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Staircase to Nowhere: MAGA's Crowning Achievement

In a perhaps unprecedented dark time for America and the world, let us take solace in our indomitable Dear Stable Genius, who remains unwaveringly focused on taking care of shiny business: Gold social security cards like Elvis, a $400 million, lopsided shed/ballroom with gaudy columns but no main entrance, and of course gold toilets - which all keeps him so busy he hardly has time to threaten Iran with war crimes. What a time to be alive, barely.

In actual good news, No Kings Day 3.0 drew between 8 and 12 million people, thus hovering tantalizingly close to the 3.5% of a nation's populace historically required to overthrow an authoritarian regime. So good work, patriots. The over 3,000 protests, aka per Mike Johnson "Hate America rallies," ranged from Alaska's Utqiaġvik, the country's northernmost city (7 people) to Ele'ele, Kaua'i, the westernmost, from over 100,000 in New York City to nine stalwarts on Maine's Monhegan Island. Thousands of Trump's neighbors in Palm Beach turned out, ending with a twilight march to Mar-A-Lago, or as close as they could get.

Their signs were brutal: "Elect A Rapist, Expect To Get Fucked. How Many Deaths For the Epstein War? Worst President Since Trump. Criminals Belong Behind Bars, Free Balls for Members of Congress Who Lost Them, Trump Rapes Kids, Impeach Pedolf Shitler, Putin's Bitch, The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived. According to The Borowitz Report, Trump, furious about the large protests, argued they'd be much smaller if you subtract all Elon Musk's kids there because they hate him: "People are saying their number (was) much higher than 400, thousands, maybe millions. You take away Elon’s kids and almost no one was there."

There were also "half-dozens to dozens of Americans" at One King co unter-protests, reports The Fucking News, who put the number at "many-ish...Organizers say there were barely any organizers," with attendees ranging from "a tiny number of young people to a die-hard faction of dying people." In Palm Beach, one man carried a heavy sign that read, "Deport the white liberals"; masked to protect himself "against the vindictive left," he said he left soon after he was "attacked" by a woman who denied touching him; her comrades said the guy just dropped his sign "because he was too weak to carry it."

Their small numbers did face competition from "the incredible shrinking CPAC," also meeting that day in Grapevine, Texas with a turnout of "barely thousands." Once a MAGA "center of political gravity," this year's event drew neither Trumps nor presidential candidates. One possible ick factor: MC was (still) CPAC chair Matt Schlapp, who in 2024 settled a pricey sexual misconduct lawsuit from a guy working on Hershel Walker’s (LOL) Senate campaign, who charged Schlapp groped him. The event did boast Todd Chrisley, a reality TV star doing 12 years in prison for massive fraud till Trump pardoned him. Here’s his welcome.

There was also a big contingent of South Korean “stop the steal” activists and supporters of former president Yoon Suk Yeol, impeached last year and now serving life in prison for insurrection. Still, the whole thing was a bit of a slog. Organizers tried to jazz up session subjects - a panel titled "Fraud" became “Ilhan Omar ‘Family’ Values"; Mercedes Schlapp beseeched factions not to "divide from within," which is how you divide; and when Schlapp asked them, the clueless CPAC "crowdette" mistakenly, hilariously cheered the prospect of impeachment proceedings by what could be a newly-Democratic-controlled House. SAD!

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Poor deplorable MAGA. Maybe they're disheartened by Trump's well-deserved plunging approval rating, now at barely 33%. Maybe it's because their regime is such a half-assed shitshow and their people are such self-serving, hypocritical dickwads. As in: Amidst a government shutdown that's seen TSA agents (starting salary $34,454) compelled to work without pay as Congress takes a two-week recess (pay over $170,000) on the taxpayers' dime, TMZ urged readers to send in photos of vacationing pols, and here comes Lindsey Graham at Disney World, “The Most Magical Place On Earth," gaily twirling a Little Mermaid bubble wand yet. America and Megyn Kelly: WTF.

Or maybe it's because Commander-In-Chief Private Bonespurs started another forever quagmire without legal or political justification, and it turns out wars in the Middle East are hard and complex and above his pay grade - like health care! - to solve, and now with no good options he's spewing up only staggering incoherence for strategy, like hailing "great progress" in imaginary "serious discussions" while pivoting to rabidly threatening to "conclude our lovely 'stay’ in Iran" by "obliterating" their civilian infrastructure, electricity, energy and drinking water, which is a war crime. But talks are going “unbelievably well."

Serious discussions with Iran Serious discussions with IranImage from Australia's The Shovel

Anyway, his true passion is turning every crass, stupid thing he or Elvis can think of fake gold like the Oval bordello and even Social Security cards, and slathering his repulsive name on structures, coins, currency, and building trashy, illegal monuments to himself like an obscene, unapproved, un-permitted, $400 million ballroom twice the size of the White House, because, "They’ve always wanted a ballroom," except now it's suddenly, "essentially a shed for what goes under it," a massive military complex, presumably a bunker where, as merciful history would have it, he'll finally free us of him, "and we're doing it very well."

He's so ballroom-enraptured that on Air Force One he just pulled out a swath of drawings to show reporters, explaining, "I thought I’d do this now because it’s easier. I’m so busy...fighting wars and other things." Quick mindless pivot to "hand-carved, beautiful, Corinthian columns" - "Corinthian wut" - he's also reportedly re-imagining for the White House facade, a change deemed "at odds with universally held historic preservation standards." Same, experts say of "barely scrutinized" ballroom plans, "riddled with design flaws" - disproportionate, pillars block windows, grand staircase to nowhere. WH lackey on "the best builder in the world": "The American people can rest well knowing this project is in his hands.” We feel better already.

Trump's "plan" for his oversized shed/ballroom Trump's "plan" for his oversized shed/ballroomImages from New York Times


And then there's his new gold toilet, mounted on a 10-foot throne near the Lincoln Memorial. The new masterwork of Secret Handshake (Best Friends Forever), it celebrates the renovation of the White House Lincoln Bedroom bathroom, all in gold, and "what this President has actually accomplished." The toilet's plaque reads, “In a time of unprecedented division, escalating conflict, and economic turmoil, President Trump focused on what truly mattered: remodeling the Lincoln Bathroom....This, his crowning achievement, is a bold reminder that (he) isn’t just a businessman, he’s taking care of business. It stands as a tribute to an unwavering visionary who looked down, saw a problem, and painted it gold.”

A Throne Fit For a King. A Throne Fit For a King. Photo from Secret Handshake

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Sun sets behind the Pigeon Point Lighthouse in California
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‘Just as Big Oil Predicted’: Fossil Fuel Industry Under Fire as Record Heat Broils Western States

Spring has not yet even begun, but as science journalist Rebecca Boyle wrote Thursday for The Atlantic, "it feels like we skipped right to summer" across the Western United States, which is facing record temperatures this week.

As of Monday, 39 million people across California, Nevada, and Arizona were under heat alerts. Temperatures in Los Angeles are reaching "25-35 degrees above normal," records are being "rewritten" in Las Vegas, and Phoenix is facing temperatures of 105°F two months earlier than usual, according to warnings issued by the National Weather Service (NWS) this week.

"This is not normal. Or at least it wasn’t normal in the past," said Boyle, who explained that it was the result of hot air being trapped by "a bizarrely strong ridge of high pressure in Earth’s atmosphere," the kind that would be uncommonly strong even in the summer.

Citing a model created by the nonprofit group Climate Central, she said that human-caused climate change had made these extreme temperatures five times more likely.

The NWS warned that a heatwave in March is "very dangerous, particularly for those not acclimated to the heat and/or traveling from cooler climates.”

Counts by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that 1,600-2,400 Americans die each year from heat-related causes, and they've more than doubled since 1999.

Meanwhile, a report from the Federation of American Scientists last year found that "the combined effects of extreme heat cost [the US] over $162 billion in 2024—equivalent to nearly 1% of the US GDP."

The Western United States has recently experienced its warmest winter on in recorded history, leading to a record snow drought. Scientists say this has depleted water supplies and will make the region more vulnerable to wildfires and drought later this year.

Climate scientist Daniel Swain told ABC News 10 of Northern California that this is only the beginning of how the climate crisis will impact the state in the coming decades.

"The hottest hots are already getting hotter, and they will continue to get hotter. We haven't seen the hottest temperatures that we're going to see in the next 20 or 30 years," Swain said. "We'll see an increasing number of years with severe wildfire conditions... We will also see increased risk of major flood events, either as snowmelt becomes more rapid in the spring or as winter storms drop even more rainfall more quickly."


The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said heatwaves like this one are unfolding "just as Big Oil predicted."

"A relatively small number of major fossil fuel companies are responsible for the majority of all greenhouse gas emissions generated by humanity. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of all global greenhouse gas emissions generated since 1854, and just 57 companies are responsible for 80% of the emissions generated since 2016," explained a report published by the group Thursday.

"These companies didn’t just contribute to this heatwave—they did so knowingly," the report said. "For decades, Big Oil companies were internally forecasting exactly these kinds of climate disasters."

However, the report explains, the industry "developed and orchestrated a multidecade, coordinated campaign to defraud the public about the dangers of climate change, and blocked solutions that could have prevented these disasters."

A study published earlier this month by Geophysical Research Letters showed that as more carbon has been pumped into the atmosphere over the past 10 years, the rate at which the climate is warming has doubled.

Following this trend, it may be as soon as 2030 that the globe surpasses 1.5°C above preindustrial averages, at which point many climate risks, such as heatwaves, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity, are expected to be dramatically amplified, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"Big Oil companies have, indeed, cost this country and the world," Public Citizen said. "Extreme heatwaves like the one impacting the Western US this month are one of the catastrophic disasters these companies predicted their conduct would bring about. They should be made to pay."

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University of Chicago graduates celebrate during commencement ceremony
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'Shameful': Trump Threatens to Redirect Student Loan Borrowers to Most Expensive Repayment Plans

After axing a Biden-era student loan repayment program, the Trump administration is threatening to kick its millions of mostly low-income beneficiaries onto the government's most expensive plan unless they switch to a new one quickly.

The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Department of Education was beginning to email the more than 7 million people enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) program, telling them they needed to change their plan within the next 90 days.

Around 4.5 million of those borrowers earn incomes between 150% and 225%, allowing them to qualify for zero-dollar monthly payments under SAVE, which the Trump administration effectively killed in December after settling with Republican states who'd brought lawsuits against the program under former President Joe Biden.

Anonymous officials told The Post that those who do not switch plans within three months of receiving the email will automatically be re-enrolled in the Standard Plan. Unlike SAVE, which is income-based, the Standard plan has borrowers pay a fixed rate over 10 years.

Standard typically carries the highest monthly payments, and those transitioning to it from SAVE could pay more than $300 extra per month in some cases, with the poorest borrowers seeing the sharpest increases.

While 90 days may seem like plenty of time to switch to a less expensive repayment plan, it's not nearly that simple.

Due to the large exodus of borrowers, the Department of Education has struggled to process all the forms, processing only about 250,000 per month. Many borrowers who have tried to transition have found themselves waiting months for a reply.

To make matters more confusing, many of these borrowers will have to switch programs again soon, since all but one repayment program will be dissolved on July 1, 2028 as a result of last year's Republican budget law. The remaining plan will also be income-driven, though it is still expected to cost borrowers more each month.

According to a report released last month by the Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers, two groups that support loan forgiveness, nearly 9 million student loan borrowers are in default. During Trump's first year back in office, the student loan delinquency rate jumped from roughly zero to 25%, which it called "precedent-shattering."

"Much of the rise in delinquencies can be linked to the Trump administration’s actions aimed at increasing student loan payments," the report said. “The US Department of Education blocked borrowers from accessing more affordable payments through income-driven plans, having ordered a stoppage in application processing for three months and mass-denying 328,000 applications in August 2025. As of December 31, 2025, a warehouse’s worth of 734,000 applications sat unprocessed.”

Being in default has major ramifications for borrowers' finances. Those with delinquent loans saw their credit scores decrease by an average of 57 points during the first three quarters of 2025, dragging around 2 million of them into "subprime" territory, which forces them to pay thousands of dollars more for auto and personal loans and makes them more likely to have difficulty finding housing and employment.

The report estimated that if those booted from SAVE defaulted at the same rate as other borrowers, the number of student loan borrowers in distress could rise as high as 17 million.

According to Protect Borrowers, the typical family will pay more than $3,000 per year in additional costs as a result of the end of SAVE.

The end of SAVE comes as oil shocks caused by Trump's war in Iran have spiked gas prices and threaten to raise them throughout the economy, adding to the already elevated costs of food, housing, and transportation resulting from the president's aggressive tariff regime.

"In the middle of an affordability crisis driven by Donald Trump," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), "Trump is killing a plan that lowers student loan costs. It's shameful."

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Anti-Trump "No Kings" Protests Held Across The US
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'No Kings!' 8 Million Rally Against Trump in Largest Single-Day Protest in US History

Millions of American across all 50 states on Saturday rallied against President Donald Trump and his authoritarian agenda during nationwide No Kings protests.

The flagship No Kings rally in Saint Paul, which organizers Indivisible estimated drew over 200,000 demonstrators, featured speeches from Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and actress Jane Fonda, as well as a special performance from rock icon Bruce Springsteen, who performed "Streets of Minneapolis," a song he wrote in tribute of slain protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Organizers called it "the largest single-day nationwide demonstrations in US history," with an estimate 8 million people coming out for events in communities and cities nationwide.

From major cities to rural towns that have never seen mobilizations like this before, protesters made clear that in America, we don’t do kings," the No Kings coalition said in a statement.

"This is what it looks like when a movement grows—not just in size, but in reach, in courage, and in more people who see themselves as part of this movement," the organizers said. "The American people are fed up with this administration’s power grabs, an illegal war that Congress and the public haven’t approved, and the continued attempts to stifle our freedoms. We’re not waiting for change; we’re making it."

The rally in Minneapolis was one of more than 3,300 No Kings events across the US and internationally, and aerial video footage showed massive crowds gathered for demonstrations in cities including Washington, DC, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Diego.

In San Francisco, thousands of anti-Trump activists gathered on a local beach to form a human sign that read, "Trump must go now! No ICE, no wars, no lies, no kings."

However, No Kings rallies weren't just held in major US cities. In a series of social media posts, Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg collected photos and videos of No Kings events in communities including Arvada, Colorado, Madison, New Jersey, and St. Augustine, Florida, as well as international No Kings events held in London and Madrid.

Attendance estimates for Saturday's No Kings protests were not available as of this writing. Polling analyst G. Elliott Morris estimated that the previous No Kings event, held in October, drew at least 5 million people nationwide, making it likely “the largest single-day political protest ever.”

This article has been updated to reflect that the flagship rally was held in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

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A protester holds a placard reading "No to the Death Penalty"
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Advocates Demand Repeal of Israeli Death Penalty Law Explicitly Targeting Palestinians

Leading international human rights groups as well as organizations in Israel swiftly demanded the repeal of a law passed by the Israeli Knesset on Monday that makes death by hanging the default punishment for Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks on Israelis—a law that one group called "discriminatory by design."

Those were the words of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, which petitioned the country's Supreme Court minutes after lawmakers passed an amendment to the federal penal law, "Death Penalty for Terrorists," in a vote of 62-48.

The group called on the high court to challenge the new law and said the far-right government had passed it "without legal authority" over Palestinians in the West Bank, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government aimed to illegally annex to Israel.

The Association of Civil Rights was joined by groups including Amnesty International, which has spoken out forcefully against the legislation in recent months, in demanding the death penalty law be repealed.

Amnesty said that under the new policy, Israel—which has vehemently rejected accusations of imposing apartheid policies on Palestinians—"explicitly creates two legal frameworks for the use of the death penalty in the occupied West Bank... and in Israel."

The law also does not allow for any pardons for those sentenced to death, making it "one of the world’s most extreme death penalty laws," said Amnesty.

The new law demands that Palestinians be put to death by hanging if convicted of nationalistic killings in a military court, and gives Israeli courts the option of sentencing Israeli citizens to capital punishment if they're convicted of similar crimes.

But Amichai Cohen, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute’s Center for Democratic Values and Institutions, told The Associated Press that only Palestinians will ultimately be killed under the law.

“It will apply in Israeli courts, but only to terrorist activities that are motivated by the wish to undermine the existence of Israel," Cohen told the AP. "That means Jews will not be indicted under this law."

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director of research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, noted that Israeli military courts "have a conviction rate of over 99% for Palestinian defendants and... are notorious for disregarding due process and fair trial safeguards."

"Israel is brazenly granting itself carte blanche to execute Palestinians while stripping away the most basic fair-trial safeguards,” said Guevara-Rosas.

She added that the law was passed weeks after the Israeli military attorney general dropped all charges against five Israel Defense Forces soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner—"a decision celebrated by the prime minister and several ministers."

“It speaks volumes to the extent of Israel’s dehumanization of Palestinians that this law has passed" after those charges were dropped, said Guevara-Rosas. "For years, we have seen an alarming pattern of apparent extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings of Palestinians—with the perpetrators also enjoying near-total impunity. This new law which allows for state-sanctioned executions is a culmination of such policies.”

Celebrations were seen among Netanyahu's top ministers once again on Monday, with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—whose Otzma Yehudit Party initially introduced the amendment—seen clutching a bottle of champagne after the passage was announced.

Historian Assal Rad noted that much of the international coverage of the bill's passage has used "procedural language to sanitize the story and make it sound legitimate."

The law, however, "is just another way for Israel to kill Palestinians," she said.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor warned that "the most dangerous aspect of the new law lies in its application within a judicial system that lacks any guarantees of a fair trial for Palestinians."

"Confessions are often obtained under duress, access to effective legal representation is severely limited, the presumption of innocence is routinely ignored, and there are major restrictions on appeals or access to documents essential for the defense," said the group.

"Combined with a lack of judicial independence and integrity in proceedings, applying the death penalty in this context cannot be considered a legitimate judicial measure," the organization added. "Instead, it constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of life, in direct violation of fundamental principles of international human rights law."

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Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth at a White House meeting
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Hegseth Broker Reportedly Tried to Make 'Big Investment' in Weapons Stocks Just Before Iran War

A broker for Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly tried to make a "big investment" in a bundle of weapons stocks just weeks before the US and Israel launched their war on Iran, an unpopular assault that Hegseth has aggressively championed.

Citing three unnamed people familiar with the matter, The Financial Times reported on Monday that Hegseth's "broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF... shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran." The bombing began on February 28.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon denied the story, calling it "entirely false and fabricated" and insisting that neither Hegseth nor any of his representatives approached BlackRock about such an investment. But the FT reported that the broker's "inquiry on behalf of the high-profile potential client was flagged internally at BlackRock."

The investment was not ultimately made because the fund—which includes behemoths such as RTX, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman—was not available for Morgan Stanley clients to buy at the time.

The purchase would not have been immediately lucrative: Over the past month, the Defense Industrials Active ETF is down over 12%. But the reported allegation that Hegseth's broker sought to make the largest investment in the weapons industry set off alarm bells, particularly amid growing concerns that Trump administration officials are using inside knowledge and manipulating markets to cash in on the war.

"You know, back when the [US government] gave a damn about anti-corruption, this is something we would've seen as a 'no no,'" said Richard Nephew, a former anti-corruption coordinator at the US State Department.

Economist Justin Wolfers wrote of Hegseth that, "in a functional democracy, he would offer his resignation tonight."

Instead, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell demanded that the FT issue an "immediate retraction," dismissing the newspaper's story as "yet another baseless, dishonest smear designed to mislead the public."

Hegseth has emerged as the most prominent and belligerent cheerleader of the Iran war in the US, and—according to President Donald Trump—the Pentagon chief was the first of the president's advisers to "speak up" in favor of the assault during the internal decision-making process.

Trump has also suggested Hegseth does not want the war to end, saying last week that the Pentagon chief was "quite disappointed" when the president claimed the conflict would be over shortly.

"I don’t want to say this, but I have to," Trump told reporters at the White House. "I said, Pete and General Razin’ Caine, this thing is going to be settled very soon, and they go, ‘Oh, that’s too bad.'"

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