Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – August 17, 2025
by Tony Wikrent
Trump not violating any law
‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’
Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]
Pentagon plan would create military ‘reaction force’ for civil unrest
Alex Horton and David Ovalle, August 12, 2025 [Washington Post]
The Trump administration is evaluating plans that would establish a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” composed of hundreds of National Guard troops tasked with rapidly deploying into American cities facing protests or other unrest, according to internal Pentagon documents reviewed by The Washington Post.The plan calls for 600 troops to be on standby at all times so they can deploy in as little as one hour, the documents say. They would be split into two groups of 300 and stationed at military bases in Alabama and Arizona, with purview of regions east and west of the Mississippi River, respectively.
Jim Stewartson, Aug 11, 2025 [MindWar]
[The Guardian, via The Big Picture August 10, 2025]
Video from Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, 18, puts fresh scrutiny on the harsh tactics used to reach the Trump administration’s ambitious enforcement targets.
Trump: Now the Cops Can ‘Do Whatever the Hell They Want’
Harold Meyerson, August 12, 2025 [The American Prospect]
…D.C.’s police union reacted to Trump’s takeover with unconcealed glee; like many cop unions, it gives voice to those officers who see themselves as occupying hostile territory and being held back from sufficiently forceful action. The union, in an official statement it released yesterday, said it “acknowledges and supports the President’s announcement this morning to assume temporary control of the MPD in response to the escalating crime crisis in Washington, DC. The Union agrees that crime is spiraling out of control, and immediate action is necessary to restore public safety.”….
Just as the presence of troops in L.A. provoked protests, so Trump is hoping that the quality of his now enhanced D.C. policing will provoke protests even if the quantity of newly deployed troops and agents isn’t in itself up to the task. In his press conference yesterday, he all but ordered the cops to run amok. Currently, he said, “they’re not allowed to do anything. But now they are allowed to do whatever the hell they want.”
Masked Border Protection Agents Open Fire on Family’s Truck After Smashing Its Windows
Brad Reed, Aug 17, 2025 [CommonDreams]
A video of the incident filmed from inside the truck showed the passengers asked the agents to provide identification, which they declined to do.
An agent was then heard demanding that the father, who had been driving the truck, get out of the vehicle. Seconds later, the agent started smashing the car’s windows in an attempt to get inside the vehicle.
The father then hit the gas to try to escape, after which several shots could be heard as agents opened fire. Local news station KTLA reported that, after the father successfully fled the scene, he called local police and asked for help because “masked men” had opened fire on his truck.
Steve Vladek [via Naked Capitalism 08-12-2025]
…it seems worth putting into context both the historical relationship between the federal government and the District of Columbia and the relevant current statutes. To make a long story short, the Constitution gives the federal government “plenary” authority over the “seat of government.” But just about everything else—including the fact that the District of Columbia is the “seat of government”—is up to Congress.
And although Congress has retained, both for itself and the President, more authority over D.C. than over any other federal enclave (including, as especially relevant today, with regard to the National Guard and the Metropolitan Police Department), the critical point for present purposes is that it was Congress that created and stood up a local government in 1973. Congress may have the constitutional power to return the city to true federal control, but the President can’t do it all by himself….
Trump’s crackdown hits Washington — federalized police NOT deployed in DC’s high crime areas
ZACK STANTON, 08/17/2025 [politico.com/playbook]
For supporters of the president’s actions, crime in the district is a blaring crisis that merits an overwhelming federal response to avoid something like failed-state status. They point out that crime, while on a downward trend, is unacceptably commonplace (the district’s homicide rate is still “almost as high as New York’s at its most dangerous, in 1990,” NYT’s Maureen Dowd notes). It demands a round-the-clock response, with FBI agents patrolling the street on foot. … And yet, much of the federal response has been concentrated in some of the safest areas of the city rather than those neighborhoods most devastated by crime. More than half of the district’s homicides last year occurred across the Anacostia River in Wards 7 and 8, The Atlantic’s Michael Powell writes; as recently as Friday, they had yet to see much of a federal response, per USA Today’s Josh Meyer.
How Pretexts Work — A manufactured crisis unfolds.
Hamilton Nolan, Aug 15, 2025 [How Things Work]
Trump’s Invasion Of D.C. Started On K Street
[The Lever, August 12, 2025]
Before the president seized control of Washington, D.C.’s police, corporate lobbyists posed as local businesses to drum up panic about local crime.
Heather Cox Richardson. August 11, 2025 [Letters from an American]
The administration is also consolidating power over the economy. Greg Ip of the Wall Street Journal noted today that the U.S. is marching toward a form of state capitalism in which Trump looks much like the Chinese Communist Party, exercising political control not just over government agencies but over companies themselves. “A generation ago conventional wisdom held that as China liberalized, its economy would come to resemble America’s,” Ip wrote. “Instead, capitalism in America is starting to look like China.”
Ip points to the government’s partial control over U.S. Steel that it took as a condition for Nippon Steel’s takeover, the $1.5 trillion of promised investment from trading partners that Trump has claimed the right to direct personally, the 15% of certain chip sales of Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices to China that will go to the administration (although who or what entity will get that money I can’t figure out), and Trump’s demand that the chief executive of Intel resign.
Ip calls this system of state capitalism “a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises.” He notes that it is a “sea change from the free market ethos the U.S. once embodied.”
Ip also notes that state capitalism is a means of political control, using the power of the state to crush political challenges. “In Trump’s first term, CEOs routinely spoke out when they disagreed with his policies such as on immigration and trade,” Ip writes. “Now, they shower him with donations and praise, or are mostly silent.” Ip pointed out that Trump is deploying financial power and regulatory power to cow media companies, banks, law firms, and government agencies he thinks are not sufficiently supportive.
Trump Has a Bonkers New Rating System for Private Companies
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, August 15, 2025 [The New Republic]
The Trump administration has released a scorecard to rank the endeavors of some 553 companies and trade associations to advance the president’s agenda and his “big, beautiful bill.”
Organizations are ranked on the sheet as strong, moderate, or low, Axios reported Friday, with ratings built off social media posts, press releases, video testimonials, ads, White House event attendance, and other budget law–oriented efforts.
The data is being circulated among White House senior staff as a temperature gauge on how to interact with companies and open calls with K Street (a nickname for Washington’s business district)….
Joyce Vance, Aug 14, 2025 [Civil Discourse]
This afternoon, a three-judge panel in the D.C. Circuit signed off on the Trump administration’s efforts to block funds for foreign assistance that have been appropriated by Congress. Despite arguments made by the plaintiffs that this violates Congress’ Article II Spending powers, the court ruled that only the head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has the ability to bring Impoundment Control Act (ICA) claims. Impoundment refers to a decision by a president to delay spending or withhold funds that Congress has allocated in the budget. The GAO was not a party to this lawsuit, although it has made multiple findings that this administration has violated the ICA in other regards.
The court’s decision was 2-1, with Judges Karen Henderson and Gregory Katsas in the majority and Judge Florence Pan dissenting. As Judge Pan notes in dissent, they reframed the issues argued by the government in order to rule in its favor, so that they could “excuse the government’s forfeiture of what they perceive to be a key argument, and then rule in the President’s favor on that ground, thus departing from procedural norms that are designed to safeguard the court’s impartiality and independence.” There will likely be a motion to ask the full court to rehear the case en banc, with all active judges sitting, before the losing party takes it to the Supreme Court….