While You Were Scrolling (07/25/2025)

$1.26 BILLION spent on incompetent ICE contract, why everyone is talking about South Park, and more

After half a year of news cycles resetting every five minutes as a result of the Trump administration “flooding the zone,” we’ve finally settled into a steady drip-flow-drip-flow rhythm based around one story and one story alone: Donald Trump’s placement in the Epstein list.

The irony isn’t lost on me that the one thing that has finally managed to wrestle control of the messaging away from Donald Trump’s fat fingers, is also the one thing his base would not stop talking about for an entire decade. And now that we’re discovering everything from Donald Trump’s coded love letter to a dead pedophile to the fact that Epstein once pleaded “the fifth, the sixth, and the fourteenth” in regards to whether he’d ever seen Trump with underage girls, there’s even more irony in the fact that the opponent very suddenly does NOT want to talk about this. C’est la vie, I guess.

But while I’ve been tirelessly keeping you updated over on my YouTube with the latest in the saga of the “Never-Aged Enigma,” the world keeps turning and the news keeps churning. 

So, now is as good a time as any to introduce my new weekly newsletter, where I’ll be covering some of the biggest stories from throughout the week that I’m not covering over on YouTube. The zone is still being flooded, and we need to learn how to swim.

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HOW TO BURN $1.26 BILLION IN THE MOST INHUMANE WAY IMAGINABLE

Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas Credit:Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Buried three paragraphs into a memo released Monday from the Department of Defense is a curious announcement: Acquisition Logistics, a company from Virginia, has been awarded a “$231,878,229 firm-fixed-price contract” to create a 5,000 capacity immigration detention center for ICE. Though it is worth pointing out that despite the nearly $232 million advance, the contract is ACTUALLY worth $1.26 BILLION. Located on Fort Bliss army-owned land, this is going to be the single largest immigration detention center in the country, since despite Alligator Alcatraz also being able to hold 5,000, this new Fort Bliss detention center will have 5,000 beds.

All of this is interesting, because Acquisition Logistics is

• A small company that specializes in supply chain management

• A relatively new company, founded in 2008

• And most importantly, an inexperienced company, with little-to-no documented experience in detention centers

This inexperience shows in the Fort Bliss Project’s plans to detain immigrants in tents, rather than rooms, which is raising red flags for immigration advocates who correctly point out that it’s unlikely the living standards will even meet the already low standards set by current detention centers because, again, it’s five-thousand tents in a poorly-constructed space in the already volatile conditions of west Texas. 

As pointed out in New Republic, this news came out around the same time as a Human Rights Watch report that shows that it’s “now routine for basics like access to time outside of cells and meetings with lawyers to be denied. Medical emergencies are dismissed or met with punishment. Lockdowns are declared to cover for ICE’s being short-staffed. One man reported that he and others were forced to eat “like dogs,” bent over with their hands restrained behind their backs.”

As of right now, we are witnessing one of the biggest mass human rights violation events in American history, and we’re witnessing it happen in real time. If you find yourself approached by ICE, just remember: you have the right to remain silent. Remain calm, and don’t run. You have the right to a warrant from a judge before letting anyone into your home. You have the right to a lawyer. And document EVERYTHING. 

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PARAMOUNT TRIED GLAZING TRUMP. SOUTH PARK BLEW UP THEIR GAME.

You’ve probably seen a lot of the clips online already from this Wednesday’s episode of South Park, and the absolutely brutal critique of Donald Trump - but have you seen any of the parts where South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone systematically tear apart Paramount, their parent company? This might be one of the most savage takedowns in television history - and it could lead to more manic Trump posts, lawsuits, and possibly the cancellation of South Park itself. I’m not joking about any of this - The White House have already released a statement, claiming South Park hasn’t “been relevant for over 20 years” and their popularity is hitting “record lows” due to “hanging by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.”

For anybody who hasn’t seen the episode, there are a few intersecting plots at work, but the most important one to know is that Jesus Christ, the person, has literally been forced into hanging out at South Park Elementary, which leads to the residents of South Park protesting - and being sued by Donald Trump for $5 billion. The reason this plot is important is because it introduces us to a few concepts that explain why this is one of the boldest pieces of television ever produced. 

• Donald Trump is an egomaniac with a very small penis, who threatens litigation over increasingly frivolous things, such as a painter making his penis anatomically correct or an Instagram commenter asking his boyfriend Satan (yes - Satan) if Trump is on the Epstein list.

• The only reason Jesus is being forced into schools is as a result of this litigation, which is requiring him to be in schools. When he reveals this, he goes on a hushed rant to the town that directly names Paramount, Stephen Colbert, and a “merger.”

That last point is important, because it reveals that South Park isn’t just ripping Trump to shreds for no reason - they’re getting revenge on their parent company Paramount. Why? To put it as simply as I can: two lawsuits happening in tandem directly led to delayed production on South Park, and Trey and Matt were not happy about it.

In Lawsuit #1, Donald Trump was suing Paramount on the grounds that 60 Minutes had edited an interview with Kamala Harris in a deceptive way, which CBS (owned by Paramount) denied doing. Despite the lawsuit being completely baseless and clearly built on nothing more than a wounded ego, Paramount decided to settle out of court for $16 million with Trump, on top of an additional $20 million in “coverage” of Trump. This move was criticized by EVERYBODY, including Stephen Colbert - whose Late Show was canceled two weeks later on the grounds that it was “purely a financial decision,” but is very transparently politically motivated. Paramount clearly wanted to suck up to Trump to get out of his crosshairs. As we’ll soon see, that likely did not work. 

Lawsuit #2 is far more complicated and spans many, many years. The shortest way I can put it is that South Park’s exclusive streaming rights were in a years-long tug-of-war between HBO Max and Paramount Plus, which coincided with Parker and Stone trying to negotiate a higher overall deal for themselves. THIS, however, was complicated by a long-delayed merger between Paramount and Skydance… a merger delayed due to complications with the FCC, who have to approve any such mergers… the FCC, run by Donald Trump, a man who was in the process of suing one of the companies in the merger.

Because of the delayed merger, Parker and Stone were in purgatory, having had to delay the release of season 27 by two weeks, which resulted in them publicly slamming Paramount for the merger being a “shit show.” But finally, on the evening of July 21, Parker and Stone inked a new deal for themselves to be EXCLUSIVELY at Paramount for five years, valued at $1.5 billion. 

And not even two days later, they released an episode lambasting Paramount for being cowards that accused the president of being a fragile litigious weirdo that is in bed with Satan. Oh, and in case you missed the subtlety, the episode ends with the town settling with Trump for $3.5 million, and creating a court-ordered pro-Trump PSA (which is a very convincing deepfake)  that involves a fat Donald Trump walking naked through the desert.

It’s insane. It’s all insane. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are BEGGING Donald Trump to sue them and Paramount, right after Paramount settled their last lawsuit - and it’s, strangely, one of the strongest and most potent acts of resistance against this administration in 2025 we’ve seen yet.

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ICYMI:

• French president Emanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte are suing Candace Owens for 22 counts of defamation, due to Candace Owens “staking her entire professional reputation” on the claim that Brigitte Macron is actually a trans woman. In response, Owens told Macron to “bring it.” Famous last words?

• Disgraced former congressman George Santos begins his 87-month prison sentence today, following his guilty plea to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He spent his last day of freedom doing what he’s best at: being incredibly annoying on Twitter.

• Remember Pete Hegseth? He’s disappeared into the ether in recent days due to his lack of involvement in Epsteinworld, but his Signalgate fiasco is getting worse behind the scenes for him, with The Washington Post revealing that the information he provided about a U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen came from a classified email marked, and I quote… “SECRET.”

• According to the United Nations, 9% of all children are “severely” malnourished in Gaza right now.

• Would you believe me if I said some people out there don’t think Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is ENOUGH of an antivaxxer? Famous for being anti-vaccine, RFK is somehow being sued by the anti-vaxx organization Children’s Health Defense for failing “to set up a task force to promote safer childhood vaccinations.” “This is not the Bobby we knew,” they’re quoted as saying, though I’d argue he’s the exact same Bobby _I_ know.

• Here’s another throwback: Kim Davis, the woman famous for a disgusting fashion sense AND denying gay couples their marriage licenses in an attempt to overturn Obergefell v Hedges, is BACK… unfortunately. She and her unfortunate skirt are trying once again to be heard by the Supreme Court to see if her First Amendment religious liberty rights were infringed upon when she unsuccessfully fought Obergefell a decade ago.

• In New York, there’s a work placement program for youth known as the Summer Youth Employment Program that pays its workers with prepaid debit cards. Somehow, a “hack” has gone viral on TikTok involving the cards being able to withdraw nearly endless amounts of money - resulting in $17 million having been withdrawn in just three days.

Don’t say TikTok never did anything for you, kids!