Trump orders federal funds to be cut off from Illinois because it has cashless bail

Did somebody say gilded age?

Among other places:

The executive order aimed at other cities across the nation directs the administration to find federal funds that could be “suspended or terminated” in jurisdictions that have cashless bail policies, the fact sheet said.

Just for the heck of it, lets thrown in some unconstitutional speech restrictions:

Trump signed another executive order on Monday aimed at prosecuting people who “desecrate” the American flag, a third fact sheet said. That order, first reported by Fox News, directs Bondi to “vigorously prosecute those who violate our laws in ways that involve desecrating the flag, and to pursue litigation to clarify the scope of First Amendment in this area.”

The order also targets noncitizens by asking the administration to “deny, prohibit, terminate, or revoke visas, residence permits, or naturalization proceedings, and other immigration benefits, or seek removal” of non-citizens who desecrate the flag. The order could hit a legal obstacle in that the Supreme Court decided in Texas v. Johnson in 1989 that flag burning was protected by the First Amendment.

I’ve been right a lot about Trump, but I’ll confess to having been way wrong about one thing: I assumed that his second term would be low energy, with golf dominating the schedule — it has, but not nearly enough — featuring a completely checked out figurehead that would lead to much backstabbing rivalry among his unsupervised satraps.

Instead, despite his very obviously declining health — can we ever catch a break in this regard? — Trump seems positively energized by his bottomless narcissistic rage, and the non-stop carnival of revenge and fascistic lib-owning that it has clearly inspired.

Maybe this will fade quickly as time goes by, but seven months in we’re looking at pretty much a worst case scenario, in which his evident engagement causes his minions to jockey furiously for attention and favor, leading to further cumulative radicalization, and a situation increasingly reminiscent of some other times and places that have descended into sheer totalitarian madness.