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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 21, 2026
by Tony Wikrent
War
US Finally Capitulates with ‘Memorandum’ of Surrender
Simplicius [via Naked Capitalism 06-17-2026]
Iran Enlisted “Senior Psychologists” to Help Craft Messages to Trump Ahead of Agreement
[Jeremy Scahill, June 15, 2026 [DropSite]
… “We added two senior psychologists to the negotiations’ advisory circle so that we can shape messages intended for President Trump from the perspective of managing what we regard as psychopathic behavior pattern,” an Iranian official told Drop Site. He said the psychologists began assisting Iranian negotiators following the initial round of bilateral talks in Islamabad in April as the two sides began exchanging proposed terms for a potential Memorandum of Understanding.
“[Trump’s] reactions have improved noticeably since we began incorporating the recommendations of these advisers into our messages and written communications,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.
“Because the exchanged texts will ultimately become part of the historical record, we conduct our negotiations in a manner that ensures the relative weight and sophistication of each party’s negotiating techniques will be evident should these communications be made public in the years ahead,” the official added….
The Race for Hypersonic Missiles
[Wall Street Journal, via Naked Capitalism 06-16-2026]
The Future of Warfare is Coming Faster Than Most Think
Karl Sanchez [via Naked Capitalism 06-15-2026]
Ukraine’s Naval Drone Program: Origins, Development, and the Organizations Behind It
[Black Mountain Analysis, via Naked Capitalism 06-15-2026]
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 14, 2026
by Tony Wikrent
War
‘Sounds a Lot Like a Nuclear Threat’: Trump Floats ‘Ultimate Alternative’ If Iran Talks Collapse
Jake Johnson, June 13, 2026 [CommonDreams]
President Donald Trump claimed Saturday that the US and Iran are on track to sign a diplomatic agreement this weekend, but added that “we have the ultimate alternative” if the process doesn’t “work out.”
“The ‘ultimate alternative’ sounds a lot like a nuclear threat,” Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, wrote in response to the president’s Truth Social post. “Not the first time Trump has hinted at it.”
Trump not violating any laws
‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’ Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’ Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025
Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein File
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, June 10, 2026 [New York Times]
On July 17, 2025, at around 6 o’clock in the evening, President Trump’s top officials filed into the White House Situation Room — the secure bunker where classified and high-stakes national security matters are discussed and decided. This was where President Barack Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the president’s national security team, watched the raid that ended with the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011.Now, however, Trump’s most senior advisers had gathered — without him — to figure out how to gain some measure of control over a very different kind of crisis threatening to engulf the presidency: the Epstein files….
Mike Brock, Jun 10, 2026 [Notes from the Circus]
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have a book coming out. The book is called Time Change, and Simon & Schuster has put substantial weight behind it, and the New York Times Magazine has run the set-piece excerpt this morning. The piece is framed, with the careful gentleness of the trade, as an inside look at the White House freakout over the Epstein files. The frame is not what the piece is.
What the piece is is a scene. The scene is the John F. Kennedy Conference Room inside the White House Situation Room complex, on the evening of July 17, 2025, at approximately six in the evening. The Vice President of the United States is in the chair. Around the table are the Chief of Staff, the Counsel, the Press Secretary, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications, the Communications Director, the Deputy Attorney General, a personal attorney to the President, another personal attorney to the President, and the Deputy Chief of Staff for Legislative, Political, and Public Affairs. On speakerphone — on speakerphone, the detail to which I will return — are the Attorney General of the United States and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The President is not in the room. The President is not in the building.
The Vice President says, this is a significant issue. He is described by people who were present as visibly anxious. He is, according to the reporting, advocating internally for the full release of all Epstein-related files held by the Justice Department, and for a congressional inquiry. The Chief of Staff has told colleagues, in some venue or other that Haberman and Swan have access to, that the Vice President has shown tendencies toward conspiracy theories. Another senior official has told the reporters that the Vice President has been aggressively pursuing the Epstein issue since the memo’s release.
That is the scene. That is what we are looking at.
I have written, in these pages, that the man at the center of this administration is evil, and that the orbit around him has chosen, every day, to be where it is. I asked, in that piece, why anybody around him is tolerating the insanity. I am writing this piece because today’s excerpt is the beginning of an answer, and the answer is not what some readers wanted to hear. The answer is that some of them are, in fact, no longer tolerating it. They are positioning. They are leaking. They are sitting for interviews. They are, in private rooms, telling Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan things that they know will appear in books published by Simon & Schuster and excerpted in the New York Times Magazine. They are, in other words, beginning the work of constructing the record by which they will, later, explain what they were doing in the room….
Mike Brock, June 08, 2026 [Notes from the Circus]
… Why is anybody around him tolerating this insanity?
The question is not rhetorical. I want it asked out loud, by name, in the rooms where it matters, by the people who go home at night and tell themselves they are the adults in the room. I want it asked of the Cabinet members who have signed on to be the cabinet of a man whose pathology is not a secret and has never been a secret. I want it asked of the aides who walk down the hallway with their phones in their hands and pretend they did not hear what they just heard. I want it asked of the Senate Republicans who have voted, vote after vote, to let this man put his name and his face and his will on the institutions of the United States. I want it asked of the donors who have written the checks. I want it asked of the lawyers who have drafted the briefs. I want it asked of the press secretaries who have stood at the podium and said the words they were told to say. I want it asked of every single one of them, and I want them to have to answer it, and I want the answer to be on the record.
There is no good answer. There is only the answer of careerism, and the answer of cowardice, and the answer of the ambient corruption of being in the orbit of a man whose pathology you have to pretend not to see. The aides who tell their friends he is not really like that. The Cabinet members who tell themselves they are the bulwark. The Senate Republicans who tell themselves they are the moderating influence. The donors who tell themselves they are funding tax policy. The legal team that tells itself it is doing the work of the law. Each of these is a lie….
Trump asking (anti)Republicans in Congress to void first-term impeachments
Joyce Vance, June 12, 2026 [Civil Discourse]
…there’s a 1984, “Let’s rewrite history” moment tonight. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has a new gambit to rewrite history. He is “pushing lawmakers to pass a resolution aimed at voiding his first-term impeachments.”….
‘Abolish ICE,’ Summer Lee Says After Haitian Immigrant Daphy Michel’s Death Ruled a Homicide
Jessica Corbett, June 12, 2026 [CommonDreams]
The U.S. Took Over Venezuela’s Oil Industry. Where Has All the Money Gone?
[Council on Foreign Relations, via Letters from an American, June 11, 2026, Heather Cox Richardson]
… Based on tanker-tracking data from Bloomberg and reports on discounts applied to Venezuelan crude, the estimated value of U.S.-controlled oil exports has increased from $600 million in January (about 380,000 barrels per day) to about $3.7 billion in April alone (about 1.1 million barrels per day). The largest recipients of Venezuelan oil since January 3 have been the United States (43 percent), India (26 percent), and Spain (8 percent).
The Trump administration has shared some details with Congress. Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified in January that $300 million had flowed through a “short-term” account in Qatar and been disbursed to Venezuela, while another $200 million was “still sitting” in the account. He indicated the administration would conduct a retroactive audit on the funds that moved through the Qatar account. The following month, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said during a press interview that the full $500 million had been transferred to Venezuela and that the administration would use U.S. Treasury accounts going forward.
But the administration has yet to provide a public accounting of the Qatar account, including how the funds were spent or what safeguards were in place to prevent corruption and money laundering….
What the Wounds Are Telling Us
by Door Maud Effting and Willem Feenstra, 13 September 2025 [de Volkskrant at volkskrant.nl]
“Doctors in Gaza observed a disturbing pattern: children with a single gunshot wound to the head or chest, a sign that they had been deliberately targeted. This emerges from research by de Volkskrant, which spoke with the doctors who are among the last international eyewitnesses.”
[De Volkskrant, via Naked Capitalism 06-08-2026]
This Dutch compilation of eyewitness accounts from doctors who voluntarily served in Palestinian hospitals in Gaza was published in September last year. It has been awarded the European Press Prize for 2026. Conor Gallagher linked to it this morning in Naked Capitalism.
Be warned: it is brutal and ugly. Try to force yourself to read through it entirely.
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 07, 2026
by Tony Wikrent
War
Does Iran Have a Nuclear Way to Stop the War?
Thomas Neuburger, June 04, 2026 [God’s Spies]
I’m writing about a striking but unverified report by journalist Pepe Escobar:
Iran wants to end the war now, and is willing to detonate a nuclear device on Iranian soil to do it.
Is this statement true? I don’t know, but the answer could come rather soon. Would it work if they carried it out? I think, absolutely it would. If Iran said, “FAFO. We’re now North Korea,” Israel would know they face their own demise if they fight Iran now. Time for the new reality to finally take hold….
The First Real Legal Challenge To Trump’s Iran War
David Sirota, June 03, 2026 [The Lever]
For the first time since the start of the Iran war, Congress has attempted to circumvent President Donald Trump and end the conflict without his approval. In the process, lawmakers took a step toward creating conditions for a first-of-its-kind legal showdown clarifying the legislative branch’s constitutional authorities under the long-standing War Powers Resolution.
On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled U.S. House passed a measure ordering the president to “remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Notably, the legislation was a so-called “concurrent resolution,” which is only required to pass both the House and Senate — and is not subject to presidential veto. Under the text of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, only a concurrent resolution is required to end a war — though the authority of that text remains in dispute.
As recounted in a new episode of The Lever’s podcast Master Plan, this particular power has never been tested at the Supreme Court….
Dean Obeidallah, June 03, 2026
Trump not violating any law
‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’
Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025
Mullin Says DHS Would Obey Courts If They Were Not “Politicized”
[Truthout, via Naked Capitalism 06-04-2026]
…cWhen questioning Mullin directly, [Senator Chris] Murphy asked, “Can you commit to us that if a court judges something ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is doing, something DHS is doing as illegal or unconstitutional, [and] tells you to stop, that you will comply with the court order?”
Mullin refused to answer directly, saying, “I will tell you that we will never break the constitution, and we’re not going to break the law, but we’re going to enforce the nation’s laws. We’re gonna enforce the laws that you guys passed, and that we implement.”
Murphy responded, “But that doesn’t sound like the same thing as committing that you will obey a court order…. I mean, I think it’s an easy thing to say. Will you or will you not implement court orders?”
“If we didn’t think courts were politicized, then I would probably be able to answer that,” Mullin said. “But we see courts over and over again that use their bench for their political opinion, not just the rule of law.”
“So you’ll pick and choose which court orders you obey based upon whether you believe that appointee to have a political agenda?” Murphy said.
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Mullin responded.
Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana’s line of questioning took an entirely different tone, essentially praising DHS and ICE. Kennedy claimed in his questions that former President Joe Biden “ignored the immigration laws” with the “encouragement” of some members of Congress, to which Mullin agreed.
Kennedy said that Democrats “believe in open borders,” to which Mullin added that it’s difficult to understand why Democrats “would allow that many people to come in and turn our streets into lawless cities and lawless towns.”
In reality, Biden deported some 4 million people from the U.S. during his tenure, and followed in the footsteps of Donald Trump’s first presidency rather than breaking from it. He also increased funding for ICE and helped expand ICE programs…..
Team Trump Under ‘Maximum’ Pressure to Jail More of His Foes
Asawin Suebsaeng, Jun 04, 2026 [Zeteo]
…In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we take a look at other parts of the U.S. government that Trump and his White House are coaxing with a very simple message: the boss will be monumentally livid at you if you don’t get very serious – very soon – about jailing his political enemies….
Two months ago, Donald Trump fired then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, because she wasn’t corrupt or zealously authoritarian enough for his liking. With her fall rose the acting AG, Todd Blanche, yet another of Trump’s former personal lawyers turned federalized hatchetmen. Off the bat, the Trump White House, including the president himself, made something clear to Blanche in private discussions, according to people familiar with the matter.
[Washington Post, via Drop Site Daily: June 5, 2026]
A former senior Social Security Administration official has disclosed in a whistleblower complaint to Senate investigators that DOGE officials sought to have 2.7 million living people, including U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, added to the agency’s Death Master File as part of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement strategy, the Washington Post reported Thursday. Jeremiah Schofield, who spent 25 years at the agency, said he refused to implement the plan after sampling 25 names from the list and finding all were alive, and that a DOGE official confirmed on a speakerphone call that the goal was to force immigrants to self-deport or show up at Social Security offices where they could be arrested. The Social Security Administration said the plan was never carried out, though the Post previously reported that a smaller version—marking 6,100 immigrants as dead—was implemented last year.