Saturday Morning Covfefe: 5 Things with Olivia

Truth with a shot of espresso.

It’s the weekend, so I poured my cafecito and burned my tongue. Then I read the headlines, and really screamed. Somewhere between Trump flying home a triple murderer and Republicans outlawing clouds, Project 2025 decided to run for the U.S. Senate. Let’s get into it.

1. Trump’s “Deal” of the Century: A Triple Murderer Comes Home to Applause

Trump’s latest “hostage deal” with Venezuela included one particularly unmentionable name: Dahud Hanid Ortiz, a U.S.-Venezuelan dual citizen convicted of brutally murdering three people in Spain in 2016.

Despite his record, which is well known to the State Department, he was flown back to the U.S., flagged in internal emails as someone officials didn’t want to call a “hostage.” Still, they did. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called his release a win, praising Trump for bringing back “every wrongfully detained American.” Ortiz now walks free in Florida.

Yes, you read that correctly. Trump included a convicted killer in a high-profile prisoner swap, overriding the objections of DOJ and State Department veterans who knew his history. He’d already been rejected from a Biden-era deal and flagged by Spain for extradition. Now, under Trump, he’s posing in photos with hostages, laundering his past through a political win.

I worked on hostage negotiations. I’m familiar with this case. It makes me sick that he’s now walking free on American soil. And Rubio’s calling it victory.

But in Trump’s version of “law and order,” PR wins come before justice.Even if that means rewriting the word hostage.

📎 NYT: Triple Murderer Comes Home in U.S.-Venezuela Deal 

2. Chemtrails Go to Congress: Republicans Outlaw Weather That Doesn’t Exist

In nearly 20 states, and now Congress, Republicans are passing bills to ban “weather modification” and “geoengineering.” What began as a chemtrail conspiracy is now codified law in places like Florida and Tennessee, with potential $100,000 fines and prison time for violating…imaginary science.

Why this matters: This isn’t harmless fringe. It’s legislation rooted in internet conspiracy theories, and it’s being pushed by lawmakers like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who once blamed space lasers for wildfires. The same GOP that calls climate change “fake” now claims we’re engineering storms with secret planes. It’s a distraction tactic, yes, but it’s also how anti-science policymaking becomes law. And when the actual climate crisis hits harder, guess who’s going to be too busy banning clouds to respond?

⛈️ NBC News: Weather Conspiracies Are Now Republican Policy

3. Project 2025 Author Now Wants Lindsey Graham’s Senate Seat

Paul Dans, the lead architect of Project 2025, is running for Senate in South Carolina, challenging Lindsey Graham in the GOP primary. Yes, the same Paul Dans who helped write the 900-page playbook to dismantle the civil service, erase LGBTQ+ protections, roll back climate policy, ban abortion pills, dismantle the Department of Education, strip the CDC and FDA of independent authority, and replace career professionals with Trump loyalists across government.

I know Paul Dans. I worked with him in Trump 1.0. He walked in the inner circles of Stephen Miller and Russ Vought, and even back then, the warning signs were there. The purge doctrine didn’t start with Project 2025, it’s just finally in writing.

Dans was ousted from the Heritage Foundation in 2024 when the backlash to Project 2025 threatened Trump’s campaign. Now? He’s embracing it fully, bragging that Trump’s second term has gone “way beyond my wildest dreams.” He’s calling the U.S. Senate the “headwaters of the swamp” and Lindsey Graham its “top swamp critter.”

This isn’t just a primary challenge, it’s a power grab by the purge architects themselves. Dans isn’t running alongside Project 2025. He is Project 2025. And now he wants a Senate seat to help finish what they started.

Trump endorsed Graham… for now. But as we've seen before, MAGA endorsements are conditional, and expendable. This primary is more than political theater. It’s a litmus test for Project 2025’s political power. The swamp is the ballot. And the purge is running for office.

🥊 The Guardian: Dans vs Graham

4. ICE Now Has Face ID on Phones, Because What Could Go Wrong?

ICE agents nationwide are now equipped with real-time facial recognition apps on their phones, rolled out with minimal oversight. Facial recognition tools, especially when deployed without guardrails, raise serious concerns about racial profiling, false positives, and warrantless surveillance. This rollout skips public input and opens the door to civil liberties violations on a mass scale.

🔎 WIRED: ICE’s Pocket Panopticon (Wired doesn’t allow gift links, but including it here for sourcing.

If you’ve been following my work, you know privacy isn’t just policy, it’s personal. As a former national security professional, I’ve long warned about the risks of unchecked surveillance power, and what happens when tools built for warzones get quietly turned inward. For more on how we got here, and who profits from it, read my previous deep dives:

📎 Stephen Miller Profits. You Get Watched 📎Built By Palantir, Sanctioned By Trump

5. Qatar‑a‑Lago Jet Update: Why Shouldn't a Bribe Become Trump’s Flying Throne?

Right now I’m picturing a golden toilet with wings. *sips coffee*

The Senate Appropriations Committee narrowly rejected Sen. Chris Murphy’s amendment to block the Pentagon from spending up to $400 million to retrofit a Qatar-gifted Boeing jet, widely expected to end up at Trump’s presidential library. The hidden kicker? Classified documents reveal that nearly $934 million has already been quietly diverted from the Sentinel nuclear missile modernization budget to fund the project.

This isn’t just another plane. It’s a $1 billion boondoggle, funded by taxpayers, retrofitted for Trump, and made possible by gutting a key national security program. It sets a dangerous precedent: foreign influence wrapped in taxpayer dollars. The plane was “gifted” by a regime with deep financial ties to Trump’s inner circle. Now Congress is funding its makeover. We’re watching corruption happen in real time, rebranded as diplomacy.

✈️ QatarALago: New York Times

🎾 One Thing for Your Soul

Billie Jean King–tennis legend, civil rights icon, glass-ceiling destroyer–is heading back to college at 80. Why? Because learning never stops.

“I never got my degree,” she said. “And I want young people to know: It’s never too late.”

In a week full of chaos and conspiracy, let this be your anchor. Keep showing up. Keep growing. It’s never too late to return. And it’s always the right time to stand up, speak out, and help shape what comes next.

🎓 Read: Billie Jean King, Still Breaking Barriers

Some weeks feel overwhelming. But then I remember: Billie Jean King is still showing up, still fighting for the truth. That’s the kind of courage I want to carry forward.

Hope you do too.

—Olivia