When Trump takes office in January, a president will for the first time be the majority owner of a publicly traded company, Trump Media, which runs Truth Social. Former SEC officials are concerned about how Trump could try to use the agency to go after the foes of his company, which accounts for more than half his fortune. They also worry that the agency isn’t up for the job of taking on Trump Media should it run afoul of securities laws.
This deeply reported article from ProPublica uses some awfully timid language in the paragraph I've cited above. But consider Trump's history as a corrupt businessman and then by far the most corrupt president in American history, and add to that his control of an already slimy company and his coming-soon immunity from criminal prosecution, and you have to conclude that he's not going to just let this opportunity go by. I trust ProPublica – the best investigative journalism organization in America – will be paying close attention.
The trait most broadly shared by Donald Trump's nominees to top Cabinet posts is an utter lack of fitness for their prospective jobs. Most appear to be afflicted with negative attributes that would automatically disqualify them not only from these highly sensitive government positions but even from much less senior jobs in any normal administration. In that respect, they strongly resemble Trump himself. Many of them share another outstanding characteristic with the president-elect. They are, like him, relentless grifters who keep monetizing their celebrity on the far right by ripping off the MAGA faithful with overpriced merchandise and other scams.
The level of moral and financial rottenness in Trump world has been epic for a long time, and as noted earlier in this newsletter the boss is unrivaled in presidential history for his corruption. One reason reprobates like to work for him is that they know he considers ethical norms a joke. What's acceptable in his operation is whatever they can get away with – provided, of course, that they don't upstage or embarrass him. So while these connect-some-dots observations by the editor of the National Memo aren't surprising, they are another reminder that the next four years will be absolutely awash in official sleaze.
“There’s a real shift in ruling-class vibes,” Rob Larson, an economics professor who has written about the new ultrarich and Silicon Valley’s influence on politics, told me. Many of America’s plutocrats seem not to care if people know that they’re trying to manipulate the political system and the Fourth Estate in service of their own interests. Billionaires such as Andreessen and Ackman are openly broadcasting their political desires and “definitely feeling their animal spirits,” Larson said. Or, as the Northwestern University political-science professor Jeffrey Winters put it in a postelection interview with Slate, this feels like a moment of “in-your-face oligarchy.”
As this Atlantic commentary notes, our recently emerged crop of ultra-right-wing American oligarchs revels – publicly and loudly – in almost pure contempt for anyone who doesn't share their belief that obscene wealth is entirely deserved and brings with it the right to make the decisions for the rest of us. Both of those assumptions are false, and obviously so. But they have one thing right, at least for the moment. They've succeeded in creating a pure mockery of what we have aspired to, namely government of, by, and for the people – and have locked in place control of, by, and for a corrupt, anti-democracy elite.
The FTC, along with attorneys general in eight states and the District of Columbia, sued in February to block the $24.6 billion tie-up between the grocery store chains, arguing the deal will raise prices, lower quality, limit choices for shoppers and harm the companies’ workers. While not the first merger challenge to highlight worker harm, the Kroger case specifically highlighted the potentially detrimental effects to unions, in a likely first.
The headline of this Politico story makes me grind my teeth, because the victory was for shoppers and for competition. At least the first sentence makes that somewhat clear: "The Biden administration won a major victory in its bid to combat high grocery prices..." In any event, the Biden administration's pro-competition policies got their swan song with this excellent ruling, and another in Washington state, as judges saw through the corporate-lawyer BS from companies trying to pull off the biggest and most blatantly anticompetitive grocery merger ever. There's still a possibility that Trump will push for aggressive antitrust enforcement, but it's a fairly dim hope given the number of monopolist-friendly oligarchs in his upcoming administration. (I also recommend Matt Stoller's analysis of the federal ruling.)
An 'aspiration' called America
Many of our greatest citizens have worked to better this country even as it has treated them as less than full Americans or even less than human. But hope should not be blindness. We can hope that America will be kinder, more graceful, more compassionate, more sincerely devoted to all people being created equal and entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the truth is that celebrating the death of other human beings because we hate them or what we think they stand for is absolutely American. To ignore that is fantasy, not aspiration. America remains the country that proclaimed that all men are equal while enshrining slavery, that enacted the First Amendment and the Alien and Sedition Acts in the same decade.
I know we're all getting more than our fill of commentary about the murder of a loathsome insurance company's CEO last week. But this newsletter post, by an estimable lawyer who has argued some important First Amendment cases (naturally on behalf of free speech), goes deeper on the sick hypocrisy we've been seeing ad nauseam over the past week. When politicians and editorial writers piously exclaim, "That's not who we are," they're almost always lying. We can be so much better, and it's essential to keep working at it, but at least let's not lie to ourselves along the way.
This newsletter is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money. For more details, please read my About page.
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Justin Elliott, Robert Faturechi and Alex Mierjeski
Ali Breland
