I don't want to go *too* far in praising this article, because there are still a large number of problems with the way it minimizes the danger of Trump literally annexing Canada, but its existence demonstrates that at least one US media outlet (NBC) understands that Trump is not joking, or playing the angles here, and is in fact dead serious about taking over Canada:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-quest-conquer-canada-confusing-everyone-rcna195657

Trump's quest to conquer Canada is confusing everyone

"Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump first mentioned his love for Canadians, including his “many friends” like hockey legend Wayne Gretzky. Then he riffed about how Canada shouldn’t exist as a sovereign country before getting to what has increasingly become a fixation: wholesale annexation of Canada as a U.S. state.

"Canada only works as a state," Trump said Thursday. "We don’t need anything they have. As a state, it would be one of the great states anywhere. This would be the most incredible country, visually. If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it, between Canada and the U.S. Just a straight, artificial line. Somebody did it a long time ago, many many decades ago. Makes no sense. It’s so perfect as a great and cherished state."

"But why should we subsidize another country for $200 billion?" Trump continued, adding, "And again, we don’t need their lumber, we don’t need their energy. We have more than they do. We don’t need anything. We don’t need their cars. I’d much rather make the cars here. And there’s not a thing that we need. Now, there will be a little disruption, but it won’t be very long. But they need us. We really don’t need them. And we have to do this. I’m sorry."

As I said at the top of this post, this is by no means a perfect article; NBC spends far too much ink focusing on Trump's personal animus towards Justin Trudeau (who is no longer even the Canadian Prime Minister) and allowing named GOP officials to pretend they're confused by Trump's annexation plan even as they enact his orders to try and make that plan a reality. Crucially however, this report *does* make it abundantly clear that Trump is dead serious and his minions know full well that he's not joking:

"Trump has been unapologetic in his quest to conquer the Canadians — an effort he said in January would be conducted by “economic force.” The result has been a disintegration of the relationship between the U.S. and one of its closest allies, and a stock market plunge over fears of ever-increasing escalation of a trade war. Both Canadian officials and Republicans initially thought the president was merely joking, ribbing Trudeau — a longtime foil — after they met at Mar-a-Lago in November. It was after that visit that Trump first publicly floated the notion of absorbing Canada. Few think he’s joking now, and the Canadians have stopped laughing.

A source with direct knowledge of the discussions told NBC News that Trump is heavily focused on Canada in conversations with aides, who believe he is completely serious about making the country the 51st state — even with Trudeau out of power and a new prime minister in place."

Unfortunately, and despite this refreshing frankness, I have some problems with the sloppy journalism and credulous naivety with which NBC states that nobody knows where Trump is getting the idea to annex Canada from, including Republicans in his government. The fact is that MAGA-connected fascist propagandists like Candice Owens (and others) have been advocating for taking over, or even invading Canada since at least 2021-2022 for a variety of reasons; including natural resources, water rights, climate imperialism (although they don't use that term,) and even to protect their ideological brethren in the larger Canadian fascist movement from legal repercussions for their own slow-moving coup attempt in Canada, the so-called "Trucker Convoy." I genuinely have no idea if US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has any clue what Trump is thinking, but fascist media personalities in Trump's orbit certainly do, and this regime has already shown a willingness to outsource official policy from raving nazi dipshits on YouTube, so I don't think "where Trump is getting this idea from" is the kind of puzzle you need Scotland Yard's finest detectives to solve.

In a story that's not really making many waves in the US media because transphobia, transmisogyny, and hating incarcerated people are all bipartisan establishment positions, the Trump administration is also transferring incarcerated trans women to men's prisons; despite the fact that it's both illegal, and multiple judges have issued restraining orders to prevent the regime from doing so:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/07/transgender-women-prison-trump

Trans women transferred to men’s prisons despite rulings against Trump’s order

"Transgender women incarcerated in the US prison system have been transferred to men’s facilities under Donald Trump’s executive order, despite multiple court rulings blocking the president’s policy, according to civil rights lawyers and accounts from behind bars.

Trump’s day-one “gender ideology” order, one of several sweeping attacks on trans rights, said the attorney general “shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers” and that no federal funds go to gender-affirming treatment or procedures for people in custody.

The executive order was quickly challenged in court. In three lawsuits filed on behalf of trans women housed in women’s prisons, federal judges have ruled that the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) cannot withhold their medical treatment and was barred from moving them to men’s facilities. One judge said the plaintiffs had “straightforwardly demonstrated that irreparable harm will follow."

Lawyers fighting Trump’s directive say the court rulings prevented the transfers of 17 trans women who are plaintiffs in the cases, but others not included in the litigation are now facing placements in men’s facilities."

In case you're missing the shell game going on here, the Trump administration is pretending that only the 17 specific trans women mentioned in the cases to block this cruel fuckery are covered, while simply going ahead to target other trans women who are not specifically mentioned in the court orders. Not only is this an abnormal, malicious violation of the spirit of the judge's orders, but it's also literally straight up illegal:

"Prisons are required under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (Prea), a longstanding federal law, to screen incarcerated people for sexual assault risk and consider LGBTQ+ status when making housing decisions. Legal experts say Trump’s blanket policy of housing trans women in men’s facilities clearly violates Prea."

This is a hard story to read, because it demonstrates a pattern of pointless, wonton cruelty towards trans women by Trump's Bureau of Prisons; in addition to moving trans women to men only facilities that put them in very real danger, the BOP has also issued *orders* for guards to deadname prisoners and use incorrect pronouns, change their gender markers on official forms, deny requests for gender appropriate clothing, and to allow male guards to pat down trans women prisoners. Furthermore because this administration (and some would say, American society) hates trans women more than they like ice cream, nobody is making any effort here to prevent abuses that would seemingly go even beyond Trump's fascist executive order. There are already reports of male guards "groping" trans women prisoners, prison officials seizing the bras and underwear of trans women prisoners like they were contraband, threats to force detransition incarcerated trans women by denying their hormone therapy, and even one report of a woman who had gender-affirming surgeries before her incarceration, being moved to a men's prison. As one lawyer noted, this "is essentially sanctioning sexual assault in some instances."

Of course, given that trans people represent a microscopic minority inside the U.S. population, and 17 trans women are being protected by temporary restraining orders, only a small number of trans women are subject to what I'd describe as a form of psychological torture and the constant threat of violence; perhaps that's why the US political and media establishment in the "opposition" doesn't care, rather than their well established indifference towards trans lives, if not outright transphobia. I would however argue that the fact that the Trump administration is plowing ahead to target such a small number of trans women demonstrates that this isn't about safety or the rule of law; the cruelty is indeed the point, and a Trump regime that cares little about malnourished children, seniors living check to check on social security, or American workers, is clearly prepared to move heaven and earth to make existence so intolerable for trans women that they simply stop existing.