It's another exhausting week in America as our duly elected leader and his not-so-elected fart-sniffing buddy make enemies across the globe for the... what, 30th time? We'd say Trump thinks he's good at poker, except the man never knows when to hold or when to fold; he only seems to vibe with upping the ante.

He's spent the week tossing tariffs around like they're his patented insults, and, unsurprisingly, the global markets are reacting to his clear instability. The president's vitriol is rapidly shifting the economy toward a recession, and Trump's recourse is simply to avoid the topic. Instead, he'd prefer to talk about how everything he doesn't agree with is illegal.

Green card holder and legal citizen Mahmoud Khalil is just one of the people caught up in Trump's new definition of the word “illegal.” Now that Trump decides what is and isn't legal, anything can land you in hot water, and the Columbia alumnus is feeling the burn. Trump’s newfound power to bend and outright break laws isn't going to help people like Khalil, its only going to help he and his rich buddies, and no one will benefit more than Elon Musk.

The billionaire is firing American civil servants left and right, and the outrage its caused across the world is finally hitting Musk somewhere he actually cares about — his wallet. His companies are tanking across the globe, and his darling baby Tesla is getting hit the hardest. But don't worry, the noble elite have a plan to fix everything by outsourcing it to robots, obviously.

It's just another week under the United Oligarchy of America. Only 201 weeks left to go.

First, they came for “illegals.” Then, they came for Mahmoud. Next….

Donald Trump and his followers employ words unlike any other presidential administration: unfounded confidence substitutes logical eloquence, and words don’t always mean what words are supposed to mean. Just look to Karoline Leavitt’s poor understanding of economics and her fragile ego as proof that many phrases with distinct definitions are used interchangeably.

For instance, it is a quintessential MAGA cliché to indiscriminately slap the word “criminal” onto all undocumented migrants when, in reality, most are working people intent on making an honest living. What they lack is not so much the ability to abide by the law but any superhuman capacity to speed up the excruciatingly lengthy process that is the U.S.’s Kafka-esque system for obtaining the proper documentation. As “the most famous undocumented migrant,” Jose Antonio Vargas, noted, the majority of Americans don’t have a clue about all its inner workings. Furthermore, being in the country illegally does not constitute a criminal offense. Overstaying one’s Visa is a civil violation, only becoming a felony if you re-enter the country after deportation.

Now, the word “terrorism” is being used to disguise the deeply concerning constitutional violation – namely, of the First and Fifth Amendments – that University of Colombia alumnus Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest constitutes. Higher education facilities have the duty to educate their students, but also to protect them, especially if what they have done amounts to free speech and civil disobedience. But universities are also money-making businesses. Hence, with the looming threat of being stripped of government funding, Colombia failed Khalil after he reportedly asked for help on the day preceding his arrest.

The green card holder’s detention and the attempt to revoke his legal status constitute a clear escalation in Trump’s targeting of civil liberties. And if this kind of totalitarian overreach remains unchallenged, it will only continue to intensify and expand its target list. In Trump’s own words, the pro-Palestinian activist’s arrest is but “the first of many.” Hope lies in people’s willingness to be brave in the face of political repression and join forces to prove that the voices of the many resound far louder than those of the few. In the words of the wisest bald diva in television history: “Power resides where men believe it resides. It’s a trick. A shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”

Elon Musk is speed running How to Lose Friends & Alienate People with the added bonus of losing more wealth than 99.99% of the population will ever have

It's been just over two months since the Trump/Musk dream team antonym started floundering its way through government, but this ocean of garbage never seems to quell.

Like an unsupervised toddler with a red pen and a pristine white wall, Elon Musk has slashed the governmental workforce by more than 10,000 Americans daily since January 2024. Nearly 63 thousand federal workers across 17 agencies have lost their jobs in only 52 days — an eye-watering 41,311% increase from 2024 — and that's not even counting the folks who quit in protest. After multiple waves of mass firings, President Trump has finally gone on record to say that sweeping administration cuts are all just recommendations that no one actually needs to follow. But now that 60k workers are standing in the breadline, his "assurance" really just sounds like empty platitudes.

Of course, now that the optics look incredibly bad, Musk won't take the credit. Instead, he and Trump are playing a "fun" game of finger-pointing when it comes to who heads DOGE and the person who’s "it" alternates at least once a week. Tell us again, Donnie, is it Vice President Musk or Amy Gleeson spitting in the faces of civil servants today?

While Musk casually shrugs his shoulders in apology over his inability to "bat a thousand all the time," we have to wonder how the investors over at Tesla are feeling as they watch those swing-and-a-miss moments tank their stock prices. The revolutionary car company's stock has plummeted since December, dropping a truly nauseating 53% of its value. It's twisted financials all the way down as the app formerly known as Twitter flails in the wind in the face of Musk losing his position at Tesla. The company's ability to produce profit was part of Musk's bid to nab X, so we imagine he's starting to feel a modicum of the poverty pressures that those thousands of civil servants are now drowning under.

Speaking of X, the social media site had a hell of a week after suffering from multiple cyber attacks. Musk went online to whine about how huge the effort was and how "a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved” in the attacks. It's just one of many ways Musk's involvement in the government seems to be biting him in his oversized and very pale behind. Of course, as soon as Musk decided it must be a country to blame, he immediately started pointing the finger at none other than the incredibly war-torn Ukraine, citing IP addresses originating from the country.

My days as a teen "hacker" tell me that any basic VPN can make an IP address appear from basically anywhere in the world. So, Musky, can you think of anyone who might want to make Ukraine look bad? Anyone? Bueller? Experts were, of course, quick to tell Musk to shut his uneducated pie-hole before his disinformation makes things worse for the already beleaguered people of Ukraine, but with a God complex that impressive, we're sure that advice went in one ear and out the other.

His following of sycophants, one that now includes a number of EV-hating Republicans, can't find any fault with Musk these days. The man is like the Pied Piper of dirtbags — he knows exactly what song and dance the Republican bootlickers came to see. He's hand feeding them garbage platitudes about how "being a mom is a real job," after trying to cut parental leave for mothers at X from 20 weeks to just 14 days. Oh, let's not forget how the literal richest man in the world is trying to shortchange one of his baby mommas on child support.

We should be surprised, but at this point being an awful person is just one of many qualifications necessary to join the MAGA bandwagon.

As prices bury Americans, Trump dodges the word ‘recession’, but don’t worry — his Commerce Secretary thinks robots will save us

Despite having a president with a "very, very large brain," the U.S. seems to be teetering on the verge of a recession. Who could’ve seen this coming? Oh wait — literally everyone except Trump.

Turns out, slapping global tariffs on steel and aluminum isn’t the economic slam dunk he thought it was. The FTSE 100 alone lost $85 billion, and the U.S. market has already hemorrhaged a casual $4 trillion. But don’t worry — Trump’s brilliant response is to double down on tariffs. The Atlanta Federal Reserve is projecting the economy will shrink by 2.8% in Q1 2025 — worse than an already bleak prediction. Bloomberg calls it a “death spiral,” which feels about right.

Just last week, tariffs hit Canada and Mexico, and grocery prices are already bracing for impact. Considering 60% of fresh fruit and 38% of fresh vegetables in the U.S. are imported, you might want to start growing your own avocado trees. Oh, and cars? If you’re thinking about buying one, add an extra $3,000 to the price tag. Hope you didn’t need that money for, like, rent or tuition.

When asked about the possibility of a recession during an interview on Sunday Morning Futures, Trump gave his usual non-answer: “I hate to predict things like that.” The President claims to have "the best words." Yet, he can't even muster up a half-hearted lie to reassure the American people.

According to Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, there's no recession on the horizon, just a little "period of transition." When one reporter pointed out that making stuff in the U.S. might actually cost more because, you know, American workers like to get paid, Lutnick dropped this nugget of wisdom: "Then robots will make them, and people don't have to go to college." Peak MAGA wisdom.

King Donald stomps on 1A with declaration that everything he doesn’t like is illegal

Donald Trump is welcoming in a new era of America — one in which trivial things like “laws” and “morals” are tossed out in favor of far more lucrative ideals. It’s landed some of our nation’s most treasured rights on the chopping block, as Trump makes mincemeat of our country and sells it as “progress.”

Free speech joined other silly, outdated American notions like due process and habeas corpus on the exit ramp this week, as Trump made the wild and utterly false claim that boycotts against Tesla are somehow “illegal.” Apparently the government can now tell us how and where to spend our money, and Trump knows exactly whose pockets he’s looking to line. He pushed back against plummeting Tesla sales with a promise to buy a Tesla of his own, but made no promises to actually drive it. Real question: Does this man actually know how to operate a vehicle? Because all signs point to “no.”

Joining boycotts on the list of “things that are only allowed when they benefit Trump” is protesting in general, since free speech is being increasingly employed by Americans to criticize our sitting president. And since he’s sporting skin thinner than starlets in the aughts, Trump has now made it one of his goals to criminalize all protests — and, eventually, free speech itself.

"You're not allowed to do that," says Trump, and somehow he's not talking about his plans for the Declaration of Independence

This week in "Is Donald Trump Really That Dense?" POTUS 47 appeared to prove, yet again, that he has the mental faculties of a toddler when he got mad at Canada for... doing the exact same thing he's doing. In a move that everyone but apparently Trump himself predicted, Canada is hitting back at his imposed trade tariffs by slapping American goods with a matching price-hike. Yes, it turns out that, if you push them hard enough, there's American-style pettiness inside every kindly Canadian.

Naturally, Trump whined about this turn of events on Truth Social, blasting the U.S.’s northern neighbor as a "Tariff abuser," a statement that's even richer than he is. "Your [sic] not even allowed to do that," he raged, displaying both the petulance and lack of grammatical understanding that we've come to expect from the leader of the free world.

"You're not allowed to do that," is something that could be sent right back at Trump for his bizarre idea for the Declaration of Independence. In case you missed it, he wants to bring the precious historical document out of its safe place in Washington's National Archives Building and put it on display in the Oval Office. Bad news for the protection of one of the nation's most integral artifacts — but good news for Nicolas Cage, the next time he gets the urge to swipe it.