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Nothing Works in Trump’s America—Except for Racism

In this week’s Elie v. US, our justice correspondent explores Trump’s stunning incompetence. Plus: baseball is back—for now.

People wait in long security lines at LaGuardia Airport on March 25, 2026.

LaGuardia stopped functioning this week. On Sunday night, an Air Canada plane crashed into a fire truck, killing the two pilots and injuring more than 40 passengers. One runway was shut down for days. The mayhem exacerbated the hours-long security lines that had been growing ever since the partial government shutdown axed TSA agents’ pay. The Trump administration responded by sending ICE agents to the airport to… stand around and do nothing. The result was even longer delays for passengers at one of the world’s busiest airports. In the future, historians will look back at our system of air travel the way we look back at medical treatments from the Middle Ages. “People stood in line for hours for this? What did they do if someone got sick—administer leeches?”

It’s kind of amazing that the planes could afford to fly at all, given the price of gas. Consumers are facing high prices at the pump as Trump’s illegal war in Iran rages on.

In a normal country, the president would be held accountable for fixing the things he’s broken. At least by the media. I try to avoid “imagine if Barack Obama did…” comparisons but imagine if Barack Obama launched a war of choice that led to massive spikes in the price of oil while the airports ground to a halt because the TSA wasn’t funded because he was trying to foist unconstitutional thugs on the country.

Of course, the reasons those comparisons are useless is because Obama was a Black man and Trump is a white supremacist, and being an open white supremacist apparently grants you a kind of pass for your drooling incompetence. Indeed, the only thing Trump can deliver on consistently is racism.

Amid all this failure, Trump made the time this week to take another bigoted swipe at Somali-Americans. He said, “In Minnesota, it’s very Somalia-oriented. These people come from a crooked country, disgusting country, one of the worst countries in the world. They come to our country—low IQs—and they rob us blind. Stupid people, and they rob us blind.”

Donald Trump’s disgusting racism is the cover for his gross incompetence. The racism is what he uses to convince his supporters to ignore his pathetic job performance.

And it works. Trump is objectively bad at running the government, but he’s objectively good at running a Klan rally, and his supporters value the latter so much that they forgive the former. That’s why racism is the only thing that is actually still working in our country.

The Trump administration is launching an investigation into the admissions practices of three top medical schools: Stanford, Ohio State, and UC-San Diego. If there is any place we need more affirmative action, it’s in the medical profession. It is incredibly difficult to find a Black doctor, and incredibly difficult for a Black person to get quality care from a white doctor. I’ve had precisely one white doctor in my entire life who made me feel like I was getting the same care as his white patients. Anyway, like I said, racism is the only thing that is working in this country.

The International Olympic Committee officially banned transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. The rule will take effect at the 2028 Olympics, which are still slated to be held in Los Angeles. To recap: trans people in sports = bad; major sporting events in fascist countries that violate international law = OK.

A coalition of 21 states have sued the Trump administration over its new USDA regulations, which could deny funding for SNAP, WIC, school lunch, and other essential programs. The administration has threatened to punish states that promote “DEI” and “gender ideology” or “provide incentives for illegal immigration.” Aside from not really knowing what those terms mean in the context of SNAP benefits, I must also point out that not giving people food because you don’t like a state that celebrates tolerance is just fucking evil. Collectively punishing poor people because a state refuses to subject........

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