The Week That Was (Or Wasn’t)
Printed by lanternlight from the Office of Low Expectations
🔥 The Great Iranian Vanishing Act (Of Uranium)
Trump protested the facts by inventing new fiction: B2 pilots, apparently overcome with emotion, called him in tears—"SIR! FLAWLESS!" One wonders if the pilots sobbed because they knew they’d been drafted into political theater, not war.
Not to be out-deluded, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—ever the mixologist of ego and ignorance—emerged with a press conference described as “unhinged” even by Department of Defense standards. His assertion that this bombing run was “the most complex and secretive military operation in history” managed to insult D-Day, Hiroshima, and Seal Team 6 in one go.
🩹 The Big Ugly Beautiful Bill Shuffles Toward Death (or July 4th)
Senators continue dragging the rotting carcass of the BBB bill through procedural purgatory. Provisions targeting SNAP and Medicaid were nixed by the Parliamentarian—prompting Senator Tommy Tuberville to furrow his brow for a full three seconds before forgetting what a Parliamentarian is.
Meanwhile, Josh Hawley crossed his self-imposed red line—not with courage but with a coward’s pirouette. Having once declared that health care cuts were intolerable, he now tolerates them with the glazed resignation of a man watching his party fall off a cliff in electoral lockstep.
Trump, meanwhile, recited budget fantasies like a drunk wizard:
“We’re cutting $1.7 trillion and you’re not gonna feel any of it. Medicaid’s the same. Same same!”
A policy lie wrapped in fiscal sorcery, delivered by a man who thinks “CBO” stands for “Cheeseburger Order.”
Coverage here: TPM Live Blog
❄️ ICE-Capades of the Damned
Masked agents are scooping up migrants (and legal residents) like it’s Black Friday at the Deport-Mart. And just to confuse the issue, a rash of fake ICE agents is robbing people in broad daylight—proving that under Trump’s regime, even the impersonators have impunity.
Pam Bondi, whose understanding of civil liberties could be written on a communion wafer, claims she’s unaware of agents hiding their faces—but defends the practice anyway. “For their safety,” she says. As though anonymity were a constitutional amendment.
ICE Impersonator Reports:
⚖️ Supreme Court Declares: “Let There Be Tyranny”
In a masterclass of enabling executive lawlessness, the Court ruled that judges can no longer issue national injunctions. Instead, illegal presidential acts must be challenged one district at a time—a bureaucratic scavenger hunt designed to wear down opposition by miles and misery.
Justice Barrett’s opinion helpfully suggests that if your rights are being trampled in Wyoming, you may need to move to Vermont and start a new lawsuit.
Justice Jackson, wielding the dissent like a flaming sword, accused the majority of creating “a zone of lawlessness.” Alas, the conservative bloc has no interest in law, only in order—specifically, the kind handed down from above.
Other rulings of the week:
- Medicaid users can’t go to Planned Parenthood.
- LGBTQ books violate religious freedom.
- Public school curricula must now come with a theological warning label.
- And yes, they ruled against porn too.
Chief Justice Roberts, the human shrug emoji, dismissed critics with:
“If it’s just venting because you lost, then that’s not terribly helpful.”
🏙️ Zohran Mamdani Wins NYC Mayoral Nomination. Meltdown Ensues.
Trump declared him a “100% Communist Lunatic” (which might be a promotion). Marjorie Taylor Greene produced an AI-generated eulogy for the Statue of Liberty. And Rep. Andy Ogles—wearing the Confederacy like a cologne—called for Mamdani’s denaturalization and deportation. A U.S. citizen. Who was born here.
Mamdani’s true crime? Caring about housing costs and looking like the people he represents.
In response, he smiled and promised to “keep showing up.” In a city as allergic to sincerity as New York, that may be his most radical act of all.
And thus concludes another cursed chapter in the ledger of American decline—a week in which facts were Sharpied into fiction, the law was declared optional for the powerful, and the rituals of democracy were simultaneously mocked and redeemed.
While the regime celebrated imagined victories and sidestepped accountability in jackboots and robes, a new name—Mamdani—rang out over the din, reminding us that even amid the theater of repression and rot, the idea of a better future remains stubbornly un-evicted.
The center cannot hold, they say—though the grifters seem to think otherwise.
