Cracks in the Regime

Trump’s polls slide, ICE’s violence escalates, and Gavin Newsom aims a $787 million lawsuit at Fox, hitting the propaganda machine where it hurts.

Good morning! Donald Trump’s Iran gamble isn’t paying off where it counts: the polls. Two surveys out this week show the president sinking to 41% approval, a few points down from his already weak June averages. A majority of Americans disapprove of the strikes in Iran, and Trump’s usual rally-around-the-flag magic is fizzling. The numbers are grim: voters don’t buy the tough-guy act, and his approval on the economy, foreign policy, and even immigration is now underwater. It’s the same story we’ve seen before: the Trump Show is loud, expensive, and deadly, but the ratings keep slipping.

Meanwhile, the chaos machine he’s unleashed at home is still chewing through lives. ICE’s long knives are out, and the body count is climbing. Johnny Noviello, a Canadian green card holder and father, died in ICE custody in Florida this week, another name on the swelling list of detainees who didn’t make it out alive. His family says he had epilepsy and needed medication. ICE says they “provided care.” The result is the same: a preventable death under a government that sees mass deportation as the centerpiece of its campaign strategy.

But even citizenship isn’t a shield in Trump’s America. In Los Angeles, Andrea Velez, a 32-year-old U.S. citizen and marketing designer, was tackled and thrown into an unmarked vehicle by ICE while on her way to work. Her crime? Existing within reach of federal agents on a power trip. ICE now claims she “forcefully obstructed” an officer, but video from the scene shows a terrified family screaming that she is a citizen as agents haul her away. Trump’s police state criminalizes even the smallest gesture hindering deportation, so they’ve charged her for allegedly extending her arm.

If that’s not enough to boil your coffee, ICE agents in El Paso reportedly beat a longtime U.S. resident and father of three Marines during an attempted deportation, leaving him hospitalized. His family says they pleaded with officers to recognize his service to the country, to look at his medical records, to see his humanity. Instead, ICE zip-tied him so tightly his wrists bled while agents pummeled him on the ground. Because under Trump, “law and order” means terrorizing even the families who’ve sent their children to fight America’s wars.

While the regime’s cruelty escalates, its economic delusions are catching up with it. The “big beautiful bill” that Trump and MAGA Mike are trying to ram through Congress is imploding in real time. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that the bill’s Medicaid-gutting provisions violate budget rules, stripping it of fast-track protection and forcing it into a likely filibuster death spiral. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that the bill’s Medicaid-gutting provisions violate budget rules, thus removing its fast-track protection and dooming it to a likely filibuster.

And while the authoritarian fantasy falls apart at home, Elon Musk is on X hawking unsold Cybertrucks stranded in parking lots like a late-night infomercial host desperate to clear inventory before the repo truck arrives. His top executives are fleeing Tesla in droves, European sales are cratering, and Chinese competitors are eating his lunch with cheaper, better EVs that people actually want. Musk wants you to think the biggest threat to Tesla is rogue shopping carts bouncing off the Cybertruck’s doors in viral clips. In reality, it’s his own hubris, and a global market that no longer needs him, no matter how many memes he posts between rounds of slashing prices to dump a rotting backlog no one wants.

And while we’re on the subject of the Trump ecosystem crumbling, Alina Habba, Trump’s personal lawyer turned interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, just found herself in hot water with the New Jersey bar. A new complaint accuses Habba of violating at least six ethics rules, including dishonesty, abuse of prosecutorial power, and weaponizing her office to “turn New Jersey red” by targeting Democrats for flimsy, high-profile arrests. She’s charged a sitting Congresswoman for observing an ICE facility, arrested Newark’s mayor only to drop the charges two weeks later under a federal judge’s scolding, and announced criminal probes into Governor Phil Murphy and Attorney General Matt Platkin for not bowing to Trump’s immigration orders. Habba was once repping parking lots in Bedminster before Trump plucked her into the big leagues, and now she’s flailing, facing the same professional reckoning that disbarred Rudy Giuliani and Ken Chesebro. Florida’s bar might roll over for Trump cronies, but New Jersey is showing signs it won’t. If she doesn’t want accountability, she can always surrender her license, otherwise, she may learn what happens when you try to twist the law for Trump and get caught.

But the cherry on top of this week’s meltdown comes courtesy of California’s governor. Gavin Newsom just hit Fox News with a $787 million defamation lawsuit, matching the exact amount Fox had to cough up to Dominion for its election lies. Newsom’s crime, according to Fox? He accurately reported when he last spoke to Trump before Trump’s forced National Guard deployment to L.A., while Fox’s Jesse Watters aired a misleadingly edited clip to claim Newsom was lying. Newsom is done playing nice. He’s suing Fox in Delaware, where it hurts, and promising to send any winnings to anti-Trump causes unless Fox retracts and apologizes. It’s a direct shot at the propaganda machine that keeps Trump afloat, and the only language Rupert Murdoch’s empire understands: the kind that costs them real money.

If there’s a lesson in this week’s wreckage, it’s that the regime’s violence, incompetence, and lies can feel endless, until they don’t. Until a parliamentarian blows up the budget bill, the polls slip a few more points, a lawsuit lands with a $787 million price tag. Until people stop being afraid and start fighting back where it hurts. Even the strongest authoritarian regimes look invincible right before they crack and the cracks are spreading.