The Trump administration wants to “flood the zone” so you can’t keep up or you get too exhausted to care - and I’ll be damned if that happens on my watch. Here’s a cheat sheet of the fuckery afoot.
1. Trump just rewrote the childhood vaccine schedule
On Monday, standing beside RFK Jr., Trump signed an executive order recommending that children be vaccinated against 11 diseases instead of the 18 the CDC recommended in 2024. Neither Trump nor RFK Jr. is a doctor. It also calls for splitting the MMR vaccine - measles, mumps, rubella - into three separate shots. Standalone versions of those shots are not FDA-approved and are not manufactured for routine use in the United States. The order tells doctors to space vaccines across separate visits (increasing the total number of doctor’s visits as healthcare costs soar), and it directs the DOJ to investigate states that don’t honor vaccine-mandate exemptions. Trump claimed at the signing that the combined measles shot could be “quite lethal.” He presented no evidence, because there isn’t any. Measles, however, is. Even Senator Bill Cassidy, the doctor who cast the deciding vote for RFK Jr. on a promise that the childhood schedule wouldn’t change, called the order “so wrong.” A judge blocked the CDC’s attempt at this in March. This one is headed to court too - but the schedule change is the policy in the meantime.
2. Trump won’t rule out an “emergency” over the midterms
In a recent interview, Real America’s Voice host Wayne Allyn Root pitched Trump - “you have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections” - as a workaround for the election bill the Senate won’t pass. Trump declined to rule it out. The Washington Post reported in March that pro-Trump activists were circulating a draft executive order claiming Chinese interference in 2020 gives Trump emergency powers over the 2026 election. In his prime-time address he rambled on about China before releasing “evidence” that was less than convincing. Mainstream media barely bothered to cover it. Courts have held over and over that states run elections, not presidents. He keeps testing the waters anyway.
3. The DOJ invented executive privilege for private citizens
Earlier this week, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel - the office that decides what the executive branch believes the law is - published a 21-page opinion saying executive privilege can cover Trump’s private advisers - people who do not work for the government - so long as the communications “relate to official presidential decisionmaking.” Translated - if Democrats win Congress in November and start sending subpoenas to the outside fixers, the White House now has a pre-written excuse to not comply. A former OLC attorney told Axios it could be a significant weapon against congressional investigations and goes beyond anything the office has formally claimed before. The opinion isn’t binding, and courts may laugh at it. It exists anyway, and conveniently, 3 months ahead of the election that would trigger it.
4. The slush fund has a pulse again
Todd Blanche was sworn in Monday as the 88th Attorney General - by Judge Emil Bove, his former co-counsel on Trump’s criminal defense team. One Trump defense lawyer administering the oath to the other. Because birds of a fucking feather.
Hours later, Trump was asked whether the $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” - the one Blanche formally killed 8 days earlier just to get confirmed - might come back. Trump answered: “Well, that’ll be up to Todd Blanche.” To be clear, on August 2nd there was no longer a Fund. On August 8th Blanche was confirmed 50-49. As of August 10th the fund’s fate rests with the man who just got the job by burying it. Never shocked. Always appalled.
5. Birthright citizenship is back in court - already
On Tuesday, the same lawyers who beat Trump in the Supreme Court filed the first direct challenge to his new birthright citizenship order, telling federal Judge Joseph Laplante in New Hampshire that it “purports to strip birthright citizenship” from children the Court already protected 6 weeks ago. CASA - the immigrant rights group behind one of the original challenges - filed its own motion the same day. The argument writes itself. The Supreme Court said the 14th Amendment covers nearly every baby born on US soil, allowing only the narrow, historical exceptions - children of foreign diplomats and of occupying enemy armies. Trump’s new order stretches “diplomats” into any foreign-government employee, and “occupying enemy armies” into anyone his administration decides to label an “alien enemy.” The Court already listed the exceptions, but Trump didn’t care and wrote new ones. The last order took 17 months to die. The clock on this one started Tuesday.
6. The war is now a billing dispute
Iran’s price for reopening the Strait of Hormuz has become a list of demands - war reparations, US troops out of the region, sanctions and the naval blockade lifted, and frozen assets released. Trump responded via Truth Social on Monday, saying “I am likewise demanding compensation from Iran” for Americans killed by Iran and its proxies going back decades, USS Cole included. So 6 months into a war we started, the strait is still largely blocked, Iran and Oman have already agreed on the shipping lanes - inbound through Iranian waters, outbound through Omani - while Washington and Tehran bill each other. Your gas prices are the interest fees.
7. The president called Democrats “jihadists”
Monday in the Oval Office - the same shitshow where he signed the vaccine order - Trump said Democrats have “jihadists being elected all over the place.” He didn’t name anyone, and didn’t need to. It came days after Abdul El-Sayed, who is Muslim, won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, and national Republicans started pointedly using his full legal name. For the record on how sincere the label is - when his own ally called New York’s mayor-elect a jihadist last November, Trump rejected it himself, calling Mamdani “a very rational person.” He knows the meaning of the word and he doesn’t believe it for a second. But he does know exactly what he’s doing and who he’s trying to influence before the midterms.
8. Medicaid will stop covering trans kids’ healthcare - Trump is campaigning on it
On Tuesday the administration finalized a rule barring Medicaid from covering gender-affirming care for anyone under 18, and CHIP - the children’s insurance program - for anyone under 19, effective October 12th. Kids already on hormone therapy have 6 months from that date before their coverage ends. Mental health care stays covered.
The rule’s text calls the treatments “sex-rejecting procedures” - which tells you exactly who wrote it. Whatever your view of the underlying medicine, note what the president did with the announcement. He posted it to Truth Social with a closing line of “Please remember this when you are casting your vote in the Midterm Elections in November.” He wrote the campaign ad into a healthcare policy targeting kids he claims are getting secret surgeries while at school.
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