stripping oligarchs of unchecked power, and building a country worth the sacrifices they’ve made. It’s the same fight echoing in Budapest, Canada, and the United States, people insisting on the right to live without kings.

But while Ukraine dreams of the future, Russia continues imperial extraction in the present. Russian forces claim to have seized the village of Shevchenko in eastern Ukraine, which sits atop one of Europe’s largest lithium deposits, 14 million tons of ore with high lithium hydroxide concentrations, essential for Europe’s green transition and battery production. It’s the second major lithium deposit Russia may have swallowed since 2022, locking away the future under guns and fences, another reminder of how war, greed, and power intersect in the rawest ways.

Around the world, the “No Kings” wave is alive, from Budapest’s bridges to Canada’s cool defiance, from Ukrainians envisioning a freer tomorrow to those resisting Trump’s relentless cruelty here at home. Strongmen are loud, but people are louder, and they’re not going away.

We’ll keep tracking the “Murder Bill,” the pressures on courts, the creeping normalization of cruelty, and the moments of resistance that remind us why it’s worth paying attention, and worth fighting for something better.

Carpe Momentum