Sunday, March 30, 2025

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 30, 2025

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 30, 2025

by Tony Wikrent


Crossing the U.S. Border? Here’s How to Protect Yourself

Nikita Mazurov, Matt Sledge, March 29, 2025 [The Intercept]

Searches of phones and other electronics are on the rise for those entering the U.S. Take these steps to help secure your devices.


Managing Unexpected ICE Visits: Best Practices for Employers

March 19, 2025 [IndustryWeek]


Rep. Jaimie Raskin’s request for you to file FOIA with DOGE



Trump not violating any law

'He who saves his Country does not violate any Law'


‘We’re Not Stopping’: Trump Border Czar Vows to Ignore Judges

[The Daily Beast, via MSN 03-18-2025]



The Biggest Scandal of the Second Trump Term Isn’t “Signalgate”

Alex Shephard, March 28, 2025 [The New Republic]

The national security chat debacle certainly merits attention. But the Trump administration is now blatantly disappearing students and others who are in the country legally…. Masked agents snatching legal residents off the streets and disappearing them—not so long ago, this would be unthinkable in the United States. Now it is not only a regular occurrence but something that the Trump administration boasts about….

By removing the authors of innocuous op-eds, Rubio seems to believe that he can surgically smother the opinions they were expressing. At the same time, this purge allows the administration to systematically attack higher education. Already, the administration has used student protests to attack a number of colleges and universities and to withhold hundreds of millions in federal funding from several. Allegations of antisemitism—and a list of demands that are more or less impossible to fully meet—are being used as a Trojan horse to withhold funding and to attack other sources of revenue. Many schools rely heavily on foreign students, who often pay full tuition. The Trump administration’s crackdown, even if it were to somehow stop today, has already seriously jeopardized that. Who would send their child to study in America in such a climate? Especially knowing their child could be swept off the street and flown to a detention facility?


What Will It Take?

Joyce Vance, March 26, 2025 [Civil Discourse]

Why use Signal in the first place when American leaders have some of the most secure communications technology in the world available to them? Is it just for convenience? If so, that’s sloppy, and they should be committing to do better, not arguing over whether the information was classified or not. (But if it looks like a duck…)

The truth is that by going to Signal, they avoided leaving a paper trail. No annoying records that could be unearthed down the road. Remember Trump’s first impeachment? It came about in large part because after the call where he threatened Ukraine’s president with withholding security aid if he wouldn’t announce his country was investigating Joe Biden for financial misconduct, records of the call were buried inside a classified information system where they didn’t belong. That was what got the ball rolling. It was about trying to hide records of an official call that everyone knew was wrong.

As far as we know at this point, there was nothing improper about the attack on the Houthis. So why were high-ranking members of the Trump administration communicating off the books? How pervasive is the practice, and who knows/authorizes it? We are a government of the people. Transparency isn’t optional. There are rules about public records that have to be followed, and this president who likes to operate in secret and at the margins of our laws has frequently tried to skirt them.


The Next American Constitution

Thomas Neuburger, March 26, 2025 [God’s Spies]

...What if the Right wins absolutely? What would we be as a country under full right-wing rule?

That’s been hard to determine, though there were clear indications. I decided the Right was factious, and a lot depended on which group would end up on top. If the Christian Nationalists, the God-bothering absolutists, or groups of that stripe should win out, we’d have one kind of place. God before gold, God with list of demands.

Or what if Charles Koch won out? America would be slightly different — a terrible place, but not the same hell hole as the New Apostolic Reform people would create. God as a cover story, gold calling the shots.

A Techno-Fascist Takeover

So who actually won? That’s been answered. Thanks to Trump’s love of revenge — if you try to remove the king, it's best to succeed — and his bromance with a man he’s decided swings admirable pipe, the group on the Right we can safely call techno-fascists has come out ahead.

They’ve captured a man who thinks like a mafia boss, and that man has captured the crown — meaning, both houses of Congress, the Court (for now), and the throne, something we once called a Presidency, then inflated to king….

I originally thought that of course Trump would leave office when his term expires…. But consider the people behind him, who feed on his fury: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and their ilk; Russ Vought, a primary author of Project 2025; the whole of the Heritage crowd; the people who created John Roberts to be who he is, who financed his Court. Crazed billionaires, bankers and moguls of every stripe. They have transformational dreams that don’t end with Trump….

Three things to watch for, ways to judge your next move:

• What will the Roberts Court do as cases come up? Acquiesce, split the baby, or pull the king off of his throne? If the third, what will Trump do? Ignore them or change course?

• If his friends wants to break Social Security — make sure checks don’t go out — they’re well on their way. If they do that, how will they deal with the fury that follows? They can respond “So what?” — invoke the No one can stop me Amendment — but will they?

• Finally, will they treat citizens like alien others? Remember, Obama set precedent on that. Will Trump go that far: use AI to find his enemies, then “deal with” the ones he thinks he can safely destroy? Or will he stop short of that?


The Appellate Void

Andrew Coan, March 24, 2025 [Balkanization]

What would it look like for the executive branch to defy a court order? Typically, we picture a dramatic showdown between the President and the Supreme Court, the whole country watching with bated breath. But there's another, less dramatic scenario, which has been largely overlooked in recent commentary.

Suppose the administration simply defies a district court order and declines to appeal. The plaintiffs, having already won, would have no standing to file an appeal of their own. Nor could they petition the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus.

The Courts of Appeals have no jurisdiction to grant mandamus against executive officials under these circumstances. As Marbury v. Madison established, such actions constitute original, not appellate, proceedings and can only be brought before a court with original jurisdiction. The All Writs Act permits writs only "in aid of jurisdiction," requiring an existing appellate case. Without an appeal, neither the Supreme Court nor the Court of Appeals would possess a clear procedural vehicle to intervene.

Contempt sanctions might solve this problem. But the best recent scholarship suggests that they are a fragile remedy even under normal circumstances. In this scenario, it seems quite possible they would fail completely. Enforcement depends on cooperation from the executive branch. And without an appeal, higher courts are likely powerless….


The Judiciary’s Last Stand

Tom Nichols, March 24, 2025 [The Atlantic]

Trump’s campaign against the rule of law has ratcheted up dramatically.


Democrat: Leaked Messages Show Waltz Admitting to War Crime in Yemen Strike 

[Truthout, via Naked Capitalism 03-27-2025]


Trump Executive Order on Voting Denounced as 'Authoritarian Power Grab'

Jon Queally, March 26, 2025 [CommonDreams]

...The official executive order—under the Orwellian header "Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections"—would do the very opposite, warn critics, by making it more difficult for tens of millions of eligible U.S. citizens to cast their ballots in state and national elections….

"The order, which multiple legal experts say is likely illegal," Edkins continued, "threatens to punish states that do not comply and could potentially disenfranchise any American who doesn't have a passport. It even invites Elon Musk's DOGE to help enforce the measures. This isn't about securing our elections—it's voter suppression, plain and simple."

The ACLU said the presidential directive "represents a significant overreach of executive power and poses a direct threat to the fundamental right to vote," in part by ordering—by fiat and without the consent of Congress—the Election Assistance Commission to alter the national mail voter registration form to require documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport, to register to vote—something never needed in the nation's history.

Trump's order also attempts to force states to enact "documentary proof of citizenship requirements". It would force state election authorities, under threat of significant federal funds being withheld, to discard all absentee and mail-in ballots received after Election Day….

"A president does not set election law and never will," said Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of the pro-democracy group Common Cause. "Trump's executive action is an attempt to take away our right to vote or make it so hard that we don't participate….”


They Are Going to Take Everything If We Don't Stop Them 

Hamilton Nolan, March 28, 2025 [How Things Work]


The worst thing that the federal government has done to labor unions in my lifetime happened last night. Donald Trump signed an executive order saying that the government will no longer recognize and bargain with a huge portion of the unions that represent federal workers. Among the agencies where he says he is tossing out the union contracts are the VA, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the Department of Energy, the EPA, the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice, and others. To justify this move, Trump said that all of these agencies are involved in “national security.” This is a fiction. His statement also said that “Certain Federal unions have declared war on President Trump’s agenda,” which is closer to the true motivation. He doesn’t like these unions, so he is just trying to erase them with the stroke of a pen….

There are more than a million union members working in the federal government. I have not seen an official count, but this executive order targets most of them. It is also meant to establish the precedent that the president is capable of destroying entire unions using flimsy legalistic pretexts. Oh, the Environmental Protection Agency is “determined to have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work,” so you can throw out its fairly negotiated existing union contract, and that is okay? Sure. Treating any of this as a legitimate political position is a mistake. This is just running into the middle of organized labor swinging around a chainsaw.
 



'Fall in Line or Else': Latest Trump Order Seen as Message to Workers

Jon Queally, March 28, 2025 [CommonDreams]

...President Donald Trump's latest attack on the working class was delivered in the form of an executive order late Thursday that seeks to strip the collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal government workers, a move that labor rights advocates said is not only unlawful but once again exposes Trump's deep antagonism toward working people and their families….

The far-reaching order, which cites the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act as the source of his presidential authority, goes way beyond restricting collective bargaining and union representation at agencies with a national security mandate but instead tries to ensnare dozens of federal agencies and classifications of federal workers who work beyond that scope….

"Straight out of Project 2025, this executive order is the very definition of union-busting," said Schuler in a Thursday night statement. "It strips the fundamental right to unionize and collectively bargain from workers across the federal government at more than 30 agencies….” 


Under Pressure From Trump, ICE Is Pushing Legal Boundaries 

[ProPublica, via Naked Capitalism 03-26-2025]


Mike Johnson Suggests Eliminating Federal Courts After Trump Rulings Blocked 

[Truthout, via Naked Capitalism 03-27-2025]


Donald Trump Has Invented Something New and Chilling

Michael Tomasky, March 28, 2025

Donald Trump is inventing a new way. Call it chaos fascism. Destroy the institutions of democracy until they’re so disfigured or dysfunctional that a majority no longer cares about them.

That’s exactly what’s happening with Social Security. The Washington Post reported this week that the SSA is breaking down: Its website “crashed four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts.” A Wall Street multimillionaire who probably doesn’t need his Social Security check and who has pledged that he will “100 percent work with DOGE” has already cut around 12 percent of the staff and doesn’t look like he’s stopping there….

It applies even to Signalgate. Trump has contempt for rules and procedures, and so he appoints unqualified stooges like Pete Hegseth to run the world’s largest military, who share that contempt—who think being tough means showing the world that they can do anything they want with no consequences. Again—ignore the law, trash the rules, establish that procedure is whatever you say it is. Chaos fascism….

Trump will orchestrate no military coup. The Republican Congress will probably pass no laws that make Trump president for life. That would be too obvious. What they’ll do is make stealthier moves across the board that discredit and destroy our democratic institutions until he and his billionaire friends can strip them for parts. Chaos fascism is here to stay.


Men DOGEbags at Work 

DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Code Base in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse 

[Wired, via Naked Capitalism 03-29-2025]

Like many legacy government IT systems, SSA systems contain code written in COBOL, a programming language created in part in the 1950s by computing pioneer Grace Hopper. The Defense Department essentially pressured private industry to use COBOL soon after its creation, spurring widespread adoption and making it one of the most widely used languages for mainframes, or computer systems that process and store large amounts of data quickly, by the 1970s. (At least one DOD-related website praising Hopper's accomplishments is no longer active, likely following the Trump administration’s DEI purge of military acknowledgements.)

[TW: Grace Hopper is a prime example of How America Was Built by government support and promotion of science and technology. Hopper’s pioneering computer work took place as she was serving as an officer in the U.S. Navy. She devised the theory of machine-independent programming languages, the foundation of all computer programming today. She retired as a Rear Admiral. These are the stories of actual industrial development that have been stifled by the neo-liberal / conservative myths of “free enterprise.” ]


DOGE cuts to Social Security staff and services sends benefits system into chaos 

WSWS, via Naked Capitalism 03-26-2025]


‘A Small Group of People Wanted to Do Away With Social Security From the Beginning’ 

[FAIR, via Naked Capitalism 03-26-2025]


Sabotage In Plain Sight— How Republicans Hope To Get Away With Dismantling Social Security

Howie Klein, March 26, 2025 [downwithtyranny.com]


Treasury Plans ‘Substantial’ Layoffs as Part of Musk’s DOGE Push 

[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 03-26-2025]


FBI puts together Tesla task force as counter-protest violence ramps up 

Electrek, via Naked Capitalism 03-26-2025]


An Interview With A Fired USDA Specialist 

[Defector, via Naked Capitalism 03-24-2025]


Internal White House document details layoff plans across U.S. agencies 

[WaPo, via Naked Capitalism 03-28-2025]


Gaza / Palestine / Israel

“The Target is Unmistakable”: The Shooting of Gaza’s Children 

Amel Guettatfi, March 27, 2025 [Drop Site]


The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics

Neoliberalism and Its Hegemonic Crisis 

[Modern Intellectual History, via Naked Capitalism 03-28-2025]


Predatory finance

The Synthetic Lender of Last Resort 

Matt Levine [Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 03-29-2025]


They’re not capitalists — they’re predatory criminals


Restoring balance to the economy


Disrupting mainstream economics


Health care crisis


Information age dystopia / surveillance state


Democrats' political malpractice

Monopoly Round-Up: The Democrats’ Corporate Lawyers Get the Humiliation They Deserve

Matt Stoller, March 23, 2025 [BIG]

...A few years ago, I spoke at the American Bar Association Antitrust Section, and observed the rage the gathered corporate lawyers felt towards anti-monopolists for barging into their club. While I noted at the time the legal elements of the disagreement, there’s a political element as well. These lawyers are the Democratic establishment, the real thinkers and operatives behind the frontmen like Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer and candidates like Kamala Harris and Barack Obama. And it’s been this way for decades, such that it’s systematized….

A key firm in this network is Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a multi-billion dollar entity that is so politically connected its New York office served as the unofficial campaign headquarters for Kamala Harris’ campaign. Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries worked as an associate at Paul Weiss for six years….

Today, at $7.5 million in profit per partner in 2024, the fifth highest of major law firms, Paul Weiss is anchored by private equity titan Apollo Global Management, as well as Google, Amazon, and Apple. It reps nine of the top ten private equity firms. Just this week, it got a securities action against Amazon dismissed, advised Rocket Mortgage in buying Redfin, and helped engineer the roll-up of roofing in the $11 billion QXO/Beacon Roofing Supply deal. Its work spans the gamut of pro-corporate aggressive lawyering. Brad Karp, for instance, sent a letter opposing the Biden administration’s $8 cap on credit card late fees. It helped Verizon buy Frontier, did one of the largest private equity deals in China and as an internal investigator failed to catch one of the largest stock frauds in history. Paul Weiss is a firm unafraid of standing up to the government on behalf of its corporate or pro bono clients….

A week and a half ago, Donald Trump targeted Paul Weiss with an executive order stripping the firm of security clearances and business with the government, as well as potentially barring their lawyers from Federal courthouses. In addition, Trump implied he would penalize Paul Weiss’ clients. It’s a blatantly illegal order, the kind widely understood as an authoritarian move.... 

Working through Burck, as well as New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a firm client, Karp reached out to Trump, and they met for three hours. In the middle of that meeting with Karp, Trump picked up the phone and calling Paul Weiss’s most important rival, Robert Giuffra of Sullivan & Cromwell, and asked what he should do. The whole episode leaked, which revealed to the entire corporate and legal world that Paul Weiss has no juice in Trump-world, and Sullivan & Cromwell does.

Finally, they cut a deal. In return for Trump ending his executive order, the firm agreed to end its diversity programs, do $40 million of free work for Trump-aligned priorities, and ensure that it would hire and represent Trump-aligned clients. Karp also disavowed former Paul Weiss lawyer Mark Pomerantz, who had worked in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in a case against Trump.

This capitulation shocked and horrified the legal world, inviting Trump to expand his attack on the legal community. The next day, Trump issued another executive order calling for the government to sanction lawyers who bring “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious” lawsuits against the government. That’s a signal to the entire legal world that representing clients in disagreements with the government carries a personal and professional risk….

In this context, Paul Weiss’ immediate capitulation caused a lot of lawyers to despair. One way of seeing this dynamic is to ask the question: If this venerable law firm, which has the resources to fight and a legacy to protect, capitulates, then who else will? But the way I see this dynamic is that it merely reveals to everyone in Democratic politics what we’ve already known, which is that big law is a place of toxic anti-democratic sentiment. And the entire edifice of party politics, that fancy lawyers do the real governing work while shabby hacks handle the rabble during the elections, is a charade to hand over America to private equity and monopoly.

The story of Paul Weiss is the story of modern corporate liberalism turned sour. It’s a wildly unethical place, flipping sides on Google for money. Moreover, its lawyers have openly encouraged corporate clients to break the law….

...what should be crystal clear to everyone in politics is these lawyers aren’t just unethical, but are in many ways the reason that the Democratic Party is as enfeebled and pathetic as it seems to be. Big law is the brains of the Democrats, with the actual elected officials, often meek pleasers with little experience wielding real power, as ornaments who serve up slop on centrist and leftism and other meaningless terms. The alchemy of big law was always they way in which you seamlessly revolve in and out of government - the allure of making a lot of money and governing. That is what is shattering….

And in that sense, I am thankful to Paul Weiss and Brad Karp. In this dangerous moment, the Democratic corporate establishment, by capitulating so obviously to Trump in return for corporate money, has just ripped out the heart that ran the Clinton, Obama, and much of the toxic parts of the Biden administrations. And they did so at the only moment in the last two decades during which normal Democrats are looking for someone to blame for their own party’s fecklessness. And who better to blame than the would-be Kamala Harris staff, a pack of Google and private equity defense lawyers - and Chuck Schumer’s brother - who, when the chips were down, bent the knee to Trump?

 [TW: Stoller’s account of the lawyers at Paul Weiss deciding to roll over for Trump, is a powerful example of civic republicanism having been destroyed by greed and the love of wealth. Paul Weiss lawyers decided they would rather preserve their wealth, than honor their profession’s civic duty to uphold the rule of law. Which is why I place the next contribution, discussing oligarchy, immediately following.]


Oligarchy

On oligarchy: ancient lessons for global politics    

Edited by David Edward Tabachnick and Toivo Koivukoski [Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2011]

Chapter 3 “Overcoming Oligarchy: Republicanism and the Right to Property in the Federalist”

Jeffrey Sikkenga

...Plato's most systematic analysis of oligarchic regimes is found in Book 8 of The Republic. In the beginning of Book 8, the conversation returns to a discussion interrupted at the end of Book 4 about the relative justice of five regimes: aristocracy (the rule of philosopher-kings), timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. The ensuing conversation between Socrates and his interlocutors Glaucon and Adeimantus focuses on the oligarchic soul because, according to Socrates, regimes acquire their character from the psyche of those who establish and hold the ruling offices….

...Socrates portrays the moneymaker's soul as 'in a sense two-fold, born from a combination of the desire to acquire security and the desire to acquire honour. For the moneymaker, wealth satisfies both desires. But money makers are not oligarchs - that is, human beings moved by distinctly oligarchic political principles. Moneymakers are politically happy if the city allows unlimited acquisition and the laws 'diligently hold down by force' crimes against property. But oligarchs demand that the city honour wealth by imposing a property qualification forholding office that excludes the vast majority of inhabitants.

According to Socrates, the oligarchic soul comes into being when the rich face a democratic revolution that insists on equality….

Unlike money-makers who gather up their property and flee when threatened, these wealthy people have become willing to risk 'impeachments, judgments, and contests' in order to defend the dignity and justice of the moneymaking way of life, which resides not so much in the simple accumulation of wealth as in the nobler fact that such a person rules himself through the dominance of the orderly (moneymaking) desires over the disorderly (spendthrift) desires. In their view, the justice of oligarchy is that it recognizes the moral excellence of the acquisitive person's orderly soul and publicly distinguishes it from lower ones that lack these virtues. For such people, oligarchy must be fought for because it is the only regime that gives the city's highest authority and honour to the best human beings, the people who deserve these distinctions. What makes some moneymakers 'truly oligarchs' is their moral attachment to a specific notion of justice that opposes the democratic idea of equality. Thus, while acquisitive desire for wealth is born from fear and shame, Socrates suggests that it becomes a bold demand for political honour fueled by a growing attachment to what the rich see as the nobility and justice of oligarchic distinction….

Aristotle notes, however, that there are a variety of oligarchic arrangements, ranging from the rule of newly rich moneymakers to dynasties of a very few old, wealthy families who are not permitted to engage in moneymaking. What unites these oligarchs indeed, what makes them oligarchs is that all of them believe that only the rich deserve to rule, and they enforce this idea by having a high property qualification for voting and office holding. The variety of oligarchies shows, however, that oligarchs disagree over why wealth is worthy of honour. Oligarchic regimes devoted to the endless accumulation of wealth believe that the life of acquisition is the good life. For them, what makes human beings noble is the act of overcoming material privation and freeing oneself from necessity. But the other types of oligarchies show that the passion fueling oligarchs cannot be reduced to the desire to acquire money. For these oligarchs, wealth is honourable because it is the only means to a higher end, hence, Aristotle says, these oligarchs 'are held to occupy the place of gentlemen' by the many and 'in most places' even mistake themselves for aristocrats. These gentlemanly oligarchs believe that both wealthy moneymakers and the poor should be excluded from office because both groups are 'vulgar' (apeirokalia): that is, inexperienced in the nobler matters that are necessary to elevate the mind in preparation for political rule. There seem, then, to be several kinds of oligarchies rooted in different notions of what type of human being is truly good and deserves to rule. Yet within these differences lies the common idea of all oligarchy: an unbreakable link between wealth and political merit. To be an oligarch is to believe that the rich (at least certain rich people) deserve mastery over the city.

[TW: Slightly different than Thorstein Veblen’s analysis of The Leisure Class, but not much. I want to emphasize here that civic republicanism is based on the belief that all individuals have reason and are capable of self-government if they are not steered astray by false prophets and demagogues. Hence, the high value placed on free public education for all — which many conservatives today have become emboldened enough to explicitly oppose. Leo Strauss and Curtis Yarvin are very open about the need for society to be ruled by elites who trained and educated to spin and weave myths and lies to keep the masses in place. ]


Nation's Elite Lawyers Choose Money Over The Constitution

Brian Beutler, March 26, 2025 [Off Message]

Suddenly, litigants who need to defend themselves against Trump’s threats or file suit to stop his legally dubious orders, “are struggling to find legal representation as a result of his challenges,” according to the Post. “Biden-era officials said they’re having trouble finding lawyers willing to defend them. The volunteers and small nonprofits forming the ground troops of the legal resistance to Trump administration actions say that the well-resourced law firms that once would have backed them are now steering clear.”

That’s bad enough. But in context, its even worse. White shoe pro bono work is in exceptionally high demand because, through his lawlessness, Trump has already taxed the world of public interest, legal aid, and boutique firms to its limit. Before his first orders, which targeted corporate firms Covington & Burling, and Perkins Coie, lawyers for these independent firms and civil-society organizations were already cracking under the workload.

“Two months into this administration, the American legal system is already under severe stress,” said Deepak Gupta, a Supreme Court advocate whose firm Gupta Wessler has participated in litigation against the Trump administration. “The nation's largest, richest, and most powerful corporate law firms are starting to be ruled by abject fear. They're already categorically declining to take on new pro bono clients in cases that might draw the administration's ire. Worse still, in some cases I know of, they're backing out of existing commitments to challenge unlawful government actions on behalf of vulnerable groups that desperately need their help. Nonprofits and smaller law firms like ours simply cannot make up for all of that unmet need.”


A Disregard for Rules Trickles Down From Trump to His Aides

Julian E. Barnes, March 27, 2025 [New York Times]


    
Surrendering to Authoritarianism

Chris Hedges, March 24, 2025

Elite universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Columbia or Yale, were created to train and perpetuate the plutocracy. They are not and never have been centers of cutting-edge intellectual thought or hospitable to dissidents and radicals. They cloak themselves in the veneer of moral probity and intellectualism but cravenly serve political and economic power. This is their nature. Don’t expect it to change, even as we fall headlong into authoritarianism….

These institutions of privilege — I attended Harvard and have taught at Columbia and Princeton — have always been complicit in the crimes of their times. They did not, until the world around them changed, speak out against the slaughter of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, the crushing of labor and socialist organizations at the turn of the twentieth century and the purging of institutions, including the academy, during the Red Scare in the 1920s and 1930s, and later the witch hunts under McCarthyism. They turned on their students protesting the war in Vietnam in the 1960s as viciously as they are turning on them now….


What the New JFK Documents Reveal

Thomas Neuburger, Mar 28, 2025 [God’s Spies]

If you’re looking for an introduction to the just-released JFK material, there’s a good discussion on Breaking Points by Jefferson Morley, a bona fide expert. It’s worth listening all the way through….

• Why does it matter who killed JFK? “Because when JFK was killed and there was no accountability, the American Empire took a turn. Kennedy was trying to steer the ship one way, and when Kennedy was killed and there was no accountability, the ship was steered another way.

“And we never had a course correction after that, because the faction that avoided accountability with Kennedy's murder and avoided responsibility for it — they had impunity, and they could dominate all the policy debates that followed. And also because they had the secrecy apparat, the apparatus of secrecy around them.”


An Abundance of Ambiguity

Zephyr Teachout, March 23, 2025 [Washington Monthly]

Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 304 pp.

…The 40-year stagnation of wages, and the drop in small and medium-sized businesses, is a supply-side story that they simply don’t engage—one that, as the former chair of the FTC Lina Khan and many others have recognized, is a direct result of monopolization and financialization.

If they took their own “stop the scarcity mind-set” medicine, they’d realize that the industrial policy of the 1980s to 2020, not zoning, was what caused the scarcity of opportunity throughout the country—and we can change that policy. During the most productive and innovative era in American history, places like Corning, New York, known as a glassware technology powerhouse, and St. Louis, which once had 22 Fortune 500 companies and a thriving “creative class,” were the centers of the dynamism. If we just got out of the modern coastal-scarcity mind-set and took on the real bureaucratic behemoths of today—the private equity cartels and the monstrous platform monopolies like Google and Meta—we would unlock far more innovation and creativity and vitality.


Collapse of independent news media

How Worker-Owned News Outlets Are Changing the Media Industry

Damon Orion [Local Peace Economy, via Naked Capitalism 03-27-2025]


Climate and environmental crises

​​​​​​​The Huge Jury Verdict Against Greenpeace Is Really An Attack on the Entire Climate Movement. It Will Backfire 

Steve Donzinger [via Naked Capitalism 03-29-2025]


1 in 7 Homes Does Not Have Home Insurance as Premiums Skyrocket 

[Realtor, via Naked Capitalism 03-27-2025]


Trump’s transactional regime

They helped Trump take back the White House. The rewards have come swiftly. 

[CNN, via Naked Capitalism 03-25-2025]


Resistance

Fighting Back: A Citizen’s Guide to Resistance

Timothy Noah, March 27, 2025 [The New Republic]


Conservative / Libertarian / (anti)Republican Drive to Civil War

Buying the vote 

[MuskWatch, via Naked Capitalism 03-25-2025]

In Wisconsin, an Elon Musk-backed super PAC is offering registered voters $100 in exchange for their contact information and signatures on a petition condemning “activist judges.” Signers can receive another $100 for additional voters they refer to the petition. The scheme was launched less than two weeks before a state Supreme Court election that could shift the partisan balance of Wisconsin’s highest court….

Michael Maistelman, a Wisconsin election lawyer who supports Crawford, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Musk's tactics may violate Wisconsin law. "Wisconsin law prohibits offering anything of value to induce a person to vote, refrain from voting, or take any action related to an election," Maistelman said. "Even though the money isn’t directly tied to voting, it could still be seen as an unlawful incentive related to election activity."

The tactic is similar to one Musk deployed during the 2024 presidential election when he offered voters in swing states a chance to win $1 million in exchange for signing a pro-Trump petition. The Department of Justice warned that Musk's tactics might be illegal, and he was sued in federal court. The sweepstakes, however, were ultimately allowed to proceed.


How Elon Musk, George Soros and Other Billionaires Are Shaping the Most Expensive Court Race in U.S. History

Megan O’Matz, March 28, 2025 [Pro Publica]

Ten years ago, when Wisconsin lawmakers approved a bill to allow unlimited spending in state elections, only one Republican voted no…. “I definitely think that that piece of legislation made things worse,” Cowles said in an interview. “Our public discourse is basically who can inflame things in the most clever way with some terrible TV ad that’s probably not even true.”


Florida child labor bill SB 918 would let minors as young as 14 work overnight 

[Pensacola News Journal, via Naked Capitalism 03-27-2025]


Florida wants to loosen child-labor laws to make up for loss of migrant workers 

[The Independent, via Naked Capitalism 03-27-2025]


The Big Bank Plotting to Privatize the Post Office Under Trump 

[In These Times, via Naked Capitalism 03-27-2025]

Wells Fargo envisions a postal service where the mail is kept as a taxpayer-funded government entity while the package and parcel components, which are more profitable, are ​“sold or IPOed.” In order for the new private company to earn a decent profit, ​“USPS would need to raise prices by ~30-140% across its product line.”

A privatized postal system would also take aim at the Universal Service Obligation, which requires mail to be delivered to every address six days a week. Such dedication to equitable service ​“would be a challenge for a third-party operator to profitably move mail and packages,” the memo complains. This move would also put pressure on the proposed mail-only service, which would likely be financially hobbled, to downgrade from six-day delivery as well.


The Reckoning at the Town Hall

Mike Brock, March 29, 2025 [notesfromthecircus]


An Open Letter to Trump Supporters

Mike Brock, March 28, 2025 [notesfromthecircus]

...I understand why many of you were drawn to Trump initially. When he emerged on the political scene, he spoke to genuine frustrations that the political establishment had ignored for too long. He named realities that many Americans were experiencing—the hollowing out of manufacturing communities, the sense that Washington elites viewed your concerns with contempt, the feeling that your way of life was disappearing while no one in power seemed to care…. no amount of partisan rhetoric can erase the legitimate grievances that drove many Americans to support an outsider promising to upend a system that wasn't serving them.

But I want to ask you, sincerely: Is this what you thought you were voting for?

Did you vote for the systematic deportation of people to face torture without due process? Did you vote for the dismantling of civil service protections so that government agencies could be purged of career experts and filled with loyalists? Did you vote for private companies to take control of Treasury systems? Did you vote for the President to declare he can simply ignore court rulings he disagrees with?

I don't believe most of you did. I believe you voted for someone who would shake up a broken system, who would put American interests first, who would speak bluntly rather than in the carefully crafted language of professional politicians. I believe you wanted accountability from institutions that seemed unaccountable, change in a system that seemed resistant to change, and recognition for communities that felt forgotten.

But what's happening now goes far beyond those legitimate desires. It represents a fundamental assault on the constitutional order itself—not because it's delivering conservative policies or challenging liberal orthodoxies, but because it's dismantling the very structure of democratic governance.

When a president claims he can simply ignore court rulings, he's not challenging “the establishment”—he's rejecting the Constitution's separation of powers. When asylum seekers are deported to face torture without hearings, this isn't “putting America first”—it's abandoning the most basic human rights principles our nation was founded upon. When career civil servants are purged and replaced with loyalists, this isn't “draining the swamp”—it's creating the conditions for unchecked corruption and abuse of power.


Don't Expect To Wake Up And Someone To Say "Trump Became A Dictator Today"— It's A Process

Howie Klein, March 28, 2025 [downwithtyranny.com]

On Wednesday, The Guardian published a piece by Rachel Leingang, Yale professor who studies fascism fleeing US to work in Canada, about Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (2018). Stanley swapped his job at Yale for one at Torononto’s Miunk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy because he sees the U.S. in danger of becoming a fascist dictatorship. He wants to raise his kids in a country that isn’t tilting towards fascism. “When I saw Columbia completely capitulate, and I saw this vocabulary of, well, we’re going to work behind the scenes because we’re not going to get targeted— that whole way of thinking pre-supposes that some universities will get targeted, and you don’t want to be one of those universities, and that’s just a losing strategy,” he said. “You’ve got to just band together and say an attack on one university is an attack on all universities. And maybe you lose that fight, but you’re certainly going to lose this one if you give up before you fight. Columbia was just such a warning. I just became very worried because I didn’t see a strong enough reaction in other universities to side with Columbia. I see Yale trying not to be a target. And as I said, that’s a losing strategy.”

Noah Smith posed a disturbing question on his substack on Wednesday: If and when you live in a dictatorship, how will you know? Smith wrote that Trump isn’t a dictator right now “but over the past couple of weeks, the Trump administration has done or said a number of things that sort of pattern-match to the stuff dictators usually do. And this is causing reasonable people to worry that Trump is slowly, carefully trying to push in the direction of a dictatorship… [M]any of the MAGA movement people are openly advocating for Trump to assert truly dictatorial powers.” He used quotes from outright fascists Sebastian Gorka, Tom Homan and Michael Flynn as examples, noting that “if Trump doesn’t push to become a true dictator, it’ll only be because he and his subordinates choose to defy the desires of their activist base. And that’s not something I’m particularly comfortable betting the future of the country on.”


The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution

A Dark Money Deluge To Kill Consumer Protections

Freddy Brewster, March 26, 2025 [The Lever]

More than a dozen legal groups bankrolled by tens of millions in dark money tied to a conservative judicial mastermind are urging the Supreme Court to kneecap federal agencies’ ability to protect consumers and impose vital fees on companies. If the groups are successful, the ruling on a little-known regulation could further constrain federal agencies’ power and give corporations free rein to pollute the environment and swindle the average consumer.

On Wednesday, the justices will hear arguments on Federal Communications Commission v. Consumers’ Researchwhich could decide whether federal agencies are still allowed to undertake certain essential government tasks, such as rulemaking and imposing necessary fees on companies and consumers. The defendant in the case, Consumers’ Research, and 13 conservative groups supporting its efforts are all in part bankrolled by a nonprofit connected to Leonard Leo, President Donald Trump’s former judicial adviser, who played a key role in constructing the Supreme Court’s conservative majority and maintains close ties to two of the justices.

Leo’s ultimate goal includes plans to “crush liberal dominance” and help establish more conservative values and judges in the federal judiciary….


Civic republicanism

On Civic Republicanism — Ancient Lessons for Global Politics

edited by Geoffrey Kellow and Neven Leddy [University of Toronto Press, 2016]

[The entire books appear to be available for reading free online.]

Introduction, by Geoffrey Kellow

... To call one’s polis a republic was to stand out against a horizon dominated by oligarchic, monarchic, and imperial alternatives… It is this vision of republicanism, civic republicanism to be precise, that the essays in this volume address. This collection considers what ancient civic republics can say to modern republics and their citizens. Of course, the ancient republics have been speaking to us, providing lessons, for centuries. Our political, cultural, and even architectural landscape is populated with their lessons.…

...when we draw on republican sources today we necessarily draw on two traditions, the original civic republicanism of antiquity as well as the varied early modern reclamations and restatements that emerged from Florence to the American founding. This inevitable commingling has been with us for centuries. In the very heart of the Renaissance both Erasmus’s The Education of the Christian Prince and Machiavelli’s The Prince explicitly and implicitly drew on recollections of Republican Rome and Cicero’s De Officiis. But just as importantly, both referred to republics more recently lost and lamented. For Erasmus and Machiavelli and ever since, when we recall republics we inevitably recall both ancient and modern republics. We cannot think only of Pericles and Cato; inevitably, we think also of George Washington and Piero Soderini….

One school of thought, most prominently represented by Quentin Skinner and J.G.A. Pocock, has argued for a deep continuity between ancient and modern. Pocock in particular has famously argued of Harrington that he provided the intellectual means “whereby the county freeholder could equate himself with the Greco-Roman polites and profess of a wholly classical and Aristotelian doctrine of the relations between property, liberty and power.”2 This interpretation has been vigorously challenged by the work of scholars such as Harvey Mansfield and Leo Strauss….

[TW: Following Strauss leads to Reagan, Bush / Shrub Jr., and Trump. Not a good path. But who follows James Harrington and his Commonwealth of Oceana (1656)? A handful of scholars have identified Harrington as a far more important influence on the USA founders than the evil John Locke, who served as secretary for Lord Shaftsbury’s Council on Trade and Plantations (which by the time of the American Revolution was more widely known and reviled as the Board of Trade), and for the Carolina Lords Proprietors. Locke coauthored with Shaftsbury The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which imposed a strictly hierarchical structure of hereditary aristocracy and slavery. Without a knowledge of the philosophical differences between Locke and Harrington, today’s opponents of conservatism — liberals, “the left,” the Democratic Party, socialists, marxists, what have you — are philosophically incapable of out- thinking and out-maneuvering conservatives: Clinton / Clinton, Obama, and Biden have not been a good path either. Certainly, at least, not good enough. ]

[The primary purpose of government, according to Locke, is the defense of property.  By contrast, republican theorists see the primary purpose of government as supporting and encouraging  individual citizens to improve themselves as instruments for improving society — doing good for the general welfare. (Recall the HAWB example above of Rear Admiral Grace Hopper and the development of computer programming.)  

[Back to Kellow’s “Introduction”:]

The concern with ends binds together all the essays concerning Aristotle and what begins to illuminate the distinctions between liberal democracy and civic republicanism… These first essays recognize that a civic republic with a common end in mind must always be concerned with the civic means, its place in the cosmos and on the earth, and the faith, character, reason, and rhetoric of its citizens….


​​​​​​​Chapter 8. Montesquieu on Corruption: Civic Purity in a Post-Republican World

Robert Sparling

...Montesquieu believed that free states always regulate their merchants, whereas despotisms create, if I may employ an anachronistic phrase, business-friendly regulatory environments (20.12).42 He did not want merchants to be overly burdened with excessive bureaucratic formalities (20.13), but he was quite clear that the purpose of commerce is to further the good of the state, and the regulation of merchants is an essential basis for freedom. Excessive taxation would harm industry, but taxation was the reason commerce was to be celebrated by governments….

Finally, he thought it essential for a well-ordered state that private property be respected (26.15). But property right is a product of positive law, and the state must be able to control matters such as inheritance in whatever manner necessary for their particular constitutions. Political interference in matters of property is not something that Montesquieu condemned, nor was he an outright enemy of high taxation (the most free countries are the most taxed, while the most despotic are the least 13.12, 10) – the key was merely to adjust tax policy so as not to dissuade commercial activity….

...for Montesquieu, corruption entails the augmentation of the sentiments (fear and avarice) that undermine sociability. In this sense, it entails the abuse of public things for private gain, for the greater corruption there is, the less sense there is of a public. But the complete elimination of fear is impossible in human society, and the complete elimination of greed leads to an unhealthy asceticism. His solution to the problem is one with which our liberal world is quite familiar – institutions must be designed such that public benefits derive from moderate private vices. The state must not be allowed to become either too heavy-handed in its wielding of the sword or too light in its control of commerce. Punishment must remain humane. Merchants and financiers must be encouraged but controlled: the liberty of commerce depends on merchants not being allowed to do what they want (20.12). Office holders may be expected to want to breach the trust given to them, and watchfulness and resentment must be encouraged in order to keep them in check. Unlike ancient founders of republics, Montesquieuan legislators no longer have purity in their sights….

But make no mistake – this regime-craft entails soul-craft. A certain type of human personality is both the product and the defender of this balance (and in Montesquieu’s more aristocratic moments he suggests that it is not a terribly admirable type). The passions of fear and avarice must not be allowed to become so dominant as to break apart natural human relationships and turn society into zero-sum games of exploitation.... 

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 23, 2025

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 23, 2025

by Tony Wikrent


Managing Unexpected ICE Visits: Best Practices for Employers 

March 19, 2025 [IndustryWeek]



Trump not violating any law

'He who saves his Country does not violate any Law'


‘We’re Not Stopping’: Trump Border Czar Vows to Ignore Judges

[The Daily Beast, via MSN 03-18-2025]


Iran-Contra Paved the Way for Trump to Defy Democratic Norms

Sam Lebovic, March 7, 2025 [Bloomberg]

... In The Breach: Iran-Contra and the Assault on American Democracy (The University of North Carolina Press, March 4), Alan McPherson argues convincingly that Iran-Contra should be plotted not as a minor sideshow in the Cold War’s final act, nor as a case study in flawed national-security policymaking, but as a key moment in the collapse of democratic norms.

McPherson was inspired to return to the improvised, personalized diplomacy of the affair while watching the first impeachment of Donald Trump in 2019. But his argument has become even more compelling in the first weeks of Trump 2.0. In McPherson’s telling, Iran-Contra was an assault on democratic governance by an extremist executive branch. The results — corruption, deception, willful illegality, lack of accountability — are starting to look familiar….

Defying Congress and the law required operating in secrecy, which also meant sidelining the federal bureaucracy. Policy was conducted instead by a small cluster of officials close to the White House, who delegated key tasks to a coterie of allies who weren’t elected, some of whom weren’t even really part of the government. McPherson is particularly good at highlighting the corruption that flourished in such a freewheeling environment. Weapons sales to Iran were managed by a small firm known, appropriately, as “The Enterprise” — operating for profit, its owners marked up the price of the missiles and decided to pay themselves millions of dollars in commission….

This was all part of a radical revision of the role of the presidency. Lawyers in the Reagan administration embraced what is known as the Unitary Executive Theory — a reading of the Constitution in which the president has sole and complete authority over the executive branch. That meant sidelining Congress and ending the independence of the bureaucracy. Edwin Meese, Reagan’s second attorney general — who would resign in 1988 amid corruption allegations — believed “the entire system of independent agencies may be unconstitutional.” Iran-Contra was a perfect illustration of the theory in practice: Congress could be ignored, and policy would run through the White House….

...In a 1992 article in The Nation, playwright Steve Tesich saw Iran-Contra as a prime instance of what he dubbed a newly emerging “post-truth” society: “President Reagan perceived correctly that the public really didn’t want to know the truth. So he lied to us, but he didn’t have to work hard at it.” The title of the piece was “A Government of Lies.”….

But McPherson is right to suggest that Iran-Contra is prologue to our present. The scandals presented an opportunity to send a clear signal that democracy had no tolerance for this kind of politics. The opposite happened. In 1992 Ted Draper, author of one of the first comprehensive histories of the scandals, concluded that “if ever the constitutional democracy of the United States is overthrown, we now have a better idea of how this is likely to be done.” Indeed, Iran-Contra taught politicians lessons — that one could find much room for maneuvers in the inner workings of the government, that the law was flexible, that there would be no consequences if you pushed the envelope or lied about what you were doing.


Nick Miroff and Jonathan Lemire, March 19, 2025 [The Atlantic]
During the first Trump administration, when Stephen Miller’s immigration policy proposals hit obstacles in federal court, rumors would circulate about his plans to dust off arcane presidential powers. Government lawyers were wary of overreach; officials in the West Wing and at the Department of Homeland Security would sometimes snicker….

Miller’s approach is different this time. He has unleashed an everything-at-once policy storm modeled after the MAGA guru Stephen K. Bannon’s “flood the zone” formula. Drawing on policy ideas worked up in conservative think tanks during the four years between Trump’s terms, Miller’s plan has been to fire off so many different proposals that some inevitably find a friendly court ruling, three administration officials told us….

Three months after leaving the White House, in April 2021, Miller co-founded a Trump-aligned think tank, the America First Legal Foundation, that he fashioned as a right-wing counter to the American Civil Liberties Union. The group’s lawyers filed scores of lawsuits against the Biden administration and U.S. companies. They also provided legal firepower to Texas Governor Greg Abbott and other Republican officials launching state-level immigration crackdowns….

With Orders, Investigations and Innuendo, Trump and G.O.P. Aim to Cripple the Left

Kenneth P. Vogel and Shane Goldmacher, March 19, 2025 [New York Times]

The president and his allies in Congress are targeting the financial, digital and legal machinery that powers the Democratic Party and much of the progressive political world….

...A small group of White House officials has been working to identify targets and vulnerabilities inside the Democratic ecosystem, taking stock of previous efforts to investigate them, according to two people familiar with the group’s work who requested anonymity to describe it.

Scott Walter, president of the conservative watchdog group Capital Research Center, which monitors liberal money in politics, recently briefed senior White House officials on a range of donors, nonprofit groups and fund-raising techniques. The White House group is said to be exploring what more can be done within the law….

Some of the president’s allies have welcomed the moves as payback for Democratic congressional investigations of Mr. Trump and Republican political networks.

“Democrats ran breathless investigations of Republican dark money for years, and I hope that this is a concerted effort to go after the left’s dark money,” said Mike Davis, a former Republican congressional aide who founded a group using what he calls brass-knuckle tactics to assail Mr. Trump’s critics….


Trump picks his next Big Law target

[Politico, via Wall Street on Parade, March 17, 2025]

President Donald Trump continued his retaliatory spree against major law firms on Friday, signing an executive order targeting New York firm Paul, Weiss days after a judge ruled that major parts of a similar order were unconstitutional.

Trump’s new order seeks to suspend the security clearances of attorneys with the firm and limit their access to government buildings, ability to get federal jobs and receive money from federal contracts….


Why Trump Tried to Fire Federal Trade Commission Democrats 

BIG by Matt Stoller

...What is this dispute really about?

So what happened? As best as I can tell, the real reason for this move is that someone in the administration wanted to establish a basic principle of governance, that the President is in charge, and not the “Deep State.”

The White House is already embroiled in a bunch of fights over who runs which parts of government. And one way to understand this action at the FTC is as part of a legal strategy to tell the courts, in a uniform way, that Trump, as the democratically elected leader, believes the Constitution empowers him to execute all Federal policy however he chooses.

And that’s a reasonable view, though the alternative - that Congress should be able to design institutions with some flexibility - is also reasonable. That said, ultimately, all roads here lead to the Federal Reserve. The logic of Trump takes us there. As Slaughter said earlier today on CNBC, if any commissioner at any agency can be fired by the President for any reason, then so can the Federal Reserve Chair or any Fed board member.

And that’s a fight Trump, and the Supreme Court, just don’t want to have, because Wall Street would absolutely freak out. Basically, the real Trump argument is that all the little people regulators must constitutionally be controlled by the President, but the one big guy, the Fed, is constitutionally run by Wall Street. I’m not kidding. In a case about the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Justice Alito actually put that in a footnote in his dissent. His legal rationale for why the Fed should be treated differently is that the Fed “should be regarded as a special arrangement sanctioned by history,” as it is a “unique institution with a unique historical background.”

Alito is a very smart guy, yet that’s the best he could come up with. This rationale is the legal equivalent of a t-shirt they sell at the beach that says “I’m the Mommy that’s why.” In a sense, the unaccountable secretive Supreme Court looks at the Fed, and game recognizes game. If Trump succeeds in taking apart the FTC’s independence, the Fed’s independence comes next.


10-year-old American citizen recovering from brain tumor deported to Mexico

psychbob, March 22, 2025 [Daily Kos]


Venezuelan Professional Goalkeeper Deported to El Salvador Prison, Stunning Family Back Home

Ryan Grim and Sarah Hay, Marcg 20, 2025 [dropsitenews]


Republican files impeachment against judge who ruled against Trump deportations 

[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 03-19-2025]


Boasberg impeachment resolution reaches 16 cosponsors

[Punchbowl News, March 21, 2025


Trump v. Boasberg: If This Isn’t a Constitutional Crisis, What Is?

Michael Tomasky, March 21, 2025 [The New Republic]


Trump’s Appetite for Revenge Is Insatiable

Peter Wehner, March 20, 2025 [The Atlantic]


A Statement from Constitutional Law Scholars on Columbia [University]

Steven G. Calabresi, Erwin Chemerinsky, Eugene Volokh, Michael C. Dorf, David Cole, and 13 other scholars, March 20, 2025 [The New York Review]

The government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing First Amendment–protected speech.

[TW: But Trump’s regime did. And without any legal consequences to itself.]


The Insidious Doctrine Fueling the Case Against Mahmoud Khalil

Debbie Nathan, March 21, 2025 [Boston Review]

How a century of immigration law has evaded constitutional rights.

...Yes, the First Amendment offers speech protections. But we also have a lesser-known idea that has influenced congressional and executive branch–mandated immigration law for well over a century: the plenary power doctrine. According to the doctrine’s principles, judges should avoid ruling on whether or not immigration laws are constitutional, even when it appears they are not….


The October Story That Outlined Exactly What the Trump Administration Would Do to the Federal Bureaucracy

Stephen Engelberg, March 20, 2025 [ProPublica]

In late October, ProPublica published one of its most prophetic stories in our history….  “‘Put Them in Trauma’: Inside a Key MAGA Leader’s Plans for a New Trump Agenda,”….

The story drew on private recordings of a series of speeches given in 2023 and 2024 by Russell Vought obtained by our colleagues at Documented, a news site with a remarkable knack for uncovering information powerful interests would prefer remained secret.


Trump Declares War on “Frivolous” Lawsuits

Stephanie Mencimer, March 22, 2025 [Mother Jones]

Late Friday night, the White House released the latest tranche of Trump executive actions and directives aimed at further kneecapping some of the nation’s most famous lawyers and law firms the president believes are obstructing his agenda or have tangled with him in the past.

One of the late-night directives is entitled “Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court.” Both terrifying and hilarious given its author, the memo instructs Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to aggressively pursue court sanctions and disciplinary actions against lawyers and law firms that engage in “grossly unethical misconduct,” which it mainly seems to define as lawyers and lawsuits Trump doesn’t like. Singled out for persecution are immigration lawyers and “Big Law” firms with pro bono practices that represent immigrants or litigate against the federal government, as well as Democratic Party lawyer Marc Elias.


Move Fast and Break the Mortgage Market

David Dayen, March 20, 2025 [The American Prospect]

On Monday, according to securities filings, Bill Pulte, the new director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), appointed himself chair of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, known as the government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs. Pulte came from a family business that is now the third-largest homebuilder in the country, but he left that behind to run a private equity firm, and became renowned as a meme-stock impresario, hyping companies like GameStop or Bed Bath & Beyond to retail investors.

Pulte, whose agency currently has the power of management over Fannie and Freddie, also removed 14 of the 25 sitting board members at the two companies. In addition to himself and Clinton Jones, the FHFA general counsel who was appointed to both boards, Pulte added four other board members, including a former portfolio manager with well-known hedge fund Elliott Management and (briefly) an engineer tied to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Another new board member, Brandon Hamara, previously worked for Pulte.


Men DOGEbags at Work

‘It’s a Heist’: Real Federal Auditors Are Horrified by DOGE 

[Wired, via Naked Capitalism 03-19-2025]

[TW: An important expose of how the DOGEbags are simply not qualified, trained, or educated to do the work they claim to be doing.]

...But two federal auditors with years of experience, who have both worked on financial and technical audits for the government, say that DOGE’s actions are the furthest thing from what an actual audit looks like. Both asked to speak on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t permitted to speak to the press.

“Honestly, comparing real auditing to what DOGE is doing, there’s no comparison,” says one of the auditors who spoke to WIRED. “None of them are auditors.”….

The auditors who spoke to WIRED allege that not only is Musk’s claim not true, but also that DOGE appears to have completely eschewed the existing processes for actually rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse….

“You can’t coherently audit something like the whole Social Security system in a week or two,” says the second auditor. It’s exactly this rush to crack systems open without full understanding, the auditors say, that has led to Elon Musk’s false claims that 150-year-olds were receiving Social Security benefits. “It could be that DOGE didn’t de-dupe the data.” ….

The auditors described a lengthy vetting process that allowed them to get the permissions necessary to dive into an agency’s data and systems. In addition to going through the initial vetting process, the auditors say that they are required to engage in continuing education.

“None of them have any auditing background, none have any certifications, none have any clearances,” says the first auditor.

Federal workers who have spoken to WIRED expressed concern that DOGE’s operatives appear to have bypassed the normal security clearance protocols in order to access sensitive systems. WIRED found that many of DOGE’s youngest members, all of whom were 25 or younger, have very limited work experience, and none in the government. One, Edward Coristine, who goes by “Big Balls” online, appears to be a 19-year-old high school graduate. Despite this, they were given high-level access at places like the GSA, the Social Security Administration, and the Treasury. Others, like those at the Federal Aviation Administration, come directly from Musk’s own companies and were not fully vetted before their start dates…..

Josh Marshall, March 22nd, 2025 [Talking Points Memo]
The Post reports today that the IRS’s internal projections estimate that the DOGE-driven disruptions to the IRS since the inauguration are on track to have reduced tax receipts by more than $500 billion by April 15th. This, to be clear, is not a final tally. It’s not April 15th yet. It’s a projection based on historical data, the number of people who’ve filed, paid owed amounts of tax etc. It’s worth taking a moment to put this number into some context in case half a trillion dollars doesn’t do it for you. Non-defense discretionary spending is the cost to fund the US government once you take out mandatory spending (mostly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) and the cost of the US military. For 2023 that number was $917 billion. So that’s most of the stuff we think of as the government, apart from those payment programs and the military. In other words, in about eight weeks DOGE managed to lose the US government, more or less light fire, more than half of what goes to all non-defense discretionary spending.


Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday the Trump administration is focused on preventing a financial crisis that could be the result of massive government spending over the past few years 

[CNBC, via Naked Capitalism 03-18-2025]

[Yves Smith: “Understand what is going on. Fed and Treasury officials historically have ALWAYS bent over backwards to reassure investors even as they labor behind the scenes to tackle looming issues. They never never never talk up the prospect of a crisis. This is Bessant acting at the front man to justify DOGE wreckage of many institutions and programs….with no meaningful impact on the deficit, among other reasons because the savings claimed are gross fabrications. Bessant’s noise-making is to justify going after Social Security and Medicare.”]


DOGE Going Dark as Evidence of Fabrications, Destructive Results and Citizen Anger Rises

Yves Smith, March 17, 2025 [Naked Capitalism]


As DOGE Mauls Social Security, Profit-Hungry Private Equity Is Swooping In 

[Truthout, via Naked Capitalism 03-20-2025]


DC Metro Police Roust Staff of Indy Agency At DOGE’s Request

Josh Marshall, March 18, 2025 [Talking Points Memo]

In the background over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to find out about the purported activities of the U.S. Marshals Service working at the behest of DOGE. When DOGE operatives took over the Foundation for African Development a couple of weeks ago, they reportedly made forced entry with the assistance of the U.S. Marshals. That’s not really what the Marshals do….

When I poked around, it seemed like people just assumed they were Marshals. Or perhaps they identified themselves as such. But the more questions I asked, the less clear it was who they really were, notwithstanding the press reports that simply stated it as a fact….

It turns out, that’s not what happened at all. According to the later-published full account in the Times, the U.S. Marshals Service wasn’t even there. DOGE operatives arrived in black SUVs along with FBI agents and accompanied “by what appeared to be private security who arrived in separate vehicles and were dressed in street clothing.”….

But it wasn’t the FBI agents or the “private security” who rousted the USIP staff out of their office. It was the DC Metro police….   

Billionaire commerce secretary says only 'fraudsters' need Social Security

Emily Singer, March 21, 2025 [Daily Kos]

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick made an appearance on Trump stooge David Sacks’ podcast “All In” on Thursday, during which he said that anyone calling for help because their Social Security check did not get paid is likely a fraudster.

"Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who's 94, she wouldn't call and complain. She just wouldn't. She thinks something got messed up and she'll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise screaming, yelling, and complaining. And all the guys who did PayPal, like Elon knows this by heart, right? Anybody who's been in the payment system and the process system knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen,” he said….

Approximately half of the population aged 65 or older living in households that receive at least 50% of their family income from Social Security benefits, and about 25% rely on Social Security benefits for at least 90% of their family income, according to a 2017 report from the Social Security Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics.


Here’s a ‘dead’ person on Social Security in Seattle, with plenty to say

[Seattle Times, March 15, 2025]

Johnson’s strange trip through the netherworld began in February, when a letter from his bank arrived addressed to his wife, Pam.

“We recently received notification of LEONARD A. JOHNSON’s passing,” it began. “We offer our sincerest condolences …”

At first she figured it was a scam — her husband, after all, was sitting right there. But then the bank got to the point.

“We know this is a difficult time, and we’re here to help,” the bank wrote. “We received a request from Social Security Administration to return benefits paid to LEONARD A. JOHNSON’s account after their passing.”

“There’s nothing you need to do — we’ve deducted the funds from LEONARD A. JOHNSON’s account.”

Uh oh. It itemized how $5,201 had been stricken from their bank account, on the grounds that Ned wasn’t justified to get those benefits — because he was dead. That was for payments he’d received in December and January….

What followed was a nearly three-week battle to resurrect himself. He called Social Security two or three times a day for two weeks, with each call put on hold and then eventually disconnected. Finally someone answered and gave him an appointment for March 13. Then he got a call delaying that to March 24.

In a huff, he went to the office on the ninth floor of the Henry Jackson Federal Building downtown. It’s one of the buildings proposed to be closed under what the AP called “a frenetic and error-riddled push by Elon Musk’s budget-cutting advisers.”

It was like a Depression-era scene, he said, with a queue 50-deep jockeying for the attentions of two tellers. The employees were kind but beleaguered.

“They are so understaffed down there,” he said. “They think the office is about to be closed down, and they don’t know where they’re going to go. It feels like the agency’s being gutted.”

After waiting for four hours, Johnson admits he jumped the line: “I saw an opening and I kind of rushed up and told them I was listed as dead. That seemed to get their attention.”


Oklahoma City man says social security benefits terminated without warning or explanation

[KFOR, Oklahoma City, March 13, 2025]

A local retiree says his Social Security benefits were suddenly suspended without warning — and with no explanation given when he reached out. He worries it may have to do with the place he was born, and ongoing DOGE cutbacks.  

The man, who was born to an active duty U.S. Solider at an overseas U.S. Army base, says because of recent comments from Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader Elon Musk, he’s worried his benefits were cut because of his foreign birthplace….


Musk Taps Private Equity Veterans to Aid DOGE at Social Security

[Bloomburg, via Truthout 03-16-2025]

Among those tapped for the task are Antonio Gracias of Valor Equity Partners, who also served on the board of Tesla Inc. and was an early investor in SpaceX — two of Musk’s companies — as well as Scott Coulter, formerly of Lone Pine Capital, and Michael Russo, formerly of Shift4, according to people familiar with the moves who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss them….

Russo arrived Feb. 3, and “introduced himself as a DOGE representative to multiple employees on multiple occasions,” Flick said. He now serves as the agency’s chief information officer. Russo also brought on Akash Bobba, a former intern for Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies Inc., to analyze Social Security data.

Bobba’s onboarding was unusual, according to Flick, who said his background check was held up for a few days. She said she received pressure from Russo and Steve Davis, who runs Musk’s Boring Co. and is also working for DOGE, to get Bobba credentials by midnight on Feb. 10. Bobba was sworn in over the phone, “contrary to standard practice,” she said.

[TW: Contrast to new policy that citizens can no longer apply for Social Security over a phone.]


EXCLUSIVE: Memo details Trump plan to sabotage the Social Security Administration

Judd Legum, Mar 17, 2025 [Popular Information, via Gizmodo.com]

An internal Social Security Administration (SSA) memo, sent on March 13 and obtained by Popular Information, details proposed changes to the claims process that would debilitate the agency, cause significant processing delays, and prevent many Americans from applying for or receiving benefits.

The memo, authored by Acting Deputy SSA Commissioner Doris Diaz, purports to be motivated by a desire to mitigate "fraud risks."

Elon Musk has pushed several false claims about the nature and scope of Social Security fraud. In a recent interview on Fox Business, Musk suggested that 10% of federal expenditures were related to Social Security fraud. This is false. Social Security fraud does exist, but "improper" Social Security payments amounts to about $9 billion annually — less than 1% of total Social Security benefits paid and 0.1% of the federal budget. Most improper payments are not criminal fraud but the result of beneficiaries or the SSA failing to update records.

The biggest change contemplated by Diaz's memo is to require "internet identity proofing" for "benefit claims… made over the phone." When an SSA customer is "unable to utilize the internet ID proofing, customers will be required to visit a field office to provide in-person identity documentation." ….

About 40% of all claims are currently processed over the phone.

Because the SSA serves a large population that is either older or physically disabled, many cannot access the internet. Under the new system, this would force these populations to visit an office to have their claim processed. The Diaz memo estimates it would require 75,000 to 85,000 in-person visitors per week to SSA's offices to implement the policy.

SSA offices do not currently have the resources to handle an influx of in-person appointments of this size. In 2023, the most recent data available, there were about 119,128 daily visits, on average, to SSA offices…..

 

An Interview With A Fired NOAA Director

Sabrina Imbler, March 18, 2025 [Defector]


The Revenue and Distributional Effects of IRS Funding 

[The Budget Lab at Yale, via Naked Capitalism 03-17-2025]

“If the IRS shrinks by 50% (a workforce decrease of about 50,000 people),3 we estimate that this significant reduction in IRS staffing and resulting IRS capacity to collect revenues would result in $395 billion ($350 billion net) forgone revenue over the 10-year budget window.4 If the lack of IRS resources leads to a substantial increase in noncompliance, net forgone revenue could rise by $2.4 trillion over 10-years.”


DOGE Is Going to Kill a Lot of Americans

Kenny Stancil, March 19, 2025 [The American Prospect]


On empathy: Elon Musk says empathy is the fundamental weakness of Western Civilization.

Thomas Mills, March 21, 2025

This Is How Tesla Will Die

Will Lockett, March 06, 2025 [via Naked Capitalism 03-19-2025]

...Tesla’s insane valuation over the past few years has enabled the company to take on a ridiculous amount of debt.

As of writing, Tesla has at least $48.39 billion in debt.

However, Musk has also used his Tesla stock as collateral for SpaceX, Twitter, and Tesla loans. Before he bought Twitter, over half of his shares were collateralised; now, that figure is far, far higher. Again, let’s be generous and assume only 70% of his 12.8% stake in Tesla is collateralised in this way, with a third of these loans for Tesla. That would mean Musk has $71.68 billion in personal loans, with $23.89 billion for Tesla.

These loans aren’t accounted towards the company’s liabilities, as they are technically part of the debt owner’s — in this case, Musk’s — personal liabilities.

In other words, Tesla actually has $72.28 billion in debt. That is more than the company is realistically worth!


Inside Trump and Musks’s Takeover of NASA.

David W. Brown, March 21, 2025 [The New Yorker]

...Darren Bossie, the new White House liaison to NASA, arrived shortly after Trump’s Inauguration. Bossie was more or less unknown at the agency, but employees soon found his LinkedIn profile. He had spent four of the past seven years bouncing around conservative politics, with a stint as Trump’s White House liaison to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and had worked as a senior consultant for unnamed companies. For the bulk of his professional life, however—from 2006 to 2018—he had been an assistant manager at a Total Wine & More in Palm Beach County, Florida. “That didn’t seem very promising,” a senior NASA official told me….

A review of public records, however, suggested that Darren is the brother of David N. Bossie, the president of Citizens United—the conservative group whose litigation before the Supreme Court empowered mega-donors and corporations to make unlimited contributions to political candidates. During Trump’s first Presidential run, David was the deputy manager of the campaign; in 2017 and 2018, he was known for fund-raising efforts in support of conservative candidates. During that period, his brother was hired into what appears to have been his first federal job—deputy director of the Office of Secretarial Boards and Councils at the Department of Energy. (In 2019, Trump distanced himself from David Bossie after he was accused of profiting off the President’s likeness; at the time, David said he was being “unfairly targeted by left-wing smear tactics.”) 


Strategic Political Economy

The Underlying Problem: This is happening because some people are too rich

Hamilton Nolan, March 21, 2025 [How Things Work]

...Trump is such a sui generis figure that it is possible to attribute his rise to any combination of a laundry list of personal attributes, social trends, and political events. Is all of this a consequence of Trump’s own celebrity? A racial backlash to the Obama years? The outcome of decades of brain poisoning by right wing media? Pandemic social isolation and inflation manifesting in a national death cult? What the hell?

Still—some causes are bigger than others. Trump’s personality and the rise of Fox News and Musk buying Twitter and the effects of the pandemic and angry old racist whites all contributed to where we are, yes, but they are not “the reason” we got here. If you pull back your focus, away from the individual personalities at play, you can perceive a brittle, dysfunctional system that was sitting there waiting for these guys to step in and run wild. How is it that the richest nation in the history of the world allowed itself to reach a point where all of this was possible? How did the United States of America become so vulnerable?

...The underlying cause of our situation is inequality. We have allowed too few people to accumulate too much wealth. The imbalance has grown so severe that a tiny number of individuals with twelve-figure net worths have the means to purchase so much political power that they can effectively make the federal government’s decisions. The significant thing about the way that Elon Musk is presently dismantling our government is not the existence of his own political delusions, or his own self-interested quest to privatize public functions, or his own misreading of economics; it is the fact that he is able to do it. And he is able to do it because he has several hundred billion dollars. If he did not have several hundred billion dollars he would just be another idiot with bad opinions. Because he has several hundred billion dollars his bad opinions are now our collective lived experience. The inequality, the decades of regulatory failures that led up to Elon Musk’s net worth, were the precondition for all of the insanity that is now playing out. It is easy to lose sight of this amid the daily headlines and the cartoonish corruption and the outrageous statements and the think pieces about the esoteric philosophy of Mencius Moldbug. It is tempting, because of the sudden severity of our situation, to imagine that there is a secret, hidden reason driving it all.

There’s not. This is the outcome of the class war—the same class war that we have been talking about for decades. This is what happens when it is lost….

Democracy is incompatible with the extremity of wealth inequality that we now have in America. The two things cannot coexist. Why? Because an electoral democracy, even the half-functional sort that the US has, only has value if all interest groups have to participate in it. Democracy is a grand gathering of interests around a table, and then a symbolic wrestling match among them all to have their interests represented and defended. Once you have one hundred or two hundred or three hundred billion dollars, however, you do not need to show up and sit around the table. You can buy the whole table. Everyone else sits around your table now, and begs you. Just like that, democracy has been replaced. This is where we are….

The soil from which everything else grew is: Rich people have too much money. That is a political and economic choice, a predictable consequence of the failure to get ahead of capitalism’s well understood tendency to produce this very situation. Here we are. We have allowed it to go too far and now the richest guy is buying total power. The key thing, the big mistake, was letting the rich people get this rich. If they were not this rich—if inequality were not so wide—the various other interests in our democracy would themselves be powerful enough that they could not be outweighed by single oligarchs. But wealth is power, and we let the oligarchs get too much wealth, and they, personally, got stronger than other interest groups that represent millions of people….


Rep. Town Hall Breaks Out in chats “Tax the Rich!” #taxcutsandjobsact [YouTueb video short]

[TW: YouTube video of portion Nebraska Republican Congressman Mike Flood’s town hall when he asks “How can you be against a balanced budget?” and the crowd began to chant "tax the rich." Note the smug look on his face.]

Amos 5

‘Therefore, since you trample the poor continuously,
    taxing his grain,
    building houses of stone in which you won’t live
    and planting fine vineyards from which you won’t drink—
12 and because I know that your transgressions are many,
    and your sins are numerous
as you oppose the righteous,
    taking bribes as a ransom,
        and turning away the poor in courtj
13 therefore the prudent person remains silent at such a time,
    for the time is evil.
    

James 2:14-17

14 What good does it do, my brothers, if someone claims to have faith but does not prove it with actions? This kind of faith cannot save him, can it? 15 Suppose a brother or sister does not have any clothes or daily food 16 and one of you tells them, “Go in peace! Stay warm and eat heartily.” If you do not provide for their bodily needs, what good does it do? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it does not prove itself with actions, is dead.


Trump’s Economics—and America’s Economy

James K. Galbraith  [The Nation, via God's Spies, March 20, 2025]

Leaving aside the buckets called “culture wars” and “foreign policy,” we may distinguish eight distinct forces at work in Trump’s economics. They are (a) the targeted destruction of specific regulatory agencies, (b) random disruptions of the federal civil service, (c) old-fashioned Reaganism, (d) tariffs, (e) migration, (f) energy, (g) the military, and (h) the general effect of rash and unpredictable policymaking—otherwise called uncertainty and chaos….

Not all regulation is effective. But quite distinct from its social and health benefits, effective regulation serves the interests of advanced businesses, including in manufacturing, by forcing old, dirty, and unsafe technologies and low-wage competitors out. Trump’s government, like others before it, is—unfortunately for its own declared strategy—in the hands of the reactionary branch of the business elite.

[Thomas Neuburger: “Translation: The troglodytes running this ship could soon be opposed by elites who want to succeed in the actual world, not just in their dreams.”]

[And, Neuberger again:

[James Galbraith is the man who wrote this about Barack Obama when he tried to cut Social Security in 2011:

[T]he President too is a young man. … He'll need a big house in a gated suburb, with high walls and rich friends. And a good income, too, from book deals and lecture fees. He may be thinking about that now. ... [But] it won't save him. For if and when he ventures out, for the rest of his life, the eyes of all those, whose hopes he once raised will follow him. The old, the poor, the jobless, the homeless: their eyes will follow him wherever he goes.

[File under “In case you forgot, it doesn’t all start with Trump.”]


Global power shift

Exposing Britain’s Covert War On Yemen 

Kit Klarenberg [Global Delinquents, via Naked Capitalism 03-20-2025]


The Nuclear War Plan for Iran 

Ken Klippenstein [via Naked Capitalism 03-20-2025]


Gaza / Palestine / Israel

Letter from a Palestinian Political Prisoner in Louisiana 

Dictated over the phone from ICE Detention. Mahmoud Khalil. [via Naked Capitalism 03-19-2025]


Oligarchy

Social Security Is Not a Ponzi Scheme

Lawrence B. Glickman, March 11, 2015 [The Boston Review]

Today’s attacks are just the latest form of backlash to the New Deal.

When Elon Musk called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” on Joe Rogan’s podcast on February 28, he was, wittingly or not, echoing a long line of conservative critics. Over the last fifteen years alone, a long line of Republican politicians—Mick MulvaneyRon JohnsonRick PerryTed Cruz, and Rand Paul—have characterized it the same way….

Inapt though such comparisons may be, they have been a persistent strand of conservative thought ever since 1935, when the Social Security Act became law. The initial conservative backlash—first to the act, then to the other gains of the New Deal era—laid the groundwork for the nine decades of attacks on public goods that have followed. Since then, the strategy has been refined, but the crusade still follows the same four-pronged process: demonize Social Security, claim that the essence of government is found in spending on absurd programs, use the state as a personal piggy bank, and assert that you and your fellow elites have been the real victims all along.

In 1937 a New London, Connecticut, newspaper, evaluating the new “social security scheme,” dismissed it as a “Ponzi-like plan” based upon a philosophy of “something from nothing.” The comparison stuck. In 1956, Clarence Manion, the former Dean of Notre Dame Law School, pioneering conservative radio broadcaster, and future member of the John Birch Society, said the federal government had “[adopted] the Ponzi “‘get rich easy’ scheme as its very own.” In 1981 conservative senator Jesse Helms called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme to buy political popularity at the risk of social security’s ultimate bankruptcy.”….

In accepting the Democratic nomination for the second time in 1936, Roosevelt gave a masterclass in how to counter the likes of DOGE. He called the kind of people whom Dewey addressed “economic royalists” sparing them no mercy in connecting their greed to the undermining of democracy and the diminution of liberty for ordinary Americans: “The privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction.” Such people, Roosevelt declared, were “new mercenaries” who “sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property.” ….


Sanders, AOC Draw Biggest Crowd of Their Careers at Rally to Fight 'Oligarchy' in Denver

Eloise Goldsmith, March 22, 2025 [CommonDreams]


Trumpillnomics

The pain is about to start

Thomas Mills, March 19, 2025 [PoliticsNC]

Right now, Donald Trump is mostly fighting on his turf. He’s made deporting immigrants and cutting government his priorities. He’s getting cheered by Republicans and conservatives for his aggressive actions. It’s not going to last. There are only so many immigrants he can deport before he causes pain in communities. There’s only so much government he can eliminate before the consequences start to hurt people and their families….

We’re only two months into the administration and the consequences of their actions haven’t been felt widely, but they are coming. A friend of mine has been talking to developers about building a few houses on a piece of property he owns. The deal fell through when the builders told him they aren’t taking on any new projects because of the uncertainty of material prices. They can’t estimate costs with Trump jerking the economy around with his on-again-off-again tariff regime.

They also can’t predict labor costs. A lot of those deportees were working in the construction industry. Builders may find themselves paying much higher costs for employees and contractors. Those same concerns will spread across the economy, making businesses reluctant to invest in their companies and hesitant to make long term plans.

The impact of tariffs will hit soon. New cars are about to increase in price from between $4,000 and $12,000. Buy now, because you won’t get a better deal anytime soon. I expect that applies to a lot of other goods, too….


They’re not capitalists — they’re predatory criminals

Trump Administration Gives All Clear to Laundering Money through Shell Companies and Bribing Foreign Officials

Pam Martens and Russ Martens, March 19, 2025 [Wall Street on Parade]


‘Italian vendetta’: SEC targeted by triumphant crypto industry 

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 03-18-2025]


How TD Became America’s Most Convenient Bank for Money Launderers 

[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 03-19-2025]

[Yves Smith: “Big investigative report. Note we wrote up a recent case seeking to claw back pay and pensions from crooked execs. This article confirms a key element of the thesis of that case, that the execs were in cahoots with the crooks.”]


Disrupting mainstream economics

An Explanation Of Why Taxes Don’t Fund Spending—And Why Elon Musk Is Wrong About The US Government Deficit

Jim Byrne [MMT101.ORG, via Mike Norman Economics, March 16, 2025]


Health care crisis

With crumbling public health infrastructure, rural Texas scrambles to respond to measles 

[The Texas Tribune, via Naked Capitalism 03-16-2025]


Information age dystopia / surveillance state

OpenAI Says It’s “Over” If It Can’t Steal All Your Copyrighted Work 

[Futurism, via Naked Capitalism 03-17-2025]


The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem

Alex Reisner, March 20, 2025 [The Atlantic]

Court documents released last night show that the senior manager felt it was “really important for [Meta] to get books ASAP,” as “books are actually more important than web data.” Meta employees turned their attention to Library Genesis, or LibGen, one of the largest of the pirated libraries that circulate online. It currently contains more than 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers. Eventually, the team at Meta got permission from “MZ”—an apparent reference to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—to download and use the data set….

Meta employees acknowledged in their internal communications that training Llama on LibGen presented a “medium-high legal risk,” and discussed a variety of “mitigations” to mask their activity. One employee recommended that developers “remove data clearly marked as pirated/stolen” and “do not externally cite the use of any training data including LibGen.” Another discussed removing any line containing ISBNCopyright©All rights reserved. A Llama-team senior manager suggested fine-tuning Llama to “refuse to answer queries like: ‘reproduce the first three pages of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”’” One employee remarked that “torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right.”….

Many in the academic world have argued that publishers have brought this type of piracy on themselves, by making it unnecessarily difficult and expensive to access research. Sci-Hub, a sibling of LibGen, was launched independently in 2011 by a Kazakhstani neuroscience student named Alexandra Elbakyan, whose university didn’t provide access to the big academic databases. In that same year, the hacktivist Aaron Swartz was arrested after taking millions of articles from JSTOR in an attempt to build a similar kind of library….

[TW: The obvious solution — but obvious only if one knows the tenets of civic republicanism — is for all scholarly articles to be in the public domain at their creation, with the creators and publishers paid by a centralized government fund. This fund could be administered by the government, or by a board comprised of scholars and publishers. This scheme of course would destroy the business model of the scholarly publishers — but that is exactly the point of civic republicanism: Each individual in society has a duty as a citizen to promote the General Welfare. Scientists and scholars are the tip of the spear in scientific and technological development: the products of their research should be made as widely available as possible as soon as possible to help advance their fields of inquiry and advance the state of human knowledge. Without scientific and technological development, no society can survive, because of the limits of finite resources at any one point in time of a particular mode of production. Our current dilemmas of private interests overwhelming public interests is the result of liberalism’s fetishization of the rights of property. (The great irony of current conservative and libertarian thinking is that they argue that liberalism has failed, because it has not done enough to shield the rights of property from civic duties and demands of public interest.)]


Climate and environmental crises

More Than 150 ‘Unprecedented’ Climate Disasters Struck World in 2024, Says UN 

[Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 03-22-2025]


Democrats' political malpractice

The Government Funding Law Damages the Legal Pushback on Trump
David Dayen, March 20, 2025 [The American Prospect]

Here’s why Chuck Schumer’s cave-in was beneficial to Trump’s legally shaky slashing of spending and the federal workforce.….

...The bigger point here is that if the only way to constrain Trump on these budgetary issues is through the courts, then you would want to take a course that doesn’t materially harm the legal arguments. Precisely by granting government funding that leaves the particulars up to the executive, those legal arguments have been harmed. Even outside of the political argument that cowering in the face of a fight makes the Democrats a more toxic and disliked institution, Schumer’s decision had negative consequences….


[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 03-17-2025]

Nate Bear

Always worth a reminder that Obama inherited ICE as a fledgling agency, increased its budget 300%, established a nationwide network of detention centres and expanded the 'secure communities' enforcement program from 14 counties under Bush Jr to all 3,181 jurisdictions in America



Trump’s transactional regime

It's the Trauma Stupid: Hurt People, Hurt People 

[LA Progressive, via God’s Spies, March 20, 2025]

Anyone paying attention to politics knows that Trump’s second term has been marked by a gleeful cruelty. The blizzard of executive orders, freezing overseas assistance to the world’s poor, firing masses of federal workers and targeting domestic safety nets pick up where his first term left off.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” boasted Russell Vought, who is now Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director, in speeches before 2024’s election. “We want to put them in trauma.”

[Thomas Neuburger: “This long piece is not just about what trauma is inflicted by Trump and his followers, but what trauma they’ve suffered that they’re now exporting.”]

Trump gave wounded swathes of the electorate a permission slip to hate immigrants, those transgendered, every diverse Democratic constituency, with special emphasis on educated coastal “elites” and its “lying media.” The irrational hate mobilized against Democrats resulted in many MAGA voters acting like the most crazed sports fans, known for their rigid, sometimes violent, home-team loyalty.

Daniel J. Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, further explains the powerful appeal and draw of leaders who exude hostility and authoritarian impulses.

“People may actually feel excitement that someone in the public eye is expressing aggression, or assertion, the opposite of impotence,” Siegel said. Such traits can feel empowering to those who lack agency and power in their lives, he explained. “It is like a child wanting to be with a parent who will protect them.”


Resistance

Guest Post By Newark Mayor Ras Baraka: Democrats Cannot Afford To Wait— The Storm Is Here

[downwithtyranny.com 3-20-2025]


80 Teslas damaged at once at Canadian Showroom

Bill Addis, March 21, 2025 [Daily Kos]

Tesla has gone so far as turning on the Sentry mode on all the cars at service centers and showrooms. They start recording when there is suspicious activity around the car.


Musk: Tesla has activated security cameras on vehicles at dealerships

[CBS News, vis MSN 03-21-2025]


Conservative / Libertarian / (anti)Republican Drive to Civil War

Project 2025 Tracker

Project 2025 Tracker began as a humble spreadsheet created by /u/rusticgorilla, combined with /u/mollynaquafina's vision for making this information accessible to everyone through a dedicated website.


Beyond My Wildest Dreams’: The Architect of Project 2025 Is Ready for His Victory Lap 

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 03-17-2025]


Will-to-Power Conservatism and the Great Liberalism Schism

Stephanie Slade [Reason, October 2020 issue, via Semafor]

By virtue of representing the correct vision of the good, these conservatives say, they have every right to use the coercive power of the state to interfere with others' choices….

...an increasingly restless group of writers and thinkers at places like First Things and the Claremont Institute who say America has tried classical liberalism—and it failed us.

These "post-liberals" believe it's time for a conservative politics that stops worrying about protecting individual liberty and starts worrying about attaining the common good. Generally speaking, that means embracing "strong rule" by a government tasked, among other things, with "enforcing duties of community and solidarity in the use and distribution of resources," as the Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule put it in a March essay for The Atlantic….

...New York Post opinion editor Sohrab Ahmari, in a now-infamous 2019 essay for First Things, called upon conservatives to accept the hard truth "of politics as war and enmity." All societies have rulers, the Will-to-Power Conservatives seem to be saying; what matters above all else is ensuring that our tribe is dominant.

Don't take my word for it. In a recent symposium published by The American Conservative, editor of American Affairs Julius Krein (echoing his colleague Gladden Pappin) complains that "contemporary conservatism" lacks "a serious approach to wielding political power." Hillsdale College's David Azerrad argues that conservatives must learn to be "manly," "combative," and "comfortable" using "the levers of state power…to reward friends and punish enemies." And Claremont's Matthew J. Peterson insists that "conservatism must not merely make arguments…it must act on them, wielding 'regime-level' power in the service of good political order to do so." ….

For Will-to-Power Conservatives...: By virtue of representing the correct vision of the good, they say, they have every right to use the coercive power of the state to interfere with others' choices. In place of equal rights under the law, it's error has no rights. This is no way to achieve the common good.


The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution

America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State

Aziz Huq, March 23, 2025 [The Atlantic]

On September 20, 1938, a man who had witnessed the rise of fascism packed his suitcases and fled his home in Berlin. He arranged to have smuggled separately a manuscript that he had drafted in secret over the previous two years. This book was a remarkable one. It clarified what was unfolding in Berlin at the time, the catalyst for its author’s flight.

The man fleeing that day was a Jewish labor lawyer named Ernst Fraenkel. He completed his manuscript two years later at the University of Chicago (where I teach), publishing it as The Dual State, with the modest subtitle A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship. The book explains how the Nazi regime managed to keep on track a capitalist economy governed by stable laws—and maintain a day-to-day normalcy for many of its citizens—while at the same time establishing a domain of lawlessness and state violence in order to realize its terrible vision of ethno-nationalism.

Fraenkel offered a simple, yet powerful, picture of how the constitutional and legal foundations of the Weimar Republic eroded, and were replaced by strongman-style rule in which the commands of the Nazi Party and its leader became paramount. His perspective was not grounded in abstract political theory; it grew instead from his experience as a Jewish lawyer in Nazi Berlin representing dissidents and other disfavored clients. Academic in tone, The Dual State sketches a template of emerging tyranny distilled from bloody and horrifying experience….