The Evidence Mounts

Remember The Manchurian Candidate? The story centers on a Korean War veteran who is part of a prominent political family. He’s brainwashed by communists after his Army platoon is captured, and when he returns home, he becomes an unwitting assassin in an international communist conspiracy. 

I’m beginning to see uncomfortable parallels with that fictional plot.

I’m loathe to give credence to the longstanding assertion that Trump is a knowing Russian asset–after all, it’s improbable that this pathetic bundle of ego and ignorance is a “knowing” anything. A recent article from the Kviv Independent does make that case, however, the author writing

Questions about U.S. President Donald Trump’s possibly shady relationship with Russia and the country’s security services have long swirled, even culminating in a special counsel investigation during his first term in office.

Though that investigation found evidence of “extensive criminal activity” by Trump, his associates, and some of his family members, it found no evidence that he was working for, or had ever been recruited by, Russia’s security services.

Yet despite this, the topic refuses to go away — most recently in a viral Facebook post from a former Kazakh security official that claimed Trump was recruited by the Soviet Union’s spy agency, the KGB, in 1987 and given the code name “Krasnov.”

Craig Unger, an American journalist and writer who has written two books on Trump’s connections to Russia’s security services and the Russian mafia stretching all the way back to the 1980s, says he is “absolutely certain” that the U.S. president is a Russian asset.

You can click through and read Unger’s arguments, but just as the central figure in the Manchurian Candidate was unaware of his brainwashing, I think it unlikely that Trump is consciously pursuing his pro-Russian, pro-Putin, anti-American rampage.

That, of course, doesn’t make his actions any less destructive. And it does raise a question about the operatives he is installing in various agencies of the federal government. Among the clowns, predators and preening incompetents, there are clearly some who are knowingly–and purposely– acting as Russian agents. Talking Points Memo recently reported on one of them.

Before Peter Marocco was selected to dismantle America’s entire foreign aid sector on behalf of President Donald Trump, he was an official with the State Department on a diplomatic mission.

During Trump’s first term, Marocco was a Trump appointee tasked with promoting stability in areas with armed conflict. In 2018, he made a two-week trip to the Balkans in what was advertised as an effort to counter extremism and strengthen inter-religious dialogue.

American diplomacy is carefully prescribed, identifying both the people officials should meet and those they should avoid.  On that 2018 visit to the Balkans, Marocco secretly met with officials, including Milorad Dodik, whom the American government had determined were off-limits: Bosnian Serb separatist leaders who had been working for years to undermine the American-backed peace deal and to promote a Christian Bosnian Serb state….

At the time, Dodik was under U.S. sanctions for actively obstructing American efforts to prevent more bloodshed. Dodik has since described himself as “pro-Russian, anti-Western and anti-American” in a meeting with Putin. Nevertheless, Trump has named Marocco to a senior post at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he’s attempted to halt dozens of programs. Former colleagues describe his agenda as “overtly militaristic and Christian nationalist.” 

Trump has made Marocco the director for foreign assistance at the State Department, and deputy administrator of USAID —  the two agencies that previously rejected him. “And unlike last time, Marocco is now without strictures and answers to few in the executive branch besides Trump himself.”

Immediately after the inauguration last month, Marocco drafted the order shutting down all of USAID’s programs and freezing foreign aid. He’s led the efforts to place nearly all of the agency’s staff on administrative leave, though the courts have temporarily lifted many of those. Much of USAID’s work has not resumed, according to interviews with dozens of government employees and nongovernmental organizations, despite the State Department’s claim that waivers allow work involving “core lifesaving medicine, medical services, food, shelter and substance assistance” to continue.

The article has much more detail about Marocco’s past activities–all of which raise the question why he has been empowered to orchestrate the Trump administration’s foreign aid policy.

TPM also reports that Rubio and Marocco have now

completely ended nearly 10,000 aid programs — including those they had granted waivers just days earlier — saying the programs did not align with Trump’s agenda. The move consigns untold numbers of the world’s poorest children, refugees and other vulnerable people to death, according to several senior federal officials. Local authorities have already begun estimating a death toll in the hundreds of thousands.

It hardly matters whether Trump is a knowing Russian asset….

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Follow The Grift

Not that it should surprise anyone, but the corruption of our Grifter-in-Chief has become too flagrant and apparent to hide. As Trump has decimated the Justice department and fired the various officials whose job it has been to ensure government ethics, his administration is coming to look a lot like that of his idol Putin.

Want examples?

Here’s a recent report from CNN Business:

A businessman who pumped $75 million into the Trump family-backed crypto token finds himself in a fortunate position this week as federal securities regulators are hitting pause on their civil fraud case against him.

On Wednesday, lawyers for the Securities and Exchange Commission and Justin Sun, a 34-year-old Chinese crypto entrepreneur, asked a federal judge to put the agency’s case on hold, citing the interests of both sides and “the public’s interest.”

The pause is a 180 for the SEC, America’s top financial regulator, which two years ago charged Sun and his companies — Tron, BitTorrent and Rainberry — with selling unregistered securities and fraudulently manipulating the price of digital token Tronix. Sun and his companies sought to have the case dismissed.

This particular grift revolves around the issuance of so-called “meme” coins–crypto tokens. Buyers with sufficient means are invited to bribe Trump by purchasing large amounts of them. To the best of my knowledge–and I’ve looked– there is no accounting, no agency or government individual keeping track of those purchases. 

The media, however, has begun to investigate; Rolling Stone recently ran an article titled “HERE’S EVERYTHING WRONG WITH TRUMP’S CRYPTO MEME COINS” with a subhead reading “The Trump family’s new crypto meme coins are an ethical disaster and ripe for corruption — and they could cost his supporters dearly.”

While campaigning, Trump promised to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet” after crypto bros poured over $130 million to elect a crypto-captive administration and Congress. Trump has tapped pro-crypto acolytes for regulatory posts across the federal government and released pro-crypto executive orders to establish a White House crypto working group and prioritize crypto across government. To top it off, the huckster-in-chief launched his $TRUMP meme coin: one part a vehicle for personal profit, one part a playground taunt over federal ethics rules, and one part a crypto-fascist pledge of allegiance. It’s a move that could not only rip off Trump supporters but also significantly corrode the democratic process.

The article goes on to explain just what a “meme coin” is: 

a crypto token based on little more than an online image, slogan, or passing social trend. The crypto industry argues it is a sort of digital collectible. The fine print on the $TRUMP coin website notes that the coins “are not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type.”

These coins have no practical use, unlike other crypto assets, which do have such uses (mostly laundering drug money or tax evasion). Most end up being worthless; a number are sold by “investors” hyping their value just long enough to allow insiders to cash out. Interestingly, the $TRUMP fine print requires its buyers to give up their rights to sue.

As the article notes, the Trump venture “presents a mind-boggling number of potential conflicts of interest” and appears designed to prey upon rather than protect naive Americans.  Or–as emerging evidence like the dismissal of the SEC suit suggests–to provide a perfect mechanism for bribery.

Lawmakers (okay, Democratic lawmakers) are beginning to catch on; one Democratic Senator has promised to introduce a measure that would make this particular grift illegal. As ABC recently reported,

Since launching a little over a month ago, the $TRUMP coin has tanked in value after early investors dumped the cryptocurrency. Members of Congress have noticed as hundreds of thousands of investors have taken hard hits and billions in value have quickly vanished.

California freshman Democrat Rep. Sam Liccardo told ABC News on Thursday he will introduce legislation to prohibit the country’s top officials and their families — from Congress to the White House — from capitalizing on personal meme coins.

I don’t think ABC is quite correct in saying that the coin has no value. That is undoubtedly true for the MAGA cult suckers who purchase it, but it clearly has considerable value for “businessmen” who want government to drop lawsuits and/or investigations, or who seek fat contracts or other preferential treatment. (Reports are that a number of lawsuits are being dropped.)

Trump has learned a lot from his idol Putin about how to keep the oligarchs loyal…..

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Why Economic Ignorance Matters

America’s election of Donald Trump–horrifying and destructive as it was and is–was part of a global lurch to the Right, and that lurch can be attributed to one over-riding factor: a negative reaction to immigration. There are a lot of moving parts to that reaction, but I want to focus on one inarguable element of MAGA’s hatred of (certain) immigrants–a hatred that blinds the economically-ignorant to the predictable consequences of mass deportations.

Racism has always been the central part of Trump’s appeal, and his promises to “protect” the border have, accordingly, focused on the southern border. When he talks about limiting illegal immigration, it is quite clear that he is talking about poor brown and Black people, not the rich, or the stray Canadian or Norwegian.

The promised massive deportations have yet to occur, but early reports reflect two “Trumpian” realities: his disregard for legal and constitutional niceties, and his ignorance of the way the economy works. It isn’t just his love of tariffs that illustrates that ignorance; he clearly has no comprehension of the importance of both legal and illegal immigrants in selected sectors of the economy.

In his first few weeks back in office, Trump has consistently ignored the law, so it isn’t surprising that early “roundups” have frequently crossed the constitutional line. As Paul Krugman recently noted, “if you make it clear that respecting the rights of the accused is a liberal, DEI thing, of course some ICE and Border Control agents will run wild. Basically, anyone with brown skin will be at risk of at least temporary detention.”

And speaking of risk, even though the number of immigrants arrested is small so far, Krugman and others point out that  the raids that have occurred have already inspired widespread fear.  Some workers have stayed home rather than coming to work. Others have returned to their home countries. And some businesses have even laid off valuable employees for fear that they may be raided.

In the linked essay, Krugman offers charts documenting the likely economic impact of widespread deportations, beginning with the fact that almost 1 in 5 U.S. workers is foreign-born. Most of those are here legally, but unauthorized immigrants make up around 5 percent of the work force.

Losing a large fraction of these workers would be a serious blow to the economy, especially because immigrants, legal and not, play a much bigger role in some industries and occupations than they do in the economy as a whole.

Agriculture is the most striking example: Immigrants — many of them undocumented — make up most of the farm labor force.

Push those workers out, either by actual deportation or detention or simply by creating a climate of fear, and just watch what happens to grocery prices.

About a quarter of construction industry employees are immigrants — 40 percent in Texas and California — but this number rises to 31 percent if you look only at “construction trades,” i.e., people who actually build stuff as opposed to working in offices or marketing. And the immigrant share is much higher in particular trades.

So at a time when Americans are still angry about the price of groceries and, with more justification, about the unaffordability of housing, Trump’s immigrant crackdown seems set to hobble food production and home construction.

Krugman notes that Trump can probably call off most of his threatened tariffs, granting exemptions in return for concessions benefitting him personally, but his constant, ugly screeds against (certain) immigrants have played into racial hatreds that can’t easily be reined in.

I have previously posted about the gap between immigration facts and the fallacies that allow MAGA bigots to use migrants as a handy wedge issue. As I said then, if anyone harbors doubts about the GOP’s entirely political approach to what the media routinely calls the “border crisis,” it should have been dispelled when Republicans abruptly walked away from a bipartisan proposal that–after difficult negotiations–had given them pretty much everything they’d been demanding, so they could use the “border crisis” as a campaign issue.

And speaking of the border–most of the 11 million immigrants who are here illegally flew in and overstayed their visas.

America’s anti-immigrant hysteria is central to today’s White Christian Nationalism. Of course, there has always been a nativist streak in America; Ellis Island was first established to keep “undesirables” from entering the country. “Give me your tired, your poor, your masses yearning to breathe free” was Emma Lazarus’ response to the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Know-Nothing Party was formed largely by people who feared that Irish Catholic immigrants would take jobs from God-fearing Protestant “real Americans.”

We haven’t come very far, and MAGA wants to take us back……

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What Could Go Wrong?

It really isn’t possible to keep track of the lawsuits being filed against the blizzard of Trump/Musk assaults on government and the rule of law. Suits have been filed by state Attorneys General, unions representing government workers, and a wide range of non-profit organizations challenging indiscriminate and uninformed “slash and burn” tactics.

It remains to be seen whether this lawless administration will comply with court rulings–and how far the rogue and corrupt members of the Supreme Court majority will go to accommodate Trump.

In the midst of all this is a lawsuit filed by Public Citizen, representing the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) demanding “an immediate halt to the massive and patently illegal invasion of privacy being carried out by Elon Musk’s “DOGE” at the U.S. Treasury Department.”

The organization has described he basics of the lawsuit. 

The Treasury Department possesses sensitive personal and financial information for millions and millions of Americans who send money to or receive money from the federal government.

Federal laws protect such information from improper disclosure and misuse — including by barring disclosure to individuals who lack a lawful and legitimate need for it.

But instead of protecting Americans’ private information as required by law, Scott Bessent — Trump’s jillionaire Treasury Secretary — allowed DOGE full access to the data.And he punished the Treasury employee who — in accordance with his job duties and the law — tried to protect that information from improper access.

The lawsuit charges that “the scale of this intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented.”

The complaint cites the legal framework for access to this information–the laws established by Congress to protect the information–and the fact that DOGE has ignored that framework and those laws, including the Privacy Act of 1974 and several IRS statutes.

A similar suit has been filed by attorneys general of 19 states who asked for–and received– an emergency temporary restraining order blocking Elon Musk and DOGE team from accessing Treasury payment systems. That suit alleged that allowing DOGE to view information maintained by Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Services (BFS) violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The lawsuit noted that the payment files in question contain “sensitive personally identifiable information,” or PII, like bank account numbers, as well as “Federal Tax Information (FTI)” protected from unlawful disclosure under Code Sec. 6103 and “Automated Clearing House (ACH) data.”

During Trump’s first term, Americans were spared the effects of several potentially disastrous measures by the overwhelming incompetence of Trump’s cabinet, which was composed of cronies who had no idea how government worked and routinely ignored the legal processes necessary to accomplish their goals. (And those inept cronies look like geniuses compared to the collection of predators, toadies, nutcases and ignoramuses of Trump II.) 

During his first term, Trump largely obeyed the various adverse court rulings triggered by that ignorance. This time, there are sobering indications that our mad rulers–having neutered Congress– will also ignore the courts, eviscerating the Separation of Powers which is foundational to the nation’s legal system.

Currently, courts have issued decisions blocking DOGE from access to the sensitive, private information contained in Treasury’s files; the extent of DOGE’s compliance is, however, unclear.

 I shudder to think what a group of self-important 19-to-24-year-olds might do with the bank account information of millions of American citizens, let alone the other personal financial information in those files. But even if those IT interns are more trustworthy than they appear, respect for individual privacy is an important social good.

As one essayist has noted, 

In an era where digital footprints are ubiquitous and personal data is often treated as a commodity, the concept of privacy has never been more critical. Despite common arguments that dismiss privacy concerns with the assertion, “I have nothing to hide,” the importance of privacy extends far beyond concealing wrongdoing.

Respect for individual privacy is an essential element in keeping personal information from being misused. The more information that is available about an individual, the easier it is to exploit it via identity theft, phishing attacks, and other forms of cybercrime. 

The last paragraph of that linked essay is particularly applicable to the threat posed by Trump/Musk:

Accepting the “nothing to hide” argument can lead to the normalization of surveillance, resulting in a society where constant monitoring is the norm. This shift can erode the checks and balances that prevent abuses of power. In such a society, the line between public and private blurs, and the potential for governmental or corporate overreach grows, threatening the liberties of everyone, regardless of their behavior.

No kidding….

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How We Got Here….

I recently came across a quote–I’ve misplaced the source–that summed up the conundrum that keeps so many of us up at night.

Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies.
The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.

How did that–how could that– happen? 

There are really two imponderable questions involved: one, what motivated his supporters to ignore those very obvious facts about him, plus the disaster of his first term, and return him to the Oval Office? And two, what led millions of Americans to conclude that there was no need to inconvenience themselves by going to the polls?

This blog has spent a lot of time and pixels on that first question. The superficial answer is that the Republican Party is no longer a traditional political party–it has become a White Christian Nationalist cult. The more difficult question is: why? What is it about White Christian Nationalism that is so appealing to some people that they are willing to overlook all the demonstrable deficits enumerated in that opening quotation, and support a man who lacks a single redeeming human quality? (He isn’t even one of those evil men whose despicable behaviors are covered by charm or distracting good looks–his physical appearance and personality are both repulsive.)

As regular readers of this blog know, my answer to that first question is the deep-seated racism that is America’s original–and continuing– sin. Throughout our history, far too many people have chosen to “other” those who look or pray differently. Today’s Christian Nationalism is a modern version of the attitudes that motivated and justified slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow, and  periodic eruptions of anti-Semitism. Christian fundamentalism feeds the persistent misogyny that allows MAGA folks to joke about sexual assaults and dismiss the significance of predatory sexual behaviors. 

There are clearly a lot of unhappy people who want to blame some “other” for their disappointments and failures–many more than we like to recognize. If there was any doubt about the immense role of racism in support for Trump, his anti-DEI rampage should have eliminated it.

But what about the second question? What failure of American life explains the significant number of people who simply didn’t bother to vote? Some of them probably didn’t want to choose between a Black woman and a clown–they shared MAGA’s biases, but detested Trump, so they opted out. Others were undoubtedly victims of the multiple vote suppression tactics employed by GOP operatives. But those two categories can’t explain the large numbers of no-shows.

Over my 21 years of teaching, I reluctantly concluded that America’s schools have failed their most important function:  citizenship education. The nation’s public schools weren’t established simply to teach the three Rs–they were also, and importantly, intended to be constitutive of a public–to turn out informed citizens who understood the system they inhabited, and recognized that membership in a polity involves civic responsibilities. (Voucher programs–as I’ve noted– wage war on that civic mission of the schools, and undermine efforts to forge a united citizenry.)

For too long, too many Americans have been–civically speaking–dumb, fat and happy. They’ve accepted the benefits of living in a free society without worrying about their obligation to maintain it. They’ve ignored politics, followed favored celebrities rather than civic or political leaders, dodged such civic duties as jury duty and voting, and complained about paying their taxes–all while assuming that police and fire departments would continue to protect them, that their Social Security checks would appear on their due dates, that the National parks would be open when they wanted to visit…expectations that are currently at risk.

If there is any bright side to the Trump/Musk destruction currently being waged, it is that people are being awakened to the fact that the maintenance of a stable government and civil society requires them to be informed participants–that they are not guaranteed an effortless free and livable society, and that continued progress toward realization of the American Idea is not inevitable. 

If and when enough good Americans eject the clowns, buffoons and bigots installed by our megalomaniac co-Presidents–if and when We the People regain control of our governing institutions, rebuilding civic education should be a first order of business. 

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If you want to understand the disastrous budget Republicans are trying to pass–and the process they’ll need to negotiate to do that–I will be doing a Zoom interview of Economics Professor Denvil Duncan from 7:00 to 8:00 tomorrow night, for the Central Indiana Indivisible chapter. You can register here.

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