Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – April 13, 2025
by Tony Wikrent
Trump not violating any law
'He who saves his Country does not violate any Law'
‘We’re Not Stopping’: Trump Border Czar Vows to Ignore Judges
[The Daily Beast, via MSN 03-18-2025]
Team Trump Is Gaming Out How to Ship U.S. Citizens to El Salvador
Nikki McCann Ramirez, Asawin Suebsaeng, Andrew Perez, April 12, 2025 [Rolling Stone]
Trump said last weekend he would “love” to send American criminals there — and would even be “honored” to, depending on “what the law says.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed this week that the president has discussed this idea privately, too, adding he would only do this “if it’s legal.” ….
The Trump administration is indeed discussing this idea behind the scenes, two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Rolling Stone. In their most serious form, these conversations have revolved around attempting to denaturalize American citizens and deport them to other countries, including El Salvador….
Shortly after stepping back into office, Trump personally directed at least one lawyer working in his administration to look into deporting American citizens via denaturalization processes, telling aides that it is a “good idea” for certain cases, according to one of the sources, who is a Trump appointee. In one of his many Day One executive orders, Trump instructed his administration to move on cases described in a federal statute regarding “revocation of naturalization.”….
Several of Trump’s most important advisers, including White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, continue to internally advocate for mass-denaturalization initiatives that they believe were squandered in Trump’s first stint in the Oval Office.For instance, the sources add, Trump administration officials have discussed possibly denaturalizing and deporting activists and other individuals whom they label as having committed so-called “fraud” on their applications for citizenship by subsequently supporting what Team Trump decides are “pro-terrorist” causes or groups — similar to the specious arguments they’ve made to justify stripping pro-Palestine student activists of their green cards or visas.According to these sources, Trump administration attorneys and some senior appointees have also discussed potential legal justifications and technicalities they can exploit for denaturalizing citizens who are accused or convicted of certain crimes, especially if the Justice Department or other offices deems their offenses to be gang-related….Mike Davis, a close Trump ally and a fixture among the MAGA legal elite, tells Rolling Stone, “I have advocated very publicly that if you are a current Hamas supporter and you were naturalized within the last 10 years, the Justice Department should move forward with denaturalization proceedings to get them the hell out of our country. Denaturalization has been on the books for a very long time. If you lie on your citizenship application, denaturalization is a consequence.”When asked if there is any precedent in the last several decades for this kind of crackdown effort, he replies: “I hope this is groundbreaking. I hope Trump and his team are trail blazers on this. Hamas supporters can go to hell and in the meantime they need to get the hell out of our country.”
Trump’s Horrifying Removal of Man in “Error” Takes an Even Darker Turn
Greg Sargent, April 12, 2025 [The New Republic]
On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a simple directive to the U.S. government. Or it would have been simple, anyway, if President Donald Trump weren’t engaged in such rampant lawlessness. The high court said the administration should be prepared to say what steps it has taken to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia—the Maryland man whom the government itself admits was deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador in “error.”
The government still hasn’t answered that basic question. On Friday, the administration refused to honor a judicial order—delivered by a lower court in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling—to provide a response to it….
All along, the administration has had the option of moving to return Abrego Garcia to the United States and then trying again to deport him via conventional legal processes—which, ironically enough, could result in his removal anyway, in a more lawful manner.
Why hasn’t the government taken that simple step? That question is the bigger, darker one underlying this whole saga….
It’s not hard to guess at the administration’s motives here. Bringing Abrego Garcia back to U.S. soil—and then arguing he should again be removed to El Salvador—is a case the administration might lose. Or if the administration sought to remove him to a third country, that would allow Abrego Garcia to challenge that effort.
Either path would unleash an even bigger media spectacle. It would mean more coverage of Abrego Garcia’s marriage to a U.S. citizen and the couple’s autistic child. It would mean more attention to his longtime ties to a local Maryland community—he’s lived there 14 years, after initially entering illegally in 2011—even as the administration redoubled removal efforts.
It would also mean more pressure on the administration to present actual evidence of the claim that he’s a gang member. Vice President JD Vance and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt have worked themselves up into paroxysms of phony outrage in making this charge. Why don’t they want it reexamined within lawful channels?
Trump Team Prepping New Strategy for Domestic Terrorism
Ken Klippenstein, April 10, 2025
The Trump administration is quietly drafting a bold new strategy for combating terrorism that targets a wide range of perceived foes, from Tesla vandals to everyday protesters, intelligence sources say.
White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka is leading the effort, which covers both foreign and domestic strategies. Gorka recently boasted that the president has “done a 180 on our counterterrorism policy.” He’s also been quite candid in comparing his political opponents to terrorists, as I’ve written about.
The domestic focus derives from the view that foreign control, antisemitism and a conspiracy against Donald Trump are behind everything from Gaza protests to Planned Parenthood. White House insiders firmly believe that protestors are being “paid” to disrupt the Trump agenda, the same sources say.
“I think when they catch these people, you'll find they're paid by highly political people on the left," President Trump said last month. Attorney General Pam Bondi echoed the view, saying, of Tesla vandals: “If you're funding this, we're coming after you.”
'Outrageous Abuse of Power': Trump Weaponizes Social Security for Deportation Spree
Jake Johnson, April 11, 2025 [CommonDreams]
The Trump administration this week reportedly classified thousands of immigrants living in the United States as dead in a Social Security database in an effort to force them out of the country, a scheme that was met with furious uproar from advocates and lawmakers.
By entering the names and Social Security numbers of roughly 6,000 immigrants into Social Security's "death master file," the administration has revoked their ability to legally work in the U.S. and receive benefits in a bid to get them to "self-deport," several news outlets reported Thursday.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk Are Weaponizing Social Security
[Social Security Works, April, 10 2025, via CommonDreams]
...When Social Security incorrectly declares someone dead, it ruins their lives. In 2023, a Maryland woman was wrongly declared dead and found her health insurance and Social Security benefits terminated, her home listed for sale, her credit cards canceled, and her water shut off. Her health deteriorated as she spent endless hours trying to undo the mistake. Indeed, she did actually die seven months later.
This is the situation that Trump and Musk plan to intentionally place legal migrants in. With one million migrants becoming naturalized citizens every year, American citizens will likely fall victim, as well.
With this move, along with using Social Security for political revenge on Maine’s governor, Trump and Musk are weaponizing Social Security. If they get away with this, it would be no surprise if they then move on to marking their perceived enemies as dead — citizens and non-citizens alike.
Trump Orders Nearly 1 Million Migrants Who Entered US Legally to Leave Now
Brett Wilkins, April 08, 2025 [CommonDreams]
ICE under Trump is attacking labor rights by targeting a farmworker advocate
Margaret Poydock and Daniel Costa, April 4, 2025 [Economic Policy Institute]
Last week, ICE agents violently removed organizer and advocate Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez from his car while dropping his partner off at work. Juarez is well known in Washington state for fighting for farmworkers’ basic rights, such as overtime pay and protections from extreme heat. Although Juarez lacks an immigration status and had an order of removal dating back to 2018, he had no criminal record and was thus likely targeted for his work with workers’ rights organizations. He is currently being held in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.
Trump Anoints Himself With The Power To Secretly Repeal Regulations
Nicole Lafond, Kate Riga, Khaya Himmelman and Emine Yücel, April 12, 2025 [Talking Points Memo]
No longer content to simply rip up the federal government, President Trump is now reaching into the past to undo agency regulations by fiat.
“In effectuating repeals of facially unlawful regulations, agency heads shall finalize rules without notice and comment,” read Wednesday’s presidential memo, using a narrow exception in the Administrative Procedure Act to do away with requirements that alert the public to the government’s actions….
In legitimizing this silent erasure, Trump cites recent Supreme Court cases including Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which dealt a death blow to agency deference but was explicitly future-oriented and not permitted to be retroactively applied to old regulations….
Trump’s Latest Executive Order Lays Bare His Authoritarian Ambitions
Thom Hartmann, April 10, 2025 [The New Republic]
His directive to the Justice Department to investigate Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, whose only crimes were telling the truth, is a frontal assault on the rule of law.
Nacht und Nebel: Erik Prince, “Big Balls” & the Second Holocaust
Jim Stewartson, April 12, 2025 [MindWar]
A pipeline to disappear opponents of the regime is being constructed. Who will stop it?
The Clear and Present Danger to the American Rule of Law
Richard Zitrin, April 8 2025 [The Intercept]
David Corn, April 8, 2025 [Mother Jones]
Men DOGEbags at Work
DOGE Is Planning a Hackathon at the IRS. It Wants Easier Access to Taxpayer Data
[Wired, via Naked Capitalism 04-06-2025]
DOGE Arrives at FDIC but Doesn’t Have Access to Bank Data
[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 04-11-2025]
'Welcome to the Oligarchy Era': Social Security Administration Switches Communications to Musk's X
Jessica Corbett, April 11, 2025 [CommonDreams]
By Moving Communications to X, Trump and Musk Renew Attack on Social Security
DOGE staff arrives at Peace Corps HQ, signaling possible cuts
[FoNBC, via MSN 04-06-2025]
Trump seeks to end climate research at premier U.S. climate agency
[Science, via Naked Capitalism 04-12-2025]
Exclusive: Musk's DOGE using AI to snoop on U.S. federal workers, sources say
Alexandra Ulmer, Marisa Taylor, Jeffrey Dastin and Alexandra Alper, April 8, 2025 [reuters, via The Lever]
DOGE drive didn’t just affect federal workers; Deloitte, Accenture, among hardest hit
[Mint, via Naked Capitalism 04-06-2025]
An Interview With An Epidemiologist Who Lost Her Job Because Of The DOGE Layoffs
[Defector, via Naked Capitalism 04-06-2025]
Strategic Political Economy
The Smoot-Hawley Tariffs Did Not Cause the Great Depression. Austerity Did.
Dougald Lamont, Apr 11, 2025
The economic arguments about the impacts of tariffs keep getting compared to a bill introduced in the Depression by two Republican congressmen - Hawley and Smoot - who sought to stop the bleeding with tariffs. Experts, pundits, journalists and partisans all keep repeating the same claim that these tariffs are to blame for the Great Depression.
The problem with this argument is that it’s not accurate. Not only is their evidence that the tariffs were not the problem, and that austerity was - there have been a string of more recent financial crises since 1989 that tell a completely different, and more accurate story that no one else is telling….
The idea that Smoot Hawley tariffs are to blame comes from a very specific, laissez-faire economic viewpoint. It’s the idea that any government action is bound to create “friction” and mess things up in the otherwise smoothly-flowing machine of a market. It blames government interference in the market as being the problem for everything, including running deficits to get the economy going again when it has collapsed.
So the same economists who believe that Smoot Hawley was to blame for the Depression don’t blame the decision to try to keep trying to balance the budget, even when 9,000 banks had failed and unemployment had increased by 20%….
Ha-Joon Chang writes that… “The tariff increase by Smoot-Hawley was not dramatic - it raised the average US industrial tariff from 37 per cent to 48 per cent. Nor did it cause a massive tariff war. Except for a few economically weak countries such as Italy and Spain, trade protectionism did not increase very much following Smoot-Hawley. Most importantly, studies show that the main reason for the collapse in international trade after 1929 was not tariff increases but the downward spiral in international demand, caused by the adherence by the governments of the core capitalist economies to the doctrine of balanced budget.' “ ….
In effect, there has been an ideological and economic denial that FDR’s New Deal is what got the US out of the Depression, which is in defiance of reality and history. There is no question that FDR’s actions and policies in the U.S., as well as the actions and policies of Mackenzie King in Canada after 1935 made colossal differences in reviving the economies of both countries….
[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 04-06-2025]
IF U.S. incomes spiked 69%, we'd return to pre-pandemic housing affordability levels IF U.S. home prices fell 41%, we'd return to pre-pandemic affordability IF mortgage rates fell 4.3 percentage points, we'd return to pre-pandemic affordability
Global power shift
Col. Larry Wilkerson: Think the U.S. can beat Iran? Yemen just crushed that illusion
[Dialogue Works, via Naked Capitalism 04-09-2025]
[Yves Smith: “Important. Contains very good discussion of economic, military, and political fractures in Israel.”]
China Approves First Autonomous Flying Taxis, Kicking Off a New Era of Urban Air Mobility
[The Droid Guy, April 6, 2025]
In a move that redefines what’s possible in modern transportation, China has officially approved the world’s first commercial autonomous flying taxis. This landmark decision puts China at the forefront of the urban air mobility (UAM) race, granting air operator certificates to EHang Holdings and Hefei Hey Airlines for their unmanned passenger aircraft.
Shanghai port completes first-ever ship-to-ship bio-methanol bunkering
WANG YING, 2025-04-01 [chinadaily.com.cn]
Gaza / Palestine / Israel
Chris Hedges, April 12, 2025
Israel is poised to carry out the largest campaign of ethnic cleansing since the end of World War II. Since March 2, it has blocked all food and humanitarian aid into Gaza and cut off electricity, so that the last water desalination plant no longer functions. The Israeli military has seized half of the territory — Gaza is 25 miles long and four to five miles wide — and placed two-thirds of Gaza under displacement orders, rendered “no-go zones,” including the border town of Rafah, which is encircled by Israeli troops.
On Friday Defence Minister Israel Katz announced that Israel will “intensify” the war against Hamas and use “all military and civilian pressure, including evacuation of the Gaza population south and implementing United States President [Donald] Trump’s voluntary migration plan for Gaza residents.”
With Bakeries and Kitchens All But Shut Down, Desperate Hunger Engulfs Gaza
Hamza M. Salha, April 09, 2025 [Drop Site]
Leaked Data Reveals Massive Israeli Campaign to Remove Pro-Palestine Posts on Facebook and Instagram
Waqas Ahmed, Nicholas Rodelo, Ryan Grim, and Murtaza Hussain, Apr 11, 2025 [Drop Site]
Oligarchy
Video of Trump Bragging About Enriching His Billionaire Pals Draws Outrage
Jake Johnson, April 11, 2025 [CommonDreams]
Viewpoint: Why Oligarchs Want a Recession
[Labor Notes, via Naked Capitalism 04-10-2025]
...Trump has simply been carrying out the promises he’s long made. His global tariff plan, for example, was outlined in 2023. Why, then, have C-suiters remained quiet cheerleaders for Trump while he implemented an economic vision that no sane person would endorse?
Because lavish tax cuts, deregulation, and an environment friendly to union-busting are just as valuable to most CEOs as a growing economy. What they lose in the stock market, they will more than make up in surplus labor, a fire sale on distressed assets, and Trump’s promise to totally eliminate the capital gains tax.
The rich are not a monolith, but the financiers and tech oligarchs (very rich businesspeople with political power) closest to the Trump administration accumulate wealth not necessarily by producing things or investing in societal infrastructure, but rather through a mix of speculation (gambling), amassing predatory private equity, and corporate welfare from the government.
The MAGA-aligned capitalists no longer require a healthy national economy to build their wealth. The working class still does. From their perspective, an economic downturn will punish labor. Win-win, for them. So now the interests of America’s ruling class are almost entirely contrary to advancing labor’s well-being….
The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics
Student Loans Update: Government May Garnish Millions of Borrowers’ Wages
[Newsweek, via Naked Capitalism 04-11-2025]
Debt data portal of debt justice
[CADTM, via Naked Capitalism 04-12-2025]
Trumpillnomics
Direct economics — the great Maga experiment
Quinn Slobodian, FT, via Naked Capitalism 04-06-2025]
The arbitrariness of the tariffs is a feature not a bug in the plan to short-circuit the financial establishment….
Similar to plebiscites and referendums, direct economics seeks to do an end run around experts and incumbents and communicate straight to individual citizens and voters. It tries to demystify what have long been naturalised processes captured in stock market indices, interest rates and even fiat currency, to expose these as mere tools of the elites in further oppressing the true people.
We can see direct economics in action in three different ways. First is the centralisation of executive power in US President Donald Trump’s tariff policy. The arbitrariness of his tariff announcements is taken as a demerit by many. Yet arguably, from the point of view of direct economics, it is this very arbitrariness that is their strength.When European traders have to wait until Trump wakes up to know what the flow of the markets will be for the day, this is not a sign of weakness for him but of power. It shows that the abstract ideas of “most favoured nation” treatment or multilateral sovereignty pooling were always shadows on the face of US omnipotence and the president’s capacity to shift action at a global level.
China Just Turned Off U.S. Supplies Of Minerals Critical For Defense & Cleantech
[CleanTech, via Naked Capitalism 04-08-2025]
A deadly mosquito-borne illness rises as the US cuts all climate-health funding
Zoya Teirstein [Grist]
Climate change is driving an explosion in dengue cases. Studying that connection is about to get much harder.
Jaguar Land Rover stops exporting to USA as Trump Tariffs come into force
[Bristol Live, via Naked Capitalism 04-06-2025]
Gary Marcus [via Naked Capitalism 04-08-2025]
Health care crisis
U.S. maternal mortality rate increased 27% over five years, NIH study finds
[STAT, via Naked Capitalism 04-10-2025]
Tuberculosis Is Back in the Spotlight. Does the U.S. Even Care?
[MedPage Today, via Naked Capitalism 04-10-2025]
[The Gauntlet, via Naked Capitalism 04-10-2025]
Information age dystopia / surveillance state
Zuckerberg on the Stand: The Trial to Break Up Facebook Starts Monday
Matt Stoller [BIG, via Naked Capitalism 04-11-2025]
OpenAI’s Motion to Dismiss Copyright Claims Rejected by Judge
[ars technica, via Naked Capitalism 04-06-2025]
[TechDirt, via Naked Capitalism 04-11-2025]
Collapse of independent news media
Corporate Media Minimize Massive Hands Off! Protests
[FAIR, via Naked Capitalism 04-10-2025]
The San Francisco Chronicle and the Astroturf Network
[The Phoenix Project, via Naked Capitalism 04-10-2025]
...Garcia-Ruiz’s tenure at the Chronicle coincided with the rise of the Astroturf Network, a phenomenon covered extensively by the Phoenix Project and smart reporters like independent journalist Gil Duran. It is a story the Chronicle has chosen to ignore and has, indeed, enabled.
Today, San Francisco’s “broligarchs,” as they have become known, have surrounded President Donald Trump. They are beginning to realize aims that are deeply anti-democratic. Many of the moneyed tech crowd want nothing less than to exit democracy, the better to avoid government regulations and taxes. At their behest, President Trump has floated the idea of “Freedom Cities” that will do just that. Among the first sites proposed was the Presidio here in San Francisco.
By the time Garcia-Ruiz unpacked his bags and assumed his new role, a handful of lavishly funded political groups — including GrowSF, Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, and TogetherSF — were well along on a project to convince voters that the city was failing due to progressive governance….
Climate and environmental crises
“Putting a price on nature opens the door to its financialisation, not its protection”
[REDDMonitor, via Naked Capitalism 04-08-2025]
Trump officials quietly move to reverse bans on toxic ‘forever chemicals’
[Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 04-08-2025]
Democrats' political malpractice
[TW: Democrats and progressives are stuck in the neoliberal trade trap.]
Why Aren’t You Supporting the Trump Tariffs?
Les Leopold, April 10, 2025
Take your pick:
1. They will lead to a destructive trade war.
2. They will lead to a massive economic depression, like the 1930s.
3. They will make prices and unemployment rise at the same time, like in the 1970s.
4. They will disappear our savings and pensions as the stock market craters, like in 1929.
5. And to save democracy, WE SHOULD NEVER SUPPORT TRUMP ON ANYTHING!
The United Autoworkers (UAW), one of the most progressive unions in the country, isn’t buying any of this. For now, it supports the Trump tariffs on cars and trucks. As the UAW puts it:
“This is a long-overdue shift away from a harmful economic framework that has devastated the working class and driven a race to the bottom across borders in the auto industry. It signals a return to policies that prioritize the workers who build this country—rather than the greed of ruthless corporations.”
….For more than thirty years, the UAW and other unions and progressives have fought free trade deals like NAFTA, adopted in 1994, which in the succeeding decades have brutally undermined American working-class jobs and communities, especially in the industrial areas of the Midwest.
The argument against free trade was simple: Allowing corporations to flee easily and rapidly to low-wage countries put them in a competitive race to the bottom in pursuit of cheaper wages and less costly working conditions. This was especially true in the better-paid U.S. manufacturing industries. Company negotiators threatened job relocation or reductions in virtually every collective bargaining effort with industrial unions.
Corporations said it again and again: “Accept wage and benefit concessions or we’ll move the plant to Mexico.”
….Progressive Democrats are stuck with a painful dilemma. If they oppose the tariffs across the board, they will be siding with the financiers and CEOs who have profited wildly from low or no tariffs, and have ushered in runaway inequality and increasing job insecurity. (See Wall Street’s War on Workers.)
But Democrats on the left so detest Trump, that it’s nearly impossible for them to join with the UAW to support the tariffs. Unless a new path is forged, progressives will find themselves in an unholy alliance with the Wall Street neoliberals and against the working-class, sounding the death knell for any kind of progressive-worker alliance to build an alternative to Trumpism.
Matt Taibbi, April 11, 2025 [Racket News]
...I’ve always had an uncomfortable relationship with the Trump phenomenon. At the best of times, I find him puzzling and maybe dangerous, even when he’s being funny or taking aim at deserving targets.
Now he’s president and people seem reflexively to want more criticism of him, but on this issue, what choice is there? The global economy created by both parties from the eighties onward was not only designed to be a giant predatory clusterfuck, but nearly impossible to unwind. Forget “incrementally,” it’s got to be exploded. Would more of the same and a slow death be better?
Elections Aren't About Compromise— They're About Power... Let the Consultants Burn
Howie Klein, April 11, 2025 [downwithtyranny.com]
“The people who really decided the 2024 election, wrote Kali Holloway, are the ones who didn’t vote at all— and they could hold the key to a Democratic comeback. Holloway urges Democrats to dump the consultant class, which has gotten spectacularly wealthy and delivered disaster to the Democrats who generally only win despite them— in blue wave elections…. “The Democrats’ takeaway from Trump’s victory should be that a party’s political priorities must resonate with the identities of its base. But they have fundamentally misunderstood this assignment, yet again. The consequences of that misunderstanding— or refusal to understand— were reflected in 2024’s turnout, when, by some estimates, a staggering 19 million people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 stayed home. It’s not that Dem voters became Republican en masse this election. In fact, in ‘nearly a third of the top 50 counties that flipped from Democrat to Republican, Trump’s vote actually declined from his 2020 numbers,’… Trump increased his vote total by just 2.8 million over 2020. The far bigger problem was Harris’s nearly 7 million vote shortfall compared with Biden four years ago.”
Free Speech and the Apocalypse
Scott Ritter [via Naked Capitalism 04-12-2025]
Conservative / Libertarian / (anti)Republican Drive to Civil War
House GOP Passes Bill That Moves Toward Making Trump a 'King With Unlimited Power'
Julia Conley, April 10, 2025 [CommonDreams]
...The bill, which passed 219-213, with only Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) joining Democrats in opposing it, would limit U.S. District Court judges' ability to issue nationwide injunctions blocking President Donald Trump's executive orders.
The legislation was proposed by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) after federal judges blocked several actions by Trump, including his executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship, his mass expulsion of immigrants to El Salvador's prison system, his freeze on federal grants and loans, and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) mass firings of federal employees.
'Bloodless Coup': NC Supreme Court Partially Upholds GOP Vote-Tossing Effort
Olivia Rosane, April 12, 2025 [CommonDreams]
Congress Stops CFPB From Capping Overdraft Fees, Monitoring Big Tech
David Dayen April 9, 2025 [The American Prospect]
The House of Representatives passed resolutions Wednesday that will nullify two Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rules. As a result, low-income customers will pay an estimated $5 billion more annually in overdraft fees, and Big Tech will get to pursue its ambitions to make payment apps and other financial services products with little regulatory oversight.
The resolutions, which have already passed the Senate and will now head to President Trump, use the powers under the Congressional Review Act to reverse regulatory actions taken by executive branch agencies submitted after a certain date. Once passed, the CRA resolutions both nullify the rule and prevent agencies from taking “substantially similar” actions in the future. President Trump signed 16 CRA resolutions in his first term, and two so far in 2025.
Liberty For Me, Control For Thee— Big Brother Wears A Red Hat Made In China Now
Howie Klein, April 10, 2025 [downwithtyranny.com]
With Musk’s lightning speed takeover of everyone’s private, personal files for Trump… authoritarian tendencies are sure trumping any left-over libertarian tendencies in the MAGA-dominated Republican Party. “The federal government,” reported Emily Badger and Sheera Frenkel, “knows your mother’s maiden name and your bank account number. The student debt you hold. Your disability status. The company that employs you and the wages you earn there. And that’s just a start. It may also know your
Active-duty military status
Addiction treatment records
Adjusted gross income
Adopted child’s name
Adverse credit history
Alimony paid
Business debts canceled or forgiven
Charitable contributions
Child support received
Country of birth
Country of citizenship
Credit and debit card numbers
Criminal history
Date of birth
Date of hiring
Dependent Social Security numbers
Disability entitlement
Driver’s license or state ID number
Effective tax rate
Employer name
Employment termination dates
Farm income/loss
Foreign business partners
Full name
Gambling income
Health provider name and number
High school
Home/personal phone number
Incarceration status
IP address
Marital status
Marriage certificate
Medical diagnoses
Mother’s maiden name
Moving expenses
Nonresident alien status
Parent educational attainment
Passport number
Personal bank account number
Personal email address
Personal taxpayer ID number
Place of birth
Prior status in foster care
Reason for separation (for unemployment claims)
Social Security number
Sources of income
Spouse’s demographic information
Student loan defaults
Taxable I.R.A. distributions
U.S. visa number
and at least 264 more categories of data.“These intimate details about the personal lives of people who live in the United States are held in disconnected data systems across the federal government— some at the Treasury, some at the Social Security Administration and some at the Department of Education, among other agencies.“The Trump administration is now trying to connect the dots of that disparate information. Last month, Trump signed an executive order calling for the “consolidation” of these segregated records, raising the prospect of creating a kind of data trove about Americans that the government has never had before, and that members of the president’s own party have historically opposed.
“The effort is being driven by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and his lieutenants with the Department of Government Efficiency, who have sought access to dozens of databases as they have swept through agencies across the federal government. Along the way, they have elbowed past the objections of career staff, data security protocols, national security experts and legal privacy protections.”
The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution
Will the Supreme Court Crash the Global Economy?
Simon Lazarus, April 13, 2025 [The New Republic]
On April 10, Chief Justice John Roberts placed a case on the Supreme Court’s docket that could potentially entrench far more devastating and irremediable damage to the global economy than Trump’s tariffs….
The case in question consolidates two litigations challenging Trump’s firing of commissioners of, respectively, the National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB (Wilcox v. Trump), and the Merit Systems Protection Board, or MSPB (Harris v. [Treasury Secretary Scott] Bessent). Both of the terminated officials are covered by statutory for-cause-only removal safeguards. Trump and his legal minions acknowledge that there was no basis for removing either official in the requirements specified in the applicable statutes; both officials had exemplary performance records, which plainly failed to meet the identical criteria in both statutes that permit removal only for “inefficiency, neglect, or malfeasance.”
Nonetheless, Trump’s Justice Department lawyers maintain that he can ignore these strictures because the Constitution bars Congress from placing any limits on his ability to fire agency heads for any reason or no reason. “The President,” Solicitor General John Sauer told the justices in his brief, “should not be forced to delegate his executive power to agency heads who are demonstrably at odds with the Administration’s policy objectives for a single day.”….
Of the two, the calamitous-consequences barrier, while as yet only fleetingly acknowledged by the justices, is no doubt the most daunting. In particular, two words give that prospect intimidating force. Those words are the Fed. As legal scholar Stephen Vladeck recently wrote, “The not-very-well-kept secret is that the justices are (understandably) wary about handing down a ruling that would allow any President, and perhaps this one in particular, to exercise direct control over U.S. monetary policy by controlling who sits on the Federal Reserve Board.” Since the original Framers’ establishment of the first and, especially, the second Bank of the United States, a broad and bipartisan consensus has hardened, in the U.S. as well as every industrialized nation, that an independent central bank with far-reaching powers is essential to maintaining monetary stability and sustaining economic growth….
Makers of Rent-Setting Software Sue California City Over Ban
[Associated Press, via Naked Capitalism 04-06-2025]
[TW: So, now that the (anti)Federalist Society reinterpretation of the Constitution is nearly complete, and with Trump in the White House, corporations have begun arguing that price fixing is merely an exercise of free speech.]
Civic republicanism
Trust and the End of the American Empire
Jim Stewartson wrote on April 7, 2025
The Executive Branch is simultaneously too weak, and too strong. Put a man in the presidency who adheres to norms and institutions and the worst crime in modern American political history, January 6th, goes totally unpunished — except for the foot soldiers. Put a malignant narcissist in the presidency who has no regard for anything but his own power and you get the unrecoverable disaster we see around us. Neither of these is acceptable.
Resistance
Not Just Unions; Strike-Ready Unions
Hamilton Nolan, April 12, 2025 [How Things Work]
The power to withhold your labor—the power of the strike—is the seed of all worker power. If you are a poor working person with no economic resources or political connections, what leverage do you have against your richer, better connected, more legally protected boss? The answer is: your leverage is your own work….
...since 1935, unions in America have existed not in a Wild West world where the strike was the only way to get things done, but in a world where there are intelligible laws and government agencies that mediate the employer-labor relationship. Contracts and laws and NLRB regulations became the dominant playing field of union power. Strikes still happened, but an overriding purpose of labor law has been to encourage “labor peace”—to minimize the need for work disruptions.
Today’s labor movement is the product of 90 years of this dynamic. Today’s big unions have been built to operate and wield power in the context of these rules. Most major unions are more commonly engaged in legal fights (where courts and regulators decide the limits of worker power) and political fights (to pick the referees who will ultimately write the government’s rules) than in strikes.
This is even more true in the public sector, which represents about half of union membership in America today. Millions of federal, state, and local government workers are legally prohibited from striking. Their unions are primarily administrative entities that negotiate and oversee contracts. These unions, to varying degrees, are the embodiment of the premise that organized labor power can exist in the absence of the strike—that laws, contracts, and regulations are enough to guarantee workers their rights.
That premise turns out to be false. We are now living through a brutal demonstration of its emptiness. The Trump administration, which cares only about power and not at all about the traditional niceties of law and public relations, has begun simply throwing union contracts in the trash and declaring that existing federal unions do not exist after all, because the boss says so. This is the worst thing that a boss could possibly do to a union. It should prompt the strongest response. If anything should cause a union to strike, it is this….
If working people agree to act in solidarity and have the willingness to strike, they can strike, and nobody can stop them. And if they have thought carefully about their leverage, and they act wisely, they can win that strike, no matter what the law says. Ask all the teachers who won their illegal strikes all across America in 2018. For that matter, ask any sanitation worker. If they stop picking up the garbage long enough, they will have their demands met. Think about power, not laws made by people who are out to destroy you….
Crossing the U.S. Border? Here’s How to Protect Yourself
Nikita Mazurov, Matt Sledge, March 29, 2025 [The Intercept]
Searches of phones and other electronics are on the rise for those entering the U.S. Take these steps to help secure your devices.
Managing Unexpected ICE Visits: Best Practices for Employers
March 19, 2025 [IndustryWeek]
