Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 30, 2025

by Tony Wikrent

Crossing the U.S. Border? Here’s How to Protect Yourself

Nikita Mazurov, Matt Sledge, March 29, 2025 [The Intercept]

Searches of phones and other electronics are on the rise for those entering the U.S. Take these steps to help secure your devices.

Managing Unexpected ICE Visits: Best Practices for Employers

March 19, 2025 [IndustryWeek]

Rep. Jaimie Raskin’s request for you to file FOIA with DOGE

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

‘We’re Not Stopping’: Trump Border Czar Vows to Ignore Judges

[The Daily Beast, via MSN 03-18-2025]

The Biggest Scandal of the Second Trump Term Isn’t “Signalgate”

Alex Shephard, March 28, 2025 [The New Republic]

The national security chat debacle certainly merits attention. But the Trump administration is now blatantly disappearing students and others who are in the country legally…. Masked agents snatching legal residents off the streets and disappearing them—not so long ago, this would be unthinkable in the United States. Now it is not only a regular occurrence but something that the Trump administration boasts about….

By removing the authors of innocuous op-eds, Rubio seems to believe that he can surgically smother the opinions they were expressing. At the same time, this purge allows the administration to systematically attack higher education. Already, the administration has used student protests to attack a number of colleges and universities and to withhold hundreds of millions in federal funding from several. Allegations of antisemitism—and a list of demands that are more or less impossible to fully meet—are being used as a Trojan horse to withhold funding and to attack other sources of revenue. Many schools rely heavily on foreign students, who often pay full tuition. The Trump administration’s crackdown, even if it were to somehow stop today, has already seriously jeopardized that. Who would send their child to study in America in such a climate? Especially knowing their child could be swept off the street and flown to a detention facility?

What Will It Take?

Joyce Vance, March 26, 2025 [Civil Discourse]

Why use Signal in the first place when American leaders have some of the most secure communications technology in the world available to them? Is it just for convenience? If so, that’s sloppy, and they should be committing to do better, not arguing over whether the information was classified or not. (But if it looks like a duck…)

The truth is that by going to Signal, they avoided leaving a paper trail. No annoying records that could be unearthed down the road. Remember Trump’s first impeachment? It came about in large part because after the call where he threatened Ukraine’s president with withholding security aid if he wouldn’t announce his country was investigating Joe Biden for financial misconduct, records of the call were buried inside a classified information system where they didn’t belong. That was what got the ball rolling. It was about trying to hide records of an official call that everyone knew was wrong.

As far as we know at this point, there was nothing improper about the attack on the Houthis. So why were high-ranking members of the Trump administration communicating off the books? How pervasive is the practice, and who knows/authorizes it? We are a government of the people. Transparency isn’t optional. There are rules about public records that have to be followed, and this president who likes to operate in secret and at the margins of our laws has frequently tried to skirt them.

The Next American Constitution

Thomas Neuburger, March 26, 2025 [God’s Spies]

…What if the Right wins absolutely? What would we be as a country under full right-wing rule?

That’s been hard to determine, though there were clear indications. I decided the Right was factious, and a lot depended on which group would end up on top. If the Christian Nationalists, the God-bothering absolutists, or groups of that stripe should win out, we’d have one kind of place. God before gold, God with list of demands.

Or what if Charles Koch won out? America would be slightly different — a terrible place, but not the same hell hole as the New Apostolic Reform people would create. God as a cover story, gold calling the shots.

A Techno-Fascist Takeover

So who actually won? That’s been answered. Thanks to Trump’s love of revenge — if you try to remove the king, it’s best to succeed — and his bromance with a man he’s decided swings admirable pipe, the group on the Right we can safely call techno-fascists has come out ahead.

They’ve captured a man who thinks like a mafia boss, and that man has captured the crown — meaning, both houses of Congress, the Court (for now), and the throne, something we once called a Presidency, then inflated to king….

I originally thought that of course Trump would leave office when his term expires…. But consider the people behind him, who feed on his fury: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and their ilk; Russ Vought, a primary author of Project 2025; the whole of the Heritage crowd; the people who created John Roberts to be who he is, who financed his Court. Crazed billionaires, bankers and moguls of every stripe. They have transformational dreams that don’t end with Trump….

Three things to watch for, ways to judge your next move:

• What will the Roberts Court do as cases come up? Acquiesce, split the baby, or pull the king off of his throne? If the third, what will Trump do? Ignore them or change course?

• If his friends wants to break Social Security — make sure checks don’t go out — they’re well on their way. If they do that, how will they deal with the fury that follows? They can respond “So what?” — invoke the No one can stop me Amendment — but will they?

• Finally, will they treat citizens like alien others? Remember, Obama set precedent on that. Will Trump go that far: use AI to find his enemies, then “deal with” the ones he thinks he can safely destroy? Or will he stop short of that?

The Appellate Void

Andrew Coan, March 24, 2025 [Balkanization]

What would it look like for the executive branch to defy a court order? Typically, we picture a dramatic showdown between the President and the Supreme Court, the whole country watching with bated breath. But there’s another, less dramatic scenario, which has been largely overlooked in recent commentary.

Suppose the administration simply defies a district court order and declines to appeal. The plaintiffs, having already won, would have no standing to file an appeal of their own. Nor could they petition the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus.

The Courts of Appeals have no jurisdiction to grant mandamus against executive officials under these circumstances. As Marbury v. Madison established, such actions constitute original, not appellate, proceedings and can only be brought before a court with original jurisdiction. The All Writs Act permits writs only “in aid of jurisdiction,” requiring an existing appellate case. Without an appeal, neither the Supreme Court nor the Court of Appeals would possess a clear procedural vehicle to intervene.

Contempt sanctions might solve this problem. But the best recent scholarship suggests that they are a fragile remedy even under normal circumstances. In this scenario, it seems quite possible they would fail completely. Enforcement depends on cooperation from the executive branch. And without an appeal, higher courts are likely powerless….

The Judiciary’s Last Stand

Tom Nichols, March 24, 2025 [The Atlantic]

Trump’s campaign against the rule of law has ratcheted up dramatically.

Democrat: Leaked Messages Show Waltz Admitting to War Crime in Yemen Strike 

[Truthout, via Naked Capitalism 03-27-2025]

Trump Executive Order on Voting Denounced as ‘Authoritarian Power Grab’

Jon Queally, March 26, 2025 [CommonDreams]

…The official executive order—under the Orwellian header “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections”—would do the very opposite, warn critics, by making it more difficult for tens of millions of eligible U.S. citizens to cast their ballots in state and national elections….

“The order, which multiple legal experts say is likely illegal,” Edkins continued, “threatens to punish states that do not comply and could potentially disenfranchise any American who doesn’t have a passport. It even invites Elon Musk’s DOGE to help enforce the measures. This isn’t about securing our elections—it’s voter suppression, plain and simple.”

The ACLU said the presidential directive “represents a significant overreach of executive power and poses a direct threat to the fundamental right to vote,” in part by ordering—by fiat and without the consent of Congress—the Election Assistance Commission to alter the national mail voter registration form to require documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport, to register to vote—something never needed in the nation’s history.

Trump’s order also attempts to force states to enact “documentary proof of citizenship requirements”. It would force state election authorities, under threat of significant federal funds being withheld, to discard all absentee and mail-in ballots received after Election Day….

“A president does not set election law and never will,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of the pro-democracy group Common Cause. “Trump’s executive action is an attempt to take away our right to vote or make it so hard that we don’t participate….”

They Are Going to Take Everything If We Don’t Stop Them 

Hamilton Nolan, March 28, 2025 [How Things Work]

‘Fall in Line or Else’: Latest Trump Order Seen as Message to Workers

Jon Queally, March 28, 2025 [CommonDreams]

…President Donald Trump’s latest attack on the working class was delivered in the form of an executive order late Thursday that seeks to strip the collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal government workers, a move that labor rights advocates said is not only unlawful but once again exposes Trump’s deep antagonism toward working people and their families….

The far-reaching order, which cites the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act as the source of his presidential authority, goes way beyond restricting collective bargaining and union representation at agencies with a national security mandate but instead tries to ensnare dozens of federal agencies and classifications of federal workers who work beyond that scope….

“Straight out of Project 2025, this executive order is the very definition of union-busting,” said Schuler in a Thursday night statement. “It strips the fundamental right to unionize and collectively bargain from workers across the federal government at more than 30 agencies….”

Under Pressure From Trump, ICE Is Pushing Legal Boundaries 

[ProPublica, via Naked Capitalism 03-26-2025]

Mike Johnson Suggests Eliminating Federal Courts After Trump Rulings Blocked

[Truthout, via Naked Capitalism 03-27-2025]

Donald Trump Has Invented Something New and Chilling

Michael Tomasky, March 28, 2025

Donald Trump is inventing a new way. Call it chaos fascism. Destroy the institutions of democracy until they’re so disfigured or dysfunctional that a majority no longer cares about them.

That’s exactly what’s happening with Social Security. The Washington Post reported this week that the SSA is breaking down: Its website “crashed four times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts.” A Wall Street multimillionaire who probably doesn’t need his Social Security check and who has pledged that he will “100 percent work with DOGE” has already cut around 12 percent of the staff and doesn’t look like he’s stopping there….

It applies even to Signalgate. Trump has contempt for rules and procedures, and so he appoints unqualified stooges like Pete Hegseth to run the world’s largest military, who share that contempt—who think being tough means showing the world that they can do anything they want with no consequences. Again—ignore the law, trash the rules, establish that procedure is whatever you say it is. Chaos fascism….

Trump will orchestrate no military coup. The Republican Congress will probably pass no laws that make Trump president for life. That would be too obvious. What they’ll do is make stealthier moves across the board that discredit and destroy our democratic institutions until he and his billionaire friends can strip them for parts. Chaos fascism is here to stay.

Men DOGEbags at Work 

DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Code Base in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse 

[Wired, via Naked Capitalism 03-29-2025]

Like many legacy government IT systems, SSA systems contain code written in COBOL, a programming language created in part in the 1950s by computing pioneer Grace Hopper. The Defense Department essentially pressured private industry to use COBOL soon after its creation, spurring widespread adoption and making it one of the most widely used languages for mainframes, or computer systems that process and store large amounts of data quickly, by the 1970s. (At least one DOD-related website praising Hopper’s accomplishments is no longer active, likely following the Trump administration’s DEI purge of military acknowledgements.)

[TW: Grace Hopper is a prime example of How America Was Built by government support and promotion of science and technology. Hopper’s pioneering computer work took place as she was serving as an officer in the U.S. Navy. She devised the theory of machine-independent programming languages, the foundation of all computer programming today. She retired as a Rear Admiral. These are the stories of actual industrial development that have been stifled by the neo-liberal / conservative myths of “free enterprise.” ]

DOGE cuts to Social Security staff and services sends benefits system into chaos 

WSWS, via Naked Capitalism 03-26-2025]

‘

A Small Group of People Wanted to Do Away With Social Security From the Beginning’ 

[FAIR, via Naked Capitalism 03-26-2025]

Sabotage In Plain Sight— How Republicans Hope To Get Away With Dismantling Social Security

Howie Klein, March 26, 2025 [downwithtyranny.com]

Treasury Plans ‘Substantial’ Layoffs as Part of Musk’s DOGE Push 

[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 03-26-2025]

FBI puts together Tesla task force as counter-protest violence ramps up 

Electrek, via Naked Capitalism 03-26-2025]

An Interview With A Fired USDA Specialist 

[Defector, via Naked Capitalism 03-24-2025]

Internal White House document details layoff plans across U.S. agencies 

[WaPo, via Naked Capitalism 03-28-2025]

Gaza / Palestine / Israel

“The Target is Unmistakable”: The Shooting of Gaza’s Children 

Amel Guettatfi, March 27, 2025 [Drop Site]

The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics

Neoliberalism and Its Hegemonic Crisis 

[Modern Intellectual History, via Naked Capitalism 03-28-2025]

Predatory finance

The Synthetic Lender of Last Resort 

Matt Levine [Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 03-29-2025]

Democrats’ political malpractice

Monopoly Round-Up: The Democrats’ Corporate Lawyers Get the Humiliation They Deserve

Matt Stoller, March 23, 2025 [BIG]

…A few years ago, I spoke at the American Bar Association Antitrust Section, and observed the rage the gathered corporate lawyers felt towards anti-monopolists for barging into their club. While I noted at the time the legal elements of the disagreement, there’s a political element as well. These lawyers are the Democratic establishment, the real thinkers and operatives behind the frontmen like Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer and candidates like Kamala Harris and Barack Obama. And it’s been this way for decades, such that it’s systematized….

A key firm in this network is Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a multi-billion dollar entity that is so politically connected its New York office served as the unofficial campaign headquarters for Kamala Harris’ campaign. Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries worked as an associate at Paul Weiss for six years….

Today, at $7.5 million in profit per partner in 2024, the fifth highest of major law firms, Paul Weiss is anchored by private equity titan Apollo Global Management, as well as Google, Amazon, and Apple. It reps nine of the top ten private equity firms. Just this week, it got a securities action against Amazon dismissed, advised Rocket Mortgage in buying Redfin, and helped engineer the roll-up of roofing in the $11 billion QXO/Beacon Roofing Supply deal. Its work spans the gamut of pro-corporate aggressive lawyering. Brad Karp, for instance, sent a letter opposing the Biden administration’s $8 cap on credit card late fees. It helped Verizon buy Frontier, did one of the largest private equity deals in China and as an internal investigator failed to catch one of the largest stock frauds in history. Paul Weiss is a firm unafraid of standing up to the government on behalf of its corporate or pro bono clients….

A week and a half ago, Donald Trump targeted Paul Weiss with an executive order stripping the firm of security clearances and business with the government, as well as potentially barring their lawyers from Federal courthouses. In addition, Trump implied he would penalize Paul Weiss’ clients. It’s a blatantly illegal order, the kind widely understood as an authoritarian move….

Working through Burck, as well as New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a firm client, Karp reached out to Trump, and they met for three hours. In the middle of that meeting with Karp, Trump picked up the phone and calling Paul Weiss’s most important rival, Robert Giuffra of Sullivan & Cromwell, and asked what he should do. The whole episode leaked, which revealed to the entire corporate and legal world that Paul Weiss has no juice in Trump-world, and Sullivan & Cromwell does.

Finally, they cut a deal. In return for Trump ending his executive order, the firm agreed to end its diversity programs, do $40 million of free work for Trump-aligned priorities, and ensure that it would hire and represent Trump-aligned clients. Karp also disavowed former Paul Weiss lawyer Mark Pomerantz, who had worked in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in a case against Trump.

This capitulation shocked and horrified the legal world, inviting Trump to expand his attack on the legal community. The next day, Trump issued another executive order calling for the government to sanction lawyers who bring “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious” lawsuits against the government. That’s a signal to the entire legal world that representing clients in disagreements with the government carries a personal and professional risk….

In this context, Paul Weiss’ immediate capitulation caused a lot of lawyers to despair. One way of seeing this dynamic is to ask the question: If this venerable law firm, which has the resources to fight and a legacy to protect, capitulates, then who else will? But the way I see this dynamic is that it merely reveals to everyone in Democratic politics what we’ve already known, which is that big law is a place of toxic anti-democratic sentiment. And the entire edifice of party politics, that fancy lawyers do the real governing work while shabby hacks handle the rabble during the elections, is a charade to hand over America to private equity and monopoly.

The story of Paul Weiss is the story of modern corporate liberalism turned sour. It’s a wildly unethical place, flipping sides on Google for money. Moreover, its lawyers have openly encouraged corporate clients to break the law….

…what should be crystal clear to everyone in politics is these lawyers aren’t just unethical, but are in many ways the reason that the Democratic Party is as enfeebled and pathetic as it seems to be. Big law is the brains of the Democrats, with the actual elected officials, often meek pleasers with little experience wielding real power, as ornaments who serve up slop on centrist and leftism and other meaningless terms. The alchemy of big law was always they way in which you seamlessly revolve in and out of government – the allure of making a lot of money and governing. That is what is shattering….

And in that sense, I am thankful to Paul Weiss and Brad Karp. In this dangerous moment, the Democratic corporate establishment, by capitulating so obviously to Trump in return for corporate money, has just ripped out the heart that ran the Clinton, Obama, and much of the toxic parts of the Biden administrations. And they did so at the only moment in the last two decades during which normal Democrats are looking for someone to blame for their own party’s fecklessness. And who better to blame than the would-be Kamala Harris staff, a pack of Google and private equity defense lawyers – and Chuck Schumer’s brother – who, when the chips were down, bent the knee to Trump?

 [TW: Stoller’s account of the lawyers at Paul Weiss deciding to roll over for Trump, is a powerful example of civic republicanism having been destroyed by greed and the love of wealth. Paul Weiss lawyers decided they would rather preserve their wealth, than honor their profession’s civic duty to uphold the rule of law. Which is why I place the next contribution, discussing oligarchy, immediately following.]

Oligarchy

On oligarchy: ancient lessons for global politics

Edited by David Edward Tabachnick and Toivo Koivukoski [Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2011]

Chapter 3 “Overcoming Oligarchy: Republicanism and the Right to Property in the Federalist”

Jeffrey Sikkenga

…Plato’s most systematic analysis of oligarchic regimes is found in Book 8 of The Republic. In the beginning of Book 8, the conversation returns to a discussion interrupted at the end of Book 4 about the relative justice of five regimes: aristocracy (the rule of philosopher-kings), timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. The ensuing conversation between Socrates and his interlocutors Glaucon and Adeimantus focuses on the oligarchic soul because, according to Socrates, regimes acquire their character from the psyche of those who establish and hold the ruling offices….

…Socrates portrays the moneymaker’s soul as ‘in a sense two-fold, born from a combination of the desire to acquire security and the desire to acquire honour. For the moneymaker, wealth satisfies both desires. But money makers are not oligarchs – that is, human beings moved by distinctly oligarchic political principles. Moneymakers are politically happy if the city allows unlimited acquisition and the laws ‘diligently hold down by force’ crimes against property. But oligarchs demand that the city honour wealth by imposing a property qualification forholding office that excludes the vast majority of inhabitants.

According to Socrates, the oligarchic soul comes into being when the rich face a democratic revolution that insists on equality….

Unlike money-makers who gather up their property and flee when threatened, these wealthy people have become willing to risk ‘impeachments, judgments, and contests’ in order to defend the dignity and justice of the moneymaking way of life, which resides not so much in the simple accumulation of wealth as in the nobler fact that such a person rules himself through the dominance of the orderly (moneymaking) desires over the disorderly (spendthrift) desires. In their view, the justice of oligarchy is that it recognizes the moral excellence of the acquisitive person’s orderly soul and publicly distinguishes it from lower ones that lack these virtues. For such people, oligarchy must be fought for because it is the only regime that gives the city’s highest authority and honour to the best human beings, the people who deserve these distinctions. What makes some moneymakers ‘truly oligarchs’ is their moral attachment to a specific notion of justice that opposes the democratic idea of equality. Thus, while acquisitive desire for wealth is born from fear and shame, Socrates suggests that it becomes a bold demand for political honour fueled by a growing attachment to what the rich see as the nobility and justice of oligarchic distinction….

Aristotle notes, however, that there are a variety of oligarchic arrangements, ranging from the rule of newly rich moneymakers to dynasties of a very few old, wealthy families who are not permitted to engage in moneymaking. What unites these oligarchs indeed, what makes them oligarchs is that all of them believe that only the rich deserve to rule, and they enforce this idea by having a high property qualification for voting and office holding. The variety of oligarchies shows, however, that oligarchs disagree over why wealth is worthy of honour. Oligarchic regimes devoted to the endless accumulation of wealth believe that the life of acquisition is the good life. For them, what makes human beings noble is the act of overcoming material privation and freeing oneself from necessity. But the other types of oligarchies show that the passion fueling oligarchs cannot be reduced to the desire to acquire money. For these oligarchs, wealth is honourable because it is the only means to a higher end, hence, Aristotle says, these oligarchs ‘are held to occupy the place of gentlemen’ by the many and ‘in most places’ even mistake themselves for aristocrats. These gentlemanly oligarchs believe that both wealthy moneymakers and the poor should be excluded from office because both groups are ‘vulgar’ (apeirokalia): that is, inexperienced in the nobler matters that are necessary to elevate the mind in preparation for political rule. There seem, then, to be several kinds of oligarchies rooted in different notions of what type of human being is truly good and deserves to rule. Yet within these differences lies the common idea of all oligarchy: an unbreakable link between wealth and political merit. To be an oligarch is to believe that the rich (at least certain rich people) deserve mastery over the city.

[TW: Slightly different than Thorstein Veblen’s analysis of The Leisure Class, but not much. I want to emphasize here that civic republicanism is based on the belief that all individuals have reason and are capable of self-government if they are not steered astray by false prophets and demagogues. Hence, the high value placed on free public education for all — which many conservatives today have become emboldened enough to explicitly oppose. Leo Strauss and Curtis Yarvin are very open about the need for society to be ruled by elites who trained and educated to spin and weave myths and lies to keep the masses in place. ]

Nation’s Elite Lawyers Choose Money Over The Constitution

Brian Beutler, March 26, 2025 [Off Message]

Suddenly, litigants who need to defend themselves against Trump’s threats or file suit to stop his legally dubious orders, “are struggling to find legal representation as a result of his challenges,” according to the Post. “Biden-era officials said they’re having trouble finding lawyers willing to defend them. The volunteers and small nonprofits forming the ground troops of the legal resistance to Trump administration actions say that the well-resourced law firms that once would have backed them are now steering clear.”

That’s bad enough. But in context, its even worse. White shoe pro bono work is in exceptionally high demand because, through his lawlessness, Trump has already taxed the world of public interest, legal aid, and boutique firms to its limit. Before his first orders, which targeted corporate firms Covington & Burling, and Perkins Coie, lawyers for these independent firms and civil-society organizations were already cracking under the workload.

“Two months into this administration, the American legal system is already under severe stress,” said Deepak Gupta, a Supreme Court advocate whose firm Gupta Wessler has participated in litigation against the Trump administration. “The nation’s largest, richest, and most powerful corporate law firms are starting to be ruled by abject fear. They’re already categorically declining to take on new pro bono clients in cases that might draw the administration’s ire. Worse still, in some cases I know of, they’re backing out of existing commitments to challenge unlawful government actions on behalf of vulnerable groups that desperately need their help. Nonprofits and smaller law firms like ours simply cannot make up for all of that unmet need.”

A Disregard for Rules Trickles Down From Trump to His Aides

Julian E. Barnes, March 27, 2025 [New York Times]

Surrendering to Authoritarianism

Chris Hedges, March 24, 2025

Elite universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Columbia or Yale, were created to train and perpetuate the plutocracy. They are not and never have been centers of cutting-edge intellectual thought or hospitable to dissidents and radicals. They cloak themselves in the veneer of moral probity and intellectualism but cravenly serve political and economic power. This is their nature. Don’t expect it to change, even as we fall headlong into authoritarianism….

These institutions of privilege — I attended Harvard and have taught at Columbia and Princeton — have always been complicit in the crimes of their times. They did not, until the world around them changed, speak out against the slaughter of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, the crushing of labor and socialist organizations at the turn of the twentieth century and the purging of institutions, including the academy, during the Red Scare in the 1920s and 1930s, and later the witch hunts under McCarthyism. They turned on their students protesting the war in Vietnam in the 1960s as viciously as they are turning on them now….

What the New JFK Documents Reveal

Thomas Neuburger, Mar 28, 2025 [God’s Spies]

If you’re looking for an introduction to the just-released JFK material, there’s a good discussion on Breaking Points by Jefferson Morley, a bona fide expert. It’s worth listening all the way through….

• Why does it matter who killed JFK? “Because when JFK was killed and there was no accountability, the American Empire took a turn. Kennedy was trying to steer the ship one way, and when Kennedy was killed and there was no accountability, the ship was steered another way.

“And we never had a course correction after that, because the faction that avoided accountability with Kennedy’s murder and avoided responsibility for it — they had impunity, and they could dominate all the policy debates that followed. And also because they had the secrecy apparat, the apparatus of secrecy around them.”

An Abundance of Ambiguity

Zephyr Teachout, March 23, 2025 [Washington Monthly]

Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 304 pp.

…The 40-year stagnation of wages, and the drop in small and medium-sized businesses, is a supply-side story that they simply don’t engage—one that, as the former chair of the FTC Lina Khan and many others have recognized, is a direct result of monopolization and financialization.

If they took their own “stop the scarcity mind-set” medicine, they’d realize that the industrial policy of the 1980s to 2020, not zoning, was what caused the scarcity of opportunity throughout the country—and we can change that policy. During the most productive and innovative era in American history, places like Corning, New York, known as a glassware technology powerhouse, and St. Louis, which once had 22 Fortune 500 companies and a thriving “creative class,” were the centers of the dynamism. If we just got out of the modern coastal-scarcity mind-set and took on the real bureaucratic behemoths of today—the private equity cartels and the monstrous platform monopolies like Google and Meta—we would unlock far more innovation and creativity and vitality.

Collapse of independent news media

How Worker-Owned News Outlets Are Changing the Media Industry

Damon Orion [Local Peace Economy, via Naked Capitalism 03-27-2025]

Climate and environmental crises

​​​​​​​The Huge Jury Verdict Against Greenpeace Is Really An Attack on the Entire Climate Movement. It Will Backfire 

Steve Donzinger [via Naked Capitalism 03-29-2025]

1 in 7 Homes Does Not Have Home Insurance as Premiums Skyrocket 

[Realtor, via Naked Capitalism 03-27-2025]

Trump’s transactional regime

They helped Trump take back the White House. The rewards have come swiftly.

[CNN, via Naked Capitalism 03-25-2025]

Resistance

Fighting Back: A Citizen’s Guide to Resistance

Timothy Noah, March 27, 2025 [The New Republic]

Conservative / Libertarian / (anti)Republican Drive to Civil War

Buying the vote 

[MuskWatch, via Naked Capitalism 03-25-2025]

In Wisconsin, an Elon Musk-backed super PAC is offering registered voters $100 in exchange for their contact information and signatures on a petition condemning “activist judges.” Signers can receive another $100 for additional voters they refer to the petition. The scheme was launched less than two weeks before a state Supreme Court election that could shift the partisan balance of Wisconsin’s highest court….

Michael Maistelman, a Wisconsin election lawyer who supports Crawford, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Musk’s tactics may violate Wisconsin law. “Wisconsin law prohibits offering anything of value to induce a person to vote, refrain from voting, or take any action related to an election,” Maistelman said. “Even though the money isn’t directly tied to voting, it could still be seen as an unlawful incentive related to election activity.”

The tactic is similar to one Musk deployed during the 2024 presidential election when he offered voters in swing states a chance to win $1 million in exchange for signing a pro-Trump petition. The Department of Justice warned that Musk’s tactics might be illegal, and he was sued in federal court. The sweepstakes, however, were ultimately allowed to proceed.

How Elon Musk, George Soros and Other Billionaires Are Shaping the Most Expensive Court Race in U.S. History

Megan O’Matz, March 28, 2025 [Pro Publica]

Ten years ago, when Wisconsin lawmakers approved a bill to allow unlimited spending in state elections, only one Republican voted no…. “I definitely think that that piece of legislation made things worse,” Cowles said in an interview. “Our public discourse is basically who can inflame things in the most clever way with some terrible TV ad that’s probably not even true.”

Florida child labor bill SB 918 would let minors as young as 14 work overnight 

[Pensacola News Journal, via Naked Capitalism 03-27-2025]

Florida wants to loosen child-labor laws to make up for loss of migrant workers 

[The Independent, via Naked Capitalism 03-27-2025]

The Big Bank Plotting to Privatize the Post Office Under Trump 

[In These Times, via Naked Capitalism 03-27-2025]

Wells Fargo envisions a postal service where the mail is kept as a taxpayer-funded government entity while the package and parcel components, which are more profitable, are ​“sold or IPOed.” In order for the new private company to earn a decent profit, ​“USPS would need to raise prices by ~30-140% across its product line.”

A privatized postal system would also take aim at the Universal Service Obligation, which requires mail to be delivered to every address six days a week. Such dedication to equitable service ​“would be a challenge for a third-party operator to profitably move mail and packages,” the memo complains. This move would also put pressure on the proposed mail-only service, which would likely be financially hobbled, to downgrade from six-day delivery as well.

The Reckoning at the Town Hall

Mike Brock, March 29, 2025 [notesfromthecircus]

An Open Letter to Trump Supporters

Mike Brock, March 28, 2025 [notesfromthecircus]

…I understand why many of you were drawn to Trump initially. When he emerged on the political scene, he spoke to genuine frustrations that the political establishment had ignored for too long. He named realities that many Americans were experiencing—the hollowing out of manufacturing communities, the sense that Washington elites viewed your concerns with contempt, the feeling that your way of life was disappearing while no one in power seemed to care…. no amount of partisan rhetoric can erase the legitimate grievances that drove many Americans to support an outsider promising to upend a system that wasn’t serving them.

But I want to ask you, sincerely: Is this what you thought you were voting for?

Did you vote for the systematic deportation of people to face torture without due process? Did you vote for the dismantling of civil service protections so that government agencies could be purged of career experts and filled with loyalists? Did you vote for private companies to take control of Treasury systems? Did you vote for the President to declare he can simply ignore court rulings he disagrees with?

I don’t believe most of you did. I believe you voted for someone who would shake up a broken system, who would put American interests first, who would speak bluntly rather than in the carefully crafted language of professional politicians. I believe you wanted accountability from institutions that seemed unaccountable, change in a system that seemed resistant to change, and recognition for communities that felt forgotten.

But what’s happening now goes far beyond those legitimate desires. It represents a fundamental assault on the constitutional order itself—not because it’s delivering conservative policies or challenging liberal orthodoxies, but because it’s dismantling the very structure of democratic governance.

When a president claims he can simply ignore court rulings, he’s not challenging “the establishment”—he’s rejecting the Constitution’s separation of powers. When asylum seekers are deported to face torture without hearings, this isn’t “putting America first”—it’s abandoning the most basic human rights principles our nation was founded upon. When career civil servants are purged and replaced with loyalists, this isn’t “draining the swamp”—it’s creating the conditions for unchecked corruption and abuse of power.

Don’t Expect To Wake Up And Someone To Say “Trump Became A Dictator Today”— It’s A Process

Howie Klein, March 28, 2025 [downwithtyranny.com]

On Wednesday, The Guardian published a piece by Rachel Leingang, Yale professor who studies fascism fleeing US to work in Canada, about Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (2018). Stanley swapped his job at Yale for one at Torononto’s Miunk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy because he sees the U.S. in danger of becoming a fascist dictatorship. He wants to raise his kids in a country that isn’t tilting towards fascism. “When I saw Columbia completely capitulate, and I saw this vocabulary of, well, we’re going to work behind the scenes because we’re not going to get targeted— that whole way of thinking pre-supposes that some universities will get targeted, and you don’t want to be one of those universities, and that’s just a losing strategy,” he said. “You’ve got to just band together and say an attack on one university is an attack on all universities. And maybe you lose that fight, but you’re certainly going to lose this one if you give up before you fight. Columbia was just such a warning. I just became very worried because I didn’t see a strong enough reaction in other universities to side with Columbia. I see Yale trying not to be a target. And as I said, that’s a losing strategy.”

Noah Smith posed a disturbing question on his substack on Wednesday: If and when you live in a dictatorship, how will you know? Smith wrote that Trump isn’t a dictator right now “but over the past couple of weeks, the Trump administration has done or said a number of things that sort of pattern-match to the stuff dictators usually do. And this is causing reasonable people to worry that Trump is slowly, carefully trying to push in the direction of a dictatorship… [M]any of the MAGA movement people are openly advocating for Trump to assert truly dictatorial powers.” He used quotes from outright fascists Sebastian Gorka, Tom Homan and Michael Flynn as examples, noting that “if Trump doesn’t push to become a true dictator, it’ll only be because he and his subordinates choose to defy the desires of their activist base. And that’s not something I’m particularly comfortable betting the future of the country on.”

The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution

A Dark Money Deluge To Kill Consumer Protections

Freddy Brewster, March 26, 2025 [The Lever]

More than a dozen legal groups bankrolled by tens of millions in dark money tied to a conservative judicial mastermind are urging the Supreme Court to kneecap federal agencies’ ability to protect consumers and impose vital fees on companies. If the groups are successful, the ruling on a little-known regulation could further constrain federal agencies’ power and give corporations free rein to pollute the environment and swindle the average consumer.

On Wednesday, the justices will hear arguments on Federal Communications Commission v. Consumers’ Research, which could decide whether federal agencies are still allowed to undertake certain essential government tasks, such as rulemaking and imposing necessary fees on companies and consumers. The defendant in the case, Consumers’ Research, and 13 conservative groups supporting its efforts are all in part bankrolled by a nonprofit connected to Leonard Leo, President Donald Trump’s former judicial adviser, who played a key role in constructing the Supreme Court’s conservative majority and maintains close ties to two of the justices.

Leo’s ultimate goal includes plans to “crush liberal dominance” and help establish more conservative values and judges in the federal judiciary….

Civic republicanism

On Civic Republicanism — Ancient Lessons for Global Politics

edited by Geoffrey Kellow and Neven Leddy [University of Toronto Press, 2016]

[The entire books appear to be available for reading free online.]

Introduction, by Geoffrey Kellow

… To call one’s polis a republic was to stand out against a horizon dominated by oligarchic, monarchic, and imperial alternatives… It is this vision of republicanism, civic republicanism to be precise, that the essays in this volume address. This collection considers what ancient civic republics can say to modern republics and their citizens. Of course, the ancient republics have been speaking to us, providing lessons, for centuries. Our political, cultural, and even architectural landscape is populated with their lessons.…

…when we draw on republican sources today we necessarily draw on two traditions, the original civic republicanism of antiquity as well as the varied early modern reclamations and restatements that emerged from Florence to the American founding. This inevitable commingling has been with us for centuries. In the very heart of the Renaissance both Erasmus’s The Education of the Christian Prince and Machiavelli’s The Prince explicitly and implicitly drew on recollections of Republican Rome and Cicero’s De Officiis. But just as importantly, both referred to republics more recently lost and lamented. For Erasmus and Machiavelli and ever since, when we recall republics we inevitably recall both ancient and modern republics. We cannot think only of Pericles and Cato; inevitably, we think also of George Washington and Piero Soderini….

One school of thought, most prominently represented by Quentin Skinner and J.G.A. Pocock, has argued for a deep continuity between ancient and modern. Pocock in particular has famously argued of Harrington that he provided the intellectual means “whereby the county freeholder could equate himself with the Greco-Roman polites and profess of a wholly classical and Aristotelian doctrine of the relations between property, liberty and power.”² This interpretation has been vigorously challenged by the work of scholars such as Harvey Mansfield and Leo Strauss….

[TW: Following Strauss leads to Reagan, Bush / Shrub Jr., and Trump. Not a good path. But who follows James Harrington and his Commonwealth of Oceana (1656)? A handful of scholars have identified Harrington as a far more important influence on the USA founders than the evil John Locke, who served as secretary for Lord Shaftsbury’s Council on Trade and Plantations (which by the time of the American Revolution was more widely known and reviled as the Board of Trade), and for the Carolina Lords Proprietors. Locke coauthored with Shaftsbury The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which imposed a strictly hierarchical structure of hereditary aristocracy and slavery. Without a knowledge of the philosophical differences between Locke and Harrington, today’s opponents of conservatism — liberals, “the left,” the Democratic Party, socialists, marxists, what have you — are philosophically incapable of out- thinking and out-maneuvering conservatives: Clinton / Clinton, Obama, and Biden have not been a good path either. Certainly, at least, not good enough. ]

[The primary purpose of government, according to Locke, is the defense of property.  By contrast, republican theorists see the primary purpose of government as supporting and encouraging  individual citizens to improve themselves as instruments for improving society — doing good for the general welfare. (Recall the HAWB example above of Rear Admiral Grace Hopper and the development of computer programming.)

[Back to Kellow’s “Introduction”:]

The concern with ends binds together all the essays concerning Aristotle and what begins to illuminate the distinctions between liberal democracy and civic republicanism… These first essays recognize that a civic republic with a common end in mind must always be concerned with the civic means, its place in the cosmos and on the earth, and the faith, character, reason, and rhetoric of its citizens….

​​​​​​​Chapter 8. Montesquieu on Corruption: Civic Purity in a Post-Republican World

Robert Sparling

…Montesquieu believed that free states always regulate their merchants, whereas despotisms create, if I may employ an anachronistic phrase, business-friendly regulatory environments (20.12).⁴² He did not want merchants to be overly burdened with excessive bureaucratic formalities (20.13), but he was quite clear that the purpose of commerce is to further the good of the state, and the regulation of merchants is an essential basis for freedom. Excessive taxation would harm industry, but taxation was the reason commerce was to be celebrated by governments….

Finally, he thought it essential for a well-ordered state that private property be respected (26.15). But property right is a product of positive law, and the state must be able to control matters such as inheritance in whatever manner necessary for their particular constitutions. Political interference in matters of property is not something that Montesquieu condemned, nor was he an outright enemy of high taxation (the most free countries are the most taxed, while the most despotic are the least 13.12, 10) – the key was merely to adjust tax policy so as not to dissuade commercial activity….

…for Montesquieu, corruption entails the augmentation of the sentiments (fear and avarice) that undermine sociability. In this sense, it entails the abuse of public things for private gain, for the greater corruption there is, the less sense there is of a public. But the complete elimination of fear is impossible in human society, and the complete elimination of greed leads to an unhealthy asceticism. His solution to the problem is one with which our liberal world is quite familiar – institutions must be designed such that public benefits derive from moderate private vices. The state must not be allowed to become either too heavy-handed in its wielding of the sword or too light in its control of commerce. Punishment must remain humane. Merchants and financiers must be encouraged but controlled: the liberty of commerce depends on merchants not being allowed to do what they want (20.12). Office holders may be expected to want to breach the trust given to them, and watchfulness and resentment must be encouraged in order to keep them in check. Unlike ancient founders of republics, Montesquieuan legislators no longer have purity in their sights….

But make no mistake – this regime-craft entails soul-craft. A certain type of human personality is both the product and the defender of this balance (and in Montesquieu’s more aristocratic moments he suggests that it is not a terribly admirable type). The passions of fear and avarice must not be allowed to become so dominant as to break apart natural human relationships and turn society into zero-sum games of exploitation….