Featured

Trump turns against ‘unacceptable’ Meloni

Trump publicly breaks with Giorgia Meloni after she criticized his remarks about the pope, turning a once-useful alliance into a political liability with consequences for Italy–U.S. relations.

Apr 14, 2026

Featured

Virginia joins a national effort to ensure only popular vote winners become president

Virginia’s entry into the National Popular Vote Compact moves the plan closer to effectively guaranteeing the presidency to the national vote winner, but major legal and political hurdles remain before it can actually take effect.

Apr 14, 2026

Buried.News

The stories buried under the noise

Primary focus

Trump fires Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary

A Cabinet secretary was forced out amid contracting and oversight scrutiny, signaling that executive control—not transparent accountability—can dictate leadership of the agency driving mass detention and deportation.

Mar 5, 2026

Featured

Desperate Trump, 79, Threatens to Kill Entire Civilization in Insane Last-Minute Panic

Trump’s reported threat that Iran’s “whole civilization will die tonight” spotlights how maximalist deadline diplomacy can blur into unlawful targeting threats while markets—and civilian risk—spiral.

Apr 7, 2026

Featured

Suspension lifted for helicopter pilots who hovered near Kid Rock’s home

The Pentagon chief publicly overrode an Army safety review after Apache crews hovered near Kid Rock’s home, raising questions about whether standards are enforced consistently when politics and celebrity are involved.

Mar 31, 2026

Norms Impact

Pop Star Tells White House ‘Perverts’ to Stop Using Her Song

The White House is turning official channels into a meme engine for war imagery—collapsing the boundary between public authority and propaganda-by-provocation.

Executive

Mar 3, 2026

Sources

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pop-star-tells-white-house-perverts-to-stop-using-her-song

Summary

The White House posted a TikTok video titled “Lethality” using Kesha’s song “Blow” over footage of military strikes and explosions. Senior communications officials defended the post as an attention strategy and said the administration will continue making “memes.” The episode normalizes federal communications that treat war imagery as promotional content and trains the public to accept governance through provocation rather than accountability.

Reality Check

When the executive branch uses official platforms to package military violence as entertainment and boasts that outrage is the point, it shifts federal communication from public explanation to public manipulation. That precedent degrades democratic oversight by training us to treat state power—especially coercive power—as content optimized for attention, not decisions justified to the people. Once that posture becomes routine, accountability mechanisms weaken: scrutiny is reframed as “engagement,” and governance is reduced to performative dominance rather than transparent, contestable policy.

Media

View media post

Detail

On Feb. 10, the White House posted a 30-second TikTok video titled “Lethality” that used Kesha’s 2011 song “Blow” as audio over military imagery, including a jet launching a missile into a ship that explodes. The video received more than 1.9 million views.

On Monday, Kesha said she had been informed the White House used her song “to incite violence and threaten war” and stated she did not approve of her music being used “to promote violence of any kind.” She later posted on X: “Stop using my music, perverts @WhiteHouse.”

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung responded on social media that criticism “gives us more attention and more view counts.” The White House, contacted for comment, sent Cheung’s post as its response. Deputy Communications Director Kaelan Dorr said, “Memes? They’ll continue. Winning? Will also continue.” The White House did not comment on Kesha’s “perverts” post.