NEWS: Trump Posts Murder Video, Expect a Midterm Coup Attempt
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Here’s what you may have missed:
Aaron Rupar, Rupar shares unhinged and racist things our president posts to social media
Why this matters: The president using his official platform to post a snuff video and racist content about Somali immigrants is deplorable and disqualifying. Trump strategically dehumanizes vulnerable populations in order to create a permission structure for his followers to do the same.
Thinking about..., The Next Coup Attempt
Yale historian Timothy Snyder argues that, with the 2026 midterm elections seven months out and a war underway, the structural conditions for another coup attempt are in place. He draws from world history in identifying five playbooks Trump could use to nullify elections, like claiming the need for government continuity in wartime or staging a terrorist attack as pretext for using emergency powers. Snyder considers the false-flag terrorism scenario Trump’s strongest option, noting the precedent set by Putin’s 1999 apartment bombings. Trump is simultaneously proposing a nearly 50% defense budget increase that Snyder reads as a bribe to military commanders whose cooperation is a prerequisite for any such coup attempt to succeed. The piece closes with a warning: Trump’s position is weak, but that weakness only matters if citizens, journalists, judges, and soldiers actively refuse to go along with his machinations.
Why this matters: Snyder’s framework gives readers a concrete way to recognize coup mechanics as they emerge, rather than after the fact. A population with advanced warning, that can perceive the threat in advance, is harder to take by surprise.
Click thru to: A companion Instagram post from Snyder summarizing his article.
The Guardian, ICE agents reportedly detain wife of US soldier just days after their marriage
ICE arrested Annie Ramos on April 2, just days after she married Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank. Ramos, a biochemistry student and Sunday school teacher with no criminal history, has lived in the U.S. since infancy. The couple had already hired a lawyer to begin the green card process before the wedding. When the family arrived at the base visitor center with her documents, an attendant called a supervisor, who called ICE. Agents arrived, handcuffed Ramos, and took her to a detention facility in Basile, Louisiana. When Blank’s family visited, they were barred from bringing in paperwork, preventing Ramos from signing her completed green card application.
Why this matters: Trump promised his immigration crackdown would target dangerous criminals. Detaining the immigrant wife of a deploying soldier on a military base shows the dragnet operates without any limits. Even the families of people actively serving are not exempt.
Democracy Now!, Meet Leqaa Kordia: Palestinian Protester Freed After a Year in “ICE Dungeon”
Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian activist who grew up in the occupied West Bank, was arrested while attending a Gaza solidarity protest at Columbia University in 2024, but the charges against her were dropped. She was detained by ICE in March 2025 during what she believed was a routine immigration check-in. ICE sent her to a detention facility in Texas where she remained for nearly a year under deplorable conditions. A room built for just 37 people sometimes held 100. Showers were broken for two weeks at a time and medical care was so inadequate she suffered her first-ever seizure and required hospitalization. She was denied access to her lawyers and family while chained to her hospital bed. A judge ordered her release on $100,000 bond in March 2026.
Why this matters: The Trump administration detained a legal resident with no criminal record for a year, apparently for protesting. Meanwhile, Americans are paying to detain people like her in horrifically run private prisons with little to no oversight.
NPR, Trump’s VA killed a home loan program. Vets are now losing their homes because of it
More than 10,000 veterans have lost their homes to foreclosure since May 2025, when the Trump administration abruptly shut down a VA rescue program for vets struggling with mortgage payments. Another 90,000 are currently behind or in the foreclosure process. The VA was warned by the mortgage industry that killing the program without a replacement would cause exactly this. Veterans with VA-backed loans now have worse foreclosure protections than most American homeowners. A replacement program is months away and, as currently drafted, could still force some vets into higher-cost loans against their will.
Why this matters: Trump campaigned on protecting veterans. His administration killed a program that was working, ignored industry warnings, and left tens of thousands of military families facing eviction.
PolitiFact, Is it a war crime to bomb civilian infrastructure, as Donald Trump has threatened?
While this situation is in flux (major understatement), Trump has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iranian power plants, oil wells, and desalination facilities if Iran doesn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz. International law experts told PolitiFact that targeting civilian infrastructure would be “a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law” under widely accepted interpretations of the Geneva Conventions. The UN Secretary-General said there are “reasonable grounds” to think such strikes could constitute war crimes. PolitiFact rates the claim “Mostly True,” noting the U.S. could invoke a dual-use argument for some targets, but that no such argument applies to desalination plants at all.
Why this matters: A sitting president is publicly threatening actions that international law experts say would be war crimes. Fact-checkers like PolitiFact perform a genuine public service by providing legal and contextual nuance and this piece is a prime example of that. But as PolitiFact itself concedes in its conclusion: “The statement [that these would be war crimes] is accurate.” Watch for fact-checkers’ tendency to deliberate beyond the plain language of a statement in ways that muddy the waters rather than clarify. A “Mostly True” rating on a statement that is simply true is its own form of distortion. Navigate our complex information ecosystem accordingly.
ProPublica, “Economic Civil War”: States Push Laws to Shield Oil and Gas Companies From Accountability
Republican-led legislatures in 11 states are advancing bills that would effectively immunize oil and gas companies from climate liability lawsuits, stripping cities, counties, and states of their primary legal tool for recovering costs from climate-driven disasters. ProPublica found that most of these bills are part of a coordinated campaign orchestrated by groups tied to Leonard Leo, the dark money operative credited with reshaping the Supreme Court. The bills target more than 30 active lawsuits that are approaching the discovery phase—the stage at which plaintiffs could access confidential industry documents and depose oil executives.
Why this matters: As climate costs mount (between $350 billion and $450 billion annually for the past three years) and the science linking specific disasters to fossil fuel emissions grows more precise, these lawsuits represent one of the last meaningful avenues for public accountability. Killing them through coordinated, dark money funded state legislation timed to preempt discovery, is how corporations escape consequences before the evidence becomes public.
Nature Human Behaviour, How deceptive online networks reached millions in the US 2020 elections
A peer-reviewed study published in Nature found that coordinated online networks using fake identities for political gain reached at least 37 million Facebook users and 3 million Instagram users during the 2020 U.S. elections. Critically, regular folks unwittingly reshared the content, meaning ordinary users were the primary delivery mechanism. The users most exposed were older, more conservative, and more frequently reached by content from untrustworthy sources.
Why this matters: Disinformation at scale doesn’t require vast resources. Just three networks moved toxic content to tens of millions of people. Understanding how this works is a prerequisite for defending against it. Peer-reviewed research like this an essential contribution to the fight for democracy. People the world over must use this information to demand more forceful regulation of social media companies. A well-informed society is a healthy society. A disinformed society is like puddy in the hands of greedy and power hungry oligarchs and despots.
Transparency International Hungary, Hungary Remains the Most Corrupt Member State of the European Union for the Fourth Consecutive Year
Hungary scored its worst result ever on Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, dropping to 84th globally and finishing last in the EU for the fourth straight year. The report attributes Hungary’s economic stagnation directly to what it calls “organized theft of public funds.” The EU has suspended billions in funding over rule-of-law failures and fined Hungary €200 million, plus €1 million per day, for defying a court ruling on asylum law. Hungary now risks losing its entire post-Covid recovery fund if it fails to implement 27 anti-corruption measures by end of 2026.
Why this matters: Viktor Orbán is running an authoritarian playbook and Trump has openly praised him. JD Vance traveled to Hungary this week to campaign on Orbán’s behalf ahead of the country’s Sunday election. A global coalition of right-wing, corrupt authoritarians is destroying democracies all over the world.
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