The Ambush Budget

From propaganda in the Oval Office to contempt immunity in Congress, the Trump regime just declared war on reality, and the working class may have only one option left.

Good morning! On Wednesday, Donald Trump dimmed the lights in the Oval Office like he was setting the mood for a hostage tape, and proceeded to ambush South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with a propaganda video. A video, at the White House, complete with fringe footage and long-debunked claims of a “white genocide” in South Africa.

Trump’s gullibility has become its own axis of danger. This man mistook a clearly doctored image of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s hand, complete with an embedded sans serif font, as forensic evidence. Who believed a 5-minute propaganda video was a diplomatic briefing? Who thinks Escape from Alcatraz is a historical documentary? Foreign leaders, disinformation brokers, and hard-right ideologues have long figured out the cheat code: feed Trump sensational images, racist undertones, and a whiff of flattery, and he’ll not only believe it, he’ll build policy around it. He is not a president guided by intelligence briefings or legal frameworks. He is a man led by whatever flashes across his screen next.

Ramaphosa, to his credit, remained composed, even as Trump peddled racial conspiracies pulled straight from the fever swamps of the far-right. At his side, South African-born Elon Musk watched intently, nodding along like the sidekick in a Bond villain lair. It was a moment of grotesque symmetry: Trump as the torchbearer of white grievance, Musk as the signal booster.

But Musk wasn’t done. Shortly after, he was back on X retweeting the same nonsense he saw on the screen, then shifting to self-promotion, saying things like, “I derive joy from seeing people enjoy the products my companies make.” This, from a man whose products include defective cars, collapsing rockets, and a publicly subsidized agency currently dismantling Medicare oversight.

Meanwhile, across town, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy declared that the Trump administration had unquestionably violated his court order by deporting multiple migrants to South Sudan, a country only one of them was actually from. It was an act of bureaucratic contempt dressed up as immigration policy. Sadly, contempt rulings might soon be off the table altogether.

As of early Thursday morning, Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” squeaked through the House by a single vote. Less a budget, it is more of a wrecking ball. A manifesto of legalized authoritarianism and billionaire fetishism, stitched together by the Freedom Caucus and rolled out like it’s a Costco hot dog special.

Hidden in the fine print? A provision that neuters federal courts from enforcing contempt citations unless a specific type of bond is set, effectively de-fanging judges like Murphy, just as the administration barrels past legal lines. Retroactively, of course, just in time for Trump’s legal exposure.

Also tucked inside: elimination of the $200 tax on gun silencers, repeal of the indoor tanning tax, sweeping new restrictions on abortion coverage, even when no federal funds are involved, and the debut of $1,000 “Trump Accounts” for newborns. This last gimmick is a shameless rebranding of a serious policy first proposed by Senator Cory Booker, who called for federally funded “baby bonds” to help close the racial wealth gap. Under Trump, the program has been stripped of its equity goals, renamed for branding purposes, and repackaged as a glorified MAGA-branded savings gimmick. What was once a tool for intergenerational justice is now a budget line scrawled over with a Sharpie and a signature.

All of this is happening while Trump slashes wages for federal contract workers, from $17.75 an hour down to $13.30, because apparently, the people who clean federal buildings and guard government facilities are being paid too much. Richard Wolff called it what it is: a direct wage assault in the middle of a living cost crisis. This rollback impacts hundreds of thousands of workers employed by private companies under federal contracts, including janitors, food service workers, and security personnel. The wage cut represents a 25% reduction in income for these workers, many of whom are already struggling to make ends meet amid rising living costs.

That same analysis warned of something more dangerous: Trump and Musk’s mass purging of federal workers under the banner of “efficiency,” all while laying the groundwork for collapsing wages across the entire labor market.

And if the domestic scene feels bleak, the international one just turned blood-red. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced, “We don’t want this anymore,” referring to ceasefire talks with Ukraine. He couldn’t have been more blunt if he’d held up a white flag and lit it on fire. Moscow sent a low-level delegation to the Istanbul talks, ignored Zelensky’s request for a face-to-face with Putin, and reiterated demands that Ukraine cede entire regions. Peace was never on the table, it was a prop.

Trump’s response? He called Putin, got stonewalled again, and then cheerfully reported to European allies that Putin “believes he’s winning.” Axios reports they were “surprised” Trump seemed so content with that answer.

And now comes the final punchline: Russia just promoted Gen. Andrey Mordvichev, the Mariupol siege commander and butcher of Avdiivka, to head of ground forces. He’s the man credited with Russia’s infamous “meat assaults,” where wave after wave of ill-equipped conscripts were hurled toward fortified Ukrainian lines. It was war by attrition. And now it’s doctrine. The empire has stopped pretending it wants peace. So has Trump.

As Trump slashes the wages of federal contract workers, guts civil service, and passes laws to muzzle the judiciary, Ukrainians are doing something remarkable: they’re building. In the middle of an existential war.

On Wednesday, XTI Engineering, a local Ukrainian firm, unveiled the HART 5100, a domestically produced, remote-controlled de-mining machine. It’s affordable, about $500,000. It’s 80% locally sourced. And it can clear two hectares of explosive-contaminated land per shift. This wasn’t even a concept three years ago. Now it’s reality. Ukraine, once completely reliant on foreign technology for mine removal, is now producing machines tailored for its own terrain and danger zones.

It’s a survival story. While Russia promotes generals who measure progress in corpses and dismisses ceasefire talks as a waste of time, Ukrainians are inventing ways to reclaim and rebuild their homeland, one bomb-scarred field at a time.

And it’s impossible to see this and not ask: If they can do this in the middle of a war zone, why can’t we muster the courage to resist our own domestic dismantling? Why do we tolerate a regime that governs through vanity, vengeance, and vandalism?

If Ukraine can fight for life, under missile fire, under siege, under unimaginable pressure, then we can damn well fight for democracy, dignity, and decency here at home.

This budget bill is a hinge point. If the Senate follows the House in passing it, we will no longer be debating whether the authoritarian state has arrived; we’ll be living in it. The courts are being muzzled, wages are being cut, and federal labor is being gutted. Immigrants are being deported to war zones, peace is off the table, and billionaires are lusting after Greenland like circling vultures, all while Trump’s tariffs drive up prices for the rest of us.

At some point, the polite objections and cleverly worded op-eds won’t be enough. If this is how they govern, then perhaps it’s time we stop cooperating, revoke our consent to be governed, and stop participating in our own abuse. Not just in protest, but in practice. We’ve spoken before about the idea of a general strike. Today, that idea grows more urgent. The authoritarians aren’t waiting anymore. Why should we?