The Results

The NY Times characterized the results as “the nation’s largest city (embracing) generational and ideological change.”

Previous Coverage of 2025 NYC Mayoral Race

Readers may want to review my previous coverage of this race as well as my piece on the two gubernatorial races decided yesterday.

• 2025 New York Mayoral Primary, Mamdani Vs. Cuomo

• Is Mamdani’s Win Over Cuomo The End of Democratic Party Neoliberalism?

• Andrew Cuomo Counting on Trump’s Support in New York Race

• 2025 Gubernatorial Races Provide Preview for 2026 Mid-term Elections

• Follow the Money Under Trump’s East Wing Ballroom and Behind Dem Progressive Campaigns

Record Setting Turnout, Youthquake Powered Mamdani

The race inspired turnout not seen in generations, per the NY Times:

In an era of low turnout nationwide, participation in Tuesday’s mayoral election in New York City was nothing short of electric, approaching numbers not seen in half a century.

More than two million New Yorkers cast their ballots. That figure was almost double the 1,100,000 people who voted for mayor four years ago. In some areas of Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, participation approached presidential election levels.

Unlike many American jurisdictions, New York historically has not allowed early voting in mayoral races. That changed in 2025.

Early vote data is public and gives analysts their first look at who voted in the election, although individual voter choices are confidential. Because demographic blocks tend to vote alike, these numbers also provide the best prediction of the outcome available.

Early vote numbers were enormous.

The NY Times discussed Mamdani’s new coalition:

For decades, Democrats in New York City have prevailed with a fairly static coalition: white liberals in Manhattan and Brooklyn, Black and Latino voters, ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities and a smattering of other immigrants.

Early results suggest that Mr. Mamdani reworked the contours of that coalition, stitching together new alliances that could shift the city’s political outlook for years to come.

He ran up 40- and 50-point margins in Brooklyn’s affluent Brownstone belt, swept northern Manhattan and secured slightly more narrow margins in historically Black and Latino areas of Brooklyn and the Bronx.

Mr. Cuomo pulled away in Orthodox Jewish precincts, where he approached 80 percent of the vote, and clearly won large numbers of more liberal Jewish voters in Manhattan and Riverdale in the Bronx that typically back the Democratic nominee.

But Mr. Mamdani, who will be the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor, more than made up for those losses with two groups most Democrats have overlooked: the young residents of gentrifying neighborhoods like Bushwick and Williamsburg, and the taxi drivers, bodega owners and other working-class South Asian immigrants in Queens and the Bronx.

Mamdani also solved one of the problems that has dogged progressive campaigns in recent decades: an inability to connect with working class and minority voters:

During the primary, Mr. Mamdani struggled to win some working-class Black and Latino areas. He overcame those challenges in a major way on Tuesday night.

With almost 90 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Mamdani was winning the Bronx by 11 points, a striking turnaround from the primary when he lost the county to Mr. Cuomo by 18 points.

In working-class neighborhoods like Kingsbridge in the Bronx, Mr. Cuomo beat Mr. Mamdani by almost two points in the primary. On Tuesday night, Mr. Mamdani was winning the neighborhood by 14 points.

Young voters showed up in a way they never did for Bernie Sanders in his 2016 and 2020 presidential races. Say it with me, youthquake:

Another NYT piece focused specifically on Gen Z voters (age 18 to 28):

Young people turned up and voted. The city’s roughly two-week stretch of early voting, which ended on Sunday, saw more than 735,000 residents cast ballots. The median age of these voters was 50, brought down by nearly 100,000 voters under the age of 35 showing up between Friday and Sunday.

The Times credits the Mamdani campaign’s ability to make organizing fun and providing a sense of connection for otherwise lonely and isolated young people.

Mr. Mamdani’s campaign did not want volunteering for him to feel like work, but like a chance to meet new people and discover new corners of New York. His vision of the city, the campaign said, is of a joyful place — one where New Yorkers can spend less time slogging and more time hanging.
…
That vision and the strategy began about a year ago, when Mr. Mamdani slid onto the social media feeds of Gen Z New Yorkers. He jubilantly crisscrossed boroughs, hitting beaches, road races and food stalls in a way that made people want to join in. He talked nonstop about the cost of living in a city where $18 cocktail menus and no-longer-one-dollar pizza slices are unsustainable on an entry-level job salary. He shared his pro-Palestinian views with supporters, who were confronted with videos of the deaths and destruction in Gaza.

And Mr. Mamdani did something else that they weren’t expecting. He invited them to come out — to a scavenger hunt (with a prize of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips, a sly reference to a Mayor Eric Adams campaign controversy), to a soccer tournament, to do-it-yourself merch nights, to a social for shredding personal documents, to bars where people could drink $5 Miller High Lifes and debrief after door knocking.

This is probably the most hope inspiring sign from Mamdani’s campaign as real, in-person, face-to-face, organizing is the most powerful political tool of all.

Whether this model can be implemented outside the densely populated Big Apple will have massive implications on American politics going forward.

Mamdani’s Victory Speech

The NY Times has the full transcript, but I want to highlight a couple things.

He opened with a quote from Eugene Debs, America’s greatest socialist politician, then immediately characterized his victory as a victory for working people.

Then he turned to his vanquished opponent.

Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. The future is in our hands. My friends, we have toppled a political dynasty.

I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life. But let tonight be the final time I utter his name, as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few.

He went on to thank “the next generation of New Yorkers”, “Yemeni bodega owners, Mexican abuelas, Senegalese taxi drivers, Uzbek nurses, Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties,” and his 100,000 campaign volunteers.

Then he reiterated some key campaign promises:

We will hire thousands more teachers. We will cut waste from a bloated bureaucracy. We will work tirelessly to make lights shine again in the hallways of NYCHA developments where they have long flickered.

Safety and justice will go hand in hand as we work with police officers to reduce crime and create a Department of Community Safety that tackles the mental health crisis and homelessness crises head on.

He also addressed the spurious charges of anti-Semitism that have been relentlessly hurled at him by zionists throughout the race and his status as a Muslim New Yorker:

We will build a City Hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism. Where the more than one million Muslims know that they belong — not just in the five boroughs of this city, but in the halls of power.

No more will New York be a city where you can traffic in Islamophobia and win an election.

He then reinforced his identity as a new kind of unapologetic progressive politician:

I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.

And he closed with a reiteration of his key promises in a call and response with his supporters:

Together, New York, we’re going to freeze the… [rent!] Together, New York, we’re going to make buses fast and… [free!] Together, New York, we’re going to deliver universal… [child care!]

Mamdani Defeats the Oligarchs

Mamdani also commented on the massive oligarch-funded campaign against him and issued a challenge in his victory speech:

Many have heard our message only through the prism of misinformation. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent to redefine reality and to convince our neighbors that this new age is something that should frighten them. As has so often occurred, the billionaire class has sought to convince those making $30 an hour that their enemies are those earning $20 an hour.

They want the people to fight amongst ourselves so that we remain distracted from the work of remaking a long-broken system. We refuse to let them dictate the rules of the game anymore. They can play by the same rules as the rest of us.

This chart from Drop Site News shows just how hard the oligarchs tried to beat Mamdani:

The Guardian named anti-Mamdani oligarch names:

Bill Ackman, the hedge fund manager and prominent Trump supporter, gave a pro-Cuomo group a total of $1.75m; Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire and three-term former New York mayor, donated a staggering $8.3m to the same Pac. The makeup moguls of the Lauder family backed pro-Cuomo and anti-Mamdani organizations to the tune of $2.6m, while the Tisch family gave $1.2m to stop the young socialist. For a long time, an effort – the billionaire class acting in concert to secure a specific electoral outcome – would have seemed insurmountable for a progressive candidate. It does not seem insurmountable anymore.

National Political Implications: Democratic Civil War

Despite running as an independent, Cuomo represented the Democratic party establishment, AIPAC, the oligarchy, and POTUS Donald Trump, who endorsed Cuomo in the final days of the race.

When I first covered the race I wrote, “if Cuomo wins, the sclerotic Democratic establishment will write off the insurgent, younger branch of the part off as sure losers in the 2028 contest and Cuomo will be an instant front-runner in the presidential primary.”

Mamdani’s historic victory (more on that below) means Cuomo’s political career should be finished, although he didn’t explicitly say we wouldn’t have Andrew Cuomo to kick around anymore at his concession speech, hopefully the man’s political career is finally over.

Mamdani’s victory was also a triumph over the Abundance bros that articulate the “vision” of the Democratic establishment:

(Democratic) consultants – long the devil on the Democratic party’s shoulder – have fallen under the spell of “popularism”, a mode of politics advanced by pollsters like David Schor and bloggers like Matt Yglesias, which posits that Democratic candidates must refine their platforms by the median of public opinion; a prescription that has almost always, in practice, meant shifting right, abandoning vulnerable constituencies, and treating the public as implacable belligerents to be coddled, rather than as intelligent adults to be persuaded.

…the rapidly proliferating number of centrist and center-right thinktanks and consultancies looking to shape Democratic party strategy exist, in part, to channel the preferences of their own ultra-wealthy funders, and to signal what the billionaire class will accept. The result is a Democratic party that appears listless and unprincipled, unwilling to fight because they do not believe in anything.

Mamdani’s electrifying campaign rejected this strategy completely.

Alex Shepherd in The New Republic sums up the strategy of the Democratic establishment:

A year ago, the Democratic Party decided to tell its voters “no.” Its leaders, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, adopted a playbook written by a fossil, James Carville, who argued that the Democrats should do nothing: Sit back, don’t make a fuss, and let Trump wreak havoc—then swoop in and win back power. At the same time, Democrats began formulating a message that attempted to scale back what they now believed were the excesses of the previous eight years. The party would be more conservative on gender and immigration, in particular, but also economics.

Mamdani won by doing something completely different. He built a campaign around a message that understood people’s anxieties about rising prices and offered concrete, legible promises that addressed them. He spoke to people not from the remove of Sunday shows and press conferences but where they were: He talked to social-media influencers and went on podcasts and showed up at Knicks games and rap concerts. He resonated with voters because he offered a vision of a better future, not a series of warmed over compromises.

The single issue that Mamdani’s opponents and critics fixated on—his longstanding support for Palestinian self-determination—only served to distinguish him from a Democratic establishment many distrusted. He held true to his beliefs, but perhaps he also saw which way the wind was blowing: Democratic voters’ views on Israel have shifted dramatically over the last two years, but their leaders’ haven’t. That some prominent Democrats lodged baseless accusations of antisemitism against him—or even dabbled in Islamophobia over his Muslim beliefs—only served to remind voters that he represented a clean break from the party’s leaders.

The weakness of the Democratic establishment was most visible in their struggles over whether or not to endorse Mamdani. Governor Kathy Hochul endorsed Mamdani in September.

U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, whose district is inside the city, dithered about whether or not to endorse Mamdani until mid-October when he finally made a lukewarm one.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, one of New York’s two Senators, never did endorse Mamdani and wouldn’t state who he had voted for.

National Political Implications: Mamdani vs. Trump

Mamdani explicitly called out President Trump in his victory speech:

if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves.

After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power.

This is not only how we stop Trump; it’s how we stop the next one. So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.

We will hold bad landlords to account because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants. We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks. We will stand alongside unions and expand labor protections because we know, just as Donald Trump does, that when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them become very small indeed.

New York will remain a city of immigrants: a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant.

So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us. When we enter City Hall in 58 days, expectations will be high. We will meet them.

For his part, Trump chose to make excuses for the GOP losses around the country rather than confronting Mamdani:

Mamdani Took “New” Trump Voters

Perhaps Trump was reluctant to attack Mamdani because he saw that the Mayor-elect cut right into the demographics that put Trump over the top in 2024 majorities: young men and ethnic minorities:

Note the difference between Mamdani and the two CIA centrists who won governships in Virginia and New Jersey.

He beat them among young women as well:

Mark Wauck broke down Mamdani’s success with those groups and speculated as to why they have abandoned Trump:

GOPers were losing with “new Trump” voters. Major parts of the traditional Dem base turned out for Mamdani—of course. On the other hand, the “new Trumpers”—Hispanics and Muslims and various Asians—who had defected from the Dems to Trump over domestic issues (crime, borders, economy) appear to have returned to the Dems. Why? The economy and Trump’s denialism has to be considered a major factor. But Trump’s strong foreign policy identification with the Anglo-Zionist targeting—ranging from tariffs and the accompanying rhetoric, to killing for sport on the high seas, to genocide—of, let’s see, Asians, Hispanics, and Muslims has to have been a factor, as well. I don’t see Trump – Mamdani voters voting GOP in the midterms at this point.

Now Mamdani Will Have to Deliver

Those readers who are having painful flashbacks to the “Hope and Change” of 2008 and burn at the memory of Obama’s failure to deliver anything resembling positive change are right to worry.

Ominously, the big BO himself is promising to be in Mamdani’s ear as a “sounding board” following one of two phone calls he placed to Mamdani during the campaign.

New York progressive netroots veteran Zephyr Teachout has a warning for Mamdani about Obama and his approach to politics:

Remember when David Plouffe and Rahm Emanuel did everything they could to destroy the grassroots that Obama 2007 built, actively stopping them from organizing for health care?

Making OFA a data operation with distributed tasks and radically centralized power?

I mean we are living with the horrific human costs of that now but one way in which Zohran is absolutely not Obama is that I am sure that he has no intention of throttling grassroots power.

Finally we will see what grassroots power built in a political campaign can do. I know a lot of people who don’t believe electoral campaigns can ever be the foundation of grassroots power but here’s a real chance to show them wrong.

Mamdani will face enormous challenges as mayor and I’ll be back next week to put names on those challenges.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

Tucker Carlson hosted Nick Fuentes on his insanely popular podcast last week. The full interview garnered 17 million views on X.com, 5 million views on YouTube, and no telling how many of his reported 2.6 million Spotify followers tuned in, but Carlson was the #2 podcast on the service last week.

For comparison, the top-rated show on Fox News (the most-watched cable news program) drew 3.7 million viewers.

The top-rated news show on broadcast television is ABC’s World News Tonight, which averages around 7.8 million viewers.

Tucker Carlson IS the American mainstream media in 2025. If he is platforming the frequently cancelled Fuentes, that’s a big deal.

It was also interesting to me because the last time I’d seen Carlson discussing Fuentes, he called Fuentes “this child, this weird little gay kid in his basement in Chicago” while interviewing Candace Owens.

But the most interesting thing about the interview was their joint condemnation of Christian Zionists.

Tucker Carlson Calling Out Neocons and Christian Zionists

Carlson had a notably tense interview with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) four months ago, but I had not expected a full throated attack on the ideology of Christian Zionists like Cruz.

Nick Fuentes: Where does neoconservatism come from? It arises from Jewish leftists who were mugged by reality when they saw the surprise attack in the Yom Kippur war.

Tucker Carlson: Well, that’s a lot of it for sure. But then like how do you explain Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, and there are a lot like that: John Bolton, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, I mean, all people I know personally who I’ve seen like be seized by this brain virus and they’re not Jewish.

They’re most of them are self-described Christians. And then the Christian Zionists who are…

Christian Zionists, like what is that? And I can just say for myself, I dislike them more than anybody, because it’s Christian heresy and I’m offended by that as a Christian.

Christian Zionism, for those of you lucky enough not to be surrounded by it on a daily basis (there are more Israel First zionists in Texas than Israel), is rooted in Protestant eschatological ideas about “the rapture” — an idea invented by the 19th Century Irish Calvinist John Nelson Darby.

Today, the movement is led by, among others, Texas minister John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel.

About Christian Zionism

It’s impossible to understand the Israel First branch of the Republican party without understanding the influence of Christian Zionism.

I highly recommend this Tad Delay piece from Parapraxis Magazine for those who want an introduction.

But let’s get back to the blow-by-blow of the political fallout from the Carlson/Fuentes tête-à-tête.

Nick Fuentes Is Cancelled No More

Ali Breland in The Atlantic wrote a mammoth piece decrying that “The firewall against Nick Fuentes is crumbling” and bemoaning the fact that Carlson had given Fuentes “access to one of the largest audiences he has ever had.”

She also lists a greatest hits of Fuentes’ racist and anti-Semitic statements, that had Carlson himself comparing the young influencer to David Duke just weeks ago.

But most importantly, she bemoaned Fuentes’ influence on today’s GOP:

In a 2021 episode of his livestreamed show, Fuentes said he wants to drag the Republican Party “kicking and screaming into the future, into the right wing, into a truly reactionary party.” His vision is coming true. Consider the leaked group chats of Young Republican leaders that were revealed by Politico earlier this month. The messages are full of the kind of anti-Semitic and racist jokes about the Holocaust and Black people that Fuentes has made as a livestreamer. Fuentes wasn’t directly referenced in the messages, though he claimed shortly after the leak that there are “Groypers in every department, every agency.” Vice President J. D. Vance called the messages “offensive jokes” and dismissed outrage over the texts as irrational “pearl clutching.” Fuentes celebrated the response on his livestream: “I never thought I’d see it ever, but Republicans are finally learning to play the whataboutism game, and I think that’s absolutely overdue.”

Heritage Foundation President Defends Carlson

But the mess really hit the fan when Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, put out a video on X.com last Thursday defending Tucker Carlson from the “venomous coalition attacking him.”

Roberts’ statement came after changes to their web site excising mentions of Tucker Carlson inspired speculation that they were preparing to disavow him.

I’ll have more to say on this in the coming days, but today I want to be clear about one thing. Christians can critique the state of Israel without being anti-Semitic.

And, of course, anti-Semitism should be condemned.

My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first and to America always. When it serves the interests of the United States to cooperate with Israel and other allies, we should do so with partnerships on security, intelligence, and technology.

But when it doesn’t, conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington.

The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians. And we won’t start doing that now.

We don’t take direction from comments on X, though we are grateful for the robust free speech debate.

We also don’t take direction from members or donors, though we are inherently grateful for their support. And we’re adding more every day. This is the robust debate we invite with our colleagues, our movement friends, our members, and the American public.

We will always defend truth. We will always defend America. And we will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda.

That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains and, as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.

The venomous coalition attacking him are sowing division. Their attempt to cancel him will fail.

Most importantly, the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right.

I disagree with, and even abhor, things that Nick Fuentes says. But canceling him is not the answer either. When we disagree with a person’s thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas in debate.

And we have seen success in this approach, as we continue to dismantle the vile ideas of the left.

As my friend Vice President Vance said last night, “what I am not okay with is any country coming before the interests of American citizens, and it is important for all of us, assuming we are American citizens, to put the interests of our own country first.”

That’s where our allegiance lies, and that’s where it will stay.

The backlash was immediate and intense.

Zionists Speak Out at the Republican Jewish Coalition Summit

Roberts immediately faced incoming fire from a bipartisan coalition of Israel first U.S. Senators, including Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, and Democrat Chuck Schumer.

“Now is a time for choosing. If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very cool and that their mission is to defeat ‘global Jewry,’ and you say nothing, then you are a coward, and you are complicit in that evil,” said Cruz at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Summit in Las Vegas (6.4 thousand views on YouTube).

“The ‘intellectual backbone of the conservative movement’ is only as strong as the values it defends,” McConnell tweeted.

“Last I checked, conservatives should feel no obligation’ to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats,” he continued. “But maybe I just don’t know what time it is.”

Schumer told the Associated Press he found Roberts’ remarks “deeply disturbing.”

But nothing could top the rhetoric coming from U.S. Senator (R-SC) Lindsey Graham and U.S Representative (R-FL) Randy Fine.

Graham’s repulsive outburst racked up 848,000 views on X.com where the up-and-coming Israel first Congressman Fine only got 15,000.

I can’t help but hope that the more people see Graham and Fine speaking their truth, the less support they will have.

Roberts Immediately Backpedals

The next day Roberts was interviewed by Dana Loesch and agreed, after a long, awkward pause, that Carlson was “sowing division” by calling out Christian Zionists.

Roberts also put out a 350 word tweet in reply to Nick Fuentes’ question “what exactly do you abhor about my views?”

But not all of the Republican response was negative as reported by Politico’s Nightly newsletter:

Meanwhile, other conservative group chats in Washington were blowing up with messages in support of Roberts’ stance. “I woke up with more texts about this last night than I did when Trump was elected,” one conservative operative, granted anonymity to discuss private messages, told Nightly. “Everything else has dissipated.”

In a message to Nightly, Carlson professed surprise at the heated reaction to Roberts’ statement. “It’s shocking to me that a principled statement in favor of free speech would be controversial on the right. But it’s also clarifying,” Carlson wrote. “Remember who opposed it.”

Laura Loomer Goes Ham on Roberts

Amusingly, the sharpest attacks on Roberts are coming from Laura Loomer, another right-winger who is frequently cancelled and officially labeled a “conspiracy theorist” by Wikipedia. The main difference between Fuentes and Loomer is there’s no question she is Israel first.

I mean, sure she’s got Alex Jones’ InfoWars and the infamous Project Veritas on her resume, but she’s now a powerful Trump 2.0 administration insider.

As the The Guardian reported in April, she can get people fired, including from the National Security Council.

So it seems likely Roberts felt a cold chill down his back when he learned Loomer had tweeted:

“What @KevinRobertsTX needs to understand is you can respect someone’s right to free speech but also condemn them and their wicked behavior that is rooted in a desire to fracture the evangelical GOP base.

Tucker is the demon who he says scratched him in his sleep.

How’s that for venom?

Loomer next zeroed in on the specific Heritage Foundation staffer she blamed for writing Roberts’ remarks on Carlson.

Heads Roll at Heritage

By Friday, Roberts was sending an email to Heritage Foundation staff titled “Heritage’s Stand Against Antisemitism and for Civilizational Truth.”

Per The Hill, the email announced that chief of staff Ryan Neuhaus was vacating his role to become a “senior advisor” to the Simon Center while executive vice president, Derrick Morgan, would be acting chief of staff until the end of the year.

Steve Bannon Confronts Loomer

But this is more than a matter of “the empire strikes back” as this confrontational Steve Bannon interview of Loomer shows.

This is the clip that’s gone viral:

Loomer accused “some on the right” of having “Israeli derangement syndrome.”

Bannon pushed back hard on the Israel first Loomer:

Steve Bannon: “Well, no, no, no, no, no. Hang on, hang on a second. If Netanyahu and the Jewish—hold on, if the Israeli government had dealt straight with us, you wouldn’t have had this problem. They’re liars. They’ve been stone-cold liars. They gave bad information. So I’m not going to let that go unchallenged. That’s just bullshit. OK?”

“Do not—don’t sit there all innocent about what Netanyahu’s—Netanyahu’s government has been atrocious, and we should have regime change in Jerusalem, and we should have it immediately. They’ve lied to the American government. They’ve lied to the American people consistently.”

These divisions on the right may be pitting one loathsome crew of racist reactionaries against another, but it is extremely novel to see the American Republican party and broader right wing tearing itself apart over whether or not to put Israel first.

This was not seen in the Bush-Cheney years that launched the endless “Global War on Terror” and maybe, just maybe it’s a sign that the neoconservative reign of terror may be running out of steam.

UPDATE

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) responds:

Full text:

The recent speeches given at the RJC conference were filled with hateful rhetoric and lies about not only myself, but my colleague Thomas Massie, my good friend Tucker Carlson, and Americans who sincerely mean it when we say America FIRST.

No other country’s interest should come before our own.

But when actual Republican members of Congress and Senators and influential figures take to calling us “dangerous threats” or even dare to call Tucker “Hitler” and publicly announce to cancel us, they are not only doing exactly what Democrats did by calling Republicans “Nazis” and Trump “Hitler” but they are also trying to get us killed.

And what purely disgust me is that they know it.

They know exactly what they are doing and they are doing it on purpose.

Me and my very serious fellow America Firsters are not against anyone, we are only sincerely for our own country, America.

In all the most well intentioned ways.

And that includes every single American citizen and their children and their children and future generations.

It’s not identity driven at all no matter how much the haters trying to get us killed claim.

We are winning and our movement is growing and I thank God for that because my children’s generation deserves hope for their future and their opportunity to live the American dream.

UPDATE 2: And Tucker folded.

And while I hate to go back to the well so soon when there are so many other topics to cover, these fools just can’t keep they names out of the papers. So let’s dive into their latest antics.

Is Ice Barbie Really Going Out With Him?

We’ll start with American Oversight’s attempt to figure out just what exactly ICE Barbie Kristi Noem’s alleged boyfriend Corey Lewandowski is doing exactly:

On Wednesday, American Oversight sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for failing to release records that could answer numerous questions about Corey Lewandowski’s shadowy role at the agency, including his status as a Special Government Employee (SGE). Despite being described as DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s “de facto chief of staff,” Lewandowski has evaded basic transparency and oversight requirements while reportedly exercising sweeping influence over policy, contracts, and personnel decisions.

The secrecy around Lewandowski’s role in the Trump administration — including his apparent misuse of the SGE designation that is intended for individuals who provide temporary, limited service to the government — reflects the administration’s broader hostility toward transparency. Recent reports suggest concern about his murky role is growing among at least some inside the White House.

Our lawsuit follows months of stonewalling by DHS, which has failed to respond to multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests seeking Lewandowski’s communications, calendars, and other records. DHS’s refusal to release records about his activities obscures whether he has exceeded the legal time limits on his appointment, avoided using government email to conduct official business, and directed agency business that may benefit his private associates.

“It is telling that this White House — which has shown an aversion to the rule of law — has reportedly grown weary of Mr. Lewandowski’s attempts to game the system at DHS,” said Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director of American Oversight.
…
Reports indicate that Lewandowski has acted as Secretary Noem’s “gatekeeper,” routed meetings through himself, directed personnel decisions, and even exercised veto power over contracts exceeding $100,000 — all while eschewing use of his government email and phone number to conduct official business and avoiding badge swipes that would document his time in government buildings. Despite these responsibilities, DHS claims he has worked only 69 days this year (228 days have elapsed since Secretary Noem was confirmed; Lewandowski began working there shortly after), well under the 130-day cap for SGEs — a count that insiders describe as a “gross undercount.”

Lewandowski has also failed to file a public financial disclosure report, raising concerns about whether he is complying with ethics rules that prohibit SGEs from engaging in outside work that conflicts with official duties. DHS’s secrecy has left unanswered questions about whether Lewandowski maintains private clients with interests before the agency.

The course of true love rarely runs smooth, even for ICE Barbi and Corey Lew. But, never fear, they’re smoothing things out by letting Corey run rampant through multiple-agencies despite his mysterious role.

ICE Barbie’s Boyfriend Corey Purges the Agency

The Daily Beast has the scoop on this stuff which builds on previously reported incidents of Noem’s rumored boyfriend, Corey Lewandowski firing officials like the head of FEMA despite having no official role at DHS.

Kristi Noem’s enforcer and rumored lover Corey Lewandowski is driving a purge inside Immigration and Customs Enforcement—tightening the DHS chief’s grip to accelerate a nationwide deportation blitz.

Five ICE field bosses were yanked from Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego and Philadelphia on Friday and sent to headquarters after complaints about lagging removal numbers.
Inside the Department of Homeland Security, Lewandowski—whose relationship with Noem has been described as D.C.’s “worst-kept secret”—has helped compile a broader list of at least a dozen field leaders to be moved or replaced, with senior Border Patrol officials stepping into ICE posts, according to Fox News Digital.

The outlet detailed an unprecedented power shift that sources called “tense” and “combative,” and has pitched two factions against each other.

Border czar Tom Homan, 64, and acting ICE Director Todd Lyons argue for targeted arrests of those with criminal convictions and final orders to leave.
…
Fox reported that the Border Patrol influx marks an “unprecedented” power shift inside DHS, aligning ICE’s field tempo with Bovino’s hard-charging “blitz” model, which would be a shift in the government’s pledge to remove “the worst of the worst” in favour of pure numbers.

Bovino, 55, has become the template for Noem’s camp, leading immigration crackdowns from Los Angeles to Chicago’s “Midway Blitz.”

His hard-edged tactics are under a judge’s microscope in Chicago, where plaintiffs say he defied limits on tear gas use and he’s been ordered to appear in court.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, described it on X as a “HUGE moment”, adding: “ICE leadership is being purged tonight. The old guard, which prioritized targeted enforcement operations aimed at people with criminal records, is being replaced with Border Patrol and Greg Bovino’s ‘Midway Blitz’ style.”

Yes, that Tom Homan, last heard from when Trump’s DOJ killed an FBI investigation involving an alleged $50,000 cash payout from undercover agents.

We’ll come back to Mr. Homan before this post is over, but first, let’s follow ICE Barbie and her bey Cory Lewandowski to the Super Bowl.

ICE Barbie: Only Patriots Welcome at the Super Bowl, Sorry Bad Bunny

From The New York Times:

Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, gave the clearest indication yet that agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement would attend the Super Bowl in February, where the Latin superstar Bad Bunny is scheduled to headline the halftime show.

Asked on Friday by the right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson if there would be “ICE enforcement” at the Super Bowl, Noem replied, “There will be,” adding that federal immigration officers would be “all over” the event.

“I have the responsibility for making sure everybody goes to the Super Bowl, has the opportunity to enjoy it and to leave,” Noem said on “The Benny Show.” People should not attend the event, she went on, unless they are “law-abiding Americans who love this country.”

Bad Bunny, a Grammy-winning musician who is from Puerto Rico, rose to fame with hits such as “MIA,” “I Like It” and “Me Porto Bonito.” He recently finished a 31-show residency in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, saying he chose not to perform in the continental United States because he feared that his fans would become targets of ICE agents.

After the N.F.L. announced last week that he would appear at the Super Bowl, which will take place on Feb. 8 in Santa Clara, Calif., far-right commentators complained that Bad Bunny did not sing in English and that he had been openly critical of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Johnson wrote on social media that Bad Bunny was a “massive Trump hater.”

Alright, fun’s over, let’s get back to talking about Border Czar Tom Homan and his fight with ICE Barbie.

Can Tom Homan Pour Oil on ICE Barbie and Corey’s Troubled Waters?

For his part, Homan says there’s no trouble on Team Trump, DHS division.

The Daily Beast transcribed the exchange above:

“There are a number of reports that there is growing friction between you and Kristi Noem … Is that report in any way accurate Tom?” Laura Ingraham asked.

But Homan—who is embroiled in a bribery scandal—ducked the question entirely, launching instead into a long-winded defense of ICE’s record.

“Look, we are all being aggressive. I have said from day one we are going to concentrate on public safety threats and national security threats,” he said. “But if you are in the country illegally, you are not off the table. We will arrest you, too.”

Homan boasted, “We have a record number of arrests and deportations,” and promised, “As we get more agents on, you will see arrests increase twice, three times, you are going to see the numbers skyrocket.”

Looks like the enemies of Trump 2.0 and ICE Barbie will have to look elsewhere to find a crack in the team’s unity.

But any attention is bad news for “Honest” Tom Homan.

Turns out there’s more scorpions scurrying around under that particular rock. Let’s flip it over.

Tom Homan Has His Hand Out at ICE

Pro Publica has the deets:

The first time a Pennsylvania consultant named Charles Sowell connected with border czar Tom Homan was when Sowell reached out on LinkedIn in 2021, looking for advice about border contracting work. Homan had finished a stint as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, capping a three-decade career in federal government. He and Sowell built a rapport, based partly on their shared criticisms of then-President Joe Biden’s border policies.

By 2023, the men had gone into business together. Sowell was paying Homan as a consultant to his boutique firm, SE&M Solutions, which advised companies — in some cases for a fee of $20,000 a month — seeking contracts from the agencies where Homan had once worked. In 2024, Sowell became chair of the board of Homan’s foundation, Border911, which championed tougher border security.
…
After Trump won and formally announced Homan would be returning with him to the White House, Sowell kept Homan on his payroll until the end of the year. Once named as the border czar, Homan said he would recuse himself from contracting, saying he would have no “involvement, discussion, input, or decision of any future government contracts.”

But several industry executives who spoke with ProPublica said at least half a dozen companies vying for a slice of the $45 billion Congress has allocated for immigration detention work had hired Sowell because he had led them to believe his connections to Homan would help their chances of winning government work.
…
Homan’s private-sector work before he returned to government transformed his finances. In 2017, he declared assets totaling a maximum of just $250,000 on his ethics disclosures following a career in federal service, a figure that excludes certain government retirement accounts.

By 2025, his net worth had grown to between $3 million to $9 million, the disclosure documents show. (The forms list assets in ranges, and a portion of his net worth may come from money he had saved in government retirement accounts.)

Now that we know Tom Homan is one of those capitalists Nancy Pelosi loves to see serving the public, let’s use him as a bridge to our next topic: Democratic attempts to resist Trump 2.0 and ICE.

Border Czar Warns Illinois Democrats

Naked Capitalism has covered Trump’s federal invasion of Chicago and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s attempts to push back by threatening to convene some sort of “truth and reconciliation commission” when and if Trump’s term ends.

We haven’t covered Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s recent call for a “general strike,” so more on that below.

But first, Border Czar Tom Homan has some words of warning for the Illinois Governor and Chicago Mayor, presumably ICE Barbie agrees:

Homan blasted the officials for “attacking federal agents” while overlooking the increasing violence and volatile situations agents face on the ground. Homan’s comments were specifically directed at Gov. Pritzker, who has repeatedly opposed ICE enforcement efforts while, controversially, calling Chicago’s summer “amazing” despite a high number of shootings and murders.

“Here’s what should happen. The judge, Governor Pritzker, Mayor Johnson, put a Border Patrol uniform on for one shift. Come out there and stand there with the men and women of the Border Patrol and ICE, and see how you’re going to respond,” Homan said.

Homan highlighted the tangible threat agents are facing nationwide amid what he described as escalating anti-enforcement riots and attacks. Recent incidents underscore Homan’s concern:

• In Chicago, rioters have been filmed calling for agents to be arrested or shot.

• An ICE agent in suburban Chicago was seriously injured in September after a suspect allegedly dragged him with a vehicle during an attempted arrest.

• In Dallas, two people were tragically killed during a September 24th shooting at an ICE office before the gunman took his own life.

• Texas authorities have reported at least two other shootings targeting ICE and Border Patrol facilities since July 4th, resulting in 10 attempted murder charges.

Homan concluded by reiterating his challenge to the critics, saying, “Put on that uniform, stand on that front line, and have stones thrown at you, and see if there’s justification for these men and women to protect themselves.”

Mayor Johnson Calls for General Strike

When last I covered the battle between Trump, ICE Barbie, and the Democrats of Chicago, I was pretty hard on the callow, feckless Dems and their failure to appreciate the reality of the conflict.

Now Mayor Johnson is trying to up the ante by talking out loud about a general strike at the most recent “No Kings” rally:

“If my ancestors, as slaves, can lead the greatest general strike in the history of this country, taking it to the ultra-rich and big corporations, we can do it too!” Johnson said, met with thunderous applause.

History shows there has never been a true, nationwide general strike in the U.S. outside of the “great strike wave of 1946” where five million American workers mobilized against Congress in an effort to demand leaders address economic instability and unacceptable working conditions. As a result, Congress created the Taft-Hartley Act, controversial legislation still in place to date, banning a broad range of union tactics, including political strikes.

Johnson has made his way to the front as a leader who isn’t afraid of intimidation tactics coming from Trump, including raids from ICE agents, and the mayor fighting back with calls for Trump to be behind bars and the “Hands Off Chicago” campaign.

Organizers of the two-mile march in the downtown area estimated close to 250,000 people participated, a major uptick from July’s rally with roughly 75,000 people. Johnson’s remarks and viewpoints have been supported by state leaders including Gov. JB Pritzker, who is also on Trump’s growing enemy list.

Speaking to the peaceful protestors, Pritzker said, “We will never surrender!”

“Peaceful, democratic resistance is always scary for authoritarians,” Pritzker said.

“We in Chicago are not afraid to stand up … Today we are resisting more than just Donald Trump’s attacks on democracy, and he knows it.”

I wonder if Mayor Johnson has put any additional thought into the general strike idea.

I’m 100% down, I’m just not sure that my refusing to make some blog posts or record music history podcasts will do much to slow the roll of the Empire.

Pritzker’s Accountability Commission Will Be Coming for ICE Barbie

We’ve covered Pritzker talking about this Accountability Commission but I wanted to dive into the details a little bit via the Governor’s press office.

Governor JB Pritzker today signed Executive Order 2025-06 to establish the Illinois Accountability Commission (IAC), an independent board tasked with capturing and creating a public record of the conduct of federal law enforcement agents and recommending actions to hold the federal government accountable as they continue conducting military-style operations in Chicago, collar counties, and other areas throughout the state. ​

The Commission will determine how to safely and prudently collect testimony, hold hearings, and gather information from individuals, community members, subject matter experts, local officials, journalists, faith leaders, and organizations. These accounts will be used to shed more light on the misconduct of the Trump Administration’s federal agents and document a formal, public record that can be used to pursue justice and accountability.

“The federal government is pushing the boundaries of their authority to terrorize our communities while disregarding all legal and moral accountability in the process. We will not meet intimidation with fear — we will meet it with truth,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “We are going to show the public — here in Chicago, the State of Illinois, across the nation, and around the world — exactly what is going on. We will create a detailed record, and that record will reflect reality. ​ Once this all ends, I believe there will be people of good faith who will review what the Commission has recorded and will demand answers and accountability.”

The Executive Order comes in response to the lack of any federal accountability for escalating federal enforcement actions marked by excessive force, masked agents in unmarked vehicles, military-style raids, the use of chemical irritants, and reports of violent conduct by federal agents across Chicagoland and throughout Illinois.

The Commission will consist of up to nine members appointed by the Governor, including a Chair and Vice Chair. The IAC will issue a report with findings and recommendations to the Governor and make the report publicly available. The work of the IAC will be supported by the Illinois Department of Human Rights (IDHR).

This is the kind of thing Democrats will need to do much more of if they are to be any kind of a brake on the ICE Barbie Trump 2.0 streamroller.

Naturally, Trump officials don’t like being threatened with legal consequences for their illegal actions.

Stephen Miller Responds, Presumably ICE Barbie Was Busy

Stephen Miller on Fox threatens to arrest JB Pritzker for “seditious conspiracy” and says, “to all ICE officers: you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. And anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop or obstruct you is committing a felony.”

And lest anyone think White House Deputy Chief of Staff (and unofficial evil mastermind of Trump 2.0) is a schmuck who’s missing out on the chance to get his beak wet, turns out he’s a savvy investor.

Stephen Miller Owns Big Heap Plenty Palantir Stock

Via Rolling Stone:

According to ethics disclosure reports released by the White House, Miller owns between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of stock in Palantir, Peter Thiel’s data and intelligence software company that has a several lucrative contracts with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track data and conduct surveillance on undocumented immigrants. It’s a pretty clear conflict of interest from the man behind much of Donald Trump’s immigration policy, in an administration that is already rife with corruption.

A Project on Government Oversight (POGO) analysis of disclosures from several administration figures found that Miller and at least 11 other White House officials and staffers own stock in Palantir, including Gregory Barbaccia, Trump’s Chief Information Officer.

Miller’s stake is tucked away in a brokerage account for one of his three young children, all of which are under the age of six. The single degree of separation is still a potential violation of ethics laws.
…
According to an April report from Wired, ICE awarded Palantir another $30 million contract to create tracking software aimed at providing the agency with “near real-time visibility” into migrants engaging in “self deportation.” According to documents obtained by Wired, one of the core functions of the program — dubbed ImmigrationOS — would be to streamline and prioritize “selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens.” The documents noted that one of the difficulties in creating the program was limited access to the biometric data of migrants.

I wonder if Miller will be threatening city officials in Portland, Oregon soon? After all they’re also getting more creative in their fights with ICE Barbie.

Portland’s Gonna Zone ICE Barbie Out of the Picture

From The New York Times:

Portland leaders are trying the strategy they know best: land use.

Oregon has one of the most complex sets of zoning and land use laws in the nation. Supporters of the policies say they encourage neighborhoods to be walkable and filled with independent businesses while also preserving vast open spaces and farmland. Critics say the rules have stymied housing construction and kept home prices high.

But in the city’s fight against the Trump administration, those land-use rules may prove to be a not-so-secret weapon, in large part because the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland may be uniquely vulnerable to the codes.

The General Services Administration, which manages real estate for the federal government, typically leases space for ICE from other government agencies or private prisons in industrial areas that are away from residential centers or popular commuter routes. The large ICE facility that has drawn protests in Illinois, for example, isn’t in Chicago, but rather the suburban village of Broadview.

Yet when federal officials looked to move Oregon’s ICE “subfield office” from a historic post office near downtown Portland 14 years ago, they chose to lease privately owned property just three miles away in the South Waterfront, a showcase for the state’s history of innovative urban design.

That has kept ICE under the intense scrutiny of both protesters and city planners. In mid-September, city leaders issued the owner of the ICE facility, the developer Stuart Lindquist, a land-use violation notice, telling him ICE had breached the terms of their original agreement for the property.

Time will tell if this proves a useful tactic.

Let’s zoom back out to the big picture before we wrap.

First, DHS is doing more than just messing with immigrants and, of course, there’s another Palantir connection to be exposed.

Palantir Co-Founder and His Hate for the Homeless

Some of the founders of Palantir, like Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, have been frequent subjects of Coffee Break discussions but so far Joe Lonsdale has escaped my drag net.

Time to change that.

Because our boy has been busy laying the groundwork for Trump 2.0.

From VICE in 2023:

This month, Kansas residents met at the statehouse to voice their thoughts on a bill that would ban “public camping,” one of many bills across the country in recent years designed to target people experiencing unsheltered homelessness by making it illegal to sleep outside.

Specifically, the bill would make it a Class C misdemeanor to sleep in public, and would bar municipalities from blocking enforcement of the law, allowing the state attorney general to sue cities and counties if they try to pass a less hostile ordinance. While most of the speakers had a connection to the state, one speaker, Judge Glock, who was the only speaker to endorse the bill according to one attendee, spoke on behalf of the Cicero Institute, an Austin, Texas-based think tank. Glock, also a member of the conservative Manhattan Institute who has written op-eds for The Wall Street Journal and National Review, serves as a senior fellow at Cicero.

It might not be clear at first blush why a think tank based in Austin, Texas is invested in a camping ban being pushed in Topeka, Kansas. In fact, the Cicero Institute has spent the last few years pushing its own model anti-camping legislation in cities across the country in an attempt to criminalize homelessness and to divert funding away from permanent, supportive housing, which it has posited as too slow and costly to deal with public encampments. Cicero-authored bills have been passed statewide in Texas and in Missouri, and statewide bills are being considered in five other states including and Oklahoma and Arizona.

Cicero was founded by Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir, the surveillance tech company whose data analysis software is used by the Department of Defense, ICE, and several big city police departments. Lonsdale is also head of the venture capital firm 8VC, which has invested in dozens of companies, including Palantir, Hims, Oculus and The Boring Company. 8VC’s motto is “The world is broken, let’s fix it,” and Lonsdale has shared his thoughts on how he would fix the world in the past, including his idea to move people into private prisons and then use market-based incentives to reduce recidivism.

ICE Barbie Is Coming for the Homeless

The DHS-Palantir joint assault on the homeless is scary and awful, as Conor warned in the post “Who’s Profiting off of the Criminalization of Homelessness?”

Raw Story transcribed some of the Invisible People podcast interview with Eric Tars of the National Homelessness Law Center:

Tars said Utah’s new facility could be a “pilot program” for that effort around the country.

“Their end goal is not just jail,” Tars said. “They want to put up more of these Alligator Alcatraz sprung structure type facilities,” referring to the ramshackle immigration detention facility constructed in a remote part of Florida’s Everglades earlier this year, where detainees have been cut off from access to their lawyers and are widely reported to suffer from inhumane treatment.

He noted that, under a proposal drafted by the chair of Utah’s Homeless Services Board, Randy Shumway, more than 300 of the beds in the facility are slated for involuntary commitment. Other homeless people will be sent there for substance abuse treatment “as an alternative to jail” and will “receive care in a supervised environment where entry and exit are not voluntary.” Shumway referred to the facility as an “accountability center.”

“An individual would be sanctioned to go there. It would not be voluntary,” Shumway said during a presentation, according to the Standard-Examiner. ”They would be there for a period of probably 90 days with the opportunity to detox in order to get mental and behavioral health care, to get substance use disorder support, to get physical health care, and to be surrounded by a community that’s helping them in healing.“

Lonsdale is a restless man with a lot of time, energy, and money to make trouble.

He’s also got big plans for his adopted home town of Austin, Texas.

ICE Barbie’s Technobros See Room to Improve Austin

From Texas Monthly:

Last February, a Silicon Valley émigré named Joe Lonsdale looked out the window of his Austin office and did not like what he saw.

There on the lawn of the exquisitely restored mission-style building that housed the Cicero Institute, a public policy nonprofit Lonsdale had founded to “fix broken public systems” and to “preserve the promise of American liberty for generations to come,” were a lot of people who did not seem to be on the same page.

It was a cool, brisk day, and the group of fifty or so flattening Cicero’s grass were dressed in knit caps, T-shirts, and hoodies. They were protesting Lonsdale’s push, locally and nationally, to sweep the homeless off the streets by ticketing or jailing those camping on city thoroughfares. As Lonsdale had made the homeless a target, so this group had now targeted him: a very wealthy white man of the political right who had come from California and was dead set on persuading the city of Austin to see things his way. He wasn’t subtle. Lonsdale had shelled out for billboards that featured his face on the left, a cowboy hat on the right, and in between, the words “Freedom. Honor. Growth.” And “Lonsdale & Cicero Institute Fight for Texas.”

As can happen, Lonsdale’s notion of freedom was colliding with that of the protesters. “Cicero Profits off Pain,” read signs printed in red on black. “Poverty Is NOT a Moral Failing,” read a handmade poster. The sign directly adjacent declared that “Billionaires Shouldn’t Exist.” A few protesters used megaphones to express their fervent opinion that Cicero’s policies amounted to criminalizing the homeless, something they accused Cicero of advocating for across the country. “Joe Lonsdale and the Cicero Institute, the victims of Cicero see through your lies!” a woman with a bullhorn cried. As she spoke, the group began a slow surge toward the porch, chanting, shaking their posters, and demanding that Cicero staffers come outside and hear them out.

Cicero’s founder made Austin his home in 2020 after becoming one of the most influential voices in Silicon Valley. A disciple of libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, he launched his career with a college internship at PayPal, which was cofounded by Thiel and was where Lonsdale came in contact with Elon Musk. After graduating from Stanford, Lonsdale worked at Thiel’s hedge fund, Clarium Capital. Then, in the early aughts, the two men founded the data mining and defense-tech company Palantir.

I wonder if Lonsdale will have to call in some of ICE Barbie’s goons to crack down on trouble makers right here in Austin?

ICE Barbie Is Fun and All, but Where Is This Headed?

Ezra Klein of all people has some salient points in the introduction to an interview with Radley Balko, the author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces.”

I see the evisceration of due process. I see detention centers being built where it is extraordinarily hard for lawyers and families to reach the people inside. I see men in masks refusing to identify themselves and pulling people into vans. I see armed U.S. troops in camo, some on horseback, riding through MacArthur Park in Los Angeles like they’re an occupying army. I see Trump sending in armed forces to take over the American capital.

What is going to happen when, predictably, a protester throws a rock at an agent? Or a Marine hears a car backfiring and thinks it’s a gunshot?

In an instant, this could all explode. You could have American troops firing on American civilians in an American city in a country-defining crisis. What happens then?

Because that’s the other picture I see — the one that keeps coming into clear focus. Not Trump cleaning up crisis or disorder but Trump creating crisis and disorder so he can build what he has wanted to build: an authoritarian state, a military or a paramilitary that answers only to him — that puts him in total control.

And let’s let the worthy Mr. Balko have the last word about Trump’s strategy, as implements by ICE Barbie Kristi Noem and her beau Corey Levandowski:

ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection have long been the most rogue, renegade and certainly pro-Trump police agencies in the federal government. So I think Trump sees those two as the most loyal to him. Also, obviously, the mass deportations are going to ensure that those two agencies remain relevant throughout his administration.
The F.B.I. has had a long, proud history and culture. There are a lot of stains on that history and culture, but it’s an institution that has prided itself on its independence. Same with the A.T.F., which is often bucked by Republican administrations. I’ve certainly had my problems with the D.E.A. over the years, but there is a separate culture and sense of independence there.
I think this is an effort to build up the two federal policing agencies that Trump sees as most loyal and deferential to him.
…
I’ve warned for a long time about police agencies becoming too militarized, too aggressive and too us versus them. Militarized both in the sense of the equipment that they use but also in the mentality that they bring to the job. But it was always in response to a real threat. So it happened during the crack epidemic, which killed a lot of people. It happened again after Sept. 11, when you had these attacks on American soil. Homeland security started equipping police departments across the country with this military-style police gear.
…
So what we’re seeing is this massive increase in aggressiveness and brutality — in response to a crisis that is completely of Trump’s own making. What we’re seeing is not a good-faith effort to go after the worst of the worst.
…
Stephen Miller is a menace. He’s been very clear about what his intentions are. He has been very clear that he does not believe the United States should be a place that takes in refugees from other countries. He has been very clear that he thinks the United States should be a primarily Western culture country. We’ve read investigative journalism about his being influenced by white supremacists. He has not pretended to hide who he is.
…
There aren’t very many countries in which the figurative political head of the country assembled his own personal paramilitary force that was loyal only to him where things turned out well. So that’s where I think we are right now.

Buckle up, things are only going to get wilder from here.

Readers might want to skim these related pieces for background:

• Elon Musk to Squeeze Tesla Shareholders to Juice xAI?

• Trump vs. Musk Omnibus

• The Abundance Bros Notice the AI Bubble but What Is Their Narrative Leaving Out?

• Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg Loves To Throw Good Money After Bad

Elon Musk Juices the AI Slop With Gulf State Cash Infusions

Let’s start with this Jacob Silverman piece for The Nation, subtitled “The tech lord’s recent bid to reshuffle the ownership structure of his empire reinforces the clout of the Middle Eastern strongman regimes in its orbit. which links Elon Musk with Saudi Arabia, the Gulf State financing many of his shenanigans.

Silverman’s Nation piece builds on previous work for The Guardian:

Some relevant points from The Guardian:

Prince Mohammed used his country’s bottomless reserves of oil and capital to flood Silicon Valley, politics, sports leagues and other power centres with cash and influence. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and Peter Thiel’s investment vehicle, Founders Fund, were among the most notable recipients of Saudi money, but they were just two among hundreds. In 2016, Uber received an astonishing $3.5bn from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF). Blackstone’s infrastructure fund got $20bn. By autumn 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported, Saudi Arabia had become “the largest single funding source for US startups”.

The Saudi-Silicon Valley relationship represented a convergence of shared interests. Saudi Arabia, like other Gulf dictatorships, wanted to wash its money, diversify its investments, deepen influence with its most powerful ally, extend soft power and counter its image as a repressive state responsible for a devastating war in Yemen. Silicon Valley offered all of that, along with access to cutting-edge technology and a business elite coming into its own.

“They’re surveillance states. They’re police states,” said Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University. “They want to use the latest technology in order to continue to remain in power and surveil their populations. So they have another interest in trying to sort of be the beneficiaries of hi-tech developments, hoping that that will help them internally with their own political rule.”

The Saudi government had vast assets held in the names of senior members of the royal family. Through his Kingdom Holding Company, Prince Alwaleed had interests in businesses like Lyft and Snapchat. And until Elon Musk came along, he was Twitter’s largest outside shareholder. As Saudi Arabia became the pre-eminent source of Silicon Valley capital, Alwaleed emerged as the country’s most recognisable mogul, taking the role of leading shareholder in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. By 2015, the prince owned an estimated 5.2% of Twitter. In November 2017, Alwaleed was arrested and confined to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh as part of a sweeping “anti-corruption” purge that forced numerous wealthy Saudis and members of the royal family to sign over their assets to Prince Mohammed. That may well have included Alwaleed’s Twitter shares.

Silverman starts out the Nation piece by emphasizing the outsize role of financial engineering such as “selling carbon credits or stashing Bitcoin on the company balance sheet” in the Silicon Valley AI slop hogs economy and how “Musk has made it a high wire act.”

Then he references an Axios piece titled “AI eats social media as xAI swallows X” that has some relevant background on Musk’s current bid to merge his AI company xAI with his “flailing social media concern” X.com into the new x.AI Holdings Corp, market cap: $113 billion.

Some relevant quotes that set the stakes facing Musk, one of the biggest hogs at the AI slop trough:

Musk’s move is a maneuver to spruce up his overall financial picture — leveraging the AI industry’s fizzy valuation arithmetic to shore up X’s stagnant revenue and debt-loaded capital structure.

High expectations for xAI and every other AI darling are buoying the rest of the tech industry for now — but all that ends the moment the AI bubble bursts.

The entire social media world — including X, Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram, Google-owned YouTube, even the younger TikTok — has become a legacy platform.

While this inherited business is still huge and in many cases profitable, it’s not going to grow or innovate at the pace Silicon Valley and Wall Street demand.

Right now, X may be the most financially challenged of the large social-media platforms. But Meta’s and Google’s properties are also benefiting from investors’ bets on the parent companies’ AI growth.

Axios also underlines the differences between X.com and xAI, mainly Share Price/Earnings ratios:

X is a mature business with thousands of employees, hundreds of millions of customers and about $2 billion in estimated global ad revenue.

Musk’s drastic spending and staff cuts brought its overhead down, but it doesn’t seem to have found a way to return to the revenue levels it last saw as the public company known as Twitter (a little over $5 billion) — let alone spark significant growth.

xAI, on the other hand, is a growing two-year-old startup that won headlines for getting a giant new data center in Memphis, Tennessee, built fast.

The company’s AI models have become contenders in the bigger AI race, earning comparisons with better-known rivals like OpenAI and Google.

But for most of xAI’s existence the bulk of its usage has come from the X network.

Musk says xAI’s paper valuation based on its most recent private investment round is now $80 billion.

Its exact revenue is a tiny fraction of that — maybe $100 million — meaning investors are paying 800 times revenue for their shares. (The equivalent figure for Tesla right now is about eight times revenue.)

And some insights about the relationship between X.com and xAI:

xAI’s modest revenue stream in turn comes chiefly from X itself.

For the moment, these dollars are all just circling the Musk-o-sphere in a slightly different configuration.

Silverman connected these dots to the Gulf State monarchy and its sovereign wealth fund’s investment in the “Muskonomy”:

In taking over X, xAI conveniently bailed out Musk’s unhappy X investors by turning them into shareholders of his red-hot AI startup. It was also a chance to win back at least some of the waning favor of X’s stable of sovereign wealth investors.

Then Silverman brings it back to in our friends from The Gulf. Starting on June 29, 2025:

…reports had surfaced that xAI was set for yet another fundraising round that would value the company as high as $200 billion, with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund set to lead the round, building on its $800 million xAI stake. Musk was now planning to double the new company’s assessed value in less than four months. The Muskonomy was booming.

To raise money for his companies, Musk has frequently turned to the same set of investors, some of whom seem to think that access to Musk and the power he holds may be more important than producing steady financial returns. There’s no other reason why his investors would bankroll something like the Boring Company, Musk’s highly touted initiative to install high-speed tunnels in major cities, which has been a near-­complete bust. So if Musk’s financial backers aren’t expecting maximum quarterly returns on their investment, just what is the gain they’re seeking to realize?

The short answer would appear to be much the same thing that the shadowy corps of crypto high rollers expect when they sink their millions into Donald Trump’s value-challenged crypto offerings at World Liberty Financial: the promise of access to one of the most influential men in the world. In Musk’s case, a key source of his continually releveraged financing is from sovereign wealth funds controlled by Middle Eastern monarchies—most significantly, Saudi Arabia. If the $400 million deal that Trump struck with Qatar to supply a luxury aircraft to serve as Air Force One poses questions of foreign-enabled corruption, what does it mean that a significant share of the backing behind the world’s richest man derives from a similarly opaque, authoritarian, and surveillance-minded regional monarchy?

Describing the fruits of a legal motion to unseal the investors in Musk’s X.com that he filed with the help of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Silverman shares some key deets about the ME sovereign wealth fund involved:

the most important names were associated with several authoritarian Middle Eastern states—especially Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who had also been one of the largest shareholders of Twitter when it was a public company. Prince Alwaleed had initially criticized Musk’s planned takeover, but he later came around, rolling over his $1.9 billion stake into the new entity.

…
Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest investors in US tech start-ups, and the ties between Silicon Valley and Saudi Arabia have deepened under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)

In April 2018 … MBS staged a charm offensive in the sanctums of American financial and political power, scheduling prominent visits with leading tech companies as well as a dinner with a dozen top venture capitalists. It was a rare public celebration of a relationship usually kept sotto voce.

But Trump 2.0 is anything but an era for sotto voce, at least for the AI slop hogs and maybe even their crypto and cocaine-dealing bros, many of whom also come together in the Gulf States.

In Trump 2.0 Not All the Fights Happen Inside the Cage

The AI hogs tend to get especially loud when they meet up cage side at The UFC Octagon.

The word is out about the deals cut there after UFC’s Hollywood billionaire owner Ari Emanuel brought Larry Ellison’s nepo-baby son David to meet POTUS Donald Trump, not once but twice, to get his acquisition of Paramount past the president.

Elon Musk attended at least one of those fight cards before Scott Bessant reportedly physically kicked Musk out of the MAGA 2.0 entourage. Violent hogs brawling in the West Wing.

Let’s revisit that ridiculous occasion for those who aren’t regular Steven Bannon listeners, via The UK Independent:

Bessent clashed with Musk in April over choices for next acting leader of the Internal Revenue Service, according to The Atlantic and subsequent media reports. The pair reportedly traded jabs and fired off expletives near the Oval Office. One witness described the fight as “two billionaire, middle-aged men thinking it was WWE in the hall of the West Wing,” Axios reports.

MAGA ally Stephen Bannon even told The Washington Post the pair exchanged blows. Musk rammed his shoulder into Bessent’s rib cage “like a rugby player,” and Bessent hit him back, Bannon recounted. Multiple people then intervened to break up the fight, the Post reported. Weeks later, Musk arrived at the White House with a black eye.

Bessent, in a lengthy interview with Bloomberg published Monday, addressed what had happened with Musk but offered few details. He did, however, confirm he didn’t give the SpaceX founder a black eye.

“I can 100 percent say I did not give him the black eye,” Bessent said.

Elon Musk may beg to differ:

And while we’re talking about Bessant, here’s a little caper that would have fit well in my “Drugged, Delusional, or Disinformed” post last week.

Now let’s get back to the Middle East.

AI Slop Hogs at the UFC in Abu Dhabi

No word on if Ari Emanuel’s one of the AI slop hogs but he’s definitely at the Gulf State trough when it’s time to finance his various businesses, whether it’s his “Hollywood Super Agency” WME Group (formerly Endeavor, formerly William Morris Agency) or his combat sports multi-monopoly TKO Group which owns the UFC, pro wrestling’s WWE, and a new boxing entity called Zuffa Group which it co-owns with Saudi Arabia.

As for UFC CEO Dana White, he’s definitely one of the AI slop hogs, at least when he reports to META board meetings to pick up his reported seven-figure compensation for serving on Zuckergerg’s board.

I’ve covered the UFC boss’s relationship with META in a previous Coffee Break.

But I don’t believe that I reported that one of Dana White’s duties as a META board member includes being an AI ambassador for the hapless social media giant turned AI loser.

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Fortunately I covered that at The MMA Draw under my nom de combat sports:

There’s no doubt that Dana is one of the best hype men on the planet. He can sell sand in the desert, ice in the Arctic, and lots and lots of not-so-great fights.

This will come in handy for Zuck since he’s bet a fortune on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI isn’t always a crowd-pleaser, especially when it’s putting Jesus shrimp all over your mom’s Facebook feed.

Dana’s already been laying the groundwork by bragging about consulting Zuck about using AI to “fix” the UFC’s jacked fighter rankings:

“We’re working on it right now,” White said. “We’ve literally been working on it all last week and I will have some answers on that soon, but the rankings system drives me crazy. From the pound-for-pound to each division, there’s huge mistakes.

“We literally had meetings this week to work on it,” White said. “I actually talked to Mark Zuckerberg, too, about AI. So I’m totally going to fix the rankings. We’re going to make a lot of strong moves here coming in to ‘25.”

Not Just for AI Slop Hogs, Cryptobros Welcome Cageside, Too

That’s right, you are seeing-recently-pardoned-by-Trump Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao cageside at the Octagon with UFC CEO Dana White last weekend at Abu Dhabi.

For those who didn’t follow that particular Trump-pardons-a-criminal-caper, here’s from The BBC coverage:

Changpeng Zhao, founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has been pardoned by US President Donald Trump.

Zhao, also known as “CZ”, was sentenced to four months in prison in April 2024 after pleading guilty to violating US money laundering laws.

Binance also pleaded guilty and was ordered to pay $4.3bn (£3.4bn) after a US investigation found it helped users bypass sanctions.
…
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called Zhao’s prosecution under the Biden administration part of a “war on cryptocurrency”, pushing back on critics who said the pardon appeared motivated by Trump’s personal financial interests.

“This was an overly prosecuted case by the Biden administration,” she said, adding that the case had been “thoroughly reviewed”. “So the president wants to correct this overreach of the Biden administration’s misjustice and he exercised his constitutional authority to do so.”
…
Zhao, who stepped down as Binance chief executive in 2023, wrote on social media on Thursday that he was “deeply grateful for today’s pardon and to President Trump for upholding America’s commitment to fairness, innovation, and justice”.

The pardon lifts restrictions that had stopped Zhao from running financial ventures, but it’s not yet clear whether it changes his standing with US regulators or his ability to lead Binance directly.

In a statement Binance called the decision “incredible news”.

The exchange, which is registered in the Cayman Islands, remains the world’s most popular platform for buying and selling cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.

It did not respond to further questions about the conflict of interest claims.

Before the pardon, Zhao’s companies had partnered with firms linked to Trump on new digital-currency projects including Dominari Holdings, where his sons sit on the board of advisers and which is based in Trump Tower.

The Wall Street Journal also previously reported representatives of the Trump family – which has its own crypto firm World Liberty Financial – had recently held talks with Binance.

Asked about the decision to pardon Zhao on Thursday, Trump appeared not to not know who he was.

“Are you talking about the crypto person?” he asked, later saying he had granted the pardon at the “request of a lot of good people”.

I’ve covered the Trump sons Eric and Don, Jr. and their crypto grifting in previous Coffee Breaks. Those Trump boys may not be AI slop hogs, but they’ve got their noses in the tough.

Not One of the AI Slop Hogs, But an Irish Coke Dealer in Dubai

Just 140km up the UAE coast from Abu Dhabi is Dubai where notorious Irish boxing promoter Daniel Kinahan is currently residing.

No word yet on whether he bopped down to see last weekend’s UFC (maybe he doesn’t like AI slop hogs and cryptobros), but that hasn’t kept him out of the news, or in this case the latest New Yorker:

Underneath a giant chandelier in the ballroom of the Burj Al Arab, (Daniel Kinahan and Caoimhe Robinson) sat on thrones, surrounded by a colorful crowd of family, friends, and business associates.

One of the revellers was Tyson Fury, the six-foot-nine former heavyweight champion of the world. He has sometimes worked with Kinahan—a boxing impresario who is also known, to law-enforcement officials, as the head of the Kinahan Organized Crime Group. (Although social media was banned at the wedding, Fury reportedly tweeted about his attendance before deleting the post.)
…
“Dubai has never cared too much about people’s reputation, as long as you’re not committing crimes in their country,” Greenaway said. “So some hardened criminals come in, they bring in their money, they put it in real estate, they use the gold exchange—they can use all this stuff to launder their money. And Dubai just doesn’t care.”

The Kinahans have taken full advantage of “this stuff.” According to Europol, the family has made extensive use of a Dubai hawala network—an untraceable money-transfer system based on trust among individual brokers. (The process has often been used in money laundering.)
…
There are indications that even the U.A.E.’s ruling élite may be entangled with criminal groups. In 2015, Sheikh Marwan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, a son of Dubai’s ruler, bought a majority stake in AA Real Estate Development, a company in which Imperiale had invested, shortly after the Spanish extradition request was filed. Imperiale personally signed the sale documents transferring the majority stake to the prince. Similarly, decrypted chats suggest that another Super Cartel member, Edin Gačanin, secured protection in the Emirates through associates of the royal family.
…
The extradition of McGovern has given rise to some speculation that the Kinahans might attempt to move to a friendlier jurisdiction: Russia, perhaps, or Iran. Recent developments in the Emirates indicate that the family’s situation is precarious.
…
Daniel Kinahan may feel safe as long as there are no charges against him, and an indictment is unlikely to come from the U.S. The Trump Administration has different drug-interdiction priorities, notably fentanyl and Latin American cartels.

A D.E.A. source told me that the agency currently has little interest in pursuing people like the Kinahans.

Well that ought to bring Daniel Kinahans a few nights’ sleep, but your poor scribe will be tossing and turning, fretting that Trump 2.0 is sleeping on an opportunity to extort a juicy bribe from the Irish crime titan or his protectors in the UAE.

But perhaps they remember the old maxim, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

Follow the Money With Drones: The Trump Family Business

In a way, Trump’s devotion to being the pater familias of a political grift dynasty is touching. Along with his sense of humor, and taste for junk food, it’s one of his more relatable traits.

The Financial Times has the latest on Donald Trump, Jr.’s latest score, who knew he was a drone builder?

A little-known drone company backed by Donald Trump Jr has won its largest contract from the Pentagon, as the US government expands its procurement of the drones.

Florida-based Unusual Machines, in which Trump Jr has held a $4mn stake, said the US army had contracted it to manufacture 3,500 drone motors, alongside various other drone parts.

The company added the army indicated it planned to order an additional 20,000 components from Unusual Machines next year.

Allan Evans, the company’s chief executive, said he believed it was the largest order for Unusual Machines parts from the US government to date, but declined to disclose the value of the contract.
…
Shares in Unusual Machines jumped as much as 13 per cent on Friday.

Unusual Machines brought Trump Jr on as an adviser in November 2024. The Financial Times earlier this year found shares in the company almost tripled in price in the weeks leading up to its disclosure of the move.

Soon after Trump Jr came on board, Unusual Machines disclosed he owned 331,580 shares, which would currently be worth roughly $4mn.

Trump Jr is not required to disclose whether he has since sold any of his stake, but Evans earlier this year said the president’s son had continued to invest in recent fundraising rounds.
…
Unusual Machines has struck deals with other US defence suppliers in recent months, inking a $12.8mn agreement with Strategic Logix in September and a $1.6mn deal with an unnamed domestic defence drone maker in August.

The company, which is working on manufacturing more of its components in the US, has also been harmed by Trump tariffs.
In the first quarter of the year, it said the levies contributed to a $3.3mn operating loss. Unusual Machines has warned the cost of sourcing components from countries other than China could impact profits.

Follow the Money to Iowa Where Trickle Down Is Soaking Trump’s Constituents

Unfortunately, there’s no indication that Trump’s interests expand enough to include his most loyal rural voters. In his defense, it’s completely unclear that he or his trade team understand the havoc they’ve wrought on American agriculture.

Let’s follow the money to Iowa.

Per The New York Times

When President Trump announced a $20 billion bailout for Argentina this month, Larry Ory, 86, a farmer in Earlham, Iowa, could hardly believe it, especially after boatloads of Argentine soybeans began shipping to China, a once-critical customer for Mr. Ory’s family.

For Iowans, losing China’s soybean market in the president’s trade war was only one of many economic shocks that have hit the state since the start of Mr. Trump’s second term.
…
Since siding with Barack Obama twice, Iowa has become a stronghold for Mr. Trump. Yet perhaps no state has struggled more with his economic policies. During the first quarter of 2025, Iowa’s gross domestic product dropped by 6.1 percent, more than any other state aside from neighboring Nebraska.

Manufacturing, which drives 17 percent of Iowa’s economic output, has been hit with higher production costs in part because of steep tariffs on inputs like aluminum and steel. Meatpacking plants, which help make Iowa the nation’s leading pork producer, rely heavily on foreign-born workers, hundreds of thousands of whom saw their legal status stripped away by the president. Mr. Trump’s war on renewable energy also threatens the wind industry that produces more than half of Iowa’s electricity.

For now, times are tough. Iowa is the country’s largest producer of corn and second-largest producer of soybeans. America exports as much as half its soybeans, and the vast majority of that had gone to China — $12.6 billion worth last year.

But this year, China stopped purchasing soybeans from the United States to retaliate against Mr. Trump’s tariffs.

American producers have spent decades working with people in China on how to use soy in animal feed, part of an effort to build up that growing market. Mr. Leeds said he has traveled to the country 25 times and used dollars paid by Iowa farmers to foster strong bonds with Chinese importers.
…

Iowa’s large beef industry then recoiled after Mr. Trump suggested he would try to lower the cost of beef by importing more from Argentina.
…
As he deals with those higher prices, Aaron Lehman, a fifth-generation farmer in rural Polk County, said he will continue to use his more than 25-year-old, worn combine. A machine with greater power and a more sophisticated GPS system would cost upward of $100,000 used and more than $250,000 new, he said.

Follow the Money: Who’s Paying the Troops?

While Trump’s policies may be stressing the economy of key supporter states, the government shut down may be interfering with his plans, or at least Secretary of State/National Security advisor “Little” Marco Rubio.

As the Armchair Warlord reminds us on Twitter, failing to pay troops has been an imperial Achilles heel through the ages.

Into the breach steps Trump Donor Timothy Mellon, per the NY Times:

Timothy Mellon, a reclusive billionaire and a major financial backer of President Trump, is the anonymous private donor who gave $130 million to the U.S. government to help pay troops during the shutdown, according to two people familiar with the matter.
…
Shortly after departing Washington on Friday, Mr. Trump again declined to identify Mr. Mellon while talking to reporters aboard Air Force One. He only said the individual was “a great American citizen” and a “substantial man.”

“He doesn’t want publicity,” Mr. Trump said as he headed to Malaysia. “He prefer that his name not be mentioned which is pretty unusual in the world I come from, and in the world of politics, you want your name mentioned.”

It remains unclear how far the donation will go toward covering the salaries of the more than 1.3 million troops who make up the active-duty military. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Trump administration’s 2025 budget requested about $600 billion in total military compensation. A $130 million donation would equal about $100 a service member.

Mr. Mellon, a wealthy banking heir and railroad magnate, is a longtime backer of Mr. Trump and gave tens of millions of dollars to groups supporting the president’s campaign. Last year, he made a $50 million donation to a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump, which was one of the largest single contributions ever disclosed.

A grandson of former Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon, Mr. Mellon was not a prominent Republican donor until Mr. Trump was elected. But in recent years, he has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting Mr. Trump and the Republican Party.

The Daily Beast goes into the source of Mr. Mellon’s hard-earned hundreds of millions:

Mellon’s grandfather was the longtime Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon, who served from 1921 to 1932 under presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. Andrew was the son of Thomas Mellon, who founded Mellon Bank, which made his family filthy rich for generations.

The donor’s dad, Paul Mellon, was a breeder of thoroughbred racehorses who benefited from the family’s banking riches. By 1957, when Fortune published its first list of the wealthiest Americans, it estimated that Paul Mellon, his sister, and his two cousins were among the eight wealthiest people in the United States.

Timothy Mellon’s cousin, Matthew Mellon, was an early crypto investor who struggled with drug addiction. He died in Mexico in 2018, aged 54, just as he was about to check himself into rehab in Mexico. He was divorced from Jimmy Choo co-founder Tamara Mellon, who once wrote that she was “snorting her way through alpine ranges of cocaine” during her marriage to the Mellon heir.

“He’s a great gentleman,” Trump said of Timothy Mellon, who appears to be more clean-cut than his younger cousin. “He’s a great patriot. He’s obviously a very substantial man, and he contributed $130 million toward the military in order to make up any difference. So he wanted to see the military get paid.”

The same piece points out that the $130 million won’t go far to cover the U.S. military payroll: it averages out to about $100/soldier.

Armchair Warlord piles on to that point:

Follow the Money Down the Jeffrey Epstein Conspiracy Path

Mellon’s famous last name and the 2025 zeitgeist inevitably led social media sleuths down the rabbit hole Epstein allegations, citing an October lawsuit against the Bank of New York (and Bank of America) by another unnamed alleged Epstein victim.

The Wall Street Journal has background on that suit:

The suit against BNY claims that since at least 2006 the bank had a relationship with MC2, a modeling agency that Epstein and modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel created. The suit claims that the men used funds from the bank to facilitate Epstein’s sex trafficking. Brunel, who was arrested in 2020 on sex-trafficking charges, died in jail in 2022.

The suits were brought by lawyers, including Brad Edwards and David Boies, who have represented many of Epstein’s victims and previously filed similar class actions against JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank in 2022.

“The other banks responsible for allowing Epstein’s trafficking should have contacted us during the previous litigation to do the right thing for these victims,” Edwards said. “It is sad that only through lawsuits and Congress are we able to bring justice to this obvious problem.”
…
JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank have said they regret their relationships with Epstein and settled the suits in 2023, without admitting wrongdoing. JPMorgan agreed to pay $290 million to victims and Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $75 million.
Epstein’s estate recently turned over to Congress a list of more than 20 banks that held accounts for Epstein and entities related to him, and several had accounts with Epstein in his later years, the Journal has reported.

Right up front, let me quote The Economic Times (India) on the matter so that it’s clear I’m not among those making these claims and am merely reporting on them to show the public mood online:

After the NYT report, several posts online began suggesting that Mellon may have been linked to Jeffrey Epstein, due to a lawsuit filed against the Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon). The lawsuit, filed on October 16, accuses the bank of facilitating financial transactions linked to Epstein’s operations. However, there is no verified evidence showing any connection between Timothy Mellon and Epstein.

BNY Mellon has rejected the allegations and described the lawsuit as baseless. A company spokesperson said, “The claims in the lawsuit are meritless, and we will vigorously defend against it.”

Confusion about the Mellon name has contributed to false links. BNY Mellon was formed after a merger between Mellon Financial and the Bank of New York in 2007. After the merger, the Mellon family did not retain ownership or control in the company. The firm became a publicly traded corporation, and institutional investors, including Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street, hold the major shares.

So case closed, right? Seems like that’s not enough to turn off the X.com rumor mill:

Follow the Money to the Power Under the East Wing Ballroom

There’s been a fair amount of MSM handwringing over Trump’s new ballroom which is being built over the rubble of the East Wing of the White House. Most of it irrelevant boo hoo about the brilliant architecture of the Roosevelt era.

CNN accidentally mentions something far more important going on underground in the demolition zone:

Initially a carriage entrance during the term of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, it became the modern East Wing as millions of tourists see it each year — or did — under his distant cousin, President Franklin Roosevelt some 40 years later. The build-out was a practical matter: With World War II raging, an emergency underground bunker had been constructed on the spot and needed the building to hide it.
…
The East Wing was not totally separated from more dire business. The bunker below — officially called the Presidential Emergency Operations Center — is where Vice President Dick Cheney went during the 9/11 attacks, and where Trump was taken during protests in his first term. President George W. Bush used the East Wing to practice his State of the Union address in 2004.

Carlyn Beccia has more on Medium:

According to the National Capital Planning Commission, no full architectural plans have been submitted — no elevations, no blueprints, no site approvals.

Yet demolition has begun. The White House maintains that “preparatory work” doesn’t require review. This neat little loophole somehow allows an entire wing of the most protected building in America to be erased without oversight.
…
Unofficially, it sits on top of the country’s most secure hideout — The Presidential Emergency Operations Center, or PEOC. The US government built the bunker during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration after Pearl Harbor scared the hell out of everyone in Washington.

Today, most White House officials refer to it as “the shelter” or PEOC — pronounced Pee-ock, (as in the sound the Founding Fathers would make if they saw Trump’s renovation). It’s the kind of 5-story bunker that was meant to survive a direct hit — reinforced concrete, steel doors, filtered air, the whole “end of the world but make it dignified” package.

…FDR used it as a communications hub; Truman and Eisenhower beefed it up during the Cold War; Dick Cheney was ushered into its lair during the 9/11 attacks. And every president since has at least had a look around, just in case democracy ever needed to hide under the table.

After 9/11, the Bush administration realized the White House’s emergency bunker was about as cutting-edge as a rotary phone. Congress quietly funded a massive upgrade, and by 2010, the Obama team was digging under the North Lawn. The official story? “Air-conditioning and mechanical upgrades.”

…By 2018…: a new, high-tech command bunker was born, stocked with the latest communications systems, computers, its own air supply, food supply, and enough filtration gear to outlast the apocalypse in style.

…The PEOC wasn’t just a bunker; over the decades, it’s rumored to have sprawled into a labyrinth of tunnels connecting to the Treasury, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and possibly even Lafayette Park. Washington’s soil is laced with secrecy — a place where the Metro can’t dig without bumping into classified concrete.
…
You don’t just slap a ballroom on top of that without “reconfiguring” something underneath. Which is why this new project, wrapped in secrecy and gold leaf, should have Americans asking the same question: Is Trump building a bigger ballroom or a bigger bunker?

All of this sheds new light on what happens when we follow the money to Trump’s alleged “ballroom” donors.

The Washington Post has more about that, including the full list of donors:

But ethics experts and Democrats say they are turning to a question related to the next phase of the project: whether the donors behind the planned $300 million ballroom that will replace the demolished annex will receive any benefits in return.

Tech companies and defense contractors such as Google, Lockheed Martin and Microsoft, as well as wealthy individuals such as longtime GOP donors Stephen A. Schwarzman and Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter, have collectively covered the cost for Trump’s project, according to a list the White House released Thursday.

Many of the firms and individuals have business before the administration, such as seeking future federal contracts or eyeing potential acquisitions.
…
Meredith O’Rourke, a longtime fundraiser for Trump, is coordinating the donations, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the efforts. O’Rourke referred questions about her role to the White House, which did not immediately respond.

The donations, which are tax-deductible, are being managed by the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit that helps manage federal projects. Donors to Trump’s ballroom project have been told to expect some form of recognition, such as the placement of etchings of their names in the ballroom, according to the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Trump said this week he has raised $350 million for his long-desired ballroom, which will be built on the site previously occupied by the East Wing, the longtime home to a visitor’s entrance to the White House. The annex also provided office space for the first lady and included other features such as a movie theater. The president, who did not specify what he would do with the extra $50 million for the project, said that he has donated “millions of dollars” himself for the beautification of the White House grounds and pledged to personally cover any shortfall in funding for construction of the ballroom if costs continued to rise.

Follow the money and it leads to the power, more often than not.

Follow the Money to the GOP Congressional Split

I’m pushing my follow the money metaphor just to please Google who loves to see “key phrases” repeated ad nauseam, so my human readers will have to forgive me.

But I wanted to cover this little swerve in the politics of the U.S. government shutdown fight.

It’s not just your usual GOP vs. Democrats split. Hapless MAGA Speaker of the House is Mike Johnson using the shutdown to control the dissident GOP house caucus according to The New York Times:

Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to put the House on an indefinite hiatus that is now stretching into its second month while the government is shut down is the latest in a series of moves he has made that have diminished the role of Congress and shrunken the speakership at a critical moment.

It’s an approach born of political expedience that could have far-reaching consequences for an institution that has already ceded much of its power to President Trump. And Mr. Johnson, who without the president’s backing wields little influence over his own members, has chosen to make himself subservient to Mr. Trump, a break with many speakers of the past who sought in their own ways to act more as a governing partner with the president than as his underling.
…
His strategy of indefinite hiatus means that Mr. Johnson has not engaged in the typical political theater that speakers often employ during shutdown fights to jam the party out of power: scheduling tricky votes on bills to reopen parks or pay certain categories of federal workers, like agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection.

Democrats had been bracing for him to do so. But instead, he has spent much of the shutdown appearing daily at news conferences at the Capitol, hammering them for refusing to fund the government and making the case that Republicans need not negotiate. He is insistent that the House has nothing to do but wait for the stalemate to end. And he defends a growing list of extreme moves by Mr. Trump.

The absenteeism, people around Mr. Johnson said, is a strategic calculation that the best way to keep his unruly rank and file in line is to place them on an extended leave.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who often serves as a sounding board for Mr. Johnson, said in an interview that if the House were in session, “other issues will begin to clutter this up, and there is some small danger that some Republicans might begin to have a mixed message on the shutdown.”

In fact, such dissonance has already begun bubbling up even with everyone working remotely. The divide among Republicans over whether to extend expiring health insurance subsidies — Democrats’ central demand in the shutdown fight — has highlighted a political vulnerability for the party.

It has all created a strange dynamic on Capitol Hill: Mr. Johnson appears to be using the considerable power of the speakership to render the House irrelevant.

This reinforces the arguments of those (like me) who claim the U.S. is in a post-Constitutional order (also see here).

For now we can leave the Replubicans behind and apply our follow the money and power lens to the doings of some Democrats.

Follow the Money Behind the Platner, Mamdani, Sanders, Porter & Fetterman Campaigns

I covered the contested Democratic primary in the U.S. Senate race challenging long-time GOP incumbent Susan Collins last week, but I forgot to include this key nugget about Platner’s consultants.

I also could have mentioned this nexus of operatives when covering Katie Porter, who has also employed some of their services on occasion.

So in the interest of advancing today’s follow the money theme, I’m going to add some key details from The New Yorker to today’s post:

It was three days before a video titled “Platner for U.S. Senate” would drop, catapulting this local oyster farmer, harbormaster, and former marine onto the national stage.

The video was produced by Morris Katz, a top political strategist for New York City’s Democratic mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani.
…
The campaign rollout, which was orchestrated by Platner’s senior adviser, Joe Calvello (John Fetterman’s former director of communications), raised half a million dollars in its first four days; volunteer sign-ups for the campaign averaged three hundred a day. “No one was expecting this,” Calvello told me. The Times, ABC, NBC, and Fox News covered the launch, focussing on Platner as a political novice who represented a new approach for the Party.

The Bullhorn Bulletin obeys the “follow the money” edict and it leads to more on the coterie of “progressive” consultants profiting off the split in the Democratic party:

One of the biggest names in that business is Middle Seat, a self-described “visionary, persuasive, disruptive, and dynamic” digital firm that built its empire branding establishment politicians as grassroots crusaders. Their website showcases glossy ad reels and testimonials celebrating their “progressive” clients and reads like a leftist wish list: racial justice, climate action, immigrant rights, intersectional feminism. The branding is perfect. The business model is cynical genius, raking in a whopping $134 million since 2017.

At the top of their portfolio is John Fetterman. Middle Seat’s site features multiple campaign videos of the Pennsylvania senator, portraying him as a blue-collar hero standing up to the system. The problem is, once the cameras stopped rolling, Fetterman stood with the very system he claimed to fight, making what appeared to be a sharp right turn to his supporters, but not surprising to those familiar with Fetterman’s record.

Middle Seat’s growing client list raises a serious question: Do they vet their clients? Are they critical about who they sell their branding to, or do they simply offer it to anyone seeking a veneer of leftist populism? The firm claims to be “a full-service media and fundraising firm for progressive causes and candidates,” implying that its work is guided by shared values. Its website even boasts, “We bring our values to work,” and “We build movements that honor the authentic perspectives of our clients.” But do they?

Now that we’ve connected previous subjects of these columns, Platner, Porter, and Mamdani, let’s turn our follow the money and power lens to the New York mayoral race as it wraps up.

Follow the Money to Mamdani’s New York?

The mainstream media seems to have cut Andrew Cuomo’s campaign loose as Zohran Mamdani looks like a sure winner in the NYC mayoral general election, if Politico is representative at least, and it is:

Pretty much everyone — including Trump himself, per the WSJ — reckons Mamdani is certain to win next week. The fascinating question for our national politics is what happens next. Even as Republicans issue dire warnings about what they believe New York’s first self-described socialist mayor would do to the city, some will privately admit that — whisper it — they kinda want him to win.

Zohran the Boogeyman: That’s because GOP strategists believe Mamdani represents a major opportunity for their party — a politician they can, bluntly, demonize in the eyes of Americans as the sort of terrifying far-left figure that the Democratic Party now represents. And if you thought Trump vs. Gov. Gavin Newsom in Los Angeles or Trump vs. Gov. JB Pritzker in Chicago was something … just wait until the president turns his attention to a new-look New York next year.

There’s one more aspect of the New York race I haven’t seen getting enough attention.

What will Mamdani do when he catches the car and actually has to administrate the city, including the NY Police Department?

Never forget the NYPD has a budget of more than $5 billion per year. Oh and they train with the Israeli Defense Forces and consider the Keffiyeh and Watermelon to be anti-Semitic symbols and therefore violations.

So you can guess how many of the rank and file NYPD and their bosses view the incoming Muslim mayor.

Mamdani Seems to Be Aware of Kinetic Reality

Zohran Mamdani is already making the kind of compromise moves that show he’s aware of his political difficulties with the enforcement arm of the city government he will be running. However, it’s unclear if he realizes the magnitude of what’s he’ll be up against.

I’m referring specifically of his stated intention to retain Eric Adams’ Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

From The New York Times:

Mr. Mamdani has faced deep skepticism from police union leaders and withering campaign trail attacks from former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, his chief rival, portraying him as hostile to law enforcement and soft on crime.

Embracing a figure like Ms. Tisch before Election Day could help the Democrat address both potential vulnerabilities — and send a clear signal that he is serious about building an administration staffed by experts who need not agree with him ideologically.

In this case, the differences are stark. He is a democratic socialist who once called the department “racist” and “anti-queer” and supported defunding it. (He has since disavowed those positions.) Ms. Tisch is a billionaire heiress appointed by Mayor Eric Adams who has pushed for stricter criminal justice laws.

Ms. Tisch’s allies have signaled for months that she would want to stay in the job regardless of the election’s outcome. The campaign officials declined to detail any conversations between the candidate and the commissioner, but said they were confident she would accept.

Some of the more vocal members of X.com’s anti-Zionist contingent have a more critical view of Ms. Tisch:

Follow the Money and Power: NYPD vs Mayor di Blasio’s Family Edition

And those of use whose memories extend all the way back to 2020 and the BLM protests in New York can think of at least one compelling reason the mayor should pay very close attention to “his” police department.

They doxxed and threatened the daughter of then Mayor Bill di Blasio during the Black Lives Matter protests. From The New York Times:

Among the hundreds of protesters arrested over the four days of demonstrations in New York City over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, only one was highlighted by name by a police union known for its hostility toward Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The name of that protester? Chiara de Blasio, the mayor’s daughter.

The union, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, used Twitter to post a police report documenting the arrest on Saturday night of Ms. de Blasio, 25.

The Police Department does not normally release internal police reports, and Ms. de Blasio’s contained personal details, including her height, weight, address, date of birth and driver’s license information.

The post was removed for violation of Twitter rules, and the union’s account was suspended Monday morning.

“The account is temporarily locked for violating our private information policy,” a Twitter spokesman confirmed.

Citing safety concerns, Twitter prohibits users from posting other people’s “private information” without their consent, a practice known as “doxxing.”

The practice has been used as a social-media weapon in culture wars, but the publishing of someone’s physical address, for example, could endanger that individual’s physical safety.

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was hip to the scene back in the day, per Business Insider:

“Last night the NYPD Sergeants’ union *publicly threatened the mayor’s daughter* while they held her. Indefensible,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Monday. “If police budgets bought peace, the $6 *billion* NYPD budget would’ve bought the most sophisticated de-escalatory operation in the world. Clearly, it didn’t.”

And there’s also a follow the money angle to the Tisch-Mamdani relationship that the potentially future mayor may be ignoring:

Nepo baby and Eric Adam’s crony, Jessica tisch, family is donating millions to Andrew Cuomo against Zohran mamdani.

Yet, Zohran still wants to keep her as head cop. Absolute buffoonery going on behind DSA curtains. https://t.co/4cT3N2aNuM

— Luis.Documents🎃👻 (@mfsgottenshook) October 23, 2025

Only time will tell if Zohran Mamdani becomes New York City mayor only to leave office as an emasculated laughing stock like di Blasio.

That’s plenty for today, I’ll be back with more attempts to follow the money to the power and anywhere else it leads.

That forces lower court judges, especially Republicans who would love to please the Trump administration to practice sontaku, the Japanese art of “obeying in advance” or “following unspoken orders” which I’ve posted about here before in other Trump 2.0 contexts.

So I thought this morning we could connect some dots on the history of how the American legal system became the American legal corruption system.

I’m going to through in a few round up items at the end to follow up on stories we’ve looked at this previously like the Maine U.S. Senate race, the New York City mayoral primary, the deep state roots of Palantir and more.

Legal Corruption Is Brain Rot Too

Without the traditional American legal methodology developed over centuries, lower courts find themselves having to guess at what the law might be.

The sly ones know to work backwards from the Trump-pleasing outcome, but nonetheless it’s a much less elegant system.

It’s also the outcome of decades of work to create legal corruption.

Slate had a piece looking back at the pivotal role of Justice Anthony Kennedy in that process.

On the bench, Kennedy quickly developed a reputation for being mild-mannered, polite, and pragmatic.

Unlike Reagan’s other doomed picks, Robert Bork and Douglas H. Ginsburg, Kennedy’s nomination was controversy-free. He was widely seen as the “nice guy” alternative to Bork’s combative demeanor and Ginsburg’s youthful indiscretions.
…
Chief Justice Roberts began drafting a narrow opinion that would grant Citizens United a win on narrow statutory grounds. However, Kennedy, never one to shy away from sweeping declarations, circulated a much broader decision—a blueprint to overturn Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and McConnell v. FEC, landmark rulings that had previously upheld limits on corporate political spending.

It was Kennedy’s draft that changed everything. According to court watchers, Roberts was so taken with it that he scrapped his own opinion and let Kennedy write the majority. This would not be a minor clarification of McCain-Feingold. It would blow a giant hole that big-money donors could flow through.
Justice David Souter was reportedly furious. He had begun drafting a blistering dissent, calling out the majority for effectively inventing a new question in order to issue a sweeping decision that went far beyond the scope of the case. But before his dissent could see the light of day, Souter announced his retirement from the court.

What happened next shocked even veteran court observers. Rather than issuing a decision, Roberts hit pause. He ordered a rare reargument and instructed lawyers from both sides to submit new briefs addressing completely different constitutional question: Did corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited money in elections, so long as the spending was “independent” and not directly coordinated with candidates? By signaling its intent to tackle such sweeping issues, the court was positioning itself to deliver a truly transformative decision.

When the court reconvened in September 2009, Justice Sonia Sotomayor had replaced Souter. Olson returned to the lectern with a new brief and a broader argument.

It was no longer about Hillary: The Movie. Instead, it was about whether corporations had a fundamental right to spend unlimited money on elections.

The government’s attorney tried to keep the case grounded: This was about a film funded by undisclosed donors, aired during a federal campaign. But the conservative majority was already down the rabbit hole, spinning hypotheticals about book banning and free speech.

Which brings us to a 2015 TIME piece by former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart cited in the Thomas Neuburger Augean Stables post we featured Thursday.

First Gary Hart from a decade ago:

From Plato and Aristotle forward, corruption was meant to describe actions and decisions that put a narrow, special, or personal interest ahead of the interest of the public or commonwealth. Corruption did not have to stoop to money under the table, vote buying, or even renting out the Lincoln bedroom. In the governing of a republic, corruption was self-interest placed above the interest of all—the public interest.

By that standard, can anyone seriously doubt that our republic, our government, is corrupt? There have been Teapot Domes and financial scandals of one kind or another throughout our nation’s history. There has never been a time, however, when the government of the United States was so perversely and systematically dedicated to special interests, earmarks, side deals, log-rolling, vote-trading, and sweetheart deals of one kind or another.

…
Recent months have seen, in effect, the legalization of Watergate. Who would have thought, forty years after the greatest political scandal and presidential abuse of power in U.S. history, that the Supreme Court of the United States would rule the practices that financed that scandal were now legal?

That is essentially the effect of the Citizens United decision. Bets may be taken as to the length of time that will expire before this tsunami of political money ends up in the pockets of break-in burglars, wiretap experts, surveillance magicians, and cyberpunks. Given the power and money at stake in presidential and congressional elections, it is inevitable that candidates or their operatives with larceny in their hearts will tap into the hundreds of millions of dollars that their campaigns are awash in to game the system in highly illegal ways.

Neuburger elaborated:

Corruption is “self-interest placed above the interest of all,” or in some cases, one’s legal or contractual obligation. [Hart’s work comes a year after Zephyr Teachout wrote her book on the subject, reaching the same idea.]

Thus, for example, some college football referees and refereeing groups are obviously corrupt. When Conference A plays Conference B using Conference B’s referees, and year after year the bad calls go Conference B’s way, especially with the game on the line, the referees are corrupt.

Are they betraying their obligation for money? Likely not. Are they betraying their obligation in order to satisfy animus against Conference A, or to make sure the “home teams” win? That’s an obvious explanation, and by his definition (and mine), that’s indeed corrupt.

Or take another situation. By this definition, the Supreme Court since at least 2000 and likely before has acted corruptly, if the definition is “self-interest placed above the interest of all.” No legal analysis of Bush v. Gore passes the “upholds the interest of all” test — the Republicans on the Court simply put a Republican (the home team candidate) in the White House because they could. Nor do their major decisions around money and corporate rights, like Citizens United or Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 Burger Court decision that lifted restrictions on campaign contributions, and its follow-up, First National Bank of Boston vs. Bellotti, whose majority opinion was authored by Lewis Powell, of the infamous Powell memo.

By this definition — perverting an outcome to benefit a group in which one has a personal interest — the Supreme Court could be thought to have acted corruptly in each case mentioned above. It was likely corrupt in Buckley, Citizens United, and First National Bank of Boston, and certainly corrupt in Bush v. Gore, where Republican justices favored a Republican candidate for president over a Democratic one on no defensible grounds.

The Court wasn’t metaphorically “corrupt.” It was corrupt by definition.

Let’s look at story of the infamous Powell memo from this 2021 Slate piece:

The education director for the national Chamber of Commerce, Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., wanted a plan of action to counter these forces, and he reached out to a good friend to draw that up: Lewis Powell, then the head of the American Bar Association, an attorney for tobacco companies like Philip Morris, and a rumored Supreme Court nominee. Powell himself had faced down movements that were hostile to his clients, including anti-tobacco initiatives that flourished after scientists began linking smoking and cancer, and he was frustrated with growing influence of a young Ralph Nader and his burgeoning consumer protection movement.

In 1971, Powell wrote a lengthy, confidential memo to Sydnor and the Chamber, titled “Attack on American Free Enterprise System,” outlining ways that corporations could band together not only to fight off regulations but also to infiltrate American institutions—universities, publishers, magazines, ad agencies, TV networks, and even courts—to make them more broadly sympathetic to business. The tone of the prose indicates that this was a personal venture for Powell: “The time has come—indeed, it is long overdue—for the wisdom, ingenuity and resources of American business to be marshalled against those who would destroy it.”

Fifty years later, that vision has come to pass. A right-wing dark money network, financed over the decades by magnates from Bryce Harlow to Richard Mellon Scaife to Joseph Coors, has funded think tanks, media outlets and writers, college programs, legal organizations, and politicians dedicated to advancing pro-business causes. As journalists like Jane Mayer have documented, the strategy has worked all too well: Megacorporations now enjoy fewer regulations, lower taxes, more lobbyists, more businesspeople in power, and the ability to impede policy perceived as hurting their bottom line, whether that be related to climate protections or health care reform.

Many of the leaders of this counterinsurgency were directly inspired by Powell’s memo, which was circulated among Chamber of Commerce members and other CEOs, went public in 1972 after its author had been appointed to the Supreme Court, and inspired the establishment of various pro-business organizations and institutions that still hold major influence today, from the American Legislative Exchange Council to the Manhattan Institute. It’s clear, reading the hectoring language in the memo and the detailed steps it requires for Big Business to take the power back, that Powell—who would go on to serve as a Supreme Court justice for 16 years—helped lay the ideological groundwork for our current politics.

The Deep State Roots of Peter Thiel and Palantir

While we’re connecting historical dots, let’s check out what Whitney Webb had to tell Chris Hedges about the roots of Palantir in the infamous Reagan Administration Iran contra crew:

Whitney Webb: John Poindexter was one of um the national security advisers to Reagan and was the highest ranking member of his administration that was indicted as part of Iran Contra.

But he is also remembered as the “Godfather of modern surveillance.” This is in part because of his efforts in the immediate post 911 era pioneering the an office within DARPA that housed a program called Total Information Awareness.

After the Reagan administration, Poindexter was in various roles throughout these tech companies that were a prototype to what Palantir and Total Information Awareness would later do.
Defense contractors trying to basically create predictive analytics to determine what terrorists would do next.

All before 9/11 even happened and of course there was a renewed demand for that type of technology and these sort of innovative solutions in the immediate post 9/11 era.

When Total Information Awareness (TIA) was reported on, there was a huge outcry throughout US mainstream media and a lot of organizations including the ACLU, rightly noted that it would eliminate the constitutional right to privacy and create this very disturbing era of mass surveillance.

One of the mainstream media reports on it said that it would fight terrorism by terrifying US citizens and making everyone a suspect in this paradigm Poindexter was seeking to usher in.

And so TIA was under pressure. It was I think first announced in February 2003 and by May they attempted to change the name to Terrorism Information Awareness trying to move away from the idea that it would be total, that it would surveil absolutely everyone through a name change but obviously it didn’t change how the program actually worked.

It would still be focused on everyday Americans, a total drag net and in that same month where that name change happened Peter Thiel incorporated Palantir and as it was developing as a company Thiel and Alex Karp the Palantir co-founders, reached out to Poindexter directly through Richard Perle, a well-known neoconservative figure and one of the architects of the Iraq war at the Bush era Pentagon.

They hatched this plan to privatize this program. rightly calculating that if they turned it into a entirely private sector enterprise the outrage would essentially dissipate which it remarkably did because originally it was a public-private partnership housed within DARPA and then by making it this private sector enterprise a lot of the concerns about it disappeared.

Role of Terror in ICE Actions

The remark that the Total Information Awareness program would “fight terrorism by terrifying US citizens” made me think of this Pro Publica report on how twenty years later, a Palantir-equipped ICE is functioning:

Recordings of those calls, obtained by ProPublica, captured some of the terror residents felt as they watched masked men ambush people and force them into unmarked cars. In some cases, the men wore plain clothes and refused to identify themselves. There was no way to confirm whether they were immigration agents or imposters. In six of the calls to Santa Ana police, residents described what they were seeing as kidnappings.

“He’s bleeding,” one caller said about a person he saw yanked from a car wash lot and beaten. “They dumped him into a white van. It doesn’t say ICE.”

One woman’s voice shook as she asked, “What kind of police go around without license plates?”

And then this from another: “Should we just run from them?”

Deluded Centrists

We’ve been discussing various forms of delusion as part of our efforts to understand WTF is driving the decision making of the Trump era ruling elite.

Aurelian had some relevant insights in his latest piece “Forever Again:
Why the time is always Now.”

Pundits assume that actors, even in crises, behave with unimpeachable rationality, and are driven by entirely conscious motivations, most of them wholly materialistic. This is, to say the least, peculiar.

Part of the reason for that, as I’ve already implied, is that it is easy. This way of thinking fits comfortably into Realist and Neorealist theories of state behaviour, and into many rational actor paradigms of political behaviour. It plays well with attempts to reduce all political behaviour to economic factors, which began with Marxism, but didn’t end with it.

And most of all it avoids the need to think of political actors as living, breathing human beings with their own frailties, wants and needs, rather than cardboard cutouts acting according to some theoretical model.
…
It’s also the political science equivalent of theories of the rational economic actor with perfect information and, at least in theory, opens the way to finally treating political behaviour with the (spurious) intellectual rigour of economic theory.

…the runaway Ukraine crisis is being desperately and inexpertly steered from the western side by a group of leaders of strictly moderate abilities who frankly now have absolutely no idea what they are doing.

This is, of course a frightening prospect if you happen to be a westerner, and its understandable that some have sought solace in imagining a shadowy anonymous group of manipulators who Know What they are Doing, whilst others have maintained that wherever we happen to be at any given moment moment was The Plan All Along.
…
So here we are, led by people scarcely aware of what they are doing and why, living a collective hallucination and playing at making the decisions their great-grandparents should have made but didn’t.

Which led me to our next piece because no one loves the Ukraine war more than centrist American Democrats and they are ironically both in the eternal Now that Aurelian describes and out of step with the times.

Centrists Trapped In An Outdated Eternal Now

From Ettingermentum News’ The Center is Choking:

So how does one sustain high-level, long-term factional conflict when the on-paper disagreements on substance are so minimal? You train your focus on tactics, which is precisely what this new crop of centrists have done near-exclusively. They have spent years carefully crafting a story about how everything wrong in American politics today is a consequence of left-wing political missteps—an old and familiar argument that they have stretched far past its breaking point.
…
As of today, the Democratic Party’s leading centrists have not wavered from either this view of recent history or its inevitable conclusion that the most important thing that needs to be done in the broader effort to defeat the GOP is to wage a holy war against the left. It only took a few hours after the election was called for Trump before they started presenting this theory as THE explanation for the party’s failure and the roadmap for the path forward. Within a few weeks, they were in the pages of the New York Times with a snappy name—“The Groups”—for the left-liberal networks that they had long demonized and were now blaming for Harris’ loss. It was a full-on, no-holds-barred, coordinated push conducted before any other faction within the party had gotten its bearings together. At the moment, it seemed well and truly poised to allow the party’s moderates to once again define the narrative of the party’s loss to Trump before his second term even began.

It also had a major problem. By sticking so closely to Shorite doctrine, the center left itself stuck in the past. Quite a lot had changed over the past four years, and more than a few of the center’s ideas had actually been implemented by the Biden administration. Yet the center refused to acknowledge either of these facts. As far as they were concerned, Harris’ defeat had given them their long-awaited opportunity to relitigate the complaints they had harbored since 2020, and they were not willing to waste the opportunity.

David Sirota warned about this in 2020, saying “We Can’t Follow Obama Back to Brunch:”

Democrats are promising that if Trump is defeated, voters will finally be able to go back to brunch as the Washington establishment returns itself to power.

The former’s message is laughably dishonest, the latter’s message is profoundly cynical and potentially dangerous.
…
It is true that the Obama years were not defined by petty bullshit that is routinely called “scandalous.” However, his two terms were hardly free of actual scandals. They were just the type of scandals that ruin regular people’s lives, but not the lives of people who wear expensive suits to work in Washington.
Obama helmed a presidency bankrolled by Wall Street donors that refused to prosecute a single banker who engineered a financial crisis that destroyed millions of lives.

He turned promises of significant health care reform into legislation that included a few positive consumer protections, but also enriched and strengthened the power of private insurance companies and dropped a promised public option.
He acknowledged the threat of climate change, but then publicly demanded credit from the fossil fuel industry for helping boost oil production during a climate apocalypse.

He pledged to walk picket lines if workers’ union rights were under attack, but then he promptly walked away from promised labor law reform.

And yes, Obama’s administration slow-walked the response to the environmental catastrophe in Flint, Michigan.

These kinds of scandals sowed deep disappointment, disaffection and economic dislocation, which helped fuel the backlash energy that powered the Tea Party and eventually Trump’s presidential candidacy. And they happened because of the kind of disengagement Obama envisioned when he promised that if Biden and Harris win, “you’re not going to have to think about them every day.” In this vision, the new White House lets us all just go back to brunch.

That refrain represents a longing that has pervaded Democratic politics in the Trump years, embodied by the now-infamous protest signs insisting that “if Hillary was president, we’d all be at brunch.”

Ian Welsh explains why the American elite is so unmoored from the rest of the population:

The US now has the least inter-generational social mobility in the Western world (it used to have the most). The elites have become self-perpetuating, and they never had to stare in a mirror and know that they may never have more than minimum wage job; that probably this is as good as it gets.

As a result they have no real empathy or understanding of the vast majority of the middle and working class. The elites know they worked hard to be where they are, what they don’t see is that their feet were put on the path from birth, and that every opportunity was given to them.

Opportunities that were not so open to those below them, who have to virtually bankrupt themselves to go to university and whose schools were completely broken, even as the value of BA declines to multi-generational lows. Put yourself in debt for 20 years, and it may still not buy you the good life.

That existence, hand to mouth, with no hope, is something America’s elites have never experienced and don’t understand.
…
The elites don’t live in the same world as ordinary people. They have become completely disconnected from that world. This is entirely logical on their part, because for 30 years they’ve gotten rich, rich, rich at the same time as ordinary people haven’t had a single raise. When you’re sitting on the top it’s very clear that all boats don’t need to be lifted and that Americans aren’t all in it together. The elites have done just fine, for over 30 years, while the rest of society went to hell.

So there’s no empathy born of shared experience, of the knowledge that sometimes life sucks and no matter what you do, it’s going to suck, and that that’s the way many people live. And there’s no acknowledgment of a need to make America work for everyone, because for the elites, that’s simply not true: America doesn’t need to work for everyone for things to be good for them.

Gerontocrat Candidate at Eternal Brunch In Maine

I posted on the Democratic Senate primary earlier this week and wanted to update with the first polling done since the 77-year-old Governor Janet Mills got into the race. Looks like the “bad jacketing” didn’t work (yet) on oysterman Graham Platner:

Ryan Grim added:

Cuomo Goes Out on a Slop Note

Andrew Cuomo is running an all-time Hall of Fame bad campaign.

Campaigns Just Fun and Games in a Post-Constitutional Republic

This NY Times story makes it painfully clear that almost nothing is less relevant than a U.S. Senate election:

Since assuming office in January, Mr. Trump and his top aides, seasoned from their first stint in the White House, have aggressively and enthusiastically usurped congressional power with little resistance from G.O.P. leaders in the House and the Senate. In many instances, they have willingly ceded their prerogatives and cheered on the president.

Even as administration policies threaten economic harm to huge swaths of rural America that they represent, congressional Republicans have been mainly silent as Mr. Trump has unilaterally imposed and threatened tariffs to achieve his own strategic, political and economic goals. Never mind that the Constitution gives Congress chief responsibility for levying tariffs.

The administration has embarked on deadly military operations off the coast of Venezuela and Colombia without the consent of Congress and no call from Republican lawmakers to scrutinize any oversight of the activities, even as the Pentagon cracks down on media coverage and communications with Congress.
…
“We don’t need to pass any more bills,” Mr. Trump told Senate Republicans at the White House on Tuesday as they reveled in their unity in the shutdown fight over a cheeseburger-and-fries lunch. “We got everything in that bill.”

Political Blender Still in Effect

To follow up on the political blender effect of right wing opposition to genocide, some tweets featuring Tucker Carlson and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene:

And then there’s Kentucky Senator Rand Paul emerging as the most outspoken opponent of Trump’s attacks on Venezuela:

The Personal Is Political for Senator Chris Murphy

Updating another of our recent themes about the personal being the political for so many of our leading characters is this nugget from another Ettingermentum News piece which pegs Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy as the leading contender to replace Chuck Schumer as the Senate Minority Leader:

A few years ago, however, Murphy decided that he needed to be something more than an anonymous mainline coastal liberal. Seemingly unsatisfied with just remaining in the Senate in perpetuity, he took it upon himself to find nothing less than the Final Solution to American Politics. Half a decade after everyone else, he quickly found his answer: that America’s social fabric had been shredded by decades of unfettered Third Way neoliberalism. It’s a drum that he’s only beaten harder since the 2024 election, when he made waves by calling for—all together now—big-tent economic populism and moderation on cultural issues.

Then he separated from his wife, started listening to Red Scare, and began dating a progressive media executive 12 years his junior.

At a personal level, I wish Murphy the best in his endeavor to find the emotional stability he so clearly lacks right now, even if restating the thesis of Bowling Alone to every late night host in America is an undeniably strange way to do it. As for national politics, his new stances would be a clear on-paper break from the politics represented by Chuck Schumer, who infamously promised that his party would more than make up Trump’s gains with working class voters by winning over moderate Republicans in the suburbs. But while this would be a definite improvement over the status quo, I’m very skeptical that it would be as revolutionary as Murphy might want it to sound.

And on that note from a different angle, Bari Weiss, the new boss of David Ellison’s CBS News seems to be collecting hot dudes:

Newly installed CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss had a phalanx of six bodyguards in New York City on Tuesday as she has faced heightened security concerns, a source with knowledge of the matter told The Post.

Weiss had guards described as “beefy” and “chiseled” as she attended a conference at the New York Historical Society put on by private equity giant RedBird Capital.

The source said the detail was hired because “there are enhanced security concerns.”

“It’s highly unusual for a news executive to have six bodyguards,” a former network exec told The Post.

And speaking of David Ellison, he appears to be allowing “Hollywood superagent” turned combat sports multi-monopolist billionaire Ari Emanuel, the political rabbi who helped get the Skydance-Paramount acquisition through Hollywood and the Trump White House, to take over the staffing at CBS Sports, from Blake “Axe” Avigon at my Substack newsletter, The MMA Draw :

The recent Paramount–TKO partnership redefined the American combat-sports map. The seven-year, $7.7 billion agreement places all UFC events: thirteen numbered cards and thirty Fight Nights per year, on Paramount+, with select broadcasts on CBS starting in 2026. The deal ends ESPN’s domestic control of UFC content and replaces the pay-per-view model inside the United States. This is not rivalry, rather integration, and that distinction will define how the next era of combat sports is built. Paramount now operates inside TKO’s distribution core, not around it.
…
Behind the scenes, multiple industry sources confirm that ESPN executives Matt Kenny and Glenn Jacobs are in advanced discussions to join CBS Sports, a move that would signal one of the most significant talent migrations in recent sports-media memory. The two were reportedly handpicked by Dana White, with David Ellison giving the green light to help construct CBS’s new combat-sports division under the broader Paramount framework.

Kenny has overseen ESPN’s global combat-sports programming since 2019: negotiating rights deals for UFC, Top Rank, and PFL; while Jacobs directed production for all MMA coverage across ESPN platforms. Together, they helped anchor the $1.5 billion UFC–ESPN deal that reshaped ESPN+. Their prospective transition to CBS would bring that same production DNA and operational muscle into Paramount’s ecosystem, marking the network’s first major reentry into combat sports since the Showtime merger realignment.

And this semi-political speech from Ari Emanuel client Stephen A. Smith regarding today’s arrest of an NBA coach and player for alleged involvement in gambling related shenanigans is of some interest since Smith has been touted as a potential presidential contender.

Transcript:

Stephen A. Smith: We know what world that I live in in terms of politics. How many times for one incident after another have I said Trump is coming.

He’s coming. I’m going to say it on national television again.

Bad Bunny is is is is performing at the Super Bowl and all of a sudden you hearing ICE is going to be there looking to engage in mass deportations. The Super Bowl disrupting things.

Big night for the NBA (they) put on a show that has now been smeared because we’re talking about this story. Okay, remember Trump has a long long history connected to the world of sports because he had those casinos.

Where do you think folks will come in half the time? I’m not talking about individuals. I’m talking about the culture.

When people want to want want to go to a casino, when people want to gamble, when people want to party or whatever the case may be, this was his kind of connection to that.

Why am I glad you’re here, Monica? Because don’t be surprised if the WNBA is next on his list.

Because when you’ve got all of these protests that have been going out there and people that have been protesting against him and what have you, this man is coming. He’s coming.

And I’ve been saying it for a long time. And to me, this is the latest nugget of evidence that we’re talking about right here.

That’s not to question the legitimacy of the case. We don’t know. We’re all sitting up here and we’re saying that we don’t know.

But anybody that has been around him, anybody that has talked to him, anybody that has seen his reactions from the sports leagues and the positions that people have taken, they are not surprised at what’s going on today.

I’m watching a press conference with the director of the FBI. Tell me when we’ve seen that. We’ve seen people We’ve seen accusations before. We’ve seen athletes get in trouble with the law before.

You don’t see the director of the FBI having a press conference. It’s not coincidental. It’s not an accident. It’s a statement and it’s a warning that more is coming.

And that’s what they’re saying here. And everybody better get I’m just telling you it’s it’s it’s it’s as serious as it gets. This ain’t the platform for me to get into it the way I’m going to get into it. But I’ve been saying he’s coming. He’s coming. Because in his eyes, folks try to throw him in jail. In his eyes, he’s innocent. They try to put me behind bars. I’m getting everybody. He’s not playing.

And so this in a lot of people’s eyes, talk to people in the NBA, talk to people in the NFL, talk to people in the world of sports, they think this is like the tip of the iceberg. These are the kind of words that are coming out of people mouths. It’s not a surprise. It’s very disheartening. It’s very concerning. We don’t know where this is going to go, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Everybody’s better brace themselves because he’s coming.

And just what is this case about? From NPR:

“This is an illegal gambling operation and sports-rigging operation that spanned the course of years,” said FBI director Kash Patel at a Thursday press conference. “The fraud is mind-boggling. It’s not hundreds of dollars. It’s not thousands of dollars. It’s not even millions of dollars. We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery across a multi-year investigation.”

One indictment — United States vs. Earnest, et al. — involved a scheme to place bets on NBA games based on non-public information, such as when a player planned to pull himself out of a game due to injury or illness.

Working with organized crime groups, NBA “insiders” such as Rozier and Jones would pass along confidential information in exchange for some of the proceeds, said Joseph Nocella, the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “They relied on corrupt individuals, including Jones and Rozier. They also used misused information obtained during long-standing friendships they had with NBA players and coaches,” he said.
…
The second indictment, called United States vs. Aiello, involved a series of rigged poker games arranged by organized crime groups in New York. Victims were induced to participate in the games with the promise of playing against prominent former athletes, including Billups and Jones, Nocella said.

Then, using a variety of cheating technology — including rigged shuffling machines and an x-ray poker table designed to reveal the victims’ hidden cards — the crime groups would cheat the victims out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game, the indictment alleges.

Victims lost at least $7 million in the rigged games, officials say.

And just to tie in another recurring theme, here’s the headline of a July DOJ press release about a different NBA player arrested in a gambling bust, no idea if the various indictments and investigations are connected:

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

Before we drill down into the personal lives, motivations, and pecadillos of several American political figures, I want to detail something that’s personal to me, millions of rural Americans and thousands of small business owners.

Rural America Is a News Desert Because of Google

I’ll start with some systemic context that helps explain how Trump has gained such a hold over rural America: the continuing death of local news and information in many parts of the United States, via Axios (don’t worry this is going to get surprisingly personal very fast, including a reveal of my secret identity):

By the numbers: Half of the 136 newspaper closures in America over the past 14 months have been from independent, for-profit newspaper chains that own five or fewer for-profit papers, according to a new report from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

By comparison, only eight newspapers owned by investment firms shuttered in the same time period.

Researchers began sounding the alarm about the rise of “news deserts” a decade ago, back when private investment firms began gobbling up and consolidating local papers.

But most of those closures occurred in suburbs where newspapers could more easily be rolled up into bigger, nearby city papers. Unlike the independent newspaper closures we’re seeing today, fewer hyper-rural outlets were impacted by the large investment firm rollups.

More than one-third (38%) of the 8,891 U.S. newspapers that existed 20 years ago have since shuttered.

Around 50 million people in the U.S. today live with limited or no access to local news.

While these details are new and horrifying, one angle that isn’t ever mentioned is the impact of Google’s monopoly control of the web advertising industry.

Things Got Personal for Nat Wilson Turner, Formerly Known as Kid Nate

This one is personal to me as it destroyed the very successful web site I had run since 2007, forcing me to sell at a loss and find myself unemployed post-50 with kids and a mortgage (please don’t be confused by my real name rather than my Naked Capitalism nom de pen.)

I tweeted about it from my dead name account:

While my web traffic, revenue, and ultimately my business was being destroyed from October 2023 to February 2024, I knew it was because of Google’s Helpful Content Update. What I did not know was that the HCU was not punishing my site because of “poor mobile response” or bugs with their “Discover” system.

What I only found out later, after I’d spent all my capital moving to a new server set up and paying a fee to escape my “ad partner” was that Google’s Helpful Content Update systematically attacked sites with independent, non-corporate ownership.

It is believed they did this in response to ChatGPT’s threat to their core search business and only wanted to drive traffic to major companies they cut deals with to use the news content for their AI engine. This is believed to be why Reddit suddenly surged in traffic from Google following a $60 million dollar deal in February 2024.

Columbia Journalism Review explains what this deal has meant in the 18 months since struck:

n the past few years, Reddit’s place in the media industry has undergone a dramatic shift. Once regarded primarily as an unruly forum for toxic discourse, it is now a consequential player in the evolving relationship between tech platforms and media companies.

That’s partly because Reddit has offered itself up as a vital supplier of data for AI companies. In February 2024, the same day it filed for an IPO, the company announced a content-licensing deal with Google for sixty million dollars a year. The agreement gave Google access to real-time content from Reddit’s vast user-authored forums. A few months later, Reddit struck a similar partnership with OpenAI that is estimated to be worth around seventy million a year.

These deals mean that when people search for content online, Reddit surfaces more often. The analytics platform Profound showed that, between August 2024 and June 2025, Reddit was the most cited domain by Google AI Overviews and Perplexity, and the second most cited by ChatGPT. Also, an update to Google’s algorithm that boosted forums like Quora and Reddit in its search rankings nearly tripled Reddit’s readership between August 2023 and April 2024, from 132 million to 346 million visitors.

I didn’t know any of this at the time.

It wasn’t until consumer product review site Housefresh published this in February 2024 (per the Wayback Machine) that I realized what was happening.

Google regularly launches updates to its algorithm to continuously improve search results quality. Think of these updates as a refresh of the system where rankings change: some websites see an improvement while others see a decline.

At HouseFresh, we keep an eye on Google’s news and documentation because these updates can literally make or break our website. That said, we don’t write for Google’s robots and always make editorial decisions with our readers in mind.

We know that at the end of the day, Google will reward us if our readers find our articles useful.

Or that’s what we thought.

You might have noticed that no matter what you Google, there’s always a selection of the same publishers showing up at the top of the results:

The article goes on to explain how big corporate web sites moved into the product review space despite not doing actual product reviews. At the time they were hopeful Google would adjust the protocols, but by May they were giving up.

This tweet explains what was going on in the product review web space fairly succinctly (it’s too long to embed), but it wasn’t limited to any particular content niche.

It was a full-on apocalypse of independent bloggers as documented in pieces like: “Google Has Destroyed the Independent Bloggers” or “Google Search Changes Are Killing Websites in an Age of AI Spam” or “How Google’s Helpful Content Update Keeps Destroying Websites” or “Google Killed My Six-Figure Blogs Overnight — And I Never Saw It Coming.”

The death of so many independent news publishers means that the oligarchs have much wider latitude to pursue their personal interests.

Let’s start at the top.

Enough About Me, Let’s Get to Trump’s Personal Motivations

Following my “Who’s Delusional, Who’s Drugged, Who’s Disinformed? It’s Hard to Tell” post which struggled to parse POTUS Donald Trump’s motivations I happened to catch Russian news analyst John Helmer on Dialogue Works and he cut the proverbial Gordian knot with something that should have been obvious to anyone but a mark like me.

Nima R. Alkhorshid: What does President Trump really care about?

John Helmer: Well, presidents, and he’s nothing new about this, care about their power.

He cares a bit more, or lots more, than some presidents about turning his power into immediate balance sheet cash in all his businesses, the businesses he runs directly through his sons.

So turning power into money is number one and number two is preserving that power, reclaiming it from the Congress if that’s necessary and protecting it at the next midterm election, always two years away from election, right? And then protecting it and preserving it uh for your next term if you can run for reelection, as most presidents hope to do, or if you can’t, as Trump’s position is at the moment, it’s to make sure that your successors or possibly yourself (if you can come up with a constitutional way of doing it) to preserve your power.

Helmer goes on to explain that the massive amounts of money being spent by NATO member countries on arms for Ukraine and the possibilities for the Trump family to personally enrich themselves are likely irresistible, so we shouldn’t expect any peace deals.

Trump Extorting the Department of Justice for Cash

Trump proves Helmer’s point with this unprecedented demand, per the NYT:

President Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit.

The situation has no parallel in American history, as Mr. Trump, a presidential candidate, was pursued by federal law enforcement and eventually won the election, taking over the very government that must now review his claims. It is also the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts created by installing the president’s former lawyers atop the Justice Department.

Mr. Trump submitted complaints through an administrative claim process that often is the precursor to lawsuits. The first claim, lodged in late 2023, seeks damages for a number of purported violations of his rights, including the F.B.I. and special counsel investigation into Russian election tampering and possible connections to the 2016 Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the claim has not been made public.

The second complaint, filed in the summer of 2024, accuses the F.B.I. of violating Mr. Trump’s privacy by searching Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida, in 2022 for classified documents. It also accuses the Justice Department of malicious prosecution in charging him with mishandling sensitive records after he left office.

Obama’s Cynicism Set the Table for Trump

Trump’s brand of flagrant corruption would not have been possible before 2016. It took eight years of bait and switch from Barack Obama to make voters cynical enough to vote for Trump.

This TikTok video from Shaking Sheets does a great job of reminding everyone just how much Obama’s personal cynicism impacted the personal mental state of the whole American electorate:

@shakingsheetsIf you take stock of all the average adult in the US has experienced in the last 2/3 decades of our political apparatus… everything starts to make a whole lot of sense! #fypシ #politics #leftist #blacktiktok #history

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Partial transcript:

In 2008 when then senator of Illinois Barack Hussein Obama launched his campaign for president and was seeking the official nomination from the Democratic Party his campaign promises and policies included but were not limited to: …

[Nat: She lists many of Obama’s specific empty promises and progressive campaign platform items and continues] ..this is why he was “the hope candidate” “the change candidate” and in 2008 the people overwhelmingly voted for this man voted for left wing populism and he shitted on his constituents heads.

He got less than 40% of what he said he would done and most of his promises, he immediately rolled back. Famously when he was asked about his day one promise to codify abortion access cause he had the Democrat super majority he said it was “nowhere near a day one priority” despite promising that on the campaign trail.

It’s quite literally how he swung the women’s vote in (the 2008 primary) and if you ask the average American about that in 2025 they wouldn’t even know this is what Obama ran on and the ones who did [remember] do know and that’s where they get their political disillusionment from.

There’s a reason people were excited about Obama and it was not just because he was young and an orator and black, it was because he was the closest we had gotten to real progressive politics in a decade and in all the ways that mattered to the people that voted for him he capitulated to the right.

…(Obama’s) deceit has produced apathy and until people are willing to answer to that to apologize, to reconcile with the American people we’ll be in this place and I don’t know how many other ways to say that

Since Obama destroyed the electorate’s hope for change, the western public has had a number of horrifically gross scandals come to light: Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, Jimmy Saville, etc.

But let’s look at one very personal scandal involving a politician that hasn’t gotten as much attention as maybe it should.

I’m referring to long-time U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives and convicted sex offender Dennis Hastert.

The Pedophilia Was Personal, but Exploiting It Was Systemic

I’ve quoted from this Aaron Good interview with BettBeat Media in a previous post but it’s full of so much insight I’m going back to the well.

The conversation turns to the Jeffrey Epstein pedophilia scandal and it’s likely links to zionism when Good brings up Hastert, a largely forgotten figure and connects it to the bigger polycrisis faced by the U.S. empire:

Dr Aaron Good: The kicker to this is if you understand how many people the US political system kills annually in terms of the structural violence: maybe 9 million people a year die of like malnutrition, lack of access to portable water, lack of access to basic health care. This is like a holocaust year in year out.

And so Dennis Hastert, (former) Speaker of the House, prolific pedophile, his pedophile crimes are actually in the aggregate almost nothing. They don’t amount to anything. They’re insignificant compared to the actual system that he protects.

But on he individual level, my God, this is horrendous. How can this be? (But Hastert’s pedophila and possible political exploitation of same) captures a lot of the the evil of this system.

And it it’s starting to register with people with the Epstein things like how can this be? How can they get away with this? We tolerate all sorts of political abuses and corruption but the trafficking of children to people in high places to blackmail them so that they’ll act against the public interest. This is unacceptable.

I think that that this sort of gradual understanding, even incomplete as it is, and not with good political analysis, especially when you’re talking about the right, is showing an empire that is facing a legitimacy crisis like it’s never faced at the same time that it’s losing its material wherewithal to successfully determine the outcomes of military confrontations.

I think that Israel lost the war with Iran. That NATO is losing in Ukraine. A war in Taiwan would be a disaster. I think a war in Venezuela would be a disaster. Although I don’t know if it would have success in the short term or not.

The empire in terms of soft power and hard power is in the worst position in my lifetime, probably in the history of western civilization because it’s been consolidated under this US leadership and now this whole project is just so tainted and illegitimate that it can’t be defended unless you just ignore enormous amounts of of reality. You have to have a made up version of reality to even argue remotely on behalf of the prevailing order that we live under.

Good also speculates that Hastert’s pedophilia might have been the entire basis of his political career as the man was a completely undistinguished wrestling coach who went on to climb the heights of the American political system despite never displaying any talent for…anything.

Hastert was widely seen as a pawn of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for much of his tenure. DeLay was so powerful at one time that his biographer Lou Dubose called him “perhaps the first Prime Minister in American history.”

DeLay was also so notorious and controversial that he wasn’t viable to run for Speaker of the House, so the easily controlled Hastert was a perfect stooge.

Speaking of stooges, let’s pivot to a more current American politician whose personal mental health having a huge impact on many. I’m speaking of Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman.

Senator John Fetterman’s Personal Mental State Becomes Very Political for Pennsylvania

Earlier this year Fetterman’s staff began leaking details of his personal mental state. Keep in mind Fetterman had a stroke mid-campaign in 2022.

The New York Times got some scoop:

The former chief of staff to Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, was so alarmed with his ex-boss’s erratic behavior last year that he wrote a lengthy letter to his doctor warning that the senator was spiraling out of control and that his mental health issues could cost him his life.

“I’m worried that if John stays on his current trajectory he won’t be with us for much longer,” Adam Jentleson, the former chief of staff, wrote on May 20 to a doctor who had treated Mr. Fetterman at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
…
have also long been warned never to get in a car if Mr. Fetterman is behind the wheel because of his dangerous driving habits. His volatile and concerning behavior, which aides noticed last year was taking a turn for the worse, has only increased since the election, people who have spent time with him said. That has coincided with a period when his politics have become more conservative, as he has watched his home state of Pennsylvania swing for Mr. Trump.

“He does not see his doctors,” Mr. Jentleson wrote last year to the medical director who oversaw his 2023 hospitalization for mental health issues. “I am not sure when he last saw a cardiologist, but I don’t think he’s seen one since he was released. He long ago ordered us to stop putting regular drop-bys with Dr. Monahan on his schedule, despite the fact that he had agreed to those as part of the plan.” Dr. Brian P. Monahan is the Navy doctor who has served for nearly 15 years as the on-site physician in the Capitol.
…
Fetterman was discharged March 31 from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, where he had been receiving treatment for clinical depression. He checked himself in for treatment on Feb. 15, with staff members citing a mental health battle that they said intensified during his recovery from a stroke he suffered on the campaign trail in May 2022.

New York Magazine had more:

When Fetterman first caught the attention of the national press, journalists wrote about him like he was a benevolent ogre crossed with a folk hero. More specifically, that’s how I wrote about him.

“This is the tale of Big John Fetterman, the giant who lives in an abandoned car dealership beside a steel mill,” my 2018 profile in the Washington Post began.

“He’s six-eight, arms covered in ink, head as bald as a wrecking ball.”

At the time, Fetterman was mayor of Braddock, which looked a lot like the left-behind corners of the country that had flocked to Donald Trump. He was running for lieutenant governor of the state, and it was easy to see his appeal: He was a bit introverted and curmudgeonly, but funny, smart, and passionate about the fate of communities like Braddock, tattooing the date of each murder that occurred in the town during his tenure on his arm. Endorsed by Bernie Sanders, but also sympathetic to fracking and other positions that cut against the progressive grain, he cruised to victory that year.

The stroke in 2022 made it difficult for Fetterman to communicate, which was painfully evident in his one televised debate with Oz.

As Republicans piled on with claims that Fetterman was incapable of doing the job, Democrats rallied to his defense and confidently predicted he would still be fit to serve.

Now, even though he requires the help of captioning on an iPhone to deal with an auditory-processing impediment, he remains a promising politician, at least to casual observers. He still exudes an elusive sense of authenticity, someone who can chop it up with manosphere chieftains like Joe Rogan while maintaining his strong stance on trans rights.

A recent poll from Morning Consult found that his overall popularity is on the rise, with 50 percent of respondents approving of the job he is doing, against just 35 percent who don’t. With the Democratic Party out of power and fighting with itself about how to move forward, it would be easy to imagine a “Fetterman 2028” machine kicking into gear.

Instead, many of his former staffers are hoping it never happens. “Part of the tragedy here is that this is a man who could be leading Democrats out of the wilderness,” Jentleson said. “But I also think he’s struggling in a way that shouldn’t be hidden from the public.”

Things were bad enough that Fetterman had to “come clean” with the public confession so beloved of the American MSM in an interview with NBC News:

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said in candid remarks about his struggles with depression that he feared seeking treatment would be the end of his political career.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” the first term senator, who was discharged in March from inpatient treatment for clinical depression, recalled a “very dark” moment in December 2022 when he was unable to get out of bed while “dreading” his Senate swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 3.

“People hear all their lives about ‘I can’t get out of bed,’ and you really can’t understand what that really means. You can’t get out of bed until it happens to you. And it did,” he told moderator Kristen Welker.

“And I was scaring my children, and they were confused,” he added. “And, of course, my wife was concerned, and I think she understands better than the kids did.”

Asked how he was feeling compared to a year ago, before he sought treatment for depression, Fetterman said that “things are so much different” now.

“The line [is] ‘I’m living my best life,’ and I really am, because I just am so grateful,” he said. “And I’m always talking about mental health, because I want everybody that can hear that is that help works, and you should get help. And please, don’t suffer any longer, because you deserve to be better. And I’m so grateful to do that, and I’m paying it forward by talking about it.”

Fetterman’s numbers have nosedived among Democratic voters, unfortunately for his staff he’s doing great with Republicans and just fine with “independents”:

From NJ.com:

The new Quinnipiac University poll, released Oct. 1, showed 46% of Pennsylvania voters approved of how Fetterman was handling his job as senator while 38% disapproved. Another 16% did not offer an opinion, according to the poll.

However, the poll found that more Republicans than Democrats approve of how Fetterman was handling his job. This comes as Fetterman has frequently criticized his own party and bucked Democratic leadership in key votes, including voting for the GOP-led spending bill earlier this week.

Even President Donald Trump has praised him in several instances for splitting with his party, saying Fetterman is the “most sensible Democrat.”

The new poll found that 62% of Republicans approved of Fetterman’s job performance while 21% disapproved. In contrast, 54% of Democrats disapproved of Fetterman while 33% approved.

Independents are evenly split, with 43 percent approving and 43 percent disapproving.

“One-time Democratic darling John Fetterman flips the approval script as Republicans embrace him and Democrats give him low marks nearly two years after GOP voters wouldn’t give him the time of day,” Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy said in a statement.

Unfortunately for Fetterman’s Democratic staffers, the numbers he’s polling are still a strong statewide majority.

It’s hard not to be sympathetic to Fetterman. He’s certainly been through a great deal. Nonetheless, his personal issues are impacting the public he’s nominally been elected to serve.

I hope this post has been a useful exercise in better understanding what is motivating some of the people in power.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

Yesterday, Conor reposted a Conversation piece about OpenAI slipping shopping into ChatGPT, which seems like an effort to induce brain-rot on their customer base:

AI’s responses create what researchers call an “advice illusion.” When ChatGPT suggests three hotels, you don’t see them as ads. They feel like recommendations from a knowledgeable friend. But you don’t know whether those hotels paid for placement or whether better options exist that ChatGPT didn’t show you.

Traditional advertising is something most people have learned to recognize and dismiss. But AI recommendations feel objective even when they’re not. With one-tap purchasing, the entire process happens so smoothly that you might not pause to compare options.

OpenAI isn’t alone in this race. In the same month, Google announced its competing protocol, AP2. Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are building similar systems. Whoever wins will be in position to control how billions of people buy things, potentially capturing a percentage of trillions of dollars in annual transactions.

Let’s all get high on Vibes

The Atlantic covered Meta’s latest atrocity, Vibes an all AI social network.

Note: When thinking about anything done by Meta in this era, never forget that Zuckerberg blew at least $46.5 billion on his disastrous Metaverse project (for the opposing view also skim this Bloomberg puff piece which claims that “analysts think that the pivot from Facebook to Meta is finally coming to fruition as the company heavily leans into its Orion augmented reality glasses.”)

Time will tell if Orion catches on, I’m skeptical that augmented reality products at this time. Now let’s hear about Vibes:

Vibes, a new social network nested within the Meta AI app—except it’s devoid of any actual people. This is a place where users can create an account and ask the company’s large language model to illustrate their ideas. The resulting videos are then presented, seemingly at random, to others in a TikTok-style feed. (OpenAI’s more recent Sora 2 app is very similar.) The images are sleek and ultra-processed—a realer-than-real aesthetic that has become the house style of most generative-AI art. Each video, on its own, is a digital curio, the value of which drops to zero after the initial view. In aggregate, they take on an overwhelming, almost narcotic effect. They are contextless, stupefying, and, most important, never-ending. Each successive clip is both effortlessly consumable and wholly unsatisfying.

I toggle over to a separate tab to see a post from President Donald Trump on his personal social network. It’s an AI video, posted on the day of the “No Kings” protests: The president, wearing a crown, fires up a fighter jet painted with the words King Trump. He hovers the plane over Times Square, at which point he dumps what appears to be liquid feces onto protesters crowding the streets below. The song “Danger Zone,” by Kenny Loggins, plays.

I switch tabs. On X, the official White House account has posted an AI image of Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance wearing crowns. A MAGA influencer has fallen for an AI-generated Turning Point USA Super Bowl halftime-show poster that lists “measles” among the performers and special guests. I encounter more AI videos. One features a man in a kitchen putting the Pokémon character Pikachu in a sous-vide machine. Another is a perfectly rendered fake ’90s toy commercial for a “Jeffrey Epstein’s Island” play set. These videos had the distinctive Sora 2 watermark, which people have also started to digitally add to real videos to troll viewers.

Here’s the Trump video which has to be seen to understand our brain-rot moment:

<iframe src="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/115398251623299921/embed" class="truthsocial-embed truthsocial-video" style="max-width: 100%; border: 0" width="600" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe><script src="https://truthsocial.com/embed.js" async="async"></script>

Why Is Trump Trolling?

The increasingly pro-Trump John Michael Greer has a theory:

Trump has realized that it’s far more effective to mock his enemies than to argue with them, and has teams of meme artists going at it hammer and tongs. His goal, I think, is to crack the facade of mandatory niceness that so many people on the left cultivate so assiduously, knowing that once it breaks and everything they’ve been repressing comes spilling out, they’ll alienate voters the way Biden did with his famous Reichstag speech

The reaction to Kirk’s murder is a good example of what he’s trying to goad them to do, and they’re falling into his trap with embarrassing ease.

Now we’ll grapple with the question of whether the stress of the obvious AI bubble is causing brain rot among tech execs.

AI Number Go Down

The first thing to know to understand the stakes at play is the amount of money OpenAI is raising and spending. That’s why I called OpenAI a “money pit” in June.

Then The Information reported in September about the obligations OpenAI is looking to take on:

Revenue growth from ChatGPT is accelerating at a more rapid rate than the company projected half a year ago. The bad news? The computing costs to develop artificial intelligence that powers the chatbot, and other data center-related expenses, will rise even faster.

As a result, OpenAI projected its cash burn this year through 2029 will rise even higher than previously thought, to a total of $115 billion. That’s about $80 billion higher than the company previously expected.

The unprecedented projected cash burn, which would add to the roughly $2 billion it burned in the past two years, helps explain why the company is raising more capital than any private company in history. CEO Sam Altman has previously told employees that their company might be the “most capital intensive” startup of all time.
…
the company has projected $13 billion in total revenue this year, up three and a half times from last year and about $300 million higher than its earlier projections for 2025, the new data show. Its revenue projection for 2030 rose about 15% to roughly $200 billion compared to the prior projection.

ChatGPT is a large driver of the company’s increased projections. OpenAI expects the chatbot to generate nearly $70 billion in additional revenue over the next six years, compared to earlier projections. Millions of people and thousands of businesses pay subscription fees to use ChatGPT.

OpenAI projected nearly $10 billion in revenue from ChatGPT this year, an increase of roughly $2 billion from projections earlier this year, and nearly $90 billion in revenue from the chatbot in 2030, a roughly 40% increase from the earlier projections.

OpenAI’s projections also raised expectations for how it will generate revenue from users who don’t pay for ChatGPT. It’s unclear how OpenAI plans to make money off that portion of its user base, although it could include shopping-related services or some form of advertising. The data show the company expects to generate around $110 billion in revenue between 2026 and 2030 from such services.

OpenAI has been promising massive revenue growth and Gary Marcus doesn’t think they’ll deliver:

OpenAI can’t make its ambitious revenue numbers — 13x-ing current revenue in five years — unless revenue from paying big business customers keeps going up and up and up and up and up.

And he shares a number of charts and tweets to illustrate his 5 reasons.

First the rosy projections:

Then reports of declining use of generative AI in the American workforce, which explains why OpenAI is pursuing advertising, porn, personal shopping, and consumer video generation.

There’s no better way to understand the awfulness of OpenAI’s consumer video generation app Sora than watching this video titled “Sora Proves the AI Bubble Is Going to Burst So Hard” by Adam Conover.

Partial transcript:

Sora 2 is one of the weirdest and in many ways worst apps to ever make it into the app store. And I’ve tried Pimple Popper Light.

So, first of all, Sora gives you the option of letting anyone make an AI deep fake video of you if you take the little step of letting them steal your face.

And almost in order to demonstrate why no one should ever do this, Sam Alman himself kindly donated his own likeness for us to have fun with. Which means that when you open Sora, almost one out of every three videos you see is Sam being physically, emotionally, and sometimes almost sexually humiliated by his own users.

Conover also discusses this Washington Post piece about the ghoulishness of the app:

Ilyasah Shabazz didn’t want to look at the AI-generated videos of her father, Malcolm X. The seemingly realistic clips — made by OpenAI’s new video-maker Sora 2 — show the legendary civil rights activist making crude jokes, wrestling with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and talking about defecating on himself.

Sora’s speed and uncanny realism has helped rocket the app to the top of the download charts, and videos reanimating the dead have been among its most viral clips. Sora-produced videos of Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and Amy Winehouse have flooded social media platforms, with many viewers saying they struggle to tell whether the videos are real or fake.

Some clips played for laughs, such a video of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” host Fred Rogers writing a rap song with hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur. Others have leaned into darker themes. One video showed police body-camera footage of Whitney Houston looking intoxicated. In some clips, King makes monkey noises during his “I Have a Dream” speech, basketball player Kobe Bryant flies aboard a helicopter mirroring the crash that killed him and his daughter in 2020, and John F. Kennedy makes a joke about the recent killing of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.

And a Techcrunch piece headlined: ChatGPT’s mobile app is seeing slowing download growth and daily use, analysis shows:

ChatGPT’s mobile app growth may have hit its peak, according to a new analysis of download trends and daily active users provided by the third-party app intelligence firm Apptopia. Its estimates indicate that new user growth, measured by percentage changes in new global downloads, slowed after April.

The firm looked at the global daily active user (DAU) growth and found that the numbers have begun to even out over the past month or so.

Although October is only half over, the firm says it’s on pace to be down 8.1% in terms of a month-over-month percentage change in global downloads.

To be clear, this is a look at download growth, not total downloads. In terms of sheer number of new installs, ChatGPT’s mobile app is still doing well, with millions of downloads per day.

Gary Marcus added:

If and when the whole generative AI edifice comes crashing down, it will be in no small part because too many otherwise smart investors read too many graphs—from “LLM scaling” to usage statistics—too naively, assuming that things had been going up for a while would continue to go up at the same pace, indefinitely.

This is, of course, a version the trillion pound baby fallacy I have mentioned before

LLMs Getting Brain Rot Themselves?!?

A group of researchers from Texas A&M University, University of Texas at Austin, and Purdue University have released a new study called “LLMs Can Get ‘Brain Rot’!”:

We propose and test the LLM Brain Rot Hypothesis: continual exposure to junk web text induces lasting cognitive decline in large language models (LLMs). To causally isolate data quality, we run controlled experiments on real Twitter/X corpora, constructing junk and reversely controlled datasets via two orthogonal operationalizations: M1 (engagement degree) and M2 (semantic quality), with matched token scale and training operations across conditions.

Contrary to the control group, continual pre-training of 4 LLMs on the junk dataset causes non-trivial declines (Hedges’ g>0.3) on reasoning, long-context understanding, safety, and inflating “dark traits” (e.g., psychopathy, narcissism). The gradual mixtures of junk and control datasets also yield dose-response cognition decay: for example, under M1, ARC-Challenge with Chain Of Thoughts drops 74.9 → 57.2 and RULER-CWE 84.4 → 52.3 as junk ratio rises from 0% to 100%.

Error forensics reveal several key insights:

• Thought-skipping as the primary lesion: models increasingly truncate or skip reasoning chains, explaining most of the error growth.

• Partial but incomplete healing: scaling instruction tuning and clean data pre-training improve the declined cognition yet cannot restore baseline capability, suggesting persistent representational drift rather than format mismatch.
  Popularity as a better indicator: the popularity, a non-semantic metric, of a tweet is a better indicator of the Brain Rot effect than the length in M1.

• Together, the results provide significant, multi-perspective evidence that data quality is a causal driver of LLM capability decay, reframing curation for continual pretraining as a training-time safety problem and motivating routine “cognitive health checks” for deployed LLMs.

So that doesn’t seem good for the industry’s financial prospects, or anything else.

And no discussion of brain rot and LLMs is complete without Boris Johnson discussing his ChatGPT use with Saudi media outlet Al Arabiya.

Quotes via The Register:

“I love ChatGPT,” the blond-mopped Brexiteer told Al Arabiya English earlier this week.

Famous for making stuff up and going on flights of fancy, Johnson served as prime minister from July 2019 until September 2022, when he was ousted after misleading colleagues over a scandal involving his government’s deputy chief whip, the party disciplinarian. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is also prone to making statements that turn out not to be entirely true.

Adopting a strange affected accent in his TV interview this week, Johnson said: “I love AI, do you use AI? Absolutely, I use ChatGPT. I love ChatGPT. I love it. ChatGPT is fantastic.”

When pressed on what he used the large language model (LLM) for, the former MP confessed he was “writing various books.”

He also said he liked to “just ask questions,” mainly, it would seem, because he wanted to hear the robot say how clever his questions were.

“‘You agree, your brain, you’re excellent. You have such insight.’ I love it,” Johnson told the interviewer.

Asked whether Johnson tells the truth, ChatGPT was a little circumspect.

“It’s complicated. Short answer: sometimes yes, but there’s quite a lot of evidence he often does not tell the full truth, or is misleading, or makes mistakes. Whether those are deliberate lies or exaggerations or misunderstandings is often in dispute,” it said.

Side note, this is what happens when you visit Al Arabiya using a VPN

Long Covid Also Causes Brain Rot

Rolling Stone is writing about the impact of long covid in U.S. schools which reminds me I need to do more coverage of Mr MAHA himself, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.:

Over the next three years, Lia would develop a perplexing, debilitating, and persistent set of symptoms. Extreme fatigue that turned mornings into catatonic nightmares. Brain fog that made memories slippery. Incessant vomiting. It all kept her out of class, stuck in the nurse’s office — or out of school entirely. The straight-A’s evaporated.

Lia’s story is one I’ve heard from dozens of families over two years investigating the impact of long Covid on kids. It’s a slow-moving spiral: first their health, then their grades, then their future. And as the country throttles past the pandemic’s fifth anniversary, those for whom Covid looms very present are feeling increasingly forgotten, subject to pervasive skepticism and a kind of cultural fatigue when it comes to their illness.
…
But since the earliest days of the second Trump administration, the dollars that could help those suffering from the illness have quietly faded away. In March, cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) disappeared the nearly $2 billion invested in the RECOVER (Researching Covid to Enhance Recovery) initiative, hamstringing research that might have yielded diagnostic tests or better treatments (though after protest from advocates, some research grants have been restored). The same week, the administration shuttered the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Long Covid Research and Practice.
…
n April, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gutted the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center — the entity whose work laid the foundation for the Moderna Covid shot. In May, health officials installed by Trump overrode career scientists at the Food and Drug Administration to limit approvals of new Covid vaccines. Around the same time, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. disavowed the vaccine for healthy kids and pregnant women. (“We’re now one step closer to realizing President Trump’s promise to make America healthy again,” Kennedy said in a video announcing the policy.)

In the weeks that followed, the secretary also removed every member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory committee, replacing them with a merry band of loyalists and skeptics. That committee has since walked back recommendations for the Covid shot. And since the committee’s suggestions only move forward with the approval of the CDC director, RFK Jr. fired Susan Monarez, whom he’d appointed to that role 29 days earlier, for her refusal to “commit in advance to approving every [committee] recommendation regardless of the scientific evidence,” as Monarez later testified at a Senate hearing.

And this X.com exchange is illustrative of the continuing brain rot around the discussion of COVID:

When Billionaires Buy Brain Rot

And my favorite recent interview withAaron Good talking to BetBett Media included a fascinating discussion about the reasons behind the dismal quality of the dismal science in Western academia in 2025 which :

It’s really going to take us this long to say ‘grass is green’ in political science because the methodological straight jacket they put themselves in.

Another way to understand why political science is so bad is to look at economics because that discipline is also such bullshit from top to bottom.

Like Milton Friedman saying no there’s no such thing as rent and then we look at our economy and we are just beset by rentier billionaires.

Yet the economics discipline kind of focuses as though Freriedman was correct and there’s no such thing as rent and says ‘don’t think about these questions.’

It’s way worse than Adam Smith because Adam Smith actually understood that the rents of feudalism were what were damaging the economy and it was true.

It kept the economy in a form of stasis because of these these rentier landlords.

But the problem is with with capitalism, the people at the top are basically those who are most effective rent seekers, monopolists, and the people who control the way finance is regulated and so on.

So since political economy is ultimately what determines the power structure of a civilization, politics, political science and economics are going to be the two most bullshit disciplines in the west because they have to be.

You cannot have people really working to illuminate politics or economics both or political economy because those things are the most important in terms of maintaining illusions and sort of bullshit orthodoxies so that the whole criminal enterprise can keep running.

Yeah. H.L. Mencken of all people wrote, I think, the best essay on this called “The Dismal Science” where he does a political economic analysis of academia and says, you know, people with with power and wealth, they don’t give a f**k about chemistry or astronomy or what have you, but they absolutely do care about economics.

He doesn’t (explicitly say) political science, but you can (apply Mencken’s analysis).

Any science that deals with the source of (oligarchical) power is going to be one that they really want to influence. And so I think that’s really the reason why political science is apologetics for uh capitalist democracy and economics is apologetics for neoliberal capitalism.

Brain Rot and the Bullshit Jobs Apocalypse

This video from Cy Canterel is on theme also.

Partial transcript:

Silicon Valley is in the middle of pulling off one of the most elegant cons in its history, convincing the world that building smart machines requires destroying human intelligence and jobs at industrial scale. It’s the inevitable result of mythological thinking so intoxicating that admitting it’s wrong would mean acknowledging hundreds of billions of dollars were invested in the wrong direction. If it continues, they will literally eat our future from the inside out.

…
Companies are committing over $300 billion to AI infrastructure in 2025 alone.
…
What if the entire architectural approach is not just inefficient but actively counterproductive? What if the pursuit of AGI through brute force scaling has created systems that are simultaneously incredibly expensive and also remarkably stupid?

Companies are developing research that makes their infrastructure obsolete while being unable to pivot because it would kill their investments. They must sell what they’ve built and the only way is through mass job elimination. The employment apocalypse is already happening. The tech sector lost 130,000 jobs in 2024. And in January 25, we saw the lowest professional job opening since 2013, with 40% of white collar job seekers failing to get an interview at all. But here’s the twist. Many AI targeted jobs are what anthropologist David Greyber called bullshit jobs. Roles like administrative coordinators, compliance officers, and middle management that exist mainly to deal with complex hierarchy and bureaucratic processes.

These roles are often light on meaning and heavy on misery. In theory, eliminating this kind of work could free humans for care work, creativity, and community building and other roles that more directly support everyone’s flourishing. But there’s a catch. Because even these jobs distribute resources, eliminating jobs without changing the predatory and meaningless economic framework creates mass unemployment, not liberation.

In the US, cities like Nashville, Houston, and Dallas might face economic collapse. This is because these areas employ massive numbers of folks in customer service, finance operations, and insurance. They could see simultaneous unemployment spikes, property value crashes, shrinking tax bases, and secondary waves of unemployment from hospitality and service work that’s no longer supported by the economy. Unlike previous disruptions that happened gradually and created new opportunities elsewhere, like other countries, AI automation threatens to eliminate jobs faster than new ones can be created anywhere. Displaced workers face permanent exclusion from the economy, creating an hourglass economy with no middle.

That’s all for today from me, I’ll be back Friday morning.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has been largely AWOL from politics this year, seemingly lost after Trump’s 2024 electoral win.

But nothing stirs the ancient Democratic establishment leader like the need to crush a promising progressive campaign for U.S. Senate so when Bernie Sanders’ supported war veteran Graham Platner started raising millions and getting called “The Maine Mamdani”, Schumer lept strollered into action and drafted 77-year-old Governor Janet Mills into the race.

Note the similarity of tactics the Democrat centrists are using to “bad jacket” Katie Porter after her own-goal interview.

The Democrat Gerontocrats War on Graham Platner in Maine

This is a race I’ve been meaning to cover for months. Graham Platner is a very appealing, Bernie Sanders endorsed candidate. Naturally, Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) have drafted the barely popular 77 year old former governor to run against him.

From Sanders’ endorsement:

“Graham is a Marine and Army National Guard veteran, an oyster farmer, and a proud member of America’s working class. He’s a Mainer through and through, and he is building a movement strong enough to take on the oligarchy that is making Maine unaffordable for all except a privileged few,” Sanders wrote in his announcement, adding that “we need senators in Washington who are prepared to take on the billionaire class and fight for working people.”

Didn’t jibe with Chuck Schumer’s ancient instincts though:

Maine Gov. Janet Mills joined her state’s crowded Democratic Senate primary as the establishment favorite on Tuesday, aiming to flip Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ seat in a pivotal midterm year.

Democrats view the seat as one of their top pickup opportunities — the only in a state Kamala Harris won in 2024 — and Mills is among a few top-tier candidates Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer aggressively recruited to run this cycle. But first the term-limited governor must contend with a competitive primary against breakout candidate Graham Platner, an oyster farmer who announced he has more than $3 million in the bank and already received the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
…
Mills, who won her seat by wide margins in her last two races, is 77 years old, making her five years Collins’ senior at a time when Americans are grappling with debates about the age of their politicians. If elected, she would be the oldest first-year senator ever. Platner is 41 and unlikely to leave the race for Mills

Common Dreams made the case for Platner vs Mills:

Platner has centered his campaign on naming “the enemy” shared by Mainers and Americans from all walks of life: not immigrants, transgender people, or other frequent targets of the Trump administration, but the oligarchy. He’s also been unapologetically outspoken in his condemnation of the US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza and over the weekend said that should he win a Senate seat, “there will be consequences” for those who have led federal immigration agents’ violent incursion in US cities.

Platner has garnered endorsements and enthusiasm from lawmakers including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who recently criticized reports that Schumer was pushing for a Mills run—and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who called his campaign “pretty impressive” and “killer” recently.

He’s also proven to be a formidable fundraiser, pulling in more than $4 million since launching his campaign in August, and has spoken to overflow crowds in cities and towns across Maine.

Recent polling has shown Platner outperforming Mills by 21 points among Trump voters, 13 points among voters aged 18-44, and 10 points in rural parts of northern and western Maine.

The Social Media Battle Lines Were Clear

I’ve been following this race as it built up to Mills’ entre on social media and saw some good tussles, but nothing especially surprising.

Ryan Grim, ex-Intercept now with Drop Site News, was doing battle with various mid-tier “DC creatures”

More on this particular DC creature’s world view as self-presented on X.com

Grim has been an active online surrogate for Platner, here he is throwing down with Politico who were very eager to carry the DSCC’s water (and have already declared victory for Mills over Platner):

The Politico covered the story carried water for the Schumer-Mills attack machine in their newsletter on the 18th:

THE MAINE PROBLEM: Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is trying to pivot away from the fallout of his divisive online posts that endorsed political violence (Washington Post), minimized rape in the military (Politico) and disparaged police (CNN)…

Note that each outlet (Politico, Washington Post, and CNN) was fed a different angle to maximize impact and increase interest from each outlet.

Planter responded on social media:

Graham Platner: Hey y’all, it’s Graham here. As you’ve probably seen, there’s a story that’s broken about comments I made on Reddit in an earlier part of my life. As I read through them, I read things that I absolutely do not agree with. I read through and I see things that, words and statements that I abhor. I also see the trajectory of my life.

When I got back from Afghanistan in 2011, I stayed in the army for another year. I got out in 2012. Some of the worst comments I made, the things that I think are least defensible, that I wouldn’t even try to defend, come from that time.

I had spent the bulk of my 20s in the infantry, deploying overseas, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The infantry was a very male-dominated place. It’s a very masculine world. When I was in, women weren’t allowed in the infantry. It’s changed now, and that’s a good thing.

But when I got out, I still had the crude humor, the dark… dark feelings, the offensive language that really was a hallmark of the infantry when I was in it.

I made comments that I’m not happy about, that I do not agree with, but they came from a time and place in my life. And as I read through the comments that were released, I can see myself changing. My language gets less crude, my thoughts and my feelings get a lot less kind of rough around the edges. I do get almost more disillusioned though, and it’s important to know that this was a time in my life where I was struggling deeply. I got out of the army in 2012. I had PTSD.

I had depression. I had all of the things that come with serving in a war, in two wars, that I eventually began to not believe in at all. It left me feeling very unmoored. It left me feeling very disillusioned. very alienated and very isolated. And I think like a lot of people, I went on the internet to post stupid things and get in fights and find some form of community in some way, some outlet for my feelings, for my rage, for my isolation.

It wasn’t until I found actual community that that all went away. And the reason that I stopped posting on Reddit around 2020 and 2021 is because that was the point in my life where I had found this. I had moved back to my hometown. I’d found community. I’d started a business.

I’d met someone to fall in love with. I’d been able to really begin to feel connected again. And not only did it let me feel connected, it also gave me a lot of hope.

I had spent years being entirely isolated. and feeling very, very angry about the system that had made me go through that experience.

Coming back to Maine, moving back to my hometown, reconnecting with the community that I’m from, building real friendships, building real networks, real relationships with people, that helped cut my disillusion. I went from thinking that people were bad to knowing that people are good.

I went from thinking that there was no hope to having nothing but hope. A hope that is rooted in the fact that it was in my community here in Sullivan, Maine that I got to come home and build a nice life. That all changed for me, but it took me a long time to get there and it was a very long journey. And along that journey, I was in different places that I’m not in now. I had different feelings that I don’t have now.

I had different thoughts and opinions that I certainly don’t have now. But I am very proud of the person I am today. And it was that whole journey that got me here. And while I won’t defend things I said in the past, I will just say that if it wasn’t for that entire journey, I would not be who I am today. And I’m incredibly proud of who I am today.

And so for those of you who have read these things and been offended, have read these things and seen someone that you don’t recognize, I am deeply sorry. It’s something that I see someone that I don’t recognize either, not in who I am today. It is somebody that I do recognize though, somebody who is struggling, somebody who is having a very difficult time settling into a society that he felt betrayed by and left behind by after having to go fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m sorry for this. Just know that it’s not reflective at all of who I am.

I don’t want you to judge me on the dumbest thing I ever wrote on the internet. I would prefer if people could judge me on the person I am today. And I just want to say thank you all very much for your time.

I included his whole statement in text because I couldn’t find it anywhere and found it full of interesting messaging that isn’t breaking through into secondary coverage. Which isn’t that big a deal when Platner’s video has more reach than most of the outlets covering him by an order of magnitude.

Back to Politico’s coverage:

Whether Platner can turn the corner remains a question. Playbook obtained screenshots of additional archived Reddit posts from September 2021 in which he calls “some” Maine lobstermen “drug addicted maniacs” and a “few” who were “pieces of shit … absolutely terrible people.” He added that “lots of guys are assholes, some are strung out or drunks, and some are lazy,” and that “the future of lobstering is pretty uncertain” on account of regulations and global warming.

In response to a user who said they had a dream of becoming a lobsterman, asking users to “crush my dreams with reality,” Platner, posting with the Reddit username “P-Hustle,” said “the majority are solid folks making a living. I work on the water and know a whole bunch of lobstermen, and only a few are pieces of shit. Granted, those few are absolutely terrible people, but it’s not remotely the bulk of guys fishing.”

Lobstermen, who number in the thousands, are a political force in an essential Maine industry.

Yesterday, Platner’s political director, former state Rep. Genevieve McDonald, stepped down, according to the Bangor Daily News’ Billy Kobin. ”While I am empathetic to Graham’s experiences and respect his personal journey and growth, I cannot overlook the volume and nature of his past comments, many of which were made as an adult, not as a young man,” McDonald wrote. She was a lobsterman.

A spokesperson for Platner did not respond to a request for comment on the lobstermen posts.

Platner Campaign Does an Info-Dump, Maybe a Limited Hangout?

The Platner campaign pre-emptively revealed this doozy on Pod Save America:

The pre-emptive reveal of potential opposition is an advanced PR move you rarely see from losing campaigns (I’m thinking Howard Dean, Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren) so this is a good sign for Platner supporters, I guess.

I’m not embedding the whole Pod Save America episode, just linking, watch if you’re into that kind of thing, but here are the quotes Axios picked up, which illustrates which talking points made it into the MSM narrative, but again Pod Save America > Axios in terms of audience size:

Platner’s campaign shared video with Pod Save America of him singing shirtless that exposed a skull tattoo on his chest that resembles the “Totenkopf,” a symbol used by Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS).

The move was intended to get ahead of opposition research, and the GOP’s Senate campaign arm seized on the images, accusing Platner of having a “Nazi tattoo.”

Driving the news: Platner said in an interview with Tommy Vietor of Pod Save America that was released on Monday that the video was from his brother’s wedding, where he lip-synced Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball.”

“I am not a secret Nazi,” Platner told Vietor, adding that he got the tattoo in Croatia while deployed and was “very inebriated.” Platner said he and his fellow Marines chose “a terrifying looking skull and crossbones.”

What he’s saying: In the years since, Platner said, he joined the Army National Guard, where he said he “got a security clearance and a full screen” to be on the detail for the ambassador to Afghanistan. The Army bans tattoos that are “extremist, racist, sexist, or otherwise indecent.”

Platner said that at no point “did anybody ever once say, ‘Hey, you’re a Nazi.’ It never came up until we got wind that in the opposition research somebody was shopping the idea that I was a secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo.”
Zoom out: An ADL spokesperson said in a statement provided to Axios that it “appears” to be a Nazi Totenkopf tattoo, which they described as “troubling,” if true.

But they added, “[w]e do understand that sometimes people get tattoos without understanding their hateful association. In those cases, the bearer should be asked whether they repudiate its hateful meaning.”

A Surprising Twist in DC Insider Reaction

Like everyone else, I’m processing information as I come across it which isn’t necessarily in a linear, time of publication fashion. Please indulge me in telling the story in the order I learned it.

So I mentioned above that Politico was declaring Platner a dead letter. Here’s that piece headlined “Democrats Keep Falling for Political Fantasies. When Will They Learn?” it’s by Jonathan Martin, best known for chronicling the 2012 Obama-Romney Race and his 2022 declaration of permanent victory for Biden over Trump “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future” which is just as prescient as it sounds.

Some morsels for flavor:

Will Democrats ever learn to stop swooning?

I refer, as you may have guessed, to the case of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner and the rinse-wash-repeat pattern that has become all too familiar for the party in the digital age.

It goes something like this: Political outsider or mostly new name mounts statewide campaign with online video that leans heavily on compelling biography or powerful oratory, out-of-state liberal hobbyists quickly fall in love and fork over money, and journalists rush to profile the latest heartthrob before inevitable disappointment when the candidate loses or, well, becomes John Fetterman.

Platner is the latest example.

I am glad he mentioned Fetterman, possibly the most disillusioning political figure since Obama himself, but on to today’s tale.

So when I saw that former Biden Press Secretary turned MSNBC host Jen Psaki was hosting Pete Buttiegieg’s she-svengali Lis Smith to discuss the race, I was expecting more of the same.

But it turns out Smith (much like the elements of Obama world who are vocally supporting Mamdani in New York) smells a winner in Platner, and shocking so does Psaki.

Check this out:

Jen Psaki: Just today, Governor Mills of Maine announced she was going to get into the Senate race at the urging of Chuck Schumer clearly and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is the body that oversees all of this from the National Party. And so she’s entered the race as of today, she’s joining a couple of other candidates who are already in the race.

The one who’s getting the most buzz is a guy named Graham Platner, an oyster man, which you gotta love that piece of his bio. And he goes around and he speaks, in human-speak (emphasis mine, Nat), about a range of issues, including the economy, which he’s relentlessly focused on.

…He’s got the thing, the quality that good candidates have, that’s a great riff on freedom that ties together cost of living issues issues people care about deeply. Um, and he’s just feels very relatable. He’s also 41 years old, uh, and Governor Mills is 77 years old. So this is a big age question in this race.

But I do wanna say for Governor Mills, ’cause this is the argument people of her, her supporters will make, she is very popular. I think she has about a 51% approval rating. Susan Collins has 14%, and (Mills) has been governing a state where she’s been elected twice, where the population is growing older and also isn’t quite as progressive as some people who live outside of Maine might think.

Then they play a video of Trump going after Mills on and she replies “See you in court.” Psaki also notes Mills won that case. But back to Psaki:

So I share that because her announcement video was cringe. And she seemed very old and out of touch, which is a contrast to Platner…

…There’s this obsession by Chuck Schumer and others in Washington. I realize I live here with going with the old same playbook that worked 20 years ago, and not recognizing that politics in the country change, and there are people who don’t come from the political world who might be worth giving a shot, and instead he seems to be putting his finger on the scale here. But what do you think?

Lis Smith: Yeah, so he has that obsession. Um, there’s an obsession right now with Democratic primary voters, especially to not nominate super old candidates. to sort of say goodbye to the Gerontocracy. There’s also an obsession among Democratic primary voters to nominate people from communities, people who aren’t just like lifetime lawyer-lobbyists, politicians, you know, people with unconventional backgrounds, uh, like Graham Platner.

And to your point, you know, you said he has a thing. I’d say he’s got Riz, you know, he’s got the sauce. Janet Mills has a backbone, but my issue isn’t with primaries. Right. I think primaries are good things when you can strengthen everybody. And you end up being a better general election candidate when you have a primary.

What my issue is with here is one: Telling a 77-year-old elected official to not to retire, but instead to go for a promotion when voters are saying, please no more of this after what happened with Joe Biden.

And my second issue is that the DSEC is putting their thumb on the scale for her, as you mentioned. …There are other candidates in there, but I do not think the DSEC is doing anyone any favors, let alone Janet Mills, by putting their thumb on the scale here, because let’s be real, Chuck Schumer is one of the least popular elected officials in American politics today.

Drops mic, as they used to say in the Obama era.

Plot Twist: Alt Media Hates Platner’s Response

Taylor Lorenz, publisher of the Discourse Blog is an outlier by any definition, but one well worth following. Here’s the first graph of her wiki for those unfamiliar:

Taylor Lorenz (born 1984 or 1985[1]) is an American journalist and technology columnist who covers Internet culture. She has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Business Insider, and The Daily Mail. In 2023, she published a book called Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet. In 2024, Lorenz left the Washington Post following an internal investigation after Lorenz posted an image on Instagram labeling president Joe Biden as a “war criminal”. Lorenz subsequently began publishing a newsletter called User Mag as well as a podcast called Power User.

And while Lorenz didn’t write this one, her Discourse Blog co-founder Rafi Schwartz doesn’t like Platner’s response to the tattoo thing at all:

Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: I don’t know if Graham Platner is a secret Nazi, or just a fucking moron. I suspect it’s more the latter, but frankly, there’s enough ambiguity and weirdness coming from the Planter camp that it’s hard to say for certain. What I do know is that, if the past couple of days are any indication, the troop-turned-oysterman-turned-ostensibly leftist wunderkind candidate is in pretty big trouble, entirely of his own making. Because while having a large SS Deathshead tattoo is kind of a campaign problem in and of itself, being a whiny dickhead about it — like Platner has been — is just digging up, stupid.
…
Discussing both his tattoo, and history of Reddit shitposting, he stressed that “the idea that a person cannot evolve and grow from years ago is pretty laughable to the average human being.”

Broadly, I agree with Platner here. People do change and mature and evolve, and having some grace for those transformations is just part of being a decent person. But, at least when it comes to his ink, there’s little sign of any attempt to evolve or grow, or even acknowledge how big of a fuck up getting the tattoo was in the first place.

Go back to the part of the (Pod Save America) interview where Platner and Vietor discuss the tattoo. At no point does Platner apologize for—or even really acknowledge that—a large SS Totenkopf tattoo can be pretty traumatic to see, even if (if!!) it was inked out of ignorance, rather than malice. There’s no “sorry.” No nothing. Instead, both Platner and Vietor go out of their way to blame “opposition research” and “political reporters” for having the chutzpah to point out that Nazis are bad and having a Nazi tattoo is also bad.

…as it turns out, there’s reason to be skeptical of Platner’s repeated claims of ignorance. In the hours following the initial furor from Platner’s Pod Save sesh, two separate reports emerged which suggested that Platner at least knew, if not celebrated, the origin of his tattoo. First, this, from his now-ex-political director and former Main State Senator Genevieve McDonald:

Schwartz then links to and quotes from this Jewish Insider post while noting it’s a “right wing” (ie very zionist) outlet:

But according to a person who socialized with Platner when he was living in Washington, D.C., more than a decade ago, Platner had specifically acknowledged that the tattoo was a Totenkopf, the “death’s head” symbol adopted by an infamous Nazi SS unit that guarded concentration camps in World War II.

“He said, ‘Oh, this is my Totenkopf,’” the former acquaintance told Jewish Insider recently, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address a sensitive issue. “He said it in a cutesy little way.”

The exchange occurred in 2012 at Tune Inn, a popular dive on Capitol Hill where Platner later worked as a bartender and was a frequent patron while he attended The George Washington University on the G.I. bill, according to the former acquaintance. He would often take his shirt off drinking with friends late at night at the bar, and on at least one occasion had stated he knew what the tattoo represented, the former acquaintance recalled.

Schwartz closes with this:

Ultimately, then, Platner’s sin and that of his most enthusiastic enablers is less that he got the tattoo in the first place (although, that too) and more a question of how he’s behaved since. Fleeing to a friendly podcast to play victim before even saying you’re getting rid of the thing doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the Senate candidate’s decision-making skills. Who knows—maybe Platner will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and continue to run the kind of gritty, progressive campaign that elevated his profile in the first place. Or maybe he’ll do what he’s done so far: ignore the hurt his tattoo has caused and move forward without any real contrition. Either way, I wouldn’t hold my breath for an apology anytime soon.

Schwartz also brings up the appalling Young Republicans racist and avowedly pro-nazi chat leaks that came out last week. Per Politico:

Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n–ga” and “n–guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote on whether he should become chair of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old.

Frankly, this is a classic example of the “political blender” which I have attributed to the cognitive dissonance caused by the zionist genocide in Gaza.

The GOP seems to be actual nazis and one of the more compelling Democratic candidate may or may not be a crypto-nazi.

Before October 7, 2023, I personally had a long-standing zero tolerance policy for nazi iconography learned in the independent music scene of the 1980s, these days I’m not sure WTF to make of it.

UPDATE: Commenter DJG, Reality Czar pointed out the obvious thing that both Schwartz and I missed (embarrassingly on my part since I’ve known it for a long time): nazi iconography ceased to be verboten in the “Democratic West” in 2022 when Ukrainian nazis suddenly became “our heroes”.

This twitter exchange between the progressive Emma Vigeland and an X.com non-blue check poster with a mid-sized following I’m not familiar with is more elegant:

How Did the Center Win Again, Anyway?

But, back to the broader American electoral context, where skilled analysts can trundle along like it’s 2012 and none of this is happening.

This Ettingermentum News’ piece “The Center is Choking” on the structural and generational conflict in the Democratic party teases a point I want to close with:

For as long as any of us have known, the Democratic Party has been controlled by its moderate wing with a grip that the best efforts of the left have been unable to break. A historic anti-war and anti-establishment effort in 2008 gave us a White House led by Rahm Emanuel.

Unprecedented progressive mobilization during Trump 1.0 culminated in the nomination of Joe Biden. To the extent that any of the left-wing organizing and energy of the 21st century has led to anything, it has been entirely on the margins—some lip service here, a few regulatory appointments there, and, at best, an acknowledgement that it is a valued “junior partner” in the coalition.

Such a track record would have been deeply sobering for the left’s effort to expand its influence even if the results in 2024 had fit entirely within its narrative. As for what actually happened last year, the wing may as well have been sentenced to death. Quite unlike his first victory, Trump’s second win didn’t come against a literal Clinton in the aftermath of a populist campaign. It came against a San Francisco liberal that he had spent the entire fall branding as a radical leftist lunatic—i.e., a seemingly clear ideological mandate. It didn’t seem to matter that Harris had run hard to the center or that the Democratic Party at large had given the leading evangelists of moderation control over a trillion dollars in ad spending. At the end of the day, it was said, Donald Trump said that Kamala Harris was for “they/them.” Then he won, and the left died.

Voters seemed to be on board with this narrative, if only at the beginning. In the first month of Trump’s second presidency, Gallup found a massive surge in the number of Democrats who said that they wanted the party to become more moderate. But in the time since then, hardly anything has gone according to the center’s plan.
…
What accounts for this reversal? A lot of it has to do with timely shifts by the left faction of the party, which has finally begun to play to its own strengths. But none of what they have accomplished would have been possible without a generational fumble on the part of the party’s center, which has so far been completely unable to adapt to the current political environment.

Also check out his piece “The Official 2026 Midterm Outlook: Schumer and Jeffries Need to Resign Immediately.” A taste:

Prior to Trump’s election in 2016, no political party had won a trifecta and lost everything in the span of only one term since the Democrats in 1892. Since then, it has happened twice, and it could very well happen once again.

…Recent history gives us no guarantee as to how next year’s elections will turn out, even with a sitting president as unpopular as Trump is today.
…
The good news for Democrats is that, like Republicans before them, the reasons why they are underperforming are obvious. For Republicans in the leadup to 2022, it was always clear that they were being brought down by their loyalty to a still-unpopular Trump and, later, the Dobbs decision, both of which kept voters from evaluating the election as a simple referendum on Joe Biden.

For Democrats this year, their obvious problem is the simple fact that they have done absolutely nothing to break from Biden since the end of his failed presidency. And as far as the midterms are concerned, this failure is at its most salient in the continued reign of the party’s two congressional leaders: Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York.

…
In every instance of a wave election this century, the parties that have achieved them held one thing in common: they were always led by figures who hadn’t just governed alongside an unpopular president.

…there is only one example this century of an out party doing what Democrats are doing now with Congressional leaders: the Republican Party of 2022. By keeping a highly unpopular Mitch McConnell as the face of their party.

Chuck Schumer as Mitch McConnell in “Old Age Ninja Mutant Turtles 2” isn’t really a very compelling title for a summer blockbuster, is it?

It’s interesting to note as we close out today’s Coffee Break that as the Obama “rizz” fades, he and some elements of his oldteam are opportunistic enough to get behind Mamdani, just as Lis Smith and Jen Psaki are backing Platner over Graham.

Winds of change or just another scam in the making?

Only time will tell, and again this is happening in a context of systemic congressional impotence produced by legalized corruption and attempted authoritarian clampdown so never forget electoral politics are just the entertainment division of the Military Industrial Complex as Frank Zappa used to say.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

This post is a grab-bag to follow up on my previous posts this week: “Zionism’s Pyrrhic Victory Drives Dystopian High Tech Drive for Control” and “Who’s Delusional, Who’s Drugged, Who’s Disinformed? It’s Hard to Tell.”

I’m trying to chronicle the crazy and there are a lot of narrative threads to carry if we’re going to keep up.

The Stupid Burns Bright Among Billionaires

Important reminder to start our post from Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs:

Bill Ackman is a billionaire Zionist who came up previously in my “Influencer Apocalypse” post on the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Tucker Carlson used Ackman as a punching bag and a punch line in his fateful Turning Point USA appearance shortly before Kirk’s death.

Now Ackman is putting his stupid directly into the NYC Mayoral campaign which we’ve been covering since before the primary:

Ackman’s ally in hasbara, Elon Musk also came forward to represent Nathan Robinson’s point by posting complete bullshit and getting caught by his X’s community notes (a pathetically frequent occurrence), but this was a good one:

The Completely Corrupted America Political Process

The United States 2025 isn’t just ridiculously hypernormalized because our billionaires are in charge, but because they’ve managed to completely rig the political process.

I sometimes handwring about the relevance of political campaigns when we’re in the midst of an authoritarian takeover that might render them moot, but they’re a big part of the distraction spectacle if nothing else.

David Sirota has a new book out (based on the podcast) “Master Plan: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America” so he’s been tweeting some things about how we got here, that relate to current themes.

I’m sharing two for context:

It’s classic that the recently indicted Trump 1.0 official turned target of the regime, John Bolton, was involved with a key of the early step in legalizing bribery in American politics:

Sirota also points out that the ruling by the post-legal Trump Supreme Court fits in with my recent themes of derangement and delusion and the battle for narrative control:

AIPAC Goes Plata O Oro on the CBC

And since AIPAC can’t keep itself out of the news lately, I guess it’s fitting to discuss their use of one of legendary Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s favorite strategies: plata o plomo (silver or lead/bribes or bullets), which I’ve inelegantly adapted to a campaign context dominated by money to plata o oro (silver or gold).

Take the money or we’ll take you out with massively funded media campaigns (although I’ll talk about the increasing kinetic element of hasbara further down).

There’s an important piece at The Nation called AIPAC and the Congressional Black Congress that details how that strategy has been deployed very effectively against a key element of Democratic congressional power:

The CBC’s silence isn’t accidental: More than half of its current 61 members have been endorsed or funded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful US lobbying arm for Israel’s agenda. In the 2023–24 election cycle alone, AIPAC endorsed 26 of the caucus’s members, raising $4.6 million for them and another $3.5 million for Black Democratic candidates.

So that covers the silver, now let’s look at the gold AIPAC threw around to beat multiple CBC members in the last cycle:

AIPAC’s targeting of Black lawmakers such as Cori Bush of Missouri, who lost her seat in 2024, for speaking out against Israel’s crimes against humanity.
…
The group also targeted … Pennsylvania Representative Summer Lee, who spoke out against Israel… (Lee survived that AIPAC offensive, but now, like other congressional critics of Israel, she has to be prepared for AIPAC-funded primary challenges each time she runs for reelection.)
…
What has rendered the Democratic Party such an impotent voice in combating the Gaza genocide, in other words, is a matter of fundraising math. A single-issue lobby reliant on strong financial backing from GOP donors has successfully managed to keep Democratic critics of Israel out of Congress.

…look at what happened to Jamaal Bowman. In May 2023, while serving as a Democratic representative from New York, Bowman cosponsored a resolution seeking to ensure that US funds to Israel would not be used to harm Palestinian children. This would seem an uncontroversial aim—but not for AIPAC and its allied PACs.

…Bowman learned the cost of speaking truth to the spending power of AIPAC. “When you go against one of their pieces of legislation, depending on what it is, they will e-mail you, relentlessly call you, relentlessly protest outside of your office, and stop you from even being able to do your job,” he continued.

In the 2023–24 election cycle, AIPAC (made) an unprecedented outlay of $15 million in a single House race by the group in its successful primary challenge against Bowman. He was replaced on the Democratic ticket by the AIPAC-endorsed former Westchester County executive George Latimer, a white candidate with a record of racist remarks.

Pro-Israel groups spent millions to defeat other Black members of Congress, including Bush and Lee as well as Maryland Representative Donna Edwards. … Lee is the only CBC member in that cohort of Israel critics who’s still in office.
…
The 2024 purge represented a dramatic upsurge in the group’s battle against Black progressives. Records indicate that AIPAC did not spend any money against Bush or Bowman during the 2022 elections. After Bush sponsored a resolution in October 2023 that called for de-escalation and a ceasefire in Gaza, AIPAC spent $8.6 million to replace her on the Democratic ticket with Wesley Bell, who abandoned his bid to become Missouri’s first Black senator in order to supplant Bush in the House.

…spending against Bush in 2022 only reached $170,602—which means that AIPAC boosted anti-Bush and pro-opposition spending by nearly 5,000 percent in the 2024 cycle. AIPAC’s anti-Bush and pro-Bell cash offensive also worked out to four times the $2 million that the progressive PAC Justice Democrats contributed to Bush’s primary campaign and anti-Bell efforts.

AIPAC Aipac Lying Low Because Opps Are Fundraising off Their Opposition

Fortunately, brutal politics like that triggers a reaction and thanks to groups like Track AIPAC the political action committee is becoming too toxic to follow standard operating practice.

One of the clearest signs is when U.S. Senate candidates are bragging that they refuse AIPAC money, not something often seen before October 7, 2023. This is from Illinois:

And it works:

Rolling Stone covered the launch of Kat Abughazaleh’s campaign, when she challenged the 80-year-old incumbent Jan Schakowsky in March, running so strong she forced Schakowsky to announce she wouldn’t run by May:

Illinois 9th District has only been represented by two people since 1965, and there hasn’t been a competitive primary since the race Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, the district’s current representative, won in November 1998. “I wouldn’t be born for another four months,” deadpans Kat Abughazaleh, the TikTok-famous political commentator now running to represent the district.

Abughazaleh is transparent about the fact that she is not what anyone thinks of as shoe-in for Congress: a 26-year-old narcoleptic freelance social media creator who doesn’t live in the district and has only lived in the state for less than a year, challenging a Democratic Party leader who has represented this part of Illinois for more than a quarter of a century.

That’s kind of the point: She is a normal person — with a rental lease she can’t break before it’s up, financial pressure bearing down on her, and prescription medication that she needs to function properly and that has been challenging to obtain since Elon Musk went after her employer, and she and many of her colleagues were laid off.
…
“We are in an emergency,” Abughazaleh says. “Right now, the answer to authoritarianism isn’t to be quiet. It’s not matching pink outfits at a state address. It’s not throwing trans people under the bus. It’s not refusing to look at the party at all and see where it could be better. The answer is to very publicly, very loudly, very boldly, stand up. The only way to fight fascism, and this has been proven over and over and over again, is loudly, proudly, and every single day.”

Even if Abughazaleh doesn’t win the seat, simply forcing gerontocrat Schakowsky to step down is a worthwhile accomplishment.

Now there are about 20 Democrats in the primary, including Daniel Biss, the Mayor of Evanston who has served in the U.S. Congress and ran a losing race for Governor in 2018, but Abughazaleh is still leading the money race — a huge feat for a first-time netroots candidate.

AIPAC’s response has been to pour stealth money into the race, supporting a fairly obscure GOP candidate. Matthew Eadie reports from Illinois:

Over 270 donors, many of whom have backed dozens of Republican politicians and the nation’s largest pro-Israel lobbying group, donated over $319,000 to State Sen. Laura Fine’s congressional campaign since May, campaign records show.

Hundreds of Fine’s donors who drove almost half of her campaign fundraising had previously supported several candidates, both Republican and Democratic, through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, including Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.).

One donor, a physician from Fort Myers, Florida, donated $500 to Fine’s campaign on Sept. 18, just three days after a fundraising email from AIPAC calling her opponents, Kat Abughazaleh and Daniel Biss “dangerous detractors” from AIPAC’s mission. The donor had previously donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republicans, including over $20,000 to two of Donald Trump’s largest super PACs in 2024.

Of the over 740 individual donations Fine received since launching her campaign, over 270 came from donors with strong links to AIPAC, which has often been criticized for targeting critics of the Jewish state, previously supported candidates directly through AIPAC, Evanston Now’s analysis of hundreds of records shows.

Fine’s donations, as listed in both her July and October FEC filings, were not earmarked as being made through AIPAC and are displayed as individual donations. Evanston Now crosschecked hundreds of the donors and their donation histories, compiling a list of candidates her donors had previously supported.

Matthew Eadie does a lot of supplemental work on X.com

AIPAC vs Thomas Massie

Here’s a tweet from a mysteriously popular seemingly AI infused anonymous account trafficking in conspiracy theory, but as we’ve learned from Dr. Aaron Good, zionists are pulling so many conspiracies that even anti-Semitic right-wingers are doing some good work:

Then there’s how AIPAC handles maverick Republicans like Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, a principled libertarian in the Ron and Rand Paul mode. Now, I could go on for hours about how wrong all those principles are, but I respect the man for having an ethos and sticking to it.

As Dr. Good told BettBeat Media:

Dr. Aaron Good: Zionism is something unique and powerful and important to grapple with and that we are kind of ill-suited to do so because of indoctrination about anti-semitism and what it is and is what it is and is not acceptable to say about Israel.

Ultimately, I am not on the side of the right-wing conspiracists who don’t really have a problem with capitalism or imperialism per se, but but focus on the conspiratorial uh activity of Zionists, which is, and some of these people will do good work because there are so much terrible conspiratorial things that (zionists) are doing. But I think it’s a mistake to just try to to fixate on that and not recognize that it’s the system that kind of created this Game of Thrones environment for oligarchic factions to act the way that they act.

But enough clarifying why I’m not exactly on Team Massie but support him in his fight with Trump and AIPAC.

Another fascinating “political blender” case is Mel The Villge Crazy Lady who does the Lord’s work battling Zionists on X, despite being all kinds of sus in other regards. Here she is fighting the good fight for Massie:

Politico had a good piece this summer explaining Massie’s district and why it will be a tough one to dislodge him from:

in Rep. Thomas Massie’s fourth Congressional district, there are a few other pillars to know about: Cincinnati chili, served over spaghetti with Greek spices; a life-size Noah’s Ark; and a political culture that, in the words of Northern Kentucky’s political class, is a good fit for Massie’s libertarian conservatism — even if it means facing the wrath of President Donald Trump.

“Yes, we’re conservatives, but we also have independent thinking,” said Republican state Rep. TJ Roberts, a protege of Massie’s in Frankfort. “We have a consistent track record of having a very different taste, especially when we talk about foreign affairs.”
…
“I am consequential here in Washington, D.C. In between launching B-2 bombers to the other side of the planet, the president spends some portion of his attention worried about what I’m going to do next,” said Massie, a 54-year-old, MIT-educated entrepreneur who founded a haptics company before moving back to his family home of Lewis County in the early 2000s.
…
Kentucky Republicans have been needling Trump like it’s a part-time job ever since his return to the White House — from Sen. Mitch McConnell’s long feud with Trump, to Sen. Rand Paul’s vote against the “big, beautiful bill” and support for a Democrat-led measure to end Trump’s tariffs on Canada.
…
His confidence is based on the particular contours of the electorate in his district, which is focused around Cincinnati’s Northern Kentucky suburbs with a healthy bite of Appalachia and exurban Louisville. Local political professionals know Massie’s fief to be a quizzical mixture of many right-leaning factions that don’t always get along: suburbanites who identify with Ohio; Appalachians who are deeply skeptical about all forms of federal control; and a strong Catholic tradition that contrasts with the state’s Bible-thumping stereotype.

Now Trump has recruited a Navy seal to run against Massie, per Politico:

Trump hailed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL captain who ran unsuccessfully for state Senate last year, as a “WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN” in a Truth Social post last week. He also said Massie “must be thrown out of office, ASAP.”

Massie is dismissing Gallrein as a threat, casting his opponent to POLITICO last week as a “failed candidate and establishment hack.” He later took to X to post vote totals showing he outran Gallrein in the counties they overlapped last year. And he recently posted the biggest fundraising quarter of his career, hauling in $768,000 from July to September and entering October with more than $2 million in cash on hand.

The president has been searching for a challenger to Massie since the Kentuckian voted against the “big, beautiful bill.” Trump’s political operation launched a super PAC aimed at unseating Massie in June, as the representative pushed to reassert congressional authority over Trump’s military actions in Iran. The group, MAGA KY, has spent $1.8 million on independent expenditures so far.

But there are reasons to be skeptical of Massie:

This will be a race I’ll be following for Naked Capitalism.

Influencer Apocolypse: The Sequel?

And to change subjects again, an alarming development in terms of hasbara manifesting in kinetic form against media, right here in the USA.

When I covered Kirk’s death I quoted Yasha Levine and he seems unfortunately prophetic:

The hit did something I haven’t seen before. It spooked the political influencers. They are scared. Many of them spent last night issuing lengthy, serious statements on X about the gravity of the situation. Some of them are calling it a 9/11 event — a 9/11 for the influencer class.

Political assassinations are one thing. Killing a president, however horrible, was seen as within the rules of “the game.” But influencers? Political commentators? They were supposed to be a protected class. Their free speech was supposed to matter. It was supposed to be protected by “the rules.” Many of them see themselves in Charlie Kirk. And they are clearly afraid for their lives. The world — their world — has turned upside down. Nothing will be the same to them. And it’s not just the influencers on Charlie Kirk’s team. The liberal and left wings of the influencer class are panicking, too. If a righty influencer can be whacked, so can they. The rules have changed.

Now it’s Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks in the barrell:

This is how Canary Mission kicked off their attacks on Kasparian:

Hopefully she stays safe.

UPDATE: As Lyman Alpha Bob pointed out in the Naked Capitalism comments, Kasparian is a skilled story teller and professional attention grabber so looking at the actual footage is pretty essential for evaluating the real threat presented by the woman and her dog:

As Levine pointed out, the Kirk assassination brought some awareness of kinetic reality to many influencers and that is not always an easy thing to handle if you live in the spectacle full-time.

I’ll have more on the Democrats’ generational war on today’s Coffee Break. Chuck Schumer is going all out to stop Bernie Sanders’ choice in the Maine Senate primary. And by all out, I mean he’s drafted a 77 year old to run for the U.S. Senate.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

That is to say, are these people deluded, drugged, deliberately disinformed or what?

With the breakdown of late 20th Century corporate mass culture and the post WW2 liberal consensus, we are seeing an unprecedented breakdown in shared information sources.

In 2025, spouses, family members, colleagues, and casual acquaintances can all be primarily informed by wildly varying information sources with few ways of knowing who is aware of what.

Let’s start with POTUS Trump because he made more than his usual a number of claims that appear to be wildly opposed to consensus reality including the usual about victory in Ukraine and peace in Gaza but also some specific claims that shocked this observer.

On October 14, Trump publicly met with Argentinian President Javier Milei and the surrealism was off the charts. The full video is worth a look if you have the stamina and sanity.

The most notable wildly false claim Trump made was the following about countries leaving BRICS (17:30 minutes in):

Donald Trump: I think if Biden would have, you know, Biden, that group would have gotten elected, meaning Kamala, you wouldn’t have the dollar as your currency anymore.

You wouldn’t have a world domination by the dollar if I didn’t win this election. And now the domination like bricks. I told anybody wants to be be in bricks, that’s fine, but we’re going to put tariffs on your nation. Everybody dropped out. They’re all dropping out of bricks. BRICS was an attack on the dollar. And I said, you want to play that game? I’m gonna put tariffs on your on your all of your product coming into the US. They said, like I said, we’re dropping out of BRICS and BRICS is like they don’t even talk about anymore.

Does he actually believe this? Are his staffers telling him that countries are leaving BRICS? Are foreign leaders telling him what they think he wants to hear? Is he taking psychosis-inducing amounts of Adderall?

This is on top of the already grim comedy of Milei’s presidency, the $20 billion U.S. bailout, and Milei’s ridiculous antics, including a stadium concert appearance to promote his new book:

Not to mention the way Trump supporting farmers are being screwed by Trump’s attempt to import Argentinian beef while Argentina grabs more of the Chinese soybean market that Trump’s tariffs have frozen American producers out of.

Atrios’ take on Bluesky points out something that should be obvious but is rarely said out loud. This planet is awash in mind-altering drugs and people are addled. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to know exactly who’s on what, when:

I’ve spent much of my life being oblivious to what I was later told were obvious abuse problems on the part of various people I knew.

I slept on this 2024 Rolling Stone piece about Trump 1.0 being awash in drugs. Here’s a taste:

In January, the Defense Department’s inspector general released a report detailing how the White House Medical Unit during the Trump administration distributed controlled substances with scant oversight and even sloppier record keeping.
…
The report didn’t say why so many of those pills had been given out. But for many who served in the Trump White House, the investigation highlighted an open secret. According to interviews with four former senior administration officials and others with knowledge of the matter, the stimulant was routinely given to staffers who needed an energy boost after a late night, or just a pick-me-up to handle another day at a uniquely stressful job. As one of the former officials tells Rolling Stone, the White House at that time was “awash in speed.”

Knowledgeable sources say that samples of the stimulant were passed around for those contributing lines to major Trump speeches, working late hours on foreign policy initiatives, responding to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, coping with the deluge of media inquiries about that investigation, and so much more.
…
The anti-anxiety medication Xanax was also a popular, easy-to-get drug during the Trump years, three sources tell us. Neither Xanax nor its generic, alprazolam, is mentioned in the Pentagon report, which notes that it is not a comprehensive list of the controlled substances ordered during the Trump years. Two people with direct knowledge of the situation recall senior officials getting Xanax from the White House Medical Unit — and sharing it with colleagues.

No reason to believe the party has stopped under Trump 2.0.

And I’m not going from the previous topic to the next topic for any particular reason, beyond my ability to miss the obvious in both instances, in this one, somehow I missed the gossip about Trump Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and would-be Trump 2024 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

If you’re behind like I was, these graphs from Corey’s wikipedia entry should catch you up on the nonsense:

While DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was participating in an immigration raid on April 8, 2025, she was accompanied by Lewandowski, who introduced himself to the federal agents as “chief of staff.” DHS later clarified that he is an adviser to DHS and a Special government employee (SGE)] The Wall Street Journal subsequently described Lewandowski as Noem’s “de facto chief of staff,” adding that there were “White House concerns about their relationship”. When then-FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton testified before Congress on May 7, 2025, stating, “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency”, a position which differed from the Trump administration, he was summoned to Noem’s office the following day, and was fired by Lewandowski, sitting at Noem’s desk.

When U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-California) was forcibly detained by security agents at a press conference Noem was giving in Los Angeles on June 12, 2025, Lewandowski, according to Padilla, ran to the scene “yelling, ‘Let him go! Let him go!’”

Lewandowski met his future wife Alison Hardy when he was in ninth grade and she was in eighth grade. In 1998, Hardy married Brian Kinney, who was killed onboard United Airlines Flight 175 on September 11, 2001. Four years later, in 2005, Lewandowski married Hardy. Together they have four children. Lewandowski is a Catholic.

In September 2021, Lewandowski was removed from his role as chairman of a super PAC called Make America Great Again Action after reports of sexual harassment accusations from a donor.

That same month, conservative media outlet American Greatness reported that Lewandowski was having an extramarital affair with South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, for whom he had long been a political advisor. Noem called the report a “disgusting lie”, saying, “these old, tired attacks on conservative women are based on a falsehood that we can’t achieve anything without a man’s help.” In September 2023, the New York Post and the Daily Mail published similar reports about Noem and Lewandowski, which Noem’s spokesman denied. As of September 2025, according to the New York Magazine, they were widely understood by those who work with them to be romantically attached, although both deny it.

The New York Magazine piece “Top Goon” is worth quoting at length as well:

“She’s going to play a key role in advancing Donald Trump’s effort to consolidate the powers of the presidency,” a former DHS official told me. “I think by the end of this administration, if she stays the whole time, she’s likely to become the warden of the police state.”

On paper, Noem sits at the top of this empire. In practice, power over immigration policy is fractured, shaped by competing factions, starting with deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who has vowed in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination to destroy nameless forces that have conspired against the right — the long arm of law enforcement, he warned them, “will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and, if you’ve broken the law, to take away your freedom.” Noem will be among those at the forefront of any such effort, surrounded by a tight inner circle that can be difficult to penetrate and often impossible to work with. “The culture over there is terrible,” the administration official told me. “People are scared shitless of Corey.”

Lewandowski has been integral to Noem’s rise, her right hand as they run roughshod over the rule of law and, like so many in Trump’s Cabinet, position themselves for a post-Trump future. Lewandowski is not only surreptitiously co-leading DHS without congressional approval but has brought Trumpworld’s manically pugnacious style to the department and drawn out some of Noem’s own pugnacious predilections, too.

After all, Trump’s immigration policies, while broadly unpopular with those who oppose masked men snatching people off the streets and spiriting them away to brutal foreign prisons, remain popular among Republicans. Frank Luntz, the veteran political consultant, thinks this is at least partly owed to Noem, who adds the necessary stage presence to Lewandowski’s muscle and Miller’s brain.

“She is probably the administration’s best spokeswoman,” he told me. “The only thing that bothers me is that her name is not mentioned as a potential 2028 Republican Party leader. She’s underestimated.”

I also have to mention the $172 million his-and-hers private jets Noem purchased.

I admit I’m shoehorning this Noem-Lewandowski thing into this piece, but that’s mainly because I deeply regret not plugging it into my piece last week on Russell Vought and Stephen Miller.

But also, Noem being talked up as future presidential material has me wondering if old Frank Luntz isn’t using psychedelic toads slime to hold down what has always appeared to be his hair piece.

I’m not saying Luntz won’t be right either, I’m just saying we’re collectively through the looking glass.

And speaking of same, this tweet featuring the most maximally triumphant take on Trump’s foreign “policy” has to be included in any catalogue of Trump-era delirium:

Larry Johnson quoted a Zionist acquaintance with similar delusions last week:

(The signing of the Sharm El-Sheikh Peace Plan) changed everything. Arrayed behind Trump in Egypt were all of the key leaders in the world other than Putin and Xi. Trump has achieved something nobody thought possible. In the process he has isolated Iran, but just as important, he now made Putin look isolated when the rest of the world is trying to end wars and create peace and prosperity.

Putin will be under a lot more pressure to end the war now. At the same time, he is not winning the war, and is losing thousands more casualties just when there are severe labor shortages, and the economy is headed to further deterioration.

The attacks on the energy facilities is having real impact and a continuation of these attacks and attacks on rail lines will serve to cause much additional economic decline over the winter.

Paying men to go die is beginning to not work. It is very expensive and more men are fleeing. Winter is about here and so the fighting season is ending soon and the trees will no longer provide cover from drones. Putin can try to go on for a long time but the longer he does the worse the economy and the energy situation. The more isolated Putin becomes from the Mideast and other parts of the world who are now working together to build the economic growth the world needs.

This is the perfect set up for Vice-POTUS J.D. Vance’s message that “it’s time for Russia to wake up:”

Vice President Vance: One of the things I really admire about the president’s approach to this entire conflict and frankly all the diplomatic efforts of the administration is that it’s very grounded in reality and what’s happening on the ground.

If you go back to the last days of the Biden administration, if you go back to even a couple of months ago, the Russians were conquering large amounts of territory. Every month they were gaining another couple hundred square kilometers, maybe more than that.

And what’s happening right now, as the president articulated, is Russia’s really stalled. They’re killing a lot of people. They themselves are losing a lot of people and they don’t have much territorial gain to show for it.

And so the president is looking at the situation. He’s saying, ‘Look, the Russian economy is in shambles. the Russians are not gaining much on the battlefield.’

It’s clearly time for them to listen to his passionate plea for them to come to the table and actually talk seriously about peace. So, I don’t you ask what’s changed. I think what’s changed is the reality on the ground where the Russians are killing a lot of people.

Which brings us to this piece from Simplicius

Azov Brigade head Bohdan Krotevych says the quiet part out loud. He says European partners are kept from the front because AFU command does not want them to see the true reality of the situation there.

It seems at this point the AFU’s collapse is being hidden from all relevant parties, and this info blackout is trickling up to Trump and his circus who reimagine the war as Russia ‘badly losing’ with millions of casualties.

Or maybe Trump’s not so ignorant after all, per the Financial Times:

Donald Trump urged Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept Russia’s terms for ending its war in a volatile White House meeting on Friday, warning that Vladimir Putin had said he would “destroy” Ukraine if it did not agree.

The meeting between the US and Ukrainian presidents descended many times into a “shouting match”, with Trump “cursing all the time”, people familiar with the matter said.

They added that the US president tossed aside maps of the frontline in Ukraine, insisted Zelenskyy surrender the entire Donbas region to Putin, and repeatedly echoed talking points the Russian leader had made in their call a day earlier.

Though Ukraine ultimately managed to swing Trump back to endorsing a freeze of the current front lines, the acrimonious meeting appeared to reflect the capricious nature of Trump’s position on the war and his willingness to endorse Putin’s maximalist demands.

Which is a decent pivot to the latest from Emmanuel Todd on the delusions of the European middle class:

are today’s middle classes, particularly the upper middle classes, reasonable? Are they peaceful? What are their dreams?

They are crazy. The construction of a post-national Europe is a delusional project when one considers the diversity of the continent. It has led to the expansion of the European Union, cobbled together and unstable, into the former Soviet space. The EU is now Russophobic and warmongering, with its aggression renewed by its economic defeat at the hands of Russia. The EU is trying to drag the British, French, German and many other peoples into a real war. But what a strange war it would be, in which the Western elites have adopted Hitler’s dream of destroying Russia!

The comparison by social class therefore allows us to make a major intellectual breakthrough. Europeanism, and therefore Macronism, fall, through their external aggressiveness, on the side of nationalism, on the side of the pre-war far right. If we add to this the increasingly massive and systematic violations of freedom of information and popular suffrage within the EU, we come even closer to the notion of the far right. Founded as an association of liberal democracies, Europe is mutating into a far-right space. Yes, the comparison with the 1930s is useful, even indispensable.

In the grandiose Europeanist project, we find a psychopathological dimension already observable in Hitlerism: paranoia. Europeanist paranoia focuses on Russia. Nazi paranoia made the Jewish threat a priority, without however neglecting Russian Bolshevism (known as Judeo-Bolshevism).
…
Today in Europe, we are dealing with madmen, or rather with a collective madness that has gripped individuals from the dominant social classes en masse. In France alone, thousands of journalists, politicians, academics, business leaders and senior civil servants are participating in the collective hallucination of a Russia that would want to conquer Europe (paranoia). No individual can be held personally responsible. We are dealing with a collective psychological dynamic.
…
The Nazi anti-Semites had a completely different psychological constitution. The death of God, to quote Nietzsche, had certainly launched them on a quest for a Führer, but they were hardly lacking in superego and remained capable of collective action. The tragic performance of the German army during the Second World War bears witness to this. Who today would dare to imagine our upper middle classes rushing to their deaths, at the head of their peoples, towards Kiev and Kharkov? Our war in Ukraine is a joke, a product of the emancipation of the self, the offspring of personal development. Only Ukrainians and Russians will die.

Unless…

Thermonuclear exchanges can do without heroes.

I don’t want to end on a grim note so let’s let Kamala Harris, someone who’s been in all three of our discussed states close us out.

Her new book got ripped in the Guardian for being celebrity addled and delusional:

A striking feature of her campaign was how it leaned into vibes and spectacle rather than substance, or building faith in Harris as a clean break from an unpopular and visibly deteriorating Joe Biden. Her new book, 107 Days, a memoir of the exact number of days she had to win the presidency, goes a long way in explaining why that was. In short, Harris – and those around her, including supportive media parties – got high on their own supply.
…
The book reveals a politician who is all about the machinery of politics, rather than one with conviction spurred by a sense of duty, or a coherent and specific set of values that differentiate her.
…
My abiding feeling reading was: oh God, this was all just as bad as it looked. The celebrity-packed campaign roster was not, in fact, panicked desperation, but the preference of the candidate and her team. They thought that such a range of characters would show that Harris was “welcoming everyone into the campaign” – as if the power of celebrity could do the unifying work of coalition-building, rather than her own programme and politicking.

The immersion in the filmic, the celluloid of US politics is so complete that there is a line about Jon Bon Jovi performing for her and it being a good omen, because he performed for a candidate who won in The West Wing. The media loved her. “And behold,” Harris quotes a Washington Post writer, praising her approach to Gaza, “she had her boat through the impossible strait.” Jon Favreau said Harris was “a sight to behold” at the Democratic convention.

I’ll close with some quotes from this video from Scott Carney, a YouTuber specializing in exposing frauds and grifts. He argues that we are on the verge of a society-wide collapse of trust so grave it could actually lead to a decrease in grifting opportunities:

we have arrived at the era of peak grift where liars, cheaters, and charlatans will have an ever harder time selling their wares to unsuspecting audiences. And this is not good news. It should terrify absolutely everyone who is watching this video because what happens after the collapse of the grifter economy is going to be so much worse than you could ever imagine.
…
What happens when we zoom out to the overall grifting economy, or if you will, the macroeconomic conditions that allow grifters to succeed. The one resource that all grifters share is a fundamental baseline of truth, or if you prefer, reality. Now, by definition, grifters monetize lies by subverting truth. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be grifting. It would just be selling quality products that actually work.

And herein lies a fundamental problem. For grifters to succeed, they need a stable base, which means a good economy, generally positive health outcomes, and enduring institutions, which ultimately earn the trust of the people in general. Grifters can only thrive by profiting off of the margins and the limits of that underlying foundation of trust.
…
Now add to this a proliferation of AI slop, state sponsored propaganda from Russia, foreign actors, and even our own propaganda, and online scammers who have stolen more than a trillion dollars in the last year. The net effect is that trust, the most important resource that grifters exploit to take your money, is being eroded at its foundations. Like any economic system, once you get an oversupply of one particular commodity, in this case grifting, it becomes increasingly difficult to make money in that niche. It’s simple supply and demand. Now, in a stable society with reliable institutions, people look for ways to beat the system where niche opportunities might let them get ahead. Sometimes they even succeed. But in a collapsing system, people need to seek out reliable information. And while I can’t tell you where that reliable information actually is right now, I do know that the demand for it is higher now than it has ever been in my lifetime.

And naturally our closing quote source repeats the Russian disinformation canard (has any country ever been worse at PR?) and on that note, I’m out.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

In battle after battle, Israel has won victory after victory, outmaneuvering foes and allies alike. However, from the perspective of Grand Strategy, Israel wasn’t victorious; the war was a Pyrrhic victory, a victory so costly that it threatens Israel’s future survival.
…
Israel is, due to the massive amounts of economic and military aid it receives, utterly dependent on the US (particularly now that global support is riskier than it has been). This relationship is now in jeopardy. Due to a poorly oriented strategy, Israel has lost one major US political party and a generational divide that could soon see it cast as a pariah state.
…
Support for Israel with the Democratic Party shifted from:

• 31% to 34% (pro-Palestinian to pro-Israel) in 2023, to

• 54% to 13% (pro-Palestinian to pro-Israel) today.

Israel on Losing End of American Generational Conflict

Robb accurately describes the conflict within the U.S. Democratic party as a generational one “fought online and offline (through campus protests and heavy-handed efforts to suppress them)” that “was won by the newer networks.”

Israel’s war on Gaza is even opposed by more American Jews than support it.

And Israel’s lobbying arm, AIPAC, is becoming politically toxic for Democrats, even centrists. From the NY Times on Oct. 2:

Some Democrats who once counted AIPAC among their top donors have in recent weeks refused to take the group’s donations. Its annual trip to Israel, a formative experience for many lawmakers that once drew a majority of first-term members, has seen a drop-off in Democratic attendance. And a majority of the Senate Democratic Caucus has voted in recent months for legislation opposed by AIPAC to cut off weapons sales to Israel.

AIPAC has long been a force on Capitol Hill, able to spend seemingly whatever it took to defeat lawmakers it viewed as hostile to Israel. Last year, for instance, the group spent more than $23 million to defeat former Representatives Cori Bush of Missouri and Jamaal Bowman of New York, two progressives who vocally opposed unconditional U.S. aid to Israel.

AIPAC also poured more than $1 million into a Democratic primary in Oregon, boosting Representative Maxine E. Dexter in her race against Susheela Jayapal, a former county commissioner and the sister of Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the former chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

In July, The Jerusalem Post worried about Democratic support and reiterates the critical importance of securing bipartisan U.S. support for Israel and how that’s gotten out of whack in Trump 2.0:

President Trump’s unwavering support for Israel since he began his second term, and especially his decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, have brought Israel’s relations with his administration and with the Republican Party to an unprecedented peak of trust and partnership.
…
Every Israeli should be thankful to President Trump for his bold decision to join the fight against the “Axis of Evil” led by Iran.

However, we shouldn’t let our gratitude carry us too far in taking actions or making statements that will be viewed by the Democrats as though we have decided to divorce from them.
…
Maintaining bipartisan support in America has always been a strategic goal of Israel. Especially now, when Israel’s sympathy toward a Republican president is at its peak, we should also extend a hand of friendship and collegiality to the Democratic Party.

Our focus should be on leading figures located closer to the center of this party, such as Gov. Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania) and Gov. Gavin Newsom (California), who are already warming up toward the presidential race in 2028. Both have already taken steps to differentiate themselves from the far Left factions in their party, and as the race evolves, they will surely continue to drift toward the center.

We still have three long years to mend the ruptures that have been created and rebuild trust and friendships with the future leaders of the Democratic Party and the population segments that support them. If we fail to do so, we may find ourselves on the brink of catastrophe by January 2029.

Back to John Robb. His analysis of Israel’s difficulties on the American right are particularly acute, as Robb is sympathetic to the right:

…as the war progressed, aggressive efforts to protect Israel divided the tribe. Early efforts to censor popular Red Tribe accounts critical of Israel, from Candace Owens to Tucker Carlson, led to a significant schism in the network. These accounts, using the same ‘truth-seeking’ solvent used by the Red Tribe to dissolve everything from COVID edicts to DEI regulations to mandatory trans mainstreaming in schools/sports, successfully attacked Israel’s outsized political influence, heavy-handed media influence, and moral failures, to grow their audience (particularly among younger audiences).

Robb wraps his argument by pointing out that support for Israel has cratered among younger supporters of both parties, “71% (in the Blue Tribe) and 50% (in the Red Tribe) aged 18-49 expressed negative views of Israel. This number increases markedly in the 18-29 segment” and points out what this means for Israel’s long-term situation.

The Twitter video below illustrates what I’ve called “the political blender” in previous posts by showing Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene favorably contrasting Zohran Mamdani’s statements on Israel with those of his primary opponents.

Note that Carlson and Greene are older than Mamdani, but much younger than most of his Zionist Democratic rivals. There is a potential majority bipartisan alliance of under-50s that opposes Israeli control of U.S. media and politics.

This video conversation between an Israeli and a self-described “American Christian Nationalist” illustrates the growing loss of support for Israel on the young American right:

Oligarchs Up Their Dystopia Game Under Pressure

In a previous post at Naked Capitalism, I’ve discussed how the acquisitions of the old-line Paramount media empire and TikTok by zionist oligarchs Larry and David Ellison are part of “Israel’s desperate push to maintain narrative control in the U.S.”

And I’ve quoted Ellison’s infamous ode to surveillance, “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly watching & recording everything that’s going on.”

But this discussion between formerly imprisoned CIA whistle-blower John Kiriakou and “Cybersecurity Expert, Associate Research Scholar at Yale Law School, and Founder & CEO of Ivy Cyber” Sean O’Brien brought out some of the particularly sinister aspects of the Zionist oligarchs Larry and David Ellison which I had not discussed in previous posts.

First O’Brien points out some of the political nuance of Trump’s relation with the Congressional TikTok ban passed under Biden and backed by the Supreme Court this year:

Professor Sean O’Brien: This proposed ban of TikTok, started in 2024 with the Biden administration. Then, TikTok was quite useful to the Trump campaign. The Trump folks leaned into TikTok quite a bit for marketing and campaigning.

So when Trump came in this time around, you know, Trump made sure that he at least did a lot of bluster about how he was going to make sure that he was doing a deal and keeping TikTok alive for all the Gen Zers who use it, etc., etc.

Then O’Brien points out just how powerful TikTok is with younger Americans:

O’Brien: There are approximately 170 million US users of TikTok. Many are those key demographics that marketers want. There’s an enormous amount of data that’s flowing through TikTok. Somewhere around 56% on the low end to 70% of Gen Z users are using TikTok. The estimates for the amount of time, the average time that they’re using are somewhere around an hour to, you know, closer to two hours, hour and a half each single day. Enormous amount of data about an entire generation plus. And now my generation, you know, millennials and even, you know, Xers and boomers, now we’re starting to get into the app.
This essentially is a data tariff the Trump administration keeps kicking the can down the road of this ban. Now, they’ve been definitely ordered by the Supreme Court to ban the app.

Then Kiriakou gets to the point, and keep in mind that he was convicted and imprisoned under Obama for revealing the CIA’s use of torture:

John Kiriakou:Should I care? Should I be worried if TikTok knows that I lie in bed every night and watch 20 or 30 minutes of people filming crooked cops and then calling them out? Do I care? Should I care if TikTok knows this about me?

O’Brien:Yeah. You don’t have to explain to targets why targeting sucks, right? And obviously, you’ve been targeted and had to deal with the US government coming after you very directly, right? So being worried about the Chinese is not really on the menu. You’re not really too worried.

John Kiriakou: The Chinese didn’t send me to prison.

Then O’Brien adds the novel and sinister aspect I hadn’t considered previously:

O’Brien: Maybe it’s not about you watching videos, but maybe it’s the time you sleep? Location data is the big issue that I worry the most about because we’re talking about apps on phones. These are surveillance devices in our pockets.

When these apps are open and you’re even when they’re not open, when they’re running in the background, they’re sending enormous amounts of data about your location, who you’re around and often whether you’re on the phone, the laptop, at work, at school, moving in a car, often they can use like the accelerometer and gyroscopes in the device to figure out some pretty obscure stuff.

Which brings me to another tech oligarch who has dramatically expanded his media empire in recent years: Elon Musk.

Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter presaged Ellison’s TikTok takeover.

Musk, with the assistance of Ben Shapiro, had a January 2024 conversion experience to Zionism following an anti-Semitic outburst and is now using X.com (formerly Twitter) to attack Brit Journalist Owen Jones.

The novel aspect is Musk’s use of xAI’s use of Grok.

I’m not going to bother to point out the logical fallacies in Grok’s attacks on Jones.

Keep in mind that Musk has had to hack Grok to get it to spout his preferred political line. From The NY Times:

Musk and his artificial intelligence company, xAI, have tweaked the chatbot to make its answers more conservative on many issues, according to an analysis of thousands of its responses by The New York Times. The shifts appear, in some cases, to reflect Mr. Musk’s political priorities.

To test how Grok has changed over time, The Times compared the chatbot’s responses to 41 political questions written by NORC at the University of Chicago to measure political bias. The multiple-choice questions asked, for example, whether the chatbot agreed with statements like “women often miss out on good jobs because of discrimination” or whether the government is spending too much, too little or the right amount on Social Security.

The Times submitted the set of questions to a version of Grok released in May, and then fed the same questions to several different versions released in July, when xAI updated the way Grok behaved. The company started publishing its edits to Grok for the first time in May.

By July 11, xAI’s updates had pushed its chatbot’s answers to the right for more than half the questions, particularly those about the government or the economy, the tests showed. Its answers to about a third of the questions — most of them about social issues like abortion and discrimination — had moved to the left, exposing the potential limits Mr. Musk faces in altering Grok’s behavior. Mr. Musk and his supporters have expressed frustration that Grok is too “woke,” something the billionaire said in a July post that he is “working on fixing.”

Another thing Musk and Ellison have in common are serious financial pressures on their empires, making them desperate much like Israel.

The nature of the polycrisis means all players are assailed on all fronts at all times.

The Information reported that Oracle’s profit margins on its AI data center investments are low:

…internal documents show the fast-growing cloud business has had razor-thin gross profit margins in the past year or so, lower than what many equity analysts have estimated. That could raise questions about whether the AI cloud expansions undertaken by Oracle and its rivals will affect profitability and sustain investors’ expectations.

In the three months that ended in August, Oracle generated around $900 million from rentals of servers powered by Nvidia chips and recorded a gross profit of $125 million—equal to 14 cents for every $1 of sales, the documents show. That’s lower than the gross margins of many nontech retail businesses.
As sales from the business nearly tripled in the past year, the gross profit margin from those sales ranged between less than 10% and slightly over 20%, averaging around 16%, the documents show.

In some cases, Oracle is losing considerable sums on rentals of small quantities of both newer and older versions of Nvidia’s chips, the data show. A spokesperson for Oracle, which doesn’t publicly disclose the AI cloud server unit’s financials, did not have a comment on those figures.

And followed up with more:

Oracle has found it challenging to generate a gross margin of more than 25% from renting out Nvidia chips that came out one or two years ago, according to a new internal Oracle document that hasn’t been previously reported.
The document suggests some of the difficulties Oracle may face as it tries to narrow the gap between its projection and its margins today

Musk is facing a different set of pressures regarding product liability, even as he seeks a record-setting pay raise, from Motorhead:

• Tesla is being sued on 3 continents for its faulty “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) product.

• Both Chinese and Australian owners of Teslas with HW3 are suing the company because their cars can’t download the latest version of FSD.

• US owners are more deferential to Musk, but will sue for more if the details from Australia and China are ratified in court.

• Tesla could lose as much as $42 billion from reimbursing HW3 customers with HW4.

• The most consequential lawsuit is in Australia, where a group of HW3 owners launched a class action that could show that Tesla not only lied about its “FSD” capabilities, but also sold cars without such capabilities.

The Zioligarchs Haven’t Forgotten the UK

Musk has also turned his attentions to the UK following his abrupt exit from Trump’s DOGE project. From Wired:

Though Musk largely ignored UK politics this year while working in the US government at his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he appears to be back across the pond, spending his money and using his platform to elevate far-right extremists.

“A HUGE THANK YOU to @elonmusk today. Legend,” Robinson wrote on Monday, following the first day of his two-day trial for a charge related to counter-terrorism law at Westminster Magistrate’s Court in London. Robinson claimed this week that Musk had funded his defense.
…
Experts believe Musk’s current outpouring of support for the UK’s far right is part of a possible concerted effort to destabilize the region politically to prevent onerous regulations—such as the EU’s Digital Services Act or the UK’s Online Safety Act—being used to punish X.
…
The Digital Safety Act, which was passed in October 2022, requires large social media platforms like X to take timely action to moderate disinformation on their platform and remove illegal content, including hate speech. The Online Safety Act in the UK requires platforms to remove illegal content while also imposing strict age verification checks. Failure to meet these requirements could cost X huge fines—up to 6 percent of revenue under the DSA. The platform could even be blocked entirely in the region. When Musk posted “The bird is freed” in 2022 after he took over the platform, Thierry Breton, then EU commissioner for internal markets, quote-tweeted: “In Europe, the bird will fly by our [European Union] rules,” adding the hashtag #DSA.

Still, one of the first things Musk did at Twitter was gut the company’s trust and safety team. Musk also granted a “general amnesty” to accounts previously banned for harassment, abuse, and spreading misinformation.

Coincidentally, Israel has been heavily and flagrantly active in UK politics recently as well.

The Israeli Foreign Minister, Gideon Sa’ar, is giving the UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, her instructions publicly:

There’s also the matter of a certain ultra-violent bunch of football hooligans who were banned from the UK but a certain sock-puppet prime minister spoke out against it:

Desperation + Complete Control Drives Impunity

The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner interviewed Nathan Thrall, a former director at the International Crisis Group about the lessons Israel has taken from its pyrrhic victory in Gaza:

Nathan Thrall: what has really changed is that ethnic cleansing has become a part of the mainstream public discourse. It is something that I had previously thought was not unimaginable but very unlikely outside of some major regional war. Now it is discussed. People are polled on it. One poll found that eighty-two per cent of Israeli Jews favored expelling Gazans. You can quibble with one poll or another, but you have clear Israeli Jewish majorities in favor of pushing Palestinians outside of Gaza. At some level, many Israelis feel that their basic predicament, the predicament of Zionism, is unresolved so long as there are millions of Palestinians living in the territory under their control.

Isaac Chotiner: When you say this has become part of mainstream discourse, what are you referring to?

Thrall: I’m talking about leading figures in the media, ministers in the government, and members of the Knesset discussing expulsion. I’m talking about Israelis from the center left putting forward plans for what they call voluntary “transfer” from Gaza. Ram Ben-Barak, a Knesset member from a centrist party, was the co-author of one of these plans. This is not a fringe notion anymore. And this comes from the fact that Israelis are unwilling to give Palestinians a state, or equal rights. What is left is either the continuation of apartheid or ethnic cleansing—and ethnic cleansing is appealing because it feels like a solution. Whereas apartheid feels like it may be sustainable, but is a nonsolution. It feels like the issue is not resolved.

Israel is also escalating in its treatment of an American journalist in the West Bank and flaunting its power over U.S. embassies:

As reported in today’s Naked Capitalism links, reporter Jasper Nathaniel is covering settler attacks in the West Bank:

Nathaniel believes his life has been endangered in the process of covering this story and accuses the Israelis of luring him into a potentially deadly trap:

And he documented the (lack of) response of American officials he contacted:

Shades of the late martyr Rafaat Alareer who blamed Bari Weiss for his death in advance, Nathaniel is calling out Ambassador Mike Huckabee should anything happen (let’s hope it doesn’t):

Glenn Greenwald points out how Israel’s impunity is derived from control over the U.S. government:

Max Blumenthal also notes the increasingly extreme American “influencers” Israel is cultivating.

These are the actions of desperate actors armed with impunity and high on the fumes of their own funeral pyre.

A massive protest by Orthodox Jews at the Israeli consulate in New York against Israel’s proposed draft law changes can’t be calming things down in Tel Aviv either:

Once Easily Dismissed Conspiracy Theories Now Drive the Narrative

I want to close by quoting Dr. Aaron Good, author of “American Exception: Empire and the Deep State” from a recent appearance on the BettBeat podcast:

Dr. Aaron Good: We haven’t been acting as you know pragmatic rational imperialists and I think that the the Zionism in particular is what has propelled this that it is something that is hard to wrap your mind around for a number of reasons.

Among them the fact that we’re so discouraged from looking at the way that these actors operate you know in the the bigger picture.

I mean, that’s funny that one of the things that Charlie Kirk was saying about his woes for the last few months when talking about Israeli donor, pro-Israeli donors pulling out of his coalition and so on, he says they act in such a stereotypical fashion, right?

Like they act like all the stereotypes and, when you think about that, is he is he accurate about that? And yes, he is.

I mean, they literally had the guy from Minnesota, Norm Coleman, and he was on stage. He’s a Zionist Jewish American, and he was saying, “What’s going on on social media and Tik Tok? Come on. We own Facebook. We’re the masters of the universe. Jews own social media.”

(Coleman) says something to that effect, right? Which if you’d said that, you know, six years ago, if you’d said those exact things, you’d be like, “Oh, he had an anti-Semitic meltdown, you know?”

But this is actually the way that they think about these things. And people like Larry Ellison are literally rich Jewish Zionists whose approach to the problems with Israel’s legitimacy are ‘I’m just going to use all my money, buy all the media, and manipulate it so that people don’t hear bad things, don’t hear about the crimes that are being committed, including the mass slaughter of children.’

I mean, recall for how many times in in recent years they would say, “That’s a blood libel. You’re saying that we kill babies and eat them, right? Or or whatever. And they would freak out about that. But you really can’t libel them at this point.

Good also connects the push for complete media and narrative control back to the assassination of Charlie Kirk (which I’ve covered in the immediate aftermath but haven’t tied back to the zionist acquisitions of Paramount and TikTok.):

Dr. Aaron Good: It was remarkable what Kirk was saying and that he was saying, ‘I’m gonna have to break with Israel, you know, and he he reportedly told people he was worried they were going to kill him and then he dies.’

And you consider that in light of the fact that Zionist actors just bought TikTok. They just bought CBS. I mean, Zionist actors did because they really want to control the whole media and make sure that nobody is there’s no platform where where people are allowed to just say things about Palestinians like with TikTok.

Interviewer: That’s what everything now everything is now Zionist owned pretty much.

Good: It’s so scary if you think about it. Pretty much everything that we use.

And how did that come to be the case?

I don’t think in in the early years after the cold war that the power and wealth were that concentrated in the hands of Jewish Zionist bazillionaires.

Something changed in the in the way the economy played out and that’s kind of a different question but something has changed in that regard.

It’s so brazen and when you think about the fact that these are people who we know will kill people if they deem it necessary. They’ll kill people enormous amounts of people, children, and they don’t even care if the world sees it ultimately.

I mean they would rather them not but they they will do it even though they know the world’s watching and the that they are going to brazenly buy all these outlets in broad daylight suggests that they are obsessed with controlling the narrative and then the damage that Kirk would have done if he continued on that path.

It’s a very obvious motive. is a very obvious motive for people who we know kill people all the time.

I’m embedding the entire 90 minute video because it’s important to see Good’s remarks in their full context, particularly the distinction he makes between left and right critics of the zionist oligarchy and the latter’s interest strictly in conspiracy while paying no attention to the fundamental structural economic forces that produce imperialist ethno-supremacist oligarchies.

These are truly the interesting times we were warned about.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

Before I focus on our characters, let’s put things in political context with this dire warning from Seymour Hersh:

What’s happening now may be a trial run for the use of those forces to interfere on the behalf of the president and the Republican Party in states where the Democratic Party has a chance to win crucial seats in next fall’s Congressional elections. I’ve been told by someone with inside knowledge that planning for such action is now under way in the White House.

I’ve previously attempted to parse the Trump 2.0 combination of bad intentions, competent elements, sheer corruption, and amazing ineptitude here and here.

There’s been plenty of buffoonery this week but too many serious doings to focus on more than a minimum of oafishness.

The first member of the Trump Trio Hersh mentions in the piece, albeit without explicitly crediting him with the scheme cited above, is Russell Vought.

As the Trump administration wrests control of the federal administration, Russell Vought seems to be the man at the wheel.

The Washington Post gets into the deets today:

The White House was aggressively encroaching on Congress’s power of the purse even before it began using the ongoing government shutdown as justification for rolling back billions more in spending.

Democratic, and many Republican, appropriators are angry at Trump’s White House for unilaterally canceling contracts, abruptly freezing billions of dollars in congressionally sanctioned funding and trying out a “pocket rescission” technique to permanently withhold $5 billion in foreign aid without congressional input.

“It is an absolute threat to Congress’s power of the purse,” said Robert Shea, a Republican who served in senior political roles at the White House budget office. “I come from a time when the administration feared the repercussions of crossing the appropriators. That time has passed.”

The Trump administration — led by budget chief Russell Vought — is intentionally pushing the boundaries of executive authority on government spending. Vought wants the Supreme Court to hear challenges to the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which puts strict limits on the ability of the executive branch to withhold money that has been approved by Congress. Vought has said he believes that law is unconstitutional.

“If Congress lays down its arms on its most fundamental authority, I don’t know what leg they’re going to have to stand on going forward,” said Brendan Buck, who was an aide to former GOP House speakers Paul D. Ryan and John A. Boehner. “Presidents will take advantage of this opportunity, knowing this is one more area where Congress has weakened itself and the administration can just run over them.”

Initially Vought allied with Elon Musk on the DOGE project as well as the Heritage Foundation with its Project 25 effort.

But now he appears to be acting as an independent agent and an audacious one, from Politico in June:

Whereas Musk bulldozed through bureaucracy and largely ignored Capitol Hill, Vought relies on a different playbook: pushing change through institutional channels, backroom conversations, and contingency planning. That sort of meticulousness and deep understanding of government has inspired fear among federal workers as he strengthens presidential authority to dismantle large parts of the federal bureaucracy, underscoring that unlike Musk, Vought actually knows how to get things done.

His ultimate goal is to “bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will,” and use it to send power from Washington and back to America’s families, churches, local governments and states, he wrote in Project 2025.

“It wasn’t actually Musk holding a chainsaw. Musk was a chainsaw in Russ Vought’s hands,” said a senior government employee with a front row seat to Trump’s remaking of government, who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to describe it.

The contrast between the two men is stark, and increasingly consequential. While Musk operated with a kind of maniacal urgency, Vought has proven he’s willing to slow down before speeding up. While Musk staffed DOGE with tech loyalists barely old enough to rent cars, Vought’s team at OMB is a veteran-heavy group with deep roots in government.

Sy Hersh warned months ago of Vought’s ambitions before his aggressive actions during the current government shutdown:

The administration’s plan to seize unprecedented unilateral power upon winning the election last year was no secret. Although some issues are now in the hands of the Supreme Court, the GOP’s notion was always to wipe out a large portion of the federal workforce in Washington and elsewhere. A major reveal came last fall in an interview Russell Voight gave to Tucker Carlson before his approval by Senate Republicans as head of the Office of Management and Budget: “We have to solve the woke and the weaponized bureaucracy and have the president take control of the Executive Branch,” he said. “The president has to move executively as fast, and as aggressively as possible with a radical Constitutional perspective to dismantle that bureaucracy in their power centers.

“There are no independent agencies,” Vought told Carlson. “There are going to be massive layoffs and firing, particularly across some of the agencies that we don’t even think should exist.”

All of this was God’s mandate, Vought explained: “We’re put here for a reason . . . because God has given us a particular purpose for a particular time, and it’s incumbent on us to be responsible with those moments that we’re given.” (I wrote about that interview last fall.) Vought has taken advantage of the current government shutdown to fire even more presumably Democratic federal workers.

Hersh previously wrote about Vought last May, again citing the Fall 2024 Vought YouTube interview with Carlson:

“The left has innovated over one hundred years to create this fourth branch of an administrative state. You and I might call it the regime— this administrative state that is totally unaccountable to the president that lets it move in the direction that it has been going. . . . They have essentially taken authority. . . . They have no legitimate authority in the Constitution. . . . [The president says:] ‘I am fully aware of the tools at my disposal and I’m going to use them on behalf of the American people . . . I’m going to go do what I said I would do. . . .’ It will certainly read in the papers like chaos. That’s good.

“Yeah, you’re going to have to kick over peoples’ paradigms. You’re going to have to kick over people’s turfs. You’re going to have to change peoples’ understanding of things that they have invested their whole life into. . . . That’s going to cause a lot of turmoil into these bureaucracies, and you got to fight through it . . . the aspect of ‘Oh my gosh, you guys are racist and you guys don’t care about us as people. . . . One of the arguments they’re using in the press against me right now, as they say, ‘He called for trauma inside the bureaucracies.’ Yeah, I called for trauma within the bureaucracies.

“The bureaucracies hate the American people. . . . So, yeah, I would want to provide trauma against that bureaucracy in a way that frees the American people from the people that have assumed the type of power that the Constitution in no law, no public debate ever gave them. Does that mean we dislike everyone working at federal agencies and want them to have a bad life. No, of course. . . . We want to turn over the bureaucracies that [are] traumatizing the American people. . . . I think [Trump is] so unique in terms of being an historical transformational person that can actually save the country. . . . We’re put here for a reason. We’re put here because God has given us a particular purpose for a particular time, and it’s incumbent to us to be responsible with those moments that we’re given.”

So let’s presume if Vought is doing the inside-the-beltway nerd labor to gut internal opposition before the 2026 elections, then Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is handling the action on the streets.

ICE is absolutely dominating the news cycle and drawing all attention away from Vought’s administrative moves and the government shutdown. Check these headlines:

Miller is also the member of the Trump Trio who drew attention in a recent CNN interview by implying that ICE might not comply with court orders in Oregon.

Boris Sanchez, CNN: You’ve called the district judge’s ruling blocking the deployment of National Guard in Oregon, illegal insurrection. Does the administration still plan to abide by that ruling?

Stephen Miller: Well, the administration filed an appeal this morning with the Ninth Circuit. I would note the administration won an identical case in the Ninth Circuit just a few months ago with respect to the federal housing of the California National Guard under title ten of the U.S. code. The president has plenary authority.

After a technical glitch, Sanchez goes back to the exact same question and drews a slightly different answer from Miller:

Sanchez: You’ve called the district judge’s ruling blocking the deployment of National Guard in Oregon, illegal insurrection. Does the administration still plan to abide by that ruling?

Miller: Well, the administration will abide by the ruling insofar as it affects the covered parties.

But there are also many other options. The president has to deploy federal resources and source assets out of the US military to Portland, basically making the point that under federal law, section, title ten of the U.S. code, the president has the authority any time he believes federal resources are insufficient to federalize the National Guard to carry out a mission necessary for public safety.

So it’s important to understand that in Portland, ICE officers have been subjected to over 100 nights of terrorist assault, doxing, murder threats, violent attack, and every other means imaginable to try to overturn the results of the last election through violence.

The most important point I want to make today is that the number one and two items in the GOP platform in 2024 were to turn back the border invasion and carry out the largest deportation program in American history since Inauguration Day.

There has been an orchestrated campaign of terrorism and violence against ICE officers. Of course, we saw the recent sniper attack against ICE officers. They’re publishing their families photos online. They’re threatening them with murder or threatening with death, and they’re physically attacking them in the street each and every day. And yet, shamefully, the mayor and governor in Portland and Oregon have refused to render aid, leaving ICE officers to street fight every single night against these terrorists.

Even as Vought and Miller tag team on a truly frightening and seemingly well-executed attempt at an authoritarian clampdown, the third of our Trump Trio, Eric Trump, the closest to POTUS Trump himself seem to have more personalized and profitable concerns.

I’m referring to the hot mic exchange between Donald Trump and Indonesian president President Prabowo Subianto:

During the exchange, which took place on a live camera feed shortly after Trump addressed a gathering of leaders in Egypt to laud the Gaza ceasefire plan, Subianto asked Trump to meet with “Eric,” presumably referring to Eric Trump, president’s son who is the executive vice president of the Trump Organization.

“Would you do that?” Trump responds. “He’s such a good boy. I’ll have Eric call you.”

Neither leader appeared to be aware that their conversation was being picked up by a microphone. The audio is muffled and at times difficult to discern. It was not clear exactly what the two men were discussing.

Tom Pepinsky, a Cornell University professor of government had some context although he doesn’t seem interested in Eric’s role specifically:

President Prabowo Subianto’s hot-mic moment with President Trump revealed to the world just how many foreign leaders are eager to exploit the Trump administration’s transactional foreign policy. While we do not know what exactly they discussed, we do know that Prabowo asked for a meeting with Eric and Don, and offered access in return to Hary Tanoesoedibjo, an Indonesian billionaire with close ties to Trump.

“Trump received millions of dollars from Indonesia during his first administration, and the extent of his personal stake in Indonesian real estate and hospitality development remains unknown. Their hot-mic conversation was a window into the corruption and lawbreaking of President Trump, who has turned U.S. foreign policy into a tool for petty corruption and insider deal-making instead of supporting U.S. national interests.

I am under the impression that Eric and his brother Don, Jr. have marginalized their sister Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner from the Trump real estate empire, am I wrong or was that less the case in the first term?

The Center for American Progress documented some of these relationships in the first Trump term and predicted the 2019 victory of Subianto:

In the summer of 2015, Donald Trump signed a deal with Hary Tanoesoedibjo—an Indonesian billionaire and head of the Indonesian company MNC Group—under which the Trump Organization will manage two resorts to be developed by MNC at a cost of between $500 million and $1 billion. One of the planned resorts is to be located in Bali overlooking an important and often-photographed Hindu temple and will be the largest resort on the island. The other resort will be located in Lido, about 50 miles south of Jakarta, and will adjoin a theme park.

Hary Tanoesoedibjo has a shady financial record. In 2016, for example, he was implicated in an ongoing tax evasion scandal with a telecommunications company he previously owned, though he has proclaimed his innocence. As described by Foreign Policy, “Hary Tanoesoedibjo is a billionaire reality TV impresario with a rich dad, over a million Twitter followers, a love for Vladimir Putin, a trail of tax avoidance allegations, and outsized political ambitions.”

Trump’s conflicts also threaten to spill out into Indonesian politics. Hary Tanoesoedibjo, who sought the country’s vice presidency in 2014, formed his own political party in 2016 and has said he will run for president in 2019. While his own candidacy is unlikely to succeed, he will almost certainly be a key backer of defeated 2014 presidential candidate and would-be strongman Prabowo Subianto, who is likely to face Indonesia’s current president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in a rematch in 2019. Should Prabowo Subianto win, Hary Tanoesoedibjo will be in a position of significant influence.

And despite not fitting neatly into my Trump Trio conceit (mandated by Google FYI, apologies) this corruption story is just too typical of Trump 2.0 not to include.

From Mother Jones:

…the Department of Homeland Security handed a massive aviation contract, potentially worth nearly $1 billion, to a relatively new company with no federal contracting experience, following an opaque and seemingly hurried process.
…
The three-year deal to fly migrants back to their home countries went to Salus Worldwide Solutions, a company founded by a former State Department official named William Walters. Until early September, the DHS division overseeing the contract was run by Christopher Pratt, a former State Department colleague of Walters. The White House had nominated Pratt for a high-level position to serve as the State Department’s main liaison with the Pentagon, but pulled his nomination on September 29.

Internal DHS records seen by Mother Jones show that Pratt was involved in the contract award to Salus. In April, before the contract was awarded, Pratt scheduled DHS offsite meetings at Salus’s office, and he personally congratulated Walters after his company won the contract.

The contract, worth up to $915 million, is for air operations to support the administration’s effort to persuade millions of undocumented immigrants to “self-deport,” a key plank in the Trump administration’s immigration policy. The White House calls the program “Project Homecoming.” Under it, immigrants who use a Customs and Border Protection app to self-deport are being offered a $1,000 “exit bonus” and free travel. This program is at least partially funded by money that Congress earmarked to provide foreign aid to help refugees, but which the Trump administration has repurposed for “self-deportations,”

A picture is worth a thousand words with this caper, Trump Trio or no:

Salus CEO William Walters’ LinkedIn resume is interesting:

His time at State gets more detail than anything else (apologies for the small print, click through to Linked In for an enlargeable version):

And let’s not forget his humble beginnings, including 4 months in Iraq, where none of the Trump trio ever served:

Might as well look at the inside man on the caper’s DHS bio while we’re flipping over rocks:

Christopher C. Pratt
Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans

Christopher C. Pratt currently serves as the Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (Senior Official Performing the Duties thereof).

Drawing on extensive experience in national security and international engagement, he is responsible for driving policy and implementation plans across all of DHS’s missions, including counterterrorism; cybersecurity, infrastructure security and resilience; border security and immigration; international affairs; and trade and economic security. He previously served as DHS’s Assistant Secretary for International Affairs, advancing U.S. national security interests and DHS priorities through collaboration with global partners.

Mr. Pratt previously served as the Principal Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs at the Department of State, where he led sensitive negotiations and engaged in high-stakes diplomacy to secure the release of American hostages and improve the government’s response to hostage-taking incidents. Prior to this role, he facilitated cross-agency collaboration to support complex recovery operations as Chief of Hostage Recovery/Personnel Recovery/NAR in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Department of Defense.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Pratt spent a decade in the private sector, where he designed and managed programs for U.S. Government entities, including establishing interagency initiatives in Afghanistan to advance mission-critical goals. He served as an advisor to the Commander of all forces in Afghanistan, as well as the Commanding General of all special operations forces.

A former practitioner of intellectual property law, he holds a Juris Doctor from The George Washington University Law School and a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from Virginia Tech. Proficient in Pashto and Swedish, Mr. Pratt’s diverse background and expertise in diplomacy, negotiations, and cross-cultural engagement have equipped him to navigate complex international landscapes and deliver results that advance national and global security.

His official photo is worth well over 10,000 words and would complement portraits of any of the Trump trio:

What’s more all-American than a couple of old colleagues pulling off an apparent inside-outside deal that could seemingly set at least one of them up for life, if not at Trump Trio levels.

I wonder what Under Secretary Pratt stands to gain, he’ll never be in the Trump trio, but a rising swamp raises all rodents.

Does he have a rabbi at DHS who keeps an eye out for him and reports up the chain, possibly all the way to DHS Secretary Krisi Noem? Is one of the Trump Trio aware (seems unlikely)?

Does Noem know that this kind of thing is going on or is it just a free-for-all at DHS. A well-organized authoritarian administration should include internal controls for including all the right people if nothing else. Wouldn’t want a chaotic atmosphere adding friction to the works.

The Trump trio shouldn’t have to handle everything themselves.

Just goes to show the egalitarian nature of Trump 2.0, a couple of decades as GOP apparatchiks and almost anyone can be in place for a potentially career-making deal, whether a Trump Trio insider or not.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

For those not familiar with the term, Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall defined it thusly in their book Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement:

“Snitch-jacketing” or “bad-jacketing” refers to the practice of creating suspicion — through the spread of rumors, manufacture of evidence, etc — that bona fide organizational members, usually in key positions, are FBI/police informers, guilty of such offenses as skimming organizational funds and the like. The purpose of this tactic was to “isolate and eliminate” organizational leadership; such efforts were continued — and in some instances accelerated — when it became known that the likely outcome would be extreme physical violence visited upon the “jacketed” individual(s).

In our farcical 2025 timeline, these techniques have been replaced by (mostly) online analogues.

Katie Porter Has Made Many Establishment Enemies

First up, we’ve got former U.S. Representative Katie Porter who was leading the 2026 California gubernatorial race in multiple polls and fundraising.

Porter became nationally known (and a favorite at Naked Capitalism) for exchanges like this one with JP Morgan Chase CEO Jaimie Dimon:

She also earned kudos for a 2021 report on Big Pharma:

Rep. Katie Porter on Friday published a damning report revealing the devastating effects of Big Pharma mergers and acquisitions on U.S. healthcare, and recommending steps Congress should take to enact “comprehensive, urgent reform” of an integral part of a broken healthcare system.

The report, entitled Killer Profits: How Big Pharma Takeovers Destroy Innovation and Harm Patients, begins by noting that “in just 10 years, the number of large, international pharmaceutical companies decreased six-fold, from 60 to only 10.”

Porter also went viral for roasting the CEO of Abbvie, a pharmaceutical company:

Naturally, corporate Dems, led by Nancy Pelosi, pushed her off the House Financial Services Committee in 2021.

As Howie Klein reported at the time, “Pelosi has pushed her off the committee at the urging on the banksters, the Fed and Wall Street special interests. In a conversation with another member of the committee, an admirer of Porter’s, I was told that it was a combination of the Fed and Wall Street that demanded her removal.”

The Los Angeles Times had more on the feathers Porter ruffled en route to getting knifed in the back in a piece headlined, “House Democrats loved her, until she made them squirm”:

Porter recently took aim at House Democrats’ rules and traditions for what is usually a behind-the-scenes competition to determine which lawmakers sit on which coveted committees.

It was a calculated high-stakes gamble that resulted in Porter not returning this year to sit on the Financial Services Committee, one of the House’s most sought-after panels and one for which the former bankruptcy and consumer law professor was highly suited.

Her sharp-elbowed maneuvering and willingness to publicly confront party leaders such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Los Angeles Rep. Maxine Waters underscored the brash determination that made Porter the surprise national standout of California’s 2018 House freshman class — and a strong contender for the U.S. Senate someday.

But in an institution fueled by seniority and relationships — especially within one’s own party — Porter’s tendency to ruffle feathers could cost her the allies she will need in the future in order to get legislation approved.
…
“This is a place that operates on relationships,” said one Democratic lawmaker, echoing a sentiment repeated by others but speaking on condition of anonymity. “These things don’t win Katie any friends.”
…
“It’s so hard to break out and have a national presence,” said longtime Democratic operative Bill Carrick. “She managed to be able to do that in her first term, especially on the Financial Services side.”
…
Porter immediately clashed with committee Chairwoman Waters, a powerful member of the California delegation who is close with Pelosi. In addition to balancing the needs of her party’s moderates with the boisterous newcomers, Waters, a longtime force on Democrats’ left flank, didn’t always see eye to eye with the new crop of progressives.

The first time Porter tried to use a poster board in the committee, Waters upheld a Republican objection, citing committee rules. When Porter came back to another hearing with a “Financial Services bingo” board, Waters again told her to take it down. “We’ve talked about this before,” she said.

Porter balked at Waters’ ruling. “Are we adding additional committee rules at this time?” asked Porter, whose use of such props was not an issue on the House Oversight Committee.In a show of her emerging political star power, Porter eventually got to display the bingo poster — on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”

Heidi N. Moore summed up Porter’s greatest hits:

• Porter didn’t just bust Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan for bullshitting, it was about something important: The willingness of Wall Street executives to pledge publicly that they were committed to winning customer trust when, in fact, Porter had proof that the company saw those statements as bullshit. Sloan resigned two weeks later.

• Porter got JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to admit he was unable to solve basic financial problems. Such as whether a JPMorgan Chase teller taking home $29,100 annually could raise her daughter and make ends meet. Should she get a JPMorgan Chase credit card? “I don’t know,” Dimon said. Overdraft at his bank? “I don’t know,” Dimon said.

• When Porter asked Trump Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson about real-estate owned (REO) properties, which fail to sell during foreclosure auctions, Carson replied: “Oreo?” He then said, “Real-estate…organization?” Carson didn’t know that his own agency had a ton of REO housing-loan properties, meaning they were auctioning, and failing to sell, properties rather than working with distressed home-owners. Porter had deftly illustrated the real-world problems that arise when a fake real-estate mogul gives his housing agency to a guy whose expertise was literally cutting apart twins conjoined at the head.

• And then there was that moment that may have saved, I dunno, let’s say hundreds of thousands of people? During five minutes of questioning, Porter got Trump’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield to pledge he would use his legal authorities to make COVID tests available for free, for everyone, in March of 2020.

Schiff Rigs a Senate Race

In 2024, Porter ran for U.S. Senate where she came in third in the non-partisan primary which saw RussiaGater Adam Schiff and senescent baseball Hall of Famer Steve Garvey advance to the general election.

As Roll Call summed up the race, “Porter’s ability to raise campaign cash lagged behind Schiff’s, who brought in $32.8 million to Porter’s $28 million. Schiff’s gambit to run ads focusing on Garvey boosted the Republican’s underfunded campaign and effectively blocked Porter from winning one of the November ballot slots.”

After the loss, Porter tweeted “we had the establishment running scared — withstanding 3 to 1 in TV spending and an onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig this election.”

Her use of the term “rigged” was seized on by her foes in the Democratic party establishment, and the MSM. See the Politico pile-on piece headlined Katie Porter pulled a Trump move after losing. Democrats are livid.:

Porter’s claim spurred an indirect rebuke from Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who wrote that California’s vote was “not rigged.” And Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who formerly oversaw California voting as the state’s top elections official, called the notion “ridiculous” without naming Porter.

“It’s not rigged,” Padilla told POLITICO. “As the former secretary of state of California, I can assure you of the integrity of the elections and the results.”

So when Porter emerged as the front-runner after Kamala Harris elected not to run, the California Democratic establishment was not happy, as shown by Politico’s piece titled “The case against Katie Porter’s inevitability”:

…there’s a crowded field of Democratic contenders now preparing to test Porter’s potential vulnerabilities, including her baggage from a failed Senate bid last year and lukewarm relationship with some powerful party insiders.

“I don’t believe this race has a front-runner in it,” said Kyle Layman, consultant to Xavier Becerra, another Democratic candidate and a former Health and Human Services secretary. “The race really started [last week]. We don’t even know where the field is at.”
…
Porter could also face a run for her money, literally. Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis already has about $9 million cash on hand between her two campaign accounts (most of which her campaign said can be transferred). Kounalakis is likely to have deep campaign pockets. She’s well connected in wealthy San Francisco circles and is the daughter of prominent developer Angelo Tsakopoulos.

Another candidate who’s pouring money into the contest is billionaire Stephen Cloobeck, who’s put in $13 million of his own wealth. All of which is to say, Porter’s fundraising prowess in past congressional runs might not translate in a statewide contest.
…
Pelosi, one of the biggest kingmakers in Democratic politics, could play an outsize role in shaping which candidate corners the support of some unions and major donors. She has already said she supports Kounalakis, her longtime ally and fellow San Franciscan.

It’s unclear if Pelosi will go to the mat for Kounalakis in the way she did for Schiff in the Senate race — a key factor that blunted Porter’s early momentum. And it’s to be seen whether the party’s two other California standard bearers — Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom — will wade into the contest.

The California establishment was waiting to pounce and Porter gave them their chance.

Crank Jacketing Katie Porter

So the stage was set when Porter sat down to be interviewed by CBS’ Julie Watts.

Watts asked a sort of stupid question, but Porter definitely made a mistake in obsessing on the question as asked rather than following the fundamental rule taught to every political candidate in media training: Ignore the question and say what you want the public to hear.

Here’s a partial transcript:

Julie Watts: What do you say to the 40% of California voters who you’ll need in order to win um who voted for Trump?

Katie Porter: How would I need them in order to win?

Watts: Ma’am, well, unless you think you’re going to get 60% of the vote. You think you’ll get 60 all everybody who did not vote for Trump will vote for you. That’s what what you’re saying in a general election.

Porter: Yes. If it is me versus a Republican, I think that I will win the people who did not vote for Trump.

Watts: What if it’s you versus another Democrat?

Porter: I don’t intend that to be the case.

Watts: So, how do you not intend that to be the case? Do do you are you going to ask them not to run?

Porter: No. No. I’m saying I’m going to build the support. I have the support already in terms of name recognition. And so, I’m going to do the very best I can to make sure that we get through this primary in a really strong position. But let me be clear with you. I represented Orange County. I represented a purple area. I have stood on my own two feet and won Republican votes before. That’s not something every candidate in this race can say. If you’re from a deep blue area, if you’re from LA or you’re from Oakland, you haven’t you don’t have an experience.

Watts: But you just said you don’t need those Trump voters.

Porter: Well, you asked me if I needed them to win. So, you don’t need I feel like this is unnecessarily argumentative. What is your question?

Watts: The question is the same thing I asked everybody that this is being called the empowering voters to stop Trump’s power grab. Every other candidate has answered this question.

Porter: This is not… I said I support it.

Watts:So, and the question is, what do you say to the 40% of voters who voted for Trump?

Porter: Oh, I’m happy to say that. It’s the do you need them to win part that I don’t understand. I’m happy to answer the answer the question as you have it written and I’ll answer it.

Watts: And we’ve also asked the other candidates, do you think you need any of those 40% of California voters to win? And you’re saying no, you don’t.

Porter: No, I’m saying I’m going to try to win every vote I can.

Watts: And what I’m saying to you is that…

Porter: Well, to those voters. Okay. So, so you I don’t want to keep doing this. I’m going to call it. Thank you.

Watts: You’re not going to do the interview with us?

Porter: Nope. Not like this. I’m not not with seven follow-ups to every single question you ask.

Watts: Every other candidate has answered.

Porter: I don’t care. I want to have a pleasant, positive conversation in which you ask me about every issue on this list. And if every question you’re going to make up a follow-up question, then we’re never going to get there and we’re just going to circle around.

Watts: I am an investigative.

Porter: I’ve (never) had to do this before. Ever.

Watts: You’ve never had to have a conversation with

Porter: …to end an interview.

Watts: Okay. But every other candidate has done this.

Porter: I…What part of I’m me. I’m running for governor because I’m a leader. So I am going to make…

Watts: So you’re not going to answer questions from reporters. Okay. Why don’t we go through I will continue to ask follow-up questions because that’s my job as a journalist. But I will go through and ask these and if you don’t want to answer, you don’t want to answer. So nearly every legislative donor…

Porter: I don’t want to have an unhappy experience with you and I don’t want this all on camera.

Watts:I don’t want to have an unhappy experience with you either. I would love to continue to ask these questions so that we can show our viewers what every candidate feels about every one of these issues that they care about and redistricting. It’s a massive issue. We’re going to do an entire story just on the responses to that question. And I’ve asked everybody the same follow-up questions.

Porter did not leave the interview and stayed another twenty minutes to answer Watts’ questions.

The Bad Jacketing of Katie Porter

The corporate media was quick to pounce:

The New York Times mischaracterized the exchange:

In the three-minute video, she dismissively rejected a question that suggested she needed to reach out to Republicans and threatened to abandon the interview after she was frustrated with several follow-ups.

Porter did not “dismissively rejected a question that suggested she needed to reach out to Republicans,” she objected to the premise that she needed Republican votes to win an election in a state with a 60% Democratic electorate.

The Times proceeded to let Porter’s primary opponents comment anonymously:

Fellow Democratic candidates said Ms. Porter “thinks she’s already won,” “can’t answer basic questions” and that the governor’s race is “no place for temper tantrums.” One opponent called on her to drop out of the race.

Naturally her primary opponents went on the attack:

But it was the corporate press who did most of the bad jacketing.

From New York Magazine:

Then someone leaked a 2021 exchange in which Porter snapped at a staffer to Politico.

Rhonda Elaine Foxx, a former Joe Biden and Kamala Harris staffer joined the pile on:

Heidi Moore pointed out the glass houses aspect of a former Kamala Harris staffer going after Porter on this issue:

Definitely something to consider, but can you clarify why her behavior is worse than that of your former bosses? Looks kind of like the same thing, no? pic.twitter.com/LXmEPPWINY

— Heidi N. Moore (@moorehn) October 9, 2025

Considering the number of former Kamala staffers attacking Katie Porter, I fear that the leaks and attempted downfall of Porter is coming from the camp of Ms. Harris, a rumored candidate for CA Governor and occupant of the most fragile of glass houses pic.twitter.com/vQL1DvfZCm

— Heidi N. Moore (@moorehn) October 9, 2025

David Sirota made some good points:

Yashar Ali actually has a good suggestion for Porter, although I doubt his sincerity:

This is a disheartening dynamic I’ve been seeing since the demolition of Howard Dean in 2004. Any Democratic candidate with populist appeal and a willingness to take on the power structure must be absolutely perfect at all times.

If someone like Katie Porter makes even the slightest mistake, the Democratic party establishment and corporate media go for the kill.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

Both Illinois officials responded defiantly on social media, as seen below.

Trump is also threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act.

He’s already issued the alarming National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 as reported by Ken Klippenstein.

My question is: Are any of these people serious?

Trump is clearly intent on making an authoritarian power grab and is likely trying to bait political opponents into Quixotic acts of resistance.

ICE agents in Illinois have been caught committing “jackbootery” as NC posted on Tuesday.

The Democrats seem oblivious to the nature of kinetic reality and incapable of going beyond ineffectual rhetoric and lawsuits, so far.

The legal angle is egregiously pointless and impotent given the corrupt courts in the Trump 2.0 era.

But what if things escalate out of anyone’s control?

What if Trump or the Democrats “work themselves into a shoot?”

A work is everything that happens within the fictional world of wrestling. Everything you see on TV during a WWE show is a work and, with the advent of social media, more and more of what fans read from wrestlers on Twitter or Instagram is also a work. The thing about a work is that the goal is to elicit a response from the audience. When a wrestler is “working” in the ring they want the live audience to cheer them if they are a “babyface,” or good guy, and boo them if they are a heel.
…
A “shoot” is something real or legitimate. It breaks the fictional world of the work. It’s something not part of the show or part of the character.

…wrestling fans want to get worked. Since the 1990s, most wrestling fans know that the WWE is scripted entertainment and that the performers in the ring are working together to tell a story through their matches. In short, we all know it’s a work. This has made it a lot harder for wrestlers and wrestling companies to work the fans and get the responses they want from them. The companies need those responses because it’s the emotional response and enjoyment of getting caught up in the show, in the work, that makes fans spend money. Getting worked is also the fun part of wrestling for fans. They want to get sucked into the fictional world of the show. Wrestling companies need to work the fans and the fans want to be worked.

American political partisans want to get worked.

We want to take our minds off the enshittification of our shared reality by imagining that we are on the verge of a definitive national political cataclysm, but the reality is no one living has any idea what such a thing would entail.

The Latest Tomfoolery

Pritzker put out a statement on Sunday as well:

“This evening, President Trump is ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard for deployments to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations within the United States. No officials from the federal government called me directly to discuss or coordinate.

“We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion. It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops. ​

“I call on Governor Abbott to immediately withdraw any support for this decision and refuse to coordinate. There is no reason a President should send military troops into a sovereign state without their knowledge, consent, or cooperation. ​

“The brave men and women who serve in our national guards must not be used as political props. This is a moment where every American must speak up and help stop this madness.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott responded:

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson spoke up too:

Trump has previously deployed forces to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Is the Clampdown Already Here?

Tucker Carlson, who’s recently been mixed up in “the political blender” due to his opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, goes full Christian Nationalist and endorses Trump’s ICE antics in his latest video:

Why is America moving towards civil war?

For the same reason all countries that wind up in civil war get there because the differences between their population between people within their borders becomes too great to bear.

People decide I have nothing in common with people who live near me and I don’t want to live near them anymore. In other words, diversity difference is actually intolerable to most people. Not necessarily racial diversity, though sometimes that too, but diversity of all kinds.

It is not our strength. In fact, it is without question our weakness and it has always been. If you have nothing in common with your wife, do you have a stronger marriage? No. Of course, your marriage falls apart. And the same is true for countries.

And the truth about the United States is that on every level, beginning with a demographic level, the American population has less in common with itself, with one another than ever before.
…
So if you want to prevent a civil war, figure out what everybody or at least the bulk of the people in your nation have in common and emphasize that. And so what would that be in our case? Hard to know.

In fact, at this stage, really the only realistic hope for national unity is spiritual revival. Is a place where most Americans wake up to realize that God exists and created every single person in the United States of America. And that’s what we have in common, our humanity.

Not because our common humanity is meaningful by itself, but because our common humanity comes from God and we’re created in his image. And only when people truly realize that will they hesitate before killing each other.

We hope that comes soon, but in the meantime, there is a step that the government at all levels, federal, state, and local, can take to restore at least a sense of calm in the midst of rising chaos.
…
So out of chaos comes what? Democracy, spontaneous order. No. Imposed order. Dictatorship. Of course, each and every time that’s what happens out of chaos. People beg for a strong man. There’s always someone willing to oblige. And that’s exactly what they get. And that’s exactly what we’re going to get unless some kind of order is restored. Which is another way of saying restoring order is not a step toward totalitarianism. It may be the only way to prevent it, but we need to do it now.

Trump and his Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller are believed by some to be deliberately provoking confrontation as a pretext for further authoritarian measures.

Thomas Edsall expressed that view in The New York Times:

Over the past four weeks, he has initiated what amounts to a unique form of partisan civil war designed to amass power in a nominal democracy and defang, decimate and defund the opposition.

Trump’s assault on the left combines the use of the available tools of violent conflict — the military, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE in particular — with the prosecution of critics (and people he just doesn’t like), cuts of essential funds for liberal institutions, the use of regulation to threaten businesses with bankruptcy, the criminalization of free speech and the blackmailing of corporate America into obedience.

Two days after the assassination of Charlie Kirk last month, Stephen Miller, Trump’s top domestic policy adviser, went on Sean Hannity’s Fox News Show to describe in great detail how the administration plans to deal with its domestic opponents: “We will not live in fear, but you will live in exile, because the power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you have broken the law, to take away your freedom.”

For Trump and his allies, recent developments, including the government shutdown, the indictment of James Comey and the assassination of Kirk, are openings to escalate the attack on institutions and programs identified with liberalism and the Democratic Party. For the MAGA right, any crisis is an opportunity. In fact, every crisis is.

Miles Taylor, Department of Homeland Security chief of staff for part of Trump’s first term is among the “it’s a set up” chorus:

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) took to the Senate floor to “explain Trump’s plan”:

1. Turn the justice system into a political witch hunt operation that punishes critics for free speech and immunizes loyalists for actual criminality.

2. Use government power to compel the media to tell only the regime’s narrative and to silence critics.

3. Use the military to perform political intimidation in places with high levels of opposition to the regime.

4. Seize control of Congress’s spending and tax powers to use those powers to reward loyalists and punish opponents.

5. Rig the rules and the information. Tilt the election playing field your way and destroy the idea of truth.

Murphy, who seems to be running for President, wrapped with a hopeful, and peaceful, plan to resist:

As Tom Neuburger wrote yesterday:

“The American Hard Right has never, ever been stronger. The feast is before them, all laid. They have the presidency. They have Trump, a master intimidator, and so they have Congress (look up “men fit to be slaves”). They have Roberts and most of his Court. They have power of the purse at last, and crime without price. They act like kings. They have a timid pretend opposition, so tied to their money and privilege they’re afraid to offend (by which I mean piss off their donors).

And the people, the last obstacle? They’re outraged, true, but they don’t rush to the streets in a way that disrupts the state.

Can Trump Really Pull It Off?

In her introduction to Neuburger’s piece, Yves was basically skeptical of Team Trump’s ability to pull off a clampdown, but she warned that “this team, if nothing else, is possessed by hubris. So they could well try a much bigger power grab backed by force. Even if it fails, the damage could still be vast in human and institutional terms.”

Will Schryver has long been a skeptic of the current administration’s ability to pull off a crackdown:

There are also those in the national security apparatus who say they plan to resist including Brigadier General Alan R. Gronewol, “Oregon’s top military leader” who testified on September 30:

Speaking before a state Senate subcommittee, Brigadier General Alan R. Gronewold told legislators that before deployment, the two companies of soldiers would be trained in “protective crowd control.” That training is now up in the air as Gov. Tina Kotek on Tuesday ordered troops to go home after a federal judge ruled over the weekend that Trump had no authority to call them up.

Gronewold said Guard soldiers serve two purposes: “One, to defend America, and two, to protect Oregonians. And so by serving in this mission, they will be protecting any protesters at the ICE facility.”

However the prospects for organized resistance are dim as Aurelian convincingly argued recently when discussing some recent unrest in France:

…the fundamental problem faced by ordinary people today trying to influence those in power. A minimum degree of consensus and organisation is necessary if anything is to be achieved, but consensus and organisation don’t just appear magically: they have to be developed and practised. In the past, opposition political parties and trades unions often provided the basis of this organisation: as far as anyone can see, Mélenchon and other political figures primarily used last week’s protests to further their own interests. For all that the Internet was supposed to bring people together (and the Gilets jaunes which we’ll get to in moment could not have happened without it) the Internet doesn’t promote consensus or organisation automatically: indeed, there’s some evidence that it’s a divisive force in such cases.

It’s worth recalling how this kind of thing would once have been organised, say in the 80s or 90s. Protests in those days were articulated around two main pillars: organisations and community. Last week’s protests would have been organised by the trades unions and the Socialist or Communist parties (OK, often in competition with each other) and would have been professionally organised, with synchronised demonstrations, massive rallies addressed by political leaders, banners, flags, hand-outs and articulated demands with lots of media coverage. It might not have achieved an enormous amount in the end, and there would certainly have been a performative element, but it would not have been damp squib like last week’s episode.

This doesn’t bode well given the rapidly building technological advantage ICE has over the American citizenry, via 404 Media:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has bought access to a surveillance tool that is updated every day with billions of pieces of location data from hundreds of millions of mobile phones, according to ICE documents reviewed by 404 Media.

The documents explicitly show that ICE is choosing this product over others offered by the contractor’s competitors because it gives ICE essentially an “all-in-one” tool for searching both masses of location data and information taken from social media. The documents also show that ICE is planning to once again use location data remotely harvested from peoples’ smartphones after previously saying it had stopped the practice.
…
The new documents provide much more detail about the sort of location data ICE will now have access to, and why ICE chose to buy access to this vast dataset from Penlink specifically.
“Without an all-in-one tool that provides comprehensive web investigations capabilities and automated analysis of location-based data within specified geographic areas, intelligence teams face significant operational challenges,” the document reads. The agency said that the issue with other companies was that they required analysts to “manually collect and correlate data from fragmented sources,” which increased the chance of missing “connections between online behaviors and physical movements.”

I’m tempted to close with a quote from Yasha Levine, but I’ll make it the penultimate point as it’s a bummer:

We are all too far removed from issues that matter most to us and have no power over the forces that govern our lives. And so everyone’s political energies are directed into the Spectacle — to bear witness, to rage, to comment, to learn, to obsessively read, to mock, to argue with people on line. In fact you could say the lack of political power is inversely proportional to the amount of time we spend in the Spectacle. The Spectacle gives us the illusion of power…of doing something…of projecting our will and being into the world.

On a slightly more hopeful note, I’ll quote Ian Welsh from 2019 who presciently predicted the impact of drones on modern war (as confirmed confirmed just this week by Haig Hovaness for Naked Capitalism who showed how the Ukrainians had an early DIY edge in the drone wars that has only recently been surpassed by Russian industrial might) and argued they were a weapon for the weak:

Governments may force drone registration and so on, but they are an easy, cheap tech to make with off-the-shelf parts. Currently, they can’t be stopped easily by conventional militaries, and it will be impossible to harden all targets against them in the perceivable future. They will make both terror attacks and assassinations quite simple.

I always thought the US was foolish for developing this technology. They made it happen much faster than it would have otherwise, and while initially it was (and still is) useful to them, in the end it will be a technology that terrorizes them and other powerful governments.

That last is just by way of pointing out that it’s never been 2025 before, the United States has never been what it is before, and there is absolutely no way to predict the outcome of a full-on civil conflagration in America except that it will be dreadful and we’ll all wish it never happened.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

“Leftist political terrorism is a clear and present danger. Corrupted ideologies like transgenderism and Antifa are a cancer on our culture and have unleashed their deranged and drugged-up foot soldiers on the American people,” said Attorney General Paxton. “The martyrdom of Charlie Kirk marks a turning point in America. There can be no compromise with those who want us dead. To that end, I have directed my office to continue its efforts to identify, investigate, and infiltrate these leftist terror cells. To those demented souls who seek to kill, steal, and destroy our country, know this: you cannot hide, you cannot escape, and justice is coming.”

The radical Left has incubated an environment where political violence is not only justified but celebrated and praised. In July, nearly two dozen armed leftists connected to various Texas-based Antifa-like groups ambushed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) facility in Alvarado, Texas.

Paxton was joined in his “call to uproot left terror cells” by the comparably corrupt Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller.

I’ll have more on the “Prarieland attack” later in the post, but first let’s put Paxton’s press release in its proper context: a Republican U.S. Senate primary.

MAGA vs RINO vs Rep. Hunt

Quick reminder that this race matters because:

1. It features a primary pitting the old-line GOP establishment against one of Trump’s top acolytes and MAGA is favored to win

2. Democrats have their best chance to pick up a Texas US Senate seat since 2018 when Ted Cruz won by 215,000 votes out of 8 million cast

3. The bravura corruption of MAGA candidate Ken Paxton would be a new low for a U.S. Senator

I covered one of the leading Democratic candidates, James Talarico, on Monday and I’ve covered the GOP primary before as “The MAGA vs RINO Frontline” and updated with “Texas Floods, Biblical Divorce Complicate US Senate Primary.”

The Paxton vs Cornyn primary race was complicated Monday by the entrance of Wesley Hunt “one of the first Black Republicans to represent Texas in the House of Representatives:”

Mr. Hunt said he decided to run because the race had become a “blood feud between Ken Paxton and John Cornyn” and that he would offer voters an alternative. He said that while Mr. Cornyn had succeeded in damaging Mr. Paxton’s standing in the polls, he had yet to improve his own numbers very much.

“They’re just slinging mud at each other,” he said. “I’m going to be the one that’s going to put the priorities of Texans first.”

Taking a swing at Mr. Cornyn, Mr. Hunt said his first priority if elected would be the repeal of a bipartisan gun control law that Mr. Cornyn helped negotiate after the 2022 massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

“You cannot author gun control legislation in Texas,” Mr. Hunt said. Mr. Paxton has also attacked Mr. Cornyn on the issue.

That line of attack showed how Mr. Hunt’s entrance is likely to complicate Mr. Cornyn’s re-election effort. The congressman and the senator are likely to draw from the same pool of conservative voters who dislike Mr. Paxton because of his long history of legal and ethical entanglements.
…
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has been supporting Mr. Cornyn, had been urging Mr. Hunt for months not to run. The committee was already concerned that Mr. Paxton’s challenge was making the primary contest extremely expensive, drawing campaign cash away from general-election contests during a midterm election cycle that was expected to broadly favor Democrats.

The committee sent a memo in September to donors who had supported Mr. Hunt, telling them that they were wasting their money on a “vanity project that could cost Republicans control of the Senate.”

Mr. Hunt, for his part, said he would not be upset if Mr. Paxton were to win the primary. “What we know about Ken Paxton is, he’s actually a conservative,” he said, implying that Mr. Cornyn was not.
…
Mr. Hunt, 43, has represented a wealthy, majority-white Houston district west of downtown since 2022, but he remains mostly unknown to voters elsewhere in the state.
…
At times, he has spoken openly about race and the history of slavery in the United States, presenting his own story of success as a ready-made response for Republicans to Democratic accusations of racism. Texas has never had a Black senator.

“Quite frankly, I don’t think Texans really care about race,” Mr. Hunt said in the interview on Monday.

The jokes write themselves, but perhaps Rep. Hunt has run some undercover operations in the Texas GOP of which I’m not aware.

The Hill reports that incumbent Senator John Cornyn is outpacing Paxton in the money race:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) raked in $3.36 million between his campaign and political committees between July and September, ending the quarter with $10.5 million cash in the bank…

In comparison, Paxton raised $2.9 million in the second quarter of fundraising this year and ended the quarter with $2.5 million in the bank. Paxton has not yet reported his third-quarter fundraising haul; candidates have until Oct. 15 to report those numbers.

Cornyn vs Paxton

Cornyn and his allies have been going all-in on social media attcks, television ads, and even vans driving around Austin attacking Paxton.

According to Axios, they’ve been working:

In May, Cornyn was down by double digits in some polls. But he has narrowed the gap this summer, drawing to within single digits in most surveys.

But his movement hasn’t come cheap, with Cornyn-allied super PACs having spent or reserved roughly $14 million in the last two and a half months, according to AdImpact.

Here’s a representative sample of Cornyn’s attacks on Paxton:

Paxton’s Extensive Rap Sheet

For those not familiar with Paxton, The Texas Tribune has a nice summary of his legal woes:

Paxton has been accused of impropriety at least six times while in elected office, including fraud, abuse of office and self-dealing.

In one of the most serious cases, he was charged with multiple felonies in 2015 for allegedly encouraging investors to buy into a McKinney tech firm without telling them that he had a financial interest in the company and also failing to register with the state before soliciting clients for a friend’s investment firm. After years in court, Paxton cut a deal to do community service in lieu of facing trial. He did not admit guilt in this case and has not been convicted of a crime.

Then in 2023, the Texas House impeached him for alleged official misconduct, some of it related to accusations that he swapped political favors with a campaign donor in exchange for a job for the woman with whom he was allegedly having an affair. Paxton called it a political witch hunt and denied that he broke the law.

After a trial, the Texas Senate acquitted him and he was reinstated to office.

The ad below references a campaign finance situation Paxton has gotten himself into:

Federal regulators are asking Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s U.S. Senate Campaign to explain or return roughly $658,000 in political contributions that appear to violate federal law.

This is a local news story about a van the Cornyn operation is driving around Austin, Texas:

For his part, Paxton has just begun to fire back with an ad that “uses old anti-Cornyn quotes from Trump and suggests that the senator isn’t a true conservative.”

Paxton is also working hard on the “earned media” front with attacks on doctors:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday accused the Texas Medical Association, the state’s leading physician organization, of skirting new federal recommendations that now state childhood COVID-19 vaccinations are no longer needed.

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice updated its vaccine guidance and no longer recommends that all children should receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Instead, it recommends that “vaccination for COVID-19 be determined by individual decision-making.”

Shortly thereafter, the TMA sent out guidance to members, telling them to consider both the CDC’s new guidelines and those of physician professional organizations that run counter to the federal guidance, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Paxton said the move represents an “undermining” of the federal guidelines.

“It’s outrageous TMA is undermining ACIP’s new federal guidelines for COVID-19 vaccines that expand personal freedom and mitigate the medical tyranny of the Biden Administration,” Paxton said in a statement. “This decision should be reversed immediately, and I encourage every Texas physician to speak out against this brazen, flawed shift by TMA.”

Paxton is also going after LGBTQ advocates, possibly using undercover investigators:

Texas Supreme Court justices will decide how much information PFLAG will have to give Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office for his investigation into medical providers allegedly violating the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors — a request the LGBTQ rights organization says is unconstitutional.
…
Paxton’s office enforces the law through its Consumer Protection Division, which also enforces the Deceptive Trade Practice Act. The division is investigating whether medical providers are trying to get around the ban by prescribing hormones under the guise of treating an “endocrine disorder” or something else besides gender dysphoria, psychological stress over one’s gender identity that is often the precursor to transitioning.

Specifically, the attorney general’s office claims some providers prescribe medicine under the endocrine disorder diagnosis because some insurers would automatically reject payment for “gender-incongruent” treatments. That violates the deceptive trade act, Paxton’s office alleges.

The investigation brought Paxton’s office to LGBTQ+ advocacy group PFLAG — a national organization with a membership model — which the office says has information about providers who were trying to get around the ban. It points to a July 2023 affidavit in the lawsuit against in SB 14, which PFLAG CEO Brian Bond said he had spoken to various parties about “contingency plans,” “alternative avenues to maintain care in Texas,” and “affirming general practitioners” in case the law was allowed to go into effect in September of that year.

Paxton has also been going after a Chinese-owned tech company over alleged data breaches and he’s also managed to keep the records of his divorce case sealed, so far.

The “Leftist Terror”

That’s enough about Paxton’s antics, let’s talk about the July 4th “Prarieland attack.” Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

The 2025 Alvarado ICE facility attack, also known as the Prairieland attack, occurred at the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, United States, on the evening of July 4, 2025. Officials describe a coordinated plot in which about 12 individuals in black clothing and body armor allegedly used fireworks and vandalism to draw out officers and ambush them with rifles. One Alvarado police officer was shot in the neck and later released from hospital care. Local reporting and court documents identify ten individuals arrested shortly after; an alleged shooter was arrested on July 15 after a manhunt, and several alleged associates were also arrested. Several members of the initial group were tied to left wing organizations or protest activities, and anti-government, anti-ICE, and anarchist documents were found. As of September 23, according to local media, between fifteen and seventeen individuals had been charged in association with the events.

The alleged shooter is a former U.S. Marine Corps reservist named Benjamin Song, 32, who “was named in a 2023 lawsuit involving the Elm Fork chapter of the John Brown Gun Club (JBGC), in a counter-protest at a Fort Worth drag show.”

Meagan Morris, one of the 17 arrested spoke to NPR station KERA News. Morris faces “state charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon on a peace officer and terrorism, as well as federal charges of discharging a firearm during a violent crime and attempted murder of a federal officer.”

“I don’t know what happened. We sure did not plan for any sort of violence or anything to go wrong like that.

“The original intent was just to show solidarity with the detainees who hopefully lift their spirits with a fun fireworks display and go home. If the officer got shot by someone, that person was acting alone. But they want to punish all of us.”
…
A recent complaint obtained by KERA News says new evidence suggests there was just one shooter that night, and 11 shell casings were recovered from the scene, “leading investigators to believe the initial 20-30 shell casings to be an inaccurate amount of spent rounds fired.”

The officer has since recovered, according to court records.

The FBI called what happened that night a “coordinated and targeted attack.” Court records allege Morris’ home was the “staging location” for the defendants to meet.

Morris claims neither is true. A few people met at her home to carpool before heading to the ICE facility as part of a nonviolent protest, she said. When they arrived at the detention center, Morris said she stayed in the car.

Since she was parked away from the facility, she said she doesn’t know exactly what happened that night, but knew she wanted no part of it as soon as she heard a gunshot.

“The minute that I thought something was going wrong like that, I tried to leave,” she said.

Morris was not among the 8 against whom the case appears to be proceeding:

A federal judge in Fort Worth found probable cause for the cases against eight defendants accused of opening fire outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Alvarado on July 4th to go to a grand jury.

The defendants — Cameron Arnold, Nathan Bauman, Zachary Evetts, Bradford Morris, Maricela Rueda, Elizabeth Soto, Ines Sota, and Benjamin Hanil Song — are among 17 people arrested in connection with the attack.
…
The first witness, an FBI agent, testified that Song acted as a cult-like leader of the group involved in the shooting. Prosecutors presented evidence of a conspiracy that included ambushing officers, setting off fireworks, damaging property, and trespassing.

Authorities said many of the suspects embraced antifa and anarchist ideologies. Investigators also recovered anarchist publications, or “zines,” and said the group used encrypted messaging platforms that automatically wipe data.
…
Song faces charges of engaging in organized criminal activity, aggravated assault on a public servant, and aiding in the commission of terrorism, according to the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office.

The Washington Post contributed to the moral panic around the case in a story headlined “Suspects in Texas ICE shooting tied to trans, anti-fascist activism”:

Just after dusk on July 5, the crash of wood and metal suddenly reverberated through a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood here known as The Bottoms. Neighbors peered out to see a small army of men in desert camouflage and tactical vests crouched behind a black armored vehicle, shouting commands toward a brick house.

A SWAT team had smashed through the front door of the residence, which neighbors say was occupied by several transgender women, part of a group of activists who initially united around trans and queer identity issues. Now, the women, dressed in bathrobes and pajamas, were being detained at gunpoint, neighbors said.

“It was weird enough that six or seven White, trans people moved into the neighborhood,” said a neighbor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of privacy concerns. He rolled a joint and gazed at the plywood-covered front window: “And now the FBI is raiding their house.”
…
Inside the house in Dallas, officers discovered nine firearms and a person wanted in connection with the shooting, a transgender woman named Autumn Hill, according to charging documents.
…
The Post’s examination of the case found that the purported attackers were among a secretive network of Dallas anti-fascists, part of a growing movement of far-left political resistance that some experts say has shown signs of increasing in violence in the Trump era.

The number of incidents is still small compared to the much larger amount of right-wing violence in America, according to several studies, including a University of Maryland examination that found far-right extremists were responsible for nearly twice as many violent acts as the far-left from 1948-2018.

These are the proverbial “interesting times” we’ve been warned about and corrupt buffoons like Ken Paxton stop being funny as soon as they start drumming up moral panic to justify wielding the power of the state against citizens.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

Unfortunately, all mainstream Western political parties continue to insist there is no alternative to ever increasing inequality.

The Western center left seems willing to try, and do, virtually anything in response to the polycrisis, anything, that is, except address financial inequality.

There have been some exceptions in the past decade, but both Bernie Sanders in the U.S. and Jeremy Corbyn in the U.K. were utterly crushed by 2020.

Now that both the Democratic party establishment and Keir Starmer’s Labour are plummeting in popularity, is there any hope for a revival of redistributionist politics?

Sometimes It’s Time To State the Obvious

A recent episode of Gary Stevenson’s Gary’s Economics podcast on YouTube reiterated the doom loop we have been in all decade and all century.

Stevenson, a former Citibank trader turned anti-inequality crusader was new to me before the YouTube algorithm put him in my path. He’s an author and has been featured in The Guardian and other MSM publications.

But here’s what he said that was of interest to me:

I was able to predict that Labour would be really unpopular, really quickly. What I said was, we are in the midst of an economic crisis that is being caused by economic mismanagement. Inequality has increased massively. The assets are increasingly owned by the rich. If you don’t tax the rich, living standards will keep falling. This is why we could predict very easily that Labour would become very unpopular.

…
The truth is actually much more interesting than that in my opinion, which is once you take a bit of a step back and start looking at things on a grander scale, there is another way in which Labour actually have been unlucky.
…
Earlier this year, I explained that Labour and Donald Trump would both fail again for the exact same reason.
So what you have here is centre-left Labour, centre-right Conservatives, even far-right Donald Trump.

It’s not even just these parties. The Democrats made the same mistake under Joe Biden. Macron made the same mistake in France. The centre left and the centre right made the same mistakes in Germany, in Italy, in Spain, in Japan.
…
If you take a step back even further, it’s even bigger than that because this is not a case of the politicians failed, and for example, the economists were right, or the journalists were right, or even the traders were right.

I say we have an economy which has cancer, and we have a group of doctors who do not believe in cancer. I think that really captures really very nicely what’s happening in the economy.

The problem is the very rich are rapidly, rapidly increasing their wealth share. They’re growing and they’re growing and they’re growing and they’re growing their wealth and they’re squeezing everybody else’s wealth out.

That has really obvious consequences. The most obvious consequence is just that other groups in society lose their wealth… and that is really the primary cause of most of our economic problems.

But most modern economists and politicians and journalists simply do not think of the economy in terms of distribution and inequality.

This is what you would expect to happen if you were constantly misdiagnosing the problem, if you had a patient who had cancer but you didn’t know cancer exists.

…
It wasn’t really a problem of the Conservative Party. It isn’t really a problem of Labour. It’s not even a problem of Donald Trump. It is a problem of a failure to recognise the correct cause of the problem by the Western intellectual class.

Yes, of course Stevenson is stating the obvious, but sometimes that gets my attention.

He’s also got political ambitions and that gets my attention, per The Guardian:

…his sights are all on politics. “Andrew Tate is seeing the same thing I’m seeing. Politics is dying,” he says. “The far right are settling now. They know what their plan is: anti-immigration is the big idea, Muslims are the bad guys, tariffs. There is a battle of ideas in society, but there is a battle of ideas on the left. I’m putting my pitch forward – I’m going to build something about inequality, taxing the rich, and I’m going to build it on YouTube. These are very ambitious plans, but what else am I supposed to do?”

Wait a second: does he actually want to be prime minister? “This is quite a simple idea: if you don’t do something about inequality, it will get worse, and living standards will continue to fall. That idea is pretty simple. It doesn’t need to be all on my shoulders. I’m trying to set a fire under the people. I’m trying to get them pumped on it.”

Stating the obvious and repeating it endlessly is the most effective form of persuasion. Stevenson’s off to a good start with his simple message and stamina. It’s going to take a lot of that to dislodge the mighty grip TINA on Western minds.

The Democrats Try Everything But Economic Populism

After Zohran Mamdami’s June win in the New York City mayoral primary, hope began to stir in the hearts of those who would like to see the deathgrip of TINA neoliberalism on American politics broken.

But instead, what we’ve seen is a parade of Democratic politicians and pundits desperately trying anything and everything but economic populism because TINA to neoliberalism in their minds.

I’ve covered Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s “Abundance” spiel which has flopped so badly that Klein has no taken to praising the politics of Charlie Kirk, platforming Ben Shapiro, and repeatedly suggesting that Democrats run anti-abortion candidates in states that overwhelmingly voted in favor of abortion rights.

I’ve also covered the “Dark Woke” faction headed up by California Governor Gavin Newsom and Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett who have chosen to do a lot of cursing and trolling rather than engage with economic populism because TINA.

I’ve covered TINA Vice-President Kamala Harris and her claim that if she’d only had more time, she could have beaten Trump. Never mind that she still can’t come up with a significant policy difference with her old boss Joe Biden and still hasn’t noticed that genocide is deeply unpopular.

I haven’t covered Brat Summer Daddy Minnesota Governor (and Kamala Harris VP selection) Tim Walz’ decision to greenlight Blackrock’s acquisition of one of his state’s largest utilities (because TINA) but David Sirota has.

I’ve even covered former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his approach of doing all the same shit but insisting this time it’s different, because, of course, TINA.

I also pointed out that Rahm’s billionaire brother Ari is a key advisor to David Ellison at Paramount and is a favored Trump insider.

One thing I haven’t posted on yet is Trump’s announcement that Ari Emanuel’s Ultimate Fighting Championship will help the POTUS celebrate his birthday with a fighting event on the White House lawn next June 14.

I also haven’t posted about Ari Emanuel’s most recent “The Weekend” confab in Aspen, Colorado last week which saw Rahm join Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro — another Democratic presidential hopeful — and Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff “along with Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, and business and entertainment moguls like Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell and Robert Kraft.”

Something tells me the economic populism wasn’t under discussion in Aspen which is famous TINA country.

I also haven’t covered the Democratic flavor of the month, Texas State Rep. James Talarico who is running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.

If Talarico wins, he may face MAGA Attorney General Ken “Often Indicted, Never Convicted” Paxton who is in good shape to knock off RINO TINA empty haircut John Cornyn.

Big TINA believers The New York Times noticed Talarico’s successful appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience and more importantly they have noticed his grassroots fundraising prowess:

In the first three weeks of Talarico’s primary run, a campaign spokesman said, he raised over $6 million from more than 125,000 individual donors. By comparison, when the Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke raised $2.2 million over 45 days in 2018, The Texas Tribune described it as a “massive haul.”

And while Talarico has vowed to take no AIPAC money for his Senate race (despite taking $59,000 from Miriam Adelson for his last State Rep. campaign) and bashes unnammed billionaires in his campaign statements, the Times focused on his outspoken religiosity which they seem to view as his secret sauce:

Talarico is an underdog in the Texas Senate Democratic primary, where polls show him running behind Colin Allred, who challenged Senator Ted Cruz in 2024. That gap might close as more people get to know Talarico; a September Public Policy Polling survey found that among those who had a favorable opinion of both him and Allred, Talarico led by a significant 50 percentage points.

Talarico, a 36-year-old former middle-school teacher and a member of the Texas House of Representatives, is generating excitement far out of proportion to his political prospects. On social media, his videos challenging Republican politicians and conservative dogma, often from a Christian perspective, regularly go viral. In July they earned him an invitation to Joe Rogan’s podcast, perhaps the most coveted platform in American politics, where Rogan encouraged him to run for president. Politico recently reported that Barack Obama was “holding calls with the party’s rising stars”; the article mentioned two names: Zohran Mamdani and Talarico, who’d impressed the former president with his leadership during Texas’ recent redistricting fight.

Writing on X after Talarico announced his Senate run, Rob Flaherty, Kamala Harris’s former deputy campaign manager, called him “the future of the party.” When I asked him to elaborate, he told me, “Democrats are losing ground because we’ve lost our ability to talk to people who have checked out of the system. He represents the kind of hopeful populism that I think is our pathway back — and he does it while having a natural sense of how to get and keep attention.”
…
All this enthusiasm may be in part a sign of desperation: Democrats are in the wilderness, eager to latch on to any inspirational figure who can guide them out. But it’s also a testament to the unexpected power of Talarico’s plain-spoken message, which combines Bernie Sanders’s anger at oligarchy with a diagnosis of the spiritual sickness that almost everyone in this country feels.

Talarico’s campaign announcement did include some decent rhetoric albeit no economic specifics:

There’s something broken in America.

Our economy is broken. Our politics are broken. Even our relationships with each other feel broken.

That’s because the most powerful people in the world want it that way.

The biggest divide in this country is not left vs. right. It’s top vs. bottom. Billionaires want us looking left and right at each other instead of looking up at them.

The people at the top work so hard to keep us angry and divided because our unity is a threat to their wealth and power. So their cable news networks and their social media algorithms tear us apart.

They divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion so we don’t notice they’re defunding our schools, gutting our healthcare, and cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends. It’s the oldest strategy in the world: divide and conquer.

We’ll see if Talarico amounts to anything. I expect him to thrash the insipid Allred whose only political skill is talking large donors out of large checks. Allred is 100% a TINA politician, the jury is out on Talarico.

FWIW TINA repeater Josh Barro thinks Talarico is disqualified based on some of his comments on the trans issue. Barro is wrong about virtually everything else, so YMMV.

I also haven’t mentioned the Democratic congressional leadership Senate and House Minority Leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries who’ve been on a heater of abysmal media appearances and social media misfires that have at least one major Democratic Substack electoral analyst calling for their immediate resignations.

Seriously, these clowns have to be seen to be believed, and no, never does a word of economic populism cross either man’s lips, because TINA:

Let’s hear the Ettingermentum diagnosis of the Dems’ TINA problem going into the 2026 midterms:

For Democrats this year, their obvious problem is the simple fact that they have done absolutely nothing to break from Biden since the end of his failed presidency. And as far as the midterms are concerned, this failure is at its most salient in the continued reign of the party’s two congressional leaders: Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York.
…
The most damning thing about all of this is that it’s hard to even say that voters are exactly wrong here. While it is true that Trump is in power now as (inflation) is intensifying, it is also true that Schumer was in charge for the first four years of the decade, when the cost-of-living crisis began. During that time, the line from him and his party was that the inflation issue was either being solved or had already been solved. They didn’t have a response when voters disagreed, and they still don’t. It isn’t a messaging problem. It’s not that it just looks like Schumer lacks any new ideas, even though it does. He literally just doesn’t have any. There isn’t a plan, and people can tell.
…
On paper, there’s no reason why Jeffries should be a liability for his party. Unlike Schumer, he’s not elderly, and he wasn’t one of Biden’s top governing partners during his failed presidency. But while he isn’t as deeply disliked as Schumer, this young and allegedly inspiring new leader is still solidly underwater among voters who know about him. Once again, the problem isn’t style, but substance. Even when it’s sold in a less problematic package, a message centered around a bitter defense of Biden-era policies is only going to make those who deliver it unpopular and hold the opposition back from benefitting as much as it should from Trump’s unpopularity.

As such, simply quietly rotating out Schumer and Jeffries with a new cast of establishment politicians won’t be sufficient to solve the credibility problem at play here. We have passed the point where wrapping the same message in a new package will work. In order for the public to stop viewing Democrats as an extension of a Biden administration they hated, the party will need to make a real, meaningful, hard break from the status quo.

On a more hopeful note, The New York Times opened its mini-series on “on the thinkers, upstarts and ideologues battling for control of the Democratic Party” with a piece by historian Timothy Shenk and it’s got some breaks free of TINA:

an air of denial — and, more recently, panic — has pervaded the discussion about what comes next. It’s easy to say drastic reform is needed, but there’s no agreement on what this should look like. In practice, the party establishment is doing what party establishments always do: counting on the other side to self-destruct so it can squeak back into power while changing as little as possible.

The strategy would be a lot more defensible if Democrats could write off Trumpism as a fever that was bound to break with time. But the evidence of the past few years points in the opposite direction — shrinking populations in blue states, an alarming drop in Democratic voter registration, dire math for retaking the Senate and crushing majorities who say the party is out of touch.
…
A few campaigns have bucked those trends. The problem for Democrats is that the best examples come from candidates running against the Democratic Party.

Consider Dan Osborn, a 50-year-old industrial mechanic and Navy veteran who is making his second bid for the Senate in Nebraska as an independent. In 2024, while Donald Trump demolished Kamala Harris by 20 points, Mr. Osborn lost by just seven. According to the analytics website Split Ticket, this was the strongest performance relative to the partisan fundamentals of any Senate candidate.

What was Mr. Osborn’s secret? He’s a sometimes fumbling speaker, and he didn’t put together a world-beating ground game or dominate social media. But he was a credible spokesman for a message that resonated with voters in Nebraska — a blistering assault on economic elites, a moderate stance on cultural issues and the rejection of politics as usual.
…
It’s a simple recipe, really: a scorching economic message delivered by political outsiders standing up to the powerful. The villains in this narrative — and it’s essential to have villains — are the elites at the top of a broken system. Neither Mr. Mamdani nor Mr. Osborn dwelled on cultural issues; instead, they concentrated on subjects like increasing wages and affording a home. Although their signature positions have strong public backing, their platforms are more than just a grab bag of whatever does best in the polls. They tell a story that reframes the debate, enlisting voters in a battle between the many and the few, with stakes that reach into everyday life.

This isn’t a progressive version of Trumpism, but it speaks to some of the frustrations that have made the president the dominant force in American life. The paradox is that stealing a page from MAGA is the best way to break its stranglehold on politics. Democrats must replace their reflexive opposition to President Trump with a positive vision for improving the lives of working people.

I’ll close with a tweet from Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who seems to be working to raise his profile and possibly break with TINA, have the last tweet in which he points out that Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are the most popular political figures with Democratic 2020 voters who sat out 2024:

Bonus closer, Basel Musharbash’s epic demolition of the all-time TINA record of President William Jefferson Clinton in response to some TINA repeater’s claim that what the Dems need is a new Slick Willy.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

Bari Weiss’ role at CBS will be somewhat analogous to that of Biden administration and IDF veteran Erica Mindel’s at TikTok:

Mindel previously worked with the U.S. State Department under Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the Biden Administration’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, according to Sada Social, a body that monitors and documents digital violations against Palestinian content.

Mindel previously served as an instructor in the Israeli army’s Spokesperson’s Unit…

It stated that in her new role, Mindel “will be tasked with formulating TikTok’s hate speech policies, shaping relevant legislative and regulatory frameworks, and monitoring trends—particularly those related to antisemitic content.”

The Ellison Media Empire is Just Part of Israel’s 8th Front

The Ellison’s neo-media empire is, in turn, part of an expanded hasbara campaign by Israel and its allies that seems a bit desperate in the wake of plummeting American support among Democrats, the young of both parties, and even American Jews.

This incredible X.com thread by GenXGirl lays out “a timeline of a sophisticated, well-funded and deliberately opaque influence operation conducted by Israel and its allies within the US to target conservatives. Polling data shows Israel has permanently lost the American left and they are losing the American right, particularly young conservatives. Israel’s campaign seeks to recast criticism of a foreign nation’s policy as a form of bigotry, weaponize faith, and co-opt American institutions, all while systematically evading the laws designed to protect the American public from such foreign propaganda.”

Weiss’ project at CBS News must be seen as part of this broader effort which Caitlin Johnstone has characterized as an attempt to “Propagandize The World Into Liking Israel Again:”

It’s cute how the Zionists think they’ll be able to manipulate and propagandize the world into liking Israel again.

Yeah, saturate all online platforms with weird-faced influencers telling us Israel is awesome. That’ll make us forget those years of genocidal atrocities.

Sure, buy up the social media platforms that young people are using so you can censor criticism of Israel. That’ll convince them that Zionism is cool.

Go on, take control of CBS and make Bari Weiss the boss. That’ll make us forget all those videos of mutilated Palestinian children.
…
Propaganda is an effective tool of mass-scale psychological manipulation, but it isn’t magic. It isn’t going to miraculously erase what people know in their bones to be true.
…
It won’t work, though. Even if propaganda could convince us that we haven’t seen what we’ve seen and don’t know what we know, propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. These past two years have made even relatively apolitical members of the public acutely aware that there is an aggressive campaign to manipulate their perception of the state of Israel, and that anyone pushing them to support that state is untrustworthy. Nobody’s going to buy into the propaganda if they don’t trust the source.
…
The world’s eyes are open to what Israel is, and they are never going to close again. You can’t take off the Mickey Mouse mask, show the kids the snarling Freddy Krueger face underneath it, and then put the mask on and hope they start calling you Mickey again. Nobody’s going to forget what you showed them.

The Building of Bari Weiss’ Anti-Establisment Billionaire-Friendly Brand

I’ve quoted this paragraph from Yasha Levine in a previous piece, but I must repost it because it introduces her so well. I’ve also added many links to back up his references:

Bari is a real operator and a genius suck up to power. She came from an affluent suburb, her parents own the upscale Weisshouse furniture store. Bari first came to public attention while a student in Columbia, where she led a campaign to cancel teachers critical of Israel and tried to get Joseph Massad, a Palestinian professor, fired. She then went on to quickly rise through the ranks of zionist activist journalism — first starting out at Jewish outlets like Tablet, then writing op-eds and reviewing books for the Wall Street Journal, where she worked directly under Bret Stephens, the arch-neoconservative now known simply as “bedbug,” and then getting beamed up to the New York Times op-ed department. Her Times job was what you’d call a Trump first term DEI hire. She was picked up to generate controversy and serve up conservative opinion to the libs. While at the Times, she constantly got glowing profiles from her liberal colleagues — and even got dressed for a photoshoot by Vanity Fair. People who know Bari say that she has real charisma — and she’s used that gift to ingratiate herself to power. And she seems to have a special way with billionaires. “She doesn’t just speak to the 1 percent. She speaks to the one-hundredth of 1 percent. And they’ll listen,” Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, explained the Bari Method to the New York Times’ Matt Flegenheimer.

Weiss’ next brilliant career move was quitting the NY Times in July 2020. Her resignation letter was carefully calculated to set up her next moves:

I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers.

I was honored to be part of that effort, led by James Bennet. I am proud of my work as a writer and as an editor. Among those I helped bring to our pages: the Venezuelan dissident Wuilly Arteaga; the Iranian chess champion Dorsa Derakhshani; and the Hong Kong Christian democrat Derek Lam. Also: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Masih Alinejad, Zaina Arafat, Elna Baker, Rachael Denhollander, Matti Friedman, Nick Gillespie, Heather Heying, Randall Kennedy, Julius Krein, Monica Lewinsky, Glenn Loury, Jesse Singal, Ali Soufan, Chloe Valdary, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Wesley Yang, and many others.

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. …

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space.

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

Bari Weiss: Serial Entrepreneur

Bari Weiss next made a series of moves astonishing in their ambition. First she founded the “anti-woke” organization F.A.I.R.

This led The New Yorker’s Emma Green to handwring “Is It Possible to Be Both Moderate and Anti-Woke?”

The organization would be called FAIR: The Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism. The name was an initial act of defiance, implicitly painting the group’s opponents, self-described “anti-racists,” as the real racists. The founders’ dream was for the group to replace the A.C.L.U. as America’s new defender of civil liberties—a mission they believed the A.C.L.U. had abandoned. The vision involved a three-pronged approach: legal advocacy, via letters and lawsuits; grassroots advocacy, via a network of volunteers; and education about the issues, spread through projects such as explainer videos and training programs.

Weiss and the other founders recruited an informal board of advisers—a mix of podcasters, journalists, academics, and lawyers. Among them were the media personality Megyn Kelly, the writer Andrew Sullivan, and the anti-critical-race-theory activist Christopher Rufo. In some circles, these people are celebrities: Angel Eduardo, who later joined the staff as the director of messaging and editorial, described one adviser, Daryl Davis, a Black musician known for persuading white nationalists to leave the Ku Klux Klan, as “my Obi-Wan.”

Jezebel reported on on F.A.I.R. donor, Harlan Crow who ponied up $500,000:

Crow, who collects Nazi artifacts and has a garden filled with statues of dictators, made his half a million dollar donation in 2021, while several other donors gave $1 million each. FAIR developed its own corporate diversity-training program and a free ethnic-studies curriculum for schools, but it sounds like the organization faced a mutiny from staff and volunteers who wanted it to be more explicit than it was about concepts like critical race theory and to speak forcefully against “gender ideology”—aka acceptance of transgender and nonbinary people.

Suzy Edelman, one of the million-dollar-donors, wrote in a 2022 email to FAIR staff: “Sex-based rights matter. Single sex spaces for women and girls must be protected. Transgenderism is a fiction designed to destroy.” Weiss was apparently concerned that Edelman was airing her grievances to other donors. “I am quite nervous that she has gotten to the Crows, which would be really damaging to me personally,” Weiss wrote to a FAIR cofounder in August 2022, referring to Harlan Crow. Weiss told the New Yorker reporter: “I leaned on many of my personal relationships and friendships to help launch this nonprofit. I was sick over the idea that their time, trust, and money wasn’t being properly protected.” Hmm!

Bari Weiss tries to paint herself as an independent, centrist journalist, but it is not centrist to start an anti-woke nonprofit, let alone one funded by a GOP megadonor—a man whose relationship is so valuable to you that you’re concerned it could be damaged via some emails.

Bari Weiss also found time to found the University of Austin which Inside Higher Ed covered in 2024:

The university, sometimes referred to as UATX, markets itself as an institution born out of alarm over the “rising tide of illiberalism and censoriousness prevalent in America’s universities” and says it is committed to “the pursuit of truth.”
…
The university is not accredited but received approval from the state of Texas to grant degrees, which allowed it to begin accepting applications last November. Students can earn a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies with a concentration in one of the fields offered by the university’s “centers of academic inquiry,” which include STEM, arts and letters, and economics, politics and history. The university currently employs about 20 faculty members, with no tenure system. Tuition is $32,000 per year.

On convocation day, students met with Governor Greg Abbott at the Texas state capitol.

Brian Hansbury listed some of the funders Bari Weiss convinced to chip in:

University of Austin received $200 million in seed money from the following billionaires:

• Joe Lonsdale, Palantir co-founder and Trump backer

• Peter Thiel, Palantir co-founder and J.D. Vance backer

• Harlan Crow, Supreme Court corrupter who also provides the school with classroom space in his buildings.

• Len Blavatnik

• John Arnold, criticizes labor unions and seems to have been radicalized to the Weiss cause by the “censors” at the New York Times

• Jeffrey Yass, who gave $35 million to start UATX and deeply funds MAGA candidates

Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi and The Twitter Files

Before we get to the crown jewel in the Bari Weiss empire, I want to briefly cover her role in “The Twitter Files.”

One screengrab of a headline is worth a thousand words:

The Insider piece is worth quoting from as well:

• Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and others were given access to the so-called “Twitter Files” by Elon Musk.

• Weiss and Taibbi are controversial figures who struck out alone after working for major media outlets.

• They share Musk’s anti-establishment outlook, and have been granted the inside track on a major story.

Bari Weiss focused her Twitter Files thread on “shadowbanning” — a practice where some content is quietly suppressed. She discussed screenshots of how Twitter employees making “blacklists” and limiting certain trending topics and accounts.

Some saw a smoking gun, proof of longstanding claims by conservatives of censorship. Others argued that what Weiss described was simply what all content moderation looks like.

And unlike her colleague in that effort, Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss has managed to stay on good terms with the mercurial Elon Musk.

UPDATE: I should say that unlike many critics, I believe the work that Taibbi, Weiss, and their colleagues did on the Twitter Files was of immense value.

The exposure of the pressure to censor user voices from Senator Mark Warner and then Congressional Rep. Adam Schiff in particular were valuable and exposed a post-RussiaGate ethos of information suppression on the part of “the Resistance” that arguably peaked with the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story on the eve of the 2020 election.

But Taibbi has gone beyond reporting when it comes to Bari Weiss. Lately, Taibbi has been singing her praises (and their friendship is likely why he is not opposing the Zionist genocide in Gaza):

I’ve had differences with Bari Weiss. I’ve disagreed with her politics more than once and mistook her arrival on the Twitter Files project as a sign that I would be squeezed out. I also wasn’t sure about the decision to pick the start of work on the Twitter Files as the moment to launch The Free Press. As a reporter with zero business sense I couldn’t imagine taking on something else at that harried moment. But this is who Bari is. She combines an innate sense of audience with rare entreprenurial energy. Additionally she understood, in a way her spineless now-complaining former colleagues from the mainstream press world never did, that in order to survive and retain her audience, she would need to take risks and bet on herself.

For instance, when 1,000 of her New York Times peers signed a Khmer Rougian denunciation of former Editorial Page Editor James Bennet in 2020, securing his resignation for running an editorial by Senator Tom Cotton calling for National Guard against anti-police protesters, Weiss balked. She went public, explaining the business was plagued by a schism between believers in “safetyism” and civil libertarianism, then soon after resigned from a plum job in the Times opinion section.

Two years after that she launched TheFP. While lunatic former Times workers were looking around the office to see whose career they could destroy next (star health writer Donald McNeil was a subsequent project), Bari pushed Elon Musk in ways I could not and got him to physically show us what a Twitter “P2” viewer looked like — this was a display screen that showed Trust and Safety executives the history of Twitter user accounts in visual shorthand. That single moment led to pictures of Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya’s “trends blacklist” notation, an image which exploded myths about shadow-banning and had far-reaching implications, leading to a Supreme Court case and an incredible future change in NIH leadership.

Bari Weiss and Her $150 Million Media Property

The crown jewel of Bari Weiss new empire was The Free Press. The New York Times described it thus in 2024:

Bari Weiss has long been blessed with two superpowers, those close to her say: She knows how to make useful enemies, and she knows how to make useful friends.

As the founder, public face and heat-seeking curator of The Free Press, a new media company with ambitions to overtake the old media, Ms. Weiss, 40, has identified a mélange of reliable foils: the illiberal left; diversity, equity and inclusion programs; opponents of Israel; The New York Times, where Ms. Weiss worked until 2020.
…
She has shared Shabbat dinner with David Mamet, the culture-warring playwright who moonlights as a Free Press cartoonist, and dazzled executives at the Sun Valley Conference, walking sheepishly past cordoned-off journalists she met in a previous life.
…
She has asked “boobs or butts?” of Kim Kardashian in a buddy-buddy interview and compelled Jerry Seinfeld to schlep to watch someone else talk into a microphone — and, for his choice, face chants of “genocide supporter!” as he left Ms. Weiss’s speech about “The State of World Jewry” in Manhattan.

She has headlined a public discussion of antisemitism in a cozy environment (“Sheryl Sandberg, welcome to my living room,” one June podcast began) and a private one last year for Hollywood dignitaries like Disney’s Robert Iger at the Bel Air home of Dan Loeb, the hedge fund titan.

And she held court last summer at the kingly Hamptons estate of Bobby Kotick, the former chief executive of Activision Blizzard, where a smattering of billionaires and moguls listened to Ms. Weiss talk up Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Republican presidential candidate, and question President Biden’s mental capacity, according to people familiar with her visit.

The Free Press has certainly enjoyed success, acquiring over 1 million subscribers by December, 2024.

Matt Johnson took a stab at explaining the appeal of The Free Press:

One reason for The Free Press’ popularity is that it offers intellectual reassurance to legions of anti-anti-Trump readers—sophisticated conservatives who may be uneasy about Trumpism, yet want to believe that wokeness and other left-wing excesses are the primary threats to Western civilization. Trump’s trade war and the ensuing market meltdown might give them some pause, but they’re desperate for intellectual ammunition to convince themselves and others that the administration’s crusade against “wokeness”—and associated initiatives like DEI—was necessary even if it meant trampling our democratic institutions.

Ideologically sympathetic outlets like The Free Press convince a wider swath of Americans that the Trump administration’s culture-war agenda is justified. Precisely because it pretends to be governed by journalistic values like objectivity and fairness, The Free Press helps sustain the society-wide hysteria over wokeness while downplaying the country’s descent into authoritarianism.
…
If there was a Free Press pitchbot, it could hardly come up with a better headline than the one affixed to columnist Batya Ungar-Sargon’s article last week: “I Used to Hate Trump. Now I’m a MAGA Lefty.” The headline gives the impression to an unfamiliar reader that Ungar-Sargon’s conversion is something new, when she has been a dependable Trump cheerleader for years. Most recently, she’s been claiming that Trump’s tariffs will reverse not just America’s manufacturing but also, preposterously, its masculinity crisis. In her MAGA conversion piece, she describes Trump as “socially moderate, anti-interventionist, and committed to America’s blue-collar workers.”

In her email announcing the Paramount acquisition today, Bari Weiss wrote of her plans for CBS News:

What does this mean for CBS News? It means a redoubled commitment to great journalism. It means building on a storied legacy—and bringing that historic newsroom into 2025 and beyond. Most of all, it means working tirelessly to make sure CBS News is the most trusted news organization in the world.

We would not be doing this if we did not believe in David Ellison, and the entire leadership team who took over Paramount this summer. They are doubling down because they believe in news. Because they have courage. Because they love this country. And because they understand, as we do, that America cannot thrive without common facts, common truths, and a common reality.

The Wall Street Journal celebrated The Free Press’ effectiveness at a vehicle for Israel’s hasbara in November, 2023:

the Israel-Hamas war has been the breakout moment for Free Press, which is appealing to readers hungry for an alternative to what they view as an unfair characterization of Israel in mainstream media. Among its recent stories are “Why My Generation Hates Jews,” a piece about polling that showed many young people siding with Hamas in the conflict; a story about a wealthy couple who are providing financial backing for pro-Palestinian rallies; and a piece about people tearing down posters of kidnapped Israeli children.
…
Weiss said Free Press’s coverage is resonating with people who feel the mainstream media is creating “moral confusion,” for example by using terms like insurgents to describe Hamas, instead of labeling it a terrorist group.

In one article, Weiss took the New York Times to task for a headline that said Israel had bombed a Gaza hospital, information it attributed to Palestinian authorities. The Times later updated its reporting after Israel denied responsibility, as did The Wall Street Journal, and both outlets eventually said evidence pointed to a Palestinian group being responsible. The Times published an Editor’s Note saying that its initial coverage relied too heavily on claims by Hamas.
…
Early on Oct. 7, after Weiss and her wife, Nellie Bowles, had returned home from a Shabbat dinner, Weiss’s phone blew up with messages about Hamas’s attack on Israel. Weiss immediately began commissioning stories, and the next day a number of employees converged around her kitchen table in Los Angeles to drum up ideas.

In her first column after the attack, Weiss wrote: “You are about to withstand a barrage of lies about the war that broke out today in Israel.” She has penned columns about “Jew hate” on college campuses and examined the views of Gazans who don’t support Hamas. Weiss interviewed an Israeli mother whose two young sons had been taken by Hamas as hostages.

Surely I don’t need to point out that Israel did indeed bomb that hospital and that they have continued to bomb it, and virtually every other hospital in Gaza.

Bari Weiss and the Murdered Martyr

I want to wrap this up by focusing on one incident in the career of Bari Weiss: her role in the death of Palestinian poet Dr. Refaat Alareer.

Current Affairs summarized the situation:

Alareer was one of the most important literary voices of Palestine—a poet, essayist, and professor of English literature whose work has changed the lives of countless people, both in Gaza and far beyond. His life was brutally cut short by an Israeli airstrike, which Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor describes as “surgical” and “apparently deliberate,” targeting his sister’s apartment “out of the entire building where it’s located.” It was the second time Alareer had been the target of Israeli bombs, after he and his family survived a strike on their own home in late October 2023, and it came after weeks of death threats from Israeli soldiers and their supporters over his online activism—threats spurred on by Free Press editor Bari Weiss, who painted a target on Alareer’s back on social media.

But I’ll let Dr. Alareer’s tweet exchange with Bari Weiss speak for itself:

The Spanish poet Federico García Lorca was not able to name the fascists who murdered him, but Refaat Alareer was.

Lorca’s death is shrouded in mystery, something he predicted in his poem “The Fable And Round of the Three Friends” (translated from the Spanish via Lithub:

Then I realized I had been murdered.
They looked for me in cafes, cemeteries and churches
…. but they did not find me.
They never found me?
No. They never found me.

I’ll end with a quote from Alareer’s 2012 poem, “I am you”:

‏I am just you.
‏I am your past haunting
‏Your present and your future.
‏I strive like you did.
‏I fight like you did.
‏I resist like you resisted
‏And for a moment,
‏I’d take your tenacity
‏As a model,
‏Were you not holding
‏The barrel of the gun
‏Between my bleeding
‏Eyes.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

Vought immediately seized on the shut down to close multiple infrastructure projects in New York and yesterday he told GOP congresspeople that mass layoffs of federal employees will be coming “in a day or two” and that “funding for food assistance for the Women, Infants and Children food assistance program would run out in the next week or two.”

The shutdown is just a news hook for Vought to draw attention to what he’s already been doing (with an early assist from Elon Musk & DOGE), per The New York Times:

Before the government shutdown began Wednesday, many agencies published contingency plans — routine frameworks that are typically updated before a shutdown. These documents included details about which programs will be suspended and how many employees will be furloughed until the shutdown is over.

They reveal, to some extent, how much President Trump has slashed the federal work force through firings, layoffs and incentivized resignation programs, because they also include a recent report of how many employees work at each agency.

The Times piece also has cuts by subagency, where available.

The Courts have been a key part of Team Trump in his second administration, enough so that Republican National Lawyers Association President took to Real Clear Politics to celebrate that “Trump Is Most Successful President in the Courts in Generations.”

President Trump is on a winning streak the likes of which we haven’t seen in generations.

In fact, while the legacy media idolize rogue judges who throw up roadblocks to President Trump’s agenda at every turn and amplify perceived losses, what they don’t want you to realize is that when the dust settles, Trump wins most of the time on the ultimate decision.
…
The 2024-25 term built on important wins achieved during Trump’s first administration, where he was able to successfully fill the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court with originalist and textualist jurists, who adhere to the rule of law and the Constitution rather than a rigid ideology that pre-determines cases based on outcomes and parties.

Trump’s remaking of the judiciary during his first administration continued to rack up wins even during the Biden administration, when the Supreme Court returned abortion regulation to the states (Dobbs 2022), ended the practice of basing college admissions on racial preferences (Students for Fair Admissions 2023), and overturned decades of unaccountable, bureaucratic rulemaking (Loper Bright 2024).

…the White House “has won 18 times at the Supreme Court since Trump took office and is on a 15-case winning run.” Furthermore, “the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on an emergency basis 28 times. … It has lost only two.”
…
The U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals – just below the Supreme Court – are also consistently delivering victories for Trump, constitutional conservatives who supported him, and the rule of law.

The Fourth Circuit, now a court usually delivering progressive, policy-driven decisions, just weighed into the discussion over federal firings with a 2-1 victory for Trump, ruling that Democrat-led states could not pursue lawsuits challenging the dismissal of nearly 25,000 probationary federal employees.

Trump was able to reshape the Ninth Circuit – once widely referred to as the “Ninth Circus” because it was so reliably left-wing – during his first term, such that when California Gov. Gavin Newsom tried to reclaim control of the state’s National Guard during violent protests in L.A., District Judge Charles Breyer, who tried to hand his governor a victory, was overturned in embarrassing fashion.

But not every judge is rolling Trump’s way. U.S. District Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee ripped Trump’s “effort to deport pro-Palestinian academics” in a “scathing 161 page opinion” that is generating lots of love in the MSM.

Although, the ruling is so far all talk and no teeth, according to Politico:

(Young) did not immediately order changes to administration policies, but said he will hold further proceedings on how to rein in the practices he found to violate First Amendment free-speech rights.
…
“The President’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech,” Young wrote, describing the courts as the most crucial bulwark to this threat.

“I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected,” Young added. “Is he correct?”

Young has repeatedly tangled with the administration over policies he has described as discriminatory, one of a handful of old-guard Reagan-era judges to sound off about Trump’s approach to governing.

In August, two members of the Supreme Court — Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — rebuked Young for blocking the Trump administration’s decisions to cut off medical research grants it deemed related to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The two Trump appointees said recent rulings on other grant-related cases on the high court’s emergency docket made clear Young’s ruling was impermissible.

I covered the Supreme Court’s difficulty in communicating their desires to lower courts previously.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that Gallup is finding the Supreme Court’s approval rating near all-time lows.

Another case that has the shitlibs in high dudgeon, is the indictment of key RussiaGate prankster former FBI head James Comey. Just look at the outrage:

I can’t resist lightening the mood by sharing Comey’s entire Instagram statement, although some might find it more sickening than amusing (though it’s not quite the banger his previous video claiming to be a Taylor Swift fan was):

Here’s a partial transcript via ABC News:

James Comey: My heart is broken for the Department of Justice. I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I am innocent, so let’s have a trial, and keep the faith.

My family and I have known for years that there are costs for standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees and you shouldn’t either.

Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant and she is right (Comey is referring to a statement his daughter, Maurene Comey, made in a farewell email to her colleagues after being fired from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York this summer).

“But I am not afraid, and I hope you are not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does.”

I must admit I’m enjoying the media coverage of the Trump appointee who’s handling the case, (this is some classic Trump admin dipshittery):

The New Yorker’s Ruth Marcus tells this part of the story just fine:

Thursday’s indictment of the former F.B.I. director James Comey bore a single, telling signature: that of Lindsey Halligan, installed by President Donald Trump just three days earlier to serve as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Halligan is an insurance lawyer turned Trump attorney and White House aide; in March, Trump appointed her to remove “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian. She has scant experience in federal courts and none as a prosecutor. Her predecessor in the position, a seasoned prosecutor nominated by Trump, was forced out last Friday, according to numerous news reports, after balking at demands to concoct cases against Comey, in addition to New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and others.

But overall, I have to agree with Aaron Mate that the Comey indictment is in good company with the RussiaGate prosecutions that Comey and the MSM were so worked up about during Trump 1.0. Note that Mate agrees “Trump is exploiting the justice system for revenge against a political foe,” he just puts it in context:

By the derelict standards of the 2016 Trump-Russia collusion probe that Comey presided over and promoted long after leaving his position, his 2025 prosecution is perfectly legitimate.
…
By January 2017, when Trump took office, FBI agents knew that they had nothing to go on (in the Russiagate investigation), and even discussed shutting down. But under Comey’s watch, the opposite occurred. Rather than abandon their baseless collusion hunt, the FBI expended considerable energy to make it look legitimate.
Comey directed agents to snare Trump National Security Advisor Mike Flynn in what amounted to a perjury trap, a move he later bragged about while hawking the first of two Russiagate-profiteering books. Getting Flynn to speak with two FBI agents was “something we’ve, I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized investigation, a more organized administration,” a self-amused Comey recalled.
It worked: Flynn was accused of falsely telling the FBI that he had not discussed the issue of sanctions with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
…
It was all a lie. The declassified transcript of the intercepted Flynn-Kislyak showed that the two barely discussed the issue of sanctions beyond a few inconsequential words.
…
Comey has now been indicted on the same perjury charge that he nabbed Flynn on. While both cases can be described as politically motivated and substantively flawed, Comey’s at least has some approximation to a factual predicate.
…
Comey, who was fired by Trump in May 2017, used his supposed credibility to keep the ruse alive. Hawking his memoir, A Higher Loyalty, to a Russiagate-crazed media upon its release in April 2018, Comey went out of his way to prop up the most farcical Trump-Russia conspiracy theory in circulation.
“I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013,” Comey told ABC News. “It’s possible, but I don’t know.” …Comey, wrote The New York Times‘ Michelle Goldberg, “has started a long overdue national conversation about whether the pee tape is real.”
…
Trump has repurposed his political foes’ playbook for his own purposes. For all of the legitimate indignation at his abuses, a considerable portion of blame belongs to those, including the newly indicted Jim Comey, who handed him the tools.

Trump is also celebrating yet another victory against Ivy League universities:

The defining battle in his crusade against higher education will soon be over, President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, announcing, seemingly offhand, that a deal with Harvard University had been reached.

“All you have to do is paper it, right, Linda?” the president said as he turned to his education secretary, Linda McMahon. “Yes, sir,” she replied. Once the agreement is finalized, the president said, “then their sins are forgiven.”

The announcement came during an unrelated event at the White House on Tuesday concerning advancements in the treatment of pediatric cancer. Details are still forthcoming. Pressed for more information, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston would only say that “President Trump is reshaping higher education. Stay tuned for further announcements!” But Trump seems to have achieved exactly what he wanted: a splashy settlement.

The Trump administration launched a multi-pronged assault on Cambridge earlier this year, freezing more than $2.4 billion in federal research grants in response to allegations that the school, which predates the nation, continued to promote so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and discriminated against Jewish students and faculty. During an August cabinet meeting, Trump told McMahon, “We want nothing less than $500 million from Harvard. Don’t negotiate, Linda. They’ve been very bad.”

The transgressions of that university now seem to be forgiven. Trump previewed a deal whereby Harvard pays a $500 million fine and operates “a series of trade schools” to train students in subjects like artificial intelligence and automotive engineering. He called it “a big investment in trade schools done by very smart people.”

Team Trump players are also scoring big off Israel’s 8 front war, such as cast-off 2020 Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, per The Hill:

President Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale has registered as a foreign agent for Israel, hired to create digital campaigns combating antisemitism in a contract worth $6 million.

Parscale filed paperwork with the Foreign Agents Registration Act saying he began work for the Israeli government on Sept. 18. He registered a company called Clocktower X LLC and is primarily corresponding with Israel’s minister of Foreign Affairs and Eran Shayovich, listed as chief of staff at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to his LinkedIn.

Parscale’s contract was first reported by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington-based think tank that advocates for restraint in foreign policy.

According to Parscale’s contract, his company is hired to create content where at least 80 percent “is tailored to Gen Z audiences across platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcasts, and other relevant digital and broadcast outlets.”

It’s a good thing Israel came through for Brad, according to Wikipedia he’d been reduced to “real estate flipping, restarting his political consulting firm, forming a data analysis startup” and working for a losing GOP primary campaign in Ohio.

Responsible Statecraft has more details on what Parscale’s company will be up to and introduces a bank shot that explains how Don Jr. will be wetting his beak on the deal:

Clock Tower will create new websites to influence how AI GPT models such as ChatGPT, which are trained on vast amounts of data from every corner of the internet, frame topics and respond to them — all on behalf of Israel.

As part of this work, the firm will also use search engine optimization software MarketBrew AI, a predictive AI platform that helps clients adapt to algorithms and promote their work on search engines like Google and Bing, to “improve the visibility and ranking of relevant narratives.”

Clock Tower will integrate its pro-Israel messaging into Salem Media Network properties, a conservative Christian media group that boasts a vast radio network and produces high-profile shows such as the Hugh Hewitt Show, the Larry Elder Show, and the Right View with Lara Trump. In April, the conservative media network announced Donald Trump Jr. and Lara Trump as significant stakeholders in the company. Salem Media Network did not respond to a question clarifying whether it would be compensated by Clock Tower for promoting messages on behalf of Israel, or how these messages would be integrated.

I have no idea how Clock Tower will “integrate its pro-Israel messaging into Salem Media Network properties.” Perhaps they’ll insert ads into Salem’s podcasts and radio broadcasts?

Speaking of Trump 1.0 left-behinds, former favorite-son-in-law Jared Kushner is, as I’ve posted before, cleaning up in Gaza, but now it’s been revealed that he was at the center of the $55 billion deal that took EA Games private with Saudi and UAE money, via Yahoo Finance:

Jared Kushner brokered the initial connection between the Redwood, California-based video game maker and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and for months acted as a central figure in the talks, according to people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations. When the deal’s momentum slowed around mid-year, Kushner pushed to keep it going, some of the people said.
…
Kushner’s matchmaking role in the plan to take EA private adds another strand to the dense tangle of business relationships between wealthy Gulf states and the president’s family. Just this week, as news of the EA deal rippled across Wall Street, the Trump Organization was inking a separate agreement to expand with another development in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second-largest city, underscoring the extent of the family’s connections to the oil-rich nation.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, along with Silver Lake Management and Kushner’s Affinity Partners, agreed to pay $210 per share in cash for EA, valuing the video-game company at about $55 billion. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is providing a $20 billion loan to support the deal.

The Saudis will be the largest contributor to the $36 billion in equity backing the deal, acquiring a controlling stake in EA, while Affinity will have the smallest share, according to people familiar with the matter.

Kushner, 44, already had a financial tether to PIF. After acting as a senior adviser to Trump in his first term, working on foreign policy negotiations in the Middle East, he founded Affinity Partners in 2021. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund contributed about $2 billion.

Affinity, which now has $5.4 billion in assets, including from Abu Dhabi-based asset manager Lunate and the Qatar Investment Authority, hasn’t previously been part of such a high-profile deal. Some of its other bets have been on companies including EGYM, a Munich-based health technology company, and in Greenwich, Connecticut-based QXO Inc.

Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt did not enjoy being asked about it:

The Daily Beast wallowed in Leavitt’s crapulence:

“I think it’s frankly despicable that you’re trying to suggest that it’s inappropriate for Jared Kushner, who is widely respected around the world and has great trust and relationships with these critical partners in these countries to strike a twenty point comprehensive detailed peace plan that no other administration would ever be able to achieve,” Leavitt declared.

“Jared is donating his energy and his time to our government, to the president of the United States, to secure world peace, and that is a very noble thing,” she insisted.

“Virtually everyone in the world is supportive of this plan that Jared Kushner offered his time to help put together alongside our special envoy Witkoff, the vice president, the president of the United States, Secretary Rubio and the president’s entire national security team,” she continued.

Leavitt didn’t have the quick instincts to turn the conversation to a topic more favorable to team Trump, the tariff deal with Pfizer.

Pfizer Inc. secured a reprieve from President Donald Trump’s long-threatened tariffs on the pharmaceutical industry Tuesday by agreeing to slash some of its drug prices by up to 85% and selling directly to the American public, a move other major drugmakers are expected to follow.

Pfizer said it will ensure Americans receive comparable prices to those offered in other countries and will launch new medicines at parity, addressing a key Trump complaint that Americans unfairly shoulder the highest medical costs in the world. In exchange, the company gained a three-year grace period from widely anticipated pharmaceutical tariffs that the administration has been promulgating.

It’s the latest example of the transactional nature of winning tariff exemptions from Trump, who has unilaterally wielded trade policy to exert power over multiple industries. As recently as last week, he threatened 100% tariffs on the pharmaceutical industry.

Similar deals could be forthcoming. Eli Lilly & Co. said it’s in active discussions with the administration to further expand patient access, as the announcement Tuesday underscores the urgency of making medicines more affordable.

It will be interesting to see if Trump can leaven his budget-slashing and civil war mongering with enough populist moves like this to pull off GOP wins in the mid-term elections.

But then again, that’s what gerrymandering is for. We’re in a post-constitutional order, remember.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.

I’m going to try to apply the lens of deliberate deception, delusion, and dipshittery that I’ve recently applied to Israel’s hasbara war on its 8th front and the European powers’ attempts to control popular opinion to the Trump administration’s recent actions, propagandistic, kinetic, and financial.

Let’s put things in context before we dive in. Trump and his administration are moving fast because it is clear the current financial bubble may be about to pop. That is the kind of pressure that drives desperate moves.

Philip Pilkington put it well, quoting from John Authers’ Bloomberg column “Assume an AI Bubble. What Difference Would It Make?”

Now let’s look at team Trump’s immediate attempts to capitalize on the shutdown.

Trump is leading into the shutdown clampdown with bluster, as usual.

Trump’s blather is easy enough to dismiss, but Russ Vought, one of the more formidable members of Trump’s administration, is already applying very targeted cuts to make the shutdown hurt Democrats where they live.

Vought is Director of the Office of Management and Budget and has immense power at his discretion.

Vought recently got the New York Times supervillain treatment:

The article has some bits worth excerpting:

(Vought) had carefully analyzed mistakes from the first term. And he had laid out steps to achieve the long-sought conservative goal of a president with dramatically expanded authority over the executive branch, including the power to cut off spending, fire employees, control independent agencies and deregulate the economy.
…
Vought has at last begun to put his plans into action — remaking the presidency, block by block, by restoring powers weakened after the Nixon administration. His efforts are helping Mr. Trump exert authority more aggressively than any modern president, and are threatening an erosion of the longstanding checks and balances in America’s constitutional system.

Now, as the government heads toward a shutdown when federal funding lapses on Tuesday, Mr. Vought, 49, is leveraging the moment to further advance his goals of slashing agencies and purging employees, with his office telling agencies to prepare for mass firings unless Congress can strike a deal to keep the government open.

The ultimatum follows a string of achievements for Mr. Vought.
This summer, he pressured lawmakers to enact his plan to cancel $9 billion for foreign aid and public broadcasting that they had previously approved — an unusual bow by Congress to the White House. The new law claimed another prize for conservatives: the death of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And a deal Mr. Vought cut with House Republicans helped secure passage of Mr. Trump’s domestic policy law that slashed spending on Medicaid and food stamps.

He has spearheaded a push to erase hundreds of regulations on the environment, health, transportation and food and worker safety, telling Mr. Trump at an August cabinet meeting that his efforts had led to 245 deregulatory initiatives this year. He has asserted White House power over independent agencies like the Federal Reserve, championing an executive order that forced them to submit their regulatory actions to his office for approval.

As the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency charged with enforcing rules to protect people from predatory financial practices, he halted nearly all of the agency’s work, and sought to fire 90 percent of its staff.

At the heart of Mr. Vought’s plan, associates say, is the intentional engineering of a legal battle over Congress’s power to decide how government money is spent, potentially creating a new legal precedent for the president to block spending on any programs and policies he dislikes.

The article also contrasts Vought’s deliberate methods with the sheer dipshittery of Elon Musk’s DOGE, which while it succeeded in terrorizing many government departments and slashing thousands of jobs, was neither a sustained or well-thought out effort.

Vought is also playing hide-the-pea with billions of dollars that Congress has appropriated, per Notus:

Across federal agencies, the Trump administration’s aggressive slash-and-burn approach to federal programs, grants and contracts has repeatedly challenged Congress’ power of the purse. The administration has claimed it has the discretion to redirect funds to programs aligned with Trump’s agenda — and Republican congressional leaders have largely let them do it.

The outcome: Billions in taxpayer dollars have become virtually untraceable — a level of opaqueness in government funds that’s raising questions around the legality of the administration’s actions. Some of these taxpayer funds expire on Sept. 30. If they’re not spent by then, like all funds Congress appropriated specifically for 2025, they disappear.

NOTUS attempted to trace the money appropriated for more than 100 government programs to understand where taxpayer dollars are going, only to hit dead ends repeatedly. Data is outdated or conflicting, agencies have been vague in their explanations, and in many cases, there’s no publicly available evidence that appropriated money is being spent at all.
…
The Government Accountability Office has opened more than 40 investigations into whether the administration is illegally withholding funds in violation of Congressional instructions. GAO has already found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and the Department of Health and Human Services are among the many agencies violating the law.
…

The Trump administration is “really pushing the limits of what the executive can do without the consent of the legislative branch,” Appropriations Chair Susan Collins told The Wall Street Journal in July.

She escalated her language at the end of August, when the White House made clear that OMB Director Russell Vought intended to pursue a controversial method of withholding funds called a “pocket rescission.”

Now let’s look at Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and his attempt to remake the Pentagon via jawboning.

It’s easy to dismiss Hegseth’s big speech as ridiculous culture war nonsense:

this speech is about fixing decades of decay, some of it obvious, some of it hidden, or as the chairman has put it, we are clearing out the debris, removing the distractions, clearing the way for leaders to be leaders. You might say we’re ending the war on warriors. I heard someone wrote a book about that.

For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons, based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts. We’ve pretended that combat arms and non-combat arms are the same thing. We’ve weeded out so-called toxic leaders under the guise of double blind psychology assessments, promoting risk averse go along to get along conformists instead. You name it, the department did it.

Foolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass heading and we lost our way. We became the woke department. But not anymore. Right now, I’m looking out at a sea of Americans who made a choice when they were young men and young women to do something most Americans will not, to serve something greater than yourself, to fight for God and country, for freedom and the Constitution.

Hegseth’s apparent anti-woke drive has gotten the usual anonymous bitching to the press, and from enough significant players that we must ask how unified the U.S. military is behind Trump’s initiatives, from the Washington Post:

Military leaders have raised serious concerns about the Trump administration’s forthcoming defense strategy, exposing a divide between the Pentagon’s political and uniformed leadership as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summons top brass to a highly unusual summit in Virginia on Tuesday, according to eight current and former officials.

The critiques from multiple top officers, including Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff come as Hegseth reorders U.S. military priorities — centering the Pentagon on perceived threats to the homeland, narrowing U.S. competition with China, and downplaying America’s role in Europe and Africa.

But there may be more significant things happening behind the scenes, things that are not surfacing via outraged leaks.

Larry Johnson quoted a private correspondence with Naked Capitalism’s principal that explains what may be going on:

…it’s ludicrous to have called so many senior guys in for such a silly agenda. A stern memo and/or video sessions would have done.

So the big stoopid meeting, IMHO was to cover for a smaller gathering that had to be done in person. And where whoever was summoned would be a big tell as to what the focus was.

Johnson expanded on that notion:

Besides the massive US naval force parked off the coast of Venezuela, we are now hearing that US tanker aircraft are flying to the Middle East via England. We saw the same phenomena in the days preceding the June 24 attack on Iran.

If the Trump administration is planning a coordinated attack on Venezuela and Iran, the commanders of USCENTCOM and USSOUTHCOM would be involved. While the plans for such attacks could have been discussed over a SVTCS (i.e., Secure Video Teleconferences), those sessions usually have dozens of straphangers watching. If you want to keep close hold on such planning, you do it in person. If the CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM commanders had been called to Washington alone, the odds are high that someone would have reported this. With the presence of the US naval force off the coast of Venezuela and the movement of US aircraft towards the Persian Gulf, this likely would have attracted unwanted attention.

Trump’s statements on his domestic military deployments are also alarming, from the Chicago Sun-Times:

“I told [Defense Secretary] Pete [Hegseth] we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military, because we’re going into Chicago very soon,” Trump said. “That’s a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor. Stupid.”

Trump again criticized crime in Chicago, despite violent crime and murder rates having dropped in the city, saying, “They need the military desperately.”

Mobilization of the National Guard has begun in Oregon, which Trump called “a war zone.”

Trump then addressed whether the military could retaliate against protesters, saying, “I say they spit, we hit.”

He also told military leaders that he signed an executive order to establish a National Guard quick reaction force last month “because it’s the enemy from within.”

“We have to handle it before it gets out of control,” Trump said.

Tyler Hicks at Inkstick wrestles with whether or not the U.S. military is ideologically ready for the kind of clampdown Trump is envisioning in his piece “‘Let’s Go Bash Some Skulls’: Inside the Militarization of Trump’s America:”

“The American right conceptualizes their political enemies and the Democratic Party as a powerful hostile foreign insurgency,” says (a California-based military officer called Michael). “Now with the clear path to escalation they have already been on, I definitely see a reaction where they take this National Guard and ICE energy and pivot it towards people of left-leaning ideals.”
…
Kris Goldsmith, an Iraq War veteran who founded Task Force Butler to investigate and counteract extremist groups, says the “MAGA-fication” of the military has been an overlooked trend. When the National Guard deploys to US cities, “generals aren’t fucking on the line holding a shield or baton,” Goldsmith says. “The young people who would be in those positions grew up in the era of Trump, many enlisted while Trump was president, and all of them enlisted in the last 10 years knowing that Trumpism exists and that it’s a political force.”

Michael, the military officer based in California, has seen that “MAGA-fication” up close and personal. He worries sending the National Guard to more cities poses serious risks, especially since, in his experience, military personnel are “softened at the idea of abusing their fellow people.”

Trump and Hegseth have been cultivating a new outlaw warrior ethos in the U.S. military, as chronicled in an ambitious multi-part series in The New York Times magazine called “America’s Vigilantes: A Four-Part Investigation of the Culture of Impunity in the U.S. Special Forces.”

All four parts are worth reading:

• A Green Beret’s Confession Outraged the Military. Then He Found an Ally in Trump.

• Nine Bodies Turned Up at a Green Beret Outpost. What Really Happened?

• How War-Crime Accusations Against Green Berets Were Denied and Buried

• They Celebrated Vigilante Justice on the Battlefield. Then They Brought It Home.

But I’ll limit myself to quoting the NY Times’ 5 take aways from the series:

1. The Special Forces’ culture of rule-breaking emerged from the pressures of an unconventional war.

2. Special Operations commanders overlooked evidence of what might have been one of the worst war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

3. The Army’s aggressive prosecution of Maj. Mathew Golsteyn reveals how it could pursue Green Berets, if it chose to.

4. This wartime culture of lawlessness has reverberated in a wave of domestic crimes committed by soldiers with Army Special Operations.

5. The operators’ vigilante ethos has been embraced by leaders like Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.

Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, rose to prominence in part through his vociferous defense of Golsteyn and other service members accused of war crimes. “They’re not war criminals; they’re warriors,” he said in 2019, shortly before Golsteyn and others received a pardon from President Trump.

In the current administration, Trump and Hegseth have pushed to loosen legal restraints on the armed forces, both abroad and in the United States, and to expand the role of the military at home. They have purged the military’s top lawyers, deployed active-duty troops to patrol American streets and authorized lethal strikes on those they designate as “narco-terrorists,” summary killings that experts say violate international law.

Trump and Hegseth’s remaking of the military has not yet reached all the general officer corps, however.

Brig. Gen. Alan R. Gronewold, head of the National Guard unit currently deployed to Portland plays a little bit of Hamlet in a letter reported by Ken Klippenstein, who also points out the troops are no longer under the command of Oregon governor Tina Kotek:

“I know some of you may have strong feelings about this mission. That’s okay. You are citizens first, but you’re also service members who took an oath to support and defend the Constitution and follow the orders of the President and the Governor. That oath doesn’t come with an asterisk that says, “only when I agree with the mission.”

“I’ll be honest with you — I know this isn’t easy. Some people in Oregon won’t understand or won’t support this mission. Some might even be hostile about it. But we’ve been through tough situations before. We are professionals who do our duties, regardless of how it’s received.”

Klippenstein has also been beating the drum over Trump’s alarming National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, a national security directive identifying “anti-Christian” and “anti-American” views as indicators of radical left violence.

So far NSPM7 has been ignored by Democrats in Congress and downplayed by the media, but I agree with Klippenstein that it is more alarming than the Executive Orders Trump has been issuing at record rates.

It seems clear that Trump 2.0 is a very different, and all-together more dangerous and alarming entity than Trump 1.0 ever was.

In my next piece, I’ll dive into Trump’s attempt to prosecute former FBI head James Comey for his role in hamstringing Trump’s first term via Russiagate and how those efforts may have only succeeded in radicalizing the President.

Originally published at Naked Capitalism.