Velvet Ropes, Coal Trophies, and Balloon Wars

A week in Trump’s America: loyalty dinners, laser mishaps, tariff threats, DOJ deflection, and the slow collapse of institutional gravity.

Today’s roundup is sponsored by Ground News

Good morning! The coffee is hot, the news is radioactive, and the United States government continues to operate like a group project where the least qualified guy insists he’s doing “great leadership” while actively setting the syllabus on fire.

Let’s begin with the administration’s favorite genre: hostile incompetence masquerading as strength. Pam Bondi spent five hours in front of the House Judiciary Committee this week performing what can only be described as hostile non-testimony, a kind of legal improv where every question about Jeffrey Epstein magically transformed into a sermon about immigrants, the stock market, or how Donald Trump is apparently the greatest president since Moses came down from the mountain. Asked why no co-conspirators have been charged? Bondi’s answer was basically: because the Dow is over 50,000. Nothing says “justice for trafficking victims” like Nasdaq vibes.

Democrats pressed her on the grotesque inversion at the heart of DOJ’s Epstein file release, victims’ names exposed, powerful men’s names protected, while survivors stood behind her, raising their hands to confirm they’ve never even been allowed to meet with the Department of Justice. Bondi refused to turn around, refused to apologize, and instead snapped that she wouldn’t “get in the gutter,” which is an interesting thing to say while actively rolling around in one.

And then there was Ted Lieu, who did what happens when a former prosecutor decides he’s done entertaining evasive performance art. Lieu pressed Bondi on Trump’s repeated appearance in the Epstein files and whether the DOJ was actually investigating anyone beyond Epstein and Maxwell. Bondi snapped back that the questions were “ridiculous” and immediately launched into yet another monologue about “all the great things Donald Trump has done,” as if the Dow Jones is now a substitute for accountability. When Lieu suggested her answer amounted to lying under oath, essentially raising the specter of perjury, Bondi erupted, shouting, “Don’t you ever accuse me of committing a crime!” The exchange captured the hearing’s central absurdity: straightforward oversight questions met not with facts, but with grievance politics, clock-running, and a level of defensiveness that practically answered the question on its own.

The hearing also produced one of the more chilling optics yet: photographers caught Bondi’s binder containing a page labeled “Jayapal Pramila Search History,” apparently tracking what a member of Congress viewed while reviewing the unredacted Epstein files. One host even suggested the timing of DOJ’s invitation for lawmakers to examine the files may not have been accidental, less transparency than an opportunity to compile ammunition. Nothing screams “accountability” like the Attorney General showing up with what looks suspiciously like oversight surveillance tucked neatly into her burn-book folder.

Questions about Ghislaine Maxwell’s cushy transfer to a lower-security prison camp, right after Todd Blanche’s nine-hour visit, were met with Bondi’s signature move: I wasn’t involved, ask someone else, stop attacking Trump. The entire spectacle played less like an independent Justice Department and more like a Trump campaign focus group with subpoenas.

Just to complete the clown car, Karoline Leavitt tried to shut down new reporting that Trump allegedly told Palm Beach police in 2006 that “everyone knew” about Epstein by declaring, with all the authority of someone slamming a laptop shut mid-scandal, “we’re moving on from that.” The public response was immediate and unanimous. Former Trump deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews shot back: “No the f— we’re not.” Rep. Yassamin Ansari echoed: “We’re absolutely not moving on.” Even Mary Trump summed it up neatly: Leavitt says move on, the rest of the world replies, “No—we’re not. Ever.” Apparently the White House thinks you can just wave away the Epstein files like last season’s fashion. The internet, for once, is not cooperating.

Before we keep going: a quick, useful interruption, because part of the reason everything feels so deranged is that we’re all forced to process the same story through wildly different media funhouses.

Today’s roundup is sponsored by Ground News, which is basically “show your work” for the news. Instead of doomscrolling one outlet at a time, Ground News lets you pull up a story and instantly see who’s covering it across the spectrum, how the coverage breaks left/center/right, and what the blind spots are, meaning: stories one side talks about nonstop while the other side barely touches.

And if you’re trying to make sense of hearings, leaks, and narrative warfare, that context is the difference between information and manipulation. Vantage also unlocks deeper tools, like political bias and factuality and ownership ratings for thousands of sources, so you can see not just what you’re reading, but what’s shaping it.

If you want to build a saner news diet without giving up on staying informed, click our link to redeem the Vantage discount, it works out to about $5/month. No promo-code gymnastics; just click, redeem, and let the app do the triangulation for you.

Just in case anyone was worried the foreign influence pipeline had been shut off, don’t worry, Pam Bondi took care of that too. In a hearing this week, Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada laid out the not-so-mysterious fact that the Trump administration has effectively stopped enforcing the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the 88-year-old law designed to prevent foreign governments and oligarchs from treating Washington like an open-air bribery bazaar.

Bondi’s first move as attorney general, apparently, was to announce “minimal enforcement” of foreign influence laws, which is a bit like appointing an arsonist as fire chief and then acting surprised when the building starts to glow.

Horsford offered a helpful real-world example: Trump announced a 39% tariff on Switzerland… which later dropped to 15% shortly after Swiss business leaders presented him with a Rolex and a personalized gold bar. Yes, really. The “Art of the Deal” is now apparently just “show up with jewelry and bullion.”

Swiss lawmakers were so alarmed they’ve called for their own prosecutors to investigate whether the gifts violated Swiss anti-bribery laws, which is a fun moment when even Switzerland is looking at Trump and saying, wow, that seems a little corrupt.

Meanwhile, the supposed payoff for Americans was laughable: Switzerland agreed to accept 500 tons of U.S. beef, while Trump simultaneously expanded preferential access for 100,000 tons of Argentine beef imports. So Nevada ranchers get nothing, foreign producers get the market, Trump gets richer, and the rest of us get another reminder that the administration’s economic policy is basically a global influence auction with tariffs as the bidding paddles.

The kakistocracy rolled right along into economic policy, where Congress briefly remembered it still exists. House Republicans have spent the last year trying to avoid voting on Trump’s tariffs the way a teenager avoids eye contact after denting the family car. They didn’t just stall, they tried a procedural magic trick.

Under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), lawmakers have a limited number of legislative days to force a vote to block certain executive actions. Not calendar days, legislative days, which only count when the House is formally in session. So what did leadership do? They kept the House technically in the same “legislative day” for weeks at a time by gaveling out and gaveling back in without formally adjourning. In other words, instead of ending the day, they just… never let it end. Like congressional Groundhog Day.

By stretching a single legislative day across multiple calendar days, they tried to prevent the clock from running on efforts to challenge Trump’s tariffs. No new legislative day meant no new opportunity for a disapproval vote. It wasn’t subtle, it was procedural taffy-pulling designed to keep members from having to cast a recorded vote on tariffs that are increasingly unpopular with voters and businesses.

This week, that little time-warp maneuver finally collapsed. The House could not indefinitely pretend Tuesday was still Monday. At some point, even Mike Johnson has to acknowledge that time is linear. Once a new legislative day was forced, the pathway reopened for members to move against the tariff policy.

As the clock started ticking again, the House did something extraordinary: it voted to cancel Trump’s Canada tariffs. Six Republicans joined Democrats to rescind the “national emergency” Trump declared in order to launch his trade war against… Canada. Our polite neighbor. The country that sends us maple syrup and apologizes when we bump into them.

Republicans tried to reframe it as fentanyl enforcement, except less than 0.1 percent of fentanyl enters through Canada, which makes this about as logical as setting your kitchen on fire because you saw a spider. Democrats called it nothing more than impulse. Trump, naturally, responded by threatening primaries in real time, because Congress is not a coequal branch, in his mind. It’s an audience.

Speaking of audiences, Trump has now decided the Pentagon should be one too. In one of the more surreal policy announcements of the week, Trump ordered the Defense Department to start buying more electricity from coal-burning power plants, throwing long-term military contracts at the dirtiest fuel source on Earth like it’s a patriotic duty to time-travel back to the soot age.

Coal executives presented him with a trophy labeled “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal.” It’s governance by banquet. Mercury pollution rises, emissions tick upward, and the military, which is supposed to plan for climate-driven instability, is being drafted into fossil fuel nostalgia.

In addition to a steam powered grid, the administration is also very focused on modern technology. For example: lasers. The FAA abruptly shut down airspace over El Paso up to 18,000 feet after the Pentagon deployed new anti-drone technology without giving aviation officials enough time to assess whether it was safe for commercial aircraft. Officials insist this was about cartel drones. People briefed on the situation say the military may have fired at what they thought was a drone…and it turned out to be a party balloon.

So if you were wondering what national security looks like in 2026, it’s experimental weapons systems, zero coordination, and the FAA grounding a major city’s sky because the Defense Department is out here playing Balloon Wars.

In what might be the most chilling institutional breach of the week, the IRS improperly disclosed confidential immigrant taxpayer data to DHS and ICE. For years, undocumented immigrants have paid taxes under explicit assurances that filing would not become a trapdoor into deportation enforcement. That firewall is now cracking. DHS requested addresses for 1.2 million individuals. The IRS responded with tens of thousands, and “inadvertently” exposed private information for thousands more, even when DHS couldn’t sufficiently identify the person.

Consider this: it as the repurposing of civilian infrastructure into enforcement machinery. Pay your taxes, and the government might hand your address to ICE.

Trump’s White House continues treating governance like a private club with a velvet rope. The National Governors Association canceled its traditional White House gathering after Trump initially invited only Republicans, turning what has always been a bipartisan federal-state tradition into yet another loyalty dinner.

When Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, and chair of the NGA, tried to preserve the association’s basic function, Trump immediately went after him too, because in this administration even Republicans become “RINOs” the moment they fail to enforce the guest list. Trump lashed out online, sneering at Stitt as the “RINO Governor of the Great State of Oklahoma,” and insisting the real issue was not partisanship, but worthiness.

“The invitations were sent to ALL Governors,” Trump claimed, “other than two, who I feel are not worthy of being there.”

Those two excluded governors were Wes Moore of Maryland, the nation’s only Black governor and the NGA vice chair, and Jared Polis of Colorado. Trump, never content with a simple snub, then launched into grievance-laced attacks, calling Moore “the foul mouthed Governor of Maryland,” and declaring he looked forward to seeing “some of the Democrats Governors who were worthy of being invited, but most of whom won’t show up.”

Karoline Leavitt defended the exclusion with perhaps the most accidentally revealing quote of the week, explaining that the White House is both “the People’s House”… and also Trump’s home, so “he can invite whomever he wants.”

Which is a fascinating definition of public office: the presidency as personal property, bipartisanship replaced by worthiness tribunals, and federal-state partnership reduced to a dinner party where the king decides who gets a chair.

The violence beneath all this theater surfaced again in the most grotesque way. Newly released evidence shows Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino praised an agent who shot Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen, five times in her car during an immigration crackdown in Chicago. Martinez was smeared as a “domestic terrorist.” The case collapsed when video showed agents had steered into her vehicle. Texts reveal colleagues congratulating the shooter, calling him a legend, offering beers. The agent bragged about how is five bullets made seven bullet holes.

Another morning in Trump’s America: coal trophies on the desk, tariff tantrums on Truth Social, party balloons treated as cartel incursions, taxpayer data handed to ICE, governors judged “worthy,” and federal agents congratulated for shooting Americans.