Saturday Morning Covfefe: 5 Things with Olivia

Truth with a shot of espresso.

This week’s covfefe is cold brew, because the only thing hotter than the weather is the mess in D.C. Let’s cool it down and stir it up.

1. Rubio’s Human Rights Glow-Down

Remember U.S. Senator Marco Rubio? The guy who once blasted Rex Tillerson for not personally presenting the Human Rights Report, and declared America must “stand with freedom-seeking people around the world”?

Back then, as a Florida senator, he celebrated these reports for “shedding light on foreign governments’ failure to respect their citizens’ fundamental rights, from the sexual exploitation of women and children to the denial of political rights to minorities.” He even took to the Senate floor to champion human rights.

Fast-forward to now: as Secretary of State, Rubio just put out the most gutted version in decades—entire sections on LGBTQ+ persecution, gender-based violence, and corruption quietly deleted. Countries cozy with us? Magically spotless. El Salvador? Whitewashed. Apparently barbarism at el CECOT (where overcrowding, torture, and secret detentions are well-documented) is now U.S.–approved. “Foes” like Brazil and South Africa? Raked over the coals. Furthermore, Israel’s documented abuses vanished like they never happened.

This isn’t a human rights report anymore. It’s a political mood board with footnotes. The man who once said America “will not tolerate” human rights violations just taught the world the opposite lesson: if you’re in Trump’s circle, abuse away. We’ll even give you a gold star.

📄 The Missing Pages: The Guardian

2. ICE or Just a Predator in a Badge?

There have been multiple incidents across the country with individuals posing as ICE agents to kidnap, rape, and assault women, flashing fake badges, threatening deportation, and using the Trump-era fear machine as cover. House Democrats are now urging DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to make ICE agents visibly identify themselves so women can tell the difference between a legitimate arrest and an abduction. Because right now? The only way to know is whether you survive the encounter.

As a former homeland security official, this makes my blood boil. ICE agents are out there conducting raids masked, in plain clothes, no visible ID, in unmarked vehicles, exactly how we’ve always warned the public criminals operate. The same administration that screams “law and order” is running immigration enforcement that’s indistinguishable from a kidnapping ring. But sure, keep the masks and hoods. Nothing says “public trust” like dressing for a mugshot.

🥷 Masked ICE Agents Assault Women: HuffPost

3. From Big Bird to Big Lies

After Congress yanked $500 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, local PBS and NPR stations are on life support. Enter the White House’s shiny new “educational partner”: PragerU, the right-wing video factory that helped launch voices like Candace Owens and pumps out climate denial, slavery whitewashing, and AI-generated Founding Fathers dropping Ben Shapiro quotes.

At the Department of Education’s launch event, Secretary Linda McMahon rolled out PragerU like it was Sesame Street, except instead of Elmo teaching kids to share, it’s Christopher Columbus telling them not to judge him by “modern standards.” Eight states already list PragerU as approved curriculum; Oklahoma’s education chief says he wants to use it to vet teachers from blue states for left-wing “indoctrination.”

This isn’t an education pivot; it’s a hostile takeover. We’re trading Big Bird for big lies, Mister Rogers for Mr. Prager, and public service for partisan propaganda. Your kids’ “history class” now comes with a propaganda filter.

🐤 PBS Out, PragerU In: Vox

4. Trump’s “Quick Reaction Force” for When Nothing’s Happening

After inflating D.C.’s “crime wave” like one of his golf scores and flooding the city with National Guard troops, Trump is cooking up a new toy: a Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force. Translation: 600 armed National Guard troops on permanent standby in Alabama and Arizona, ready to drop into any American city within an hour, whether the governor wants them or not.

The Pentagon docs say it’s for “unrest.” Here’s the kicker: crime is down, there are no major protests, and there’s no significant resistance to federal policy. But when you’ve got a hammer, every street looks like a nail, and this hammer comes with riot gear.

Critics call it dangerous overreach that drains Guard resources from disasters and emergencies. And here’s the future it’s setting up: the next time people gather to protest, whether it’s for reproductive rights, against police violence, or over stolen wages, they won’t just face local cops. They could be staring down federalized troops who got there before the TV cameras. I call it martial law on layaway.

🪖 Martial Law on Layaway: WaPo

5. Helsinki. Anchorage. Different backdrop, same humiliation.

I’ve always said that if Trump returned to office, he’d roll out the red carpet for Putin, and sure enough, he did. But this time it was literally in Alaska, a state Russian propagandists on state TV still call “our Alaska.” They even played it up like Putin was coming home.

After nearly three hours behind closed doors, Trump emerged with his usual word salad: “There’s no deal until there’s a deal.” Translation: nothing concrete. Putin, for his part, said he’s “sincerely interested” in ending the war in Ukraine. Yeah, sincerely interested in rebuilding the Soviet Union.

Zelenskyy? Not even invited. Trump still managed to tell him, through the press, to “make a deal.” So, no ceasefire. No peace framework. No press questions. Just two warm handshakes on the tarmac, a cozy ride together in Trump’s limo (we will never know what they said in “The Beast”), and Putin joking about “next time in Moscow.” Zelenskyy is now expected in Washington on Monday, likely to plead his case directly, after being cut out of the room where it happened.

For the self-proclaimed deal-maker, Trump left Anchorage with neither peace nor a plan, just optics that hand Putin another win. And while the stagecraft and optics of Alaska stole the spotlight, here’s what barely got mentioned: Russia is quietly tightening its military embrace with China in the Indo-Pacific. Joint drills, whispers of basing rights, and a two-theater strategy that could redraw power lines from Taiwan to Ukraine.

It’s Helsinki all over again. At least this time, Trump didn’t stand on stage and publicly trash the intel community to flatter Putin. But the outcome was the same: Putin got the optics, Trump got played, and Ukraine got left out in the cold.

🐉🐻 The Other Alliance; No Deal: Axios

☀️ One Thing for Your Soul

History took the field in Atlanta last Saturday when Jen Pawol became the first woman to umpire a Major League Baseball game in nearly 150 years, working first base in Game 1 of the Marlins–Braves doubleheader.

Jen Pawol’s debut was three decades and more than 1,200 games in the making. She’s worked her way from NCAA softball to the minors, through pandemic shutdowns, long bus rides, and the grind that makes most people quit. And on Saturday, she got a standing ovation just for walking onto the field, rare air for any umpire, before capping the day with her cap headed to Cooperstown.

“This is what we worked for,” she told crew chief Chris Guccione, who called it one of the proudest moments of his career. Jen hopes her milestone becomes a beacon for others: “Come out and give it a try… see it through, make friends, have fun.”

It’s proof that grit and persistence still break barriers, and sometimes it’s a fastball right over the middle.

⚾ Breaking Barriers at First Base: MLB; Pawol on the Field

More soon,

Olivia