This Week in Tyranny: 3 More Troops Killed in Iran War Trump “Ended”, Trump Restarts ICE Killings, McConnell MIA

Welcome back to This Week in Tyranny. While you were watching wildfire smoke turn the sky over half the country the color of a nicotine stain, three US service members died in a war the President keeps insisting he ended, ICE shot two more men and the White House told the mourners to keep it down, Trump went on primetime to reveal China stole the 2020 election, the Secretary of Defense turned military jets strafing a public beach into policy, and a senator’s been missing so long his own party thinks his proof-of-life photo is a deepfake. Let’s start with the war Trump keeps ending.Three American service members are dead this weekend, two in Jordan and one in Iraq, defending against Iranian missiles and drones, with one still missing. That’s sixteen troops dead now in a war Donald Trump has declared over so many times he’s earned a signing-ceremony punch card. He signed the latest ceasefire last month, held the pen up like he’d cured cancer, told you it was finished, and this week Iran’s Supreme Leader reviewed that signature and called it, “worthless.” Trump spent the week bombing civilian bridges and ports, Iranian missiles are landing on oil fields in Kuwait, and this morning he ordered fresh strikes to “swiftly punish” the country he keeps attacking. Asked about the dead Americans, he said it was “a very sad thing,” the way you’d mention a rained-out barbecue. He keeps announcing peace and ordering airstrikes in the same breath, and it’s other people’s kids who come home in the boxes.At home, ICE spent the week shooting people. On July 7 in Houston they killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a man they’ve admitted they mistook for someone else. On July 13 in Biddeford, Maine, they killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero. And spare me whether they had the right guy, since no name on a warrant turns shooting an unarmed man at a traffic stop into anything but a killing. None of it was on camera, either. Congress gave ICE the money for body cameras and ICE spent it on anything else, a real stroke of luck for the people holding the guns. Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary finally paused most vehicle stops to slow the body count, but that only lasted about a day before the Orange menace overruled his own secretary on Truth Social and posted “keep those Crime Stat Records coming,” about human beings his agents are shooting. Then border czar Tom Homan went on Fox to explain whose fault the killings really are. Not the agents. Not the guns. The people who said the killing was bad. His message to anyone upset that ICE keeps killing civilians was to “shut their mouth” or there’ll be “more bloodshed.” I’m sorry? Are you threatening to unlawfully kill people for speaking out about you unlawfully killing people? What the actual feck?Then Trump commandeered primetime to whine yet again the 2020 election was stolen by China. a story his own intelligence agencies looked at and threw back. He declassified a fat stack of documents that turned out to be five-year-old news in a fresh binder. He waved around 278,000 noncitizen voters that officials in Nevada and Pennsylvania read once and set on fire. And he slurred through all of it at the speed of a man deflating, ranting about a “shadow government” while attacking CISA, the election-security agency his own administration runs, the one that called 2020 the most secure election in American history. My dude, you keep warning us about the shadow government. You are the shadow government. He’s oh for sixteen in court trying to pry loose the state voter rolls, so now he’s writing the excuse months early, that if Republicans lose the midterms, it was stolen. He’s pre-drafting the tantrum.On July 15 the Blue Angels screamed over a packed Pensacola Beach so low that lawn chairs took flight and people dove into the sand, a maneuver the military calls reckless and this administration files under content. The Navy opened a safety review. But hairgel hegseth, looked at fighter jets flinging umbrellas across a beach full of families, waved the review off, and asked for an encore. Eric Trump chipped in by calling everyone alarmed by it the “low-T mainstream media,” which is a strange thing to say about people who just don’t want a flying cooler to the skull. This is combat aircraft and taxpayer jet fuel burned to run a monster truck rally over a crowded beach.And then there’s the senator no one can produce. Mitch McConnell, 84, went into a hospital on June 14 and hasn’t been seen since, while Kentucky’s Democratic governor Andy Beshear says two federal agencies called him to report McConnell had died. So the office released a photo of McConnell holding up a newspaper like a kidnapping victim, to prove he’s alive, and it went so well that his own MAGA base declared it AI-generated and Laura Loomer pronounced him brain dead. Now Beshear is considering appointing the replacement himself and flipping the seat to Democrat. Republicans are racing to sue him under the law they wrote to stop exactly that. Control of a 53-47 Senate now hinges on whether anyone can confirm one man has a pulse.And in the lightning round. Truth Social announced it’ll sell Wall Street a milliseconds-early peek at Trump’s market-moving posts, so the firms that pay can trade on his next war or tariff before you finish reading it, and since he owns the company, he’s charging admission to front-run his own mouth. Then the White House called his teleprompter operator a disgrace for quietly making six figures betting on Trump’s speeches, the exact hustle Trump just incorporated. And Stephen Miller stood at a State Department podium calling the American left “enemies of civilization” and rolling out a plan to disrupt, defund, debank, and prosecute left-wing groups, which is a lot of verbs for putting the people who protest him on the terror list.That’s your week in tyranny. Welcome to the golden age.Sources:https://www.ms.now/news/us-service-members-killed-missing-jordan-iran-war-centcomhttps://www.commondreams.org/news/tom-homan-bloodshedhttps://www.democracynow.org/2026/7/17/headlineshttps://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/5971473-blue-angels-low-flyover-review/https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2026/jul/13/tweets/mitch-mcconnell-rehabilitation-photo-ai-reused/https://www.jezebel.com/even-republican-senators-think-mitch-mcconnells-proof-of-life-photo-is-fakehttps://www.democracynow.org/2026/7/17/headlines/truth_social_plans_to_sell_priority_access_to_trumps_postshttps://truthout.org/articles/miller-labels-leftists-a-cancer-that-world-must-root-out-in-fascistic-speech/ Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe