McDowell County, North Carolina, loves Donald Trump, and showed it by voting for him 74-25% in 2024. As The News and Observer noted, “The county of about 45,000 in the mountains of western North Carolina is still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Helene a year ago. Its difficulties have been made worse by a low level of federal relief funding and bungling by the Federal Emergency Management Agency under Trump and his Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem.” 

As we’ve discussed, MAGA-loving states are poor and depend heavily on the federal government, which means they’re funded disproportionately by blue states and urban America. So when they vote for a Republican Party that holds nothing but disdain for poor Americans, they are voting for a government that systematically wreaks havoc on them. And they’re too ignorant to even realize it.

Related | Look just how much red counties depend on the government they hate

“Here in the western part of the state, which is a red area, I’ve actually enrolled people in the ACA who are so excited to have coverage,” Amy Stevens, who helps people get health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act, told The News and Observer. “But then they say, ‘You didn’t enroll me in that Obamacare, did you? I don’t want any of that.’”

Well, they got some of that—and in the process, they got health care. 

“I have so many stories of people who got insurance for the first time and were able to get to the doctor and find out they had chronic health issues they knew nothing about,” Stevens added.

It wasn’t their beloved Republican Party that made that care possible. It was us—liberals who actually believe that the U.S. government can and should make people’s lives better. We believe health care isn’t a privilege for the wealthy, but a basic right for everyone.

We believe no one should lose their home because they got sick, that children shouldn’t go without medicine because their parents can’t afford it, and that our collective strength comes from lifting each other up—not pretending everyone can fend for themselves in this capitalist hellscape.

We pay our taxes—never complaining that much of those taxes get siphoned to rural America—because we believe in building a country where everyone has a fair shot, not just those who live in cities or in wealthy coastal enclaves. We build the systems that keep rural hospitals open, send disaster aid to small towns, fund the postal service despite its inefficiencies, expand broadband opportunities, and make sure a kid in McDowell County can see a doctor just like a kid in Manhattan.

But those conservative voters, benefiting from Democratic policies and liberal America’s tax dollars, spat in our faces and doubled down on division, hatred, and bigotry by voting for Trump. Such ingratitude!

They got what they wanted and elected him back into office. And the result? Over 1 million people in North Carolina are now set to lose their health care. McDowell County, already overly reliant on the charity of blue-state taxpayers, will bear a particularly heavy brunt.

That sounds tragic for them. But there’s a silver lining: They're finally getting the day they voted for.

Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights, humanitarian, economic, and constitutional crises, we felt it critical to make an inventory of this new round of horrors. This list will be updated monthly between now and the end of Donald Trump’s second term.

These lists, along with everything McSweeney’s publishes on this site, are offered ad-free and at no charge to our readers. If you are moved to make a donation in any amount or subscribe to our website’s Patreon, please do. This will help support this project and our other work.

ATROCITY KEY

– Constitutional Illegalities, Collusion, and/or Obstruction of Justice
– Environment
– Harassment, Bullying, Retribution, and/or Sexual Misconduct
– Lies and Misinformation
– Musk Madness
– Policy
– Public Statements and Social Media Posts
– Trump Family Business Dealings
– Trump Staff and Administration
– White Supremacy, Racism, Misogyny, Homophobia, Transphobia, and/or Xenophobia

Main Index

Trump’s first term

AUGUST 2025

1. – August 1, 2025 – Trump removed Erika McEntarfer, the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after a report showed hiring slowed in July and was much weaker in May and June than previously reported. In a post on his social media platform, Trump alleged that the figures were manipulated for political reasons and said that McEntarfer, whom former President Joe Biden appointed, should be fired. He provided no evidence for the charge. “I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote. “She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified.” He later posted, “In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.”
   
   
2. – August 2, 2025 – Trump called on top Federal Reserve officials to seize control from its chair, Jerome Powell, if he failed to cut interest rates. The move was a large-scale escalation of the attacks on the central bank’s independence. In a series of social media posts days after the Fed held rates steady for the fifth consecutive time, Trump said, “Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell, a stubborn MORON, must substantially lower interest rates, NOW. IF HE CONTINUES TO REFUSE, THE BOARD SHOULD ASSUME CONTROL AND DO WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS HAS TO BE DONE!” Hours before, the federal government released data that underlined a significant deterioration in the US job market.
   
   
3. – August 2, 2025 – The Senate took its August recess without a deal to advance dozens of Trump’s nominees. After negotiations with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Trump broke down, Republicans said they may try to change Senate rules when they return in September to speed up the pace of confirmations. As negotiations faltered, Trump’s frustration boiled over in a Truth Social post: “Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the Radical Left Lunatics, to GO TO HELL! Do not accept the offer, go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our Country.” In response, Schumer said, “Trump tried to bully us, go around us, threaten us, call us names, but he got nothing.”
   
   
4. – August 3, 2025 – Following criticisms from Charlamagne tha God in his interview on My View with Lara Trump, Trump lashed out against the radio host on social media. In a rant riddled with numerous false and misleading claims, Trump called Charlamagne, who is Black, a “racist sleazebag,” “low IQ individual,” and “dope.” “Look, my fellow Americans,” Charlamagne responded. “We are in a strange time right now, a time we have never seen because authoritarian strategy is being used against anyone who speaks out against this administration.”
   
   
5. – August 4, 2025 – The National Park Service announced that a statue of Confederate army general Albert Pike, which was toppled and set on fire during a 2020 antiracism protest in Washington, DC, would be reinstalled. “The restoration aligns with federal responsibilities under historic preservation law as well as recent executive orders to beautify the nation’s capital and re-instate [sic] pre-existing statues,” said the statement. Before its removal, the statue of Pike was a frequent source of controversy; activists and government officials had long called for its removal, with some claiming Pike was the “chief founder of the post–Civil War Ku Klux Klan.” Since taking office, the Trump administration has also restored Confederate names to Army bases.
   
   
6. – August 5, 2025 – Health and Human Services secretary and antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. canceled almost $500 million of grants and contracts for developing mRNA vaccines. In a social media video posted the same day, Kennedy Jr. also falsely claimed the vaccines did not protect against respiratory illnesses like COVID and flu, causing scientists to push back. “By issuing this wildly incorrect statement, the secretary is demonstrating his commitment to his long-held goal of sowing doubts about vaccines,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. “Had we not used these lifesaving mRNA vaccines to protect against severe illnesses, we would have had millions of more COVID deaths.” “I can say unequivocally that this was the most dangerous public health decision I have ever seen made by a government body,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. First used during the COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA vaccines are much faster to develop than traditional vaccines and can be quickly altered as viruses change. In 2023, the technology was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
   
   
   BARDA and mRNA vaccines announcement. (US Department of Health and Human Services)
   
   
7. – August 5, 2025 – At the signing ceremony for his executive order establishing a security task force for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, Trump did not rule out the possibility of sending the military to the Games. “We’ll do anything to keep the Olympics safe, including using our National Guard or military,” Trump said. “I will use the National Guard or military—this is going to be so safe—if I have to.” In a highly unusual and constitutionally questionable move in June, Trump deployed the Marines and National Guard to Los Angeles to quell protests against ongoing immigration raids, prompting California to sue. During the same signing ceremony, Trump also insisted there would be “some form” of sex testing at the Games to ensure trans women would not be allowed to compete in women’s sports. “The United States will not let men steal trophies from women at the 2028 Olympics,” said Trump.
   
   
8. – August 5, 2025 – Following the assault of former DOGE and current Social Security Administration employee Edward “Big Balls” Coristine in DC during an attempted carjacking, Trump threatened to federalize the nation’s capitol. The president shared a photo on Truth Social showing a bloodied, shirtless Coristine, writing, “If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City.” In the same post, Trump claimed that crime was “totally out of control” despite falling crime rates, alleged that teenagers were “randomly attacking, mugging, maiming, and shooting innocent Citizens,” and called for the teens to be prosecuted as adults. The next day, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he was considering taking over DC’s police force and bringing in the National Guard: “[Coristine] went through a bad situation to put it mildly, and there’s too much of it. We’re going to do something about it. That includes bringing in the National Guard, maybe very quickly too.” When asked whether he would overturn DC’s home rule, Trump added, “We’re going to look at that. In fact, the lawyers are already studying it.” On the campaign trail and since retaking office, Trump has repeatedly called for the federal government to take over DC.
   
   
9. – August 5, 2025 – In an internal email, ICE announced a thirty-day pilot program offering cash bonuses to agents for hastily deporting migrants. According to an initial memo, agents would receive two-hundred-dollar bonuses for deporting migrants within seven days of arrest and one hundred dollars for deporting migrants within two weeks of arrest. The agents were also encouraged to use expedited removals, which permit some migrants to be deported without court proceedings, a possible violation of due process rights. “This is so ungodly unethical,” said Scott Shuchart, a former senior Homeland Security official. “You can’t incentivize government agents to short-circuit people’s procedural rights. Would you pay a bonus to judges for wrapping up trials faster?” The program was abruptly canceled four hours after its announcement following an inquiry by The New York Times.
   
   
10. – August 6, 2025 – The Guardian reported that Vice President JD Vance’s security team raised the water level of the Little Miami River in Ohio for a family boating trip to celebrate the vice president’s forty-first birthday on August 2. According to a statement by the US Army Corps of Engineers, the request from the US Secret Service was made to “support safe navigation.” However, an anonymous source told The Guardian that the request was instead made to create “ideal kayaking conditions.” Regardless of the reason behind the request, Vance’s use of public resources came at a time when the Trump administration had made drastic cuts to the National Park Service. “While there may well be security-related explanations or justifications that come into analysis, my reaction is: I don’t care. We shouldn’t be utilizing government resources in this way. I never would have allowed it,” said Norm Eisen, a former White House special counsel for ethics and government reform during the Obama administration.
    
    
11. – August 7, 2025 – Following up on his unsubstantiated allegations earlier in the week that JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America had discriminated against him, President Trump signed an executive order directing regulators to punish banks that illegally discriminate against conservatives and to retroactively review whether financial institutions have in the past closed accounts for political or religious reasons. “The banks discriminated against me very badly,” Trump told CNBC earlier in the week. In the same interview, he also accused the Biden administration, without evidence, of instructing regulators to “do everything you can to destroy Trump.” In a Politico article, banking industry officials acknowledged that certain regulatory policies aimed at preventing illicit financial transactions and managing reputation risk can result in customers being cut off without explanation. However, they rejected the president’s claim that these accounts were closed for political reasons.
    
    
12. – August 7, 2025 – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted and praised a CNN video interview with Christian nationalist pastor Douglas Wilson, who doesn’t believe women should vote. “All of Christ for All of Life,” Hegseth wrote in his post. During the interview, Wilson said that “women are the kind of people that people come out of,” adding, “The wife and mother, who is the chief executive of the home, is entrusted with three or four or five eternal souls.” In the same interview, Wilson defended previous comments he had made that there was mutual affection between slaves and their enslavers and also said that sodomy should be recriminalized. “The Secretary very much appreciates many of Mr. Wilson’s writings and teachings,” Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told NPR in an emailed statement.
    
    
    Douglas Wilson continues to gripe about women having the right to vote. (Right Wing Watch)
    
    
13. – August 8, 2025 – The Smithsonian altered its description of President Trump’s impeachment after the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack. The previous text referenced Trump’s incitement charge, which it said was based on Trump’s “repeated “false statements” challenging the 2020 election results” and his speech that “encouraged—and foreseeably resulted in—imminent lawless action at the Capitol.” The new description reads: “On Jan. 13, 2021, Donald Trump became the first president to be impeached twice. The charge was incitement of insurrection based on his challenge of the 2020 election results and on his speech on Jan. 6. Because Trump’s term ended on Jan. 20, he became the first former president tried by the Senate. He was acquitted on Feb. 13, 2021.” In addition, the word “alleged” was also added to a description of Trump’s first impeachment: “The charges focused on the president’s alleged solicitation of foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election and defiance of Congressional subpoenas.” The recent changes came after the museum took down a temporary addition to an exhibition about the American presidency that mentioned Trump’s two impeachments. “The resulting chilling effect seems clear. The Smithsonian curators and museum specialists are walking a tightrope, attempting to stick to factual interpretations about the recent past while experiencing pressure to minimize any bad information about the Trump administration,” said Samuel J. Redman, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
    
    
14. – August 8, 2025 – The Justice Department launched an investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James, who won a civil fraud case against President Trump and his companies in 2023. Trump began criticizing James as soon as the civil case was launched, accusing her of targeting him for political reasons and calling James, who is Black, a “racist.” “Investigating the fraud case Attorney General James won against Trump and his businesses has to be the most blatant and desperate example of this administration’s carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign,” said Abbe Lowell, James’s attorney. “Weaponizing the Department of Justice to try to punish an elected official for doing her job is an attack on the rule of law and a dangerous escalation by this administration.”
    
    
15. – August 8, 2025 – In a memo, the Air Force rescinded benefits to at least a dozen transgender service members who had applied for early retirement to avoid being kicked out of the service for their gender identity. The early-retirement applications were prompted after the Pentagon issued a memo in February declaring medical diagnoses of gender dysphoria incompatible with military service. According to lawyers, disqualifying medical conditions diagnosed during active service typically result in a medical retirement, which comes with benefits. However, according to the latest memo, the service members, who had each served between fifteen and eighteen years in the Air Force, will instead be forced to choose between a “voluntary” separation agreement or an involuntary removal, both of which will result in substantial losses of financial, medical, and other benefits worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. “The first feeling I felt was betrayal,” said Master Sergeant Logan Ireland, who served multiple overseas tours over fifteen years, on learning the news. “I’ve given my life to the service.”
    
    
16. – August 9, 2025 – As he finalized the details for his upcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin, Trump told reporters that a new peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine may involve Ukraine ceding territory to Russia. “You’re looking at territory that’s been fought over for three and a half years with—you know, a lot of Russians have died, a lot of Ukrainians have died. There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both,” said Trump. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy quickly pushed back on Trump’s statement. “The answer to the Ukrainian territorial question is already in the constitution of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in a video address. “No one will retreat from this, and no one can. Ukrainians will not give up their land to an occupier.”
    
    
17. – August 11, 2025 – Trump announced he was activating eight hundred members of the National Guard in an effort to bring down rising crime rates in Washington, DC. The move reflected an escalation of his aggressive approach to law enforcement. Flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi during a White House press conference, Trump declared, “We’re going to take our capital back.” A recent Department of Justice report showed that violent crime was down 35 percent since 2023 and that DC’s violent crime rate was at its lowest in thirty years. District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb said, “The administration’s actions are unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful. There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia.”
    
    
    Trump says he’s deploying National Guard across Washington and taking over city’s police. (AP)
    
    
18. – August 11, 2025 – Trump nominated E. J. Antoni, chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a contributor to Project 2025, to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If approved by the Senate, Antoni would replace Biden appointee Erika McEntarfer. Trump fired McEntarfer on August 1, after the July jobs report showed hiring had slowed sharply in the spring, with lower job gains than initially estimated. “Our Economy is booming,” Trump crowed, “and E. J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE.” Antoni was quoted as calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” that “we need to sunset.” Criticism of Antoni’s nomination came from unexpected sources. Kyle Pomerleau, of the right-leaning Tax Foundation and the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote on X, “There are a lot of competent conservative economists that could do this job. E. J. is not one of them.”
    
    
19. – August 12, 2025 – The State Department released an annual collection of reports on human rights records in nearly two hundred nations but left out language on persistent abuses in nations that were included in prior reports. The omissions signaled the Trump administration’s clear move away from criticizing human rights offenses from countries that are viewed as key partners. Critical language in sections on El Salvador, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel was scaled back or excised. Earlier this year, NPR obtained an internal State Department memo instructing employees editing the reports to remove whole categories of violations, including gender-based violence and environmental harms. References to restrictions on political participation and government corruption, violence against minorities and LGBTQ people, and harassment of human rights organizations were also ordered to be removed.
    
    
20. – August 13, 2025 – As the new chairman of the Kennedy Center, Trump announced the 2025 honorees. He named country music star George Strait, actor Sylvester Stallone, singer Gloria Gaynor, the rock band Kiss, and actor-singer Michael Crawford as the year’s recipients. The president has made revamping the Kennedy Center and its “woke” agenda the center of a push to overhaul the country’s cultural life. He also...

Queen once asked, "Who wants to live forever?" And while the band's frontman Freddie Mercury only made it into his 40s, the song's question continues to haunt people—especially aging tyrants who fear that the icy hand of death is upon their shoulder and want far more time to ensure both national and personal glory.

At a Beijing gathering this week, China's Xi Jinping, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and North Korea's Kim Jong Un met to commemorate Japan's defeat in World War II. The three men and their translators were caught on hot mics having an "unscripted moment" in which the conversation turned to life extensions and immortality.

"Earlier, people rarely lived to 70, but these days at 70 years you are still a child," Xi told the other two, according to Bloomberg.

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Comments

From Orbital Mechanics, a visualization of the 2153 nuclear weapons exploded on Earth since 1945.

2153! I had no idea there had been that much testing. According to Wikipedia, the number is 2119 tests, with most of those coming from the US (1032) and the USSR (727). The largest device ever detonated was Tsar Bomba, a 50-megaton hydrogen bomb set off in the atmosphere above an island in the Barents Sea in 1961. Tsar Bomba had more than three times the yield of the largest bomb tested by the US. The result was spectacular.

The fireball reached nearly as high as the altitude of the release plane and was visible at almost 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) away from where it ascended. The subsequent mushroom cloud was about 64 kilometres (40 mi) high (over seven times the height of Mount Everest), which meant that the cloud was above the stratosphere and well inside the mesosphere when it peaked. The cap of the mushroom cloud had a peak width of 95 kilometres (59 mi) and its base was 40 kilometres (25 mi) wide.

All buildings in the village of Severny (both wooden and brick), located 55 kilometres (34 mi) from ground zero within the Sukhoy Nos test range, were destroyed. In districts hundreds of kilometers from ground zero wooden houses were destroyed, stone ones lost their roofs, windows and doors; and radio communications were interrupted for almost one hour. One participant in the test saw a bright flash through dark goggles and felt the effects of a thermal pulse even at a distance of 270 kilometres (170 mi). The heat from the explosion could have caused third-degree burns 100 km (62 mi) away from ground zero. A shock wave was observed in the air at Dikson settlement 700 kilometres (430 mi) away; windowpanes were partially broken to distances of 900 kilometres (560 mi). Atmospheric focusing caused blast damage at even greater distances, breaking windows in Norway and Finland. The seismic shock created by the detonation was measurable even on its third passage around the Earth.

The Soviets did not give a fuck, man…what are a few thousand destroyed homes compared to scaring the shit out of the capitalist Amerikanskis with a comically large explosion? Speaking of bonkers Communist dictatorships, the last nuclear test conducted on Earth was in 2013, by North Korea.

Update: Since this post was published, North Korea has tested a few more nuclear devices, the last one in 2017.

[This is a vintage post originally from Aug 2015.]

Tags: atomic bomb · Cold War · infoviz · timeless posts · video · war