The Trump Presidency Timeline
Documenting the chaos since day one. 51 entries and counting.
Category: oligarchy
oligarchy
silicon valley builds a new religion, forgets to include humans
Artist’s impression of what happens when guys who can’t run a social network decide to redesign the species and the cosmos, no public comment period required.
Silicon Valley has looked at the crumbling state of American democracy and concluded the real problem is that regular humans are still involved. Sam Altman is out here calmly workshopping a future where homo sapiens "design our own descendants" and then hand the planet (and the galaxy) over to our machine betters, while Elon Musk – the guy Trump literally let take a buzzsaw to the federal bureaucracy – helpfully explains that humanity is just a "biological bootloader" for digital superintelligence. You thought you were a citizen; turns out you're BIOS.
The piece lays out how this isn't just some nerdy late-night Reddit thread, it's a full-blown civil religion for billionaires: a techno-mystical faith where consciousness gets uploaded, meat bodies are for peasants, and AI overlords spread across the cosmos while the rest of us apparently get to enjoy being structurally unemployed in a gig economy run by venture-backed HAL 9000s. The "God-shaped hole" in Silicon Valley gets filled with a religion that conveniently declares its high priests – Musk, Altman, Page & friends – the rightful architects of the next species, answerable to no one, least of all voters.
Rather than build tools that serve actual human needs, this worldview justifies pouring billions into "transhuman" fantasies while treating labor, social stability, and basic rights as quaint legacy systems to be deprecated in the next software update. Ford tried to re-engineer society with a rubber plantation; these guys want to re-engineer the definition of human, aided by a government happily outsourcing power to tech oligarchs. Democracy is struggling to regulate broadband, and the people effectively writing policy now think our constitutional role is to be compost for their cosmic data center.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
oligarchy
climate finance bro discovers oil money is also green
Mark Carney explains that climate risk is very serious as he ceremonially cuts the ribbon on another taxpayer-subsidized pipeline to nowhere.
Mark Carney, former central banker, UN climate envoy, Davos heart-throb and author of Very Serious Climate Words™, is now prime minister of Canada and has decided the best way to confront an "existential threat" is to, uh, set the climate plan on fire and throw a pipeline on top. Next to Donald Trump, he still looks like a responsible adult – which tells you more about Trump’s America than it does about Carney’s Canada.
After activists helped put him in power expecting a climate hawk, Carney’s first big move was to scrap the consumer carbon price and then systematically gut almost every meaningful mandate: methane rules weakened and delayed, a clean electricity standard pushed from 2035 to 2050 with new gas plants invited back in, the long-fought oil and gas emissions cap tossed, anti-greenwashing laws flagged for rollback, and zero-emission vehicle mandates kneecapped so hard EV sales cratered. It’s like watching someone take a carefully built climate Jenga tower and play it drunk, blindfolded, and sponsored by Suncor.
He’s also gone full petro-state cosplay: fast-tracking LNG terminals and pipelines, carving out deregulated "nation-building" zones, shoveling tax credits at carbon capture schemes that conveniently help frack more oil, and launching a so-called "sovereign wealth fund" that looks suspiciously like a public-money firehose for new fossil infrastructure. A windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies riding the Iran war to record profits? Absolutely not – can’t have the donors feeling pinched.
The climax came with a cozy deal with Alberta premier Danielle Smith – whose base includes a Trump-backed separatist movement – to clear the way for yet another bitumen pipeline while dramatically weakening Alberta’s industrial carbon price. The result: a carbon price that was supposed to hit $170/tonne by 2030 now limps to $130 by 2040, prompting even the mild-mannered Canadian Climate Institute to say net zero by 2050 is now fantasy. Carney’s defenders swear this is all 4D chess to keep Canada united; what it actually looks like is the familiar Trump-era formula: appease the loudest reactionaries, reward fossil oligarchs, and hope nobody notices the climate promises dissolving in a haze of PR and pipeline approvals.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
oligarchy
trump and the tech bros promise your job is totally fine, stop asking questions
Trump and the tech bros explain that losing your job to AI is actually a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to believe in trickle-down 2.0.
Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Peter Thiel have formed a kind of billionaire barbershop quartet to sing you soothing lullabies about AI: don’t worry about your job, don’t worry about retirement, the government will just mail everyone "UNIVERSAL HIGH INCOME" checks and we’ll live in a frictionless techno-utopia where the only thing automated faster than your work is your dignity. Minor footnote: the CEOs actually building this stuff keep warning that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and push unemployment toward 20%, but you’re supposed to ignore that and focus on the vibes.
While workers are busy trying to block new data centers from swallowing their towns, the Trump administration is over in the corner doing exactly what the billionaire class ordered. Donald Trump is enthusiastically greasing the skids for AI expansion, with top adviser Kevin Hassett insisting AI "isn’t costing anyone their jobs" as tech layoffs stack up like unread EULAs. The message from Mar-a-Lago to Menlo Park is clear: if AI turns millions of people into a permanent underclass, that’s a feature, not a bug.
Bernie Sanders, inconveniently for the oligarchs, keeps pointing out that maybe—just maybe—we shouldn’t let a handful of tech billionaires unilaterally redesign the economy, democracy, and the future of work while promising to get around to the safety net eventually. He’s calling for guardrails, worker protections, and a moratorium on data centers, which in Trumpworld is basically socialism plus treason. The people actually in power, however, are betting that if they repeat "AI will bring untold prosperity" enough times, you won’t notice that what’s really being automated is your bargaining power, your privacy, and your ability to say no.
So the emerging Trump-era AI policy is simple: billionaires get the profits, AI gets the control, and workers get a front-row seat to the great experiment in whether you can live on vibes, press releases, and a promise of future government checks that this administration has absolutely no intention of funding.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#killing-democracy
oligarchy
crybully server farms demand civil rights
Artist’s impression of an AI datacenter bravely standing up to the real oppressors: zoning laws and water meters.
America still doesn’t have universal healthcare, but congratulations: your local AI datacenter may soon have more rights than you do. Arwa Mahdawi walks through how the AI gold rush is quietly turning into a massive public subsidy program for server farms that guzzle power, suck up water, belch pollution, and hand you the bill. Power prices on the biggest US grid jumped 76% in a quarter thanks to these things, and one Georgia facility helped itself to 30 million gallons of water before bothering to pay. Six percent of US and UK electricity is already going to datacenters; projections say that could hit 14% of US demand by 2030. But sure, tell me again how we can’t afford to decarbonize or lower people’s bills.
The punchline: instead of asking whether it’s sane to carpet the planet in Altman’s GPU sweatshops, the conversation is drifting toward whether datacenters are being discriminated against. Venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary is out here claiming protesters are just mysterious paid agents, because obviously no normal person could be upset about a giant humming water vampire next door. And the University of Michigan is threatening legal action because a township paused water and sewer hookups for its $1.2bn nuclear-weapons-and-AI complex, whining that the moratorium is “unlawfully discriminatory” toward data centers. We’ve already let corporations claim free speech, religious beliefs, and bespoke civil rights; now the next frontier is extending that protection racket to anonymous beige boxes full of servers. Corporate personhood was bad enough when the ‘persons’ weren’t also trying to drink the town dry.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
oligarchy
ai cage match: musk vs altman vs breathable air
Elon Musk and Sam Altman, bravely battling each other to decide which billionaire gets to privatize your power grid and your data first.
Elon Musk and Sam Altman are locked in a courtroom slap-fight over who gets to be Supreme Lord of Predictive Text, and the press is dutifully live-blogging every billionaire tantrum. Musk claims he was tricked into funding a non-profit that dared to become a for-profit; OpenAI says he knew all along and is just trying to kneecap a rival. The stakes are allegedly "the future of AI" but somehow always resolve to "who gets the $150bn and the IPO."
The more interesting story is the one they’re trying to bury under their egos: a tiny cartel of AI companies—OpenAI, Anthropic, Musk’s xAI, Amazon, Microsoft—are racing to terraform the economy in their own image, vacuuming up data, capital, electricity, and political influence. They’re starving academia, siphoning money away from climate tech, and shoving resource-hungry data centers into communities that get the asthma while Silicon Valley gets the equity. It’s imperialism as a cloud service, and your lungs are the externality.
Outside the courtroom, people who don’t own private jets are starting to notice. Residents in places like New Mexico, Memphis, and Tucson are organizing against supercomputing monstrosities like OpenAI’s Stargate campus, Musk’s Colossus facility, and Amazon’s Project Blue—facilities that run on methane turbines and PR spin while politicians grin about "innovation." Locals are turning up at city halls in 114F heat just to demand breathable air and functioning water systems, while the AI barons pitch their projects as "the future of humanity" from air-conditioned boardrooms.
So yes, Musk vs Altman is a feud. It’s also a great magic trick: keep everyone watching the billionaire soap opera while the AI oligarchy quietly fuses itself with state power and public infrastructure. The only plot twist is that some of the extras—aka regular people—are starting to walk off set.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#imperialism
oligarchy
trump megadonors discover ‘economic uncertainty,’ somehow unrelated to trump
Artist’s rendering of economic uncertainty: a half-built warehouse owned by billionaires who just spent $80 million on Trump and suddenly can’t find the money for drywall.
Billionaire Trump superfans Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein are hitting pause on a shiny new 1-million-square-foot Uline distribution facility in Kenosha, Wisconsin, citing "current economic conditions" and extra space in their existing properties. The same folks who helped bankroll Trump’s return to power with nearly $80 million in 2024 PAC money now say the economy is too "unsettled" to build in a state that just happens to be a presidential battleground. Totally normal coincidence, do not question the timing.
This is the same Uline brain trust that thought it was "for fun" to poll their own employees on how they planned to vote in 2024, then acted shocked when workers viewed it as political pressure from the boss who spends eight-figure sums electing Republicans. One employee even resigned in protest in January 2026, which Elizabeth Uihlein dismissed as basically everyone else being stupid and humorless. Now the Kenosha city planning commission is politely granting them a 12-month permit extension so the billionaire donors can decide when it’s economically and politically convenient to keep their promise of local jobs.
So to recap: Trump’s favorite shipping magnates help underwrite his campaign, turn their company into a low-rent polling operation, and then park a major development in a swing state while muttering about the economy under the president they bought. Oligarchy isn’t just thriving—it’s asking the city for a conditional use permit extension.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
oligarchy
trump, tech bros, and the ai panopticon industrial complex
Artist’s rendering of American democracy being cooled by 40 million gallons of water a day so a Trump-aligned AI can generate better deepfakes of it dying.
The sequel to Citizens United is here, and this time it runs on GPUs. Since Trump’s 2024 inauguration turned into a VIP tech-bro meet-and-greet, the administration has been shoveling billions in subsidies and contracts at already-loaded AI firms like it’s a clearance sale on democracy. Regulation? That’s for hair salons and burrito shops. AI companies get the honor system and a direct line to Trump, plus a bonus package of NDAs and backroom land deals to quietly carpet the country with data centers.
Meanwhile, the supposed ‘jobs of the future’ mostly involve no actual jobs in the places hosting these gigantic electricity-sucking, water-guzzling server barns. Locals from red Indiana counties to tribal nations in Oklahoma to blue-ish New Jersey towns are looking at their soaring utility bills, decimated water tables, noise pollution, and the prospect of AI-powered surveillance and job-killing algorithms and saying: actually, no, we don’t want to help build the authoritarian cloud. So they’re blocking and stalling tens of billions in projects, because that’s the only point in the process where ordinary people get a vote that isn’t paywalled.
Naturally, the respectable commentariat has arrived to explain that resistance is ‘myopic’ and ‘elitist.’ A Jacobin academic and Palantir executives somehow land on the same talking point: if we don’t let Trump-aligned surveillance giants build limitless infrastructure for deepfakes, predictive policing, and autonomous weapons, the poor will suffer. Yes, the real working-class heroes are the billionaires wiring the planet for permanent monitoring. As Palantir’s CEO openly muses about ‘deep societal upheavals,’ we’re told the only way to avoid elite domination is to trust the elites building the domination machines.
So while Trump-world merges MAGA politics with an unregulated AI panopticon, the only people doing anything resembling democratic governance are the ones chaining themselves to zoning boards and demanding moratoriums. The administration’s position is clear: AI infrastructure should be fast-tracked with secrecy and subsidies, and any guardrails are a ‘distraction.’ The people fighting the data centers aren’t just NIMBYs; they’re the last half-functional circuit breaker in a system that’s otherwise content to let Trump, xAI, Meta, Blackstone and Palantir turn the country into a fully automated compliance-testing environment.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
oligarchy
venture capital populists discover the working class lives in their tax shelters
David Sacks explains populism from the rarefied vantage point of someone whose working-class struggle involves choosing between a fifth and sixth home on Billionaires' Row.
Terry Gross brings on George Packer to explain how Silicon Valley's self-proclaimed "disruptors" have discovered a new product line: authoritarian cosplay for fun and profit. David Sacks — early investor in basically every app on your phone and longtime resident of the "actually, I'm a libertarian" neighborhood — has rebranded himself as a "venture-capital populist" while sitting on a pile of equity and White House access. He now claims he's on the side of the working man, bravely defending America from the true elites: tech CEOs who don't clap hard enough when Elon tweets.
Once upon a time, these guys wrote checks to Democrats and talked about immigrants and gay rights at TED. Then the Biden administration had the unspeakable audacity to enforce antitrust laws, crack down on money laundering in crypto, and suggest that maybe AI shouldn't be a live beta test on the entire human species. Regulation showed up, and suddenly the "move fast and break things" crowd decided the thing they most wanted to break was democracy. MAGA offered them exactly what they wanted: deregulation, a war on "wokeness," and a president whose own crypto fortune has magically ballooned by at least $7.5 billion since 2024.
Sacks, now Trump's special adviser on AI and crypto and co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, uses his White House podium time to praise Trump's "legal fairness" — which in this context means ending prosecutions of their industry while Trump rages about "lawfare" and his attempted assassination like he's the patron saint of persecuted billionaires. The new tech right gets regulatory immunity and policy tailored to their portfolios; Trump gets a pipeline of money, a veneer of "high IQ" validation, and a cadre of oligarchs willing to call this whole arrangement "populism" with a straight face. Everyone wins, except the public, the rule of law, and anyone not invited to Billionaires' Row.
Source: npr.org
#oligarchy#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
oligarchy
trump, tech bros, and the campaign to punish australia for liking journalism
Trump and the tech billionaires, carefully considering whether Australian democracy can be monetized or should just be punished.
Australia’s Labor government dares to suggest that Meta, Google, and TikTok should pay for siphoning off value from Australian news outlets, and suddenly the American tech oligarchy is clutching its pearls and speed-dialing the one man who hates journalists even more than they do: Donald Trump. The plan: turn Trump’s festering rage at the “enemy of the people” into US foreign policy, and use America’s trade and diplomatic muscle to smack Australia until it stops trying to keep its media alive.
Trump, already furious that Australia didn’t enthusiastically join his Iran adventure in the Strait of Hormuz, has made it clear the country is on his naughty list. That just happens to coincide beautifully with the interests of Meta, Google, and the newly Trump-compliant TikTok (now with its algorithm babysat by Larry Ellison’s Oracle, because oligarchy is a full-service industry). These companies are shoveling hundreds of billions into US projects, buying up media companies, and collecting White House dinner invites—while preparing to lean on the next US ambassador to Australia to help kill Canberra’s media tax. The message is simple: back your journalists and your democracy, and Washington—under Trump and his tech patrons—might just punish you for it.
Meanwhile, Albanese is out here saying quaint things like “journalists are the lifeblood” of democracy, while Trump sues the BBC for reporting on January 6 and screams at CBS for reading from a shooter’s manifesto. Australia is trying to keep local news alive; Trump and his tech allies are trying to make sure that any country that protects independent media learns what happens when you offend a man who prefers his coverage fawning and his oligarchs happy. Democratic values vs. billionaire feelings—guess which side US foreign policy is drifting toward.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#killing-democracy
oligarchy
trump tries to nationalize spirit, still can’t keep it in the air
A retired Spirit pilot gets a water cannon salute from Southwest while the Trump administration’s bailout plan taxis straight into a flaming crater.
Spirit Airlines finally achieved the one thing it never managed with legroom: dignity. The airline collapsed mid–retirement flight after running out of cash and watching “rescue” talks with the Trump administration go down faster than a budget red-eye. Captain Jon Jackson’s last Spirit flight was canceled along with the rest of the airline, because nothing says orderly wind-down like waking up to find your company dead and customer service "no longer available".
Instead of landing his career at the airline he served, Jackson had to hitch a ride home on Southwest, where his son and the crew scrambled a water cannon salute and a terminal champagne send-off. Corporate America: zero. Random decent humans: carrying the whole scene on their backs again. Meanwhile, behind this Hallmark moment is the fine print: jet fuel prices spiked thanks to the US-Israel war on Iran, Spirit had been bouncing in and out of bankruptcy like a loyalty program, and the Trump administration’s big idea was to float taking a 90% stake in the airline. Yes, the same crowd that can’t staff an ethics office wanted to effectively nationalize a discount carrier.
Even Spirit’s bondholders — not known for being squeamish about terrible ideas — looked at Trump’s proposed 90% federal takeover and noped out. So instead of a coherent industrial policy, workers got pink slips, passengers got stranded, and Trump got yet another reminder that yelling "deal!" on TV doesn’t magically conjure capital. The aviation community managed to show respect, compassion, and solidarity. The administration managed to demonstrate that it can’t even pull off airline socialism badly.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#money
oligarchy
trump’s british life coach tries to repossess california
Steve Hilton, dressed like a startup founder who just discovered deportation policy, explains why California needs more Trump cabinet energy and fewer functioning institutions.
California, the state that once elected Arnold Schwarzenegger as a moderate fever dream, is now flirting with Steve Hilton: British import, ex–David Cameron guru, former Fox News host, and self-described pal of "half of Trump’s cabinet"—which is a bit like bragging you’re close with half the people in a sprawling RICO indictment. Hilton is somehow leading a chaotic primary field, powered by disarrayed Democrats, a toppled candidate facing sexual assault allegations, and a donor list that reads like a Silicon Valley cap table.
Instead of quietly losing like a normal California Republican, Hilton is barnstorming the state in single-button T-shirts, selling Trump-world policy with a soft accent and "common sense" branding. He’s hoovering up individual donors, peeling off Sergey Brin–adjacent tech money, and pitching a "political revolution" where lifelong Democrats supposedly wake up one morning and decide what California really needs is a Fox News alum who’s very good at wrapping hard-right positions in the language of compassion and affordability. So yes, the richest, bluest state in the country is toying with the idea of handing the keys to a guy whose friend group helped build the Trump administration. What could possibly go wrong.
Instead of quietly losing like a normal California Republican, Hilton is barnstorming the state in single-button T-shirts, selling Trump-world policy with a soft accent and "common sense" branding. He’s hoovering up individual donors, peeling off Sergey Brin–adjacent tech money, and pitching a "political revolution" where lifelong Democrats supposedly wake up one morning and decide what California really needs is a Fox News alum who’s very good at wrapping hard-right positions in the language of compassion and affordability. So yes, the richest, bluest state in the country is toying with the idea of handing the keys to a guy whose friend group helped build the Trump administration. What could possibly go wrong.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#trumps-america
oligarchy
make psychedelics great again (for investors)
Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump, and Joe Rogan audition for a new show called ‘Shark Tank: Controlled Substances Edition’ in the Oval Office.
Trump just discovered a new frontier in Republican morality: drugs are bad, unless Peter Thiel can IPO them. Six decades after Ted Kennedy grilled Timothy Leary as the alleged acid Antichrist, his nephew RFK Jr is now literally standing behind Donald Trump in the Oval Office as Trump signs an executive order to "accelerate" psychedelic medicine. Joe Rogan is there too, naturally, because US drug policy is now apparently written via text messages from podcasters.
The sales pitch is mental health: ibogaine and other psychedelics for PTSD, depression, and suicidal ideation, especially for veterans and cops. The reality is a gold rush. With a projected multibillion-dollar mushroom market and over a billion people living with mental health conditions, Silicon Valley and the far-right donor class have realized that curing trauma is less important than capturing the revenue stream from it. Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin and assorted biotech guys in Patagonia vests are shoveling money into psychedelic startups while Trump uses the presidency as their regulatory battering ram.
So the same movement that spent decades fearmongering about "hippie drugs" and locking people up for possessing them is now fast-tracking hallucinogens—just as long as they’re dispensed in a clinic, wrapped in a patent, and backed by a billionaire. Street users still get the carceral state; investors get the visionary rebirth. It’s not a war on drugs any more, it’s a licensing deal—with the federal government and the MAGA coalition serving as the marketing department.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
oligarchy
civil rights division now protecting ai from civil rights
Elon Musk and the Trump DOJ, jointly ensuring that no algorithm is ever burdened by the weight of basic civil rights.
The Trump justice department has decided that its top civil rights priority is … defending Elon Musk’s AI company from Colorado’s attempt to stop algorithmic discrimination. Assistant attorney general for civil rights Harmeet Dhillon announced that laws requiring AI systems to avoid unintended discriminatory effects are actually unconstitutional because they "infect" products with "woke DEI ideology". Bold choice: turning the Civil Rights Division into the Algorithmic Segregation Protection Unit.
Colorado’s law asks developers of “high-risk” AI used for jobs, housing, healthcare, education and finance to disclose risks and mitigate bias, which is apparently a bridge too far for both xAI and the feds. Musk’s company insists the law violates the First Amendment by telling AI developers how to design systems and by “compelling speech” on public issues, and the Trump administration eagerly transformed that into a full-on federal-state showdown. Instead of a patchwork of state protections, they’d prefer one neat national framework where your landlord’s automated denial system can discriminate freely from sea to shining sea.
So now, the federal government is riding to the rescue of an oligarch’s startup, arguing that protecting people from AI-driven discrimination violates equal protection, while endorsing "some discrimination" if it’s not labeled DEI. The message is clear: civil rights for humans are optional; civil rights for corporations are non-negotiable. The only "high-risk" system this administration is interested in regulating is anything that might inconvenience Elon Musk.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#killing-democracy
oligarchy
larry ellison buys hogwarts, westeros, and probably cnn’s spine
A Warner Bros water tower and a U.S. flag, soon to be rebranded as ‘Property of Larry Ellison & Friends, LLC’.
Warner Bros Discovery shareholders have enthusiastically voted to let Paramount — backed by Oracle billionaire and Republican cash fountain Larry Ellison — swallow the whole studio for $111bn, giving one guy’s family a content empire that runs from Harry Potter and Game of Thrones to CNN and the Food Network. Because if there’s one thing democracy needed in 2026, it’s fewer companies controlling more of the information, entertainment, and sports you’re allowed to see.
While the Department of Justice is theoretically still reviewing this antitrust carnival, Ellison is hosting Donald Trump for a cozy little dinner at the U.S. Institute of Peace, which is now apparently available for rent as a "corruption gala" venue. Protesters — including Mark Ruffalo — are outside pointing out that maybe, just maybe, it’s a problem that the guy trying to buy CNN is also cutting huge checks to the man who has openly demanded CNN be sold and reshaped to his liking, after calling its current leadership "corrupt or incompetent." Subtle!
More than 1,400 actors and filmmakers are warning the merger will mean fewer jobs, less competition, and higher costs, while Elizabeth Warren is calling it an "anti-trust disaster" and promising a fight. Industry analysts, on the other hand, calmly predict Washington will just rubber-stamp the whole thing, outsourcing any actual scrutiny to European regulators. So the future of American media policy is now: billionaires buy everything, Trump shows up for the photo op, and the only real hope is Brussels.
Source: bbc.com
#oligarchy#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
oligarchy
trump’s $400m panic room for his ego gets green light
Artist’s rendering of the new White House ballroom, where national security threats will be neutralized by exclusive donor galas and very strong chandeliers.
The Trump administration just got the go-ahead from a DC appeals court to keep pouring concrete into its $400m White House ballroom, built on the corpse of the East Wing. A federal judge had actually paused the project over the small matter of whether the president can bulldoze part of the White House and slap on a mega-ballroom without congressional approval. The appeals court’s response: please hold our gavel while we consider the "emergency"—and in the meantime, keep building.
The administration insists that stopping construction would cause “grave national-security harms” to Trump, his family, and staff, which is a very poetic way of saying the president desperately needs a fortified party bunker. Judge Richard Leon tried to split the difference, allowing only below-ground "national security" work that didn’t lock in the final ballroom size. The appeals court then stepped in to temporarily override even that, so the cranes and donors could keep moving.
Speaking of donors, Trump swears this $400m ego chamber is privately financed by a who’s who of corporate America: Meta, Apple, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Palantir, Google, Comcast—basically a sponsorship deck for American oligarchy. The ballroom is just one piece of Trump’s broader campaign to physically rebrand Washington in his image: a 250ft arch, a years-long Kennedy Center overhaul, and now a corporate-branded, security-pretexted monument to himself attached to the White House. Democracy may be crumbling, but at least the event space will be spectacular.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
oligarchy
trump’s favorite rich kid vs the guy who actually works for a living
Max Miller, bravely representing the struggles of inherited wealth, prepares to explain to an iron worker why the real victims are people whose gambling losses aren’t yet fully deductible.
Max Miller, former Trump aide and proud election-denial enthusiast, is suddenly discovering that running on “the economy” might be a bit awkward when an actual iron worker shows up and asks why the hell he’s been voting against workers the entire time. Miller, grandson of a man who helped run a multi-billion-dollar real estate empire, has spent his congressional career bravely tackling the struggles of the common man by, for example, authoring a bill to make gambling losses tax deductible. Finally, a voice in Washington for the most oppressed class of all: guys who lose their shirts at the casino and want the IRS to say "there, there."
Brian Poindexter, meanwhile, is a union iron worker, apprenticeship instructor, and five-term local councilman whose life story involves working seven days a week in high school and clawing his way into community college one night class at a time. So naturally, in Trumpworld, he’s the radical one. Poindexter is running on the shocking premise that the economy should reward work more than inherited wealth and that laws shouldn’t be rigged against workers—a direct threat to the Miller business model. He’s also pointing out that Miller barely shows up in the district, doesn’t hold real town halls, and can’t even manage competent constituent services, unless the constituent is a billionaire or a roulette wheel.
Miller’s labor record is about what you’d expect from a Trump-endorsed mini-oligarch: a 14% lifetime AFL-CIO score and a vote against the PRO Act, because helping workers organize might cut into the supply of cheap, compliant labor and sad campaign photo-ops in hard hats. While Democrats try to flip this R+5 district with a slate of candidates that includes Poindexter and a few establishment retreads, the core question is simple: will voters stick with the pampered election-denying heir who thinks tax policy should comfort problem gamblers, or try the guy who’s actually worn a tool belt for something other than a campaign commercial?
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#killing-democracy
oligarchy
trump taps nine-figure mystery fund guy to run the fed, what could go wrong
Kevin Warsh, preparing to reassure senators that the Juggernaut Fund full of undisclosed assets will absolutely not influence the guy running global monetary policy, scout’s honor.
Kevin Warsh, Trump’s pick to run the Federal Reserve, turns out to own at least $100m in assets, including two mystery investments over $50m each in something called the Juggernaut Fund LP — which is exactly the kind of name you give a fund when you absolutely do not want anyone asking what’s inside. The underlying assets are conveniently hidden behind “pre-existing confidentiality agreements,” but don’t worry, he pinky-swears he’ll divest if confirmed. Ethics in Government Act compliance now apparently consists of: check a box, promise to sell the giant black box of money later, and we’re good.
The rest of his portfolio reads like a VC pitch deck written by a bored chatbot: AI bets, crypto schemes like a “yield-generating Ethereum layer two,” a robotic coffee bar, bionic clothing, and a reversible male contraceptive startup. Because nothing says “steady hand on the world’s most important central bank” like a guy simultaneously long on robot lattes, Ethereum yield farms, and high-tech birth control. His wife, Jane Lauder, strolls in with a casual $1.9bn family fortune, plus muni bonds listed as just “over $1 million,” which is how rich people say “don’t bother me with decimals.”
Meanwhile, the Senate confirmation is tangled up in a Republican vow to block Warsh until DOJ finishes its politically convenient investigation into current Fed chair Jerome Powell — a probe a federal judge already called a barely disguised attempt to bully Powell into cutting rates or quitting. DOJ is appealing, because of course it is; why stop using law enforcement as a monetary policy tool now? Powell’s term ends in May, and he’ll stay on pro tem if Warsh isn’t rammed through in time, so the world’s largest economy is basically waiting to see whether its central bank will be run by a career central banker… or by a nine-figure Juggernaut Fund guy whose conflicts of interest are marked “confidential” and stamped “trust me.”
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#corruption
oligarchy
trump considers turning air travel into a literal monopoly game
United and American executives gaze lovingly at a route map, trying to decide which cities to overcharge first while Trump nods along like a man who thinks antitrust is a brand of breath mint.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby reportedly strolled into a late-February meeting with Donald Trump and floated the casual idea of merging United and American, a move that would essentially turn "competition" in US air travel into a historical anecdote. The two largest airlines on Earth would combine into one mega-carrier, shrinking the already oligopolistic "Big Four" (United, American, Delta, Southwest) down to a cozy Big Three that control nearly three-quarters of all passenger capacity.
Details of what Trump said are, of course, unclear, because why wouldn’t the fate of the entire airline industry be discussed in opaque, off-the-books conversations instead of, say, in public regulatory proceedings? Wall Street, however, got the message loud and clear: United’s stock ticked up, American’s jumped more than 7%, and investors briefly glimpsed a glorious future where passengers pay more for less while shareholders toast to "efficiency." As aviation expert Ganesh Sitaraman politely translated, fewer airlines means higher prices, more junk fees, and even more miserable flying — so, exactly the kind of deal this White House likes.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is out here doing his best "I’m not saying yes, I’m not saying no" routine, musing that there is "room" for more consolidation while promising theoretical scrutiny and asset sales. Meanwhile, unions, rival airlines, airports, and anyone who’s ever flown coach are expected to hate this. But when you’ve got a president who treats the Oval Office like the VIP lounge at Mar-a-Lago, where CEOs can pitch multi-billion-dollar mega-mergers over metaphorical cocktails, the public doesn’t exactly get priority boarding.
So the Trump administration’s deregulatory dream marches on: fewer companies, more concentrated power, and a government that hears out monopoly fantasies from CEOs before passengers even know what’s happening. If you thought flying was bad now, just wait until "competition" is a vintage concept and your only real choice is whether you want to be gouged in basic economy or gouged in slightly-less-basic economy.
Details of what Trump said are, of course, unclear, because why wouldn’t the fate of the entire airline industry be discussed in opaque, off-the-books conversations instead of, say, in public regulatory proceedings? Wall Street, however, got the message loud and clear: United’s stock ticked up, American’s jumped more than 7%, and investors briefly glimpsed a glorious future where passengers pay more for less while shareholders toast to "efficiency." As aviation expert Ganesh Sitaraman politely translated, fewer airlines means higher prices, more junk fees, and even more miserable flying — so, exactly the kind of deal this White House likes.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is out here doing his best "I’m not saying yes, I’m not saying no" routine, musing that there is "room" for more consolidation while promising theoretical scrutiny and asset sales. Meanwhile, unions, rival airlines, airports, and anyone who’s ever flown coach are expected to hate this. But when you’ve got a president who treats the Oval Office like the VIP lounge at Mar-a-Lago, where CEOs can pitch multi-billion-dollar mega-mergers over metaphorical cocktails, the public doesn’t exactly get priority boarding.
So the Trump administration’s deregulatory dream marches on: fewer companies, more concentrated power, and a government that hears out monopoly fantasies from CEOs before passengers even know what’s happening. If you thought flying was bad now, just wait until "competition" is a vintage concept and your only real choice is whether you want to be gouged in basic economy or gouged in slightly-less-basic economy.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
oligarchy
trumpworld takes its war-and-wallet summit off the books
The Salamander hotel, temporarily rebranded as the Global Elite Pop-Up War & Finance Emporium, where democracy is not on the guest list.
While Trump screams on Truth Social about the "paper tiger" of NATO, his loyal lieutenants spent the weekend in Washington doing something far more on-brand: slipping into the Bilderberg meeting to mingle with billionaires, arms dealers, and spy chiefs without the inconvenience of public records. At the Salamander hotel, Interior secretary Doug Burgum, tariff whisperer Robert Lighthizer, House Ways and Means chair Jason Smith, and Trump’s "drone guy" Army secretary Dan Driscoll joined Wall Street bosses, pharma execs, and the usual NATO brass for some casual off-the-books lobbying.
The agenda? The "Trans-Atlantic Defence-Industrial Relationship" and the "Future of Warfare" — otherwise known as how to turn permanent war and AI-powered drone swarms into a stable revenue stream. Eric Schmidt, now full-time drone evangelist, was there, along with Anduril’s Brian Schimpf and Palantir CEO Alex Karp, fresh off their work on Trump’s "Golden Dome" project. Intelligence chiefs, including the head of MI6, floated through this little democracy-free zone too, just to really underline that this is where policy gets made while voters get the press releases later.
Normally, Peter Thiel is the dark wizard in residence here — he helps bankroll the Washington meetings through American Friends of Bilderberg, sits on the steering committee, and built Palantir with CIA money — but he skipped this year’s event, which in this universe counts as a transparency win. Still, Trumpworld got exactly what it loves: a secret space where corporate lobbyists and government officials can coordinate war, surveillance, and profit with zero oversight. The public gets no minutes, no transcripts, and no accountability — just the bill.
Source: theguardian.com
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
oligarchy
trump’s favorite tv conglomerate speedruns media monopoly
Brendan Carr and the acting antitrust chief smile for the camera after helping one company swallow most of local TV, proving that regulatory capture now comes with its own photo op.
Nexstar looked at federal law saying a broadcaster shouldn't control more than about 39% of U.S. TV households and said, "What if we just did 80% instead?" The FCC and DOJ, now apparently functioning as the White House's in-house merger concierge service, shrugged, stamped it approved, and posed for photos. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr even flexed a selfie with the acting antitrust chief just days after they both green-lit Nexstar’s $6.2 billion gobble-up of Tegna, because when you're vaporizing media-ownership rules, you obviously need content for the gram.
The deal hands Nexstar 265 local stations across 44 states plus D.C., giving one Trump-friendly corporation staggering control over what counts as "local" news. And just to make sure the vibes were right, Nexstar pulled Jimmy Kimmel from its ABC stations after Carr publicly fantasized about pushing him off the air, then juiced up its cable arm NewsNation with pro-Trump pundit Katie Pavlich and a growing roster of Fox News refugees. Trump briefly pretended to weigh the deal, then smashed the big red button on Truth Social: "GET THAT DEAL DONE!" Four hours later, Carr obediently echoed the boss. Now a federal court in California is being asked to do the thing the regulators were supposed to: stop a politically wired media monopoly from jacking up prices, gutting newsrooms, and turning "local" coverage into a single corporate talking point.
So yes, under this administration, antitrust law is less about protecting competition and more about rewarding loyal broadcasters who yank the wrong comedians and hire the right MAGA influencers. The message from Trump-world is clear: align your newsroom with the president’s ego, and suddenly legal ownership caps become suggestions and 80% of American households is just a fun number on a slide deck.
Source: npr.org
#oligarchy#forever-grifting