Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 10, 2026
by Tony Wikrent
Mother's Day
Heather Cox Richardson, May 10, 2026 [Letters from an American, May 9, 2026]
If you google the history of Mother’s Day, the internet will tell you that Mother’s Day began in 1908 when Anna Jarvis decided to honor her mother. But “Mothers’ Day”—with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—actually started in the 1870s, when the sheer enormity of the death caused by the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War convinced writer and reformer Julia Ward Howe that women must take control of politics from the men who had permitted such carnage. Mothers’ Day was not designed to encourage people to be nice to their mothers. It was part of women’s effort to gain power to change society....
War
Iran used Chinese spy satellite to target US bases
[Financial Times, via The Big Picture, May 05, 2026]
Leaked documents show IRGC secretly acquired system and used it to guide strikes during war in March. Iran secretly acquired a Chinese spy satellite to target US military bases across the Middle East. The China-Iran axis just became a lot more concrete — and a lot more dangerous.
Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show
Evan Hill, Jarrett Ley, Alex Horton, Tara Copp and Dan Lamothe, May 6, 2026 [Washington Post]
Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported....
Experts who reviewed The Post’s analysis said the damage at the sites suggested that the U.S. military had underestimated Iran’s targeting abilities, not adapted sufficiently to modern drone warfare and left some bases under-protected.
“The Iranian attacks were precise. There are no random craters indicating misses,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine Corps colonel, who reviewed the Iranian images at The Post’s request. The Post previously revealed how Russia provided Iran with intelligence to target U.S. forces....
Satellite images show extensive damage to at least 15 U.S. military sites, with over 225 essential pieces of equipment destroyed — and the American people were never told the full scale of it....What The Washington Post has now documented is something altogether different: a state adversary damaging U.S. military infrastructure across an entire region. Bahrain. Kuwait. Qatar. Saudi Arabia. Jordan. The United Arab Emirates. Multiple bases. Multiple categories of targets. Multiple forms of military infrastructure.
That is the point.
Iran did not merely “respond.” Iran demonstrated that the U.S. military footprint across the Middle East is not some invisible, invincible architecture of empire.
It is a map of fixed targets.
Demand destruction vs fuel-superseding infrastructure
Cory Doctorow, 04 May 2026) [Pluralistic]
... In starting this stupid, unforgivable war, Trump has vastly accelerated the process of demand destruction. Rather than buying American oil, the whole world has undertaken a simultaneous, rapid, irreversible shift to electrical substitutes for fossil fuel applications, from induction tops to balcony solar to ebikes and EVs:
https://thepolycrisis.org/01-demand-destruction-us-oil-is-not-winning-the-iran-war/
As Solnit writes, Trump's stupid war follows on the heels of another unforgivable and cruel blunder: Putin's quagmire in Ukraine, which catapulted Europe into the Gretacene, with a wholesale, continent-wide shift away from fossil fuels to renewables and the devices they power. Now, the rest of the world is following suit. In South Korea, President Lee Jae Myung is leading the charge to transition the country to renewables, framing fossil fuels as an existential geopolitical risk.
Trump's demand destruction accelerates Putin's demand destruction: China and India both increased their energy consumption in 2025 – but reduced their fossil fuel consumption over the same period. In 2025, coal accounted for less than a third of the world's energy for the first time in modern history. 2025 was the year that solar and wind overtook coal globally.
Meanwhile, Trump and his oil baron buddies keep trying to make fetch happen. On the campaign trail, Trump told the oil industry that if they slipped him a $1b bribe, he would give them anything they wanted, and he's kept his promise. Trump will let Big Oil drill anywhere they like, from sacred sites like New Mexico's Chaco Canyon to the Arctic. He'll even let them take all of Venezuela's oil. The problem is that banks can see the demand destruction writing on the wall, and they are conspicuously declining to loan the oil companies the money they'd need to get that oil.
Truly, Trump's a machine for creating stranded assets at scale.
In starting this stupid, unforgivable war, Trump has vastly accelerated the process of demand destruction. Rather than buying American oil, the whole world has undertaken a simultaneous, rapid, irreversible shift to electrical substitutes for fossil fuel applications, from induction tops to balcony solar to ebikes and EVs:
https://thepolycrisis.org/01-demand-destruction-us-oil-is-not-winning-the-iran-war/
As Solnit writes, Trump's stupid war follows on the heels of another unforgivable and cruel blunder: Putin's quagmire in Ukraine, which catapulted Europe into the Gretacene, with a wholesale, continent-wide shift away from fossil fuels to renewables and the devices they power. Now, the rest of the world is following suit. In South Korea, President Lee Jae Myung is leading the charge to transition the country to renewables, framing fossil fuels as an existential geopolitical risk.
Trump's demand destruction accelerates Putin's demand destruction: China and India both increased their energy consumption in 2025 – but reduced their fossil fuel consumption over the same period. In 2025, coal accounted for less than a third of the world's energy for the first time in modern history. 2025 was the year that solar and wind overtook coal globally.
Meanwhile, Trump and his oil baron buddies keep trying to make fetch happen. On the campaign trail, Trump told the oil industry that if they slipped him a $1b bribe, he would give them anything they wanted, and he's kept his promise. Trump will let Big Oil drill anywhere they like, from sacred sites like New Mexico's Chaco Canyon to the Arctic. He'll even let them take all of Venezuela's oil. The problem is that banks can see the demand destruction writing on the wall, and they are conspicuously declining to loan the oil companies the money they'd need to get that oil.
Truly, Trump's a machine for creating stranded assets at scale....
Ukraine’s rapid rise as an anti-drone powerhouse
[New Atlas, via The Big Picture, May 05, 2026]
Necessity makes the best R&D lab. Kyiv’s counter-drone industry now exports back to NATO. In only four years after the Russian invasion, Ukraine went from being a country knocked back on its heels and scrambling for military aid to emerging as a leading provider of battlefield-tested counter-drone expertise and exporter of anti-drone weapons systems. How did this happen? Let’s find out.
Trump not violating any law
'He who saves his Country does not violate any Law'
Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025
Insane Pre-Crime Strategy Unveiled for Leftist “Extremists”
Ken Klippenstein [via Naked Capitalism 05-07-2025]
The White House declared war on the American people today, labeling its political opponents as terrorists, including “Left-wing extremists.” The new label also claims that there are “deepening alliances” between “the far-left and Islamists” — or pro-Palestinian protesters.
The language is contained in the White House’s newly released National Counterterrorism Strategy. It is the first National Strategy to be unveiled since 2021, when the Biden administration issued its document. The Strategy identifies the “left-wing,” “anti-Fascists,” “Anarchists” and “radically pro-transgender” ideologies as threats equivalent to jihadi groups like al Qaeda and ISIS, or narco-traffickers.
The Strategy is the brainchild of White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka, an eccentric figure I have reported on, who last year hinted at terrorism charges being levied for political opponents of the administration. The document makes clear he got his wish. Gorka called the Strategy “my life’s work,” ....
“Counterterrorism” Now Officially Means Targeting Trans People
Sophie Hurwitz, May 8, 2026 [Mother Jones]
On Wednesday, the White House released a new “United States Counterterrorism Strategy,” the first such directive since a 2021 Biden-era memo emphasizing the need to combat white supremacist violence, which has now been scrubbed from the White House website.
Wednesday’s document, masterminded by White House “counterterrorism czar” Sebastian Gorka, does not mention far-right violence at all. It identifies “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists” as a security threat of equal severity to “Legacy Islamist Terrorists” and “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs.” The administration will now apparently “prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.
Exclusive: VA conducted internal investigations into employees who attended vigil for Alex Pretti
[CNN, via Naked Capitalism 05-07-2025]
Malcolm Ferguson, May 8, 2026 [The New Republic]
Internal ICE records reveal widespread use of force in detention centers
Douglas MacMillan, Andrew Ba Tran, Drea Cornejo and Luis Melgar, May 4, 2026 [Washington Post]
Homan promises "Mass deportations are coming”
Heather Cox Richardson, May 06, 2026 [Letters from an American, May 5, 2026]
Today, at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix, Arizona, Trump’s White House advisor on border security, Tom Homan, assured Republicans that mass deportation is coming and that the administration will flood immigration officers into jurisdictions that aren’t cooperative. Michael Williams of CNN reported that Homan told Republicans angry that the administration is not deporting enough people: “You ain’t seen sh*t yet. This year will be a good year. Mass deportations are coming.” He added: “You’re going to see more ICE agents [than] you ever seen before.”
Five Ways The War on Terror Empowered The ICE Assault
Spencer Ackerman, 05 May 2026 [forever-wars.com]
OVER THE WEEKEND, Jose Oliveres revealed in The Guardian that ICE has contracted with a security firm called MVM to hunt for undocumented people who entered the United States as unaccompanied children. "ICE says it wants to confirm the children’s location, school enrollment and overall wellness, including checking for signs of abuse or trafficking, according to the contracting document," Oliveres reported.
If you're thinking to yourself that MVM sounds familiar, perhaps you're remembering its earlier incarnation from the War on Terror. Back then, it provided force protection for CIA and NSA officers in Iraq. In 2018, I reported on an earlier ICE contract with MVM, this one to ferry unaccompanied migrant children across the ICE network of warehoused-sized cages....
Two Motions From the SPLC Tell the Story: The Government's Indictment Is in Trouble
Joyce Vance, May 05, 2026 [Civil Discourse]
New disclosures reveal how DOGE actually worked
[Washington Post, via The Big Picture, May 03, 2026]
Depositions offer insight into what Elon Musk’s group was up to, including its heavy use of ChatGPT. Members describe a club-like atmosphere in which they pushed for grant and contract cancellations across the government with little oversight.
Trump Administration Closes Watchdog Office For Immigration Detention Abuses
[Huff Post, via Naked Capitalism 05-05-2025]
Trump’s Renewable Energy Crackdown Hits Legal Wall
[OilPrice, via Naked Capitalism 05-04-2025]
Strategic Political Economy
How Rightwing Billionaires Created a Faux Movement and Used It to Rob America Blind
Thom Hartmann [May 9, 2026]
For decades, many Democrats have suspected what’s now being confirmed in plain English by a Trump insider. Ashley St. Clair — the 27-year-old former Turning Point USA brand ambassador and mother of one of Elon’s 14 kids who built a million-follower platform on X and became one of MAGA’s most visible young women — has spent the past few weeks blowing the lid off the entire racket.
In a series of TikTok monologues and a recent feature in The Washington Post, she’s describing in detail how the Republican’s right-wing influencer economy actually works, and her bottom line is brutal: she estimates that “roughly 99 percent” of the largest right-wing influencers are compensated in some form, most of it locked behind nondisclosure agreements so airtight that anyone who tries to talk about it will get buried under litigation they can’t afford....
I’ve been around long enough to remember when this stuff was happening to radio hosts, before podcasting took off. Back in the early 2000s, I had a friend who was a nationally syndicated rightwing talk show host, and he told me how every time he gave a speech to a high school audience, a right-wing foundation would cut him a $20,000 check as a “speaker’s fee” to supplement his income. He did a dozen or more a year. That was the level of subsidy on offer just for keeping kids’ minds tilted in the right direction, and it was, he said, available to hundreds of rightwing radio hosts across the country....
Republicans don’t have any real answers for any of the crises we’re creating, because their actual policy agenda (more tax cuts for billionaires, more deregulation for monopolists, more handouts to fossil fuels) both caused most of these problems and is also wildly unpopular when stated plainly.
So they manufacture the rage, pay the influencers, bias the algorithms, fund the think tanks, bankroll rightwing podcasts, radio and TV, and then coordinate and pay for the talking points in private group chats....
Call your senators and representatives at the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and demand legislation requiring full disclosure of paid political messaging by online influencers, the same way every other form of paid political advertising is regulated.
Palantir and the New Order: Neoliberalism is dead. Say hello to Techlordism – The Point
[Yanis Varoufakis, via Naked Capitalism 05-06-2025]
... Unlike Adam Smith or John Stuart Mill—who fretted over precisely when markets might fail—neoliberals declared the market infallible. Even when Wall Street cratered our economies, they insisted that mortal intervention would only make things worse. That suited the financiers perfectly. But that era is over.
A new form of capital is ascending: cloud capital—networked algorithmic machines that grant their owners remarkable powers to modify our behaviour. And just as financiers needed neoliberalism, today’s tech lords need a new ideology to legitimise their rule. I call it techlordism.
Neoliberalism’s job was to provide an ideological and pseudo-scientific cover for the incessant recycling of dollars through US deficits. Techlordism’s job is far more radical: to provide the ideological cover for colonising everything—human endeavour, state institutions, and Wall Street itself....
Nitish Pahwa, April 28, 2026 [Slate]
BIG money in politics is why the GOP/oligarchs have “captured” the Supreme Court
Dean Obeidallah, May 09, 2026
If you are upset with the GOP Supreme Court decisions on everything from the Voting Rights Act to overturning Roe v Wade, then please understand the connection between big money (more specifically “Dark Money”) and this corrupt court’s agenda. That is a big reason why on my SiriusXM show we just presented “Dark money” week. The goal was to showcase guests that share exactly how corrupt our campaign finance system—especially when it comes to untraceable “dark money” donated by the wealthy and corporations to shell companies and organizations not required to reveal who funds them.
In the 2024 presidential race, the Brennan Center for Justice detailed that these dark money groups “plowed more than $1.9 billion” into the election—up from $1 billion in 2020. And that was all legal—thanks in large part to the GOP Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010.
In fact, the Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act (VRA) last week is all part of the dark money scheme. As Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) noted in conversation, the U.S. Supreme Court has been “captured by dark money” from conservative corporate interests. That is why he fully expected the Court to gut the VRA because it helps the GOP remain in control of Congress and in turn deliver tax cuts for the wealthy, less regulations and more for their wealthy donors....
I also spoke to Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) who shared how big money in politics has impacted what bills the GOP committee chairs will allow to be discussed. She noted how bills were suddenly pulled because some big donors reached the GOP committee chair and demanded it. This is yet another example of why we must remove this money from our system by either state laws or reforming the Supreme Court. Below is my conversation with Rep Balint:....
Global power shift
Mike Brock, May 09, 2026 [Notes from the Circus]
...China and Iran are not natural allies, which means contemporary Chinese support for Iran requires explanation against the longer arc of Chinese policy. China has the leverage to end the war and is paying real economic costs to keep it going, which means the cost-absorption is a strategic choice rather than a passive posture. China is refusing the largest soft-power opportunity of the century to maintain the war, which means the refusal is an active strategic decision rather than diplomatic restraint.
The only diagnosis that accounts for all three observations simultaneously is that Beijing is conducting Cold War strategy. The clandestine arming — the BeiDou-directed strikes against U.S. forces, the sodium perchlorate shipments for solid-propellant rocket manufacture, the satellite imagery from Earth Eye Co and the PLA-linked geospatial intelligence firms, the Y-20 transport flights delivering tunnel-boring equipment under the $8 billion gold-for-weapons deal, the eleven entities and three individuals the Treasury sanctioned yesterday for their material support to the Iranian war effort — these are the operational expressions of the strategic decision the leverage and soft-power observations have already established. The clandestine arming is not the evidence that establishes the diagnosis. The clandestine arming is what the diagnosis predicts will be happening, given the strategic decision the leverage and soft-power observations have proven Beijing has made....
China’s Big Bet on Wind Power Is Paying Off
[New York Times, via The Big Picture, May 06, 2026]
An industrial policy of subsidies and import restrictions laid the foundations for China to become almost as dominant in wind turbines as in solar panels. While we argue about windmills causing cancer, Beijing is shipping turbines and printing electricity. The energy-transition gap keeps widening.
[Headphonesty, via Naked Capitalism 05-03-2025]
[Travel and Tour World, via Naked Capitalism 05-03-2025]
Oligarchy
America’s Suicide Pact - America’s suicidal march began long before Donald Trump.
Chris Hedges, May 08, 2026
...Civilizations, as the historian Arnold J. Toynbee famously argued, “die from suicide, not by murder.” They collapse from within. They fall prey to moral, social and spiritual decay. They are seized by a parasitic ruling class. Democratic institutions seize up. The citizenry is immiserated, wealth is funneled upwards to the ruling class and coercion is the principle form of control.
Our suicidal march began long before Donald Trump and his bizarre court of buffoons, sycophants, grifters and Christian fascists took power. It began when the ruling class, especially under the Reagan and Clinton administrations, set out to harvest the country and empire for personal profit....
...They pretended to honor electoral politics, checks and balances, a free press and the rule of law while subverting all of these democratic pillars. That old system, however flawed, was hollowed out. It was turned over to the amoral and the idiotic — look at the Supreme Court or Congress — those willing to do the bidding of the billionaire class.
Armed with billions by the mortal enemy of the demos — the oligarchs and corporations — the political elites, Republicans and Democrats, destroyed the careers of those politicians who resisted. They crushed labor unions. They blacklisted honest journalists and consolidated the press into the hands of a handful of corporations and oligarchs. They slashed regulations that constrained unfettered greed and protected the population from predatory corporations and environmental toxins. They passed legislation that created a de facto tax boycott for the rich — Trump famously paid no federal income taxes in 10 of the 15 years prior to his presidency — while stripping the country of its industry and throwing some 30 million people out of work. Wealth is no longer created by producing or manufacturing. It is created by manipulating the prices of stocks and commodities and imposing a crippling debt peonage on the public.
These parasites cut or abolished social programs, militarized the police, built the largest prison system in the world and pumped funds into a bloated and out-of-control war industry. German socialist and politician Karl Liebknecht, on the eve of the suicidal folly of World War I, called German imperialists “the enemy at home.” ....
Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN May 07, 2026
...Steven Roth, the CEO of real estate giant Vornado, went further Tuesday on an earnings call.
“I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich’ when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs and even the phrase, ‘from the river to the sea,’” Roth said, referring to the pro-Palestinian phrase that the Anti-Defamation League labels an antisemitic threat....
Trump's fruitless search for a goreable ox
Cory Doctorow, 09 May 2026 [Pluralistic]
I've got good news and bad news for Trump. The good news: you can get elected by promising to do something about the cost of living crisis, and the president actually has a lot of ways to improve people's daily costs. The bad news: everything you could do to fix working people's cost of living will make an oligarch worse off.
This is the essential conundrum of Trumpismo: to keep his base happy, he needs to make their lives better; but to make their lives better, he'll have to make oligarchs angry. The oligarchs' wealth bonanza caused the cost of living crisis. Oligarchs' pleasure causes our suffering, so alleviating our suffering will reduce their pleasure....
Your grocery bill went up because oligarchs price-gouge you. Eggflation was caused by Cal-Maine, the monopolist that owns every brand of eggs in your grocer's fridge, who jacked up prices because they knew they could:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/10/demand-and-supply/#keep-cal-maine-and-carry-on
Pepsi and Walmart conspired to force every retailer to jack up the prices of all Pepsi products (including Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Aquafina, etc) at every retailer's store, so that Walmart could also jack up their prices and still undersell their competition (naturally, Trump let them get away with it):
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/secret-documents-show-pepsi-and-walmart
This stuff isn't exactly a secret. Grocery store owners hold earnings calls with their investors where they boast about the fact that they can raise their prices far in excess of their increased costs, and blame it on inflation:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power
They boast about their "personalized pricing" swindles, whereby they use surveillance data to figure out how desperate you are and jack up the prices you see in their apps:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/11/nothing-personal/#instacartography
Trump has the power to put a stop to all of this, but still, he can't, because his oligarch pals would squeal, and when they squeal, Trump jumps. In theory, Trump has lots of power, but in practice, Trump can't do anything....
An oligarch’s dystopian scheme to discredit journalism with AI
[Popular Information, via The Big Picture, May 03, 2026]
Judd Legum on a coordinated, AI-powered campaign to flood the zone with fake reporting and erode trust in the real thing. Disinformation industrialized. Peter Thiel goes full super villain, funding a startup launched this month will use an “AI jury” to “subject the media’s claims to systematic investigation and judgment.” That same system of AI adjudication assigns a numerical value — the so-called “Honor Index” score — grading the trustworthiness of individual reporters. And for a starting price of $2,000, anyone can pay for the company to review and adjudicate complaints they may have about a news outlet or reporter.
Cory Doctorow, 06 May 2026 [Pluralistic]
...Capitalism is supposed to run on risk: the risk of being overtaken by a competitor drives businesses to deliver better services more efficiently, thus producing a bounty for all. But capitalists really hate risk, hence the drive to monopoly: Mark Zuckerberg admitted, in writing, that he only bought Instagram so that he wouldn't have to compete with it ("It is better to buy than to compete" -M. Zuckerberg):
https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/20/if-you-wanted-to-get-there/#i-wouldnt-start-from-here
Capitalists hate capitalism, but they love feudalism. Feudalism is like capitalism, in that you have a ruling class that creams off the surplus generated by labor; but under feudalism, society is organized to protect rents (money you get from owning stuff) over profits (money you get from doing stuff). The beauty of rents is that they are insulated from risk: if you own a coffee shop, you're in constant danger of being put out of business by a better coffee shop. But if you own the building and your coffee shop tenant goes under, well, you've still got the building, and hey, now it's on the same hot block as the amazing new cafe that's driving its competitors out of business:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital....
Monopoly is to capitalism as gerrymandering is to democracy, a way to strip out any meaningful choice. Think of the two giant packaged goods companies that fill your grocery aisles: Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Practically everything on your grocer's shelves is made by a division of one of these two massive conglomerates. If you try to "vote with your wallet" by buying a low-packaging version of a product, it's going to be sold to you by the same company that sells the high-packaging version. If you switch to an artisanal brand of cookies made by a local family business, Unilever or P&G will buy that company and issue a press release declaring that they made the acquisition because they know "their customers value choice":
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/18/market-discipline/#too-big-to-care
Gerrymandering strips your vote of any impact on political outcomes. Monopoly strips your purchases of any ability to influence economic outcomes. Wrap both of them in "revealed preferences" and you get a system that endlessly narrates its ability to deliver choice, and then blames your misery on your having chosen badly....
[Covert Action, via Naked Capitalism 05-09-2025]
...Parenti and Noton consider Reuther’s death to have been “part of a truncation of liberal and radical leadership that included the murders of four other national figures—John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy and dozens of leaders in the Black Panther Party and various community organizations.”[4]
Parenti and Noton make clear that the evidence of foul play in Reuther’s plane crash is considerable.
A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation found seven abnormalities in the altimeter, including a loose screw caused by someone deliberately loosening it.
Reuther’s plane crashed when the pilot, George Evans (48), misjudged the distance in the approach because of the faulty altimeter, and clipped the top of a large elm tree before crashing into a pine forest. The plane exploded on impact and then erupted into flames....
Felonomics
Brad Reed, May 06, 2026 [CommonDreams]
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett on Wednesday tried to put a rosy spin on President Donald Trump’s economy by highlighting the large credit card bills being racked up by US consumers.
During an interview on Fox Business, Hassett cited credit card spending as a purported sign of strength in the economy as a whole.
“I had the head of one of the Big Five banks in my office yesterday, going through credit card data,” he said. “Credit card spending is through the roof! They’re spending more on gasoline, but they’re spending more on everything else too.” ....
Fred Wellman, a Democratic candidate for the US House of Representatives in Missouri, could not hide his disgust at Hassett’s performance.
“He’s smiling,” Wellman observed. “He’s celebrating that we are all maxing out our credit cards because they have torched the economy. He’s not smiling for working people. He’s happy for the corporations and billionaires. It’s good for them. We can all die poor. This is why I’m running for Congress.” ....
Social Security Alert: SSI benefits for disabled adults living with family could be reduced
[MARCA, via Naked Capitalism 05-03-2025]
Ted Cruz Admits Trump Accounts Are Designed to Privatize Social Security Over Time
Jake Johnson, May 08, 2026 [CommonDreams]
One advocate said the Texas Republican laid bare the “two-pronged strategy to push Social Security privatization: Creating the Trump accounts with one hand and gutting the Social Security Administration with the other.”
The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics
Farm bankruptcies jumped 46% in 2025 as debt loads and costs rise
[Investigate Midwest / Farm Bureau, via The Big Picture, May 05, 2026]
Chapter 12 filings climbed in the US. That’s a third straight increase annually as higher production costs and expanding borrowing put new pressure on farmers in 2026. A 46% jump in Chapter 12 filings is not a vibes story — it’s farmland deflation, input inflation, and the trade war all hitting at once.
California braces for uncertainty as last shipment of Persian Gulf oil arrives in Long Beach
[Los Angeles Times, via Naked Capitalism 05-05-2025]
Surging HOA Fees Are Pushing Homeowners to the Brink
[Wall Street Journal, via The Big Picture, May 04, 2026]
The hidden second mortgage no one underwrites for: HOA fees climbing faster than wages and faster than insurance premiums. Affordability has many tentacles. Monthly costs of homeowners associations have jumped 26% since 2019; owners can also be hit with special fees for large repairs (Wall Street Journal)
Tax on big business for housing has been a huge success
[48 Hills, via Naked Capitalism 05-05-2025]
“It turns out voters really, really care about their nursing homes”
[Working Class Stories, via Naked Capitalism 05-05-2025]
Health care crisis
Economic Liberties, May 05, 2026 [The Economic Populist]
When healthcare stocks plunged 20% in late January 2026 — not because Medicare Advantage payments were cut, but simply because they weren’t increased as investors expected — it exposed the undeniable truth. The U.S. government’s largest contractors aren’t the ones building fighter jets and submarines. They’re the ones denying your insurance claims.
Dominated by UnitedHealth, Humana, CVS/Aetna, Elevance, Centene, and Cigna, private insurers now collect over a trillion dollars annually in taxpayer money—dwarfing the defense industrial complex.
Think I am exaggerating? Consider: Lockheed Martin, the largest defense contractor in history, received nearly $52 billion from the federal government in 2024. During the same period, UnitedHealth raked in over $232 billion. All told, Medicare Advantage plans collected $462 billion from taxpayers in 2024. Add Medicaid managed care, to the tune of another $517 billion. And ACA subsidies — $125 billion more. Add it up. The U.S. government is funneling over a trillion dollars a year to Big Medicine insurers. In comparison, the government is currently spending an estimated $1 trillion on defense spending....
Whitney Curry Wimbish, May 8, 2026 [The American Prospect]
Predatory finance
Your Power Tools Got Worse on Purpose
[Worse on Purpose, via The Big Picture, May 03, 2026]
How a Hong Kong conglomerate bought Milwaukee, DeWalt, and Craftsman — and what happened to quality after the acquisitions.
Your Glasses Got Worse on Purpose
[Worse on Purpose, via The Big Picture, May 03, 2026]
They’re not capitalists — they’re predatory criminals
Epstein Advised U.S. Treasury on Crypto During Obama’s Iran Sanctions Push
Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim, May 08, 2026 [Drop Site News]
Treasury officials consulted with Jeffrey Epstein about using cryptocurrency during negotiations with Iran over nuclear deal, even as he made investments in blockchain technology.
Jared Kushner’s Role as ‘Special Peace Envoy’ Is a 5-Alarm Constitutional Fire. Here's Why
Kim Wehle, May 07, 2026 [Zeteo]
Kushner claims to be representing the US in high-stakes foreign policy negotiations, while also pursuing billions from other nations for his firm. So, who is he actually working for, Kim Wehle asks....
As Kushner claims to be representing the United States in negotiations with Iran over a war his father-in-law started with the family’s lifelong personal friend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the 45-year-old is apparently planning to hit up Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates – all foreign governments that depend on the US military for security and weaponry – for billions in funding for his private equity firm while already managing some of their investments. Even Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, sounded the alarm, posting a screenshot on X of the New York Times headline, “Jared Kushner Solicits Funds for His Firm While Working as Mideast Envoy.”
Creating new economic potential - science and technology
Next-Generation Precision Medicine Platforms Come for Cancer
[The Scientist, via Naked Capitalism 05-03-2025]
Darkness Can Move Faster Than Light Without Breaking the Laws of Physics
[ZME Science, via Naked Capitalism 05-05-2025]
How mathematics built the modern world
Bo Malmberg & Hannes Malmberg, 15th November 2023 [worksinprogress.co]
Disrupting mainstream economics
Richard Murphy, May 7 2026 [Funding the Future]
After months of hard work, we have finally issued the first version of a new collection of posts from this site on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
Disrupting mainstream politics
It’ll be years before Americans get used to higher prices — and politicians can’t just wait it out
[G. Elliott Morris, via The Big Picture, May 06, 2026]
Consumers will eventually adjust, but in the meantime, they’ll keep punishing leaders who don’t act. The reference-point reset on the price level is permanent damage to political incumbents — left or right. Voters anchor on what they remember....
SIN’s new model for predicting American views on the economy rests on a metric called “excess inflation.” This measure, whose usefulness was first identified by economist Jared Bernstein, simply gauges how much higher prices are today compared to what consumers expected them to be after three decades of low inflation.
This is illustrated in the chart below. The dashed red line tells us where prices would have been had inflation in the United States never deviated from its pre-COVID level of about 2% per year. The solid dark line, on the other hand, shows us where prices actually stand today, following the spike in inflation in 2021-22 and higher-than-normal inflation ever since.
Information age dystopia / surveillance state
The FCC Wants Your ID Before You Get a Phone Number
Ken Macon, May 6, 2026 [Reclaim The Net]
The era of the anonymous phone number could be ending. On April 30, the Federal Communications Commission unanimously approved a proposal requiring telecom providers to verify customers’ identities before activating service.
Government-issued ID, physical address, legal name, and existing phone numbers would all be included. The stated goal is stopping robocalls. The result would be an identity-verification regime covering one of the last semi-anonymous communication tools available to ordinary Americans.
The proposal applies to nearly every voice provider in the country, from traditional carriers and mobile operators to VoIP services. The FCC is seeking public comment on specifics, but the direction is clear....
The framework borrows from banking’s anti-money-laundering rules. The FCC is also asking whether carriers should retain identity documentation for at least four years after a customer leaves and whether they should check customers against law enforcement watchlists. Penalties would shift to a per-call basis, meaning fines of $1,000 to $15,000 for every illegal call a poorly verified customer places.
The real privacy stakes sit in the proposal’s section on prepaid service. Right now, you can pay cash for a prepaid phone and SIM card without showing identification. Journalists use prepaid phones to protect sources, domestic violence survivors use them to avoid being traced, and whistleblowers, activists, or anyone with a reason to separate phone activity from legal identity relies on this.
New Lawsuit: Do We Have a Right to Know We’re Being Surveilled?
[Drop Site News, via The Big Picture, May 03, 2026]
Scarsdale, New York didn’t want to share its plans for Flock surveillance cameras. A new lawsuit brought by NYCLU goes after Flock’s license-plate camera dragnet. The basic civil-liberties question — can a public agency hide where it’s watching from? — is overdue for a court answer.
Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device
[That Privacy Guy, via Naked Capitalism 05-09-2025]
Bad Connection: Uncovering Global Telecom Exploitation by Covert Surveillance Actors.
[Citizen Lab, via The Big Picture, May 03, 2026]
Two sophisticated telecom surveillance campaigns for the first time, links real-world attack traffic to mobile operator signalling infrastructure. The findings expose how suspected commercial surveillance vendors (CSVs) exploit the global telecom interconnect ecosystem, leverage private operator networks, and conduct covert location tracking operations that can persist undetected for years.
Your ISP Is Watching You. Here’s How a VPN Can Help
[PC Magazine, via The Big Picture, May 03, 2026]
A practical primer on what your internet provider sees and what a VPN actually fixes (and doesn’t). Useful if your privacy hygiene is overdue.
Climate and environmental crises
What happens when a farmer loses his soil?
[Food and Environment Reporting Network, via Naked Capitalism 05-04-2025]
Democrats' political malpractice
Barack Obama Considers His Role in the Age of Trump
[New Yorker.
Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party,
I met with Obama at his new Presidential center, on the South Side of Chicago.
In our conversation, Obama made it plain that he no longer harbors illusions about the nature of the Trump Presidency. His early prediction that Trump was capable of rolling back only a modest percentage of Obama’s achievements, and that political norms would prevail, has not remotely proved to be the case....
I asked Obama whether he considers what else he could do. “I think about it every day,” he said. He believes that if he spoke out much more often—if he tried to combat every outrageous utterance and misbegotten policy from the Trump White House—he would quickly diminish his impact....
[TW: Ugggh. Mere hagiography. I turn to David Sirota to supply the needed corrective tonic.]
The Obama Shrine — Brought to You by Wall Street
David Sirota, May 6, 2026 [The Lever]
With his presidential library, former President Obama is unveiling an oligarch-funded shrine to himself amid everyone in America being fleeced by oligarchs. It’s a perfect bookend of a presidency that bailed out its Wall Street donors who were throwing millions of Americans out of their homes (and no, the bailouts were not “paid back”).
Obama says he wants his $850 million Obama Presidential Center, slated to open in June, “to put my presidency in context” — and in a sense, that’s what the shrine does. Its sponsor list is context for a presidency that promised hope and change and then used a massive electoral mandate to deliver more of the same. Indeed, the list is a who’s who of the winners of the Obama era: tech moguls, financial giants, telecom behemoths, a health insurance giant, and other bold-faced names of the oligarchy....
Why the Working Class has Given Up on the Liberal Establishment
Les Leopold, May 04, 2026
Blimey! Lessons from the Labour Party's collapse -- A cautionary tale for Democrats
Jordan Zakarin, May 07, 2026 [Progress Report]
Resistance
Do Your Phone Calls and Emails Matter? The Economy of Political Pressure
Christopher Armitage, May 09, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]
[This is long, but packed with important information for anyone who really wants to make a difference. I'm sure the impact is less in states ruled by (anti)Republicans, but Armitage specifically addresses this issue. It really must be read in its entirety, and saved and widely shared as a valuable reference tool. Armitage discusses the role played by district attorneys, state attorney generals, governors, state treasurers, and state legislators, and the legal basis these officials have for challenging and obstructing unlawful actions by the federal government. Armitage includes suggested scripts for making calls, because a coordinated campaign of calls has the greatest effect. ]
Most people believe politicians do not listen. A Rasmussen survey of voters found that only 11 percent thought their Members of Congress listen to the people they represent. Most people are wrong about how politicians listen, and once that gets clear, the path to actually moving them gets short.
Former congressional staffers who wrote the Indivisible Guide put on paper how political offices actually count constituent contact. The framing they use:
One phone call counts the way a hundred to a thousand angry voters count. One personal email counts the way ten to fifty voters count. One form letter counts for one voter, if it counts at all.
These ratios track closely with what the Congressional Management Foundation has measured directly through more than two decades of survey research.
In CMF’s 2015 report, “Citizen-Centric Advocacy: The Untapped Power of Constituent Engagement,” ....
State-level offices receive a small fraction of the contact volume that flows to a member of Congress. State comptrollers and state treasurers, by accounts widely shared in organizing circles, often go weeks or months without seeing coordinated constituent campaigns. District attorneys hear from victims, defense attorneys, and the press, with constituents arriving in the rare third lane. State legislators field nowhere near what their federal counterparts handle. State officials also operate with less donor capture and less partisan whipping than federal Members, so a larger share of their decisions sit in the open category where contact can actually move outcomes.
The thresholds that move these offices are correspondingly small:
10 calls in an hour catches the staff’s attention. 50 calls in a day pulls the senior team into a room. 100 calls in a day clears every other item off the docket. 500 calls in a week forces policy change consideration. 1,000 calls creates a record the office cannot ignore, and that the office knows will surface in the next election cycle.
Personalized calls do the work, while form letters, petitions, and automated messages are filtered out by office triage before staff ever read them. One real phone call, in the caller’s own words, outweighs hundreds of templated messages....
[Especially interesting is Armitage's discussion of state banking and the example of the Bank of North Dakota:
The first four asks hit immediately, and the fifth asks for the structural piece that makes the rest sustainable.
Federal financial coercion works because states bank where the federal government can reach them. North Dakota took a different path in 1919, when the state legislature established the Bank of North Dakota under the Nonpartisan League’s program of state ownership and control of credit. The Bank of North Dakota is state-owned, state-deposited, and state-controlled, and it has operated continuously for over a century. It serves as a correspondent and lending partner for community banks across the state, provides counter-cyclical lending during disasters, and generates revenue that flows back to the state’s general fund. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston published an in-depth study of the bank in 2011 examining whether the model could be adapted for other states. New Mexico, California, Massachusetts, and a handful of other states currently have public banking legislation in committee or under active consideration.
Openstates.org lists every state legislator and their direct office line.
Here is the script:
“I’m [name] from [district]. The Bank of North Dakota has operated continuously since 1919 as the only state-owned bank in the country. Its presence gives North Dakota tools no other state has. I’m asking the legislator to introduce or co-sponsor legislation establishing a state public bank on that model, with explicit authority to hold state pension assets, process state tax flows, and provide state-chartered services to entities the federal government may target. Bills are already in committee in New Mexico, California, and Massachusetts. Will the legislator move on this? Yes or no?”
[And I want to end with this excerpt, from near the end:]
The constitutional authority underneath all of this is settled law. State officials can prosecute federal officials for state crimes, and presidential pardons do not reach state convictions. State attorneys general can revoke corporate charters, and state legislatures can establish public banks. The anti-commandeering doctrine, established in Printz v. United States and New York v. United States, prevents the federal government from forcing states to enforce federal law.
Christopher Armitage, May 05, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]
Christopher Armitage, May 04, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]
On January 16, 2025, four days before his father returned to the White House, Eric Trump signed a contract.
The counterparty was Aryam Investment 1, an Abu Dhabi entity linked to Tahnoun bin Zayed, the United Arab Emirates national security adviser and brother of the UAE president. The deal transferred forty-nine percent of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's cryptocurrency venture, in exchange for five hundred million dollars. One hundred eighty-seven million flowed directly to entities controlled by the Trump family within weeks.
The Wall Street Journal published the underlying contract on January 31, 2026, after reviewing the documents.¹
A foreign government official bought a piece of the incoming American president's family business four days before he was sworn in. The contract's on paper, the wire transfers cleared, and the beneficiaries are named. The Trump Organization is a New York entity, the signatories live in New York and Florida, and the transaction touches New Jersey banking infrastructure.
Sixteen months later, no one's been charged.
This is the part of the story where most political writing reaches for outrage, and the outrage is appropriate, and the outrage changes nothing. So we're going to do something different.
We're going to talk about how federal prosecutors took down the Five Families in 1985, and we're going to apply that methodology to what's available to every Democratic governor, attorney general, district attorney, county prosecutor, state legislator, mayor, and city council member in America right now....
How to Beat the Far Right: Lessons From History
Daniel Trilling, May 04, 2026 [Zeteo]
... A few years ago, for his book If We Burn, the journalist Vincent Bevins traveled the world to talk to people who had taken part in the mass protest movements of the 2010s. Speaking to people in Brazil, Chile, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Turkey, Hong Kong, and South Korea, he wanted to find out why, in so many places where people had taken to the streets in support of more freedom, or a fairer distribution of wealth, the ultimate outcome had been forms of authoritarian and right-wing reaction. Was there anything, he asked former activists, you’d say to a young person fighting for change in the world right now?
Don’t give up, was one frequent piece of advice. But so was something equally important: think about what comes next. Again and again, the former activists told Bevins they had been naive in thinking that just because they were in the right, things would turn out for the best. Mahmoud Salem, an Egyptian blogger who took part in the 2011 Tahrir Square protests that brought down the regime of Hosni Mubarak, recalled the final battle scene from ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ when the monstrous villain Sauron is defeated once and for all. Why, Salem now wonders, did they think the Arab Spring would be like the movies? Why didn’t they have a plan for what came next? As two Brazilians who took part in the mass protests in their country in 2013 told Bevins, “There is no such thing as a political vacuum.” Either you fill the gap, or someone else will come along and do it for you. (In Brazil, as we now know, that someone was Jair Bolsonaro.)....
Christopher Armitage, May 06, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]
Conservative / Libertarian / (anti)Republican Drive to Civil War
Trump-backed candidates win majority of Republican primary races for Indiana Senate
SCOTT BAUER, OBED LAMY and THOMAS BEAUMONT, May 5, 2026 [Associated Press]
...Of the seven challengers endorsed by Trump, at least five won. One incumbent prevailed and the seventh race was too close to call.
“Big night for MAGA in Indiana,” U.S. Sen. Jim Banks wrote on social media, adding that he was “proud to have helped elect more conservative Republicans to the Indiana State Senate.”
Inside the Secret Group Chats Fueling MAGA’s Messaging Machine
[Slate, via The Big Picture, May 05, 2026]
Ashley St. Clair revealed the coordinated system shaping pro-Trump narratives online.
Jim Stewartson, May 08, 2026 [MindWar]
When the Civil Rights Act was signed into law in 1964 by Lyndon Johnson, followed by the Voting Rights Act a year later, American racists began a long project to claw that progress back. The reactionary fervor to those laws was a major factor in Lyndon Johnson pulling out of the 1968 presidential race, and his Vice President Hubert Humphrey losing the election. And it’s why segregationist George Wallace had a credible candidacy as an independent.
Another big factor, however, was the Johnson administration’s failure to end the Vietnam war. As we now know, Richard Nixon deliberately interfered to extend the war, so he would have an issue to run against—and Johnson knew about it.
I argue this was the beginning of the Big Rig, a systematic campaign by the Republican Party to steal elections—and a systemic failure of the opposition to stop them. Every Republican president elected from Nixon forward has cheated to win. All of them.
- Nixon deliberately prolonged the Vietnam war until after the 1968 election, costing countless lives over the next five years.
- Reagan conspired with the Iranians and Israel to keep the hostages in Iran in captivity until after his 1981 inauguration. Craig Unger has detailed this history extensively.
- Bush was elected in 1988 after covering up for the crimes of Iran-Contra as CIA Director for Reagan, and continued the cover up during his presidential term—using Bill Barr as frontman.
- Bush Jr. was elected in 2000, after Roger Stone and three of the current Supreme Court Justices (Roberts, Kavanaugh, Coney-Barrett) coordinated the legal case and “Brooks Brothers Riot” which prevented a recount in Florida which would have swung the election to Al Gore.
- Trump was elected in 2016 through psychological and hybrid warfare operations conducted by a conspiracy of the Russian government, Peter Thiel, Jeffrey Epstein, Mike Flynn, Erik Prince, and numerous others. At the end of his term, Trump tried to overthrow the 2020 election to stay in power.
- Trump was elected again in 2024 by Elon Musk purchasing Twitter to run right-wing influence operations—and by giving Trump $300 million to prop up his failing campaign.
At every step of the way, Democrats have failed to prevent these catastrophes in real time despite ample foreknowledge—and failed to get accountability afterwards, despite clear evidence of crimes....
The South Rises Again
Heartland Institute Podcast Questions Whether All Americans ‘Should Have the Right to Vote’
Rei Takver [DeSmog Blog, via Naked Capitalism 05-07-2025]
“Look, I’m going to say something very controversial: Not every adult over the age of 18 should have the right to vote,” Jim Lakely, communications director of the Heartland Institute, said during an early April episode of the group’s In the Tank podcast.
Heartland was a contributor to Project 2025, the policy blueprint for Trump’s second term.
“We did not have universal suffrage when the framers of the Constitution founded this country. It varied a little bit state-to-state, but basically you had to be a white man. You had to be an owner of property, and a certain amount of property, and that pretty much was only white men,” Lakely said. “We’re never going back to that, of course, and I wouldn’t actually argue for that. But there’s something to be said for the way they set that up on purpose, and it was because they wanted only people who have a stake in the country — mainly the people paying taxes to support the government — should have the franchise and be able to select the direction of the government.” ....
All Americans should be worried that a top Trump cabinet official openly lauded a group that questions universal suffrage, said climate scientist Michael Mann, the director of the Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Heartland’s authoritarian, anti-democratic agenda is now exposed for all to see,” Mann told DeSmog in email. “The assault on climate action and the assault on democracy are one and the same, an effort to advance the authoritarian agenda of fossil fuel interests and the politicians in their pay.” ....
Remembering What The Stakes Are
Joyce Vance, May 09, 2026 [Civil Discourse]
Here’s what the whole gerrymandering debate is about: Who gets to have and exercise power.
The Speaker of the Alabama House delivered a timely reminder, as the state legislature moved at lightning speed to pass “new” voting maps (they’re really, more or less, the old ones that the Supreme Court said were illegal a couple of years back). In a press conference, the Speaker, Nathaniel Ledbetter, called on the courts to “overturn the 14th Amendment.” Press play below to listen to his exact words. There is no ambiguity. He’s talking about the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Unfortunately, no one followed up to ask Ledbetter which part he objected to. There are five sections in the 14th Amendment. Donald Trump already objects to the guarantee of birthright citizenship: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” But the Supreme Court seems likely to hand him a loss in that regard; his executive order is currently on hold while it considers the case.
So maybe it’s the start of the next sentence? “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Or maybe it’s the following clause: “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Maybe it’s the provision that prohibits states from denying “any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Probably it’s all three. What’s clear is that he wants the courts to say Alabama can use maps that were drawn with the intent to prevent Black people’s votes from counting. In any event, the Supreme Court doesn’t overrule constitutional provisions; it’s job is to interpret them....
[TW: the Wikipedia entry on Ledbetter is bare bones -- an example of how liberal and Democratic Party elites have failed at the basic level of political warfare: know your enemy. A search on RightWingWatch only 6 entries -- all on the Lily Ledbetter law, not the leading (anti)Republican of a former confederate state. Where did this guy go to college? Who are his political (big money) sponsors? Where did he get the idea of eliminating the 14th Amendment? I have no doubt that it was the entire right-wing influence machine and think tanks that have richly sustained people like Russell Voight and Stephen Miller for decades now. As I have repeatedly tried to warn members of the Democratic Party in my area, it is a mistake to dismiss (anti)Republicans and conservatives as insane cranks. They really do have a coherent philosophy of political economy and governance, and it is irrevocably hostile to basic principles of the philosophy of civic republicanism that are the actual foundation of what is, in our age, commonly called liberalism. See Insane Pre-Crime Strategy Unveiled for Leftist “Extremists” above, if you missed it.]
The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution
John Roberts Is Trying to Defend the Indefensible
Matt Ford, May 8, 2026 [The New Republic]
The chief justice insists he and his colleagues are not political actors, but can’t explain what an overtly politicized right-wing court would do differently from the one he leads.
Two justices, one quest: push to gut Voting Rights Act reaches final act
[The Guardian, via The Big Picture, May 03, 2026]
Latest ruling is culmination of Justices Roberts and Alito’s campaign to slowly but surely strangle efforts to protect democratic rights of Black and other minority Americans The Guardian traces a decade-long Roberts/Alito project to dismantle Section 2. The arc was never accidental. The latest ruling is culmination of Justices Roberts and Alito’s campaign to slowly but surely strangle efforts to protect democratic rights of Black and other minority Americans
The Court Didn’t Just Disenfranchise Blacks. It Also Disenfranchised Cities.
Harold Meyerson, May 7, 2026 [The American Prospect]
Scalia Clerks Argued in Half the Supreme Court Cases This Term
Justin Wise and Jordan Fischer [Bloomberg Law, via scotusblog.com [May 5, 2026]
A new Bloomberg Law analysis found that “[f]ormer clerks to the late Justice Antonin Scalia argued in nearly three dozen cases—or 52% of the docket—before the US Supreme Court this term, far more than clerks from any other chambers.” Specifically, it found that “12 former Scalia clerks, all of whom are men, appeared in 31 arguments. ... Six cases featured two Scalia alumni taking the lectern, often on opposite sides.” One reason for the high percentage, according to Bloomberg Law, is that “Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who clerked for Scalia between 2005-06, filled out his office with other former clerks.”
Janai Nelson, The Lawyer Who Argued The Callais Gerrymandering Case
Joyce Vance, May 06, 2026 [Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance]
Janai became one of the few women of color to argue before the Supreme Court when she argued Louisiana v. Callais this term. We discuss the decision, its impact on voting rights, and what it’s like to argue a case before the Supreme Court. In a moment where we all need a hero, listening to Janai discuss how she prepared for the argument and dealt with questions from conservative justices who seemed to have already made up their minds is really heartwarming. You can listen to the episode here ....
Civic republicanism
The world’s most complex machine
Neil Hacker, 23rd April 2026 [worksinprogress.co]
By betting on extreme ultraviolet lithography long before it worked, ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips....
ASML’s success depended on two projects in the late 1990s and 2000s that gave it a huge advantage in research and development. The first was a public-private partnership, started in 1997, called the Extreme Ultraviolet Limited Liability Company. The Extreme Ultraviolet Limited Liability Company began life as a rescue mission. Before 1997, basic semiconductor research was carried out in a small handful of research labs, all dependent on government grants.
The original program for EUV research was a ‘virtual national lab’ that combined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Each covered a different component: Livermore focused on mirrors and optics, Sandia on the light source and systems engineering, and Berkeley on advanced equipment for testing. But in 1996, Department of Energy budget cuts had placed the virtual national lab program on the chopping block.
Intel, then the undisputed world leader in microprocessors, was keen to preserve the work and spearheaded the creation of the Extreme Ultraviolet Limited Liability Company, the largest public-private partnership of its kind in the history of the US Department of Energy....
The second project essential to ASML’s success was the Belgium-based Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC), a research organization that collects machines from different companies and allows researchers to test them in semi-real environments while protecting the companies’ intellectual property....
By contrast, Canon and Nikon were tight-lipped about their research and made little effort to cooperate with outside companies. While this theoretically allowed them to maintain greater control over their work, and capture more of the value chain, it also made them solely responsible for simultaneously solving a bewildering array of fundamental physics problems, while assuming all the financial risk of doing so....
Since almost all of the parts in ASML’s machines are made by other companies, it has become master of a sprawling supply chain of over five thousand companies. It has diversified its suppliers over the years in a very deliberate way: 80 percent of its spending goes to companies across Europe and the Middle East (notably not the US, despite prior agreements), which reduces the risk of potential export restrictions, tariffs, and other geopolitical risks that may face critical suppliers based in the US or Asia. It also aims for its suppliers to make no more than 25 percent of their revenue from ASML, to force them not to become overreliant on the volatile semiconductor market....
[TW: shows that much of the most severe damage from the Trump regime slashing of research funding will be manifested 20 to 30 years from now, most likely as the retarded development of USA industrial base compared to other countries.]
George Packer, May 4, 2026 [The Atlantic]
But Sacks has always taken a dim view of politics. At 25, appearing on a C‑SPAN talk show while still in law school, he expressed a preference for “the ethos of Wall Street” over “the ethos of Washington” and quoted Calvin Coolidge on the business of America being business, avowing: “I’d probably rather live in a greedy country where people don’t share than in an envious country where people are stealing from each other.” ....
Thiel was determined to be a public intellectual like his hero William F. Buckley, so he began writing a book on left-wing campus extremism. When he found the work too onerous, he turned the research over to Sacks, and they co-authored The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus, published in 1995 by a libertarian think tank. Sacks attended the University of Chicago Law School, but law was too much like the detested public sector, and in 1999, when Thiel co-founded an online-payments company in Palo Alto that was soon to be called PayPal, Sacks left a consulting job to lead the company’s product team. He made important contributions to PayPal’s success; by various accounts, including Sacks’s own, he was also known for telling co-workers in blunt terms that they were wrong. A former colleague told me that with Sacks, “there’s masters and there’s slaves. He doesn’t have partners: ‘You do what I tell you to do, or you’re one of the few people that tell me what you want me to do.’ ” The former colleague added, “Part of his drive is that he believes he is one of the small number of elite people who really get it and are capable.”
[TW: In contrast to:]
Epilogue: Securing the Republic -- John Adams to Mercy Warren, 16 Apr. 1776
CHAPTER 18, Document 9, Warren-Adams Letters 1:222--23 [The Founders' Constitution, University of Chicago Press]
... public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics. There must be a positive Passion for the public good, the public Interest, Honour, Power and Glory, established in the Minds of the People, or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real Liberty: and this public Passion must be Superiour to all private Passions. Men must be ready, they must pride themselves, and be happy to sacrifice their private Pleasures, Passions and Interests, nay, their private Friendships and dearest Connections, when they stand in Competition with the Rights of Society.
The Spirit of Commerce, Madam, which even insinuates itself into Families, and influences holy Matrimony, and thereby corrupts the morals of families as well as destroys their Happiness, it is much to be feared is incompatible with that purity of Heart and Greatness of soul which is necessary for an happy Republic.
This Same Spirit of Commerce is as rampant in New England as in any Part of the World. Trade is as well understood and as passionately loved there as any where.
Even the Farmers and Tradesmen are addicted to Commerce; and it is too true that Property is generally the standard of Respect there as much as anywhere. While this is the Case there is great Danger that a Republican Government would be very factious and turbulent there....
"REPUBLICANISM" from Gordon Wood's Creation of the American Republic
Chapter Two, from Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, Chapel Hill, Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va., University of North Carolina Press, 1969.
The sacrifice of individual interests to the greater good of the whole formed the essence of republicanism and comprehended for Americans the idealistic goal of their Revolution…. To eighteenth-century American and European radicals alike, living in a world of monarchies, it seemed only too obvious that the great deficiency of existing governments was precisely their sacrificing of the public good to the private greed of small ruling groups....
This same celebration of the public welfare and the safety of the people also justified the very severe restrictions put on private interests and rights throughout the Revolutionary crisis. The coercion and intimidation used by public and quasi-public bodies, conventions and committees, against various individuals and minority groups, the extent of which has never been fully appreciated, was completely sanctioned by these classical Whig beliefs. As David Ramsay later recalled, "the power of these bodies was undefined; but by common consent it was comprehended in the old Roman maxim: 'To take care that the commonwealth should receive no damage.'" But it was not simply a matter of invoking the Ciceroian maxim, Salus Populi suprema Lex est. The extensive mercantilist regulation of the economy, the numerous attempts in the early years of the war to suppress prices, control wages, and prevent monopolies, reaching from the Continental Congress down through the states to counties and towns, was in no way inconsistent with the spirit of '76, but in fact was ideally expressive of what republicanism meant. In the minds of the most devoted Commonwealthmen it was the duty of a republic to control "the selfishness of mankind ... ; for liberty consists not in the permission to distress fellow citizens, by extorting extravagant advantages from them, in matters of commerce or otherwise." Because it was commonly understood that "the exorbitant wealth of individuals" had a "most baneful influence" on the maintenance of republican governments and "therefore should be carefully guarded against," some Whigs were even willing to go so far as to advocate agrarian legislation limiting the amount of property an individual could hold and "sumptuary laws against luxury, plays, etc. and extravagant expenses in dress, diet, and the like."
Civic Republicanism: an analogy to traffic laws
[TW: A useful analogy to understand republicanism are traffic laws. What is the purpose of traffic laws? What is society’s objective in imposing and enforcing traffic laws? Is it to catch speeders? Certainly, but that is really an ancillary objective. Is it to make driving safe by ordering and directing traffic in specific ways? You must drive in the right lane (in USA); you may not turn left from the right lane, nor turn right from the left lane; you must stop at a red light.
[The social objective in traffic laws is to ensure that traffic flows safely and efficiently, while being conducted by unknown individual drivers at any moment. In this sense, traffic is free, while it is not free at all – traffic must stay in the lanes assigned it and obey other traffic laws.
[What if a community decides to use the traffic laws to raise revenue? That’s what Ferguson, Missouri did, creating the pathway to the police murder of Michael Brown and the riots triggered by Brown’s murder. No longer can traffic in Ferguson and environs flow safely and efficiently; the social objective of the traffic laws have been corrupted and obstructed by Ferguson’s policy of using the traffic laws to raise revenues. And note that there was nothing illegal about what the civic leaders of Ferguson tried to accomplish by using the traffic laws to raise revenues.
[Or consider a situation where a town or county decides to rigorously enforce the traffic laws on a specific major thorough fare. A dozen or more police officers are assigned. Every little infraction is looked for and vehicles pulled over. Soon, there is traffic jam that is obstructing the safe and efficient flow of traffic. The traffic laws are being sternly enforced, but the social objective of keeping traffic moving has been destroyed.
[Republicanism is much the same way. Certain political norms and rules must be obeyed in service of society having a safe and efficient debate on social objectives and the policies needed to meet them. Conservatives and (anti)Republicans have bent and ignored the norms and rules, and they are open about their goal of prohibiting safe and efficient debate. No consideration of socialism is allowed, though Social Security is one of the most successful socialistic programs ever, and is the backbone of economic security for the vast majority of our senior citizens. No consideration of tax increases is allowed, even though it is now clear that the (anti)Republicans’ tax cuts of the past four decades have benefited only a very small group of people, who have emerged as a new oligarchy threatening the democratic principles of our republic.]
Every Democratic Candidate Must Have an Answer for This Question
Jason Linkins, May 9, 2026 [The New Republic]
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority is trying to drive the party to extinction. What do they plan to do about it?
[This] is—the fight of the Democrats’ lives: the court’s wholesale elimination of the party’s ability to govern. The conservative bloc, through what I would charitably describe as chicanery, has locked down American life for the foreseeable future. They essentially possess veto power over any legislation or executive order not to their liking, and they are now moving in the direction of stripping Democratic voters of their electoral power. This is an existential crisis that affects every Democrat running for federal office, and as we barrel toward the midterm elections and then into a presidential campaign, it’s incumbent on Democrats to explain how they will confront this challenge. Or to put it another way: How will they change the Supreme Court? ....
The Roberts court has dismantled the Democratic Party in a number of ways. One was its 2024 ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which did away with a judicial doctrine known as Chevron deference that allows the executive branch to respond nimbly and autonomously to laws passed by Congress. Its elimination essentially allows the high court to undercut the actions taken by the administrative state to carry out laws. This is specifically bad for a party that actually uses the federal government to facilitate policy, rather than using the federal government to destroy the federal government.
But the Supreme Court has put its finger on the scale for Republicans in even less ambiguous ways in recent years. The conservative majority’s embrace of what’s known as the “major questions doctrine” has added a new layer of imperviousness to its reign of Calvinball terror. That doctrine, which is a very recent invention of the conservative legal movement, allows the justices to overturn a federal regulation if they believe Congress didn’t “speak clearly” enough when authorizing it. If you’re wondering what that means, well, it means whatever a majority of justices think it means: Over time, the major questions doctrine has allowed the justices a wide range in applying subjective and malleable criteria to rule against regulations.
The Supreme Court, by the way, has never applied the major questions doctrine to a Republican president’s actions....
As if kneecapping the Democratic Party’s ability to govern isn’t enough, the court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais has effectively eliminated the safeguards in the Voting Rights Act that ensured the rights of Black Americans to participate in electoral politics. Ford wrote that the ruling all but ensures that “Black representation in Congress will … plummet, further tilting the House map in favor of the GOP.” True enough, within days, Republican-controlled legislatures began the process of dismantling majority-minority districts.
To Ford’s mind, Democrats find themselves facing some pretty stark choices to confront a Supreme Court that has gone to such lengths to annihilate their party: “Since the Supreme Court as currently constructed cannot be trusted to protect the egalitarian republic that, as Kagan noted, Union soldiers and civil rights activists fought and died to build, sufficient justices must be appointed to it to remedy the problem.” ....
[TW: Adding more judges to the Supreme Court assumes that Democrats will be allowed to win control of the House, Senate, and presidency. But more fundamentally, it does not address the real problem, which is the past 3/4 of a century oligarch funded reinterpretation of American history and Constitutional law to replace the founding philosophy of civic republicanism with the economic liberalism of Adam Smith and the slave and opium dealers of the British empire, and the anti-republican, pro-elite sentiments of the Austro-Hungarian empire (Frederick von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises).]
This Is the Issue That Must Unite Democrats—and It Isn’t Donald Trump
Michael Tomasky, May 8, 2026 [The New Republic]
It’s a problem that’s far more enduring than Trump. And any Democrat who isn’t serious about reining it in deserves zero 2028 consideration....
...Steven Roth, the CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, said this week that the phrase “tax the rich” is hate speech on a par with other well-known slurs. “I must say that I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich’—quote, tax the rich—when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs and even the phrase, ‘from the river to the sea,’” Mr. Roth said on an earnings call Tuesday, as reported by The New York Times....
What millions of Americans hate is the extreme concentration of wealth and political power in the United States. Back in March, a New York Times analysis of donations in the 2024 election campaign found that just 300 billionaires and their families made a staggering 19 percent of all contributions to federal campaigns. That was more than $3 billion all told, either directly or through political action committees. The money helped elect Donald Trump, of course, but also new senators like Montana’s Tim Sheehy, who raked in $47 million from billionaires in his win over Democrat Jon Tester.
This is sick. This is not democracy. These people have no sense of limits, no sense that democracy requires that restrictions be placed on their power. Or maybe they do recognize that fact and have contempt for it, in which case it makes them opponents of democracy.
“I have the right to spend whatever I choose to promote what I believe,” David Koch once wrote, criticizing the landmark 1974 law that sought to impose caps on campaign expenditures. Fuck you. No you don’t. I mean, you do, right now, under the current laws of the United States, where the Supreme Court has held that money is speech and as such needs to be as “free” as speech is. You may think I’m referring to the infamous Citizens United decision of 2010, but actually the court initially made this holding in 1976’s Buckley v. Valeo, which came long before campaigns were so awash in lucre. That year, the average Senate race cost $595,000. Adjusted for inflation, that would be around $3.8 million now. In 2020, Senate races averaged around $30 million.
Koch is wrong. Money isn’t speech. Money is money. The difference is easily provable with the observation that all of us can speak equally but we cannot spend equally. If Koch and I are standing in the town square advocating for opposing candidates for mayor, I can speak on behalf of my candidate as endlessly as he can. That’s speech. But his ability to hand his preferred candidate $100 bills is rather more infinite than mine. That isn’t speech. It’s money. It corrupts the process. Someday, this will be obvious to a different Supreme Court.
You’d think these people would be satisfied with the way things are, so heavily stacked in their favor. But they aren’t. They want more. They always want more.
[TW:
Fink, Zera S., The Classical Republicans: An Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern of Thought in Seventeenth Century England (Evanston, Northwestern University , 1945.), Chapter 6. The Old Cause, P153
A second fundamental thing which makes no less clear [Algernon] Sydney's rejection of monarchy is his remarks on the nature of man. "Man" he wrote, "is of an aspiring nature, and apt to put too high a value on himself. They who are raised above their brethren, though but a little, desire to go farther; and if they gain the name of king, they think themselves wronged and degraded, when they are not suffered to do what they please. In these things they never want masters; and the nearer they come to a power that is not easily restrained by law, the more passionately they desire to abolish all that opposes it.”25 Even when a prince was virtuous and began by desiring nothing more than the power allowed him by law, he was subject to greater temptations to invade the liberty of his subjects than human nature could be expected to withstand. "The strength of his own affections," Sydney declared, "will ever be against him. Wives, children, and servants will always join with those enemies that arise in his own breast to pervert him; if he has any weak side, any lust unsubdued, they will gain the victory. He has not searched into the nature of man, who thinks that anyone can resist when he is thus on all sides assaulted."26 Monarchy, in short, by the very constitution of human nature, tended always to degenerate into tyranny. It was a defective form of government because in the most important place of all it was lacking in those adequate restraints on the defects of human nature which all the classical republicans saw as an essential of any well-contrived government. ]
Less Noted, Just as Radical: The High Court’s Rightward Economic Shift
Hannah Garden-Monheit, May 8, 2026 [The New Republic]
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