Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 25, 2026

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 25, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

Dingbat imperialism and its malcontents

Hoodwinks and Hijinks: Trump ‘Nabs’ Greenland at Davos 

Simplicius [via Naked Capitalism 01-23-2025]

…In this case, Trump did major damage to alliances and economic ties, causing Europe and Canada—by way of Mark Carney and Macron—to announce reorientations toward China. That said, it’s still possible for the whole megillah to turn out favorably in the long term, particularly because it helps rupture NATO and the EU, which ultimately works in everyone’s favor, including the US’s. The more the transatlantic mafia and ‘deep state’ can be hobbled and undermined, the weaker the American deep state becomes, which sources much of its power, funding, and influence from the European arm of the cabal…

[TW: Besides providing this badly needed perspective on Trump versus the “Trilateral Commission” transatlantic mafia, Simplicius also provides in the article a very useful collection of Trump’s craziness this past week.]

The Strong Will Suffer What They Must — Vaclav’s Grocer and American Hubris

Seva Gunitsky, Jan 21, 2026

…The Melian Dialogue is not endorsing a timeless law of global politics. It’s showing us Athens at the precise peak of its imperial hubris: the moment when a great power becomes so convinced of its own invincibility that it can no longer perceive its limits….

Carney seems to be betting, I think correctly, that America under Trump has reached its Melian moment: maximum confidence, minimum self-knowledge….

Watching A Superpower Die By Suicide 

Garrett Graff, January 22, 2026 [Doomsday Scenario, via Naked Capitalism 01-23-2025]

The Great Greenland War — Three Possible Histories

Big Serge [via Naked Capitalism 01-22-2025]

The Bridge at the Center of the Pentagon 

Michael McNair [via Naked Capitalism 01-19-2025]

The Architect of U.S. Defense Strategy

The man setting U.S. defense strategy has already told you exactly how he thinks. He published the playbook years before taking office. And surprisingly few analysts have actually read it.

Elbridge Colby, or “Bridge” to those who know him, now serves as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the senior official responsible for running U.S. defense strategy.

Captain John Konrad, after spending a week inside the Pentagon, put it bluntly in his 13,000-word field report for gCaptain: “aside from Hegseth, the most powerful gravitational body in the building is Elbridge Colby.” He added that Colby’s “grand strategy remains exactly what he published in his books and interviews long before taking office. He is executing it now.”

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 [mediaite.com]

The University of Pennsylvania Ran a Simulation to Predict an American Civil War. It Gave the EXACT MOMENT WE ARE IN RIGHT NOW.

Shaun King, Jan 22, 2026

A Penn law center war-gamed a federal operation spiraling into state vs. federal force. Their scenario is now playing out

Expert Who Ran Simulations on ‘How Civil Wars Start’ Warns Minnesota Is Exactly What It Looks Like

Brad Reed, January 21, 2026 [CommonDreams]

Claire Finkelstein, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, wrote in a Wednesday column published by the Guardian that she and her colleagues at the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL) conducted a tabletop exercise in October 2024 that simulated potential outcomes if a US president were to carry out law enforcement operations similar to the ones being conducted by the Trump administration with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Minnesota.

‘Absolutely Vile’: ICE Snatches Young Kids From Minnesota Schools, Sends Them to Texas

Jake Johnson, January 22, 2026 [CommonDreams]

Federal immigration agents have detained at least four children from Minnesota public schools over the past two weeks, including a 5-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl who were both sent to Texas detention centers that have come under fire for grotesque conditions.

Trump orders active duty troops to prepare for Minnesota deployment 

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 01-19-2025]

Why are federal agents gunning down Americans in the streets?

Noah Smith, Jan 10, 2026 [Noahpinion]

Here’s an assessment by a 25-year ICE veteran whose job was to evaluate shootings by the agency….

Here’s a video of ICE agents in Arkansas beating up an unarmed U.S. citizen. Here’s a video of ICE agents arresting two U.S. citizens in a Target. Here’s a story about a similar arrest. Here’s a video of an ICE agent brandishing a gun in the face of a protester. Here’s the story of ICE agents arresting a pastor who complained about an arrest he saw. Here’s a video of ICE agents arresting an American citizen and punching him repeatedly. Here’s a video of ICE agents threatening a bystander who complained about their reckless driving. Here’s a video of ICE agents arresting a man for yelling at them from his own front porch. Here’s a video of ICE agents making a particularly brutal arrest while pointing their weapons at unarmed civilians nearby. Here’s a story about another ICE killing, this one in Maryland, under dubious circumstances. Here’s a video of ICE agents savagely beating and arresting a legal immigrant. Here’s a video of ICE agents storming a private home without a warrant. Here’s a video of ICE agents pulling a disabled woman out of a car when she’s just trying to get to the doctor.

These are all things I noticed on X within just the last two days. There has been a pretty constant stream of these for months. Here’s a roundup of some others, by Jeremiah Johnson….

Vance Endorsed Slashing Civil Liberties Protections During Minneapolis Visit — The VP said that the executive branch should be able to issue its own warrants to enter homes.

Josh Kovensky, January 23, 2026 [Talking Points Memo]

…But Vance made another remark while in Minneapolis that has largely escaped attention.

He threw his support behind the idea that the executive branch can enter private homes as part of immigration enforcement without a warrant. It’s an argument that would transform the Fourth Amendment, which mandates that independent judges can issue warrants on the request of law enforcement.

Vance’s remarks came in response to a question about a whistleblower disclosure to the Senate, first reported by the AP. Per the disclosure, ICE issued a memo in May arguing that immigration authorities could enter private residences absent a judicial warrant if they believe that someone with a final deportation order is inside….

Breaking the Fourth Amendment
Joyce Vance, Jan 23, 2026 [Civil Discourse]

[TW: Using a screen shot of a court warrant, and an administrative warrant, Vance explains the differences and legal implications.]

‘Dark, Bizarre Stuff’: White House Posts Deepfake Image of Arrested ICE Protester Crying

Stephen Prager, January 22, 2026 [CommonDreams]

“All of us are on full notice that this White House feels no compunction about concocting obvious lies, concedes nothing when its lies are exposed, and should be presumptively disbelieved in all matters.”

12 ways the Trump administration dismantled civil rights law and the foundations of inclusive democracy in its first year 

[The Conversation, via Naked Capitalism 01-18-2025]

The Congresswoman Criminalized for Visiting ICE Detainees

Jonathan Blitzer, January 19, 2026 [The New Yorker]

LaMonica McIver went to tour an immigration jail in her New Jersey district. Now she faces seventeen years in prison.

Trump sues JPMorgan for $5 billion, alleges the bank closed his accounts for political reasons 

[AP, via Naked Capitalism 01-23-2025]

The Last Election

Chris Hedges, Jan 19, 2026

The presidential election in 2024 may be the last free vote taken in the United States. Dictatorships only hold elections with predetermined outcomes or do not hold them at all. Trump is no exception.

The Evil Man and the Empty Congress — A psalm for the republic in extremis

Mike Brock, Jan 20, 2026 [Notes From The Circus]

…Let me be precise about what I mean. Evil, as I use the term here, is the systematic use of power to dissolve the constraints that protect human dignity and law, while demanding deference to the very crimes being committed. It is not merely selfishness, incompetence, or even cruelty. It is the deliberate subordination of other human beings to one’s own will, coupled with the insistence that this subordination is right and proper, that resistance to it is illegitimate, that the victims deserve what they receive.

By this definition, observe: A president who pardons those who attacked the Capitol on his behalf, while prosecuting those who investigated him. A president who defies court orders and dares the judiciary to stop him. A president who treats foreign policy as a vehicle for personal enrichment and grudge-settling—threatening war over Greenland, blockading Venezuela, inviting Vladimir Putin to advise on Middle East peace. A president who is 30 days late on releasing court-ordered documents and responds to the deadline by releasing one percent of the files. This is not a policy disagreement. This is the methodical dissolution of the constraints that make lawful government possible, conducted by a man who believes he is owed obedience….

First, let us address those who made this moment possible.

The anti-anti-Trump intellectuals. The contrarians and self-appointed heterodox thinkers who could not bring themselves to support Trump, but who found the alarm of his critics unseemly. The real threat, they insisted, was the overreaction itself. They positioned themselves as the adults in the room while the rest of us succumbed to panic…

Here is what I maintained for years, and what I will now state plainly: the obsessive fixation on leftist excess functioned as a form of cognitive capture. It rendered an entire class of otherwise intelligent people incapable of perceiving threats originating in their own ideological vicinity. They became so convinced that the republic faced imminent danger from campus speech codes and diversity initiatives that they looked upon an actual authoritarian—a man who had already attempted to overturn an election—and concluded he represented the lesser evil.

This is the precise error made by German conservatives in the early 1930s, who persuaded themselves that the Austrian corporal was a manageable risk compared to the Bolshevik menace. I do not make this comparison for rhetorical effect. I make it because the structural logic is identical….

The financial class, which assured us that Trump represented the superior outcome for capitalism and markets. They were explicitly and repeatedly warned that this man was unstable, authoritarian, and constitutionally incapable of the restraint that global economic leadership requires. And they made their calculation: yes, but the regulatory burden. Yes, but the tax implications….

The technocratic establishment—the consultant class, the pollsters, the professional Democrats who have made careers of cautious positioning. They have no theory of the moment. They have tactics designed for a political context that no longer exists. They are preparing for an election in 2026 as though elections, conducted fairly and counted honestly, remain a reliable mechanism for the transfer of power….

To the Citizen—and I use that word with the weight it deserves—I hope you understand that this falls to you now.

The institutions have failed. I have just spent considerable effort documenting the various ways in which people who should have known better did not act as though they knew better. The cavalry is not coming. There is no adult in the room who will fix this while you go about your life. The room is full of adults, and they have failed.

Which means the republic is counting on you to keep her….

Strategic Political Economy

Sources of America’s Hidden Inflation

Robert Kuttner, December 1, 2025 [The American Prospect]

… As Emma Janssen writes, plutocracy is a driver of the affordability crisis. The top 10 percent of income earners now do close to half of the spending, by some estimates. This has led to “premiumization,” where airline seats, concert tickets, and even staple goods are priced for wealthier people because they are the primary buyers. That in turn drives prices higher for everyone else, as anyone who buys a ticket to a concert or a sporting event appreciates. Antitrust policy has thus far failed to curb obvious abuses by middlemen ticket sellers. Paul Starr writes in a sidebar that these trends invert the 20th-century pattern of affordable culture, beginning with nickel movie tickets and cheap bleacher seats….

The Monopolized Economy

Kainoa Lowman, January 22, 2026 [Washington Monthly]

Global power shift

The Monstrous Confessions Of Mark Carney 

Nate Bear [via Naked Capitalism 01-23-2025]

…Carney’s speech is worth reading for its confessions. For its confession that liberal centrism is an ideology of cynical self-interest, that its symbols are fake, its rhetoric designed to deceive. For its admission that the rules-based order is a lie, that western neoliberal governance is a hideous, hypocritical creation.

In the most revealing section, Carney said:

• “For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.
• We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
• This fiction was useful. And American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.”

China Leads Air Logistics Revolution with First Test Flight of Tianma-1000 Unmanned Cargo Plane 

[Military Watch Magazine, via Naked Capitalism 01-18-2025]

Photos Capture the Breathtaking Scale of China’s Wind and Solar Buildout

[Yale Environment 360, via The Big Picture, January 21, 2026]

Last year China installed more than half of all wind and solar added globally. In May alone, it added enough renewable energy to power Poland, installing solar panels at a rate of roughly 100 every second.

The New World’s Largest Subway System* Part 2

JRUrbaneNetwork, Jan 19, 2026 [via Naked Capitalism 01-23-2025]

[TW: Beijing. Closely followed by Shanghai and Guangzhou, which has 22 lines. Twenty-two. Subway construction in USA the past couple decades is a miserable joke compared to what the Chinese have done and are doing. “Job well done” to all the conservative, libertarian, and (anti)Republican think tanks that have emitted a steady effluent of “private automobiles are the pinnacle of personal freedom in our glorious free market.”]

Gaza / Palestine / Israel

Israel Just Bulldozed the U.N. Headquarters in Jerusalem —Filmed It—And Bragged About It Because They Know the World Will Do Absolutely Nothing – Including the United Nations

Shaun King, Jan 20, 2026

Israel demolished UNRWA’s HQ in occupied East Jerusalem and claims it’s legal. It’s not. The world’s silence is the story.

An Australian Woman Accidentally Butt-Dialed Someone. They Arrested Her and Charged Her with Anti-Semitism Because the Woman She Butt-Dialed Was Jewish. I’m Dead Serious. 

Shaun King

Oligarchy

The Dictators’ Miscalculation: How Undermining American Democracy Created Their Worst Nightmare — On Minneapolis, mass strikes, and why authoritarian regimes are watching American resistance with terror

Mike Brock, Jan 19, 2026 [Notes From The Circus]

…Xi and Putin spent years undermining American democracy. Not as a side project or opportunistic meddling. But as their core geostrategic priority.

They wanted a paralyzed America. Divided, ineffective, consumed by internal conflict. Too fractured to project power globally. Too dysfunctional to coordinate democratic alliances. Too distracted by domestic chaos to constrain authoritarian expansion.

They got Trump.

And they found more than willing partners. Not assets they themselves developed, but a domestic oligarchic class that has found some degree of convergent interests with these foreign menaces to the free peoples of the world. America’s Gilded Age 2.0 has produced its own anti-democratic movement: a cohort of tech accelerationists, right-wing reactionaries from Silicon Valley. Thiel, Musk, Andreessen—not Russian puppets, but American oligarchs who share with Putin and Xi a common vision: a world where capital operates free from democratic constraint….

But these enterprising state-breakers are more pernicious than the economic royalists whose hatred Franklin Roosevelt welcomed. Those were merely national predators. These ones have somewhat more global ambitions. They would rather pay protection money to a Putin or a Xi Jinping—tributes to operate their transnational empires—than suffer the indignity of democratic regulation by the popular will of uppity citizens of lower vibrations. How dare these human resources deign to suggest they are qualified to opine on matters of national policy?

This is the psychology driving the convergence. Not only ideology or strategy. Also wounded pride. The democratic expectation that billionaires answer to the same laws as everyone else is, to them, an intolerable insult. Autocrats don’t impose such indignities. Autocrats can be paid off. Autocrats understand hierarchy.

And so the project isn’t just capturing America. It’s dismantling democratic constraint everywhere.

Even now, Musk is focused on destabilizing British democracy. One might think a man with his responsibilities—running the world’s most valuable automaker, advising the president, managing a social media platform—would have his hands full. But the itch to topple a few more democracies apparently cannot be scratched by American politics alone.

Through X, he has repeatedly attacked Prime Minister Keir Starmer, called for his imprisonment, and promoted the idea that Britain needs “liberation” from its elected government. He has amplified far-right figures like Tommy Robinson and pressured Reform UK leadership while signaling interest in funding the hard-right party. During periods of civil unrest, he framed the UK as heading toward “civil war”—language officials say has inflamed far-right riots….

A divided America arguing over pronouns and Hunter Biden’s laptop? Xi can work with that. Putin can work with that. Tehran can work with that. A fractured empire, tearing itself apart over culture war trivia, is precisely what they ordered.

An America learning how to organize general strikes, chase federal forces from cities, coordinate legal resistance with mass action, and force regime accountability? That’s a different problem entirely. That’s an existential threat to every authoritarian regime on Earth….

The technology spreads whether they like it or not. Hong Kong protesters already used American civil rights tactics. Iranian protesters study color revolutions. Russian dissidents watch everything.

Minneapolis isn’t just resisting Trump. It’s creating the blueprint for dismantling every authoritarian regime on Earth….

I described Trump’s inability to build like Orbán. How performing dominance prevents institutional consolidation. How narcissistic hierarchy can’t create stable partnerships because it requires perpetual displays of subordination rather than functional cooperation.

I described the authoritarian coordination problem. How can they trust each other? Trust requires stability, and a narcissistic hierarchy produces only chaos….

The Education of the Broligarchy

[Colossus, via The Big Picture, January 24, 2026]

… The leaders of the tech sector are almost the only people in American life since the end of the Cold War who actually have some experience of sustaining our inherited greatness, and of foreseeing and building a better future. Indeed, tech elites today might well be said to have the same sort of reasonable claim to national leadership and esteem that the generals, planners, and engineers who won World War II enjoyed in the generation after 1945….

Yet they seem to lack the ability to transfer their success and skills into politics. It is not that tech elites have failed to think about the subject—or about philosophy, culture, and other fields beyond their core areas of professional competency. They are conspicuous readers, or at least conspicuous owners and discussers of books that consider society and history from perspectives far removed from those of the engineer or capitalist. As a historian, literary critic and political theorist, I have been struck, along with many of my colleagues, by the recent proliferation of a so-called “canon” of such books read by many of the Valley’s leading technologists and financiers, along with people who, from within or beyond Silicon Valley, wish to outdo, imitate, or simply better understand the mindset of those leaders….

[TW: Reading Ayn Rand will more likely destroy your empathy for other people than inculcate in you the civic virtue required to be a good citizen of a republic.]

Felonomics

Trump Delivered 22% Boost to Billionaire Wealth in 2025, But Catastrophe for Working Class 

[Common Dreams, via Naked Capitalism 01-21-2025]

Trump Administration’s Efforts to Strip Shareholder Rights Makes the Miserable Citizens United Impacts Even Worse

[Public Citizen, January, 21 2026, via CommonDreams]

How “Bitcoin Jesus” Avoided Prison, Thanks to One of the “Friends of Trump” 

Avi Asher-Schapiro and Molly Redden, January 22, 2026,[ProPublica]

Billionaire fugitive Roger Ver was facing federal criminal charges until he sought the services of a select club of President Donald Trump’s former personal attorneys who have easy access to top Justice Department appointees.

Trump’s USDA Is Hiding the Data on Food Stamp Cuts 

[Mother Jones, via Naked Capitalism 01-21-2025]

Trump administration concedes DOGE team may have misused Social Security data

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 01-21-2025]

The Economic Legacy of DOGE 

[Apricitas Economics, via The Big Picture, January 23, 2026]

DOGE’s legacy is officially the single-largest annual decline in the federal workforce in 75 years—with total federal employment down by roughly 277k, or more than 9%, since Trump’s inauguration; but it failed its supposed budget-cutting goals & broke important agencies.

The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics

Monopoly Round-Up: The Slow Death of Banking in America

Matt Stoller, Jan 19, 2026

Crypto interests came after the local banker last week in a bitter Congressional fight. They didn’t win, but it’s not over. Plus, the “Mamdani effect” is real, and Canada aligns with China.

Health care crisis

The School Engine Behind Flu and COVID — and Why Clean Air for Kids Is the Missing Public Health Tool

[TACT, via Naked Capitalism 01-19-2025]

​​​​​​​Drugmakers hike medicine prices in 2026. How much more will you spend? 

[USA Today, via Naked Capitalism 01-21-2025]

Predatory finance

They’re not capitalists — they’re predatory criminals

Restoring balance to the economy

Legislators Push to Make Companies Tell Customers When Their Products Will Die

[Wired, via Naked Capitalism 01-23-2025]

Disrupting mainstream economics

Democracy’s Edge: Elite Overproduction 

Simon Pearce [via Naked Capitalism 01-19-2025]

Information age dystopia / surveillance state

Dubai Shows the Face of What Comes Next

Ken Macon, January 16, 2026 [reclaimthenet.org]

A trade show dressed as a tech utopia, Intersec 2026 turns surveillance into spectacle and sells the illusion that safety and scrutiny are the same thing.

Behind the glossy slogans and demo booths is a tight circle of companies actively designing the infrastructure of a world where identification is constant and unavoidable.

Today we dissect who they are, what they are selling, and how their products quietly fit together into a single system of control spanning borders, cities, workplaces, and personal devices.

It looks closely at the vendors turning faces, irises, fingerprints, and phones into permanent credentials, and at how their tools migrate from airports to offices to the street with barely a public conversation.

Matthew McConaughey Is Using a Clever Legal Trick to Bludgeon AI Companies 

[Futurism, via Naked Capitalism 01-18-2025]

A Man Bought Meta’s AI Glasses, and Ended Up Wandering the Desert in Search of Aliens

[Futurism, via Naked Capitalism 01-19-2025]

Climate and environmental crises

The Oceans Just Keep Getting Hotter

[Wired, via The Big Picture, January 19, 2026]

For the eighth year in a row, the world’s oceans absorbed a record-breaking amount of heat in 2025. It was equivalent to the energy it would take to boil 2 billion Olympic swimming pools.

Experts reveal stunning change in global energy: ‘The driving force’

Grace Howarth, January 20, 2026 [via Clean Power Roundup]

We officially produce enough renewable energy to meet the planet’s electricity demands for three quarters of the year.

An energy think tank, Ember, has published positive new data about wind and solar energy. According to reporting by Electrek, renewable energy is growing so much that it is actually outpacing global electricity demand.…

Scientists reveal the impact of air pollution on the human body 

[Independent, via Naked Capitalism 01-24-2025]

Democrats’ political malpractice

Jeffries Won’t Whip Vote Against ICE Funding

David Dayen, January 21, 2026 [The American Prospect]

Trump Is Proving Democratic Presidents Weren’t Powerless 

[Jacobin, via Naked Capitalism 01-24-2025]

Resistance

The Key to Minneapolis’s Successful ICE Resistance

Ana Marie Cox, January 22, 2026 [The New Republic]

The city’s rapid mobilization against ICE was aided greatly by a community with well-worn connections and a tradition of mutual aid. You can—and should—start building this resilience where you live.

What to Do if ICE Invades Your Neighborhood

[Wired, via The Big Picture, January 19, 2026]

With federal agents storming the streets of American communities, there’s no single right way to approach this dangerous moment. But there are steps you can take to stay safe—and have an impact.

Abigail Spanberger’s First Move as Virginia Gov. Was a Masterstroke

Perry Bacon, January 21, 2026 [The New Republic]

Even before taking office last Saturday, new Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, demanded and received the resignations of several of her Republican predecessor Glenn Youngkin’s appointees to the board that oversees the University of Virginia. In a similar vein, the state’s new attorney general, Democrat Jay Jones, forced out legal counsels at George Mason University and the Virginia Military Institute who were appointed by his Republican predecessor.

Job changes at state colleges aren’t usually national news. But what Spanberger and Virginia Democrats are doing matters well beyond the Old Dominion. Republicans like President Trump and Youngkin keep appointing right-wing partisans to traditionally apolitical roles like university board member and FBI director. These appointments are designed to turn key nonpartisan institutions into apparatuses for the Republican Party….

Republican leaders no longer believe in nonpartisan institutions or nonpartisan appointees chosen for their expertise. So many GOP appointees don’t believe in the true missions of the institutions that they are being put in charge of and aren’t qualified to lead them—and therefore must be removed from these jobs as quickly as possible….

The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution

‘Superstar’ Appellate Judges Have Voted 133 to 12 in Trump’s Favor

[New York Times, via The Big Picture, January 19, 2026]

President Trump promised to fill the appeals courts with “my judges.” They have formed a nearly united phalanx to defend his agenda from legal challenges. Destroying the Rule of Law one incompetent jurist at a time.

Civic republicanism

Our unfinished republics 

Sean Irving [Aeon, via Naked Capitalism 01-23-2025]

Across the democratic world, citizens describe a growing sense of powerlessness. Governments rise and fall, but the power to shape daily life now flows elsewhere – through markets, corporations and data systems untouched by democratic oversight. A recent international survey found that, in almost every major country, most people believe the economy is rigged to benefit the rich and powerful; many say their societies are ‘broken’. Discontent has fuelled a turn toward authoritarian politics, which promises control while entrenching new forms of oligarchic rule….

…The relationship between freedom and power is at the heart of the republican tradition. For centuries, republican thinkers argued that liberty required institutions capable of restraining arbitrary power. Niccolò Machiavelli’s Discorsi (1531) held that only a populace able to check elites could remain free. James Harrington’s Oceana (1656), written during England’s brief republic, helped articulate the link between independence and ownership. In the American and French revolutions, republican ideas became state-forming principles: Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762) radicalised demands for popular sovereignty, while John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the authors of The Federalist Papers (1787-88) argued that only constitutional checks and balances could secure freedom….

To make sense of the term ‘economic republicanism’, it helps to understand how the long history of republican political theory views power. This goes back to the world of classical Greece and Rome, and was not always necessarily anti-monarchical. Its deeper commitment is to society organised as a res publica – a public thing – so that power is regulated in such a way as to secure the liberty of its citizens. As scholars such as Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit and others have shown, republican liberty is best understood as the absence of domination. A person is unfree whenever they live at the mercy of another’s will without effective recourse. What compromises liberty and leads to unfreedom, republicans believe, is not direct interference in a person’s actions, but exposure to arbitrary power: a slave with a benevolent master remains unfree.

[TW: “Republican liberty as the absence of domination” is not incorrect, but is only half the formula. The principle of civic virtue in republicanism demands both a willingness to subordinate private interests to the General Welfare, and a positive requirement to “do good.” This last — to “do good” — is what almost all scholars of republicanism ignore. I think largely because of the power of liberalism’s idea of unfettered personal liberty. But, whatever — the point is a general social expectation that each individual of society should “do good,” should be a “useful member of society” flows from the republican insistence that ALL individuals are capable of reason and understanding, and therefore capable of making some contribution to help move society to a better level, ie, to “form a more perfect Union,” as the founders of USA expressed it the Preamble to the Constitution.

[This capacity for reason and understanding exists in ALL individuals to some degree, regardless of their station in life, their class or socio-economic position, their physical or mental handicaps, their access to or lack of access to economic and financial resources. That’s why a fundamental principle of republican self-government is a democratic selection of representation based on “one person, one vote.” It’s not “one dollar, one vote,” at least, not quite yet, though the Supreme Court’s deliberate trashing of the old republican understanding of corruption has allowed the emergence of an oligarchy and the construction of a political system dominated by major financial donors. And let me note, there are some among the morbidly rich who have explicitly promoted a system of “one dollar, one vote.”

[Benjamin Franklin was very explicit about the need to do good as both a personal and civic principle. He wrote that he was greatly influenced by Cotton Mather’s tract, Bonifacius: Essays to Do Good:

[There needs abundance to be done, that the Miseries of the World may have Remedies and Abatements provided for them; and that miserable people may be Relieved and Comforted. The world has according to the Computation of Some, above Seven hundred millions of people now Living in it. What an ample Field among all these, to Do Good upon!  In a word, The Kingdom of God in the World, Calls for Innumerable Services from us. To Do SUCH THINGS is to Do Good. Those men Devise Good, who Shape any DEVICES to do Things of Such a Tendency; v Things be of a Spiritual Importance, or of a Temporal. You see, Sirs, the General matter, appearing as Yet, but as a Chaos, which is to be wrought upon. Oh! that the Good Spirit of God may now fall upon us, and carry on the Glorious work which lies before us! (pp. 20-21)

[Mather advocated the establishment of voluntary associations to do good by benefiting society, and founded Associated Families, a community improvement group in Boston, which Franklin’s father joined. Franklin thus was following the model set by Mather, when Franklin later helped establish in Philadelphia the Library Company, the fire fighters association, the American Philosophical Association, and the college which became the University of Pennsylvania.

[Compare Mather’s 1710 Bonifacius: Essays to Do Good, with Franklin’s 1743 A PROPOSAL for Promoting USEFUL KNOWLEDGE among the British Plantations in America:

[The first Drudgery of Settling new Colonies, which confines the Attentionof People to mere Necessaries, is now pretty well over; and there are many in every Province [colony] in Circumstances that set them at  Ease, and afford Leisure to cultivate the finer Arts and improve the common Stock of Knowledge. To such of these who are Men of Speculation, many Hints must from time to time arise, many Observations occur, which if well-examined, pursued and improved, might produce Discoveries to the Advantage of some or all of the British Plantations, or to the Benefit of Mankind in general….

[That the Subjects of the Correspondence be, All new-discovered Plants, Herbs, Trees, Roots, &c. their Virtues, Uses, &c. Methods of Propagating them, and making such as are useful, but particular to some Plantations, more general. Improvements of vegetable Juices, as Cyders, Wines, &c.  of Curing or Preventing Diseases. All new-discovered Fossils in different Countries, as Mines, Minerals, Quarries, &c. New and useful Improvements in any Branch of Mathematicks. New Discoveries  , such as Improvements in Distillation, Brewing, Assaying of Ores, &c. New Mechanical Inventions for saving Labour; as Mills, , &c. and for Raising and Conveying of Water, Draining of Meadows, &c. All new Arts, Trades, Manufactures, &c. that may be proposed or thought of. Surveys, Maps and Charts of particular Parts of the Sea-coasts, or Inland Countries; Course and Junction of Rivers and great Roads, Situation of Lakes and Mountains, Nature of the Soil and Productions, &c. New Methods of Improving the Breed of useful Animals, Introducing other Sorts from foreign Countries.  New Improvements in Planting, Gardening, Clearing Land, &c. And all philosophical Experiments that let Light into the Nature of Things, tend to increase the Power of Man over Matter, and multiply the Conveniencies or Pleasures of Life.

[In Internal Improvement, National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States  (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2001), John Lauritz Larson, argues (p 3)

… “the positive use of government power for popular constructive purposes, such as public works of internal improvement, never was proscribed by American republicanism but lay well within the presumed legitimate authority of revolutionary governments. In fact, one of the virtues of republican government supposedly lay in its capacity to render safe and liberal the pursuit of human improvement by representative authorities. In the hands of arbitrary rulers, purposeful designs and high-handed government easily tyranized nations, fostering the interests of corrupt favorites at the expense of the freedoms of the people. But in proper republics, designs supposedly could emanate only from the people themselves. Unless produced by dishonest intrigue, the designs of republican governors must necessarily reflect the public interest and serve the common good. Therefore, new American governments ought to have been ideally situated, not just to keep the peace and preserve order, but to foster improvement in the conditions of life.””

[The foremost USA economist of the middle 1800s, Henry C. Carey, wrote in volume 3 of his 1858-59 set, The Principles of Social Science, wrote “The more perfect is a person’s development, ”the greater is his desire for knowledge, the greater his love for literature and art, the greater his desire to see for himself the movements of the world, and to learn from those who are capable of affording him instruction.”

[Here is the ultima finis of political economy for a republic: to so highly develop the powers of human mind over matter and nature, that the need for physical toil is eliminated, the mind unshackled to roam freely in the hallowed halls of knowledge, and the intellectual life become the norm of not just a fortunate few, but of all citizens. Compare this to the dreary, profit-driven, soulless proselytizing for artificial intelligence today.

[And contrast this pleasant, hopeful view of human agency, with the conservative and (anti)Republican practice of politics as culture war. Rather than lifting up individuals and their capacity to use reason to do good, conservatives and (anti)Republicans cultivate and reinforce tribal and personal selfishness, and fear and hatred of outsiders.

[I am suspicious of much of the rest of Irving’s article. He discusses a number of other theorists he claims as republican, including Henry George, who I won’t disagree about. But, for example Irving writes about “former Royal Navy officer Thomas Hodgskin … a disciple of Adam Smith, was in many ways an anti-establishment market libertarian.” Citing Smith as congenial to republicanism is always a tell-tale sign that the writer does not really have a firm grasp of republicanism. Smith was an agent and promoter of the British empire, and argued strenuously against USA attempting to industrialize. So, no surprise that Irving is author of Hayek’s Market Republicanism, The Limits of Liberty (London, Routledge, 2021). Hayek was a factotum of the Austro-Hungarian empire, who mourned that empire’s demise. And Hayek’s neoliberal theology of “the market” should be seen as one of the most destructive and devastating trojan horses ever directed against both republican political economy and the Judeo-Christian heritage of empathy, selflessness, and social justice. “By their fruits you shall know them.”

​​​​​​​[Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.

Do justly now,

Love mercy now,

Walk humbly now.

You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

-The Talmud ]

Ruling-Class Control of AI Is Making Things More Expensive and You Poorer

Why Aren’t All the Americans Protesting?

Kathleen Wallace, Jan 19, 2026

I do believe this is an important point for our friends outside of the United States to understand. I often see many asking why we simply don’t decide not to comply. They wonder why we don’t take to the streets in such numbers that they would have to bend to our will. A major reason is this large, though minority group of regime supporters is very much a part of our national fabric. It’s difficult to unravel something that took so many years to construct, that of a bootlicking, Empire approving, acquiescent populace. It’s not like we are dealing with one crazy grandpa in a 10-mile radius. It’s far more widespread and disturbing than this.

Who Isn’t — and Who Is — Rising Up to Save Our Country — Time for the comfortable to stop being so comfortable.

[Going Deep with Russ Baker, Jan 18, 2026]

…There are people — I think of them as the “Ten Percent” — who are fairly immune to these economic, psychological, and physical weapons. They can afford to do things the rest of us cannot. They are more potent. (I don’t mean that this amorphous grouping is literally10 percent of the population — just that they are far from a majority, but a lot more than the super-rich One Percent.)

And they are not MAGAs.

They’re the people who are blessed with a decent education, financial good fortune, comfortable lives, and positions of influence and authority. They’re found in banks, corporations, small businesses, law firms, and elsewhere. They are the most likely to grasp what is going on.

But from my own observations, this class, aside from a small minority that is already mobilized, remains largely silent and passive. Perhaps, with markets and 401Ks booming, the dangers and depravities still seem far away and abstract….

What MAGAs Don’t Know Hurts Everyone

Most of the complaints that animate the Trump base are essentially based on fiction.

Even at their imagined worst, the problems that MAGAs fulminate over do very little harm to anyone. How many people can point to grievous injuries they have suffered at the hands of the tiny number of trans people in America?

And what about the so-called antifa agitators? It’s easy enough to start believing the country is crawling with agitators, subversives, and “domestic terrorists” when the authorities label as such anyone who doesn’t share the Trump regime’s agenda and dares to be vocal about it. But the folks out in the streets in numbers look to me just like ordinary Americans understandably alarmed and distressed by the federal government’s Gestapo tactics….

The MAGAs have been captured by a cult — and manipulated by a small number of people. We know who they are: the likes of media mogul Rupert Murdoch (remember him? Still stoking chaos at 94!), richest rich person Elon Musk, and a pack of formerly unknown and undistinguished people, now suddenly famous influencers. With the assistance of various offshore actors, including bot shops organized and directed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China.

This fabrication of artificial enemies and nonexistent threats, the constant warnings about shadowy forces moving against all-American values and institutions, would not be possible, however, without the passivity of what I described above as the powerful but so far unengaged Ten Percent….

Your social media platform is rigged by algorithms to feed you not news that you need to function as a citizen in a democracy, but “news” tailored to enrage you, and to keep you reading more of the same on the same site….

The Mystery of Greenland

Did you feel like you missed something when Greenland suddenly zoomed into first place as the most important thing in the world, somehow the most urgent issue on the national agenda? I certainly did. I mean, we get it: geographic importance, access to minerals, yadda yadda. But that’s nothing new: In 1946, President Harry Truman offered Denmark $100 million in gold for it….

So I appreciate that a correspondent for The Guardian has found the answer. And you’d be shocked — shocked — to discover that it was a billionaire, cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, who put the Greenland bee in Trump’s bonnet….

How a billionaire with interests in Greenland encouraged Trump to acquire the territory

Tom Burgis, 15 Jan 2026 [The Guardian]

US president’s friend Ronald Lauder – who first proposed Arctic expansion – is now making deals in the island

[TW: Lauder is an oligarch. Oligarchy has always been the deadly opposition to republics. Do you need a better example of how oligarchy bends and perverts the direction of public discourse and government purpose?]

What Trump Can Do in Greenland by Barely Lifting a Finger

Josh Marshall, January 20, 2026 [Talking Points Memo]

I keep hearing that Trump might “invade” or “seize” Greenland. In reality I think it’s much easier than that. And a key part of the equation involves very little risk. The U.S. doesn’t need to invade Greenland. It’s civilian population is just over 50,000 people, around 20,000 of whom live in Nuuk, the territory’s capital. It has no military at all. So the U.S. could like send in maybe a hundred troops and simply declare that Greenland is now under U.S. sovereignty. They don’t really have to “do” anything. The US is the globe’s greatest military power. Greenland is in our part of the world. No one else has any significant military assets anywhere close by. European powers have sent over what I think is a few dozen troops as a sort of symbolic show of support. But they’re not going to be fighting even a token military force. The point is that the U.S. seizure of Greenland can be largely rhetorical. And then it’s kind of done if Trump says it is done. The most the U.S. would likely have to do would be to take control of the main airport in Nuuk.

“What Is Going to Happen?” — How to reject a new normal.

Hamilton Nolan, Jan 18, 2026 How Things Work

…The Trump administration, and the Republican Party in general, has attacked America’s educational system from top to bottom. It has systematically tried to restrict what can be taught in public schools in red states. It has, where possible, overruled fact with religion. It has gone after individual teachers and their unions. It has defunded prestigious universities, and used government funding as a hammer to bully universities into adopting highly politicized codes of conduct, including drastic restrictions on free speech in the classroom. From kindergartens all the way up to grad schools, it is engaged in a project of trying to change what is taught to students in a way that suits right wing sensibilities.

The Trump administration has also attacked the media. The president has sued multiple news outlets for true reporting. He has used the government’s ability to approve corporate mergers as a way to push media companies to censor their news divisions. His billionaire allies, seeing the writing on the wall, have begun meddling in the editorial operations of news outlets they own in order to make them more friendly to the administration. On top of these attacks on traditional journalism, Trump’s allies have also rigged social media algorithms to turn Twitter into a right wing propaganda machine, and are aiming to do the same thing with other popular apps. The CEOs of the biggest tech companies, which ultimately control the majority of America’s information environment, have proven themselves willing to monkey with the information that they deliver in order to serve their own financial interests by maintaining positive relationships with Trump.

All of these things, together, are having the broad effect of making the information that hundreds of millions of Americans receive more right wing, more Trump-friendly, more propagandized, and less honest. These shifts in information range from a school child in Oklahoma not being well-informed about the theory of evolution to a grandmother watching CBS News not being able to see a story about the administration’s human rights abuses to a bored office workers being bathed in right wing memes just by lazily scrolling Twitter all day. In aggregate, over time, the result of this trend will be to move public opinion to the right—most notably by reducing the prominence of aggressive, critical truth-telling in all corners of the public sphere. Outright corporate and government censorship and the self-censorship that teachers and journalists and other public figures engage in out of a sense of self-preservation both contribute to this effect.

If this continues, it means that, over time, there will be a strong force that tends to erode public knowledge about the bad things that the Trump administration does, and therefore also tends to weaken public opposition to the administration. If you are a politically astute person who is immersed in a media environment that still abounds with good reporting, this may sound absurd. But when you look at the big picture, it is fairly clear that this is a powerful trend. It is easy to laugh at the clumsy propaganda of authoritarian governments throughout history. But there is a reason why it exists: It works….

Why have so many institutions—trillion-dollar companies, the world’s most prestigious universities, the United States Congress—faltered and broken in the face of this kind of idiotic man? The answer lies in the nature of institutions themselves. Institutions are entities built to wield power in the context of a particular set of rules and social arrangements. By ignoring all of those rules and social arrangements, Trump has left these institutions befuddled about how to proceed. He is like a chess player who declares that all of his pieces are queens, or a football player who pays off all of the refs and rides a tank onto the field. “Ermm, I don’t believe that’s allowed…” his opponents say, as he declares himself the winner. The same set of rules that these institutions bought into as the basis of their own power have become an anchor on them, in the face of an opponent who cares nothing for rules at all….

This basic process has happened across the entire range of institutions mentioned above. They were built to operate in a world in which the rules meant something, and now the rules mean nothing. The final insult is that the government, which is supposed to enforce the rules, is the one now gleefully breaking them. In search of fairness, companies cannot turn to the SEC, schools cannot turn to the Education Department, unions cannot turn to the NLRB, lawyers cannot turn to the Department of Justice—all of those things, which the institutions have been trained to see as the referees and enforcers of fairness, are now their outright enemies….

[TW: Nolan went to Minneapolis and has been posting some first-hand accounts on his website.]

There Will Be a Nuremberg-Style Trial

W. A. Lawrence, Jan 23, 2026 [Glass Empires, via Naked Capitalism 01-24-2025]

Trump officials are deliberately replicating the playbook that led to Nuremberg. The documentation exists. International jurisdiction is inevitable….

The question becomes not whether Trump officials will face tribunals, but when accountability arrives.

Trump’s June 2025 directive read: “ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.” He named Los Angeles, Chicago, New York. Miller ordered 3,000 arrests daily. Privately, the administration targeted one million deportations in Trump’s first year. DHS posted an image depicting “America after 100 million deportations” as paradise, captioned: “The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world.”

On January 15, 2026, ICE agents threw tear gas beneath a family’s car in Minneapolis. Their six-month-old infant required CPR. The family had mounted no attack. Vice President Vance defended ICE tactics eight days later.

At CPAC 2023, Trump declared: “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.” He told Fox News in June 2024: “Revenge does take time, I will say that. And sometimes revenge can be justified.” NPR documented over 100 instances in which he threatened to investigate, prosecute, or imprison opponents.

Asked about Election Day chaos in October 2024, Trump responded: “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big issue, and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

In September 2025, speaking to 800 generals and admirals at Quantico, Trump declared: “This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, because the enemy from within must be handled before it gets out of control.”

Veterans Day 2023 in New Hampshire: “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.” Four times in 2023, he declared immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” December rally in Durham, New Hampshire: “They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.” Confronted with Hitler parallels, Trump doubled down in Waterloo, Iowa: “I never read ‘Mein Kampf,’” then immediately continued: “[Immigrants] are destroying the blood of our country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country.”….

You’re Not a Progressive. You’re a Constitutionalist 

Christopher Armitage, Jan 23, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic, via Naked Capitalism 01-24-2025]

Dr King and Our Authoritarian Crisis

William J. Barber, II and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Jan 18, 2026 [Our Moral Moment]

…We deceive ourselves if we believe King was able to face down Southern racism because he had the full support of the federal government. The fact that we are living in a national security state that has labeled people who resist authoritarian extremism “domestic terrorists” can help us understand the context Dr. King was born into almost a century ago. Most people know Dr. King was surveilled by the FBI at the end of his life, but in his new book Martyrs to the Unspeakable, James W. Douglass reveals that King’s family and community were marked as a threat to national security a dozen years before Martin was born.

According to US military intelligence in 1917, “Negro unrest” was one of four “principle domestic enemies” in the US during World War I. US Army Lt. Col. Ralph Van Deman argued that Black Americans who challenged racism were influenced by “foreign backed subversion” and should be monitored. “No one,” Van Deman argued, “was more influential in the black community than its ministers.” He directed a spy network to focus on Black churches, and in September of 1917 – 12 years before Martin was born – the US Military Intelligence Division opened a file on King’s grandfather, the pastor of Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. “It behooves us to find out all we possibly can about this colored preacher,” an Army official wrote in a top-secret telegram to the Army’s Southern Department headquarters.

This surveillance continued with King’s father, who succeeded his father-in-law as the pastor of Ebeneezer. Noting his participation in the National Negro Congress, Daddy King’s intelligence file labeled him a “Communist threat.” By this time, intelligence officers who were learning about the inner workings of Black churches understood that these were not corporations directed from the top-down, but democratic communities where organizing was often directed from multiple centers of power. They opened files on the financial secretary and even the custodian at Ebeneezer also….