You might have noticed that when Netflix was attempting to acquire Warner Brothers, Republicans were suddenly and uncharacteristically interested in media consolidation and antitrust reform. Republican AGs threatened investigation. The Trump DOJ launched a (fake) antitrust inquiry. Senator Mike Lee scheduled a hearing where he’d planned to press Netflix on the competitive impacts of the deal.
But now that Trump-allied billionaire Larry Ellison has decided to elbow out Netflix and dramatically overpay for Warner Brothers instead, all of this furrowed-brow concern has magically disappeared. Despite the fact the Paramount deal is arguably worse for the market, labor, and Democracy.
Mike Lee says he’s cancelled his planned Netflix hearing, but curiously has no similar hearing scheduled for Paramount. He issued a statement that didn’t mention Paramount at all:
“Netflix’s proposed acquisition of Warner Brothers raised serious antitrust concerns. When a massive streaming platform consolidates even more TV shows and movies behind a single paywall, American families lose. Walking away from this deal is a win for consumers.”
There are far more operational redundancies between Paramount and Warner Brothers, guaranteeing significantly more layoffs. The higher debt load from subsequent CBS and Warner transactions also guarantees more layoffs and higher prices for everyone (labor and consumers always foot the bill for these deals). It’s also easy to argue that David Ellison (who was basically gifted a role as media mogul by his dad) and friends are dramatically less competent, likely resulting in significantly more mistakes and operational chaos.
And yet, Republicans couldn’t care less because the billionaire now buying Warner Brothers is aligned with their (increasingly unpopular) authoritarian agenda.
For as long as I’ve been alive, a key platform for the GOP has been to coddle corporate power, encourage rampant and harmful consolidation and monopolization wherever possible, and aggressively undermine corporate oversight, consumer and labor protections, and regulatory integrity. It’s not been subtle.
Yet consistently you’ll see the press trip over itself to give the GOP credibility on corporate oversight or “antitrust reform” they never had to actually earn. You’ve seen it constantly with phony populists like Josh Hawley and JD Vance, we saw it repeatedly during last election season, and you saw it again recently during the Netflix deal, when the press failed to indicate none of the inquiries were in good faith.
Democrats like Cory Booker are now threatening inquiries from the other side of the aisle:
“The circumstances surrounding this Administration’s antitrust enforcement, and the apparent political favoritism that has colored this, have cast a shadow over every transaction now moving through the approval process. Congress has a responsibility to ensure the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are not clearing megamergers for the benefit of the Administration’s allies.”
But historically Democrats have been generally terrible on media policy, media reform, protecting labor, and protecting consumers from consolidation. Outside of folks like Lina Khan and Katie Porter, it’s another area where they’ve been a somewhat decorative opposition party that will often say the right thing, but fail to really apply pressure when it matters. We’ll see what happens next.
The Trump DOJ will of course rubber-stamp Ellison’s deal, and outside of potential state antitrust lawsuits, they don’t have a lot of leverage until they can regain control of the House, Senate, and the courts. Hooker is threatening to unwind the deal should they retake the majority during the midterms, but given Dem history, that’s the sort of threat you’d need to see before you really believe.
Consolidated corporate power buys the U.S. government (or lack of) they’d like to see, and the rest of us live in the wreckage while the corporate press tries to direct your attention elsewhere. I never thought this corruption was particularly subtle in years past, and now the clobbering is so ham-fisted it almost feels overtly satirical.
Trump couldn’t accept the fact that he lost the 2020 election. So he stood idly by (if you believe his narrative) or urged on (if you believe your own eyes and ears) his supporters to raid the Capitol building to seize the election from the electorate. If that meant killing his own vice president, so be it.
Eventually, Trump left office, replaced by Joe Biden for a whole four years of relative sanity. Then Trump returned to office and immediately pardoned nearly every one of his supporters who had been criminally charged with federal crimes for participating in the January 20th insurrection attempt.
The GOP has a very slim majority at the moment. GOP legislators opting to retire are now derailing pro-MAGA legislation. Democratic opposition is finally showing some signs of life. And California has responded with pro-Dem gerrymandering of its own, limiting the effectiveness of GOP members running for congressional seats.
Now that it’s starting to look like a fair fight out there in the electorate with the mid-term elections approaching, the administration is making a push to seize election power from the states in order to give Trump the congressional majority he needs to keep being as awful as he’s been since his return to office.
President Trump doubled down on his extraordinary call for the Republican Party to “nationalize” voting in the United States, even as the White House tried to walk it back and members of his own party criticized the idea.
Mr. Trump said on Tuesday that he believed the federal government should “get involved” in elections that are riddled with “corruption,” reiterating his position that the federal government should usurp state laws by exerting control over local elections.
If states “can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over,” he said in the Oval Office, accusing several Democratic-run cities of corruption. “Look at some of the places — that horrible corruption on elections — and the federal government should not allow that,” he added. “The federal government should get involved.”
A nationalized election process is just a welcome wagon for autocracy. That’s why it’s never happened before, thanks to the foresight of the founding fathers who definitely weren’t interested in going back to being the subjects of a king, even if the king pretended a captive process was actually a democratic election.
And that’s why it’s being bandied about by this administration — one that clearly doesn’t care what happens to America as long it continues to remain in power. That’s also why Trump isn’t necessarily angling for a full takeover of midterm elections. He just wants to interfere in places where his lackeys have a real chance of losing elections.
During a podcast interview with Dan Bongino, his former deputy F.B.I. director, on Monday, Mr. Trump called for Republican officials to “take over” voting procedures in 15 states, though he did not name them. “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” he said. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
No sentence should ever begin with “during a podcast interview with Dan Bongino” and end with an actual sitting president stating he should be allowed to “take over” the midterm elections in a select number of areas where his supporters aren’t likely to win.
None of this matters to Trump, however. Blessed with a lack of foresight or hindsight, Trump ventured out into the relative safety of his favorite conflict of interest — Truth Social — to ensure Americans that he hasn’t ruled anything out when it comes to actually stealing an election. (h/t Derek Guy and his preservation efforts)
If you can’t see/read the embed, consider yourself blessed. Consider yourself cursed (and feel free to do as much cursing as you feel is necessary) if you choose to read on. Here’s the entirety of Trump’s “it’s coup time baby!” Truth Social post:
The Democrats refuse to vote for Voter I.D., or Citizenship. The reason is very simple — They want to continue to cheat in Elections. This was not what our Founders desired. I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future.There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not! Also, the People of our Country are insisting on Citizenship, and No Mail-In Ballots, with exceptions for Military, Disability, Illness, or Travel. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
These are not the words of a well person. These are certainly not the words of anyone you’d want to have the driver’s keys to a nation, much less the access code to an apartment pool.
Someone who thinks the answer to his hostile takeover of the American election process can be justified by “Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted” is the same sort of person who thinks they’re only days away from perfecting a perpetual motion machine or discovering the secret to eternal life.
But while that part of the post may be comically delusional, it’s the next sentence that’s far more worrying. This is the president claiming he will mandate his version of “Voter I.D.” at the polls, whether it’s legal or not.
And it definitely won’t be legal. Almost every effort the administration has made to disenfranchise voters, alter long-standing election rules, and eliminate voters not likely to side with Trump and the GOP has resulted in lawsuits. Very little of this litigation is settled. And what little of it has been settled has resulted in a loss for Trump.
The GOP’s efforts to codify Trump’s baseless voter fraud conspiracy theories haven’t had much more success. What has managed to move forward is largely redundant, but with the added bonus of allowing Trump’s DOJ to prosecute election officials if the administration believes (hallucinates) local officials didn’t do enough (whatever that means) to dissuade non-citizens from voting.
But this is exactly the sort of thing Trump loves, even if he possibly knows there’s no factual basis for the accusations and insinuations he’s making. If his GOP counterparts lose elections during the midterm, he’ll be the first to start mouthing off about immigrants and “illegal” votes. If his boys win, he’ll take credit for the “fair” election. And the conspiracy theories will return to the slow boil until they’re needed in 2028.
Last night the House passed, and then Donald Trump signed, the funding bill that reopened the government after the longest government shutdown in history. Amazingly, the Republican’s sketchy demands to fill their personal bank accounts with undeserved taxpayer money almost scuttled the deal. But, don’t worry: those Senators got their corrupt boondoggle and they plan to enrich themselves.
The party of pure fucking garbage just keeps being awful. Government employees went without paychecks, families went without medical and food benefits, and no one in the GOP really appeared to care how long an entire nation suffers so long as it got what it wanted.
“Ask not what this country can do for you” is apparently too woke to be considered an aspiration. Under Trump’s GOP, the operative phrase is “Don’t even ask whether or not it can. Make the country do for you and fuckthem if they complain.”
A spending package expected to be approved as part of a deal to reopen the government would create a wide legal avenue for senators to sue for as much as half a million dollars each when federal investigators search their phone records without notifying them.
The provision, tucked into a measure to fund the legislative branch, appears to immediately allow for eight G.O.P. senators to sue the government over their phone records being seized in the course of the investigation by Jack Smith, the former special counsel, into the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
To be clear, legitimate concerns have been raised about warrantless access to Americans’ phone records, especially when the FBI utilizes the NSA’s collections to engage in “backdoor” searches.
But there’s nothing legitimate about what is happening here. Congressional reps have sought carve-outs that only serve themselves and have expressed almost zero concern about how this same warrantless access affects the people they serve.
So, not only have GOP legislators placed themselves above the people they serve by only seeking to exclude themselves from the reality that affects the rest of us, they went further by holding the entire government hostage with a demand that has no business being tacked onto a federal funding bill, and one that only serves to give those eight Senators the freedom to grab hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money.
If they want to give themselves extra privileges, they should have the strength of character to introduce this in an actual bill that would be forced to stand on its own merits (read: lack thereof), rather than force the Democratic party to comply as federal government websites (illegally!) pillory them on a daily basis as the people who are keeping American citizens from collecting paychecks and benefits.
It gets even worse when you look at the details:
Because the provision is retroactive to 2022, it would appear to make eligible the eight lawmakers whose phone records were subpoenaed by investigators for Mr. Smith as he examined efforts by Donald J. Trump to obstruct the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Each violation would be worth at least $500,000 in any legal claim, according to the bill language. The bill would also sharply limit the way the government could resist such a claim, taking away any government claims of qualified or sovereign immunity to fight a lawsuit over the issue.
This isn’t even about the FBI’s abuse of NSA collections, which would actually be something worth limiting further. It’s specifically and only about eight GOP Senators whose phone records were sought under the Third Party Doctrine — something that few people in the government would attack because that court-created doctrine has proven extremely useful to law enforcement at every level.
But it also adds a payout for those “victimized” by a legitimate investigation into the attack on the Capitol building following Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. And guess who these people are:
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming.
Yep, it’s the expected collection of boot-lickers. These are people unfit to serve who may see themselves raking in at least a half-million for stroking Trump’s ego and repeating his lies about the 2020 election.
Lindsey Graham has already said he plans to make people pay for having his phone records accessed, which is rich, because Graham has been one of the most vocal proponents in the Senate of giving the DOJ vast and unlimited surveillance powers. Also, when he says “make people pay” he means that you, the taxpayer, needs to give him money because he got caught up in the DOJ’s investigation into the attempted insurrection.
These Senators who have no problem expanding surveillance on you, the little people, also simultaneously are awarding themselves a special provision to sue for your tax money to go straight into their bank account. It’s about as corrupt as it can be. Incredibly, they even screwed over a colleague in the House, Mike Kelly, who was the one member of the House whose phone records were part of the same investigation. The funding bill only allows for Senators to sue over this.
No one else will benefit from this but these eight GOP senators. The rest of the nation can continue to get fucked on the regular.
“The Senators may not like being treated like the rest of America, but these phone-record subpoenas and non-disclosure orders are routine in grand jury investigations at the state and federal level,” he said. “No one has an absolute right to be notified that their call records have been subpoenaed, much less the right to a million bucks if it happens. This provision would not give any Americans other than U. S. Senators these rights.”
Passing a law that only applies to eight Senators, which only serves to enrich them at the expense of the taxpayer seems like a perfect encapsulation of the state of the modern GOP: fuck the little guy and do anything to get money for yourself. The MAGA mantra.
While Speaker Mike Johnson has said that they’ll bring up a separate bill next week to strip this provision, Republicans in the House refused to strip it during negotiations over the funding bill, where it would have actually mattered. What is now likely to happen is that Johnson will allow a vote on a bill next week in a symbolic gesture that will not pass. And Senator Graham and his buddies will cash in.
What a job, when you get to vote yourself the ability to just take a bunch of taxpayer money in response to being investigated.
Like far too many people in the Trump administration — including the 79-year-old child currently sitting in the Oval Office — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth thinks he’s owed respect simply because of the position he holds.
While a certain amount of deference is expected when you’re the boss, it’s much more difficult to earn the respect you need to actually be a leader. Hegseth — elevated from his Fox News commentator spot to one of the most powerful positions in the world — not only seems incapable of doing this, but actually seems unwilling to become a true leader.
Instead, Hegseth has become nothing more than a Trump puppet. Puppets generally aren’t given positions of power, but the only people Trump trusts enough to elevate are those who’ve demonstrated there’s nothing they won’t do to push the party line.
Military officials are resigning or getting fired at an alarming rate. Meanwhile, Hegseth (who needed J.D. Vance to set into the Senate to get appointed by a 51-50 vote) has done everything he can to prove he’s unfit to lead. And that’s on top of everything he had already done to demonstrate he should never have been considered for this post. I’ll let Ben Wolfgang of the Washington Times summarize the series of embarrassments that is DoD Secretary Pete Hegseth:
Mr. Hegseth’s nomination was nearly derailed by allegations of personal misconduct, including sexual assault, excessive drinking, spousal abuse and financial mismanagement of two veterans organizations he ran.
That’s just the stuff he did before Trump decided Hegseth should head up the US military. Since then, Hegseth has been involved with two careless chat conversations about classified military operations. He also embarrassed himself (and the military, by extension) during a public appearance with Trump in which he talked down to a hastily (and expensively) gathered group of top military officials. Hegseth called them fat, ranted about beards, and generally made an ass of himself.
Having laid out what he apparently thought was some sort of plan for the future has left several military officials not only unimpressed, but genuinely worried Hegseth’s tenure will do long-term damage to this institution. Back to Ben Wolfgang and the Washington Times:
High-level sources said that they believe Mr. Hegseth is simultaneously doing deep damage to the military, both from a public relations standpoint and structurally behind the scenes, that may not be fully apparent until months or even years from now.
[…]
They argue that the firings, early retirements and resignations that have amassed over the past eight months will fundamentally weaken the military.
“Across the services, we are bleeding talent, talented generals and flag officers, for what appears to be the opposite of a meritocracy,” another current senior officer said. “There are people being held back from promotions, or being fired, or removed for sometimes unknown reasons, often for favoritism, or just simple relationships.”
The federal government is just one big culture of fear. The damage done by Elon Musk’s DOGE continues to resonate and individual agencies (like the Defense Department) are engaged in persistent purges meant to rid them of everyone but Trump loyalists. It’s no way to run a country, but that’s to be expected, because none of these people are capable of running a country.
Unbelievably, some military officers and officials think an uptick in recruitment proves Hegseth is the right man for the job. But that’s just going to contribute to the long-term problems Hegseth and Trump administration are creating. After all, if the messaging is a blend of ‘roid rage and racist dog whistling, the self-selecting nature of joining the military is going to result in it being filled with a bunch of people similarly unfit to be in the business of defending this nation.
The official response to the Washington Times reporting is exactly what you’d expect it to be:
“The anonymous general and senior officer quoted in your article should put their names to their comments if that’s what they truly believe in and consider resigning from their post. Our warriors deserve senior leaders who support the mission and put warfighting first,” [Pentagon spokesman Sean] Parnell said.
This is self-serving bullshit. It would be one thing if the only consequence for speaking publicly was a firing or a resignation. But this administration is never satisfied by a simple shit-canning. The vengeful thugs running rampant in the Trump regime are always willing to drum up criminal charges for anyone they consider an enemy, even if it’s just people who simply aren’t going to bend the knee or stay silent about the damage being done to the entirety of the US government. This government refuses to consider even the mildest and most constructive of criticism. To these ingrates, any dissent is intolerable, if not actually criminal.
A lot of GOP politicians align themselves with Christianity, especially the offshoot that believes the richer you are, the more God loves you. (That it tends to dovetail nicely with white Christian nationalism is just a bonus in these Trumpian times.) But somehow they never seem to be able to spend a dime of their own when people are in need.
Just take a look at Kristi Noem, current DHS head and former South Dakota governor. Noem sent a bunch of South Dakota National Guard members to the Texas border. Later, she refused to spend money deploying troops while her constituents were getting flooded out of their homes. She justified her refusal to spend residents’ tax dollars to help residents by pointing out the trip to the Texas border was actually paid for by someone with more money than discretion. She apparently hoped this would offset the $1.3 million in state emergency relief funds she blew on being performative, rather than on helping out the people who likely voted for her.
It’s always nice to have a few helpful millionaires/billionaires in your pocket. Donald Trump has more than a few of those. With the GOP refusing to negotiate in good faith with the Democratic party on a funding bill, the government remains shut down. Despite the fact that it’s the GOP holding the country hostage, rich Trump supporters who would absolutely riot if anyone suggested raising their taxes are cutting massive checks to cover a few of the administration’s expenses during this shut down.
Mr. Trump announced the donation on Thursday night, but he declined to name the person who provided the funds, only calling him a “patriot” and a friend.
[…]
“He doesn’t want publicity,” Mr. Trump said as he headed to Malaysia. “He prefer that his name not be mentioned which is pretty unusual in the world I come from, and in the world of politics, you want your name mentioned.”
The New York Times managed to identify the person behind this generous donation — a donation that can only be considered “generous” in the sense that it never should have happened in the first place.
Timothy Mellon, a reclusive billionaire and a major financial backer of President Trump, is the anonymous private donor who gave $130 million to the U.S. government to help pay troops during the shutdown, according to two people familiar with the matter.
It sounds like a lot, but we’re talking about a government that has been several trillion in the hole for years now. I’d love to see how this gets divvied up because if it’s just divided equally, it’s not going to mean a thing to the troops currently getting screwed by the party that claims it loves them the most.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Trump administration’s 2025 budget requested about $600 billion in total military compensation. A $130 million donation would equal about $100 a service member.
Getting an extra Benjamin is nice if you’re already getting paid. When you’re not getting paid, $100 is just enough money to make you resent it. Sure, you’ve got $100 more than you had before Mellon stepped briefly out of the shadows to stuff a little cash into Trump’s coat pocket, but what the fuck are you supposed to do with it? It’s not enough to do anything practical, like keep all the utilities on or cover the house payment or even stock the cupboards. May as well just toss it in the nearest slot machine and hope for the best.
Mellon is a billionaire and a fan of Trump, as so many billionaires are. He’s also donated millions to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his anti-vax efforts. He’s also this guy:
In an autobiography that he self-published in 2015, Mr. Mellon described himself as a former liberal who moved to Wyoming from Connecticut for lower taxes and to be surrounded by fewer people.
His book also contains several incendiary passages about race. He wrote that Black people were “even more belligerent” after social programs were expanded in the 1960s and ’70s, and that social safety net programs amounted to “slavery redux.”
And yet here he is, being a social safety net for thousands of troops who may never even see the money he gave to the Trump administration. For one thing, the logistics costs alone would probably eat up a great deal of what’s been donated. For another, this is pretty clearly illegal, which means no distribution will even happen.
[T]he donation appears to be a potential violation of the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits federal agencies from spending money in excess of congressional appropriations or from accepting voluntary services.
With that much still unsettled, this may remain in limbo. And that’s probably for the best. The only thing more insulting that gifting troops with a useless $100 bill would be clawing it back once federal funding resumes.
Finally, if we really want billionaires to bail out the government, the easiest way to do this is by TAXING THEM MORE. Let’s not pretend this guy is some sort of quiet hero who did this because he cares too deeply for this country to see soldiers go without pay. He did this because it’s another way to ensure he and the rest of the people in his tax bracket remain as privileged as they’ve always been. $100 can be gone in a second. But influence and access is forever.
The Republican Party is no longer a legitimate political organization. It has transformed into a corrupt, immoral, and criminal enterprise that serves the interests of one man’s power while systematically destroying the constitutional principles this nation was founded upon. What we’re witnessing isn’t political competition but organized crime wrapped in patriotic rhetoric.
When the President threatens military officers’ careers for not applauding his political agenda, when he declares American cities “enemy territory” to be conquered by federal forces, when he orders the creation of “quick reaction forces” to suppress civilian dissent, this isn’t governance. It’s the systematic dismantling of constitutional constraints on executive power. The Republican Party leadership has abandoned any pretense of defending democratic institutions in favor of tribal loyalty to authoritarian rule.
Trump has already deployed military forces against American cities. He sent troops to “protect” Portland with authorization for “full force, if necessary.” He deployed 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to quell immigration protests. He deployed the National Guard and federal agencies to Washington, D.C., and federalized the police force ostensibly to combat crime. Now he’s announced the creation of military “quick reaction forces” to help quell civil disturbances across the country.
They’ve gerrymandered districts to maintain power regardless of popular will. They’ve implemented voter suppression tactics designed to prevent Democratic participation. They’ve signaled they won’t recognize electoral outcomes that threaten their control. They’ve converted the Justice Department into a revenge operation against political opponents while pardoning violent criminals who attacked law enforcement officers.
The Republican Party has become a seditious conspiracy against constitutional governance, orchestrated by corrupt oligarchs, seditious Christian nationalists, and fascist neo-reactionaries from Silicon Valley. These actors are exploiting legitimate anti-elite sentiment among Americans who have real grievances about economic inequality and institutional failure. They use well-funded propaganda and algorithmic manipulation to trick citizens into supporting the very oligarchs who created those problems in the first place. The goal isn’t reform but permanent power and the end of competitive elections altogether.
The corporate collaboration represents an equally damning betrayal of American principles. CEOs who pay tribute for regulatory favors aren’t engaging in normal business practice. They’re committing federal crimes while destroying the competitive capitalism they claim to defend.
Tim Cook’s golden plaque presentation followed by immediate tariff exemptions represents textbook bribery under federal law. YouTube’s $24.5 million “settlement” payment, with $22 million funding Trump’s personal real estate projects, is a protection racket disguised as legal resolution. These aren’t complicated ethical questions requiring nuanced analysis. They’re clear violations of anti-corruption statutes that should result in federal prosecution.
The democratic opposition should be taking careful notes and planning comprehensive public hearings once legitimate governance is restored. Tim Cook should be dragged before Congress with cameras rolling to explain his tribute payments under oath. Every CEO who handed Trump money in exchange for regulatory favors should face criminal investigation. Every company that provided services enabling human rights violations should face trust-busting and systematic accountability.
These executives aren’t legally immune from prosecution. They’re simply calculating that their wealth and status make them functionally untouchable. They’re committing crimes in broad daylight because they assume the justice system serves their interests rather than the rule of law. If we didn’t accept “I was just following orders” at Nuremberg, we certainly shouldn’t accept “I was just protecting shareholder value” from corporate executives who funded authoritarianism for personal profit.
But perhaps most contemptible are the conservatives who continue defending this criminal enterprise as “the lesser evil” while constructing fantasy scenarios where Democratic governance somehow represents a greater threat than systematic constitutional destruction.
These people are morally corrupted beyond redemption. Once you reach the point of arguing “well, they’re corrupt too” while watching the President deploy military forces against American cities, you’ve lost any claim to principled political judgment. You’ve revealed that your tribal loyalty matters more than constitutional governance, that your partisan identity matters more than national dignity, that your psychological comfort matters more than democratic survival.
There is no moral equivalency between normal political disagreement and systematic authoritarianism. There is no principled argument for supporting a criminal organization because you dislike progressive tax policy. There is no intellectual framework that makes corporate bribery acceptable because you’re worried about diversity initiatives.
These aren’t principled conservatives making difficult political calculations. These are unprincipled tribalists desperately searching for justifications to support evil while maintaining their self-image as moral actors. Their revealed preference is clear: they prefer authoritarian corruption to progressive governance, criminal conspiracy to constitutional democracy, systematic humiliation of American institutions to higher taxes on the wealthy.
History will remember them as collaborators who chose comfort over courage, tribe over truth, personal advantage over national dignity. They had every opportunity to choose differently. They chose complicity instead.
The Republican Party is a criminal organization. Its corporate collaborators are willing accomplices. And anyone still defending either has forfeited any claim to principled political engagement.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
It’s a meme so famous it has its own Wikipedia page. And like plenty of memes with this sort of pedigree, its origins are humble: just another article by The Onion (or rather its Clickhole offshoot). You know the face and you know the words:
Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point
To Marjorie Taylor Greene’s credit, she’s done this more than once. She’s the wild card in the GOP party, but not the kind that might lead to another win. She’s the other kind of wild card: the unknown and unpredictable factor that occasionally delivers debacles and flame outs, rather than the easy, uncomplicated heist of democracy her party is actively engaged in.
So, when MTG goes rogue, it means something. But it possibly means less than if a staid backbencher suddenly stood up and declared Trump wrong about anything. That said, we’ll take what we can get when the takings are so meager and limited in quantity.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is continuing to buck GOP congressional leadership, placing blame on top Republicans Thursday morning for failing to pull the government from its ongoing shutdown.
“I’m not putting the blame on the president,” Greene (R-Ga.) said in an interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “I’m actually putting the blame on the speaker and Leader [John] Thune in the Senate. This should not be happening.”
Government shutdowns are a GOP specialty under Trump. This time around, though, the White House has expressly politicized the shutdown via its official websites, which is just another line this administration feels comfortable crossing.
The administration is angry because Democratic legislators won’t sign off on every ridiculous thing the Republican party is demanding in exchange for a barely-functioning government. In addition, it’s clear the GOP doesn’t actually want the shutdown ended, what with the administration using it as an excuse to lay off or fire people it wasn’t able to get rid of back when DOGE was still a going concern.
Marjorie Taylor Greene placing the blame where it belongs (speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Senate leader John Thune) definitely bucks the trend when it comes to Republican discussions of the ongoing shutdown. The GOP has aligned with the administration, which has chosen to publicly blame (again, via official government websites) the Democratic party for a crisis the GOP deliberately created to use as leverage to push through even more odious legislation.
Taylor Greene, of course, is no angel. Between her COVID conspiracy theories and her insistence that some sort of Jewish-controlled “space laser” caused California wildfires, Taylor Greene has been nothing but batshit crazy while somehow maintaining access to considerable public power. Pizzagate, QAnon, replacement theory, etc. have all been part of Greene’s arsenal for years. But this time, she’s actually right. There’s no conspiracy here. There’s just the GOP holding the government hostage until it gets what it wants.
And now, her super-weird form of local advocacy has turned her into the rogue the GOP can’t control. It’s not just this recent shutdown. It’s a whole lot of things the GOP would rather pretend simply didn’t exist, beginning with the Epstein files and running right through the healthcare price hikes their constituents will be facing if the GOP manages to pass the budget bill it has proposed:
Greene has continued to be a thorn in the side of Republican leadership in recent weeks, splitting from President Donald Trump and the GOP on a string of major topics — calling the war in Gaza a “genocide,” campaigning for the release of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case and pushing for an extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.
MTG — however momentarily — has just become one of us: people who can not only see through the GOP’s increasingly stupid lies, but know that America’s never going to be great again with these motherfuckers in charge. There may be hope for Taylor Greene after all. But if recent history has anything to say about it, the new, improved MTG will be just as unpredictably awful as she was prior to this brief return to reality.
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has apparently decided his latest form of politically motivated lawfare (the thing he insisted he would end once he took over) should be threatening Google over… checks notes… having spam filters that work too well at blocking actual spam. In a letter sent to Google CEO Sundar Pichai last week, Ferguson claims the company may be violating the FTC Act because Gmail’s spam detection system catches Republican fundraising emails.
This isn’t just bad policy—it’s a rehash of thoroughly debunked claims from 2022, dressed up with new threats and an alarming misunderstanding of both the First Amendment and the FTC’s actual authority.
The Letter That Shouldn’t Exist
Ferguson’s letter reads like it was written by someone who’s never encountered a spam filter in their life. He claims Gmail’s spam detection constitutes potential “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” because:
My understanding from recent reporting is that Gmail’s spam filters routinely block messages from reaching consumers when those messages come from Republican senders but fail to block similar messages sent by Democrats. Indeed, according to recent reporting, Alphabet has “been caught this summer flagging Republican fundraising emails as ‘dangerous’ spam— keeping them from hitting Gmail users’ inboxes—while leaving similar solicitations from Democrats untouched….”
Let’s be real here: Republican political organizations have a long history of sending emails that look exactly like spam because, well, they often are spam. They use deceptive subject lines, aggressive tactics, and mass-mailing techniques that trigger spam filters not because of political bias, but because they’re using spammy tactics.
Even pro-MAGA commentators have called out their own team for this behavior:
Ferguson then tries to shoehorn this into FTC authority by claiming:
Alphabet’s alleged partisan treatment of comparable messages or messengers in Gmail to achieve political objectives may violate both of these prohibitions under the FTC Act. And the partisan treatment may cause harm to consumers.
This is legal nonsense wrapped in political theater. The FTC has never policed “political bias” in private companies’ editorial decisions, and for good reason—the First Amendment prohibits exactly this kind of government interference.
We’ve Been Here Before (And It Was Stupid Then Too)
This entire controversy stems from a 2022 study by political consultants who discovered that Gmail caught more Republican emails in spam filters. What Ferguson conveniently omits is what the study’s own authors admitted: this only happened on completely untrained accounts. Once users actually used their spam filters—you know, the way normal people do—the difference disappeared entirely.
The study also found that other email providers caught more Democratic emails as spam, but Republicans laser-focused on Gmail because it fit their victimization narrative better.
Republicans then filed both lawsuits and FEC complaints (both of which failed easily) claiming this was somehow an “in-kind contribution” to Democrats. Never mind that when given a chance to weigh in on this matter, the public—including many Republicans—don’t want political spam cluttering their inboxes and wish politicians would stop sending so much of it.
There’s also the fact that Google has offered Republicans a system to have their emails whitelisted… and Republicans never seem to take them up on it.
Why This Is Legally Bankrupt
Tech lawyer Berin Szoka demolished Ferguson’s legal theory in a thread explaining why this investigation violates the FTC’s own authority:
Bias can’t be “unfair” because Section 5(n) requires the FTC to show that “substantial injury” is “not outweighed by countervailing benefits,” and the First Amendment bars the government from weighing a spammer’s right to “speech” against a website’s right to editorial control over how to define and block spam.
Szoka also notes that claiming Google “deceived” users would require showing the company made specific promises about spam handling that it then broke. Ferguson’s letter contains no such allegations… because they don’t exist.
The real tell is in Ferguson’s breathless claim that:
Hearing from candidates and receiving information and messages from political parties is key to exercising fundamental American freedoms and our First Amendment rights.
This fundamentally misunderstands how the First Amendment works. Google has its own First Amendment right to decide what content to host and how to organize it. The government can’t force private companies to amplify speech they’d rather not carry—that would be compelled speech, which the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled violates the First Amendment.
Political Theater, Not Law Enforcement
Ferguson barely bothers making an actual legal case here, probably because he knows it’s garbage. This is political posturing designed to keep the White House happy by appearing to “do something” about conservative claims of “censorship.”
The letter is particularly rich coming from an administration that spent months threatening tech companies over fact-checking and content moderation, then celebrated when those companies caved to the pressure. Apparently free speech principles only matter when they benefit the right people.
Here’s what Ferguson and his allies refuse to acknowledge: if Republican fundraising emails are getting caught in spam filters more often, maybe the problem isn’t Google’s algorithms. Maybe the problem is that Republican organizations keep using tactics that trigger legitimate spam detection.
Political emails are explicitly exempt from the CAN-SPAM Act, which means political fundraisers can get away with behavior that would be illegal for commercial senders. They often use deceptive subject lines, fake urgency (“FINAL NOTICE”), and other tactics that any reasonable spam filter would catch.
The solution isn’t to threaten tech companies with government investigation for having effective spam filters. The solution is for political organizations to stop acting like spammers.
Ferguson’s letter represents yet another in a long line of attempts at dangerous expansions of FTC authority into areas where it has no business. The FTC is supposed to protect consumers from actual fraud and deception, not police private companies’ editorial decisions based on political considerations.
If this theory of FTC authority were accepted, it would open the door for government officials to threaten any tech company whose algorithms don’t produce politically favorable results. That’s not consumer protection—that’s garden variety authoritarianism.
The First Amendment exists precisely to prevent government officials from using their power to coerce private companies into amplifying preferred political messages. Ferguson’s letter is exactly the kind of government overreach the founders sought to prevent.
Ferguson’s not dumb. He knows this investigation is legally baseless. He knows the FTC lacks authority to police political bias in private editorial decisions. He knows the First Amendment protects Google’s right to determine its own spam filtering policies.
This letter isn’t about consumer protection or fair trade practices. It’s about using government power to intimidate a private company for making editorial decisions that favor users who don’t want spam over Republican politicians. That’s not just bad policy—it’s a violation of everything the First Amendment is supposed to protect.
The real scandal here isn’t that Gmail’s spam filters work too well. It’s that the chairman of a federal agency thinks threatening private companies over their editorial decisions is somehow part of his job description.
A New York business frozen out of its checking account. A Georgia chemotherapy patient denied a credit card refund after a product dispute. A New Jersey service member defrauded out of their savings.
These consumers — along with hundreds of others — reached out to their congressional representatives for help in the past 12 months.
“I have been unable to pay my rent, utilities, personal bills, student loans, or my credit card. I have been unable to buy groceries or put gas in my car,” wrote the New Yorker, who contacted Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ office.
Records show their representatives — all Republicans — referred them to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog agency formed in the wake of the Great Recession to shield Americans from unfair or abusive business practices. All three consumers got relief, according to agency data.
Then the lawmakers — along with nearly every other Republican in Congress — voted to slash the agency’s funding by nearly half as part of President Donald Trump’s signature legislative package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a step toward the administration’s goal of gutting the agency.
Republicans have long been critical of the CFPB, accusing it of imposing unreasonable burdens on businesses. Already, the CFPB under Trump has dropped a number of cases and frozen investigations into dozens of companies.
Yet the agency has historically benefited consumers across the political spectrum, securing around $20 billion in relief through its enforcement actions.
Data obtained by ProPublica through a public records request shows that many of the same Republican members of Congress who have targeted the CFPB for cuts have collectively routed thousands of constituent complaints to the agency.
Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Rep. Rob Wittman of Virginia, for example, voted to reduce the CFPB’s budget. Yet each of their offices has referred more than 100 constituents to the CFPB for help, among the most of any House members. The office of Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who also voted for the CFPB cuts, has routed more than 800 constituent complaints to the agency, the most of any current lawmaker from either party, ProPublica found.
A spokesperson for Issa said in an email that most of his office’s referrals to the agency “occurred several years ago” and reflected “a conventional way” to handle constituents’ consumer issues.
Wittman and Cornyn didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about the disconnect between their offices’ use of the CFPB’s services and their votes to cut it. Neither did New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, whose office fielded the defrauded service member’s complaint, or Malliotakis, who was approached by the New York business owner, or Rep. Rick Allen, whose office directed the Georgia chemotherapy patient to the agency.
Overall, members of Congress have steered nearly 24,000 complaints to the CFPB since it opened its doors in 2011. Roughly 10,000 of those were referred by the offices of current and former Republican lawmakers, ProPublica found.
“This is how members of Congress from both parties get help for the people who live in their districts,” said Erie Meyer, the CFPB’s former chief technologist, who left the agency in February. The agency has a particular mandate to help service members and seniors, she noted. “This is how, if a service member is getting screwed on an auto loan, this is the only place they can go.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., has referred more than 200 constituents to CFPB since its creation. In a statement to ProPublica, he accused Republicans in Congress of “pursuing senseless cuts that will undermine their own ability to protect their constituents, who will be left in the lurch when they fall victim to scams or deceptive and unfair business practices.”
“Republicans have made clear that they stand on the side of big businesses — not consumers,” he added. “Their irresponsible pursuit of dismantling the CFPB will have far-reaching and long-lasting consequences.”
An Irreplaceable System
In recent years, the CFPB’s public database shows the number of complaints has exploded, from around 280,000 in 2019 to more than 2.7 million last year.
Complaints have grown across many categories, including credit cards and debt collection. Last year, most of the complaints filed, over 2.3 million, were about mistakes or other problems involving credit reporting agencies, and more than half of them resulted in relief, CFPB data shows.
“These credit score formulas govern so many factors of your life. It’s not just your ability to get a loan, it’s your ability to secure housing or qualify for a job,” said Adam Rust, director of financial services at the Consumer Federation of America. “It’s important that you can resolve something, but it’s difficult to do it on your own.”
Once a complaint is submitted, it is routed to the company, which has 15 days to respond. Companies can request an additional 45 days to reach a final resolution.
Many consumers end up getting nonmonetary relief, such as fixes to erroneous credit reports or an end to harassment by debt collectors, but some get financial help as well. More than $300 million has been returned to Americans through the complaint system, including $90 million just last year.
Normally, staff at the CFPB monitor the complaints to identify systemic issues and escalate complaints involving consumers who are at immediate risk of foreclosure, although that didn’t happen for a few weeks this year when the agency’s acting director halted its work.
The CFPB also shares complaint information with other federal agencies, states and localities to help them protect consumers. No other government or private entity has the capacity to effectively handle the volume of complaints that the CFPB does, experts and current and former employees say.
In legal filings opposing the Trump administration’s steps to effectively shut down the CFPB, 23 Democratic attorneys general noted that their states collectively have referred thousands of complaints to the agency and that its services can’t be replaced by state-level operations.
“In the CFPB’s absence, consumers will be left without critical resources,” they wrote.
The complaint system has also lessened the burden on congressional offices, which can route constituent problems to an agency dedicated to, and expert in, addressing consumer issues. Yet that hasn’t stopped Republicans from pursuing dramatic cuts to the agency.
The CFPB receives its funding from the Federal Reserve instead of annual appropriations bills. The structure is meant to safeguard the agency’s independence, though critics say this makes the agency less accountable, giving elected officials less power over its operations.
Initially, Republicans pressed for extreme cuts to the CFPB as part of Trump’s legislative package. House members approved a 70% cut. The Senate Banking Committee attempted to go even further, zeroing out the agency’s funding entirely.
Ultimately, the final version of the bill signed into law by Trump on July 4 cut the CFPB’s budget by around 46%, reducing the agency’s funding cap — the maximum amount it can request from the Federal Reserve — from $823 million to $446 million for this fiscal year. The agency requested $729 million last fiscal year.
The offices of lawmakers who voted for the bill have referred about 3,400 complaints to the agency, running the gamut of consumer problems — from crushing debt to mortgage issues to financial scams, ProPublica’s data analysis shows. (In some of these cases, consumers also took complaints to the CFPB themselves in addition to reaching out to their representatives. Consumers’ names aren’t disclosed in the data.)
Their constituents are sometimes desperate: “I’m about to be homeless because of this,” wrote a Florida resident whose bank account was frozen.
Others have expressed frustration at getting the runaround from a company. “I’ve spent countless hours on hold trying to speak with a representative, only to be met with silence or outdated instructions to send letters,” wrote one Virginian in a complaint about their bank.
In a statement after the CFPB funding cut passed, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Tim Scott, R-S.C., applauded the measure for saving taxpayer money but insisted it would not affect the agency’s mandatory functions, which include handling complaints.
Consumer experts as well as current and former CFPB employees, however, said the cuts will likely hinder the agency’s effectiveness.
“I think the whole process is at risk,” said Ruth Susswein, director of consumer protection at the nonprofit advocacy group Consumer Action. “If you starve the system, it cannot provide the benefits that it now offers.”
Signs of Strain
The Trump administration’s initial efforts to unilaterally hobble the CFPB give a hint of what may lie ahead for the complaint system.
In February, acting Director Russell Vought issued a stop-work order to all CFPB employees and canceled a slew of contracts, including for antivirus software that scanned files attached to consumer complaints.
The actions largely froze the complaint system for about a week. More than 70,000 complaints were submitted, but most were not sent to companies for their response during that period, data shows.
Although some issues were later fixed, the work stoppage spawned a backlog of more than 16,000 complaints that required manual review, according to court records from a lawsuit filed by the union that represents CFPB employees. About 75 complaints from consumers at risk of imminent foreclosure, which would normally be escalated to CFPB staff, weren’t acted upon.
In late March, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered the CFPB to end the work stoppage, reverse contract terminations and reinstate probationary employees who were fired. However, an appeals court allowed layoffs to proceed, triggering a frenzied effort by the administration to cut about 90% of the CFPB’s staff.
The layoffs included the vast majority of the roughly 130-member team that manages the complaint system as well as nearly every staffer in legally mandated offices focused on service members and seniors.
The CFPB has fielded over 440,000 complaints from current and former service members and their families since 2011, according to CFPB data, more than 100,000 of which have resulted in relief.
The CFPB did not respond to multiple requests for comment. In a court declaration, Mark Paoletta, the CFPB’s chief legal officer, said that the agency’s leadership had “been assessing how the agency can fulfill its statutory duties as a smaller, more efficient operation. In making this assessment, leadership discovered vast waste in the agency’s size.”
Paoletta also said the agency would have a “much more limited vision for enforcement and supervision activities, focused on protecting service members and veterans, and addressing actual tangible consumer harm and intentional discrimination.”
In April, Jackson issued an order blocking the firings made at the CFPB after the appeals court decision. The administration has appealed Jackson’s ruling.
Lawsuits won’t protect the CFPB or its complaint apparatus from the cuts included in the recently passed spending bill, current and former agency employees pointed out.
These changes are likely to hit home with consumers no matter which party they favor, said Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center, which is a plaintiff in the union’s lawsuit.
“Republicans don’t want to be abused by big corporations that ignore them any more than Democrats do,” she said.
There’s a trick at the center of American political discourse—so deeply embedded that even well-meaning people don’t realize they’re performing it. It goes like this: if you’re a fair-minded individual, you must believe that both political parties are fundamentally the same. To assert a meaningful difference in their commitment to truth, democracy, or constitutional governance is to betray your objectivity. In this view, saying the Republican Party is more dangerous than the Democratic Party isn’t just a factual judgment. Rather, it’s a tribal confession.
This, more than any specific lie or scandal, is the master gaslight of our era. It is the epistemic sleight of hand that has broken the American mind.
Because here’s the truth: one party has become a conspiracy cult organized around personal loyalty to a would-be autocrat, willing to burn down democratic institutions for power. And the other… hasn’t. That’s not partisanship. That’s observation.
To deny that difference isn’t neutrality. It’s disorientation.
This false equivalence is not just intellectually lazy. It’s a deliberate strategy to disarm the public’s capacity for understanding reality at the very moment when moral discernment is most needed. It trains citizens to see betrayal and resistance as equally suspect, to treat sedition and institutional defense as symmetrical extremes. It creates an imaginary center that floats somewhere between coherence and collapse—and insists that “balance” means staying there.
Consider how this works in practice: Trump’s indictments for crimes he actually committed are treated as equivalent to the imaginary “weaponization” of law enforcement under Biden. Trump had classified documents photographed in boxes at Mar-a-Lago. His charity was shut down for criminal self-dealing. We have him on tape asking Georgia officials to “find” exactly enough votes to overturn the election. But prosecuting these documented crimes becomes “lawfare”—equivalent, somehow, to the fever dreams in which children are trafficked from the basement of a pizza parlor that doesn’t have a basement.
Only in a post-truth environment—where slogans pass for arguments and outrage replaces analysis—could such equivalences be drawn. To treat the prosecution of crimes as morally equal to the invention of conspiracies is not just unserious. It’s insane.
Yes, the Democratic Party is flawed. Yes, liberal institutions have failed in profound ways—some of which I’ve critiqued in these very digital pages. But they remain broadly committed to elections, peaceful transfers of power, constitutional process, and pluralistic government. That’s not nothing. That’s the foundation of everything.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party has nominated a man who tried to overturn an election, incited violence against political opponents, promised to dismantle the civil service, and pledged to weaponize the Justice Department against critics. He now enjoys the open support of insurrectionists, foreign adversaries, and indicted financiers. This is not business as usual. This is the death spiral of democratic governance.
And it continues. With a single phone call to Governor Greg Abbott, Trump persuaded Texas Republicans to abandon their response to the Central Texas floods and instead embark on a radical gerrymandering crusade—targeting five new congressional seats through brute procedural power. Governance discarded. Power prioritized.
To equate these two forces is not fairness. It is moral blindness.
And that blindness has a function. It provides cover. It allows elites to keep access. It permits institutions to pretend they’re not implicated. It flatters audiences who want to feel superior to the “partisans.” But in a democracy, refusing to take sides when the stakes are constitutional survival isn’t wisdom—it’s abdication.
The center, properly understood, isn’t the midpoint between parties. It’s the ground where reality lives. And right now, that ground is under siege—not from both sides, but from one.
So no, I will not pretend both parties are the same. I will not apologize for calling authoritarianism what it is. And I will not lend credibility to the lie that recognizing asymmetry is itself a form of extremism.
That’s the fulcrum of the gaslight. That’s the belief they need you to accept in order to keep breaking reality apart.
Don’t believe it.
Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And one party has abandoned the truth.
The center must be held. But it can only be held by those willing to name who’s trying to tear it down.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
