Shell Games and Smokescreens: Trump’s America on Full Garish Display

Billionaires hoard, Ukraine waits, the planet burns, but ordinary people still fight, and win.

Good morning! As MAGA Mike fumbles to herd his chaos caucus like greased pigs on a downhill slope, Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” teeters on the edge. It was already a monstrous package: cutting Medicaid for 17 million people, gutting SNAP, blowing a $3.3 trillion hole in the deficit, and handing out billionaire tax breaks like cheap cologne samples at a Vegas convention. Now, even Trump’s own hardliners are balking, squealing about “fiscal responsibility” while they eye the election clock and Trump’s threat to primary them into oblivion.

Meanwhile, Rep. Dan Goldman served them a live-wire sermon on the Hill, torching the hypocrisy of gutting healthcare in their own districts to fund ICE bonuses and billionaire golf weekends. He reminded them that this “draconian bill” will “kick 17 million Americans off their healthcare,” including “34,000 of your own constituents” in GOP districts, all so they can “give tax cuts to Donald Trump and Elon Musk.” Goldman hammered them for slashing SNAP by 30% while handing “masked, plainclothes ICE agents an extra $40,000 bonus” and gutting clean energy jobs in their own red districts to “throw a bone to the oil industry.” And as for the debt they claim to care about? Goldman shredded that illusion too, reminding them the bill “increases the deficit by $3.3 trillion,” nearly a trillion more than the House version, while 80% of the benefits go to the top 10% of earners. Remember when Congress at least pretended to read bills before torching the social safety net? Neither do they.

If you’re wondering where all that billionaire money goes instead of raising wages or fixing the roads, a quick refresher: stock buybacks, legalized under Reagan and supercharged by Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, let CEOs inflate their own stock-based pay while understaffing stores and hoarding cash. That’s how we get to a Lowe’s CEO making 557 times what the guy helping you find screws makes, and how Trump’s push to make those cuts permanent will keep the foam parties in Venice going while hospitals close back home.

Speaking of how billionaire power suffocates accountability, let’s turn to Paramount’s decision to pay Trump $16 million to settle his ridiculous “60 Minutes” lawsuit. His complaint? They edited Kamala Harris’ interview in a way he didn’t like. Paramount folded, desperate to clear the runway for its Skydance sale, proving that corporate media will often sacrifice the First Amendment if it threatens their quarterly returns. Trump called it a “win against fake news.” We call it a reminder that independent journalism, without billionaire boards or shareholder panic, matters more than ever.

Across the Atlantic, Trump’s commitment to democracy is on full display as he freezes weapons shipments already promised to Ukraine, leaving Kyiv scrambling for answers while Russia shells its cities and the Kremlin smirks about a quicker victory. These shipments, including Patriot missile systems and artillery, had already been approved under the Trump administration, but Trump’s White House has now decided to yank them back midstream, just as Ukraine faces heavy losses and intensified Russian assaults. North Korea is sending 30,000 more troops to reinforce Russia’s front lines, but Trump’s “America First” means pulling critical air defenses from the fight against autocracy, empowering Putin’s regime while Ukraine bleeds.

Meanwhile, the Trump regime is playing an obscene shell game with human lives, as the Abrego Garcia case now demonstrates in brutal clarity. In a plot twist so lawless it stunned seasoned legal observers, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who had been illegally deported by Trump’s DHS despite a court order protecting him from removal due to the risk of torture, was brought back to the U.S. under federal court and Supreme Court orders. But instead of acknowledging the mistake, Trump’s DOJ indicted him on what former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner rightly calls “weak-ass, trumped-up charges” to save face.

When a federal judge ruled Abrego Garcia should be released pending trial, Trump’s DHS threatened to immediately seize him again and deport him the moment he walked out of federal custody, defying prior court orders and constitutional protections. In a move that says everything about this regime’s contempt for the rule of law, Abrego Garcia and his lawyers actually begged the court to keep him in jail rather than risk another illegal deportation. As Kirschner put it, “They are hoping that they can keep the shells moving and nobody will actually see under which shell Abrego Garcia is at any given moment.”

This is how a lawless administration operates: ignore court orders, violate due process, and abuse federal power to please a corrupt president’s whims, all while turning the Department of Justice into a vindictive tool of personal vengeance rather than a vehicle for justice. They don’t think they will be held accountable, but accountability will come, because justice matters.

Back on the home front, the Trump regime is busy scrubbing the National Climate Assessment from the web, erasing sea-level rise projections for Miami and New York, wildfire risk maps for California, and county-level heat index forecasts that communities, farmers, planners, and journalists rely on to prepare for the next wildfire or flood. Teachers used the assessment’s searchable atlas to show students how climate change is shaping their hometowns; city planners used it to strengthen infrastructure; journalists used it to hold local officials and polluters accountable. It’s the climate version of “if we don’t measure it, it’s not real,” except the heat waves, crop failures, and storm surges won’t get the memo. When you can’t win the argument, you hide the evidence.

And yet, there is hope. In Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court struck down the state’s 1849 abortion ban, ensuring that reproductive freedom survives in a key battleground state. It’s a hard-fought reminder that flipping courts and turning out voters matter, and that rights can be clawed back even when the machinery of repression feels unstoppable.

Today’s America is ruled by billionaires who would rather hoard cash than pay taxes, by politicians who would rather gut your healthcare than risk a donor’s wrath, and by a convicted felon who somehow became president and would rather hand Ukraine to Putin than risk a bad news cycle. We’re governed by a regime that erases climate data as heatwaves kill, that illegally deports people and then indicts them to save face, that caves to Trump’s tantrums while hospitals close and foam-soaked billionaire weddings carry on. But ordinary people, when organized, can still win victories that matter, from protecting abortion rights in Wisconsin to fighting for the truth in your communities. That’s what we’re here to cover, and why your attention, your willingness to look at what’s happening without flinching, remains a radical act.

Stay awake. Stay focused. Carpe Momentum!