The Great Liquidation

As Trump auctions off public land, cracks down on political enemies, shields Putin, stumbles toward war, and rewards insurrectionists, America slides deeper into authoritarian rot.

While America watched Donald Trump rage-post about smiling soldiers and bark orders to evacuate Tehran via social media, his Senate allies quietly launched one of the most audacious acts of theft in modern U.S. history: the sale of America itself.

Tucked into the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee’s reconciliation package, because nothing says “budget math” like corporate land grabs, is a provision that authorizes the forced sale of at least two million acres of public land in the next five years. But that’s just the opening bid. Over 250 million acres of wilderness study areas, recreation lands, roadless forests, tribal homelands, big game migration corridors, and critical wildlife habitat are now on the chopping block. All eligible. All available. No public hearings, no tribal consultation, no pesky voters getting in the way. A conveyor belt of 30-day nominations and 60-day auction cycles efficiently redistributes America’s public commons to oil drillers, mining conglomerates, and real estate speculators who write large campaign checks.

Of course, the bill pretends this has something to do with “housing.” It doesn’t. There are no enforceable requirements that any of this land ever be used to build affordable homes, and most of it isn’t even suitable for development. It creates a lovely financial reservoir for the regime to raid as they shovel billions in tax cuts toward the donor class.

As if that weren’t enough plunder for one week, Trump’s DOJ has now issued a legal opinion asserting that executive order can unilaterally revoke national monument designations, placing another 13.5 million acres under immediate threat. What we’re witnessing isn’t policy. It’s a looting spree wearing the tattered costume of legislation.

Meanwhile, half a world away, Trump continued his personal live-tweet reenactment of Dr. Strangelove as Israeli airstrikes pummeled Tehran overnight. Fifty Israeli jets bombed the Iranian capital, sending thousands of civilians fleeing. Supreme Leader Khamenei, unsurprisingly, rejected Trump’s demand for “unconditional surrender” with a warning that any U.S. intervention would trigger “irreparable damage.” The Trump White House, naturally, responded with maximum dignity: evacuation warnings, juvenile threats, and a fresh round of You can run, but you can’t hide tough-guy slogans posted on Truth Social between golf fundraisers.

Meanwhile, half a world away, Trump continued his personal live-tweet reenactment of Dr. Strangelove as Israeli airstrikes pummeled Tehran overnight. Fifty Israeli jets bombed the Iranian capital, sending thousands of civilians fleeing. Supreme Leader Khamenei, unsurprisingly, rejected Trump’s demand for “unconditional surrender” with a warning that any U.S. intervention would trigger “irreparable damage.” The Trump White House, naturally, responded with maximum dignity: evacuation warnings, juvenile threats, and a fresh round of You can run but you can’t hide tough-guy slogans posted on Truth Social between golf fundraisers.

As the bombs fall and the world holds its breath, one thing is conspicuously missing: answers. There have been no formal press briefings from the White House. No Defense Department statements. No Pentagon briefings explaining what role, if any, U.S. forces are playing in this spiraling conflict. No legal justification offered to Congress or the American public for what appears to be a rapidly escalating proxy war with nuclear stakes. The United States may already be entangled in yet another Middle Eastern war, and the public is being treated to nothing but cryptic posts and photo ops involving flagpole installations.

Then, right as global war loomed, the White House declared a travel and photo lid. No live appearances. No unscripted remarks. Not even a staged backdrop of flags and soldiers to project strength. The world may be sliding toward regional collapse, but America’s commander-in-chief apparently can’t summon the strength to walk across a camera frame, much less explain to the nation what we’re doing and why. Perhaps he’s too busy berating his generals behind closed doors, or slurring through whatever late-night pharmaceutical cocktails keep the MAGA machine barely functioning.And while his foreign policy stumbles into catastrophe, Trump’s domestic authoritarian project keeps grinding forward. ICE continues its latest political purge, leveraging expansive “immigration audit” authorities to detain elected officials, judges, city council members, and opposition activists under flimsy documentation pretexts. Somehow, the arrests always seem to involve Democrats. Just a coincidence, surely.

The most high-profile target this week: New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. In a scene that could have been ripped directly from some late-stage banana republic, federal agents physically manhandled Lander outside City Hall as cameras rolled, claiming his detention was part of a “routine immigration status review” tied to extended family members. Lander, a sitting citywide elected official with no immigration violations of his own, was reportedly held for hours before being released without charge, a pure display of intimidation theater, designed for maximum public spectacle.

Federal power is being openly weaponized into a political cleansing machine, part show trial, part suppression campaign, aimed squarely at thinning the ranks of opposition officeholders ahead of 2026. The Minnesota assassinations may have lit the fuse on stochastic terror. ICE is doing the slow, methodical part.

In case anyone needed additional reminders of what’s at stake, a Reagan-appointed federal judge handed down one of the most scathing public rebukes of Trump’s regime yet, striking down his anti-DEI executive orders as “the most racist government actions I have seen in 40 years.” The judge, who has served on the bench since 1985, minced no words about Trump’s so-called “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism” order or his sweeping anti-DEI campaign: this is state-sponsored racial discrimination, executed with the kind of naked bigotry federal courts rarely have the guts to call out. The regime, naturally, responded by accusing the judge himself of racism, a projection reflex so reflexive at this point it practically counts as self-parody.

Even as Trump edges toward war with Iran, his ongoing protection of Vladimir Putin remains the one constant in his otherwise erratic worldview. According to former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor, the White House is actively delaying bipartisan Senate sanctions legislation that would impose sweeping new economic penalties on Russia. Eighty-four Senators have signed on. Trump’s team continues to stall under the pretense of seeking a “diplomatic opening.” As Taylor bluntly put it: “We don’t see that coming out from this administration.” The Europeans, once again, are being told to “step up” as Trump shields Putin from real consequences while Ukraine fights for survival.

And yet, none of this quite captures the depths of Trump’s depravity like his treatment of those who literally saved Congress from being lynched in 2021. This week, two of the most prominent law enforcement heroes of January 6, Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges, filed a federal lawsuit demanding that Congress finally obey its own law and install the memorial plaque honoring the officers who risked their lives to defend the Capitol. The plaque was authorized by Congress in 2022. Congress has never installed it. MAGA leadership, led by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who continues to serve as Trump’s obedient hall monitor, has spent the past three years blocking the memorial entirely. Too busy handing out pardons to insurrectionists and holding candlelight vigils for Ashli Babbitt, Johnson and his crew have allowed the mandated tribute to the officers who defended Congress to gather dust.

Meanwhile, Trump rewards their attackers with campaign events, legal defense funds, and, in Babbitt’s case, a $5 million taxpayer-funded settlement quietly handed to her family for the death of a woman who was attempting to reach and possibly kill elected officials during a violent coup attempt. The defenders get ignored and the attackers get a payout.

Trump continues to rewrite January 6 into a bizarre fascist passion play: rewarding attackers, erasing defenders, and, in a grotesque flourish, stripping Fort Gregg-Adams, which had honored the highest-ranking Black Army officers of World War II, back to its old name: Fort Lee. Not even Robert E. Lee, mind you, just some other Lee, carefully selected to maintain plausible deniability while dog-whistling the intended audience.

In Trump’s America, the insurrectionists are the martyrs; the defenders are erased; the land is for sale; the courts are branded racist for enforcing the Constitution, and the regime’s most coherent foreign policy principle remains: do not disturb Vladimir Putin.