Author: Tony Wikrent Page 2 of 50

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – July 05, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

UNhappy birthday, America

Reconsidering the Constitution’s Preamble: The Words that Made Us U.S. — University of Wisconsin Legal Studies Research Paper Series Paper No. 1718

David S. Schwartz, September 25, 2021 [37 Constitutional Commentary 2022]

[TW: I now refer to the GOP and its members as (anti)Republicans and the (anti)Republican Party, because they believe in a philosophy of governance that is repugnant to the original principles of civic republicanism on which USA was founded. The two major principles of civic republicanism are promoting the general welfare, and justice, as explained by Senator Charles Sumner in a speech on February 5 and 6, 1866, The Equal Rights of All: The Great Guaranty and Present Necessity, for the Sake of Security, and to Maintain a Republican Government; Speech in the Senate, on the proposed Amendment of the Constitution Fixing the Basis of Representation. (Here are excerpts.)

[(Anti)Republicans have openly and explicitly rejected the founding principle of promoting the general welfare. This rejection is centralt to their attacks on the “welfare state.”  See Randall G. Holcombe’s 1992 article arguing that the major improvement of the Confederate Civil War constitution was the elimination of the General Welfare mandate. Holcombe served on Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors in Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign. Also see Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s May, 2011 misinterpretation of James Madison, enumerated powers, and the General Welfare mandate.

[Recovering the meaning of the General Welfare Clause  necessarily includes a rebuttal of conservative / neoconfederate / (anti)Federalist attempt rewrite the Constitution with their pet theories of constitutional originalism and enumerated powers.

[Until they were shocked by the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, liberals and leaders of the Democratic Party have been blind to this reactionary project. Democrats and “the left” have committed a grievous error of omission by ignoring the historical record of the fight within USA between republicanism and oligarchy, and rejecting out of hand USA Constitutional law and political history as mere instruments of an oppressive and exploitative capitalist system tainted irremediably by slavery, racism and bigotry. This omission has crippled the ability of “the left” – not to mention the leadership of the Democratic Party – to comprehensively understand how thorough, insidious, and deadly the reactionary project is. They mistakenly believed liberalism was a derivative of civic republicanism instead of seeing how much of liberalism — with its emphasis on “private property” and “individual liberty” — was shaped as an oligarchical response to civic republicanism and the rise of the American republic. Thus they were disastrously outflanked by the Rehnquist / Scalia / Thomas assault on the law and persistent undermining of the principles of civic republicanism.

[Nevertheless, some constitutional scholars and historians — such as those listed in the excerpts below — were quite aware of the reactionary assault on the USA justice system, and working to correct a historical record that had been hijacked by the conservative / neoconfederate / (anti)Federalist project. The liberal / Democratic / “left” response to “the right” is bound to fail until it incorporates the work of these constitutional scholars and historians.

[Conservatives and originalists dismiss the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution as a “stylistic flourish with no operative legal significance,” but “the drafting history of the Preamble, observable by comparing the preambles in the Articles of Confederation, the Committee of Detail draft of the Constitution, and the Committee of Style’s final version, demonstrate that the Framers considered the Preamble to be substantively meaningful.” There is room to debate the exact meaning of the Preamble — “it might be viewed as a rejection of compact theory, as an interpretive guide to the powers granted in the body of the Constitution, or as a source of implied powers.” But concluding that the Preamble is “a legally inoperative flourish has no basis as a matter of text or history.”

[In his 1833 three-volume Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States — long considered the most through and faithful exposition of Constitutional interpretation — Justice Joseph Story wrote that while the Preamble does not confer any “substantive power” on the national government, it does “expound the nature, and extent, and application of the powers actually conferred by the
constitution,” and should be used as a guide to interpreting the Constitution when “the terms of a given power admit of two constructions, the one more restrictive, the other more liberal.” Further, interpretation should be “governed by the intent of the power;” that is, Constitutional interpretation of federal powers should “promote” and not restrict — Story uses the word “defeat”” — that power. Schwartz writes,

“For Story, then, the preamble is an argument against strict construction of federal powers: a statement that the Constitution’s grants of powers are to be liberally construed, to promote such things as “the general welfare.”

[This is, of course, the exact opposite of the doctrines of conservatives and originalists such as William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas,  and Samuel Alito, not to mention the entire (anti)Federalist Society.  Schwartz makes the important point that

The argument that the preamble meant nothing more than a stylistic flourish … was highly congenial to compact theorists, nullifiers, and secessionists.

[We have seen this throughout American history: the “domestic enemies” of the Constitution have tried repeatedly to have the Constitution reinterpreted in ways that limit and even abrogate the powers of the national government. Today, the “domestic enemies” of the Constitution want to dismantle “the administrative state” and allow “free enterprise” and “private property” free reign to foul our environment, alter our climate, exploit our labor, limit our economic prospects, mute our political participation, and surveil our lives.

[Schwartz ends by noting that at the time of ratification, the Anti-Federalists fully understood that the grand objectives proclaimed in the Preamble meant that the federal government was not at all strictly limited in its powers, but pointed to an expansive realm of implied powers, as Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton would argue in his February 1791 report to President Washington on the constitutionality of establishing a national bank.

[Schwartz writes,

The Framers felt they had to clarify that the new government was a truly national government, and moreover, one based on republican principles—that is, authorized by the sovereign people, not by a grand interstate compact.

Significantly, nothing in the Preamble makes “limited enumerated powers” an object, or—pace Madison—an essential characteristic of the national government. The preamble does not list “federalism,” or “state sovereignty” or “balancing national powers with the rights of the states” among its great objects. [p. 10] ….

Federalists and Anti-Federalists during the ratification debates and early republic both understood the Preamble “as reinforcing a theory of sovereignty and national union that expanded the scope of national power, beyond either those powers that were enumerated or those powers that might be aggregated from that enumeration.”  This nationalist reading, channeling the constitutional vision most acutely expressed by James Wilson, was thus a prominent reading—although so read with horror by Anti-Federalists—as Federalists in the early post-ratification years argued that the Preamble was indeed a legitimate source of implied powers. [pp. 11-12]

[There is plenty of history that clearly demonstrates the wild inaccuracy of “originalist” interpretation: Hamilton’s reports, Justice James Wilson’s law lectures in the first years of the republic [and it was actually Wilson who wrote most of the Constitution; Madison is better known because he took notes on the proceedings and later became President], Justice Story’s Commentaries, and more. Never forget that yhe Southern slaveholders insisted the slave states were the true republics in their time. Failure to understand what a republic really is at that time, and repudiate the slaveholders accordingly, led to civil war. ]

Read More

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 28, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

Trump administration begins mass layoffs at ODNI

Drop Site Daily, June 23, 2026

The Trump administration has begun mass layoffs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, with hundreds of employees expected to lose their jobs, CNN reported Monday.

Acting ODNI Director Bill Pulte, whom President Donald Trump tasked with downsizing the agency, is overseeing cuts expected to hit the National Counterterrorism Center and National Counterintelligence and Security Center, with as many as 400 employees at the counterterrorism center reportedly targeted.

War on voting

The Real Reason Trump Never Stops Talking About Voter Fraud

Jamelle Bouie, June 17, 2026 [New York Times]

… To say, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that there was systematic voter fraud is to lie. And Trump, again, was lying. But he was also making a specific political claim. If there were no shenanigans but there was still “fraud” because the election was “rigged,” then it’s clear that the meaning of fraud has less to do with any particular set of rules and procedures than it does with the more elemental aspects of American political life. And it doesn’t take much work to decipher the president’s conception of “fraud.”

There was a reason, to put it differently, that Trump centered his crusade on ferreting out “illegal votes”; there was a reason he focused on cities with large Black populations like Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia; and there was a reason that when his supporters fought their way into the Capitol, they unfurled Confederate flags to mark their achievement.

The president’s convoluted and false claims about “fraud” were little more than a smoke screen for a more basic claim about who belongs to the community — about who counts as a voter and who counts as a citizen. To say that Democratic victories in Pennsylvania or Georgia were the product of fraud in Philadelphia or Atlanta was to say, in short, that the wrong people were voting. And in the same way that Trump’s “birtherism” wasn’t really about whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, his crusade to “stop the steal” wasn’t about the nation’s election procedures. It was a declaration that the only real voters were his own….

Brad Reed, June 25, 2026 [CommonDreams]

Letters from an American, June 24, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson, Jun 25, 2026

… this morning at 9:49, Trump suddenly announced he will not sign the bill into law until Congress passes the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, known as the SAVE or SAVE America Act, that he keeps pushing….

Then, at 10:26, he posted: “Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

That language is important. Since retaking office in 2025, Trump has used official emergency declarations at an unprecedented rate in order to claim emergency powers under which he can ignore laws. Although the Republicans hold a majority in both the House and the Senate, meaning Trump could work with Congress to pass legislation, he and his advisors appear to be applying the strategy of Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt.

Much of Schmitt’s philosophy centered around the idea that in a nation that is based in a constitution and the rule of law, power belongs to the man who can exploit emergencies that create exceptions to the constitutional order, enabling him to exercise power without regard to the law. Trump—who himself almost certainly has not read Schmitt—asserted this view in August of last year when he said: “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country’s in danger—and it is in danger in the cities—I can do it.”

Alex Kaplan of Media Matters notes that since Trump took office in 2025, his loyalists have urged him simply to declare a national emergency in order to justify dictating new voting and election rules to the states.

The U.S. Constitution gives to the states the authority to conduct elections, but the Trump administration wants state voter lists, at least in part so it can run them through a tool designed to find noncitizens who might have applied for benefits for which they’re ineligible. That system, known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements and, confusingly, also abbreviated as SAVE, is not designed for voter rolls, and as Liz Dye explained today in Public Notice, it explicitly did not cover U.S. citizens.

But, Dye explains, between last April and last August, employees of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Department of Homeland Security, and the Social Security Administration linked the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements to the master file from Social Security, called NUMIDENT. Then they reprogrammed SAVE to upload voter rolls for mass citizenship screening.

Certain Republican-dominated states, like Texas, handed over their voter rolls. An investigation by Jen Fifield of ProPublica and Zach Despart of ProPublica and the Texas Tribune in February showed that when used to try to identify noncitizen voters, the system had an error rate of at least 14%, misidentifying legal voters as illegal ones.

In addition to the system’s inaccuracy, the uploading of the files, Dye notes, was “a gross violation of the Privacy Act of 1974,” which prohibits the government from repurposing an individual’s data for a new use without notice and without providing for 30 days of public comment….

Marc Elias: The Stakes in November – The famed election lawyer sizes up where we stand

Win McCormack, June 26, 2026 [The New Republic]

War

Negotiating Without Leverage And With Lies – What We Are Seeing Is Astonishing For The USA

Phillips P. OBrien, June 24, 2026 [via Letters from an American, June 24, 2026]

… Personally, I have never seen the US in such a position of weakness.

Because the US has no significant leverage over Iran, the Trump administration (as it has been for months, it needs to be said) will simply have to dissemble about non-existent Iranian concessions to try and make it seem that they have not been completely routed. And that is the second part of this update. The US government has reached the stage where the default assumption must be that it is lying when it comes to Iran making any concessions. For months the Administration has been claiming that Iran was agreeing to this concession or that concession—and none of these claims has been true. Now that the US has even less leverage, the lies will probably get larger.

We are witnessing the most extraordinary negotiating moment in the history of US foreign relations, and that alone makes it worthy of note….

Read More

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]

Read More

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….

The Orbit is Fracturing

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….

Donald Trump is Evil

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.

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….

National Security Expert Joe Cirincione delivers the truth about Iran war that corporate media is afraid to say: Trump lost this war. Period.

Dean Obeidallah, June 03, 2026

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

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.

Whistleblower says DOGE sought to have 2.7 million living people declared dead to pressure immigrants into self-deportation

[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.

Read More

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]

Read More

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.

 

Read More