Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 15, 2026
by Tony Wikrent
Midterm
A Tool Built by Election Deniers Said These Voters Were Dead. We Found Them Alive
Doug Bock Clark, Max Blau and Misty Harris, November 11, 2026 [ProPublica]
Ahead of the midterms, conservative election activists discussed plans to wield a powerful new weapon in the war against fraud: a data tool built by one of their own that could identify suspicious voters and help with contesting their ballots.
The system was put to the test this week in Forsyth County, Georgia, where a member of the county’s election board provided other officials with what he suggested was evidence of wrongdoing: four allegedly dead voters.
But it turns out all four are alive and well, ProPublica determined. The board rejected the attempt to challenge their ballots.
The effort, though, shows that even after last week’s blue wave, those who believe the 2020 election was stolen have continued to relentlessly search for ways to contest Republican losses....
Dean Obeidallah [November 12, 2026]
... When I interviewed Scott about three weeks before election day, he spoke of the key issues in this race—from inflation to corruption. But he told me the number one issue—and the one he closed his speeches with—was that the GOP had gutted the Voting Rights Act with their Supreme Court’s racist decision earlier this year. Scott explained this issue—that so much of the national media and Democratic leaders in DC were missing--had intensely animated the Black voters in Mississippi because they got that the GOP wanted to erase bot the sacrifice of their “ancestors” who led the Civil Rights movement and the voice of Black voters today....
Jim Crow Said This Could Never Happen: Mayfield Just Elected a Black Mayor
Berry Craig, Nov 11, 2026 [LA Progressive]
In a Kentucky town where Black residents were denied equal access to schools, churches, restaurants, and theaters, Derrick Parrott's election carries a significance that reaches far beyond City Hall.
How Big a Role Did Immigration Play in the 2026 GOP Wipeout?
[Center for Immigration Studies, via Naked Capitalism 11-08-2026]
Dems Should 1st Pass $15-An-Hour - A Lesson from Lula on Mobilizing Workers
Mike Elk, Nov 10, 2026 [Payday Report]
On October 5th, Lula, a former auto workers' union leader turned President, trailed Flavio Bolsonaro by 2.2 million votes. Most political observers, even on the left, predicted Lula was unlikely to make a comeback.
Then, Lula supporters started mass street protests around the country numbering in the hundreds of thousands, even more than a million, like the one that I filmed on Copacabana Beach.
His supporters formed a massive WhatsApp group called Lula’s Army that soon grew to over 11 million members nationwide, coordinating actions and social messages among activists with very different political viewpoints across Brazil.
Suddenly, things began to shift as people took to the streets, and Lula found himself with the political momentum to call a vote in the Brazilian Senate to shorten the workweek from 6 days to 5, while keeping the same pay.
For 40 years, Lula’s Workers’ Party had tried and failed to shorten the Brazilian workweek, but on October 14th, just 11 days before the election, Lula used the energy of street protest to pass the measure. Only one right-wing member of the 81-member Brazilian Senate voted against it. Flavio Bolsonaro skipped the vote altogether because he knew that voting against it was political suicide.
Suddenly, the vote gave Lula new momentum, and some polls in Brazil even began to show the unthinkable: Lula was leading the presidential race.
On October 25th, Lula came back to win in Brasil - gaining an amazing ten million votes in less than three weeks, the most impressive comeback victory in the history of the Americas....
Thomas Mills, Nov 09, 2026 [PoliticsNC]
Gina Hinojosa’s Win Was the Most Important of the Entire Midterms Here’s why.
Steve Phillips, Nov 09, 2026 [Nation Magazine]
Heather Cox Richardson, November 9, 2026 [Letters from an American, November 8, 2026]
Perry Stein and Jeremy Roebuck of the Washington Post wrote today, congressional Democrats are already building the investigative staff of the committees they will begin to lead in January. In a line that shows just how much things have changed, Stein and Roebuck write that the congress members have “been hiring from the large pool of former career prosecutors who were fired or departed from the Justice Department since the start of Trump’s second term.”
War
Russia Already Using Its Own Starlink Rival Over Ukraine, Kyiv Intelligence Says
[United24 Media, via Naked Capitalism 11-08-2026]
Trump not violating any law
‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’
Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [Mediaite]
Trump Has a Secret Plan to Evade Accountability. Will Dems Defeat It?
Brian Beutler, and Greg Sargent, November 10 2026 [The New Republic]
[TW - Unusually long article, but thorough and packed with important information and crucial nuance. See especially the discussion of inherent contempt of Congress and the stark contrast with civil contempt of Congress.]
... In the weeks leading up to the election, we spoke to a number of House and Senate Democrats and senior congressional aides. We sought an answer to a question that now appears even more pressing: How aggressively will congressional Democrats wield their institutional powers once it becomes clear that Trump and his accomplices in the White House will stand in the way of every investigation the Democrats undertake—and every check they place on his abuses of power?
To put the question another way: What deeper mindset will Democrats take into these battles? Will they approach the next year as if we’re still locked in a deep crisis—as if the constitutional order still hangs in the balance, requiring maximal exercises of power? Or will they enter with a more lax posture, as though their midterm victory has brought things more or less under control, and the crisis has largely been averted?
“We’ll still be facing a lawless president,” Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told us. While Van Hollen stressed that this would only be one piece of the Democratic agenda, he added: “And that will require complete pushback.”
But, unfortunately, not all Democrats see things in these crisis-like terms. And it’s unclear whether the ones who do will be willing to act accordingly, or will be able to persuade their reluctant colleagues to rise to the moment and be sufficiently confrontational.
Every Democrat we spoke with agreed that the Trump administration is world-historically corrupt, and most expected his lawbreaking to persist or even escalate. Some do seem willing to contemplate suspension of the regular order of things, if that’s what it takes to slow or stop the lawlessness. Others, though, seem more resigned to running a playbook for normal times, one that’s plainly unsuited to the coming moment....
Trump orders DOJ investigation of Democratic lawmakers
[Drop Site Daily: November 9, 2026]
On Saturday, President Trump said that he ordered the Justice Department to look into “criminal acts” by Democratic lawmakers. In a Truth Social post, he said that Democrats’ threats of investigations and impeachment are “extortion at the highest level.” He singled out Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), accusing her of threatening young conservatives. and said that “imprisonment should be against these EXTORTIONISTS.” During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged Congress’ oversight authority, but said that Democrats’ rhetoric crossed a line. He refused to rule out the possibility that the DOJ would prosecute Democratic lawmakers for trying to investigate the Trump administration. Blanche said, “I would be very worried if I was a member” of the Oversight Committee. He added that the DOJ will provide legal defense to Trump officials facing scrutiny from Democrats.
CBS: ICE deported a record 483,200 people in 2026
[CBS, via Drop Site Daily: November 13, 2026]
Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported a record 483,200 people in fiscal year 2026, according to Homeland Security data obtained by CBS. The total tops the prior record of 442,640 ICE deportees in the 2025 fiscal year. The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute found that only about 20% of roughly 980,000 ICE and CBP deportees since January 2025 had ever been convicted of a crime. Exit polls from the midterm elections showed that voters rejected the Trump administration’s far-right immigration policies.
Local Journalist Murdered After BBC Documentary Exposed Police Corruption in Ecuador
Camila Lourdes Galarza, Nov 13, 2026 [DropSite]
Total System Failure: U.S. Government Networks Will Need To Be Torched And Rebuilt
[The Fine Print, via Naked Capitalism 11-12-2026]
From dodgy DOGE bros to White House systems compromised by foreign intelligence, Trump cybersecurity damage will take decades and untold billions to repair.
Strategic Political Economy
GRAPH: Over 78% of all wealth created in the past 2 years has gone to the top 10%
[Steve Rattner, via The Big Picture, November 11, 2026]
Wages, inequality, and the roots of America’s affordability crisis
Heidi Shierholz, Josh Bivens, Nov 13, 2026 [American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, via Economic Policy Institute]
In this article, we make the following arguments:
Far too many families are unable to afford a decent economic life.
The primary cause is a large increase in income and wage inequality, with incomes and wages for the vast majority of families lagging far behind what they could and should be.
This rise in inequality was caused by increasingly unequal “market” incomes (e.g., wages and salaries, returns on investments), while changes in taxes or transfers (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance) slightly dampened the rise of income inequality.
The large rise in income inequality was driven by intentional policy changes that affected typical workers’ leverage and bargaining power in the labor market—and that means they can be reversed.
In capitalist economies (like ours), labor markets are inherently tilted toward employers—but historically and globally, broadly shared prosperity has only been achieved when policies that intentionally support workers (like strong unions, adequate minimum wages, and full employment mandates) have provided a countervailing force against employers’ power in labor markets.
Much of the post-1979 period in the United States saw an assault on worker-friendly policies, and this led directly to the rise in inequality and to weak income growth for working families.
Chris Hedges, Nov 12, 2026
Young Talent Fueled American Scientific Dominance. Now It’s Disappearing
[New York Times, via The Big Picture, November 13, 2026]
Under Trump, new Ph.D. enrollments are down, funding is on the decline and many budding researchers are reconsidering their careers.
[Black Lodges, via Naked Capitalism 11-12-2026]
When politicians tell us that change takes time, what they are really admitting is that the people demanding it cannot yet compel them to act, and rather than acknowledge that this imbalance is a deliberate consequence of the class relations they are committed to preserving, they wrap their refusal in the respectable language of pragmatism, responsibility and economic necessity, as though the continued impoverishment of working people were some unavoidable law of nature rather than a political choice from which somebody, somewhere, is making an enormous amount of money.
Global power shift
China’s Supercarrier Ops. Becoming More Complex: Navy’s Offensive Capabilities Growing Rapidly
[Military Watch, via Naked Capitalism 11-11-2026]
How are China’s Type 052D destroyers shifting the balance in the western Pacific?
Gabriel Dominguez, 22 Sep 2026 [South China Morning Post]
The Southern African Bi-Oceanic Railway Could Be A Game-Changer In The Sino-US New Cold War
Andrew Korybko [via, via Naked Capitalism 11-14-2026]
All of Southern Africa will likely fall under the US’ “sphere of influence” and become the minerals base of the US-led “Global West’s” “Fourth Industrial Revolution”-driven economic competition with China....
The disproportionate role of Southern Africa’s minerals industry (which includes the DRC’s) in the 4IR has recently transformed the region into an economic battleground in the Sino-US dimension of the New Cold War. As it stands, the US is gaining ground in accessing these resources, though not yet at China’s expense. In the future, however, it’ll likely resort to a combination of “creative diplomacy” and Hybrid Warfare to coerce these countries into replacing China’s role in their minerals industry with the West.
As was observed here, “China lacks the capabilities and will to militarily enforce debt repayments, while the US’ control over Western financial and legal institutions limits China’s options in those respects”, and the same goes for international arbitration if they illegally pull out of contracts with China. Simply put, Southern Africa’s minerals are the US’ for the taking, but it might first want to launch the Southern African Bi-Oceanic Railway (SABOR) for reducing import costs before making such a power play.
Gaza / Palestine / Israel
Herzog taps Eisenkot to form new Israeli government
Drop Site Daily: November 9, 2026
Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Saturday formally gave Gadi Eisenkot the first opportunity to form a new government. Eisenkot now has 28 days plus a possible 14-day extension from the president. If he is unable to form a government, Netanyahu could then be given a chance to put together a coalition. If Netanyahu is also unable to do so, new elections could be called.
Eisenkot has said that parties can join his coalition if they agree to four conditions: recognition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state; a duty of national service for all; recognition of Hamas as a terrorist organization; and a commitment to destroying Hamas’s military and governing capacity.
Netanyahu’s Likud Party won the most seats of any single party, while his wider coalition won 53 seats, short of a 61-seat majority in the 120-seat parliament. Eisenkot’s Yashar party emerged as the second-largest party with 21 seats, while his coalition, won a total of 48 seats. Two parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel won an unprecedented 19 seats.
Oligarchy
Letters from an American, November 7, 2026
Heather Cox Richardson, November 8, 2026
In his victory speech on November 3, after winning a U.S. Senate seat in the previously Republican-dominated state of Texas, Senator-elect James Talarico redefined the modern United States by recalling an older era when Americans worked together to defend their country against those who would take all its wealth and power for themselves.
His words were especially piercing in Texas, where billionaire Elon Musk spent at least $225 million in the midterm elections to keep the state government in the hands of Republicans. And yet, voters elected a Democratic governor, a Democratic lieutenant governor, a Democratic attorney general, and a Democratic state house anyway.
“We just took back Texas,” Talarico told the cheering crowd. “We just proved that all the money in the world is no match for the people of Texas. We just showed that a politics of division is no match for a politics of love. And we just sent a message to every billionaire megadonor, every trillionaire megadonor, every corrupt defender of this broken political system in this state, in this country. Power belongs to the people.” ....
Talarico rooted his political beliefs in his belief in the commandments to “love God and love neighbor” and noted that “despite our differences, we all want the same things. A safe neighborhood, a good job, a high-quality, well-funded public school, and the ability to see a doctor when we need one.
“But the billionaires who own the social media algorithms, who own the cable news networks, who own the politicians fighting on our screens, they want us at each other’s throats. They want us focused on how we’re different instead of on how we’re the same. They want us looking left and right at each other instead of looking up at them. The real fight in this country is not left versus right. It is top versus bottom.
“The people at the top work so hard to keep us angry and divided because our unity is a threat to their wealth and their power,” he said. “We saw it in this race. We saw it in every billionaire-funded attack ad. The people at the top divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion, by culture, so we don’t notice that they are picking our pockets, that they are defunding our schools, that they are gutting our healthcare, that they are raising taxes on all of us while they cut taxes for themselves. It is the oldest strategy in the world, divide and conquer. But tonight we sent a crystal clear message to the people at the top. We will not be conquered.”
“[W]e are tired of being pitted against each other,” Talarico continued. “We are tired of being told to hate each other. It has been 10 years of this kind of politics. Politics as blood sport. Politics as trolling and owning. Politics as professional wrestling. It tears families apart. It ends friendships. And it leaves us all feeling terrible all the time. People across the political spectrum are hungry for a different kind of politics. Not a politics of hate, not a politics of fear, not a politics of division, but a politics of love.” ....
Wall Street Mocks Bernie Sanders as “Almost Dead”
Lee Hepner, Nov 08, 2026 [BIG]
Christopher Armitage, Nov 09, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]
[Marketwatch, via The Big Picture, November 10, 2026]
The wealthiest 10% have a median net worth that is $800,000 greater than it was three years ago. Venessa Wong on the Fed’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances: from 2022 to 2025, real median net worth rose 2% for the typical American but 19% for the top decile, whose median is $800,000 higher than three years ago. Having assets, not earning more, is what separated the winners.
Ryan Cooper, November 13, 2026 [The American Prospect]
... Huang is out because, remarkably enough, Nvidia is one of the better-governed tech companies. Unlike Meta, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Snap, and of course SpaceX, Nvidia does not have a dual-class share structure, in which the company’s founder(s) get total control over the company despite only owning a minority of the shares. As I have previously written, that practice makes a hash of the entire argument for a public corporation and greatly increases the risk of poor business decisions.
Neither the board, nor shareholders, nor public pressure could pry Mark Zuckerberg out of the big chair at Meta if he refuses to leave, no matter how many tens of billions of dollars he wastes on some cockamamie metaverse nonsense. But because Huang and his wife only control about 3.6 percent of the company, the Nvidia board and shareholders have real power. When he screwed up badly enough, that was it....
[TW: Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton submitted to Congress on December 13th, 1790 his Second Report on the Further Provision Necessary for Establishing Public Credit. It is often referred as The Report on a National Bank. In one section, where Hamilton explains the best structure for a central bank, he propounds a system of proportional shareholder representation in which no one "person, copartnership, or body politic" was allowed more than 30 votes, no matter how many shares they owned. Since this was a Founding Father prescribing a system of corporate ownership that is entirely at odds with today's business management ideas of shareholder value, profit maximization, private equity, etc., etc., I was amazed when I began checking various biographies of Hamilton and found that none had pointed to this extraordinary proposal.
[Hamilton's plan of shareholder voting, if it had been extended beyond the central bank to other corporations, would have hampered, if not entirely crippled, the corporate raiders who destroyed tens of thousands of USA industrial facilities--beginning in the 1960s "go-go" years of mergers and acquisitions; the 1970s through 1990s "leveraged buyout" pirates like Michael Milkin and Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts; and contemporary "private equity" scammers like Peter G. Peterson's and Stephen A. Schwarzman's Blackstone Group; David Rubenstein's and Caspar Weinberger's Carlyle Group; Leon Black's Apollo Global Management; and Mitt Romeny's Bain Capital. Ands it would obviously have prevented the emergence of today's tech broligarchs such as Musk, Thiel, Bezos, Ellison, Zuckerburg, Andreessen, Karp, etc., etc.]
XI. The number of votes, to which each Stockholder shall be entitled, shall be according to the number of shares he shall hold in the proportions following, that is to say, for one share and not more than two shares one vote; for every two shares, above two and not exceeding ten, one vote; for every four shares above ten and not exceeding thirty, one vote; for every six shares above thirty and not exceeding sixty, one vote; for every eight shares above sixty and not exceeding one hundred, one vote; and for every ten shares above one hundred, one vote; but no person, copartnership, or body politic, shall be entitled to a greater number than thirty votes. And after the first election, no share or shares shall confer a right of suffrage, which shall not have been holden three calendar months previous to the day of election. Stockholders actually resident within the United States and none other may vote in elections by proxy.
[TW: Note also that Hamilton's share voting formula is clearly unfavorable to increasing concentrations of economic wealth. Holding 12 shares gives the holder only one half the number of votes. Holding 36 shares gives only one third. Holding over 100 shares gives only one fifth. Holding 1,000 shares gives the holder only 30 votes, or a mere 3/100 the number of votes. Holding 10,000 shares or one million shares, and the holder still gets only 30 votes. The more vampire-wealth held, the less weight each share of vampire-wealth is allowed. Here we see Hamilton carefully balancing the republican need for economic equality with the need to avoid alienating owners of wealth, even vampire-wealth. Throughout the reports, Hamilton explicitly wrote that the primary goal was to promote the general welfare and the public interest.
[What does concentration of wealth look like today? Here is a partial list of companies that have been "acquired" and "reorganized" by just one private equity group, Bain Capital: AMC Theatres, Artisan Entertainment, Aspen Education Group, Brookstone, Burger King, Burlington Coat Factory, Canada Goose, DIC Entertainment, Domino's Pizza, DoubleClick, Dunkin' Donuts, D&M Holdings, Guitar Center, Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), iHeartMedia, Sealy, Sports Authority, Staples, Toys "R" Us, Warner Music Group, Fingerhut, The Weather Channel, and Apple Leisure Group, which includes AMResorts and Apple Vacations. This list is copied directly from the Wikipedia entry on Bain.
[If you want to see more such concentrations of wealth, just follow the links for each outfit listed on Wikipedia's list of Largest private equity firms by PE capital raised.
[I strongly suspect that most of the calumny heaped on Hamilton - that he was an elitist and even a monarchist - was designed to prevent most people from realizing what Hamilton's actual policies were. To enact Hamilton's policies would be to dismantle the oligarchy that rules USA and destroy the power of that oligarchy.]
See also this book: Christian Parenti, Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder, Verso Books, 2020
America’s Backlash Against Oligarchy: Why the megabillionaires lost big Tuesday
Paul Krugman [via The Big Picture, November 08, 2026]
The midterm result was a tale of many backlashes. There was the backlash of erstwhile Trump voters, particularly young white males, against high gasoline prices and the Iran War. There was the backlash of Hispanic voters against ICE and Trump’s horrific deportation policy. There was the backlash of Black voters against Republicans’ gerrymandering to negate their votes and Trump’s open racism. There was the backlash of women against the destruction of abortion rights and suppression of the Epstein files. There was a backlash of ordinary families against the loss of healthcare coverage. There was a general backlash against Trump’s bottomless corruption and lies. And there was a backlash of patriotic Americans against Trump’s bromance with Putin.
Jim Stewartson, Nov 10, 2026 [MindWar]
A video was created by Stephen Miller’s own schoolmates which featured him asking this question to a student body of 2,000:
“Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?”
—Stephen Miller, Santa Monica High, 2002
The tech billionaires who fled California are facing a new blue Texas
[Washington Post, via thejackpot.blog/node/TodaysWaterCooler20261110]
Appointment in Samarra. The speaker (“me”) is Death:
There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that had jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.
The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.
Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, “Why did you make a threating gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?”
“That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”
Felonomics
Race, Race, Go Away - Trump wants to make racial data disappear, except where he demands more of it.
Paul Starr, November 12, 2026 [The American Prospect]
The Trump administration is trying to delete race from national statistics, and it may very well succeed. The courts may not stand in the way, and Democrats have not even raised the issue this election year, probably because they want to avoid getting sucked into battles over race and identity politics.
On September 9, the administration announced a proposal to remove race and ethnicity questions from the decennial census. That announcement followed a vote last July by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to rescind requirements for employers to report the racial and gender makeup of their workforce. Just as important as these actions are the administration’s justifications for them, which suggest that the government should never collect or publish data based on race....
Yet while the Trump administration seeks to stop collecting data by race, it is demanding extensive racial data from colleges and universities. These contradictory actions are driven by one aim: preventing minorities from obtaining what the administration sees as unfair racial preferences....
Venezuelan Parliament Approves Law to Open Electricity Sector to Partial Privatization
[Venezuelanalysis, via Naked Capitalism 11-11-2026]
Health care crisis
US Has Lost Measles Elimination Status, Global Health Authorities Say
Amy Maxmen [KFF Health News, via thejackpot.blog 11-14-2026]
US Health Insurance Coverage Declines
[JAMA, via Naked Capitalism 11-14-2026]
Predatory finance
Wall Street’s $1.5 Trillion Debt Bubble Could Be More Dangerous Than AI
[Wealth Advisor, via Naked Capitalism 11-10-2026]
Restoring balance to the economy
BLOCKED! Emboldened State Regulators Just Scuttled a Major Money Merger
Lee Hepner, Nov 13, 2026 [BIG]
California regulators, led by former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, just blocked a merger that had also attracted the ire of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. State agencies have more power than we know.
Disrupting mainstream economics
Understanding Economics: Capital isn’t capitalism
Richard Murphy, November 14, 2026 [Funding the Future]
Capital isn't capitalism. That's an essential distinction if we are to understand how economics really works. Capital is not just money, financial assets or the wealth owned by capitalists. It is everything we have now that can help us live well in the future.
In this episode of Understanding Economics, I explain why capital matters to everyone, whatever economic system we live in, and why mainstream economics gets so much wrong by concentrating on financial capital.
There are five essential forms of capital: ecological, human, social, physical and financial.
Ecological capital, which includes the natural systems on which life depends, underpins everything else.
Human capital is our knowledge, skills and health.
Social capital is the trust and cooperation that make society work.
Physical capital provides the buildings, infrastructure and equipment we need.
Financial capital comes last. That's because money cannot grow food, provide healthcare or sustain the environment. At best, it is just a facilitator.
In this context, I explain the crucial distinction between capital and income. Using the example of an apple tree, I show why consuming capital can make us richer today but poorer tomorrow.
That raises a fundamental question. How can businesses claim to make profits when they are destroying the ecological and human capital on which our future depends?
Real prosperity requires us to maintain all five forms of capital. The form of capitalism we have does not do that, and so understanding capital is essential if we want an economy that works for everyone.
This video is part of my Understanding Economics series, which explains economics in ways that challenge conventional thinking.
American capitalism was a win-win. We’ve abandoned it to bet
[USA Today, via The Big Picture, November 11, 2026]
If all of this money went into the capital markets instead, it would finance the growth of companies through innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as infrastructure that girds the economy. An opinion column argues Americans have stopped making the pie bigger and started grabbing someone else’s slice. More than a quarter of Gen Z and millennials say they’ve used prediction markets, versus 2% of boomers, and about 40% of 18-to-49-year-olds told Siena they’d placed a sports bet.
There are better ways of taxing wealth than imposing wealth taxes
Richard Murphy, November 14, 2026 [Funding the Future]
... as I have long pointed out, and as I demonstrated in my Taxing Wealth Report, we do not need a wealth tax to significantly increase the amount of tax raised from those with wealth. This goal can be achieved within the existing tax system in the UK and could raise significantly more revenue to achieve the goal of reducing inequality than any wealth tax that has been proposed for this country could. What is more, because each measure could be introduced individually, and I proposed up to 30 in all, of varying degrees of revenue effectiveness, the cliff-edge effect seen in this poll in California could be avoided, making delivery a much higher probability.
This was an issue I discussed with Aaron Bastani in my interview with him for Novara Media last week. They have now clipped that section of the video and published it as a separate video in its own right. That's here.
I suggest all those who are suffering disappointment in response to this result in California take a look. There are better ways to do wealth taxation than by imposing wealth taxes.
Information age dystopia / surveillance state
How to Protect Your Digital Identity as Online Threats Evolve
[Shattered, via thejackpot.blog/node/TodaysWaterCooler20261110]
Excellent walkthrough. “Ten years ago, identity theft was pretty much just a case of someone having their wallet stolen or their store being hacked. These days, it’s a different ballgame. A data breach can create a massive database that criminals can then use for a very long time. Phishing emails are now much more convincing and personalized. SIM swap attacks mean you can take over a phone number and get the verification codes. This means that one leaked record can open many accounts. Think of your personal data as partly exposed, and try to limit the harm it can cause.”
New Tool Removes Hidden Metadata Without Uploading Your Files
[Reclaim The Net, November 14, 2026]
Reclaim The Net has launched a free website that removes the hidden metadata that files carry, and which can reveal a wealth of information about the device that was used to create the file, its owner, and sometimes even the location where the file was created.
We built it, we run it, and you can use it at metadatadelete.com.
Thomas Neuburger, Nov 10, 2026 [God's Spies]
A $10,000 Bribe to Build a Data Center
[More Perfect Union, Nov 09, 2026]
Amazon is spending $1 billion to make people okay with data centers in their backyards. In one Pennsylvania town, every resident was offered $10,000; in another, landowners were offered millions.
AI Bubble: This is the beginning of the end
Ed Zitron [YouTube, via Naked Capitalism 11-14-2026]
Important.
I watched a humanoid robot clean my apartment. It felt like a taste of the future
[MIT Technology Review, via The Big Picture, November 12, 2026]
The startup Tau Robotics is sending humanoid robots to clean San Francisco homes. They still need lots of human guidance, but they’re learning. Grace Huckins signed up for a San Francisco humanoid-robot cleaning service from Tau Robotics without telling them she’s a journalist. The long-term goal is autonomous cleaners, but for now the robots are piloted remotely. The startup Tau Robotics is sending humanoid robots to clean San Francisco homes. They still need lots of human guidance, but they’re learning.
Collapse of independent news media
Why the Media Covered Hunter Biden More Than Trump's Corruption
Julie Hollar, Nov 8, 2026 [LA Progressive]
A new FAIR study finds that Hunter Biden's laptop received nearly five times as much news coverage as insider trading allegations under Trump, exposing a troubling double standard in American political journalism.
Opinion | Eighty years ago, America reimagined press freedom. It’s time to do it again.
[Poynter, via Naked Capitalism 11-08-2026]
... What does a free and responsible press owe a democratic society? In 1942, as total war tested the resilience of free institutions across the globe, University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins and Time publisher Henry Luce set out to tackle a question that is arguably even more relevant today, with public trust in news as low as ever. Their radical experiment gave rise to the Commission on Freedom of the Press, better known as the “Hutchins Commission,” a landmark effort to redefine the relationship between press freedom, public accountability and the democratic good.
The commission’s final report, published in 1947, made the case for press freedom as social responsibility, arguing that news media enjoyed constitutional protection not as an unregulated entitlement, but as a public trust obligated to serve the public good. This view of press freedom creates a key distinction from free speech, a right less burdened by obligations of the speaker....
Climate and environmental crises
Chinese scientists develop new oil refining method that may cut energy use by 90%
Zhang Tongin, 13 Sep 2026 [South China Morning Post]
Democrats' political malpractice
The Private Equity Lobbyist Network Surrounding Chuck Schumer
[ReadSludge, via thejackpot.blog/node/TodaysWaterCooler20261109]
“Blackstone, Apollo, and private equity trade groups employ Schumer alumni to push their interests in Washington as progressive senators push for tougher restrictions on the industry.” And: “Schumer has backed some narrower measures targeting private investors, including a bill to give public agencies and nonprofits priority in buying distressed mortgages. But he has not cosponsored any of four private equity reform bills championed by the American Economic Liberties Project.”
Machinists union calls on Schumer to step aside as leader
[Politico, via thejackpot.blog/node/TodaysWaterCooler20261110]
“The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers sent the New York lawmaker a letter Monday urging him ‘not to seek another term’ as Senate Democratic leader — making the 600,000-member union the latest voice to join the push for a leadership shakeup after last week’s elections.” And: “In a statement to POLITICO, [IAM International President Brian Bryant] was even more blunt: “The IAM Union is through with any member of leadership, in any political party, who stops one iota short of being a ferocious, unyielding and unbending champion of working people.”
Exclusive: Bernie Sanders on Why It’s Vital for Democrats to Replace Chuck Schumer
John Nichols, Nov 12, 2026 [The Nation]
In an interview with The Nation, the progressive icon says that the Senate leader is “way out of touch with where the American people are at.”
Nation Magazine
Hamilton Nolan, Nov 14, 2026 [How Things Work]
... Here we all were, in Denver, at the Mission Ballroom, for WHAT’S NEXT, an event that brought together the professional spine of the Democratic Party to try to lay down exactly what should and will be happening for the next two years... The event was put on by Majority Democrats, a moderate-ish group that seeks to build a majority caucus inside the party. It explicitly distinguishes itself from those three apocalyptic horsemen, “The Gerontocratic Establishment,” the “Activist Left,” and “The Maga Right.” Majority Democrats is funded by a hedge fund billionaire, and you could really tell in the event’s production values. Get a bunch of the Activist Left together and you’re looking at janky PA systems and unruly stacks of fliers. But here at What’s Next, there was unlimited free snacks and professional execution and a wondrous lighting display on stage that looked like a sculpture of huge lamps of all colors turned on their side, hypnotizing and soothing the crowd as some Congressman drones on. If I were a billionaire dark money funder I would take a hard look at how much of my political money is being spent on lighting....
The money also bought graphic design, and it was an atrocity. Any normal human would step back and clutch their chest in agony at the sight of the posters that adorned the hallways. They were all done up in the style of classic concert posters, like something you might see hanging on a telephone pole to advertise a Grateful Dead or Bob Marley show, except they featured the most aggressively uncool politicians in the United States. There was Hakeem Jeffries, wearing shades; there was an ad for Cory Booker & The Revolution; there was a four-peat of Josh Shapiro’s head in four different colors; there was a hand drawn picture of CIA agent-turned-governor Abigail Spanberger as a hippie with flowing blond hair holding a batch of flowers....
Thus, the consultants that took the stage in Denver delivered lectures to the assembled functionaries about What Voters Are Thinking. And what they are thinking is: Affordability. Affordability, affordability, affordability. The economy, stupid. Prices of things. They’re high, and they should be lower, for the sake of affordability. “I hope you’re very excited to hear someone repeat the phrase ‘cost of living’ for seven minutes and 45 seconds,” joked Charlotte Swasey, director of analytics for the Searchlight Institute. Searchlight is a sort of companion think tank for the Majority Democrats project, funded by the same billionaires, whose schtick is “we serve up centrism but from a guy with long hair.” That guy is Adam Jentleson, the bearded and man-bunned former Harry Reid and John Fetterman staffer who has now found himself a secure perch in the lucrative Telling The Left To Shut Up industry....
Spending some time in this setting will help you understand why the Democratic Party is so perpetually frustrating. In this consultant-centered model, the politicians themselves become little more than actors, sent out to convincingly perform the script that the consultants have devised. The best politicians are not the ones who have their own ideas but rather the ones who can sound winning and likable while repeating back to voters the things that voters themselves have said in various focus groups just a short time ago....
Jeffries immediately began talking about the need to get permitting reform done. This is his power. He may be corrupt, and an obstacle to true progress, but he has achieved total unflappability. He cannot be disturbed, and he also cannot be made to answer a question with truth or clarity, two qualities which are effectively superpowers for a man in his position. He would say things like, “We have to get dark money out of politics,” without defining it in a way that might get him into trouble. When asked something he didn’t want to answer at all, like whether he supports term limits, he would say, “It’s the right conversation to have.” He would say things that are vaguely reassuring to people of all political persuasions, like, “We’re going to be guided by the Constitution.” If you didn’t press hard, he can leave you thinking he agrees with you on everything. If you do press hard, he slips out to the side, like trying to snatch a quick fish underwater. Even if you don’t like him, you must admit that he is a perfect leader for the Democratic Party: a human bowl of Jell-O, capable of holding a shape for a while, but always ready to ooze into any new container as necessary....
The truth is, though, that no matter how big a tent you put over the Democratic Party, it will still be divided. Why? Because that is the nature of politics. Factions are not inherently bad. They exist because people genuinely disagree on substantial things. You can say “let’s all come together in unity,” but when we propose a wealth tax and you say no, there is no unity there. There is just a fight. When we ask for Medicare for All and you say no, there is not common ground. There is a fight. Policy differences matter. Party unity is important in general elections, but when it comes to governing, it is more instructive to think of politics as a battle. The left has more common ground with the moderates in Denver than it has with the fascists in Trumplandia, yes. But what the moderates and the fascists have in common is that they are both trying to ensure that the left does not gain power. The hand of friendship that centrists extend to the newly ascendant left wing of their party comes with a tacit agreement that the left will remain the minority partner in this coalition. If you are on the left and you actually want to change the structural problems that brought us to this point, the holes in the big tent are easy to spot....
Van Hollen Challenges a Bankrupt Status Quo
Daniel Larison [via Naked Capitalism 11-14-2026]
The Real Reason Chris Van Hollen’s Challenge to Schumer Is a Big Deal
Greg Sargent, November 13, 2026 [The New Republic]
Matt Stoller on Hakeem Jeffries
Matt Stoller, Nov 9, 2026 [X]
Dem members of Congress and base voters see Hakeem Jeffries very differently. I'll try to make the case *for* Jeffries, from the perspective of members. Ironically, they like him for the same reason voters don't, which is that he's nice and passive. He's NOT Pelosi. Pelosi was a control freak, she tracked everything and bossed around the caucus with detail-oriented savviness. To give you a specific example, Pelosi made sure that only a few members could have staff with classified clearances, while most could not. That was a mechanism to ensure that just a few Dems would be able to make key decisions on national security. She also was the Democrat who took over from the GOP Congress first elected in 1994. Gingrich (and his side kick Tom Delay) had taken apart a bunch of important Dem-leaning institutions to run Congress, centralizing control in the hands of leadership and corporate think tanks. That was the 'K Street Project.' It was a Strong Speaker model. Pelosi had the chance to undo those changes, but she doubled down on the Strong Speaker approach. It wouldn't be a return to the Office of Technology Assessment and powerful caucuses, it would be the Wall Street-funded Center for American Progress and Congressional leadership in charge. She was a pro-choice Gingrich. Subsequent GOP leaders basically kept this arrangement in place, with Trump operating as the de facto latest strong speaker....
On a substantive level, what it meant is that legislation could only be as good as Pelosi's people could make it. A San Francisco out of touch rich lady, and her advisors, were the ones structuring policy. Pelosi cut out much of the caucus, which means she cut out much of the country. That dramatically reduced the quality of what the House was doing....
And Jeffries? Like Pelosi, Jeffries is a very communicator. So to outsiders, he seems similar. But he's completely different as a House leader. He doesn't track very much, he doesn't know what is happening in every corner of the caucus, and he doesn't have strong views. He won't set a direction. He'll listen, he will act if there's a consensus, but otherwise will sort of let things play out. You can talk to him about your concerns, he'll listen and be sympathetic. No one is worried about crossing Jeffries. The downsides to Jeffries are pretty clear. He's widely disliked as a speaker, he makes the Democratic Party look bad because he clearly doesn't have a view of how to govern. He likes Israel and big money, but he'll do populist things if pushed. He proposed no agenda for the 2026 election, so there's no obvious specific mandate. Do something about 'affordability,' sure, but what? He also won't be able to manage the House. He won't be able to whip close votes, he won't set a direction, and the committee chairs or caucuses will likely run the place. When he speaks publicly, he'll lack the credibility to speak for the caucus. He won't be able to negotiate with Trump one on one, Trump will just go around him to other groups of Dems. It'll be chaos.
[TW: A key principle of civic republicanism is that all people have the potential contribute to society. That's why society has a duty to ensure every citizen has the basics of a dignified life, education, and medical care. So Pelosi's method of rule was inherently antirepublican.]
Matt Stoller, Nov 9, 2026 [X]
... As with Pelosi's choice to double down on Gingrich's model of the House, Schumer actually inherited this model from Mitch McConnell, who organized the Senate around the filibuster blocking legislating. That technique was actually initiated to kill Bill Clinton's health care plan in the early 1990s, McConnell systemized it into the driver of the entire institution. Since the Senate is a bit more personality driven than the House, it is true Harry Reid for a time did things a bit differently. But it's been decades since the Senate actually functioned effectively to legislate. Schumer just did what McConnell taught him to do.
It's important to recognize two things about this institutional setup. First, this strategy has a long term cost, which is increasing nihilism and cynicism from voters. They can see clearly that elections don't seem to matter when it comes to their pocketbooks. And second, Schumer isn't doing this alone, he's supported by much of the Democratic caucus and external stakeholders. A lot of the Democratic caucus in the Senate is just not interested in addressing big money interests or governing through public authority....
Democrats Have a New Center. The Old One Isn’t Taking It Well.
Ben Windsor [via Naked Capitalism 11-14-2026]
A Blue Tsunami that has grown bigger this week, with resounding victories in states Democrats scarcely dreamed of taking – from Kansas and Alaska to Texas and Mississippi.
But the more seismic development was the kind of Democrats who won. Across battleground districts and deep-red states alike, a defiant new mode of Democratic populism performed shockingly well, challenging long-held assumptions about the party’s political center.
Its success has sparked a fierce online battle for credit. But the squabbling risks obscuring the much bigger upheaval: the emergence of a new political center – and the old guard’s struggle to come to terms with it.
To understand just how dramatically that center has shifted, look to Texas.
Self-declared populist Gina Hinojosa named economic power as the defining struggle of our era. James Talarico railed against billionaires buying elections, lobbyists rigging the rules and Big Tech destroying American society. And rancher Clayton Tucker attacked agricultural consolidation and sold “Bust Monopolies” stickers.
Nationwide, the party’s election machinery trained its fire not only on Republicans, but on Big Tech data centers, price gouging monopolies, Wall Street home takeovers, AI surveillance pricing, and corporate consolidation in medicine, agriculture, groceries and beyond.
The victors – hardly all disciples of the progressive left – were united by a willingness to wage class war against concentrated economic power, echoing Texas progressive populist Jim Hightower: “Politics isn’t about left versus right, it’s about top versus bottom.” ....
For the leaders of the party’s corporate-funded think tanks and diminishing neoliberal wing, this is presenting a rather awkward problem: How to grapple with a party unifying against the very corporate interests they’ve spent years urging Democrats to accommodate?
Their answer is simple enough: Declare the winners to be moderates, claim the victory as their own, and post, post, post their way through it.
For over a week now, Matt Yglesias, Jonathan Chait and Third Way’s Jonathan Cowan have been trying to squeeze the populist surge into their well-worn “moderates win” narrative – claiming victory and vindication via a brand of politics that bears little resemblance to their own.
Jonathan Cowan, founder of the corporate-funded group Third Way, took a victory lap in The Wall Street Journal. It was inarguable, he said, that “moderates made both the Senate and House majority.” This week in The Atlantic, Chait recast the sweeping populist victory as crushing defeat for the progressive left, framing their exuberance at the results as “election denial.” And through it all, Matt Yglesias has been relentlessly arguing that progressives Abdul El-Sayed and Troy Jackson statistically underperformed in victory....
While President Barack Obama fused calls for post-partisan unity with progressive ambitions – hope and change – these new populists are fusing pragmatic coalition-building with explicit class confrontation – stop punching left and right, punch up.
It’s a distinction that runs beyond policy preferences and to a different mode of politics altogether.
Traditional moderates might promise competent management, incremental reform and political compromise. Populists are campaigning on the premise that the entire economic and political system is rigged and are demanding fundamental change.
They took public anger and channeled it toward billionaires, powerful corporations and the politicians who protect them – rather than simply railing against DC gridlock and government dysfunction.
And rather than seeking legitimacy through elite approval, reverence for institutions or bipartisan conventional wisdom, they’re earning credibility by breaking norms, confronting powerful interests and pledging to deliver results by any means necessary....
Semafor’s Dave Weigel summed it up well: “The left’s take here is that the winning messages came from them. Economic populism with no hemming and hawing a-la 2024. Its worry is that Schumer/Jeffries could run things like Keir Starmer, taking the mandate and futzing around, giving the populist right another opening.”
Christopher Armitage, Nov 09, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]
... On Nov. 8, 1994, Republicans picked up 54 House seats and eight Senate seats, their first House majority in 40 years. Gingrich had been working toward that night since 1990, when his training operation GOPAC mailed Republican candidates a memo titled "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control," written with the pollster Frank Luntz. The memo told candidates to memorize two word lists, one for talking about themselves and one for talking about Democrats, and to use them in every speech and every piece of mail. "Pathetic," "lie" and "traitors" went on the list for Democrats. Four years before the election, one party decided it would speak with one voice and trained its people to do it. That is the boring part of a revolution, and it is the part that worked.
The Contract came next. On Sept. 27, 1994, more than 300 Republican candidates stood on the Capitol steps and signed a one-page document promising floor votes on 10 bills in the first 100 days of the new Congress. The bottom of the page read, "If we break this contract, throw us out. We mean it." Nobody signs a platform. These guys signed a contract with a return policy.
Then, on their first day holding the gavel, they took a chainsaw to their own building. On Jan. 4, 1995, the new House cut committee staff by a third and eliminated three committees. The same day they took away the floor votes of the five nonvoting delegates, including the District of Columbia's. By the fall spending bill, the Republican chairman's own summary in the Congressional Record showed committee staff cut 33 percent and the Office of Technology Assessment eliminated for a $22 million savings. The General Accounting Office was slated for a 25 percent cut over two years. Congress fired the people who read the bills for them. Social scientists call this Congress's self-lobotomy, and the cuts were never reversed. A dumber Congress depends on lobbyists and on leadership for information, and Gingrich was leadership. None of this needed a Senate vote or Bill Clinton's signature. A House rules package passes by majority vote in one chamber on day one.
The House brought every item in the Contract to a floor vote inside the 100 days; the only failure was congressional term limits, which needed two-thirds. Gingrich told CNN on April 6, 1995, "We voted on all 10. We passed nine out of 10." The Senate slowed almost all of it, and Clinton vetoed the Balanced Budget Act of 1995 on Dec. 6, 1995, saying "I am vetoing the biggest Medicare and Medicaid cuts in history," and vetoed welfare reform twice before signing the third version in August 1996, so the laws signed in that first year were modest. Clinton signed the Congressional Accountability Act on Jan. 23, 1995, and the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act on March 22, 1995, per the constitutional scholar Louis Fisher's review in the New York Review of Books. The securities lawsuit limits became law over Clinton's veto on Dec. 22, 1995. The line-item veto and welfare reform followed in 1996. By the Contract’s second anniversary, in September 1996, Republicans were telling the House that two-thirds of the Contract was now law, and Clinton had already stood up at his 1996 State of the Union and declared the era of big government over. That November they became the first House Republican majority reelected since 1928, and they held the chamber for 12 years.
Gingrich was never trying to pass laws in those 100 days. He was building attack ads. Every House Democrat had to vote against poison pilled items such as the “balanced budget amendment,” against “welfare reform,” against a tax cut and against a “crime bill,” on camera, in the first spring of a presidential election cycle....
The Coming Democratic Party Battle On Taxing The Rich
Bob Lord and Sarah Christopherson, Nov 9, 2026 [The Lever]
...Will they take on the oligarchy? Will they tax the ultrarich? According to polling, even Republican voters overwhelmingly favor that approach.
Our prediction: The already giant chasm between the progressive and corporate wings of the party will widen — with the corporate wing already lining up behind purely performative measures that will do little to materially change the country’s existing balance of wealth and power.
The progressive wing has much of its tax policy agenda prepared. Three separate wealth tax bills have been introduced this session of Congress and are sure to be reintroduced in some form next session.
Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) Billionaires Income Tax Act, which requires billionaires to pay income tax on their stock gains annually, not 20 years later when they finally sell, or never if they die holding the stock, as under current law. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) likely will reintroduce their Equal Tax Act, which subjects all income over $1 million to the same top rate — that is, it requires rich Americans to pay the same rate on income from wealth as high-wage earners pay on income from work. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) likely will reintroduce the Working Americans Tax Cut Act, which exempts income up to the basic cost of living from federal income tax and recovers the revenue cost with a progressive surtax on income over $1 million.
Other bills are in the works. One is a Roosevelt Institute proposal to tax investment gains in a way that entirely neutralizes the worst loophole in the tax law — the ability to completely defer tax on investment gains until investments are sold — without running afoul of any constitutional concerns. This deferral loophole is what ensures that ultrabillionaires pay income tax at lower effective annual rates than most middle-class workers. If Jeff Bezos had sold off all his Amazon holdings at the end of 2025, he would have been left with the same amount of wealth as if he’d been taxed on his gains every year at just 4.8 percent and sold just enough shares to pay the tax. (For perspective, middle-class workers pay average effective federal income tax rates between 7.7 and 10.7 percent.)
But Corporate Democrats have very different plans in mind....
The corporate wing likely won’t be as brazenly dominant as it was during the Obama trifecta, when centrists flexed their power to undermine every progressive proposal, from the public option in healthcare reform to strong guardrails on Wall Street. Our organization, Patriotic Millionaires, arose from the refusal of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party to let George W. Bush’s tax-cut giveaway to the rich expire on schedule, even though Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House. Fifty-six wealthy Americans joined our founder in a letter pleading with the president to allow their taxes to increase for the good of the country. Instead, President Obama and corporate Democrats worked with Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts across the board in 2010 and even threw in a whopping increase in the exemption from federal estate tax.
Don't Let Centrists Rewrite History. Democrats Ran Against the Billionaires.
Eric Blanc, Nov 11, 2026 [Labor Politics]
My research found that 25 of the party’s 32 Senate candidates explicitly ran against the billionaire class. When Third Way says moderates won Democrats their majorities, they’re confused or lying.
[More Perfect Union, Nov 10, 2026]
Resistance
Anti-Oligarchy Activists Plan to Dox Elon Musk and Hundreds of Billionaire-Linked Homes
[Wired, via The Big Picture, November 08, 2026]
The Capytistas, a secretive group claiming more than $1.2 million in backing, started with Elon Musk and Tesla’s board. Members argue that those who buy political power deserve the scrutiny they’ll impose.
The City That Brought Down an ICE Airline
[American Prospect, via The Big Picture, November 12, 2026]
A follow-up on Omni Air International, the charter airline flying ICE’s longest deportation flights, and the local-government pension funds invested in it.
Civic republicanism
Cory Doctorow, November 09, 2026 [Pluralistic]
...there is no going back. Trump I didn't have a plan, it only had Trump, whose One Big Idea was issuing Executive Orders. Many of these were meaningless bloviating. Some were illegal and were swiftly suspended or never went into effect. Biden overturned nearly all the remaining EOs (that were both substantive and not totally illegal).
But Trump II had Project 2025. The point of Project 2025 and the ambition of the wreckers who wrote it was to push America through a series of one-way transformations that cannot be undone, and that's what's happened, over two short years. That's the bad news. The good news is that it's much easier to destroy than to build, so Project 2025 hasn't led to the creation of permanent, load-bearing fascist institutions that cannot be shuttered without bringing down large parts of the USA.
Start with values. Trumpism is a denial of democracy and the rule of law. Tens of millions of Americans have been marinated in a belief system that says that the way to win power is to claim all the elections you lose are rigged and that these "stolen elections" are best addressed by staging a coup. These people are in a cult that embraces its leader's naked corruption. They're in a cult whose doctrine treats political triumph of as divine direction to embark on looting sprees. It's a cult whose members mutilate their faces so that they can't ever leave, and the reward for this permanent disfigurement is endless influence-peddling:
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6136101-ambassador-guilfoyle-wire-request/
Even without ritual scarification to mark them out forever, millions of these people will never come back from this cult indoctrination. They will forever be democracy's enemies, treating the idea of laws, rules and honest service as shucks for the rubes. What's more, these people's neighbors, family members and co-workers will never be able to fully trust them.
Unfortunately, those values aren't just diffused through the population: they are concentrated in the organs of state. DOGE and Federalist Society judicial appointments have created a stay-behind cadre of life-tenured fascists who now dominate America's federal judiciary and permanent civil service, including and especially the nation's law enforcement and national security agencies, from the FBI to the FDA, the NSA to the Bureau of Prisons.
Worse: DOGE also chased away hundreds of thousands of skilled, principled public servants. Those people have retired, retrained, emigrated or exited the workforce. They can't simply be re-hired and restored to their old roles. From finance regulation to the national education system, America has lobotomized itself, swapping people who understand how things work and use that understanding to enforce the laws and safeguard the American people for end-times fascists, caliper-wielding eugenicists, and Ayn Rand LARPers.
Much of the work DOGE's victims did is also gone forever. When DOGE's muskrats killed long-running NIH research projects, they pulled the plug on studies, some of which had run for decades. Many of these experiments are unsalvageable. DOGE didn't just throw away the contributions that cancer patients, people with genetic disorders and other volunteer research subjects gave to science: in halting these research projects, DOGE shredded this selfless sacrifice. Why not? When one NIH official begged his DOGE invaders not to kill long-running, valuable cancer research, the DOGE child laughed and said it didn't matter, because AI was going to cure cancer....
Christian Accelerationism Is a Psyop Crafted to Destroy Any Host Country
Christopher Armitage, Nov 09, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]
Accelerationism is the belief that the fastest way to a new order is to make the current one fall apart faster. The Christian version adds a reason to want the fall: the end of the world is a promise, so a government coming apart is proof the promise is being kept. The question is whether that belief does to a country what a foreign psychological operation (psyop) does, and whether anyone built it on purpose. The answer depends on who built and paid for the movement, and on what the people in it say they want from the state. We read the polling, the hacked emails, the sanctions records and the movement’s own speeches, and they come in that order below....
About one third of Americans qualified as Christian nationalism adherents or sympathizers on PRRI’s five-question scale. Among Republicans the figure was 56 percent of the party. Among adherents, 73 percent called President Donald Trump a strong leader who should be given the power he needs. PRRI also found that adherents and sympathizers score high on their Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale, which scores how strongly a person wants to submit to authority and punish people who break the rules....
An American founder, two Russian co-founders, sanctioned Russian money and 31 years of exchange visits are the parts of a designed operation. A psyop changes what a population believes in order to change what it does, and this one fits the definition.
The damage to the host is the easiest part to show, because the movement’s own leaders describe their goals. Peter Thiel is the billionaire who gave $15 million to the super PAC that backed Vice President JD Vance’s 2022 Senate campaign, and the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi reported that he has given private lectures arguing that attempts to regulate artificial intelligence align with the Antichrist.
A man who believes regulation is satanic cannot support a government that regulates. A voter who believes Trump should be given whatever power he needs cannot support a court that tells him no. Every institution that makes a republic work becomes, in this theology, an obstacle to the end of the world....
Christopher Armitage, Nov 12, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]
What does holding power do to the person who accepts or seeks it? Researchers have measured the answer in the brain circuits of mice, the blood of monkeys, the speech of British prime ministers and the prices chief executive officers, CEOs, paid in 106 corporate takeovers. So I read those studies, along with the psychology experiments on power, two famous failures included.
Below, we go through the science on the mice, the monkeys, the prime ministers and the CEOs in that order, then the psychology, and finally the cases where people limited the change or reversed it. Then we look at what practical lessons might be found from what we just learned....
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