Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 25, 2025
by Tony Wikrent
The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution, Part 1
GOP Budget Would Make It Even Harder to Hold Trump Administration in Contempt
Shawn Musgrave, May 24 2025 [The Intercept]
...The looming showdown over the judiciary’s power to issue contempt orders stems from a single sentence tucked into the thousand-page budget bill, which passed the House of Representatives by a single vote on Thursday.
“This is a slap in the face to the concept of separation of powers,” said a spokesman for Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.).
If enacted, the provision — found on page 544 out of 1,082 — would restrict how federal judges can hold government officials or other litigants in contempt if they defy court-issued injunctions and restraining orders. Contempt is the primary enforcement mechanism available to courts, and in cases around the country judges have weighed whether to issue contempt findings against President Donald Trump’s deputies….
Although this is technically a budget bill, items in it from that wish list include a significant restriction on “the authority of federal courts to hold government officials in contempt when they violate court orders,” as Dean of Berkeley Law School Erwin Chemerinsky explained in Just Security Monday. “Without the contempt power,” he writes, “judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored.”
Trump not violating any law
'He who saves his Country does not violate any Law'
Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]
Debating Trump “Ambush” of South African President With “White Genocide’ Lies
Trump’s goals were clear. I wrote yesterday that he was pushing the phony “white genocide” narrative to:
- Retaliate against South Africa for going to the ICJ regarding the actual genocide in Gaza, to get them to back off more.
- Cheapen the public discourse over “genocide” — helping turn it into just another meaningless slur.
- Make it seem like Trump is standing up for alleged oppressed white folks, to play to some white working-class voters who don’t perceive that it’s actually — again — for Israel (similar to how they repackaged Palestine protests as an immigration issue).
- Push back against BRICS to the extent it’s challenging US establishment dominance, or appears to be doing so.
He lectured him on alleged abuses in South Africa and Ramaphosa was at best doing a diplomatic defense.
Trump orders the government to stop enforcing rules he doesn’t like
Maxine Joselow, Hannah Natanson and Ian Duncan [Washington Post, via downwithtyranny.com 5-19-2025]
At the Transportation Department, enforcement of pipeline safety rules has plunged to unprecedented lows since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.Trump recently ordered Energy Department staff to stop enforcing water conservation standards for showerheads and other household appliances. And at one Labor Department division, his appointees have instructed employees to halt most work related to antidiscrimination laws.Across the government, the Trump administration is trying a new tactic for gutting federal rules and policies that the president dislikes: simply stop enforcing them.“The conscious effort to slow down enforcement on such a broad scale is something we have never seen in previous administrations,” said Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy. “It amounts to a dramatic assertion of presidential power and authority.”This account of the Trump administration’s efforts to scale back application of many laws is based on interviews with more than a dozen federal employees across seven agencies, as well as a review of internal documents and federal data….In some cases, Trump has personally ordered a halt to enforcement. The president on May 9 signed a memorandum directing the Energy Department “not to enforce” what he called “useless” water conservation standards for home appliances including bathtubs, faucets, showerheads and toilets….
Heather Cox Richardson, May 20, 2025 [Letters from an American]
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about the Department of Homeland Security's budget for fiscal year 2026. When Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) asked her to define “habeas corpus,” Noem’s response indicated she has no understanding of the nation’s fundamental law.
“Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country,” Noem said. Hassan corrected her: “Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people. If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason. Habeas corpus is the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea.”
'Should Send a Chill Down the Spine of Every American': Trump DOJ Charges New Jersey Democrat
Jake Johnson, May 20, 2025 [CommonDreams]
Trump uses legal setbacks on mass deportation for public relations
Myah Ward and Kyle Cheney, 05/23/2025 [Politico, via [Talking Points Memo]
...While Justice Department lawyers seek to salvage some of the most aggressive elements of Trump’s deportation agenda, the rest of the president’s team is focused on making sure Americans hear the story he wants to tell: that of a president trying to get violent criminals out of the country, only to be blocked by obstinate judges.
It’s an oversimplification that depends on misrepresentations of what the courts have ordered. But it is one the president knows he can tell with a louder megaphone and little pushback from judges, who speak through court filings, not soundbites. That vacuum allows Trump to frame the legal tongue-lashings he receives as a badge of honor, proof he’s upholding his campaign-trail commitment to deport criminals at any cost….
Welcome To The White Christian Nationalist Presidency
David Kurtz, May 22, 2025 [Talking Points Memo]
Relying on internal documents, the NYT goes deep inside the Trump administration’s handling of the case of the mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia:
“In the days before the government’s error became public, D.H.S. officials discussed trying to portray Mr. Abrego Garcia as a “leader” of the violent street gang MS-13, even though they could find no evidence to support the claim. They considered ways to nullify the original order that barred his deportation to El Salvador. They sought to downplay the danger he might face in one of that country’s most notorious prisons.”….
Judge Thwacks Trump DOJ Over Newark Mayor Case
A federal magistrate judge savaged the Trump DOJ for its “embarrassing retraction of charges” against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who had been arrested at a controversial ICE detention center in his city.
“An arrest of a public figure is not a preliminary investigative tool. It is a severe action,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Andre M. Espinosa told the DOJ prosecutor. “It should only be undertaken after a thorough, dispassionate investigation of credible evidence.”
Interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba had announced the charges would be dropped the same day she announced charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) arising from the same incident. Baraka and McIver are both Black.
Trump Is Building a Global Gulag for Immigrants Captured by ICE
Nick Turse, Jonah Valdez, May 15 2025 [The Intercept]
The U.S. is in talks with 19 nations, including Libya, Kosovo, Rwanda, and Moldova, to accept deportees from other countries.
GAO Makes Official What’s Been Obvious: Trump Admin Is Breaking Impoundment Control Act
Nicole Lafond, May 22, 2025 [Talking Points Memo]
...As part of its 39 different investigations into various actions the Trump administration has taken in the last four months that could qualify as Impoundment Control Act violations, the Government Accountability Office determined this afternoon that the Trump administration has, in fact, done just that….
Official Pushed to Rewrite Intelligence So It Could Not Be ‘Used Against’ Trump
Charlie Savage, Julian E. Barnes and Maggie Haberman, May 20, 2025 [New York Times]
Strategic Political Economy
CBO Report Shows Trump-GOP Bill Would Spur Unparalleled Wealth Transfer From Poor to Rich
Jake Johnson, May 21, 2025 [CommonDreams]
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that the Republican legislation speeding through the U.S. House of Representatives would cut household resources for the bottom 10% of Americans while delivering gains to the wealthiest in the form of tax breaks.
"If enacted, this would be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history," Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, said in response to the CBO analysis, which was released shortly before the start of a dead-of-night House Rules Committee hearing on the Republican reconciliation package.
A Moment of Clarity: House Republicans unify to pass big, ugly payout to billionaires
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, May 22, 2025 [Our Moral Moment w/ Bishop William Barber & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove]
'Call This What It Is—Theft': Republicans Approve Largest Medicaid, SNAP Cuts in US History
Jake Johnson, May 22, 2025 [CommonDreams]
Heather Cox Richardson, May 19, 2025 [Letters from an American]
In The Bulwark today, Jonathan Cohn noted that Republicans are in a tearing hurry to push that Big, Beautiful Bill through Congress before most of us can get a handle on what’s in it. Just a week ago, Cohn notes, there was still no specific language in the measure. Republican leaders didn’t release the piece of the massive bill that would cut Medicaid until last Sunday night and then announced the Committee on Energy and Commerce would take it up not even a full two days later, on Tuesday, before the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office could produce a detailed analysis of the cost of the proposals. The committee markup happened in a 26-hour marathon in which the parts about Medicaid happened in the middle of the night. And now, the bill moves forward in an unusual meeting late on a Sunday night.
Cohn recalls that in 2009, when the Democrats were pushing the Affordable Care Act, more popularly known as Obamacare, that measure had months of public debate before it went to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. That committee held eight separate hearings about healthcare reform, and it was just one of three committees working on the issue. The ACA markup took a full two weeks.
Cohn explains that Medicaid cuts are extremely unpopular, and the Republicans hope to jam those cuts through by claiming they are cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse” without leaving enough time for scrutiny. Cohn points out that if they are truly interested in savings, they could turn instead to the privatized part of Medicare, Medicare Part D. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that cutting overpayments to Medicare Part D when private insurers “upcode” care to place patients in a higher risk bracket, could save more than $1 trillion over the next decade….
The continuing Republican insistence that spending is out of control does not reflect reality. In fact, discretionary spending has fallen more than 40% in the past 50 years as a percentage of gross domestic product, from 11% to 6.3%. What has driven rising deficits are the George W. Bush and Donald Trump tax cuts, which had added $8 trillion and $1.7 trillion, respectively, to the debt by the end of the 2023 fiscal year.
But rather than permit those tax cuts to expire— or even to roll them back— the Republicans continue to insist Americans are overtaxed. In fact, the U.S. is far below the average of the 37 other nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an intergovernmental forum of democracies with market economies, in its tax levies. According to a report by the Center for American Progress in 2023, if the U.S. taxed at the average OECD level, over ten years it would have an additional $26 trillion in revenue. If the U.S. taxed at the average of European Union nations, it would have an additional $36 trillion.
MAGA dominance, brought to you by aging Dems.
Today, the House passed Republicans’ budget narrowly by a 215-to-214 vote — meaning Democrats could have blocked the bill from moving to the Senate if three of their voting members hadn’t died this session. That includes Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, who passed at 75 yesterday, just hours before the vote. He’s joined by Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, 77, and Rep. Sylvester Turner of Texas, 70. (Turner passed after succeeding longtime Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who died in office last year at 74.) Eight members of Congress have died in office since November 2022 — and all were Democrats.
America Desperately Needs To Invest in Infrastructure
Kurt Cobb, May 19, 2025 [oilprice.com]
..."2025 Report Card from America's Infrastructure" from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)….
Strongman Economics Are Piss: The most futile way to fight investor capitalism
Hamilton Nolan, May 20, 2025 [How Things Work]
A basic but accurate model of investor capitalism is: Companies have expenses, and they have profits. The job of company managers is to minimize expenses and maximize profits, to the extent possible. The huge pools of capital controlled by investors will flow to the firms that produce the highest profits, with the same inexorable logic of a river flowing where gravity leads it. In return for their capital, investors want as much of a company’s profits to be given to them as possible….
Once investor capitalism has gotten hold of an economy, as it has in America and on most of Planet Earth, it operates like a machine programmed with those few rules. Its logic is straightforward and does not change. The only way to alter its course is to impose hard limits upon it. If you do not want it to produce, you know, “slavery,” which fits quite well in its logic, you have to make rules against it. If you do not want companies to dump their toxic waste in the lake, you have to enforce regulations against it. Otherwise they will do it, because it lowers expenses and produces higher profits. This simple model explains basically all corporate behavior. We, as a society of human beings, must turn the dials that dictate the limits on capitalism, because capitalism itself is a machine that only does one thing. America’s economic inequality is a result of our failure to restrain the operations of this machine very much. We currently exist at the “You can still be considered a legitimate businessman and make billions of dollars in private equity by buying a hospital and driving down the costs by firing the people who keep all the patients alive” level of regulation.…
Right now, companies in America and around the world are being subjected to a somewhat novel form of power: The power of the strongman. In any nation where the forces of capital have accumulated as much power as they have in the USA, there is a superficial appeal to the idea of a strongman who can put them in check. The appeal of Donald Trump to a laid-off coal miner is similar to the appeal of Evo Morales to an impoverished Bolivian campesino, in the sense that both represent a prayer for relief by powerless workers crushed and discarded by capitalism. Whether the prayer is answered, and how, is a separate issue….
I say all this as a prelude to focus on what our strongman leader is actually doing on this front. I’m not talking about all the normal bad stuff, the corruption and narcissism and racism and everything else, which we can stipulate that we all know. Is Donald Trump doing anything that amounts to “Populist strongman uses his power to force the greedy investor class to release its grip on all corporate profits?” In fact, he is. And the way that he is doing it reveals everything about why the hope in a strongman savior is a dead end for the working class….
It is fascinating to watch Trump impose significant new costs on companies, and then try to simply bully the companies into not raising prices in response. He told Walmart to “EAT THE TARIFFS” rather than passing on their costs. We are witnessing a classic battle between strongman economics and investor capitalism. Normal capitalist logic is to raise prices in response to increased costs (maybe even raise them a little more than necessary, in the spirit of seizing an opportunity) in order to protect corporate profits, which are the most important thing. The strongman says: No, I want you to voluntarily accept lower profits in order to comply with my will, and to make me look good, and strong, and popular. If you do not do this, I will retaliate against you; I will smear you, threaten you, unleash government agencies to harass and investigate and trouble you, make your life hell in various corrupt ways. The companies must then reassess whether they will be able to continue to maintain their profits, or whether the power they are up against is so potent that they must, at last, give ground….
The interesting thing is that what the strongman does is a crude, corrupt, and brain-damaged version of what organized labor does....
U.S. Navy Admiral Convicted of Bribery Over Post-Retirement Job Offer
May 21, 2025 [The Maritime Executive]
A federal jury has convicted Adm. Robert Burke (USN, ret'd) on bribery charges related to post-service employment in the private sector. While it is commonplace for admirals to take positions with defense contractors after leaving the military, prosecutors alleged that Burke arranged a six-figure contract for his future employer before he departed the service. As a four-star admiral, Burke is among the highest-ranking officers ever convicted of a federal crime.
The story began in 2018, when training firm Next Jump received a subcontract from the Navy for a pilot program. The Navy terminated it the following year, leaving Next Jump without any military contracts. Next Jump's co-chief executives, defendants Yongchul "Charlie" Kim and Meghan Messenger, emailed Adm. Burke - at that point the vice chief of naval operations - in hopes of reestablishing the business relationship….
Distributional and Macroeconomic Effects of Trump 2.0
Simon Grothe and Michalis Nikiforos, May 5, 2025 [Institute for New Economic Thinking]
Global power shift
China Is on Its Way to Becoming World’s First ‘Electrostate’
Alex Kimani [OilPrice, via Naked Capitalism 05-23-2025]
- China leads the world in electrification, with a 30% electrification rate—far ahead of the U.S. and EU at ~22%—dominating sectors like transport and industry.
- Massive investment in electric vehicles, high-speed rail, and renewables has positioned China as a superpower in clean energy technologies, with renewables now making up 10% of GDP.
- Despite progress, China’s ongoing coal expansion complicates climate goals, as the country remains the largest greenhouse gas emitter, raising doubts about its transition timeline.
[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 05-19-2025]
China is building nuclear with costs comparable to natural gas plants in the U.S. $2.3 million per megawatt. Let that sink in.
China approves building of 10 new nuclear power units for $27 billion
Reuters, April 28, 2025
The US–China AI race is forcing countries to reconsider who owns their digital infrastructure
[Chatham House, via Naked Capitalism 05-19-2025]
Aurelien, via Naked Capitalism 05-21-2025] Important.
Gaza / Palestine / Israel
Netanyahu: Gaza Aid Scheme Offers Israel Symbolic Cover to Finish the Genocide
Jeremy Scahill, May 19, 2025 [DropSite]
Trump’s Break with Israel: Genuine Shift or Political Theater?
Kit Klarenberg, May 19th, 2025 [MintPressNews]
Wiz Acquisition Puts Israeli Intelligence In Charge of Your Google Data
Alan Macleod, April 17, 2025 [via DefendDemocracy.Press May 24, 2025]
Google recently announced it would acquire Israeli-American cloud security firm Wiz for $32 billion. The price tag — 65 times Wiz’s annual revenue — has raised eyebrows and further solidified the close relationship between Google and the Israeli military….
Wiz was established only five years ago, and all four co-founders — Yinon Costica, Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik — were leaders in Israel’s elite military intelligence unit, Unit 8200. Like many Israeli tech companies, Wiz is a direct outgrowth of the military intelligence outfit. A recent study found that almost fifty of its current employees are Unit 8200 veterans….
Former Unit 8200 agents, working hand-in-glove with the Israeli national security state, have gone on to produce many of the world’s most infamous malware and hacking tools.
Perhaps the most well-known of these is Pegasus, spyware used by governments around the world to surveil and harass political opponents. These include India, Kazakhstan, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, the latter of which used the tool to spy on Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi before he was assassinated by Saudi agents in Türkiye.
In total, more than 50,000 journalists, human rights defenders, diplomats, business leaders and politicians are known to have been secretly surveilled. That includes heads of state such as French President Emmanuel Macron, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Iraqi President Barham Salih. All Pegasus sales had to be approved by the Israeli government, which reportedly had access to the data Pegasus’ foreign customers were accruing.
Unit 8200 also spies on Americans. Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency regularly shared the data and communications of U.S. citizens with the Israeli intelligence group. “I think that’s amazing…It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve seen,” he said….
[Conflict’s Forum Substack, via Naked Capitalism 05-18-2025]
Leaked map shows Israeli proposal to force Gazans into strips of land
[The Times, via Naked Capitalism 05-19-2025]
Meet the Right-Wing Ultra-Zionist Immigrant Pushing for Mahmoud Khalil’s Deportation
[Zeteo, via Naked Capitalism 05-21-2025]
...helping lead the Trump administration’s legal effort to deport Columbia protest leader Mahmoud Khalil.
As the principal assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division, Yaakov Roth, an immigrant himself, is at the center of two of the Trump administration’s most high-profile – and contentious – deportation efforts since taking power. He’s a lead attorney in the Khalil case, and he is also working to prevent the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father who the Trump administration mistakenly sent to a notorious El Salvador prison – and now refuses to bring back.
In both cases, Roth has taken a maximalist view of presidential power, arguing that President Donald Trump has “expansive authority over foreign affairs, national security, and immigration” to justify some of the more eyebrow-raising Department of Homeland Security moves….
Oligarchy
British Intelligence: A Law Unto Themselves
Kit Klarenberg, May 15, 2025 [Global Delinquents]
The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics
"2025 Report Card from America's Infrastructure" from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
Restoring balance to the economy
Apple F$@ks Around with Court Order, Finds Out
Matt Stoller, via Naked Capitalism 05-21-2025]
Disrupting mainstream economics
From “Ricardian Vice” to First Principles
Steve Keen, May 15, 2025 [via Naked Capitalism 05-20-2025]
The concluding chapter in my forthcoming book Money and Macroeconomics from First Principles, for Elon Musk and Other Engineers
Health care crisis
UnitedHealth secretly paid nursing homes to cut hospital care, Guardian reports
James R. Hood, May 21, 2025 [via Naked Capitalism 05-22-2025]
Information age dystopia / surveillance state
Delete Yourself, Part 2: Your Personal Data on the Dark Web:
[Wall Street Journal, via The Big Picture May 23, 2025]
How to lock down your finances and online accounts after a data breach spreads your information to the secret corners of the internet.
The Coming A.I. Catastrophe for Middle America’s Gen Z
[Observer, via Naked Capitalism 05-18-2025]
Creating new economic potential - science and technology
Coffee Break: A Triumph of Gene Editing
KLG, May 23, 2025 [Naked Capitalism]
This case was published on 15 May 2025 in The New England Journal of Medicine: Patient-Specific In Vivo Gene Editing to Treat a Rare Genetic Disease [paywall, but accessible with registration; the news release from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is here]. This is the remarkable story of Baby KJ, who was born with the very rare deficiency of the enzyme carbamoyl-phosphate synthetase 1. That mouthful means that a person with the deficiency cannot get rid of ammonia, which is a byproduct of protein metabolism. Early-onset CPS-1 deficiency has a mortality rate of ~50% in infancy. Those who do not die early are at severe risk of irreversible brain and liver injury due to high levels of ammonia. The urea cycle is outlined here, for those who want a short biochemistry lesson.
The ultimate cure for Baby KJ will probably be a liver transplant, but brain damage usually occurs before a patient with Baby KJ’s condition grows large enough for the transplant. Baby KJ’s doctors as part of a team with 45 members developed his treatment plan in less than seven months, and during the middle of his eighth month he received the second dose of his treatment. The nature of this treatment could allow for repeated doses of the therapy, thereby obviating the need for an eventual liver transplant. After treatment Baby KJ began to eat an increased amount of dietary protein and his nitrogen-scavenging medication was reduced to half of the starting dose. So far, no adverse events have occurred. Baby KJ will be monitored during a long follow-up period, but as of now he is a healthy baby with happy parents and three happy siblings….
The authors conclude with the following:
Therapies similar to (Baby KJ’s) could be developed for hundreds of hepatic (liver) inborn errors of metabolism…corrective gene editing lends itself to rapid customization for individual patients owing to the platform nature of the technology. Shared components among gene-editing therapies could include the same lipid nanoparticle formulation and mRNA, with the gRNA (guide RNA) customized to each patient’s variant.
We assessed (the therapy) for editing efficiency in mice and for safety in nonhuman primates. Such studies might not be necessary for future patient-specific treatments; perhaps cell-based studies would be sufficient. Although (the therapy) was developed under emergency conditions for a devastating neonatal-onset metabolic disorder, we anticipate that rapid deployment of patient-specific gene-editing therapies will become routine for many genetic diseases.
The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (U01TR005355 and U19NS132301, to Drs. Musunuru and Ahrens-Nicklas; R35HL145203, to Dr. Musunuru; U19NS132303, to Dr. Urnov; and DP2CA281401 and P01HL142494, to Dr. Kleinstiver). In-kind contributions were made by Acuitas Therapeutics, Integrated DNA Technologies, Aldevron, and Danaher. Additional funding was provided by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute’s Gene Therapy for Inherited Metabolic Disorders Frontier Program. What is the “return on investment” for this work? It can’t be calculated. But listening to Trump apparatchiks talk about supporting “gold standard” science after their devastation of it is hard to take. The “Gold Standard” refers to a fetish and nothing more, and when applied to scientific research it has no meaning.
The secretive US factory that lays bare the contradiction in Trump’s America First plan
[BBC, via Naked Capitalism 05-19-2025]
CERN Gears Up To Ship Antimatter Across Europe
[ars technica, via Naked Capitalism 05-20-2025]
Democrats' political malpractice
The Democrats Are Having a False Reckoning Over Joe Biden
Osita Nwanevu, May 23, 2025 [The New Republic]
...The Democratic Party is sick. Most Americans disapprove of it. Only 35 percent of Democrats are optimistic about the future of the party. In November, the Republican Party won its first presidential popular vote victory in 20 years….
Historians, political scientists, political professionals, and journalists have all chimed in about how the party might be fixed, about what ought to be done and why. But within the last week, the political press seems to have settled easily upon the issue that evidently ought to be at front of mind for us all: The first and most significant problem facing the Democratic Party today, it seems, is that Joe Biden ran for reelection….
Party hopefuls looking for ways to mark themselves as different from the rest of the pack today have other, better options. The best way to demonstrate a measure of real independence from the Democratic Party is to tell the truth about what really ails it: wealthy, clueless donors; an approach to public policy incommensurate with the scale of the challenges the country faces; a quasi-religious faith in the virtues of bipartisanship; a related and willful blindness to the depths of the Republican rot beyond Donald Trump; and a blindness, just as consequential, to the structural features of our federal system that will continue pulling governance to the right. All are much deeper problems than Joe Biden’s ego and those who chose to flatter it.
[The Ink, via Naked Capitalism 05-18-2025]
Six months ago, Donald Trump won the presidency for the second time — and a legion of people and institutions that stand opposite him vowed a reckoning….
For a moment, it seemed there might be a window of openness to a real reckoning worthy of the word and age. With a loss so devastating to so many, there was space for rethinking.
But as I look back on this half year, I can’t escape the conclusion: there was no reckoning. In fact, as far as I could tell, quite the opposite.
What I observed in these settings was those who found themselves facing Trump for the second time — whether in active opposition to him or in the adversarial role of the press — wriggling out of the hard self-examination so many promised and craved in November.
After what was once heralded as a wake-up call, I saw instead in so many quarters human qualities that make reckoning all but impossible: defensiveness, incuriosity, touchiness, the inability to see oneself as others see you, certitude in the name of so-called “moral clarity,” smugness, condescension, blame casting, deflection, and a total rejection of introspection….
In politics, if your ranks are fewer than you want them to be, the safe assumption is that it’s your own fault….
Introspection is, of course, the central gaping absence in Trump himself. But now his deepest tendencies are becoming our tendencies standing across from him.
An unthinking man is making us unthinking. An unreflective man who always thinks his first thought is his best thought is inspiring that instinct in his foils. A president blindly sure of himself is making others blindly sure that everyone who supports him is deluded or ill. A man who sees all critics as haters is stirring a similar defensiveness in those who face him.
A culture of incuriosity prevents any real understanding of Trump’s enduring appeal — even in the face of the present chaos and pain. Everyone with some one- or two-word catchall explanation for what is going on — Fox! racism! — is pretending they know things….
Biden Is a Scapegoat. The Democrats Are the Problem.
Carlos Lozada, May 20, 2025 [New York Times]
Joe Biden Is the Least of Democrats’ Problems
Jason Linkins, May 24, 2025 [The New Republic]
Well, folks, the Democratic Party really went through it this week. Last weekend, it was disclosed that former President Joe Biden was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of prostate cancer that had metastasized to his bones. Coming smack-dab in the center of the hype cycle from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book about how Biden’s inner circle kept his infirmity out of sight, the episode only magnified the party’s gerontological problems. On Wednesday, like a rush delivery from the coda store, all of this was underscored by the passing of Virginia Representative Gerry Connolly, who recently was named the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee despite his own cancer diagnosis.
The Democrats’ Biden reckoning is a real choose your own adventure. To my mind, this was a case of elite failure: not just from the fabled “politburo” troika of Biden insiders that led the charge to keep Biden’s struggles from the limelight, but also from the party elders who engineered this mishap in the first place. They slaughtered their younger candidates in the 2020 presidential primary, mercilessly took down the one among them who dared to suggest Biden was too old, and forced a party-wide acclamation of Biden’s nomination following the South Carolina primary, which put us irrevocably on the path to his subsequent 2024 candidacy….
New Deal Dems Understood Who The Bad Guys Were— Today's Party Establishment Is Way Off Base
Howie Klein, May 23, 2025 [downwithtyranny.com]
Until Democrats Admit Kamala Was A Uniquely Terrible Candidate, Statistics Won't Really Explain Much
Howie Klein, May 22, 2025 [downwithtyranny.com]
Lots of people are looking at “What Happen In 2024,” the new 2024 election data released this week by Catalist. Kamala’s numbers went down so widely and in so many demographics and subgroups that it’s nearly impossible to come to any conclusions other than the obvious one: she shouldn’t be the party’s nominee again. Her tragically over-priced consultant-and-donor-driven campaign turned off the base so profoundly that this may have been the biggest single reason Trump beat her, especially since she didn’t even manage to make headway with the centrists she decided to aim for instead….
Trump’s transactional regime
Reality show will be ‘Hunger Games’ for immigration: Producer
[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 05-18-2025]
Resistance
The Re-Emerging Anti-MAGA Majority
Michael Podhorzer, May 24, 2025 [via msn.com]
...The current backlash against Trump is exactly the outcome we’d expect to see if my long-standing argument is true: that America has an anti-MAGA majority, but not necessarily a pro-Democratic one. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the reality of American politics today is not a “realignment,” wherein the views and values of most ordinary Americans have become fundamentally more aligned with the views of MAGA Republicans. Rather it’s been a “dealignment” from both parties. Voters, increasingly distrustful of institutions and clamoring for substantial change that neither party is delivering, have punished incumbent parties in nine of the past ten elections—a D-R-D-R presidential alternation pattern unseen in over a century….
Once The Dems Win Back Both Houses Of Congress, Will There Be Accountability For Trump's Corruption?
Howie Klein, May 24, 2025 [downwithtyranny.com]
[TW: Not with the Democratic leadership in Congress right now….]
If Not Impeachment, What? Let's get some clarity from Democratic leaders…
Brian Beutler, May 19, 2025 [Off Message]
...Thanedar is a junior House Democrat from Michigan representing part of the city of Detroit, and its suburbs. Last week, he pissed off basically everyone in Democratic Party officialdom for having the temerity to insist Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses, and that Congress should fulfill its obligation to check him or remove him from office.
Depending on their affect and faction, House Democrats either browbeat Thanedar, or pleaded with him last week to suspend his efforts to force a vote on his articles of impeachment.
With backing from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) reportedly called Thanedar’s efforts “idiotic” and “horrible,” while the current leadership warned him that they’d whip all other Democrats to vote against his articles of impeachment if he pressed ahead with his plan.
In the face of all this pushback, Thanedar blinked. “After talking with many colleagues, I have decided not to force a vote on impeachment today,” Thanedar told Politico. “Instead, I will add to my articles of impeachment and continue to rally the support of both Democrats and Republicans to defend the Constitution with me.”….
Conservative / Libertarian / (anti)Republican Drive to Civil War
Patel, Bongino dismiss Epstein conspiracy theories: ‘He killed himself’
Elizabeth Crisp, 05/19/25 [The Hill]
Patel and Bongino Blow Up Epstein Conspiracy Theories: 'He Killed Himself'
Jeff Charles, May 19, 2025 [TownHall]
An Outspoken Christian Nationalist Pastor Expands His Sway In Trump’s DC
Josh Kovensky, May 22, 2025 [Talking Points Memo]
US House Passes 10-Year Moratorium on State AI Laws
Justin Hendrix, Cristiano Lima-Strong, May 22, 2025 [techpolicy.press, via Naked Capitalism 05-23-2025]
Brian Merchant, May 16, 2025 [\Blood in the Machine., via Naked Capitalism 05-23-2025]
The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution, Part 2
Don Moynihan, May 22, 2025 [via Talking Points Memo]
With unitary executive theory, Congress cannot write robust new legislation that modernizes the civil service and stops politicization. A President could just ignore it. Even if Trump leaves office, and a new President looks to restore nonpartisan competence, their promises are only good for four or eight years before another President can come in and rip up the terms of their employment. And over time, why would even a good government President invest effort in restoring capacity if their successor can undermine it?
With unitary executive theory, the public sector becomes permanently viewed as an unstable and chaotic workplace that we are seeing now. The most capable potential employees decide its not worth the bother, and the workforce becomes a mix of people who cannot get a job elsewhere, and short term political appointees.
The Supreme Court Makes Sure the Law Does Not Get in the Way of Trump’s Takeover
Pema Levy, May 23, 2025 [Mother Jones]
...The court offered a few justifications. First and foremost, it nodded at the Unitary Executive Theory. The theory rests on the idea that the Constitution vests all the executive authority in the president, and therefore it’s unconstitutional to place limits on how the president uses that authority. This theory was crafted by conservative lawyers in the 1980s and early 1990s, when Republicans seemed to have a lock on the presidency but couldn’t get control of Congress and therefore needed a justification for the president to act unilaterally. The Roberts court has spent the last 15 years embedding the theory into constitutional law—even though many academics argue it is an inaccurate and opportunistic reading of the Constitution and the nation’s history….
The order did not come in the normal course of business, after full briefings, oral arguments, and deliberation. Instead, the court issued an unsigned opinion on its emergency docket, granting the administration’s request to remove Wilcox and Harris while the lower courts continue to consider the case. It would be a significant moment if, in the regular course of business, the Supreme Court overturned a 90-year precedent upon which Congress has relied to shape the federal government. But it is more irksome to do it on the sly, effectively telling the administration to go ahead and fire whomever they want, never mind Congress’ statutes or the court’s own precedents.
The decision also has one key reservation. The court did tell Trump that some officials are off limits: the members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Open Market Committee (a body within the Federal Reserve that sets the nation’s monetary policy).
The Supreme Court’s Immunity-to-Impunity Pipeline
George Thomas, May 21, 2025 [Washington Monthly]
...Leah Litman gives us good reason to doubt that the Roberts Court will hem Trump in. Indeed, her new book, Lawless, seeks to demonstrate that this Court was constructed to advance a Republican agenda. When Justice Antonin Scalia passed away at the beginning of an election year, then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a confirmation vote for Barack Obama’s Supreme Court appointee. Yet when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died with early voting already underway in the 2020 election, McConnell muscled Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation through the Senate. Politics over rules. If Litman is right, there is little hope that the Court will tame a lawless administration; because it is driven by “conservative grievance,” not law….
The Court’s ‘Make It Up As You Go’ Constitution
Josh Marshall, May 23, 2025 [Talking Points Memo]
What interests me most about the Supreme Court’s telegraphed decision ending independent agencies is the ease with which they discard their governing theories (unitary executive) when the results are ones they find unpleasant (ending the independence Federal Reserve). Let’s make a note in passing that as long as they were going to make this disastrous decision, I’m glad they were also hypocrites and exempted (or suggest they are going to exempt) the Federal Reserve, because not doing so would have made it even worse.
It’s very much of a piece with 2024’s presidential immunity decision….
The Obscure Legal Doctrine Guiding the Supreme Court Into Oblivion
Matthew Wollin, May 22, 2025 [The New Republic]
Civic republicanism
Thomas Neuburger, May 20, 2025 [God’s Spies]
...This flawed Constitution has been under assault for decades. Hard-line conservatives would say, disingenuously in my opinion, that this assault on democratic rule started with the Constitution’s third iteration, that of Roosevelt’s New Deal.
I say “disingenuously” because conservatives, by definition, always promote aristocracy — a landed gentry, a privileged class, a ruling moneyed elite — whether they say so or not, while our written Constitution, through its iterations so far, has always increased the people’s control of government.
The New Deal Constitution is the last one the U.S has agreed on, and it’s been under assault, in more ways than one, by more groups than one, for more than 50 years. I want to enumerate them briefly, these assaults — first, to provide a larger philosophical context for much of the writing here; and second, to provide set-up for expanded discussion.
For a discussion of our three Constitutions to date, see here….
Assault by The Security State
Briefly, a muscular security apparatus is the natural enemy of democratic rule….
Assault by Neoliberal Economics
The modern assault by neoliberal economics, starting with the Mont Pélerin Society, founded, perhaps not coincidentally, in 1947, the same year as the national security state. The go-to person to read about neoliberalism in Notre Dame professor Philip Mirowski, author of The Road from Mont Pelerin and Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste…. That battle is over; a return to FDR economics is, I think, impossible, given where we are now and how many have collaborated to bring us here….
Assault by Executive Rule ….
Assault by the Radical Right
This assault is above and beyond neoliberal distortions. While neoliberalism has worked successfully to replace the FDR state with its opposite, all the while keeping its forms, the radical right assault wants to alter those forms, to make them conform to the Real Constitution today, the one we actually use.
The Real Constitution lets the president murder by order. The Real Constitution lets the president go to war for any hand-waving reason he wishes to, against any nation he wishes. The Real Constitution lets the president spy on the people, all of them, all of the time, by any means spying is possible.
The Real Constitution lets the executive branch break any law, whenever, in its wisdom, it thinks it necessary. It doesn’t even have to provide the reason. “National security,” you know….
When William F. Buckley Jr. Met James Baldwin
Sam Tanenhaus, May 20, 2025 [The Atlantic]
In 1965, the two intellectual giants squared off in a debate at Cambridge. It didn’t go quite as Buckley hoped.…
Goldwater had been one of only six Republicans to vote against the landmark Civil Rights Act when the Senate passed it in June 1964. At the GOP’s nominating convention in San Francisco a month later, a desperate attempt by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller to add an anti-extremism plank to the party platform had been thunderously rejected. Five of the six states that Goldwater won in November—all but his own Arizona—were in the Deep South. The journalist Robert Novak observed that Goldwater and his allies had completed their makeover of the GOP into “the White Man’s Party.”
And a primary shaper of that new party was Bill Buckley. In the pages of National Review, the political fortnightly he had founded in 1955 and still edited, he and his colleagues continued to support segregation in the South, a decade after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown. In his writing, he referred to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and others in the civil-rights movement as lawbreakers and agitators.
Wills believed, that meeting “the demands (even legitimate demands) of some” to outlaw segregation might “bend the permanent structure of our society permanently out of shape” and “sacrifice the peace of all of us.” To that extent, Wills could sympathize with white southerners. But they must also respond humanely. This was the test being failed time and again.
The permanent structure of society was Baldwin’s theme too, only he was making the opposite case: The structure itself was rotten and awaited the match that would set it ablaze. Here Wills was ready to meet Baldwin. Unlike Buckley, who read just enough of books he disliked to collect ammunition for disparaging them, Wills brought Jesuitical thoroughness and precision to his reading. He read not only The Fire Next Time, but just about everything else Baldwin had published, and he was overwhelmed by its artistry and power….
[TW: I included this not simply because it is an interesting glimpse at one point in the history of conservative thought, and, even better, a rare discussion of Baldwin, but because it touches on an incongruity in my own thinking. While I accept the legitimacy of Baldwin’s argument that
The Christian world, he wrote, “has revealed itself as morally bankrupt and politically unstable.” With the Church’s long history of anti-Semitism in the background, he stated bluntly: “The fact of the Third Reich alone makes obsolete forever any question of Christian superiority.” The Holocaust—the most radical instance of modern evil—was thus not truly surprising to him and other Black Americans. Just as Christians had monstrously mistreated Jews, so “white men in America do not behave toward black men the way they behave toward each other. When a white man faces a black man, especially if the black man is helpless, terrible things are revealed.”
I also feel somewhat like Buckley, who was “affronted by the line Baldwin drew from Saint Paul to the gas chambers.” While I believe, as Baldwin wrote, “The structure of society is rotten and await[s] the match that [will] set it ablaze, I also believe that there are aspects of that society worth preserving: the natural rights of humanity, and the moral necessity of trying to structure and administer governments to impose justice AND promote the General Welfare. But is Neuberger correct, in the link above, Updating the Constitution, that “a return to FDR economics is, I think, impossible, given where we are now and how many have collaborated to bring us here”? If so, what is the path forward? Surely we do not simply accept that the oligarchs have won, and we allow them to codify the anti-republican Constitution they have imposed on us by the sheer weight of their pecuniary advantage?
