Five years to the day after his supporters stormed the Capitol to overturn an election he lost, Donald Trump stood at the Kennedy Center and floated canceling the next one.

”I won’t say cancel the election, they should cancel the election because the fake news will say ‘he wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator,’” Trump told Republican lawmakers with a smile, according to The Daily Beast. ”They always call me a dictator.”

Happy anniversary, democracy!

WHAT’S GOING ON: The 79-year-old president spent over an hour rambling to GOP lawmakers about how unfair it is that his party might lose seats in the midterms—a thing that happens to literally every president’s party. His solution? Maybe just… don’t have the election.

Trump complained about the ”psychological” tendency of voters to turn against the party in power during midterms, asking Republicans to explain \”what the hell is going on with the mind of the public.”

Here’s a thought: maybe the public doesn’t love watching you openly fantasize about ending elections?

THE DETAILS: Trump warned Republicans that losing the midterms would mean impeachment. ”Because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be, I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” he said—which is a fascinating admission that he expects to do impeachable things.

He also told lawmakers they could ”own health care” by ”giving the money to the people rather than insurance companies,” then provided zero specifics and literally told Congress to ”figure it out!” Leadership!

OF COURSE: This is the exact playbook. Float the authoritarian idea, wrap it in a ”joke,” preemptively call anyone who objects hysterical, and watch the Overton window shift. Trump’s been doing this since 2016—joking about third terms, joking about being president for life, joking about his supporters attacking journalists.

The jokes keep getting less funny.

WHY IT MATTERS: When a president who already tried to overturn one election starts publicly musing about canceling the next one, that’s not comedy—it’s conditioning. He’s normalizing the unthinkable so that when he actually tries something, half the country will shrug and say he was always ”joking” about it.

And he chose January 6th to do it. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a message.

The Trump White House is openly discussing a military invasion of Greenland—an autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO ally. White House propaganda minister Karoline Leavitt confirmed that “utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option” to seize the resource-rich Arctic territory, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio refused to rule out force and senior adviser Stephen Miller questioned Denmark’s right to the land it’s held for centuries. Full story

Genocide scholars are sounding the alarm: the United States has entered the early-to-mid stages of genocide against transgender Americans. Experts point to systematic rights stripping by the Trump administration and GOP legislatures—from healthcare bans to bathroom regulations across 20+ states—warning that these “less violent” tactics mirror how historical genocides begin. Full story

Trump pardoned former FBI agent Jared Wise—who stormed the Capitol, exited through a broken window, and yelled “kill ’em” at police officers—then immediately hired him as a senior adviser at DOJ to “investigate” the very Jan. 6 prosecutions he once faced. The guy who tried to overthrow the election is now rewarded with power over the people who held him accountable, because in Trump’s America, loyalty to fascism beats the rule of law every single time. Full story

Trump’s DHS is flooding Minneapolis with 2,000 federal agents in what it’s calling the “largest immigration enforcement operation ever”—explicitly targeting the nation’s largest Somali community while Secretary Kristi Noem films arrests for social media. The massive show of force has residents terrified, with agents going door-to-door and making traffic stops, while Trump uses debunked fraud allegations to justify what Gov. Tim Walz calls “a war being waged against Minnesota.” Full story

Trump’s former Russia adviser Fiona Hill just revealed that Russian officials repeatedly floated a “very strange swap” during his first term: Moscow would abandon Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro if Washington let them take Ukraine. Hill says Russia’s then-ambassador kept hinting at the deal—”hint hint, nudge nudge, wink wink”—though Trump’s team claims they weren’t interested. Full story

Yesterday we asked, Do you think Trump will stop with Venezuela? 98% of you said NO.

JMeaner said: “Unless he is stopped he will continue doing whatever comes into his demented, cruel mind!!!! He is an absolute abomination!!!!”

Anaya said: “This operation at the most basic level gave Trump a huge ego boost (apparently needed daily). These boosts come with accompanied groveling by his administration. He can't get enough of either. ”

Desantis said: “I believe, if he is not stopped now by our elected officials he will continue to illegally invaded other countries. This is Fascism, Authoritarianism, Communism, call it whatever you want. This is not normal, this is not America, this is not democracy. This is so wrong in so many ways, completely unacceptable and disgusting. When will our elected representatives put an end to his power grab and stand up to this demented little man. Americans deserve better. ” (FYI it’s not Communism but we get your point.)

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Trump’s invasion of Venezuela, and his threats to seize Greenland, aren’t some unhinged deviation from American foreign policy. They’re just saying the quiet part loud. Because underneath every invasion, every coup, every “national security priority” in American history, you’ll find the same answer to the same question: What’s…

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