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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 31, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

 

Trump not violating any law

‘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

 

Company headed by Trump-pardoned Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy wins $106 million federal prison contract

[Guardian, Drop Site Daily: May 28, 2026]

LEO Technologies, a Texas-based AI company founded and led by Elliott Broidy—a Republican fundraiser pardoned by President Donald Trump on his last day in office in 2021, days before Broidy was to be sentenced for secretly lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of Chinese and Malaysian interests—won a $106 million contract from the Bureau of Prisons to translate, transcribe, and monitor prison phone calls using artificial intelligence last month, the Guardian reported. The contract marks LEO’s first with the federal government. Broidy, who has twice pleaded guilty to separate criminal offenses.

 

The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr.

Robert Faturechi, May 28, 2026 [propublica.org]

 

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump Are Running a $1.2 Billion Felony Fraud Scheme that is Fully Prosecutable in New York.

Christopher Armitage, May 24, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]

Other crypto founders are serving eight, twelve, and twenty-five years in prison for the same conduct. The only thing that separates the Trump sons from those men is their last name.

 

How Trump Created a Slush Fund for His Allies – The President may have committed the rare offense that turns Republican lawmakers against him.

Ruth Marcus, May 24, 2026 [The New Yorker]

 

Trump’s Jan. 6 slush fund is right from Hitler’s playbook! This is not a coincidence

Dean Obeidallah, May 25, 2026

It was about a year after Jan. 6 that I first raised red flags in both articles and on my SiriusXM radio show that Donald Trump would be increasingly defending and even praising the Jan. 6 terrorists. That was way before Trump was calling them “patriots,” pardoned them or recently erased their crimes from the DOJ website and created his $1.8 billion terrorist slush fund to reward them.

The reason I raised that concern is not because I’m some type of political version of Nostradamus. Rather it’s because I have read a great deal about the history of fascist leaders and spoken to many experts.

That history was telling us that Trump would not reject the J6 terrorists but instead embrace, celebrate and honor those who helped him wage his failed coup. After all, it’s exactly what Adolph Hitler did after his 1923 failed coup known as the “Beer Hall Putsch.”….

 

Here’s the Real Reason Pam Bondi is Returning to the Trump Regime

Dean Obeidallah, May 28, 2026

On Wednesday, we learned that fired Attorney General Pam Bondi was returning to work for the Trump regime. However, this time no longer as the corrupt administration’s top attorney but as a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) that will focus on Artificial Intelligence….

But why would Bondi—who has no experience in the AI area—be appointed to this board by Trump and get a hero’s welcome?! Well former prosecutor Glenn Kirschner has a theory—and it’s one that resonates with me.

Glenn’s view it’s likely two reasons. First, “This is probably a wonderful opportunity to grift Should someone be interested in doing just that,” Kirschner commented.

And second—and this is the big one—”Pam Bondi knows where all the Epstein bodies are buried and Trump wants to keep her close.” Ding! Ding! Ding! That sounds like a winner. This is especially true given Bondi will testify Friday, May 29 before the House Oversight committee. (Obviously, the timing of the new gig is not a coincidence!)

And as I have written about in the past, Bondi served as Florida’s Attorney General from 2011 to 2019 at the very time Epstein was operating his massive child rape and women sex trafficking ring in that very state. Yet Bondi NEVER investigated Epstein despite there being more one thousand victims. That was clearly a decision by her in an effort to protect Trump and other powerful men….

We also discussed Trump DOJ’s latest actions to cover up the Jan. 6 crimes. This comes in the form of Acting AG Todd Blanche deleting a massive number of Jan. 6 related files from the DOJ website about the people charged and convicted of crimes—including those who brutally beat up police officers like Michael Fanone.

Some of the records Blanche deleted–as NPR reported— include:

• Daniel Rodriguez, who pleaded guilty to driving an electroshock device into the neck of former Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone, and who was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison.

• Thomas Webster, who was convicted by a jury of assaulting law enforcement with a metal flagpole, tackling a police officer to the ground and trying to remove the officer’s gas mask. Webster was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

• Peter Schwartz, who was convicted by a jury of assaulting police officers with pepper spray and throwing a metal chair at law enforcement. Schwartz was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

And DOJ is bragging about this erasure of records saying in a statement they are “proud” to strip the “DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.” The goal in deleting these records is not just part of the effort to rewrite Jan. 6. It’s also to make it more difficult for the media and public to uncover the crimes committed by Trump’s followers—especially since he is on the verge of giving them a huge pay day with his $1.8 billion terrorist slush fund….

 

How the War on Terror Created the Age of Trump (W/ Matt Kennard)

Chris Hedges, May 27, 2026

Matt Kennard shows in his new book that the bipartisan War on Terror laid the groundwork for the Trump presidency and the rise of fascism — now, with extremists empowered, we face the consequences.

 

Trump’s $250 Greenback Is a Gift to the Criminal Class

Timothy Noah, May 28, 2026 [The New Republic]

 

National Park Entrance Fees Are Funding Trump’s D.C. Projects 

[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 05-29-2026]

 

Strategic Political Economy

GRAPH: Not All Oil Is the Same (types of oil)

[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 05-26-2026]

 

The Mystery Gasoline Surcharge: How Oil Incumbents Are Trying to Maintain Fossil Fuel Dominance

Matt Stoller, May 29, 2026 [BIG]

Among American elites, there appears to be an aggressive embrace of new technologies, whether crypto, generative artificial intelligence, or automated systems in war. But there is an important exception. If you deploy energy systems at scale that compete with fossil fuels, you will be ignored. The reason is both the narrative power of oil companies, and the Trump administration’s view that fossil fuel infrastructure is a deep source of American strength.

What’s interesting about this dynamic is that clean tech systems – batteries, solar panels, electric vehicles – are having real impacts, far more measurable than crypto or AI. Here is a chart of annualized gasoline sales in California, which has dropped by 2.5 billion gallons a year since 2019, despite more cars on the road. And California is leading the way in America; a quarter of new cars there are electric….

[TW: I have not yet come across a book that, imho, adequately explains the proper principles of political economy for a republic. I have been pondering these principles since it became clear around 2009-2010 that President Obama and the Democratic Party leadership had no intention of imposing accountability and justice on the financial predators who had created the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Among the principles of political economy of civic republicanism I have identified are

[1. Scientific and technology progress are fundamental and essential to a republic’s economic health (note I do not use the term “economic growth” here).

[2. Because private enterprise, in reality, is mostly risk averse and therefore unwilling to invest in breakthrough science and unproven technology, one major responsibility of the national government is to encourage and support scientific endeavors and the development of new technologies — including outright funding. First Secretary of the Treasury was explicit about this in hid December 1791 Report to Congress on the Subject of Manufactures, which carefully and thoroughly refuted the “free enterprise” and “free trade” nostrums of British empire factotum Adam Smith. Point number 2 is reflected repeatedly in the history of how nations actually industrialized, including

• USA’s deliberate seeding of new armory machine tool technology into the rest of the economy in the early 1800s (which created the bases for modern industrial mass production);
• the massive land giveaways that supported the development of nationwide rail networks in the mid-1800s;
• outright national funding of the telegraph and infant electricidal industry;
• agricultural research and development, including fighting pests and diseases, and identification and support of new crop breeds;
• outright government funding of the road and highway network that made possible the widespread use of automotive technology;
• early funding and continued support for aviation and aerospace technology;
• the development of transistors, integrated circuits, computers and the internet.

[To use Marxist phraseology, it is the political superstructure — the government — that most often creates and determines new means of production — the exact opposite of the disastrously erroneous Marxist view of reality.

[3. Unfortunately, though it is government support which creates new industries, new companies and huge private fortunes, the human faults of avarice, lust for power, pride end up transforming these new industries, new companies and new private fortunes into opponents of further change to the means of production. When this inevitably occurs, Marxist analysis of how the means of production determines the political superstructure tends to reflect reality with more fidelity than other forms of economic analysis.

[4. Therefore, a republic must always take steps and impose measures to limit the accumulation of wealth, the translation of wealth into political power, and misuse of the political system by concentrations of wealth and the morbidly rich. The argument that every billionaire is a policy failure must be fleshed out by developing this framework of civic republican political economy. Much of the history of neoclassical and Austrian economic thinking is a series of case studies in how concentrations of wealth and the morbidly rich used academia to develop schools of political economy which justified selfish behavior and concentrations of wealth, and in effect suppress and bury a decent exploration and consideration of civic republican political economy.

[5. Civic republican political economy therefore demands making moral judgements about what is good and bad for the preservation and development of human existence. Preserving the use of fossil fuels endangers human life istelf and is therefore bad. Remember that two of the basic principles of civic republicanism are justice, and the General Welfare. Gambling, prediction markets, crypto, and artificial intelligence should all be rigorously subjected to moral judging. Markets cannot and will not do this. The essence of the evil of neoliberal and neoclassical economics is that they use mathematical certainty as a facade to evade moral judgement.

[Though it omits any consideration of government’s role in supporting the early development of the petroleum industry, Stoller’s article is an excellent case study of how an industry, once mature, becomes a force for oligarchy and against republican governance. – TW]

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 24, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

 

Americans are leaving the U.S. in record numbers and spending hundreds to learn how to do it

Jennifer Liu, May 17 2026 [CNBC, via DailyKos]

…A record number of Americans are leaving the U.S.: The country saw a net negative migration of between 10,000 and 295,000 people in 2025, according to research from The Brookings Institution. The widest estimated range was among people who left voluntarily, with Brookings estimating that between 210,000 to 405,000 people did so last year.

It’s the first time in at least 50 years that more people moved out of the country than moved in. Restrictive immigration policies and deportation efforts play a role, according to Brookings. Some U.S. citizens are emigrating for school, work, raising a family, retirement and everything in between.

Expatsi, a company that offers relocation tours for Americans, is becoming a sought-after resource for some….

The company, launched in 2022, held its second annual Move Abroad Con in San Diego on May 9 and 10. Some 600 Americans from around the country attended, double the number of people at the inaugural event held in May 2025, Expatsi co-founder Jen Barnett tells CNBC Make It.

A majority, 89%, said they want to leave the U.S. for political reasons, according to a sampling of 218 of the weekend’s attendees, per Barnett. Others say they hope to move for adventure and growth (73%), as well as to save money (57%). Roughly two-thirds of respondents hope to move within two years, they have an average monthly budget of $3,856 to work with, and hopeful movers are split among 44% individuals, 39% couples and 17% families with kids….

 

LinkedIn Is Doing What Bluesky Was Supposed to Do

[Popular by Design, via The Big Picture, May 20, 2026]

Rebuilding a public square on the platform you least expect. For a brief moment about a year ago, it really did look like Bluesky might work. Researchers and left-of-center intellectuals were flooding in, swapping starter packs, reassembling what felt like a nostalgic reunion of old Twitter. Then everyone arrived, and the center could not hold. A sharp argument that the post-Twitter intellectual conversation didn’t move to Bluesky or Threads — it quietly migrated to LinkedIn, of all places. Uncomfortable for everyone involved, but not wrong….

The people on LinkedIn are the people we should be trying to reach: policymakers, congressional staffers, civil servants, industry analysts, foundation program officers, and journalists at general-interest outlets. A 2025 Avoq survey of DC policy insiders found that 81 percent of Democrats, 84 percent of Republicans, and 78 percent of MAGA-aligned respondents use LinkedIn. Good representative data on LinkedIn compared to other platforms is notoriously hard to find, but this looks like a bipartisan footprint no other platform comes close to matching….

Discussion that actually moves understanding. The clearest evidence I have for all of this is my own cross-posting experience. I have often shared the same piece, including the more controversial ones, simultaneously on Bluesky, X, and LinkedIn, and the pattern has been remarkably consistent. On Bluesky, the reaction is usually either silence or a small pile-on when the piece challenges prevailing consensus, and substantive engagement is rare. On X, responses are a mix of real engagement and the usual ratio of slop, bad-faith screenshotting, and reply guys.

On LinkedIn, the pushback I get is both the most civil and the most productive: named professionals who actually work on the topic, often from perspectives I don’t share, who write multi-paragraph responses that engage with the argument rather than perform outrage about it. This holds even for pieces and takes I expected to trigger the most hostility, because people disagreeing under their own name with their employer looking over their shoulder have strong incentives to be reasonable.

 

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In the first article in this series we discussed freedom under capitalism. The conclusion was simple: capitalist freedom for the vast majority of the population means the right to choose your master, your job, if you can find one. Once you have a master, you do what they say for most of the day, for most of your life. If you can’t find a master, you’re free to be homeless, hungry and eventually (few people survive being homeless more than about five years), and soon enough you’re free to die.

Yay Capitalism.

Note that this is structural: yes some people will become capitalists or otherwise escape the master trap, but the vast majority won’t and can’t. Someone is going to lose the dire game of musical chairs (jobs.)

Now let’s look at representative democracy.

In a democracy you’re free to choose your legislators or executives. You can’t vote for just anyone, though, only approved candidates. In most systems if someone runs without belonging to a party, they won’t win, and parties usually control you can become a candidate.

As a group the people who are elected will decide pretty much everything about how your society runs. Sometimes they seem to care about the citizens (FDR say) and sometimes they don’t. (Every American government since Nixon.) I can’t remember the last time food stamps were increased, rather than cut, other than a brief raise during the pandemic.

The number of elected people with real power is small compared to the population, and as an ordinary person your vote is generally meaningless. It’s never YOU who makes the difference. Big donors and other people who can organize groups of votes do, but that’s a vanishingly small number of people. So elected officials, especially at the national and State level pander to people with money or votes (pastors, for example. Used to pander to unions, not so much any more.)

Your choice of ruler is better than having a hereditary monarchy. Yes. But your actual power is insignificant. And Democracies have all the normal powers of government: they can draft you and send you off to die. They can send you to prison. They can take property from you. They can coerce you to work. Ideally they make it so people who lose the musical boss game are taken care of anyway, but often they don’t. Certainly they can do good and sometimes do.

But any freedom you have in a society is contingent on the government. Not drafting you. Making it so you don’t have to have a master. Making it so you can get health care, or not. Your freedom is contingent on what elected officials want: officials who structurally have every reason to pander to those with money or power: and that’s before we even get to the issue of bribery, whether while in office or after: Bill Clinton became very rich after leaving office. He was bribed post-facto and everyone knows that was the case. The last President who didn’t get taken care of this way was Carter.

Trump, of course, is just blatantly accepting bribes while in office, which has the dubious virtue of complete honesty.

A system where the people who decide what freedoms you have are structurally more likely to favor a small minority with wealth and power, and where if they are corrupt, you can’t bribe them, isn’t likely to maintain your freedom very well if important people think they’d benefit from you losing your freedom, is it?

Certainly people with money and power don’t really want you to not need a job and a master, because the people who have influence over them want cheap workers who will do anything they’re told to do.

Churchill quipped that Democracy was the worst system except for all the other ones we’ve tried.

Perhaps so, though the CPC and most Chinese disagree.

But even if true, representative democracy, at least in a system with significant wealth and power differentials, is a shit system where you have freedom only if elites feel it benefits them that you be free.

Perhaps in an egalitarian system it would work better, but under capitalism, which by its nature requires concentration of power, it does not

We’ll discuss other forms of organization as this series continues. For now, just note that representative democracy, by its very design, will tend to be more responsive to people who don’t want ordinary people to have freedom than to those who do want ordinary people to be free.

 

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 17, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

 

War

Iran war has cost American consumers over $37 billion in extra fuel costs, Brown University tracker shows

[Drop Site Daily: May 12, 2026]

American consumers have paid more than $37 billion in additional gasoline and diesel costs since the war with Iran began on February 28, according to a real-time tracker developed by Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs.

 

Trump not violating any law

‘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

 

Trump Isn’t Mentally Ill; He’s Evil

Thomas Meisenhelder, May 14, 2026 [Common Dreams]

…Nor are the mentally ill immoral. It is somewhat commonplace to find public figures, journalists, and other “experts” express that a person who commits a horribly immoral act must be mentally ill. This is a faulty presumption. Mental illness does not necessarily affect moral reasoning or understanding….

Donald Trump is not crazy, he is evil. The America Heritage Dictionary definition of evil has three components. The first one is that evil means morally bad or wrong. The list of the immoral acts of our president is too long to be included listed completely here, but consider just a sampling: participating in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuses, illegally detaining and deporting veterans, children, and others; using charitable donations for personal desires; separating innocent children from their families; fomenting racism and racial hatred; ridiculing the disabled; daily misogyny; supporting white supremacy; inciting violence; lying for personal gain; harming the lives of LGBTQ+ people; taking food and medical care from children and their families; and the list goes on and on.

The dictionary also defines evil as harmful or causing injury and pain. Rather than repeating the cruel and hateful list above, please consider this sampling of the harmful consequences of decisions of President Trump: ordering the murder of hundreds of people who have been in boats attacked because they were supposedly carrying illegal drugs; murdering nearly a hundred people in Venezuela when the country was attacked and he ordered its president arrested; causing death and injury to tens of thousands of Iranians during his war against the government of that country; partnering with Israel’s raining of death and destruction on the people of Lebanon, Gaza, and Palestine; expanding the embargo against Cuba causing pain, injury, and death to ordinary Cubans; and his administration’s defunding of the medical aid and food assistance provided to less developed nations by the US Agency for International Development, which has damaged the lives of millions of people around the world….

 

INSIDER Exposes Trump’s SECRET EMERGENCY Midterm Plan!! (YouTube video)

[Legal AF, YouTube, May 15, 2025]

Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz interview Jonathan Winer, former State Department official, on the secret Presidential Emergency Action Documents, Trump’s intention to manipulate the midterm elections, his devilish designs, and how to foil them….

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