Putin’s Press Secretary, America’s Chef-in-Chief, and the Billionaires Who Want to Gut You

A phone call with a dictator, a golf club crawling with violations, a court ruling that buries the planet, and one pope praying for peace.

Good morning! Let’s begin with the man who once promised to end the Ukraine war “in 24 hours.” Instead, Donald Trump emerged from a multi-day silence to announce that he’d just had a “very good” phone call with Vladimir Putin, one that, by his own admission, “will not lead to peace.” In a post that read like it was faxed straight from the Kremlin, Trump blamed Ukraine for drone strikes on Russian airfields, downplayed Moscow’s aggression, and casually floated the idea that Putin could help broker a deal with Iran over its nuclear program. You read that correctly: the man arming Russia with Iranian drones is now, according to Trump, the best hope to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Even Fox News looked visibly baffled, asking why Trump was essentially broadcasting Russia’s next military move. Enter Trump’s Secretary of State spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, who defended his actions with the conviction of a malfunctioning Roomba. She likened his so-called transparency to North Korea’s pink-suited news anchors, which, if nothing else, was the most accidentally honest metaphor of the day.

Meanwhile, Pope Leo XIV had his own call with Putin this week, pleading for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine. The Vatican’s appeal, rooted in the sanctity of life and international law, was met with predictable indifference from the Kremlin. President Zelensky expressed gratitude for the gesture but reminded the world that peace without justice is surrender. The timing couldn’t have been more damning: just hours after Leo’s call, Trump issued his own readout, praising the conversation with Putin while admitting it was not a step toward peace. While the pope tries to stop the bloodshed, Trump continues auditioning for the role of Putin’s wartime press secretary. One offers moral clarity; the other offers cover.

Yet, Zelensky remains undeterred. After Ukraine’s daring Operation Spiderweb destroyed over 30% of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, he announced Kyiv’s willingness to enter ceasefire talks anytime, anywhere. Putin declined. So Ukraine did what Ukraine does, showed strength. Trump once told Zelensky, “You don’t have the cards.” Turns out, he was wrong. Ukraine’s still playing, Trump’s still folding.

Speaking of wild cards, Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany arrives at the White House today, just in time to step into this geopolitical soup. On the agenda: trying to rescue the EU from Trump’s pending 50% tariffs, explaining to the president that AfD is not, in fact, the voice of German democracy, and possibly trying to get him to stop acting like Putin’s Instagram intern. Trump’s people, in the meantime, are still flirting with Europe’s far-right, defending AfD against Germany’s own intelligence agencies, and pretending this isn’t all wildly destabilizing.

But why stop at foreign humiliation when you can spook investors, too? Goldman Sachs has confirmed it’s been quietly paring back risk since Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariff barrage in April. Translation: the smart money is heading for the lifeboats. With uncertainty rising, capital expenditures stalling, and Moody’s warning about America’s $36 trillion debt pile, even Wall Street knows the vibes are rancid.

In a twist of fiscal irony, Elon Musk, fresh off a failed Starship test and mounting Tesla troubles, is now leading the social media charge against Trump’s gargantuan spending bill. Not because it’s cruel, corrupt, or wildly destructive, but because it doesn’t cut deep enough. Musk, who once begged the GOP to fire every Democrat, is now rage-posting memes like a high schooler with a libertarian phase. One post featured a movie-style “Kill Bill” poster. Another had his AI chatbot Grok dissecting Trump’s budget math and declaring it misleading. In Grok’s words, the Office of Management and Budget’s claim that the bill won’t expand the deficit by $5 trillion is… well, nonsense. Musk isn’t just trolling, he’s torching the narrative Trump’s team has been trying to sell.

While Trump sheepishly reposts vague affirmations and ducks the confrontation, Musk is on offense, criticizing what he sees as handouts to the “parasite class,” a dehumanizing term he often reserves for the poor, the sick, and anyone whose life doesn’t revolve around optimizing quarterly earnings. This isn’t ideological clarity. It’s class war cosplay from two billionaires whose only real dispute is over how to offload the costs of empire onto everyone else. Musk wants deeper service cuts and broader deregulation; Trump wants tax breaks for cronies and a shiny rally tagline. One fires tweets from a bunker in New Jersey, the other from a bunker under X HQ, but make no mistake: they’re fighting for control over the same rigged machine.

In Maryland, federal Judge Paula Xinis has officially lost patience with the Trump administration’s obstruction. On Wednesday, she granted attorneys for Arando Abrego Garcia the right to file a motion for sanctions after months of noncompliance with her Supreme Court–affirmed order to facilitate Garcia’s return to the U.S. “I feel like a cat and you’re moving the string around trying to jerk me around,” Xinis said in a recent hearing, calling out what she described as deliberate stalling tactics by DOJ and ICE. She also ordered the release of documents the administration had attempted to keep secret in a separate ruling, describing them as part of a broader “veil of secrecy.”

Bloomberg just confirmed a fatal crash involving Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system that was quietly reported seven months after it happened. The cause? Sun glare. The car didn’t slow down, didn’t brake, and veered directly into a pedestrian. Elon Musk insists the issue has since been solved, yet recent footage shows otherwise. Robo-taxis are launching next week in Austin, where, last we checked, the sun still shines. So unless Tesla’s next model comes with a sunhat and a seeing-eye dog, don’t hold your breath.

Back on Earth, in Liberty, Missouri, a quieter but no less devastating crisis is unfolding. Nearly a third of Warren Hills Elementary’s teachers are leaving, many citing cancer diagnoses they believe are linked to environmental hazards at the school. Some suspect the towering cell structure just 130 feet away. Others worry it’s something buried in the soil. Since 2020, at least nine staff members have received diagnoses of serious cancers, and while the school district insists it’s all coincidence, those most affected refuse to wait for officials to “prove it’s not the building.” For families and teachers, though, the damage has already been done, the trust is gone.

And in Washington, the machinery of that same indifference just clicked forward another notch. In a unanimous decision that environmental lawyers will cite with dread for decades, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a controversial crude oil railway in Utah, effectively gutting the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The ruling lowers the bar for approving major fossil fuel infrastructure, even as the climate crisis speeds up. The 88-mile railway at the heart of the case will now carve its way through sensitive terrain to Gulf Coast refineries, its approval fast-tracked with limited environmental review. This wasn’t just a ruling on a rail line, it was a green light for deregulated extraction, the kind fossil lobbyists have spent years engineering. With this decision, they finally drove in the golden spike.

Miraculously, some good news finally emerged from the Pacific. Hawaiʻi has become the first U.S. state to implement a “green fee” on hotel stays, raising an estimated $100 million annually to fund environmental protection and climate resilience. For just a few extra dollars per night, visitors will help support reef restoration, invasive species removal, and post-disaster recovery. The move is bold, overdue, and historic, proof that functional governance isn’t extinct, just island-bound.

And finally, for a palate cleanser worthy of a gag reflex: Trump’s Bedminster golf club was slapped with a health inspection score of 32 out of 100, the lowest in Somerset County. Critical violations included raw meat next to ready-to-eat food, unclean surfaces, and a staff described as clueless about basic food safety. Or, as Trump might say, a “tremendous job.” The facility has been upgraded to a B after a reinspection, but the stink of undercooked hubris still lingers.

That’s today’s circus: allies bewildered, inspectors appalled, Musk in denial, and Trump, somehow, still asking Putin for homework help. The world spins, and we document the disintegration, one round at a time.