WASHINGTON — Ever throw a party only to have no one show up? Awkward. Lonely. Embarrassing.Welcome to President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair, where even the baptism pool was empty in Friday’s 100-degree heat as two men waved large flags to a crowd of two and a half — a little boy danced to soulless piano playing to the massive “revival” tent’s eight rows of empty chairs.America may be back according to MAGA bumper stickers, but if Trump’s fair is any barometer, the nation’s surely seen better days.At this lightly attended spectacle, even hologram Abraham Lincoln was left addressing an audience of one in the air-conditioned Illinois exhibit.But it was not just dead presidents getting a cool reception. Even America’s living U.S. trade representative Ambassador Jamison Greer’s panel commemorating Horespower of America — Thursday’s official theme at this state fair — was only attracting a crowd some 15 people when Raw Story visited, not including his three-person, suit-donning security detail and a handful of event staff.It seems pigs are more popular than politicians, though.Thursday morning’s youth livestock exhibition featured pigs. The live display attracted a rotating cast of some 20 people on one grandstand — even as the other rodeo stand remained empty throughout the porky presentation — which was far more interest than Trump’s trade rep garnered.“I guess, technically, that’s a rodeo,” an older man told his unimpressed partner as they passed the day’s sparsely attended youth livestock show (Thursday’s afternoon “rodeo” was later canceled, apparently due to the heat).In the stifling temperatures, grumblings were heard amongst attendees when they reached exhibits, only to be turned away by event staff, like the temporarily shuttered Virginia and Texas exhibits.“Oh no,” one lady exclaimed. “I just wanted to get out of the heat.”Other makeshift fan-waving visitors peeked their heads into exhibits just for a second as they hunted for hydration that was cooler than the lukewarm-to-hot bottles of water passed out for free.“There’s no water,” one female scout yelled to her small group huddled outside the Maryland exhibit.Other visitors were surprised to see their home state’s packed like sardines in exhibit halls, like the one small temporary building dedicated to Rhode Island, Vermont and — because they have so much in common — Kentucky.“I don’t know why they have Vermont and Rhode Island in here, too,” one man complained through a southern drawl.“Kinda weird,” his female companion agreed.One of the more popular exhibits seemed to be the South Carolina one, as older visitors found respite in the state’s six large white rocking chairs.Another popular exhibit was Florida’s, but folks waiting in the 40-some-odd-people-long line weren’t quite sure why there was a line, let alone why they were waiting in it.“Is this the line for Florida?” Raw Story asked as Lynyrd Skynyrd's “Free Bird” wailed over the loudspeakers. “What’s in there that’s so good?”“Yeah,” a family at the end of the line said just about in unison.“We were wondering the same thing,” a lady chimed in.“A little puppy,” an Asian tourist mimed with her hands.“Oh, okay,” the lady replied. “Like a little stuffed animal.”While there was some MAGA gear spotted throughout the crowd, one visitor’ proudly wore an “all of us are immigrants” shirt.“Sometimes the possibilities of good trouble present themselves,” Bob, who was in town with his wife from Pennsylvania, told Raw Story. “I’m a provocateur.”Though Bob gave credit where credit was due.“It’s also a Steve Earle song called ‘City of Immigrants,’” Bob went out of his way to confess to Raw Story later in the afternoon.While the administration has refused calls to publicly disclose all of the fair’s financial backers, corporate logos are prominent in Trump’s America.What’s more American than the military-industrial complex? To the chagrin of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, everywhere you looked throughout the fair you could spot a logo of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, SpaceX, GE Aerospace and other contractors.The Pentagon and other agencies also got in on the action, as they turned their exhibition space into recruiting centers as Air Force Thunderbirds buzzed the National Mall outside.The Department of Homeland Security even passed out FEMA-emblazoned crayons, coloring books and Pedro the Penguin maps of hazards across all 50 states for kids to color.\Silicon Valley’s finest also flexed their corporate might throughout the event, including Oracle, Uber, Micron Technologies, Mosaic, and Chime.Signs for Phorm Energy — a caffeine-spiked drink company co-owned by UFC president Dana White and Anheuser-Busch — were also hard to miss.Traditional American companies like Wrangler, Tractor Supply and Scott’s Miracle-Gro are also sponsors.
A longtime Democratic political insider secretly served as an informant for the FBI while working for California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Alexis Podesta, who was appointed by Gov. […]
Views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author. Get the f**k outta here, Barack Obama; the Democrats have a new superstar, and his name is […]
In a 6-3 decision breaking on partisan lines, the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Slaughter that Trump can fire Federal Trade Commissioners and other federal agency directors without cause. The ruling overturns longstanding Supreme Court precedent and express statutory instruction that combined to protect the political independence and subject matter expertise of federal agencies for over 90 years.The ruling presents a novel reading of a president’s Constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” expanding that power for a rogue president hellbent on breaking laws instead of executing them. As Justice Sotomayor put it, “The Court… is elevating (Trump) above his once-coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”An activist Roberts Court has now written into existence an all-powerful unitary executive despite elaborate instructions in art. I, II and III to keep the three branches of government separate and equal. Rejecting federal laws that restrict a president’s removal of agency directors to for-cause removal, SCOTUS has made the president all powerful and Congress less relevant, while arrogating scientific and technical questions to itself.Trump’s corporate donors can now choose their own regulatorsBefore republicans on the bench rewrote it this week, the Federal Trade Commission Act stated that a President could only remove a commissioner for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” That statute clearly and intentionally barred presidents from firing directors for partisan or corrupt reasons, and from punishing regulators who rule against a president’s corporate donor(s). Vesting a singularly authoritarian executive with unprecedented, expansive powers, the Supreme Court re-wrote federal laws to advance their own political narrative.Over two dozen federal agencies will be affected, covering everything from the financial markets, the commodities markets, and nuclear power. Agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission were all Congressionally designed to be independent watchdogs, enforcers insulated from partisan whims. Now Trump can remove any commissioners who threaten to rule against his allies, assuring that his political supporters will be afforded preferential review, licensing, merger approvals and other rulings.With Trump’s new latitude to fire any agency head who threatens meaningful regulation, his corporate donors have been effectively empowered to choose their own regulators. Federal laws passed to protect human health, finance, banking, communications, workplace safety, and clean air, soil and water have been rendered functionally meaningless.Replacing science, expertise and merit with political fealtyCongressionally created and funded federal agencies serve express, statutory purposes written to safeguard the American public. The Supreme Court had protected agency autonomy and expertise dating back to 1935, ruling that some degree of autonomy was necessary for federal agencies to meet specific scientific, economic, communications, trade, health, and environmental mandates. Federal agencies were never meant to be a president’s personal toys with which to reward donors and cronies.For a president in the habit of accepting lavish gifts and cash from foreign governments, along with hundreds of millions from domestic supplicants, finding even more room for self-dealing, corruption and political favoritism must be heady. For the rest of us, it’s dangerous. We actually need competent people to run the federal government, even in its post-DOGE watered down state.If Trump declares that every home must be heated by dirty coal, the head of the Energy Commission must try to effectuate that command no matter the harm to Americans’ lungs. If Trump declares that particulate matter, fossil fuels and the widespread use of Monsanto is good for the environment, any EPA director who contradicts him with cancer and death statistics will be silenced through removal. It’s governance by full Idiocracy.A know-nothing, anti-science president can now follow his gutTo every American outside the Fox News propaganda bubble, Trump has demonstrated astonishing incompetence on all fronts. From economically illiterate tariffs to our defeat in Iran, sprinkled with comically disastrous results in between, an ignorant and arrogant “I follow my gut” Trump revels in rejecting science and expertise as Americans pay the price.The only thing saving the nation from complete chaos and disaster to date is that several federal agencies had retained some level institutional competence despite Trump (and Musk’s) best efforts to dismantle them.
Some 163 million people in the U.S. live in areas that experienced dangerous heat on Thursday, according to the National Weather Service — sending “heat risk” forecasts in major cities (including New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Atlanta) into the most extreme risk category through Saturday. Part of the reason is the planet is warming dangerously, but Trump calls climate change a “hoax” and is encouraging more use of fossil fuels. Especially endangered are workers toiling under the hot sun, or in stifling warehouses, or in delivery trucks with no AC.Yet Trump’s pick to run the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, David Keeling, is weakening the agency’s own heat standards by removing specific inspection goals. OSHA’s Heat National Emphasis Program expired on April 8. Its proposed heat standard has been stalled.For many workers, heat standards are literally a matter of life and death. Every year, workers collapse, suffer permanent injuries, and die while doing their jobs in extreme heat. Years ago, when I ran the Labor Department, we had the toughest Occupational Health and Safety Administration in history, run by a truly committed worker advocate named Joe Dear. We made workplaces safer — reducing worker deaths and injuries.Since its inception in 1971, OSHA has reduced workplace-related fatalities by almost 63 percent. It has slashed the rate of serious workplace injuries and illnesses by 75 percent. But OSHA under Keeling is retreating from worker safety. Before Trump picked him to head OSHA, Keeling was Amazon’s top safety executive. During Keeling’s tenure at Amazon, a Senate report found that Amazon warehouses were twice as dangerous as those of its competitors.This year, we’ve already seen reports of Amazon workers dying on the job on a near monthly basis, including incidents in Oregon and North Carolina. Why would we trust Amazon’s safety head with the country’s workers?Before he was at Amazon, Keeling was in charge of safety at UPS. How did he do there? OSHA repeatedly cited UPS for exposing drivers to excessive heat. Federal investigators found at least 100 drivers were hospitalized for heat-related injuries between 2015 and 2018. UPS delivery trucks had no air conditioning until 2024, when it was won in a landmark collective bargaining agreement with the Teamsters.Now Keeling is head of OSHA, and OSHA is weakening its heat protection standards. Workers are already paying the price. Reports of worker deaths during extreme heat continue to emerge across the country. Heat exposure can trigger heat stroke, organ failure, and chronic kidney disease. These are among the most predictable workplace hazards, which means they can often be prevented with strong safety standards and rigorous enforcement.But instead of strengthening those protections, OSHA under Keeling has weakened them. At a time when record-breaking temperatures are becoming more frequent, retreating from enforcement sends a dangerous message that worker fatalities are a cost of doing business.When he was in charge of safety at Amazon, Amazon became notorious for dangerous warehouse conditions. When in charge of safety at UPS, UPS resisted providing air conditioning for delivery vehicles. Now, when the agency responsible for protecting millions of workers should be leading the fight against preventable heat deaths — it’s backing away from its most basic responsibility to protect people over profits.Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
With the 2026 midterms a little over four months away and President Donald Trump continuing to suffer from weak approval ratings in poll after poll, Democratic strategists are feeling cautiously optimistic about their ability to recapture the U.S. House of Representatives — and they believe the U.S. Senate is in play for them as well. But according to the New York Times, Trump has a variety of schemes designed to shield Republicans from major losses in November.Trump, journalists Karen Yourish, Nick Corasaniti and Charlie Smart report in the Times, "is trying to use the levers of the federal government, along with personal influence over state and local lawmakers, to reshape the rules governing the 2026 midterms and future elections in extraordinary ways.""Many of these efforts have been blocked by courts, stymied by the Constitution or stopped in Congress," the reporters explain. "But the relentless assault by the president on the electoral process — both administratively and rhetorically — is likely to sow doubt and lay groundwork for extensive challenges to election results. Agencies and officials across the federal government have, at the direction of Mr. Trump, undertaken dozens of actions grounded in novel strategies and aimed at insulating Republicans from potential losses in November. Those actions fall into six major categories, and some fall into more than one."Those six categories, according to Yourish, Corasaniti and Smart, are: (1) "taking steps to nationalize elections," (2) "trying to tighten voting restrictions," (3) "pushing for mid-decade redistricting," (4) "cutting election security," (5) "undermining faith in the electoral system by questioning previous results," and (6) "punishing those who have worked against election denialism." Trump, the Times reporters note, has "installed" a long list of "election deniers" in the federal government — including Jeanine Pirro, Harmeet K. Dhillon and FBI Director Kash Patel at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Patrick Weaver at the Defense Department, and Heather Honey and Secretary Markwayne Mullin at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)."While Mr. Trump's attempts to use executive orders to change elections have been largely blocked by courts," Yourish, Corasaniti and Smart explain, "the president and his allies have found other avenues to add new restrictions to voting that are designed to help them win at the ballot box. Soon after Mr. Trump took office, the Justice Department dropped or halted all of its open voting rights lawsuits that preceded Mr. Trump's inauguration, easing the path for partisan gerrymanders and voting laws to withstand legal scrutiny. That included dropping a lawsuit against a voting law in Georgia. The number of lawyers working in the voting-rights arm of the Justice Department, one of the government's critical bulwarks against civil rights abuses in voting and elections, has dwindled from about 30 at the end of the Biden administration to the single digits after resignations, cuts and reassignments."
