Heat, Maps, and Mayhem: Trump Turns Up the Temperature at Home and Abroad

From record-shattering heat waves to a Putin-friendly land swap in Ukraine, the headlines prove that when Trump’s in charge, the climate isn’t the only thing in crisis.

Good morning! America is sizzling like a poorly timed steak on a cheap gas grill, with more than 40 million people under dangerous heat alerts. Phoenix, Palm Springs, and even the Grand Canyon are pushing 115°F, while the Plains brace for triple digits and the Northwest flirts with highs near 110. Single-digit humidity and gusty winds in Oregon, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming are primed for wildfire spread, because obviously the climate crisis wasn’t dramatic enough without a little accelerant. Relief will be brief, just long enough for the heat to come roaring back into the Midwest and Northeast next week like a sweaty freight train.

Across the Atlantic, in foreign policy land, Europe has decided it’s not going to watch Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin play Risk with the Ukrainian border, especially when the “game” involves Ukraine being told to hand over roughly 25% of the Donetsk region plus other fortified territory Russia hasn’t been able to capture. Putin’s preconditions for their Aug. 15 Alaska meeting also include lifting sanctions, in exchange for a ceasefire that amounts to a complete victory for Moscow. Retired U.S. Colonel Richard Williams called Trump’s border-redrawing fantasy “a bloody Russian land grab” and accused him of chasing “the Nobel Peace Prize for nothing.”

Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly and forcefully rejected the plan, telling Trump and Putin that “any decisions made without Ukraine are decisions against peace” and insisting on a ceasefire first, reciprocal territorial exchanges only, the return of Crimea, and ironclad NATO membership guarantees. European leaders Macron, Starmer, Meloni, Merz, Tusk, Stubb, and von der Leyen have echoed him, declaring that Ukraine’s future cannot be decided without Ukraine. Macron warned that legitimizing a forceful change of borders would shred the post–WWII international order and invite aggression against other nations from Taiwan to the Baltics.

Trump, meanwhile, has been telling reporters there will be “swapping of territories to the betterment of both” and now claims his campaign promise to end the war in 24 hours was just “sarcasm.” Europe’s diplomatic translation: they’ll see Trump’s Alaska summit and raise him a hard pass on appeasement, and a reminder that the map of Europe is not a set of poker chips to be slid across the table for the price of a photo op.

Back home, the White House is busy cleaning house, literally, starting with IRS Commissioner Billy Long, who was booted after refusing to hand over taxpayer data on 40,000 suspected undocumented immigrants. DHS wanted addresses, privacy lawyers objected, and Treasury had already greased the skids for data-sharing. Long’s firing clears the way for what DHS hinted would eventually be a hunt for seven million people. Because nothing says “small government” like weaponizing the tax code for mass surveillance.

Then there’s Roland Mehrez Beainy, the Lebanese-born owner of a Trump-themed burger joint in Texas, now facing deportation for overstaying his visa and allegedly fabricating a marriage. Beainy’s MAGA merch-lined restaurants celebrated the man now trying to kick him out. Somewhere in the cosmos, irony is standing ovation–applause loud enough to drown out a campaign rally.

The Epstein saga refuses to stay buried. Valdson Vieira Cotrin, who ran Epstein’s Paris home for 18 years, says he never believed Epstein would kill himself, noting the financier was confident about securing bail. It’s yet another crack in the official story, though at this point the “suicide” narrative has more holes than Trump’s recollection of any meeting under oath.

Speaking of selective memory, we now know that FBI Director Kash Patel once took the Fifth when asked before a grand jury about Trump’s obstruction and espionage case at Mar-a-Lago. He only agreed to talk after prosecutors granted him immunity, which is not exactly the “nothing to hide” energy you want from the nation’s top cop.

Trump, for his part, has signed a directive authorizing U.S. military strikes deep into Latin America against drug cartels. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth once called this an “all options on the table” scenario, though critics point out that “law enforcement via airstrike” is usually filed under “destabilizing foreign policy.” It’s a premise straight out of The Sum of All Fears, the Tom Clancy novel where one “surgical” strike sets off a chain reaction of mistrust, retaliation, and geopolitical chaos that can’t be stuffed back in the bottle. The only difference is that in Clancy’s world, the fictional president actually read the briefing book before pulling the trigger. In ours, it’s just one more blurred line between policing and war.

And while Trump insists inflation doesn’t exist, “look how cheap everything is!”, this week’s CPI reading is expected to clock in at 2.9–3%, driven largely by his own tariffs. Real incomes are shrinking, coffee makers have jumped from $19.99 to $49.95, and gas prices are creeping toward $4.50 on the West Coast. Economists are warning of stagflation, that charming 1970s cocktail of rising prices and stagnating growth. If your grocery store starts using digital tags that change prices mid-shop after a presidential tweet about hating apples, don’t be shocked. We have the technology.

In the “gerrymandering as blood sport” department, Trump has been pressuring Texas Republicans to redraw congressional maps mid-decade, insisting the GOP is “entitled” to five more seats, the Constitution and basic democratic norms be damned. Democrats in the state fled to block the vote, but the real fireworks came from across the country: California Governor Gavin Newsom threatened a “trigger” redistricting plan of his own, pledging to put a Democratic-friendly map before voters if Texas moves forward. “We’ll fight fire with fire,” Newsom vowed, promising an election in November to let Californians redraw their lines in kind. It’s an interstate game of mutually assured cartographic destruction, a reminder that once you start playing with maps for raw partisan gain, you’d better be ready for someone else to grab the pen.

The streets are not taking all this lying down. Massive protests erupted in Los Angeles against Trump’s ICE raids, ignored by corporate media but loud enough for Secret Service to scramble when the president apparently planned to return to the White House roof, yes, the same roof where he recently mused about installing nuclear weapons, before someone talked him down. Across the Atlantic, UK protesters heckled JD Vance outside Chevening House as European leaders confronted Trump’s real estate–broker–turned–Russia–envoy Steve Witkoff over what Putin actually told him. After three rounds of calls, Witkoff admitted Putin hadn’t offered a withdrawal but demanded Ukraine hand over fortified land in exchange for a “maybe” on a ceasefire. Zelensky and Europe’s leaders responded with a firm no: ceasefire first, NATO guarantees after, and keep your hands off Ukrainian soil.

While that diplomatic humiliation unfolded, Trump was showing off “Trump 2028” merchandise to Azerbaijan’s dictator and joking about running for a third term constitutional limits be damned. Between that, the regime’s efforts to strip patents from Harvard, demand $1 billion in tribute from UCLA, and punish universities that don’t toe the MAGA line, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that dismantling America from the inside isn’t the business plan. Which is why the protests matter. Because if the White House is going to run like a clearance sale on democratic norms, someone has to stay in the street, keeping the receipts.