Wednesday Reading
What fresh hell is this? #Incompetence #Corruption
“Make no mistake. Trump’s police state, enforced by unaccountable, anonymous secret police, is quickly taking shape. Our federal legislators are handing him the billions in resources needed to build it, red state governors like Ron DeSantis are constructing concentration camps to hold human beings in wired cages, and Trump is already threatening to strip a political opponent of his U.S. citizenship and deport him … The Medicaid cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy in the Republican budget get most of the media attention. But there’s also an eye-poppingly huge sum of money earmarked for Homeland Security and ICE. And that money, according to JD Vance, is the most important expenditure in the budget, calling everything else ‘immaterial’ and labeling Medicaid policy nothing more than ‘minutiae.’ (University of Michigan’s Don) Moynihan notes that the ICE detention budget is larger than the former budget for USAID, and that the increase is larger than budget cuts to education, SNAP, and larger than cuts to NIH, CDC and cancer research combined.” (Status Kuo)
“It is now more dangerous to be a billionaire, according to security consultants, who say they have noticed a rise in threats directed at the super-rich and business leaders this year. Paul Sarnese, owner of Secured & Prepared Consulting, based in New Jersey, said: ‘At least in the beginning of the year what we were experiencing in the economy created more animosity towards those that are more well off. And unfortunately, people are acting out on that.’ He added that wealthy executives were receiving more ‘online threats’ and ‘direct threats.’ Dave Komendat, a partner at Corporate Security Advisors, based in Seattle, said security fears around high net worth individuals are higher now than during the years of Occupy Wall Street, when protests against wealth inequality took off in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. ‘There’s definitely a sense of more urgency,’ he said. ‘I think there’s also a sense of more vulnerability based on the ever-increasing capabilities on the cyber side. People feel more exposed, whether it’s where they live, hacktivism, getting into their accounts … all of the types of things that create concern have been elevated.’ The rise in security concerns comes after Brian Thompson, the boss of UnitedHealthcare, one of America’s largest healthcare insurers, was shot dead outside a Hilton hotel in December on the way to his company’s annual investor conference. Since the murder, Sarnese said the number of inquiries received by his firm for security assessments has at least doubled. A fundraiser for the legal costs of Luigi Mangione, the 27-year-old accused of Thompson’s murder, has surpassed $1 million and attracted more than 28,000 donations. Some of the most recent donors have written notes to Mangione celebrating the advancement of Mamdani in the mayoral race and attacks on ‘corporate greed’. Mamdani, 33, plans to partially fund pledges — including a rent freeze and government-run grocery stores — by increasing income taxes on New York millionaires by two percentage points. America’s billionaire class gained 101 new members last year to total 835 individuals, growing faster than any other nation, according to UBS. US billionaires’ wealth rose 28 per cent to $5.8 trillion in 2024, analysis by the bank found, driven by industrials and tech billionaires.” (Louisa Clarence-Smith/The Times)
“Erica Lubliner is a psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who directs a clinic that offers mental-health services to Latinos. She provides care to a wide range of patients: first- to fourth-generation immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, and undergraduate and graduate students at U.C.L.A., many of whom are the first in their families to go to college. She usually meets patients in her bright office on campus in Westwood, where paintings by Mexican artists hang on the walls and children’s books are within easy reach. But, after the ICE raids began around the city last month, she moved her appointments online. Lubliner’s patients are safe in her clinic, she told me, ‘but even getting here can be scary’ … Lubliner is one of several psychiatrists and psychologists I recently spoke with who have worked with immigrant patients for many years. They’re familiar with the psychological harm caused by past law-enforcement crackdowns and anti-immigrant rhetoric. But, as Dana Rusch, a psychologist at the University of Illinois Chicago and the director of an immigrant mental-health program, told me, ‘This feels different than it did during the first Trump Administration. It feels different than other periods of immigration enforcement, even prior to the Trump Administration. What’s happening right now feels humanistically different.’ Her younger patients are asking her why people hate immigrants so much, or hate them and their families. Rusch said that she has a hard time answering these questions. (Her typical response is to talk about oppression in an age-appropriate way.) Lubliner has also seen the increased emotional toll that this latest round of raids has had on her patients. During the first Trump Administration, she was doing her fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry, and she witnessed plenty of fear. ‘Some of the kids were worried—there was some school avoidance. . . . People were afraid to go to doctor’s appointments,’ she told me. ‘But right now people are trapped in their homes. It’s very different. Children are now having conversations with parents about what Plan B and Plan C are if they get deported. They’re going to notaries public to write down what will happen to their children.’ One of her patients is so afraid to go outside that she won’t throw out her trash, so she has a neighbor help her.” (Geraldo Cavala/NYer)
“The Senate version of the Big Beautiful Bill passed on Tuesday. It now heads to the House, where odds are strong it will get through by the end of the week. As we at the Prospect have been covering in detail, Trump’s mega-bill would deal a devastating blow against the green industries that will obviously drive the global economy for the rest of this century. Fortunately, a couple of truly mind-bendingly awful provisions were taken out. While accelerated depreciation, a business tax break that solar and wind have had access to since 1986, ends in this bill, a tax on solar and wind production was removed, while tax credits for those technologies will now expire within 12 months of enactment rather than in September. (These aren’t just Biden-era subsidies, by the way, some of them have been around since the 1970s.) Essentially, solar and wind projects would have to be under construction in the next 12 months to qualify for tax credits, and those projects would also have to be in service by the end of 2027. That’s going to be a difficult task. You might expect a sizable boom in the next 12 months, as companies race to get in under the wire before the tax credits expire. But with everyone competing to do so, a run on manpower and components will surely follow. Prices will likely go up, nullifying some of the benefit of the tax credits. In the end, fewer projects than expected are likely to get completed in the next year, and after that the well will go very dry … I have just one question: Have Chinese Communist infiltrators taken control of Republicans in a conspiracy to destroy America?” (Ryan Cooper/TAP)
“This morning, I drank my iced coffee through a paper straw. The kind that collapses in on itself halfway through, as if even it is exhausted by the weight of being ‘the solution.’ I remembered to bring my tote bag. I even rinsed an empty ketchup bottle with my bare hands to recycle it, and scratched the crust off the top too. I did my tiny part to be a good person in a burning world. And then I opened my phone and saw it: Jeff Bezos’s wedding. A $50 million celebration in Venice, complete with a foam party on a half-billion-dollar yacht, three days of masquerade balls, and ninety-four private jets idling on the tarmac like this was a climate-change-themed sequel to White Lotus. Oprah was there. So were Kim Kardashian, Tom Brady, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ivanka Trump. I watched celebrities, dressed in couture and climate virtue, celebrate (without irony!) a man who has done more to accelerate climate collapse and enable fascism than almost anyone alive. It felt like a punchline. Except the joke was on us … So the protestors, many of them in their 60s and 70s, held signs. They chanted. Some couldn’t even speak. Some couldn’t walk. Many couldn’t run. So the police zip-tied them. They zip-tied seniors in wheelchairs. They handcuffed paraplegics and told them to push their electric chairs out of the building. They arrested people who are fighting, quite literally, to exist. Meanwhile, the man helping bankroll the end of the world—through emissions, through amazon’s surveillance capitalism, through donations to politicians eroding democracy is popping champagne in a tux while being fanned by billionaires and flattered by a world too spineless to say: this is obscene.” (Liz Plank)
“Maybe because Trump has spent a lifetime dodging accountability in the legal system, the idea that his actions could have unintended consequences seems foreign to him. He has especially good reason to feel unbound now. The institutions that might have restrained him — and usually did restrain other presidents — are buckling under his relentless drive to centralize more presidential power. Cascading events over just the past week have captured the breadth of this capitulation. The six Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices signaled again that they see themselves less as hindrances than handmaidens to Trump’s accumulation of power when they voted to essentially bar lower courts from imposing nationwide injunctions against his policies. Two of the tiny handful of Congressional Republicans who have maintained a degree of independence — Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska and Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina — announced that they would not seek reelection, showing the president’s success at eradicating dissent within his party. Congressional Republican leaders again demonstrated that they will not defend the institution’s authority when they justified Trump’s refusal to consult Congress (or even inform Democrats) before he bombed Iran. The decision by the University of Virginia’s president to resign under pressure from the administration underscored how many institutions in civil society are surrendering to Trump’s unprecedented incursions on their independence. That was just one week.” (Ron Brownstein/Bloomberg)
“Trump’s lawsuit against 60 Minutes is not serious. It’s not grounded in law or fact. It’s a tantrum disguised as litigation. This is the same man who’s called the press the “enemy of the people.” He’s sued media outlets before—not to win, but to intimidate. To bully. To punish truth-tellers. That’s what this is. A power move. A test. And Shari Redstone is failing it. Make no mistake: settling with Trump isn’t just a business decision. It’s a signal. It tells every autocrat and strongman wannabe that if you throw enough legal garbage at the wall, major American institutions will buckle. It tells journalists everywhere that truth isn’t a defense—it’s a liability … Shari Redstone doesn’t seem to get that. She’s too busy chasing merger deals, cashing out legacy assets, and finding new ways to monetize what’s left of an empire her family built. But if she thinks propping up Trump to squeeze out a few more bucks from a dying entertainment company is going to end well, she’s mistaken.” (Adam Kinzinger)
“A pro-Russia disinformation campaign is leveraging consumer artificial intelligence tools to fuel a “content explosion” focused on exacerbating existing tensions around global elections, Ukraine, and immigration, among other controversial issues, according to new research published last week. The campaign, known by many names including Operation Overload and Matryoshka (other researchers have also tied it to Storm-1679), has been operating since 2023 and has been aligned with the Russian government by multiple groups, including Microsoft and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The campaign disseminates false narratives by impersonating media outlets with the apparent aim of sowing division in democratic countries. While the campaign targets audiences around the world, including in the US, its main target has been Ukraine. Hundreds of AI-manipulated videos from the campaign have tried to fuel pro-Russian narratives. The report outlines how, between September 2024 and May 2025, the amount of content being produced by those running the campaign has increased dramatically and is receiving millions of views around the world. In their report, the researchers identified 230 unique pieces of content promoted by the campaign between July 2023 and June 2024, including pictures, videos, QR codes, and fake websites. Over the last eight months, however, Operation Overload churned out a total of 587 unique pieces of content, with the majority of them being created with the help of AI tools, researchers said. The researchers said the spike in content was driven by consumer-grade AI tools that are available for free online. This easy access helped fuel the campaign’s tactic of ‘content amalgamation,’ where those running the operation were able to produce multiple pieces of content pushing the same story thanks to AI tools. ‘This marks a shift toward more scalable, multilingual, and increasingly sophisticated propaganda tactics,’ researchers from Reset Tech, a London-based nonprofit that tracks disinformation campaigns, and Check First, a Finnish software company, wrote in the report. ‘The campaign has substantially amped up the production of new content in the past eight months, signalling a shift toward faster, more scalable content creation methods.’” (David Gilbert/WIRED)
“Last month, The New York Times editorial board urged Democratic voters in New York City against supporting mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. With only five years under his belt as a state assemblyman, the board wrote, the 33-year-old would ‘bring less relevant experience than perhaps any mayor in New York history.’ Then the anti-endorsement took aim at his policy positions, such as rent freezes and city-owned grocery stores. Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, was ‘running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges’ and ‘too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance.’ Voters didn’t appear to agree. Mamdani handily won the Democratic nomination for mayor, as the official tabulation of ranked-choice votes confirmed on Tuesday. Now, the question is whether Mamdani can actually implement his campaign promises … State legislators would need to approve Mamdani’s plan to implement free buses, as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is a state-run agency. One of Mamdani’s signature achievements in the Assembly was a 2023 pilot program that made five bus lines free for one year; however, the legislature did not extend the program. Mamdani has estimated that making all of New York City’s bus lines free would cost around $700 million, but his government and Albany would need to negotiate on whether that cost fell on the city or on the MTA. Janno Lieber, the chair of the MTA, had been critical of the pilot program, saying it sent the ‘wrong message’ when the city was trying to focus on fare evasion. Nonetheless, in an interview with NPR on Monday, Mamdani said that ‘the reason that I put forward this agenda is not only because it’s urgent, but because it’s feasible,’ citing the lapsed pilot program. ‘It wasn’t simply about economic relief. It’s also about public safety, the fact that assaults on bus drivers went down by 38.9 percent through this pilot, the fact that we actually saw an increase in riders who had previously been driving a car or taking a taxi, reducing congestion around those same routes,’ Mamdani argued. Susan Kang, an associate professor of political science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a Mamdani supporter, contended that the nominee’s experience as an activist would allow him to mobilize his supporters if he is elected mayor, and they in turn would put pressure on state legislators to approve his priorities.“ (Grace Segers/TNR)
“Around 11 a.m. Wednesday, throngs of trial rubberneckers and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs supporters gathered outside the downtown Manhattan federal courthouse in response to the jury’s bombshell verdict that found him guilty of transportation for prostitution but not guilty of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. The sidewalk on Worth Street became packed with a mix of innocuous onlookers, semi-agitated social-media hopefuls, and emotionally disturbed persons within an hour after Diddy learned his fate. Police urged those in attendance to stay off the street, but movement was limited given how crammed the sidewalk had become. One man carried a flag that said ‘Justice for Britney’ as a woman in a patterned bathing-suit top and white men’s briefs walked nearby. ‘I’m the Britney Spears dude. I’m going to save Britney and free Britney for real this time,’ the man said. ‘The people controlling Diddy’s finances are holding Britney in a court-sealed care plan, and I’m calling them out. Diddy’s the fall guy for them.’ Dozens milled around the plaza between the Worth Street courthouse entrance and the back of the 60 Centre Street courthouse. Here, the party atmosphere came into sharper relief. A crowd cheered when Diddy’s mother was spotted near the door of the courthouse. ‘I told you! I told you!’ a man could be heard shouting in the background. Chants of ‘Free Puff! Free Puff! Free Puff!’ rang out as several raised their fists in support. Diddy’s mom responded in kind, waving her hand and blowing kisses to the crowd. One thought of Madonna’s Eva Perón greeting devotees in Evita. A man in a purple fedora, who’s been milling outside court during the trial with a selfie stick and attached smartphone, exchanged hearty laughs with a muscular man in a white tank top. A woman shouted, ‘Bring the oil out!,’ referencing the baby-oil evidence from the ‘Freak Off’ parties — and then it was brought out. The man in the tank top pulled off his shirt and danced with his apparent new friend in the fedora as a smartphone-donning crowd encircled them. Then, the man wearing the fedora poured baby oil on the other man’s chest and back as some in the crowd rubbed their hands over the oilee’s half-naked body.” (Victoria Bekiempis/Vulture)
“Ghana has always been an attractive destination for the Black diaspora: Following its independence in 1957, its first president, the charming and influential Kwame Nkrumah, invited prominent Black Americans to visit the country. (He even asked the activist and historian W.E.B. DuBois to move there. The 93-year-old was given a house by the state, four servants, two cars, and citizenship. When he died in 1963, two years after his arrival, he received a state funeral.) The country has seen a renewed surge of visitors since 2019, which then-President Nana Akufo-Addo declared the Year of Return, timed to the 400th anniversary of the first arrival of African slaves in Virginia in 1619. In a speech in Washington, D.C., Akufo-Addo pushed Black Americans to travel to Ghana and reconnect with their lost lineage, ‘brothers and sisters in what will become a birthright journey home for the global African family.’ International visitors reached the record number of 1,130,307 that year. The country has continued to enjoy a notable influx of tourists, aided by a government initiative that fast-tracks visa applications for international travelers as part of its efforts to attract members of the Black diaspora. While fires were raging in Los Angeles in January this year, Mayor Karen Bass was in Accra as a guest of incoming Ghanaian president John Dramani Mahama. Eric Adams had his own much-publicized spiritual-cleansing trip in 2021 amid travel concerns over the omicron variant of COVID-19. Chance the Rapper, Meek Mill, Kendrick Lamar, Dave Chappelle, Stevie Wonder, and Twitch streamer Kai Cenat have all made pilgrimages to Ghana in the past few years. There’s a smaller contingent of Black Americans, who, like Núñez and Mozie, visit and decide to stay. They are looking to experience life in a majority Black country for the first time. Donald Trump’s presidency, and its attendant animosity, has been a galvanizing force. For these visitors, Ghana represents more than just a vacation spot. Accra is not their Ibiza. It is a safe haven from the racial politics of America. But this wave of migration has not been without friction. Since 2019, local chiefs have sold or given land to ‘returnees,’ or people of the diaspora, sometimes without the consent of local farmers whose families previously had access to the land. In a grim twist, the beachfront property near historical slave forts has proved particularly enticing to Americans. In the town of Asebu, near Cape Coast, displaced farmers brought a lawsuit against a local chief who offered 5,000 acres of land to returnees, who were able to buy plots at lower prices than they could get in their countries of origin. (A court injunction seems to have been ignored, and construction has continued.) Building a house in Ghana might cost somewhere between $15,000 and $30,000.” (Kéchi Nne Nomu/NYMag)
“The peak of Pam (Harriman’s) Power was after Averell's death in 1986, when she was liberated from having a grand old codger in tow, and she became an early talent spotter of the young Arkansas governor Bill Clinton. I met Pamela at the home of Washington Post chairman Katharine Graham in the early 90s, when my husband, Sir Harry Evans, then president of Random House, was trying to persuade her to write a book. To my young eyes across the dinner table, Pamela seemed like an august old trout with a Mrs. Thatcher power-helmet coif, but not to my husband, who found her, to my annoyance, mesmerizing … In 1993, now-President Clinton rewarded Pamela’s assiduous fundraising for the Democratic Party with her first real job, the premier posting of U.S. ambassador to France. What sweet revenge to return to Paris as queen of the most coveted address on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré (a former mansion of the Rothschilds, no less), occupying a position of real power, with the U.S. president on speed dial. She worked at full throttle on international trade, NATO expansion, and the Bosnian War, making full use of the gifts that would no longer be belittled as ‘charm,’ but retitled as soft power. One senses she loved her diplomatic brief as much as any of the diamond necklaces locked in her safe.” (Tina Brown/What Fresh Hell)
“In my 35 years of writing about and reporting on US politics and ideology, I can’t think of another time when so many professional observers seem so utterly at a loss to analyze, or even categorize, the president’s MO. And most of them have gotten it wrong. Trump’s operating model is not, as some maintain, the foreign autocrat—even if he curries favor and sings the praises of Putin and Orban and Erdogan, and cozies up to Middle Eastern potentates. Neither is Trump’s model his crafty lawyer-mentor Roy Cohn—even if he practices Cohn’s mantra: Deny, deflect, delay. It’s a mistake, too, to think of Trump as a latter-day P.T. Barnum, a showman-salesman mugging for the TV cameras and effusing on Truth Social. All that may apply to Trump the entertainer. But Trump the president is shaped by someone he observed at much closer range from childhood on: his father, Fred Trump, the great mid-20th-century apartment builder and developer of outer-borough New York. For many years father and son were partners who mastered the byways and back alleys of real estate at a time when, as two of the period’s best reporters wrote, New York was a ‘city for sale.’ It was a brutish world of transactional power, of patronage, favors, cronyism, bribes, payoffs, pork, and spoils—as well as extortion, intimidation, and threat. It was a world ruled by Mob capos and political allies who at times were little more than frontmen.” (Sam Tanenhaus/VF)