The Turkey, the Tyrant, and the Trump Phone That Never Was

A holiday-eve roundup featuring ICE’s in-law roundup, Kristi Noem’s 18th-century cosplay, Trump’s crime-free hallucinations, Campbell’s chicken panic, and the ozone layer politely saving us anyway.

Good morning! It’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, which means half the country is busy basting turkeys and the other half is aggressively pretending they don’t see the dishes piling up. I’m doing my part by keeping today’s roundup a little shorter than usual while preparing for family chaos and attending to Marz, who believes the Pilgrims invented the concept of “romps” and therefore must honor the tradition hourly. But even on a short day, the news insists on being deeply, almost artistically absurd.

Let’s begin with the Trump administration’s ongoing experiment in reinventing autocracy by way of immigration policy. ICE has arrested Bruna Caroline Ferreira, the mother of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew, because nothing says “law and order” like deporting one of your own in-laws. Ferreira, who has lived in Massachusetts for decades and was in the process of obtaining a green card, was slapped with the label “criminal illegal alien” by DHS, a term they deploy the way some people use paprika, sprinkled liberally on everything whether it fits or not. Her attorney says she has no criminal record whatsoever and was previously a DACA recipient. But under Trump and Kristi Noem’s tenure at DHS, the nuance of “facts” continues to be optional. ICE grabbed her without a warrant, hauled her out of state, and now expects her to litigate her case from Louisiana.

Speaking of Kristi Noem: the Justice Department has finally confirmed what everyone suspected during those 255 days of bureaucratic stonewalling, Noem herself made the final call to defy a federal judge and ship detainees to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, a law so old it predates electricity. Judge James Boasberg explicitly ordered the administration to halt the removals and return those already deported, but Noem, after receiving DOJ’s legal advice, effectively said, “I’ve read your little court order, and I’m choosing violence.” The administration is now arguing that the injunction didn’t apply because they deported people fast enough, as though speed-running due process is a valid legal theory. Boasberg is reviving criminal contempt proceedings, and plaintiffs want at least nine Trump officials on the stand, meaning the holiday season may yet deliver the gift of accountability wrapped in subpoena paper.

All this was unfolding while Trump held a rambling press gaggle on his way to his taxpayer-funded Thanksgiving retreat at Mar-a-Lago, where he will presumably spend the weekend being congratulated for his bravery in combat against household appliances. He insisted Ukraine is “very happy” with negotiations that involve ceding land to Russia because, according to him, “you can’t have a border that goes through a highway.” He revealed that Steve Witkoff, perhaps joined by Jared Kushner if the mood strikes, will be heading to Moscow next week to chat with Putin about the “deal,” a diplomatic strategy that can only be described as “two real estate guys walk into a war zone.”

Then came the claim that D.C. is now “safe” and “crime-free” because he personally fixed it in “three or four weeks,” a fantasy so bold it deserves its own Hallmark Christmas movie. In reality, the AP reports, Washington has had 62 murders since Trump installed the National Guard, which is a strange definition of crime-free unless the new math they’re teaching in Florida includes subtracting every inconvenient homicide. Sure, the capital is now safer than Mayberry, and the restaurants are “booming,” in the same way he claims the economy is booming when everyone is standing in a breadline.

But for those seeking a break from the geopolitical delusion spiral, corporate America has generously stepped in. Campbell’s Soup is currently fighting a public relations fire because one of its IT executives, not food scientists, not marketers, IT, was allegedly recorded saying the company makes “highly processed food” for “poor people.” Campbell’s responded by placing him on leave and issuing a statement clarifying that, yes, their soup contains “real chicken,” as though defending the honor of canned poultry was in the original job description. They even released a fact sheet explaining that they do not use 3D-printed chicken, lab-grown chicken, or artificial poultry of any species, which is something I did not know companies needed to say out loud until today. Meanwhile, the employee who reported the comments was fired shortly afterward and is now suing for discrimination and retaliation, proving once again that in corporate America, the real crime is telling the truth about your boss.

No holiday-eve news cycle would be complete without a fresh helping of Trump-branded grift, and this one is particularly succulent. The long-teased Trump Phone, a supposedly “American-made” smartphone announced by Eric and Don Jr. back in June, has officially joined the ranks of other Trump products that exist primarily as vibes, merch, and prepaid invoices. NBC’s Brian Cheung tried to purchase one back in the summer, putting down the required $100 deposit, and was immediately rewarded with a fraud alert from his credit card company asking, in effect, “Are you absolutely sure?”

The Trumps promised an August release for this gold-plated, flag-slapped monument to tackiness. It is now November, and the only thing that has shipped is customer money into the family’s accounts. No phones, no updates, and no explanations beyond vague mutterings about the government shutdown, because apparently the only thing preventing the Trump Organization from manufacturing a cell phone is Congress failing to pass a funding bill.

The website has undergone “quiet edits” in the same way the Kremlin does quiet edits to maps. The big, bold claim that the Trump Phone would be “Made in the USA” has now been erased completely, replaced with a patriotic shrug about being “American Proud.” Tech experts note this is because it is literally impossible to build a smartphone in the U.S. at the promised price point unless you’re sourcing parts from the same alternate universe where Trump “won big.”

No one, including Cheung, has received a prototype, a production model, or even a blurry photograph that isn’t a render pasted onto a gold case. What people have received is a black hole where their prepaid $100 used to be. This follows a long Trump tradition: take the money up front, pretend a product is moments away, and then, when the delivery date blows past like a breeze through an unsecured classified document folder, insist it’s all coming “next month.”

In other words, the Trump Phone is shaping up to be the perfect device for the MAGA era: a phone that doesn’t exist, manufactured in a country it’s not made in, paid for in advance by people who won’t get what they were promised, and marketed by a family that calls this “success.” A flawless ecosystem, provided you measure success by deposits, not deliveries.

Thankfully, the universe offers balance, and today it comes in the form of legitimate good news: the ozone layer is healing. A new NOAA–NASA report confirms that the Antarctic ozone hole is the fifth smallest since 1992, thanks entirely to the Montreal Protocol, the rare global treaty that didn’t devolve into a diplomatic food fight. The controls on ozone-depleting chemicals are working exactly as intended, and the ozone layer is still on track to recover completely by the late 2060s. If we hadn’t phased out those CFCs back in the ’80s, we’d be heading into a world where sunscreen would be sold in buckets and dermatologists would have to unionize. Instead, thanks to actual international cooperation, the hole is shrinking, forming later, breaking up earlier, and trending steadily toward restoration. It is literally a planetary success story, a reminder that we can fix things when we collectively decide not to be idiots.

And so, on this day before Thanksgiving, we take our wins where we can find them. The ozone is healing. Campbell’s is defending the dignity of its poultry. Trump is unintentionally performing experimental theater at every available microphone. ICE is still targeting the vulnerable, and Kristi Noem is still cosplaying as a wartime general under an 18th century law, but at least we know it, name it, and refuse to let it slide by unnoticed.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Marz is pacing in that dramatic “I have been wronged” way that means it’s time for another pre-holiday romp. Stay warm, stay vigilant, and may your cranberry sauce be less chaotic than the federal government.