Banana Republic, USA

From Los Angeles crackdowns to Middle East war, the empire spirals with a cognitively crumbling autocrat at the helm and a forecast that might just rain on his vanity parade.

Good morning! It’s hard to know where to start on a day like this. The Marines are in Los Angeles. Israel and Iran are at war. A U.S. Senator was handcuffed for asking a question. And somewhere in the middle of it all, Donald Trump is rambling about rerouting Pacific Northwest water to save Los Angeles from wildfires and reopening Alcatraz as some kind of dystopian Airbnb-meets-Gitmo reboot.

Welcome to Friday the 13th, 2025, authoritarian style. The horror movie is real. And this one doesn’t end with a jump scare it ends with a boot.

Yesterday, Senator Alex Padilla, senior Democrat from California and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, was forcibly removed, thrown to the floor, and handcuffed by federal agents after he dared to ask puppy killer and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question. Not a rhetorical one, not a protest chant. A question about the unauthorized deployment of the National Guard and now, reportedly, the Marines on the streets of LA.

Padilla, wearing a U.S. Senate-branded shirt, escorted by the FBI, sitting quietly behind reporters in a secured federal building, identified himself multiple times. “I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the Secretary.” His reward? A knee to the floor, wrists in cuffs, and a press statement from DHS that accused him of “lunging” at the Secretary and engaging in “political theater.”

If this administration can manhandle a sitting Senator like he’s trespassing at Mar-a-Lago, imagine what it’s doing to farmworkers in Oxnard, day laborers outside Home Depot, or kids outside LAUSD schools. Actually don’t imagine it. Just look outside. According to Padilla, ICE and National Guard raids are now sweeping through communities with flashbangs and masked men in unmarked vans, the kind of imagery that used to make Americans gasp when it came out of Venezuela or China.

And in case you were wondering whether this military escalation was spontaneous, it wasn’t. A federal judge ruled earlier this week that the Trump administration’s federalization of California’s National Guard was unconstitutional, calling it an abuse of power that bypassed both state consent and congressional oversight. The ruling cited clear evidence of premeditated escalation dating back to February, aligning with a CNN investigation that revealed internal planning documents and communication logs outlining the move months in advance. But today, a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit issued a temporary stay, allowing the Guard to remain under federal control while the administration appeals, meaning that for now, Trump’s occupation of Los Angeles continues, even as its legality hangs by a thread.

And if that’s not chilling enough, let’s revisit what Kristi Noem actually said to justify it all:

“We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country.”

This is a clear attempt at regime change. This is the Wilmington coup playbook, dressed in khaki and tactical gear, aimed squarely at the largest, most diverse state in the union. In 1898, white supremacist Democrats in North Carolina overthrew the multiracial, democratically elected government of Wilmington, murdering dozens of Black residents and forcing local officials to resign at gunpoint. It was the only successful coup in U.S. history, until now. What Trump, Kristi Noem, and their uniformed enablers are staging in Los Angeles isn’t just an abuse of federal power. It’s an echo of violent authoritarianism, repackaged for the 21st century and broadcast live on cable news. Only this time, they’re calling it “liberation.”

And let’s not forget who’s allegedly at the helm of all this: a man whose cognitive state is deteriorating faster than his global favorability ratings. According to the latest Pew survey, U.S. favorability has plummeted in 15 of 24 countries since Trump clawed his way back into office, including a staggering 91% disapproval in Mexico, the nation he now taunts with border raids and racial slurs dressed up as policy. The international stage is watching a once-global leader unravel in real time. This is a man who recently claimed California borders Canada, who thinks wildfires can be stopped by simply “turning the water on,” and who suggested reopening Alcatraz because it “represents something strong and miserable and beautiful and weak.” Yes, all of that came out of his mouth, and he’s now dispatching Marines to Los Angeles like it’s Fallujah.

Governor Gavin Newsom wasn’t being rhetorical when he said, “He’s lost it.”

But let’s be very clear: this isn’t just dementia with a motorcade. This is authoritarianism with a press office and a flag pin. As historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds us, fascist regimes don’t begin by targeting senators. They begin with the marginalized, the immigrants, the poor, the powerless, because they’re easiest to crush before moving up the food chain. What happened to Senator Padilla wasn’t a misunderstanding, it was a signal. If they can body-slam a sitting U.S. senator for asking a question, imagine what’s happening to the day laborers and cooks and farmworkers whose stories Padilla invoked while still visibly shaken on MSNBC.

And the world is catching on. In Canada, former MP Charlie Angus took to the podium ahead of the upcoming G-7 summit to deliver a blistering warning about Trump’s visit.

“We are witnessing a man who has threatened our nation’s sovereignty, who is proud to have overturned the rule of law, who brags about being a sexual predator — and he is being welcomed into Canada,” Angus said, calling on Canadian authorities to bar the convicted felon from crossing the border.

“You want to know what we are dealing with? We are dealing with a fascist.”

That’s what standing on the right side of history sounds like.

Padilla knows it, too. In a raw and emotional interview with MSNBC, he described the moment he hit the floor, and how he immediately thought of his parents: immigrants from Mexico, a cook and a house cleaner, who never dreamed their son would be cuffed by his own government for demanding oversight. “If they’ll do this to me,” he said, “just imagine what they’re doing to everybody else.”

We don’t have to imagine, we’ve seen the vans, we’ve seen the raids. And we’ve now seen what happens when a Senator asks the wrong question at the wrong press conference.

But just when you think things can’t get worse, we pan east to the Middle East where all-out war has broken out between Israel and Iran. Airstrikes, counterstrikes, and rapidly aligning regional powers are threatening to spiral into a broader, more catastrophic conflict. And how is the United States responding under Commander-in-Chief Trump? Disjointed. Contradictory. Alarming. Trump took to Truth Social to claim he had spoken directly with both “Bibi and the Ayatollah”, a statement so unconfirmed it has U.S. intelligence and international reporters openly laughing into their hands.

Meanwhile, his administration can’t even agree on whether to send humanitarian aid or additional firepower. There’s no doctrine, no diplomacy, just vague threats, a lot of shouting, and whatever Jared Kushner texted from his Riyadh villa.

This is the same man who campaigned on ending the war in Ukraine “on day one”, and instead, cut military and humanitarian aid, torched alliances, and left Ukraine exposed while Putin regrouped. Now, faced with a second war, he’s resorted to imaginary phone calls and incoherent press briefings, all while militarizing Los Angeles as if street medics and teachers were Hamas operatives.

We’re teetering on the edge of a multi-front global crisis led by a man who just last week thought he could reroute rainfall.

And yet, somehow, even amid this chaos, Trump still found time to rehearse for his vanity parade in D.C. tomorrow, the kind where tanks roll past war memorials while the commander-in-chief waves from a platform surrounded by flags, marble, and carefully curated minorities.

But nature might have its own thoughts. Thunderstorms are forecast for the capital tomorrow, and the latest radar shows a decent chance that Trump’s parade will get rained out by the very heavens he keeps invoking on Truth Social. It would be poetic if it weren’t so terrifying, the empire, damp and confused, lurching across the lawn while the republic buckles beneath it.

So here we are: war abroad, martial law at home, and a leadership structure that punishes oversight while promoting delusion. It’s not just that the mask has slipped, it’s that they’ve taken it off and dared you to call it what it is. Authoritarian. Unconstitutional. And accelerating.

Stay loud. Stay visible. Stay peaceful, because, as Senator Padilla said, that’s exactly what they’re afraid of, and pray for rain!