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.
#oligarchy#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
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.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
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.
#oligarchy#killing-democracy
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.
#oligarchy#money
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.
#oligarchy#trumps-america
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.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
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.
#oligarchy#killing-democracy
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.
#oligarchy#killing-democracy#forever-grifting
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.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
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?
#oligarchy#killing-democracy
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.”
#oligarchy#corruption
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.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
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.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
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.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
fox news to sacramento pipeline gets trump’s blessing
Steve Hilton, freshly endorsed by Trump, contemplates the awesome responsibility of turning California governance into a Fox News weekend segment.
Donald Trump rolled out of his Truth Social bunker last night to endorse former Fox News host and David Cameron sidekick Steve Hilton for California governor, because why wouldn’t the largest state in the country be run by a guy whose main qualification is once yelling at liberals on cable news?
Trump promised that “as President, I will help him” and that “with Federal help, and a Great Governor, like Steve Hilton, California can be better than ever before!” Subtle as a brick: elect my guy and maybe the federal government will stop treating the country’s biggest economy like an enemy state. Elect anyone else and enjoy four more years of disaster tourism from Mar-a-Lago.
The GOP field is basically Hilton vs. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, while eight Democrats politely reenact the Spider-Man pointing meme in California’s jungle primary. Polls show no clear frontrunner and a non-trivial chance of a two-Republican general, which is why the state party chair is begging low-polling Democrats to stop cosplaying as viable candidates. Meanwhile, Hilton is out here promising tax cuts, homeownership, and better test scores, as if the main structural barrier to California’s future was not enough Steve Hilton in it.
So the Trump machine is now explicitly offering a loyalty rewards program for governors: say the right things on TV, get the presidential seal of approval and a vague promise of extra federal goodies. It’s not quite handing out ambassadorships to donors, but it’s the same basic model—just with more wildfire risk and a much bigger GDP.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
trump’s billionaire stimulus package is going great
Americans gather near the Capitol to demand the radical idea that billionaires should pay more tax than a barista with two roommates and a 20-year-old Honda.
Under Donald "man of the people" Trump, billionaire fortunes hit all-time highs while the federal minimum wage stayed frozen at $7.25, like a museum exhibit from a time when groceries didn’t cost your firstborn. Oxfam reports that in the year after Trump’s re-election, billionaire wealth grew three times faster than in the previous five years, which is what happens when you pass tax laws written like a love letter to private jets and stock buybacks.
Out in the real world, people like Karen Sanchez are spending their free time at breweries asking strangers if they’d like to mildly inconvenience Elon Musk’s net worth. California’s pushing a one-time 5% wealth tax on its 200+ billionaires to patch the holes blown in hospital and education funding, while states like Massachusetts and Minnesota are already using millionaire taxes to do radical things such as feeding kids and fixing roads. At the federal level, Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna have the audacity to propose that billionaires pay an annual 5% wealth tax, which in Trump’s America ranks somewhere between arson and treason.
Polls show about 70% of Americans think the system is rigged for corporations and the wealthy, possibly because the system is very obviously rigged for corporations and the wealthy. After Trump’s 2017 and 2025 tax cuts shoveled money to the top, CEOs of the five biggest US companies are averaging $52 million a year while the people who actually keep the country functioning are told to be grateful for "opportunity" and maybe some pizza in the break room. So yes, billionaire fortunes are soaring, and so is the movement to finally send them a tax bill that isn’t written in crayon by their lobbyists.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
trump’s billionaires-only tax plan is going great
Donald Trump, flanked by billionaires, announces another "middle-class tax cut" while someone quietly loads the Treasury into a Goldman Sachs-branded Brinks truck.
Bernie Sanders helpfully confirms what everyone with a paycheck and a pulse already suspected: under Trump’s tax regime, America is basically a private country club where 938 billionaires own the place and the rest of us are paying cover. The top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 93%, Elon Musk alone has more than half the country, and somehow the guy worth $805bn is paying a lower tax rate than the person driving your Amazon package to your door. Meanwhile, Trump and his family picked up an extra $4bn since his re-election, because the house always wins when the house writes the tax code.
While billionaires are out here paying effective tax rates that would embarrass a Cayman Islands shell company — 0.1% for Warren Buffett, under 1% for Jeff Bezos, 1.3% for Michael Bloomberg — Trump’s corporate tax bonanza lets giants like Tesla, SpaceX, Palantir, Ticketmaster, and the Yum Brands empire pay zero in federal income taxes on tens of billions in profits. But don’t worry, 60% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck are definitely "sharing the sacrifice." Oh, and 15 million people were thrown off healthcare so the top 1% could get a trillion‑dollar tax cut. Truly a model of Christian governance.
Sanders proposes a 5% wealth tax on billionaires that would raise $4.4tn over a decade, enough to do wildly extremist things like: end homelessness, fund universal childcare, expand Medicare, raise teacher pay, and undo Trump’s healthcare cuts. Under this plan, Musk would owe $42bn and still be left with a paltry $792bn to scrape by, while Bezos and Zuckerberg would have to soldier on with a couple hundred billion each. The horror. As Justice Brandeis warned, you can have democracy or concentrated wealth, not both. Trump and his donors have made their choice. Sanders is simply pointing out that if this is a "populist" presidency, the only "people" it serves are billionaires and their accountants.
So yes, the rich could pay their fair share and we could have functioning healthcare, housing, and schools. Or we can keep pretending that a system where schoolteachers pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett is freedom. Under Trump’s America, the only redistribution happening is from the bottom 90% straight into the yachts of the 1%, and they’re still calling it a tax cut for "hardworking Americans" with a straight face.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
government collapses, vip line surges
A TSA line wrapped around the terminal while a glowing CLEAR kiosk beckons: 'Government services failing? There’s an app for that.'
The Department of Homeland Security shuts down, TSA officers are working for free like it's an unpaid internship from hell, airports are collapsing into pure chaos – and Clear Secure’s stock is up 57%. Truly, the free market has spoken: why fund a functioning government when you can just pay $209 a year to skip past the peasants in line while the people actually doing security work can’t afford gas?
Clear’s app downloads jumped 625% in a single Sunday because nothing motivates Americans like the chance to buy their way out of a crisis the government created. TSA workers are unpaid, lines are "sprawling", and Clear helpfully deploys 3,500 "ambassadors" to manage the mess and toss out $200,000 in gas and grocery cards – a tidy PR write-off to paper over the fact that the shutdown that’s wrecking people’s lives is a growth opportunity on their earnings call.
And as the public system crumbles, TSA is partnering with Clear to roll out biometric e-gates that don’t need a human operator. So the government underpays and demoralizes its workforce, then quietly tests out replacing them with retina scanners run by a private company whose business model depends on permanent dysfunction at the checkpoints. What a coincidence. American travelers “deserve better,” Clear’s executive says – and by “better” he clearly means a future where security is two-tiered: premium face-scan fast lane for those who can afford it, and a six-hour line for everyone else stuck inside the world’s most profitable shutdown.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting#killing-democracy
trump’s big, beautiful wealth gap
Trump announces a tiny discount on a few drugs while quietly handing the stock market another gift basket from working-class America.
Trump’s economy is doing great — as long as you’re in the top 10% hoarding about 90% of all stocks and responsible for half of U.S. consumer spending. The administration slashed regulations, showered corporations with tax breaks, and watched as seven tech giants turned the stock market into a VIP-only money cannon. Out in the real world, one guy is planning a house addition and not worrying about child care, while his friends are wondering why the “booming economy” never made it past the gated community.
Meanwhile, Trump’s tariff fetish is quietly functioning as a regressive tax on everyone who can’t buy groceries in bulk at Costco with their capital gains. Prices are up, job growth is sputtering, and lower-income workers are discovering that the president who promised to fight for them actually outsourced that job to robots and AI. Wages are slowing, hiring is weak, and people like a 23-year-old optometrist’s assistant in Portland are skipping meals and getting told by official Washington that everything is fine and they’re just imagining the hunger.
To paper over the mess, the White House is hyping a second-term rerun of the first: more tax cuts, more deregulation, and a crackdown on immigration dressed up as a wage plan. Toss in some Trump-branded 50-year mortgages, a handful of selectively cheaper prescription drugs, and a child savings account that only really works if your parents can throw in $5,000 a year, and you’ve got a perfect program: symbolic help for the poor, compounding returns for the rich. As families at the bottom juggle rent, loans, and food, Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” makes sure refunds are just large enough to distract from the fact that the entire system is engineered to keep the wealth gap not just wide, but growing.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
trump admin bravely defends america’s most vulnerable: oil exporters
Trump energy officials reassure oil executives that, even during a war, no radical measures like ‘prioritizing Americans’ will be considered.
The Trump administration has bravely surveyed a region-wide war with Iran, surging crude prices, and Americans staring down $3.88 gas, and concluded the real crisis is that oil and gas executives might feel briefly uncomfortable. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright rushed to X with matching corporate love letters assuring industry that the White House has "no plan" to restrict oil and gas exports, because heaven forbid any of that sweet crude stay home during a wartime price shock.
Instead of even pretending to weigh national energy security or consumer pain, the administration is loudly reaffirming its core doctrine: drill more, export more, and if Americans can’t afford to drive to work, they can always admire the quarterly earnings from afar. This comes as Burgum and Wright huddle with the oil and gas lobby, where "policy" is apparently just whatever the American Petroleum Institute scribbles on a napkin between cocktail refills. The message is clear: in Trump’s America, the strategic petroleum reserve is Wall Street’s feelings, and that’s what gets protected.
The U.S. once treated crude exports as a strategic lever; now it’s a sacrament. The administration is busy expanding LNG export terminals and pledging fealty to global markets while calling it "good for the economy"—a neat way of saying "good for shareholders" and hoping no one asks who’s paying the $0.96-per-gallon war surcharge at the pump. Energy policy has been fully outsourced to the industry it’s supposed to regulate, and the only thing being conserved is profit.
#oligarchy#forever-grifting
