Three More Years?

Democracy may not survive Trump, but the planet might not either.

Good morning! Donald Trump’s America is on the verge of shutting down again. The government lurches toward September 30 with no budget in sight, and Trump’s grand advice to his own party is: “don’t even bother dealing with” Democrats. The political equivalent of a toddler covering his ears and screaming until the Play-Doh is pried from his hands. Democrats are drawing a line where anyone with a functioning moral compass would: healthcare. Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have made it clear they won’t greenlight another budget that rips Medicaid to shreds or lets ACA premiums skyrocket. Families are already getting notices that their bills are set to rise by hundreds of dollars a month thanks to Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, beautiful in the same sense that a foreclosure notice is beautiful. Meanwhile, Republicans mutter that Democrats actually want a shutdown for political reasons, as if preserving healthcare is a sinister plot.

And at this point, I have to ask not whether our democracy can survive three more years of Trump, but whether our planet can. While the lights threaten to go out in Washington, the Environmental Protection Agency has decided that the best way to fight climate change is to stop measuring it. The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, the backbone dataset for tracking emissions and enforcing laws since 2010, is slated for the chopping block. Without it, states, scientists, and even businesses will be flying blind. You can’t regulate what you don’t measure, and smashing the thermometer doesn’t cure the fever. EPA officials openly admit that states rely on this data to run their own climate programs, then shrug that those states can “figure it out themselves.” Oil and gas reporting? Suspended until 2034 because Trump’s tax bill delayed the fee, and now the delay is the excuse for shutting down the oversight. This is willful blindness in the middle of a planetary fire.

Abroad, the unraveling continues. Polish fighters just shot down Russian drones in their own airspace, the first time NATO territory has been directly violated since 2022. Warsaw triggered Article 4 consultations, Europe rallied, NATO condemned. Trump? He posted a grumpy Truth Social update and told Fox News, “I’m not gonna defend anybody.” He even floated the idea that the incursion might have been “a mistake.” Poland’s leadership was quick to set the record straight: no, it wasn’t. In any sane administration, American diplomats would have been on the phone through the night, NATO councils buzzing with U.S. leadership. Instead, Max at UNFTR is right: when the so-called world’s superpower shrugs, others move without us. Europe is already coordinating defense strategies on its own, BRICS is busy constructing alternatives to the dollar, and Poland is hoarding gold like it’s 1939 all over again. The world doesn’t stop waiting for us just because Trump wants to golf.

Back home, the economy is being systematically mugged. Richard Murphy tallied the collapse: job growth flatlined at a laughable 20,000 when the U.S. normally adds a quarter million; tariffs sparked retaliation that wiped out soybean exports, leaving nearly a million Midwest farmers with empty ledgers; Hyundai’s $7 billion investment was wrecked when ICE detained hundreds of Korean and Japanese engineers, the very workers building the plant. They were jailed, then released only after South Korea’s president called Trump directly to demand it. ICE tried to spin the fiasco as “voluntary departure,” even scrubbing its press release of references to the Korean arrests. The plant sits idle. Skilled engineers are swearing off America altogether. And the entire episode sends a clear message to every foreign investor: the U.S. under Trump is not just unreliable, it’s actively hostile.

The FBI has become a punchline with a badge. MeidasTouch laid bare how Kash Patel, podcaster-turned-director, bungled the Charlie Kirk investigation from start to finish. His FBI misidentified suspects, racially profiled an Arab Kirk supporter, and spun absurd tales about “transgender ideology” etched onto cartridges. The arrest wasn’t the FBI’s doing at all, the killer confessed to his father, who told pastors, who told police. But Patel still staged a press conference to congratulate “good cops being cops” and promise to see Kirk in “Valhalla.” At the very moment he was falsely tweeting that a suspect was in custody, he was dining at Rao’s in Manhattan. Experienced agents who might have led the investigation have been purged under Trump’s retribution agenda, replaced by twenty-something interns and YouTube influencers. It’s less law enforcement than cosplay with sidearms.

And then there’s the propaganda. From the second Kirk was shot, MAGA media spun fantasies about a purple-haired Latino transgender shooter. It was the character they wanted, the scapegoat they needed. Reality ruined the script: the killer was a white Mormon, raised Republican, who once wore a Trump costume for Halloween. The FBI didn’t solve it, the family did. The truth clashed with the propaganda, but not before the lie had done its work, smearing minorities and feeding the persecution complex Trump relies on. Which brings us to an important clarification: “antifa” is not an organization. There is no membership card, no central command, no shadowy headquarters. Antifa is short for anti-fascist and describes a tactic, not a club. Just as terrorism is a tactic used by different actors, or just as spinning details is a tactic used by politicians, “antifa” is a way of resisting fascism. Pretending it’s a cohesive terror group is itself a propaganda tactic, one designed to conjure an enemy that can be blamed for everything from graffiti to assassinations. The viral claim was bunk because the entire frame was bunk.

That’s the unifying thread of this roundup: sabotage and spin. The shutdown brinkmanship over healthcare. The climate data blackout. NATO left exposed while Trump shrugs. Farmers and investors betrayed while ICE counts “arrests” like baseball cards. The FBI led by a podcaster who sells t-shirts about dogs peeing on enemies. And the viral lies about antifa, whipped up to distract from reality. This isn’t incompetence by accident, it’s kakistocracy by design. The least qualified, the least scrupulous, the least serious are in charge, and the result is a government that doesn’t just fail to serve its people, it actively endangers them.

The good news? Reality does not bend forever. Farmers know when their soybeans aren’t selling. Europeans know when Russian drones violate their skies. Scientists know when climate data goes dark. And readers like you know the difference between tactics and organizations, between propaganda and truth. The bad news? The price of learning these lessons under Trump’s watch is higher every day, and we are all footing the bill.

So that’s where we are: democracy on life support, the planet gasping for breath, and a government that treats both like stage props in a bad reality show. I’ve been piecing a deep dive together in between taking Marz out for soggy walks in the rain and chasing grandkids around the living room, but one way or another it’s going live before the weekend is out. Some things you just can’t postpone, and naming this sabotage for what it is is one of them.