Trump Just Gave Stupidest Reason Possible for Banning Paper Straws

Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday liberating Americans from the “forced use” of paper straws, because why govern when you can just screw around?

The executive order stated that it would end the “irrational campaign” against plastic straws, and determined that paper straws were “nonfunctional,” more expensive to produce, and use harmful chemicals.

“These things don’t work, I’ve had them many times, and on occasion, they break, they explode,” Trump said, as he signed the order. “If something’s hot, they don’t last very long, like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds. It’s a ridiculous situation.”

The real ridiculous situation is Trump thinking that anyone cares that much about paper straws while he rips away funding from essential government agencies, undermines the government’s checks and balances, and empowers a billionaire technocrat to sift through Americans’ private information.

But Trump has other things on his mind, such as destroying the symbols of the liberal regime he’s come to replace rather than actually doing anything to help struggling Americans—or sharks, as it turns out.

“I don’t think that plastic is going to affect a shark as they’re eating, as they’re munching their way through the ocean,” Trump assured reporters Monday.

The order stated that all federal agencies would stop the purchase of paper straws, and instructed the assistant to the president for domestic policy to create a strategy within 45 days to impose the policy nationwide.

Of course, the “irrational” campaign Trump is raging against was really one against all single-use plastics. But thanks to Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and recently withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accords for a second time, plastic straws are back to fill the oceans, and the planet is free to burn!

Donald Trump is threatening to blow up the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas if the Palestinian group doesn’t release all of its Israeli hostages by midday Saturday.

“If they’re not returned—all of them, not in dribs and drabs, not two and one and three and four and two—by Saturday at 12 o’clock,” Trump said. “And after that, I would say, all hell is going to break out.”

On Monday, Hamas threatened to delay the further release of Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip, accusing Israel of violating the terms of the ceasefire deal, which required Israel to send Gaza hundreds of thousands of tents, as well as other humanitarian supplies. Those supplies and tents have not arrived, Hamas said. Speaking anonymously, three Israeli officials and two mediators told The New York Times that Hamas’s claims are accurate.

Israel has also continued to launch targeted attacks on Gaza, killing more than 110 Palestinians in the three weeks since the ceasefire was supposed to take effect. Hamas said that Israel is playing “dirty games” in its ceasefire violations.

“This could threaten the deal to collapse,” Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told Drop Site News. “Netanyahu came back from the United States with all intentions to sabotage the deal.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments seem to confirm that. He told reporters on Monday that he made a strategic agreement with Trump and the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, about what positions Israel would take in negotiations. Netanyahu said he has new plans for Gaza and that he and Trump see “eye to eye.”

“You wanted a day-after [plan]? You got one.… It just doesn’t match the Oslo narrative.… We won’t repeat that mistake.… I’ve come back with a vision without Hamas and without the Palestinian Authority,” Netanyahu said. In a meeting at the Knesset, Netanyahu shook his fist and said, “We know what complete victory is, and we will not give up on it.”

On Sunday, Trump doubled down on his idea of the U.S. taking over the Gaza Strip, telling reporters he was “committed to buying and owning Gaza” and that “we’ll make it into a very good site for future development by somebody.”

All of this points to Trump and Netanyahu blowing up the already violated ceasefire deal, with Trump’s half-baked takeover plan becoming the new course of action. Palestinians in Gaza would be ethnically cleansed from the territory, with Trump seeking to force neighboring countries like Egypt and Jordan to take them or face tariffs. The convicted felon president and the wanted war criminal prime minister are primed to inflict more suffering on the Palestinians.

MAGA muse Steve Bannon pleaded guilty to fraud in New York Tuesday morning.

Bannon is taking a plea deal for defrauding New Yorkers who gave money to his “We Build the Wall” online fundraiser, which was allegedly pooling money from normal civilians for Trump’s border wall during his first term.

“Nobody lost money, find one,” Bannon told New York Daily News’s Molly Crane-Newman when asked how the Trump supporters he scammed felt, even though he had just confessed to the fraud.

Bannon will avoid jail time completely for this second criminal conviction, instead receiving a three-year conditional discharge after pleading guilty to one count of defrauding donors. He was originally facing five felony counts and up to 15 years in prison. The War Room host is likely to blame this all on corruption and cast himself as a political prisoner rather than admit that his “We Build the Wall” program was as flimsy as Trump’s original promise to construct it.  

This story has been updated.

Trump’s Justice Department is dropping its corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams—not because the charges aren’t credible, but because Adams could help MAGA’s extreme immigration agenda.

Acting Attorney General Emil Bove told New York prosecutors to dismiss the charges against Adams on Monday, while openly admitting that the Justice Department “reached this conclusion without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based.”

Instead, the memo notes that a criminal trial against Adams might restrict his ability to “devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the policies of the prior administration.”

“The Eric Adams memo doesn’t even pretend to be dropping the prosecution for a legitimate reason,” researcher Will Stancil wrote on X. “It says he shouldn’t be prosecuted because he’s running for reelection (?) and so he can carry out the president’s agenda (??). OPEN corruption: ‘MAGA politicians are above the law.’”

This isn’t just obvious and blatant corruption. It’s also a sign that the Justice Department has fully transformed into nothing more than a political tool for the president.

Adams has been begging for a pardon for months, and he bet on Trump giving it to him if he started acting like he was auditioning for a role in the administration. In December, the New York City mayor cast his indictments as political targeting akin to that of Trump and Hunter Biden. “Those who are here committing crimes, robbery, shooting at police officers, raping innocent people … I would love to sit down with the border czar and hear his thoughts on how we are going to address those who are harming our citizens,” Adams bizarrely said at the time. “This is not a new position. In the era of cancel culture, no one is afraid to be honest about the truth. Well, cancel me.”

That same month, he requested a meeting with Trump’s draconian border czar Tom Homan to help him crack down on immigrants who “snuck in” to New York City. In January, he met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and days later he was sitting down with Tucker Carlson talking about how the Democratic Party “left him.” The quid pro quo agreement has been cooking for some time now, and Adams got the best outcome possible. He gets off scot-free, and Trump and Homan get to run rampant through New York City.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to withdraw Army recruiters from the nation’s top Black engineering event has ushered blunt criticism from military leadership.

“It’s fucking racist,” one active duty Army general told Military.com on the condition of anonymity. “For the Army now, it’s ‘Blacks need not apply’ and it breaks my heart.”

The Baltimore-based Black Engineer of the Year Awards (BEYA) has historically been a key event for the Pentagon to recruit high-caliber STEM talent. One Army recruiter told the servicemember news outlet that BEYA is one of the “most talent-dense events we do,” and that the branch “need[s] the talent.” BEYA, in turn, recognizes on its website that the “U.S. military is one of the largest STEM employers in the nation.”

But despite its abundance of talent, recruiters were concerned that attending the event could infringe on Donald Trump’s anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion executive order. Hegseth has, from the jump, been totally on board with the radical shift, making the dissolution of long-standing diversity efforts a priority of his tenure.

On January 31, Hegseth declared that Black History Month, Women’s History Month, and other heritage month observations were officially “dead” and would no longer be recognized by the military. And on Monday, Hegseth made the first move in implementing Trump’s transgender ban on the armed forces, initiating a pause on integrating new trans troops.

“I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is, ‘Our diversity is our strength,’” Hegseth said Friday in an address to Pentagon staff. “I think our strength is our unity. Our strength is our shared purpose, regardless of our background, regardless of how we grew up, regardless of our gender, regardless of our race. In this department, we will treat everyone equally.”

“We will treat everyone with fairness,” he continued. “We will treat everyone with respect. And we will judge you as an individual by your merit and by your commitment to the team and the mission.”

Recruiters that would have attended BEYA weren’t left with nothing to do. Instead, they were redirected to participate in a National Rifle Association-sponsored event in Pennsylvania, which Military.com described as a “predominantly white gathering that recruiters acknowledge is less likely to yield high-quality applicants.”