The most on-the-nose Onion headline of all time just might be this one:
Though written in 2003, that headline perfectly captures the Trump era. No one has figured out how to counter Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone” strategy, and maybe no one ever will; it turns out that shit can be shoveled faster than it can be sorted through, and who wants to spend their life sorting through shit, anyway? Trump triggers the “fuck this noise” reflex in any sane person, so you can’t really blame people when they turn their attention to other things. The world is full of food and music and baseball and blowjobs — what’s the point of diligently noting every last boring thing that happens in Washington?
That’s especially true in a week like this one, when the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder has lowered the quality of our dialogue from “sewage pit” to “clogged toilet in a porno theater”. Events like these make normal people insane, and they make insane people rich. But stuff is still happening; several things happened this week that could seriously impact our lives. This recap could probably include ten or 15 items — I’m skipping big news like the budget negotiations and Israel’s move into Gaza City — but here are three events that caught my eye:
Trump illegally pursues illegal TikTok sale
Maybe the most straightforwardly illegal thing that Trump has done — which is a competitive category — is to simply not enforce the law banning TikTok if it isn’t sold. He keeps granting himself extensions that are not allowed by the law, which should have the same legal weight as me writing “Jeff = drive” on a McDonald’s wrapper and using that as my drivers’ license. But Trump keeps getting away with it, because Congress clearly thinks that its most sacred duty is to support Trump’s “Congress can go fuck itself” agenda.