News and commentary for understanding and coping with the years ahead...
Guard rails
The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, stipulates that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" are automatically citizens. The language was crafted and added to the Constitution to establish full citizenship rights for Black Americans, but it has been interpreted for more than a century as also granting rights to all children born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents' immigration status.
The 14th Amendment is absolutely clear, as this NPR story indicates. But that doesn't matter to the Trumpists who want to empty the nation of, among others, people with brown skins.
They are trying to get the radical right-wing judges they've appointed to rewrite the Constitution without the bother of passing an amendment. They pulled it off last summer, when the Supreme Court made presidents, at least ones named Trump, unaccountable for crimes they commit while in office. So yes, it's possible, though unlikely.
The Trump crew gains either way. Even if it's performance art, and low art at that, this episode will rouse the right-wing base. And it'll occupy the lives of good people – stealing their time and money – who are trying to defend the plain meaning of the Constitution from the most deceit-stained regime in American history. Maybe that's the point.
Tech companies, padding their bottom lines, have made their experiences worse, a phenomenon so widespread and well-recognized that now there’s slang for it. Whether the scandals are scams, child predation, worker exploitation, or violations of user privacy — pick your poison — Trump has offered tech a way to buy itself out of consequences. That makes life tangibly worse for everyone who isn’t a billionaire. There are those who will say that this is good — that the corruption is happening in the open instead of the shadows. But public, open corruption allows even more rottenness to fester in secret. Consider all the strongman governments; besides their advances in bribery, what did they innovate? Silicon Valley’s leaders fashion themselves as titans of industry, but what they’re really building is a golden age of grift.
This Verge commentary helps us understand a new era in America's government-business relationship. We all need to be clear on the degree to which some of the most powerful, valuable, and deeply control-freakish companies on the planet have decided to make common cause with the anti-democracy, pro-oligarchy regime.
You can read the tech barons' lavish gifts to Trump and his family, and their prominence at Trump's oath of office (god the hypocrisy) in several ways. Maybe they prefer fascism to democracy. Or maybe they've capitulated to fascists in order to protect their businesses from regulation and/or competition.
In a way, their motivations are irrelevant. They've taken their stand. They stand with Trump. You need to view them as active partners with the regime.
In practical terms, this means Big Tech will sell you out in a heartbeat – even beyond the crappy way they've been treating you already. Keep that in mind as you use their platforms, or better yet as you think about how you can leave their platforms for places that respect you more than they go on bended knee to fascism.
[E]choes of the Bannonite lamentations over “American carnage” were boilerplate shows of outrage for the masses; the real action in Trump’s government has always been reserved for the wealthy and wised-up insiders. That was the unmistakable message of Trump’s own pre-inaugural financial stunt: launching a Trump-branded memecoin over the weekend that briefly netted him a paper windfall of some $41 billion in market capitalization by 1 pm Monday. (An allied memecoin offering for his wife, Melania, produced a market cap of around $8.4 billion over the same golden interval.) True to volatile crypto form, however, both fake products soon tanked, as Trump disappointed his crypto fanboy base by neglecting to mention their hobbyhorse currency during his inaugural address.
I'm glad to see that the author of this Nation commentary – unlike so many others covering the Trump family's cryptocurrency plays – recognizes that Boss Trump didn't make $41 billion on this vehicle for endless ill-gotten gains. It's paper wealth for now, and the minute he starts cashing his meme-coins in for real money, the value will tank. But it won't go to zero. This operation creates a financial vehicle that is just about perfect for corruption, because it invites anyone who wants to bribe Trump to do so in a way that can't be traced – or at the very least will make it difficult to, as the cliche goes, follow the money.
I apologize if you're getting tired of hearing this from me, but we are now in an era of unprecedented corruption at the highest level of our government. And this time, it's right in our faces. Trump is positively flaunting his sleaze, daring anyone to do anything about it. Except: No one can do a thing about it except Congress, and because he owns one of the two major political parties, there is no possibility that Congress will do anything. Meanwhile, the also-corrupt Supreme Court immunized him from prosecution for the crimes he is already committing as president.
There are no jackbooted thugs at work here. No burning presses. Just a slow, steady transformation powered by the bland language of corporate America. Mission statements. Rebrands. Optimization. The same tools that built Amazon are now being used to dismantle democracy. This is how democracy dies in 2025: not in darkness but in a rebrand, not with a bang but with a mission statement. The Post still carries "Democracy Dies in Darkness" on its masthead—but it's a slogan that reads less like a warning now and more like a strategic goal.
For the first few years of Jeff Bezos' tenure as owner of the Washington Post, it seemed as though he understood the organizations vital place in American political life. Certainly he acted that way, investing heavily to build up and sharpen the journalism.
The slogan the Post adopted – "Democracy dies in darkness" – was modestly hokey, but it meant something in an era when government and corporate secrecy and misinformation were, and are, keeping the public from knowing exactly how the rich and powerful were manipulating everyone else in pursuit of more wealth and power.
But as the newsletter post above observes, the new slogan – "Riveting Storytelling for All of America" (really, not a joke) – is below pathetic if you care about journalism's duty. I'm saddened by the Post's decline, especially over the past few months as Bezos' abject capitulation to Trump has become so obvious.
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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Chris Lehmann
Joan Westenberg
