Ten days away from the midterms, the two most vile people in the United States (in the world?) — Elon Musk and Donald Trump — are plotting how to take over the elections. Musk is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Republican races and Trump is using the Justice Department to try to decertify Democratic wins even before they occur.
But as Heather and I explain, they won’t succeed.
Please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, and join in the conversation.
Sorry to intrude on your inbox again today, but Trump’s attempt to overturn any results of the 2026 election he dislikes took a sharp turn toward authoritarianism when the Justice Department today asked a federal court to block certification of the Senate election in Alaska if the Republican incumbent narrowly loses.
The Department argues that confusion over a candidate on the ballot with a name very similar to that of the incumbent, Senator Dan S. Sullivan, could taint the election result.
This is absurd.
1. The federal government has absolutely no authority under the U.S. Constitution to tell Alaska when and how to certify its votes. It’s up to state law, and Alaska’s state officials are following Alaska state law. In June, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the second Mr. Sullivan could appear on the ballot, ahead of the primary.
2. To add authoritarian insult to democratic injury, Trump made it clear that he had demanded the lawsuit. “I’m the one that said do it,” he told reporters.
Since when does a president of the United States have authority to order the Justice Department to block certification in a senatorial race if a Democrat wins — and do this only 11 days before Election Day? In simple fact, no president can do this, but Trump has never been stopped by norms or rules.
3. Finally, there’s little doubt that this lawsuit is intended to cast doubt on the integrity of elections all over America — and to delay final tallies.
The Department argues that if the incumbent Republican loses and it appears he might have won but for the other Mr. Sullivan on the ballot, then the vote should not be certified until “an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan and any further procedures or relief this court deems necessary and appropriate.”
How the hell would such an investigation even be undertaken, since ballots are cast anonymously?
If this judicial tactic works, we can expect it all over the country — interminable investigations to determine whether votes cast for Democratic candidates were “meant” to be cast for Republicans.
We’ve been through this before. Trump has tried this before. Remember 2021?
I find this a very worrisome sign. It suggests that Todd Blanche — who was confirmed as Attorney General in August — is willing to interfere in a federal election if Trump wants him to do so.
It increases the likelihood that Trump will order Blanche and the Justice Department to make a similar move in California, where the Department has escalated its claims that thousands of noncitizens are illegally registered to vote and demanded that California set aside ballots from suspected noncitizens.
Trump and his regime have made similar claims against other states. And, of course, Trump has long claimed, despite evidence showing otherwise, that he lost the 2020 election because of mass voter fraud by noncitizens.
I hope (1) the Supreme Court dismisses this case as soon as possible, and signals it will treat any similar cases against other states the same way, (2) when and if Democrats take control of the House, they impeach Todd Blanche, and (3) the New York State bar, where Todd Blanche is licensed to practice law, immediately takes steps to disbar him.
Republicans are relying on this billionaire’s money to win the midterms — and hoping you don’t notice.
Elon Musk has quietly spent $445 million for Republicans so far in this year’s midterm elections.
He’s spent the most money so far in the Texas Senate race, boosting Republican Ken Paxton and attacking Democrat James Talarico. He’s also spending millions for the Republican Senate candidates in Ohio and Michigan, and in more than 30 competitive House races. The spending is happening through his “America PAC.”
But while Republicans accept Musk’s money, they’re hoping no one notices. Party operatives behind the scenes reportedly want to maintain some distance from him.
Despite his unpopularity, Republicans are still eager to take his money. And he’s still eager to give it to them.
That’s because Musk needs Republicans just as much as Republicans need him.
After helping deliver the presidency and Congress to them two years ago, Musk has reaped a massive return on his investment through government contracts, tax cuts, and deregulation.
Republicans can try to downplay their dependence on Elon Musk in the midterms, but we know the truth.
And if Republicans maintain control of Congress, they’ll continue to sell out our country to billionaires like him.
A few weeks ago, when I asked you what you thought Trump’s promised “October surprise” would be, most of you predicted he’d interfere in the election.
My erstwhile Cabinet colleague Robert Rubin, who served as secretary of the treasury, agrees with you.
Rubin wrote in Wednesday’s New York Times that many Americans “underestimate” the threat presented by “Trump’s clearly expressed desire to interfere with and even usurp the midterm elections.”
Rubin worries that leaders in business and politics “don’t take Trump’s attacks on voting seriously” and therefore “markets are not pricing in what I consider a meaningful risk.”
Presumably, according to Rubin, if the stock market were reflecting the actual risk of Trump taking over American democracy, it would not be at its current record highs. It would be far, far lower.
But could it be that current record high stock market valuations do reflect the real possibility that Trump will usurp the 2026 midterms?
Trump has already usurped the powers of Congress over spending, tariffs, and war and defied the judicial branch when it told him to stop. Yet the stock market has surged.
Is it possible that investors — especially big investors — don’t particularly like the messiness of democracy?
Perhaps the wealthiest Americans, who own most shares of stock — and hold a larger share of the nation’s wealth than at any time in history — worry that if we had a real democracy, a majority of voters would decide to raise taxes on them to finance all sorts of things that the majority needs, such as healthcare, childcare, good schools, elder care, and affordable housing.
Maybe the wealthiest Americans worry that if we had a real democracy, a majority would demand that artificial intelligence be strictly regulated; that AI data centers must pay for the electricity and water they’re using and the noise they’re creating; and that no individual can monopolize satellite communications, or own a major source of information, or pollute our politics with hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign spending.
So they don’t mind that Trump is clamping down on democracy. In fact, some are quite elated, and the high stock market valuations reflect their elation.
I’m reminded of multibillionaire Peter Thiel (founder of PayPal, patron of JD Vance, and one of the Republican Party’s largest donors), who wrote that he “no longer believe[s] that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Why? Because democratic majorities vote for more government spending, social welfare programs, and market regulations, which Thiel views as infringements on individual freedom and free-market capitalism.
If Thiel represents the views of most of the billionaire class in America today, perhaps the buoyant stock market is indeed reflecting the possibility that Trump will finish the job he began — usurping the midterm election and American democracy.
I hope to hell I’m wrong. I hope Bob Rubin is wrong, too.
One of few silver linings of these dark Trump times is that much of what had been hidden has now been exposed.
I’m referring specifically to where the power lies in our system — power to decide how most Americans live and work. This exposure is having a huge effect on American attitudes. It may even lead to a fundamental political realignment along with major reforms.
To summarize: America hates the billionaire barons of Big Tech.
Let me start with some historic context, then discuss how this affects the most pressing issues in the 2026 campaign, and finally suggest some likely outcomes.
I. The First Gilded Age’s Robber Barons and the Second Gilded Age’s Billionaire Barons of Big Tech
The first Gilded Age, which stretched from the late 1870s to around 1900, featured “robber barons” who lived like kings while corrupting the federal and state governments with bribes to get whatever they wanted from pliant legislators.
Today’s second Gilded Age is led by the billionaire barons of Big Tech, who are similarly living like kings while corrupting our democracy.
Just three billionaires have donated more than $600 million to Republican candidates in the 2026 midterms, an all-time record.
One of them — Elon Musk — sank more than a quarter of a billion dollars into getting Trump elected in 2024 and is sinking even more into the 2026 midterms.
In return, Trump has allowed Musk to extend his monopoly on satellite communications, financed largely by taxpayers — even giving him the power to disable Ukraine intelligence. Trump also allowed Musk’s DOGE to rampage through federal databases and gather information on every American.
Larry Ellison and his son, David, defanged CBS News and its flagship “60 Minutes” and kicked Trump critic and satirist Stephen Colbert off the air. In return, Trump has greenlit the Ellisons’ acquisition of a media empire stretching from Paramount to CNN, CBS and CBS News, TBS, TNT, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, Discovery, HBO, and TikTok.
Jeff Bezos gave Melania Trump a $40 million licensing fee for a puff documentary about her (with about $28 million going directly to her) and another $35 million for marketing the movie dud. Bezos also destroyed the integrity of the editorial page of TheWashington Post by barring it from endorsing Kamala Harris in 2024 and from writing anything negative about capitalism under Trump.
In return, Trump has given Bezos and his Amazon carte blanche to monopolize online retailing along with federal contracts to provide cloud infrastructure for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the National Security Agency (NSA).
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund and $25 million to Trump’s White House ballroom fundraising campaign, and he gave Trump personally a custom engraved glass and 24-karat gold base plaque. In return, Trump has given Cook and Apple critical exemptions from Trump’s sweeping tariffs, allowing them to import electronic components from China.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, also helped finance Trump’s inauguration and his ballroom, gave Trump $25 million to settle his lawsuit against Meta for suspending him from its platforms after the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, rolled back content moderation and fact-checking on his platforms, and brought Trump loyalists into Meta’s leadership.
In return, Trump went along with Zuckerberg and Meta’s wish not to have a federal AI regulator but to rely on “self-policing” and to pressure European and other countries not to impose taxes on digital services.
II. The Billionaire Barons and AI
The billionaire barons of Big Tech are now investing more than $1 trillion of other people’s money and debt — along with taxpayer-financed subsidies — into AI. (Last year’s giant Trump-Republican tax cut featured major tax breaks for Big Tech, helping drive a big decrease in corporate tax payments even as AI spending soars.)
The billionaire barons are thereby exposing the U.S. economy to the largest gamble since Wall Street’s wanton betting led to the 2008 financial crisis — threatening tens of millions of jobs, putting energy-guzzling data centers all around the nation, and posing a non-negligible threat to the survival of the human species.
The barons are also hastening climate change through the data centers’ exponential energy and water demands, along with the expansion and resurrection of fossil fuel infrastructure to power AI.
Tech giants’ self-reported greenhouse gas emissions have surged. Meta’s emissions jumped over 60 percent, Google’s rose nearly 50 percent, Amazon’s increased by 33 percent, and Microsoft’s by more than 23 percent — almost entirely driven by building and expanding data centers.
The billionaire barons of Big Tech are also among the biggest beneficiaries of Trump’s war in Iran, through their ownership of advanced AI.
Peter Theil’s Palantir is powering the U.S. military's targeting and data operations through its Maven Smart System platform, which processes massive streams of satellite, drone, and intelligence data.
Billionaires Palmer Luckey, Brian Schimpf, and Trae Stephens are behind Anduril, which provides major counter-drone defense systems used to intercept Iran’s low-cost Shahed drones. Billionaires Larry Page’s and Sergey Brin’s Google — along with billionaire Sam Altman’s OpenAI and billionaires Eric Schmidt and Dario Amodei’s Anthropic — are providing advance AI models and technology for military planning, intelligence, and counter-drone operations.
III. Will History Rhyme?
By the first decade of the 20th century, Americans had had enough of the brazen inequalities and corruption that characterized the first Gilded Age. A wave of reforms — antitrust laws, progressive taxation, pure food and drug regulation, bans on corporate political activities — blocked much of what the robber barons had been doing.
Then, after the Great Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression, the nation ensured that the barons could no longer wreak havoc on America. Labor laws, securities laws, unemployment insurance, the minimum wage, the 40-hour workweek, and additional taxes on high incomes were enacted, laying the basis for the prosperity of the post-World War II era.
Are we on the precipice of another age of reform?
Perhaps. A new Politico poll shows that Americans are fed up with the billionaire robber barons of Big Tech — and Republicans are likely to take most of the political blame on Election Day.
The top tax priorities for voters, according to the poll, are hiking taxes on billionaires and curbing tax breaks for big companies.
Nearly half of respondents — 47 percent — called Republicans the party of tech tax breaks, more than double the 21 percent who said the same for Democrats. Voters are also far more likely to want candidates who propose stripping away tax incentives for the data centers needed to fuel the AI boom.
About a fifth of respondents said that ending those tax breaks would be among their most important tax issues in the midterms (only 1 in 10 wanted to offer new preferences for data centers).
A majority of respondents thought that tech chief executives have been secretive about the potential risks of AI, while a plurality of Americans believe both that the risks of artificial intelligence development outweigh the benefits and that the government should strictly regulate AI.
It’s impossible to know whether the upcoming midterms elections will reflect these sentiments or, even if they do, whether these sentiments will find their way into subsequent legislation.
But — given the polls, and also what I’m hearing informally from around the nation — it seems likely to me that high on the nation’s emerging progressive agenda will be busting up Big Tech monopolies, getting big money out of our politics, enacting a wealth tax, putting guardrails around AI, seeking to reverse climate change, and preventing billionaires from creating and owning media empires.
I can’t say precisely when we’ll see these enacted, but I’m confident we will see them. America hates the billionaire barons of Big Tech, with good reason.
We’re within two weeks of the midterms, and some people are sitting it out. They’ll probably vote, they tell me, but they’re not going to do anything more “active” because, they say, they “don’t do” politics.
Hey, I get it. I understand. I’ve been around politics for 60 years. It’s not pretty. In fact, “doing politics” feels a bit gritty and grimy, if not outright indecent. Who wants to “do politics?”
But let me explain why — if you happen to be one of these people — you might want to reconsider.
“Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine,” Trump told reporters Monday. “They haven’t been doing much,” he said — ignoring the Russian missiles and drones that have been targeting Kyiv in one of the worst bombardments of the war. By contrast, Trump said, “We’ve given a lot to Ukraine. They’ve given nothing to us.”
In the last week, he or Musk (or both) have slowed or eliminated Ukraine’s access to Starlink satellite intelligence, leaving Ukraine without warning of Russian bombs. He’s pushed for Ukraine’s capitulation. He’s said Ukraine needs a “new president.”
Meanwhile, Trump has lifted sanctions on the sale of Russian oil on the global market. He has made a deal for the U.S. to buy Russian diesel. On Friday, Trump decided against imposing additional sanctions against Russia that Congress authorized in the Lindsey Graham Act, two days before the sanctions were to go into effect. Trump has also invited Putin to attend the G20 summit in Miami in December. And Trump has accepted Putin’s invitation to a three-way summit with Xi to decide Ukraine’s fate.
What are we to make of this? Why is he apparently selling out Ukraine? I’ve asked a number of Trump-watchers and Russian experts and grouped their responses below. Please choose the explanation that makes the most sense to you.
AI-enablers claim it will spawn a “Star Trek”-like utopia, where no one will have to work because technology can meet all of our needs. AI-skeptics warn of a “Matrix”-like dystopia, where machine-supremacy subjects humans to mass unemployment, even more rampant inequality, and environmental ruin.
The AI enablers want us to think we’re powerless, but we’re not. We must erect the following FIVE guardrails to protect humanity from AI:
AI Guardrail #1: Rein in data centers, starting with a total national pause on data center development until more regulations are in place. This is necessary AND popular. Over 70 percent of Americans oppose building AI data centers in their communities. A nationwide moratorium will buy us time while we figure out how to make data centers cover their own costs — both financial and environmental.
AI Guardrail #2: Block corporations from mass layoffs. We may not be able to stop all AI job losses, but we must have some guardrails in place to protect workers. We’ll need universal basic incomes and universal job guarantees to ensure that AI doesn’t leave people destitute.
AI Guardrail #3: Make the AI economy benefit everyone. One of the biggest threats from AI is that the wealth it generates will go exclusively to people like Elon Musk, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Every Alaskan, working or not, receives dividends from the state’s oil and mining proceeds. Why should an AI dividend for all Americans be harder to accept?
AI Guardrail #4: Label AI and stop abuses of our data. Deepfakes are a dangerous way in which our personal imagery and data can be abused with AI. We have to know what’s real and what isn’t — and we need federal laws to ensure the takedown of AI-generated content that uses someone’s likeness against their will.
AI Guardrail #5: New AI products must seek government approval. Tech billionaires will complain that this could stifle the “free market,” but that’s baloney. We don’t let corporations invent new types of nuclear weapons or new types of cocaine or new types of biological pathogens — or even new drugs without government approval that they’re safe and effective. We protect the public from certain kinds of innovation, and we should do the same with AI.
As humans, we can and must join together across party lines to demand these guardrails and ensure that the Big Tech oligarchs don’t drag us into a dystopia.
It is the only way for humanity to live long and prosper.
The venerable New York Times — the “gray lady” of American journalism that not only determines what’s news but sets the standard for how it should be reported — has been describing the upcoming midterms as if it were a competition between two equally passionate and roughly equivalent sides.
For example, in describing the recent debate between the two candidates vying to represent Michigan in the Senate, Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, the Times offered its readers an analysis of social media feeds —“one curated for a left-wing audience and one for a right-wing audience.”
The Times did this by collecting more than 13,000 posts from X, and then — using a social media analytics company — categorizing the posts according to their apparent political leanings and whether they were “personal attacks and criticism” or concerned a particular issue area.
Then the Times presented it all in a vertical graph, starting with the beginning of the debate at the top and the end at the bottom, with responses to El-Sayed on the left side and responses to Rogers on the right.
What did the Times report that might be useful to its readers? It turned out that “viewers following the event on social media likely came away with two very different impressions, depending on their own political inclinations.”
Well, duh. People choose social media depending on their political inclinations to begin with.
The Times then suggested that the two very different impressions were roughly equal, both in the degree to which they distorted the truth and in how troubling we should find those distortions.
“An algorithm attuned to Democrats … served up commentary depicting the Democratic candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, as a firebrand who delivered quick-witted attacks that left his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, scrambling. A feed curated for Republicans … created an impression of Mr. Rogers as calm and composed onstage as he landed blistering critiques of Dr. El-Sayed.”
When the candidates talked about the Iran war, according to the Times, “left-leaning users” praised “Dr. El-Sayed’s opposition to the conflict” while “right-leaning users” posted “personal criticism of Dr. El-Sayed’s Muslim beliefs.” As the debate shifted to the economy, “left-leaning users” posted about affordability, while the posts of “right-leaning users” were “often laden with personal attacks against Dr. El-Sayed.”
As the debate progressed, the Times reported, these “dueling narratives” became more pronounced. When Dr. El-Sayed again referred to the economy, left-leaning accounts “posted about the high cost of living” while Rogers’s supporters posted that “high gas prices are only temporary.” When Dr. El-Sayed talked about improving healthcare, Rogers’s supporters expressed “skepticism about Dr. El-Sayed’s medical background.” (The Times then noted that although Dr. El-Sayed has a medical degree from Columbia University, he has never practiced medicine.)
So what is the average reader or voter supposed to take away from this so-called analysis?
Note for starters that all the responses analyzed by the Times were on Musk’s “X” — which already leans authoritarian.
Beyond this is circular reasoning. People identified as "left-leaning users” were assumed to be “left-leaning” because their comments showed they were for El-Sayed and against Rogers, and “right-leaning users” were “right-leaning” because they were for Rogers and against El-Sayed.
The worst ad populum fallacy is that both sides deserve equal weight. They engaged in “dueling narratives” and they posted about the same number of comments. Even the graph represented a kind of equivalence.
Rubbish. Doesn’t TheNew York Times have a responsibility to tell readers that Rogers has been a rubber-stamp for Trump, including Trump’s war in Iran; that he voted for the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, and surveillance legislation; that he has a political record of suppressing Black votes in Detroit and across Michigan; and that he has long represented corporate interests over the interests of average working people?
And doesn’t the Times also have a responsibility to tell its readers that El-Sayed takes the opposite position on these — and is pushing for a single-payer healthcare system, breaking up large healthcare monopolies, taxing billionaire wealth and regulating AI and data centers, banning corporate campaign contributions, ending gerrymandering, reforming the Supreme Court, and ending U.S. military aid to Israel?
Two weeks from an election that will determine whether guardrails will be erected against America’s first dictator, and what does TheNew York Times do? Depict it like any other contest between America’s two major political parties — in which they present “dueling narratives” from their “left-leaning” or “right-leaning” perspectives.
This depiction is irresponsible and dangerously fraudulent. Don’t accept it.
Our fifth class begins our focus on power — and on the weakening power of workers and the increasing power of big corporations.
In case you missed them, here are the classes that have been released so far: Class 1, Class 2, Class 3, and Class 4.
For Class 5, just double-click on the video below, and you’re in the fifth week of class.
Background: It’s one of the oldest struggles inside the American economy and within capitalism worldwide: between labor and capital. And it has a direct effect on inequality.
Today we’ll look at antitrust laws designed to contain the market power of corporations, and labor laws designed to increase the market power of workers.
Both sets of laws have been altered over the last 40 years, contributing to a huge power shift. Corporations have gained greater market power, while the power of organized labor has been dramatically reduced. We’ll examine why these changes have occurred.
Questions:
What happened to antitrust in the United States over the last 50 years?
What happened to labor unions?
Why are antitrust (anti-monopoly) laws stronger in Europe than they are in the United States?
Why is a higher percent of European (and Canadian) workforces unionized than in the United States?
What’s the relationship among degrees of monopolization, levels of unionization, and inequality, and why?
A huge thanks to the Wealth and Poverty team — to Michael Lahanas-Calderón, Kyle Parker, Dan Davis, and Emmett Tjen — as well as Coro Fellows Ammar Ansari and Meagan Turner for preparing these course materials to be shared with all of you. And to Heather Kinlaw Lofthouse for making all this happen on this page.
The Republican Party once stood for limited government, active opposition to Soviet aggression, and a balanced budget. Now it stands only for Trump and his authoritarian neofascism, demanding total loyalty to him.
Yet Trump’s approval among U.S. adults now stands at 33 percent, with 66 percent disapproving; 52 percent said they disapprove strongly. (That approval rating is 4 percentage points lower than in July and 8 points lower than at this point last year.It’s lower than at any point in his first term.)
In other words, the Republican Party has tied itself to Trump, but the vast majority of Americans believe Trump a failure.
So where does that leave the GOP? Nowhere. The GOP is dead.
The death of the Republican Party is tragic to me personally. I got my first job in government in Republican Gerald Ford’s administration. I argued Supreme Court cases in Ford’s Department of Justice. Years later, as secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, I worked closely with Republicans in the House and Senate to enact the Family and Medical Leave Act, raise the minimum wage, and protect workers’ pensions. My father was a Republican who voted for Dwight Eisenhower for president in 1952 and 1956. His father, my grandfather Alexander Reich, was a Republican who voted for Alf Landon for president in 1936 and Wendell Willkie in 1940.
Gerald Ford is as far from the current Republican Party as was or is any Democratic president. Sad to say, in 2024, the board of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation declined to present the Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service to former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney out of fear that, should he become president again, Trump would retaliate against the organization by taking away its tax-exempt status.
In response, Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer David Hume Kennerly resigned from the board. In his resignation letter he wrote that “Gerald Ford became president, in part, because Richard Nixon had ordered the development of an enemies list and demanded his underlings use the IRS against those listed. That’s exactly what the executive committee fears will happen if there’s a second coming of Donald Trump.” Kennerly added:
“Did [Lieutenant] Gerald Ford meet the enemy head-on [in World War II] because he thought he wouldn’t get killed? No. He did it despite that possibility. This executive committee, on the other hand, bolted before any shots were fired. You aren’t alone. Many foundations, organizations, corporations, and other entities are caught up in this tidal wave of timidity and fear that’s sweeping this country. I mistakenly thought we were better than that. This is the kind of acquiescent behavior that leads to authoritarianism. President Ford most likely would have come out even tougher and said that it leads directly to fascism.”
Ford’s biggest mistake as president was to pardon Nixon. Ford believed that America had to be shielded from the pain and disruption of a president put on criminal trial and possibly imprisoned. Yet to many Americans, the fact that Nixon would not be held accountable felt like another assault on the common good.
All subsequent Republican presidential candidates, including Trump, have used Nixon’s playbook, relying on a coalition of corporate America and the white working class, and using bigoted racial dog-whistles.
Nixon infected the modern Republican Party with a sickness that would ultimately kill it. Trump applied the coup de grace.
The Republican Party purged their honest lawmakers who refused to go along with Trump’s Big Lie, the most dangerous one in American history in terms of its consequences for Americans’ confidence in democracy.
On April 14, 2024, on ABC’s “This Week,” host George Stephanopoulos asked New Hampshire’s then Republican governor Chris Sununu about his switch from supporting former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley for the Republican presidential nomination to supporting Trump.
“Your words were very, very clear on January 11, 2021,” Stephanopoulos reminded Sununu. “You said that President Trump’s rhetoric and actions contributed to the insurrection. No other president in history has contributed to an insurrection. So, please explain.”
Sununu responded, “For me, it’s not about him as much as it is having a Republican administration.”
Near the end of the interview, Stephanopoulos said: “Just to sum up, you would support [Trump] for president even if he is convicted in classified documents. You would support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You would support him for president even though you believe he’s lying about the last election. You would support him for president even if he’s convicted in the Manhattan case. I just want to say, the answer to that is yes, correct?”
Sununu replied, “Yeah, me and 51 percent of America.”
Stephanpoulos: “I’m asking you about right and wrong. You’re comfortable with the idea of supporting someone who’s convicted of a federal crime as president?”
Sununu: “No, I don’t think any American is comfortable with any of this. They don’t like any of this, of course, but I mean, when it comes to actually looking at each of these trials as they kind of take place whether it’s this year or next year or as they kind of line up. Right now this is about an election. This is about politics.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Politics is not about right and wrong? It has no moral content? Is it only about winning?
Chris Sununu’s willingness to destroy American democracy so his party could stay in power — a rejection of our system of government and an abrogation of the self-government that generations of Americans have fought and died for — is shared by most Republican officeholders today.
The Republican Party’s end is tragic because America needs two parties capable of governing; two parties with a sense of the common good, even if their interpretations of it differ; two parties dedicated to democracy, even if politics is sometimes dirty and often frustrating.
The death of the Republican Party illustrates what happens when presidents are not held accountable. It is evidence of what occurs when a large portion of the public feels it’s been cheated. It shows that many Americans have lost sight of our history and ideals or have become so cynical and hopeless that they are willing to chuck it all in favor of an atrocious human being who claims to be on their side.
The Republican Party went from a governing institution into a crazed cult, intent on turning America into an authoritarian nation. A large, angry, anxious working class craved a strongman who’d shake up the system, but strongmen are utterly inconsistent with democracy. Hence, the GOP’s death.
I fervently hope that many of the Trump cultists now in Congress who call themselves Republicans will be thrown out on November 3. That would be the best thing that could happen to the Republican Party, because it could give the GOP the chance it desperately needs — to start over.
This past week 4 of “Wealth and Poverty” focused on inequalities of place. If you haven’t had a chance to join, here’s a VERY short summary:
Reminder: Tomorrow we begin Week 5, when we’ll turn our focus to the giant “power shift” that began in the 1980s — weakening the power of workers and increasing the power of big corporations.
Week 5 will be released tomorrow at 2 pm PT, 5 pm ET.
In case you missed them, here are the classes that have been released so far: Class 1, Class 2, Class 3, and Class 4.
It’s not really a choice between two parties. After all, a record 45 percent of American voters now call themselves “independent” and don’t align with either party. And most of us who still describe ourselves as Republicans or Democrats don’t have much love for whichever party we’re registered with.
Nor will it be a choice between the “left” and the “right,” as those terms have been used for the last half-century — representing preferences by the left for more and bigger social safety nets and by the right for lower taxes. These days, big business wants more government in the form of subsidies, bailouts, no-bid government contracts, and a giant military-technology state.
The real choice is between ever more concentrated wealth and power at the top — in the billionaire class, tech bros, Wall Street, and the C-suites of giant corporations — versus more wealth and power in what used to be the American working middle class.
That’s what the “affordability crisis” is all about. It also underlies America’s growing concern about corruption.
For the last few weeks it’s looked as if America was about to choose the second path, for The People and against Big Money.
But Big Money is now striking back. Elon Musk is pouring hundreds of millions into supporting Republican candidates, as are Big Crypto, AIPAC, AI, and Trump’s MAGA Inc. (and its related super PACs).
“Dark money” — anonymous campaign donations flowing through so-called “nonprofits,” mostly from wealthy individuals and CEOs — is also dropping into the system.
Democratic candidates are being outspent 2-to-1 by super PACs and megadonors. More than in any midterm since the Supreme Court’s shameful Citizens United decision, Big Money is going almost exclusively to the GOP. The Supreme Court has given Republicans an additional spending advantage by allowing super PACs to work in close cooperation with candidates.
Texas’s James Talarico hasn’t taken any corporate PAC money, for example, and has an army of volunteers going door to door for him and has accumulated one of the largest small-donor war chests of any candidate in this election cycle. But his opponent, Ken Paxton, is relying almost entirely on $158 million he’s got from Musk via a Republican super PAC.
This enormous gusher of Big Money for Republicans has no regulatory oversight because the Federal Election Commission has no quorum and therefore can’t function.
At the state level, Big Money is attacking ballot measures to increase taxes on the super-rich — such as California’s Proposition 40, a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires. Google multibillionaire Sergey Brin is sinking hundreds of millions into defeating it. Gavin Newsom also opposes it. But another California presidential hopeful, Ro Khanna, is pushing for it, to his great credit. (Note to California voters: Vote YES on 40 and NO on the poison pills, Props 41 and 42.)
This election is the clearest contest yet between Big Money and The People. Spending by super PACs and other megadonors in the current midterms is over 50 percent higher than in the 2022 midterms, in inflation-adjusted dollars.
I wish I were more confident that The People will prevail. Democrats are doing well in the polls, but polling is flawed when it comes to the influence of Big Money. Many so-called “low-information” voters are more likely to be swayed by media advertising and less likely to respond to polls or tell pollsters truthfully how they intend to vote.
When this is over, if the Democrats take back the House and at least come close to retaking control of the Senate, high on their agenda must be seeking to get Big Money out of our politics — via constitutional amendment or public financing of elections (matching small-dollar donations). And also going after the source of much of the Big Money by enacting a national wealth tax.
In the meantime: stay calm, support good candidates, do whatever you can to get out the vote, and vote as soon as you can.
Today, with just over two weeks to go until the midterm elections, Michael, Kamau, and I take stock of where we are: Trump is acting weirder than ever (which is saying something), his polls are lower than ever, inflation is higher than it’s been in years, his war in Iran is getting even worse and his cozying up to Putin even more bizarre.
So please grab a cuppa, pull up a chair, and join the conversation.
AI data center construction is diverting capital and labor away from building everything else we need. AI is the biggest, most costly, and least popular economic bet America has ever made. Why are we making it? Who stands to gain? Who’s going to lose? What can we do?
The Democrats’ focus on affordability seems to be a winning strategy (we’ll know for sure in a little over two weeks). But we mustn’t lose sight of the moral squalor at the core of the Trump regime.
It’s that moral squalor — the utter disregard for the opinions, norms, and ideals of the nation or, for that matter, of humanity — that uniquely marks Trump and the reprobates he has attracted to Washington. It has also poisoned much of the Republican Party, including the billionaires and tech bros who finance it.
To put this despicable era behind us, we’ll need to renounce and reverse this squalor.
What are loosely described as Trump’s “conflicts of interest,” for example, extend way beyond enriching himself from his presidency. He has violated the basic norms of presidential decency.
He just decided to host the Group of 20 annual summit of world leaders at his private golf club in Miami in December. When he sought to do this during his first term, it was viewed as a blatant violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Now, after America’s moral sensibilities have been numbed by Trump’s appetite for foreign gifts — such as Qatar’s “donation” of a $400 million jumbo jet — it barely merits a mention.
He sells advance notice of his market-altering announcements for $100,000 a month, thereby profiting by tipping off people who trade on the information before it becomes publicly available. He files a trademark application for “Trump TV” to control the name of a streaming service that the White House uses for official presidential communications, thereby pocketing the benefits from taxpayer funds used to create and run the channel.
His family-backed crypto firm introduces a stablecoin just months before he signs legislation promoting it. His wife is paid tens of millions for a self-promotional film by Jeff Bezos’s Amazon, a federal contractor and major retailer subject to a myriad of regulations. His son has a Russian oligarch, close to Putin, pick up the tab for part of his wedding afterparty in the Bahamas.
He arranges for the Justice Department to grant him and his family immunity for any back taxes and penalties they might owe.
And so on. Trump has tossed away all constraints on making money off his presidency “because I got no credit in the first term” and “I found out that nobody cared.”
Credit? Someone who is entrusted with the highest office in the land must receive “credit” for doing what’s right, in order to continue doing what’s right? Nobody cares? A president can embrace corruption if the public doesn’t mind?
It’s not just the blatant self-dealing. His moral squalor extends to every aspect of governing.
He lies incessantly — a gushing firehose of deception.
His foreign policies make Henry Kissinger’s realpolitik seem principled by comparison. He orders the abduction of the president of another nation, installs a new president of his choosing, and announces he’s taking that nation’s oil — and doesn’t even account for what he does with the oil money.
He attacks Iran without consulting America’s traditional allies or even Congress.
Eager to reduce diesel prices (which are hurting Republicans in the midterms), he turns his back on Ukraine and sides with Putin, the aggressor in that conflict — making a deal to import Russian diesel fuel (a windfall for Putin who can now bomb Ukraine even harder) while demanding that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries. Trump then blames Ukraine president Zelenskyy for high oil prices rather than Trump’s own war with Iran, and says Ukraine should get a new president.
If this isn’t moral squalor, I don’t know what is.
The squalor also extends to usurping the authority of Congress to decide on tariffs, wars, and whether and how to spend taxpayer money.
And extends to his cynical defiance of Supreme Court orders. When the high court invalidates Trump’s tariffs, he reimposes them under a different statute. When the court rules that he doesn’t have grounds to remove a member of the Fed board of governors, he concocts a means to do so anyway. When the court says he has to remove his name from the Kennedy Center, he closes the center and threatens to demolish it.
It extends to his using the Justice Department and the FBI to prosecute people who have stood up to him, including courageous judges and prosecutors.
It extends to his overt bigotry and racism — claiming Mexicans are “bringing drugs and crime”; calling Somali-Americans “garbage” and denouncing “what they’ve done to Minnesota, these people from Somalia”; and taunting Muslims (calling Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate from Michigan, “Mohammed”).
It extends to giving a gigantic tax cut to America’s wealthiest people, financed by cutting nutrition assistance and health care to America’s most vulnerable people.
The moral squalor has turned much of America into a police state — terrorizing large numbers of people residing here, including many here legally. Deploying ICE agents at schools, courthouses, and hospitals. Forcibly taking parents away from their children. Allowing masked gunmen without identification to grab suspected undocumented immigrants off our streets, from their cars, and out of their homes — giving them no opportunity to defend themselves in front of third parties before putting them into often overcrowded and unhealthy prisons or sending them to other countries where they’re imprisoned. Killing and murdering — even murdering Americans who are trying to monitor their activities — then refusing even to conduct official inquiries into the murders.
When asked if there are limits to his authority, Trump replies: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
“My own” morality is no morality at all. Morality reflects collective judgments about right and wrong, shared values about what we owe one another as citizens of the same society. Morality refers to the ideals we seek to achieve together.
Trump is not guided by any sense of right and wrong. He is guided only by what enriches him or gives him more power and glory — a nihilistic might-makes-right ethos in which the strong do whatever they want and the weak suffer what they must.
To be sure, Trump’s moral squalor could not have permeated America — he could not have been elected a second time — had our shared norms and ideals not already been compromised.
Vast inequalities of income and wealth, coupled with a growing sense that the social contract at the heart of the American system was coming undone and that those at the top have rigged the game, were already fueling anger and distrust. Trump ignited that fuel.
But without shared ideals or common moral values, there is nothing pushing back against this despicable president and regime — no countervailing moral force against the ongoing squalor.
Part of the project of ridding ourselves of Trump, therefore, must be to rekindle our understanding of the common good and appreciation of what we owe one another as members of the same society.
Of course we must make life more affordable; Democrats are wise to emphasize this in the midterms. But we also must demand common decency from our president.
Trump and Vance claim they’re putting “America first.” They’re not. They’re putting themselves first and America last.
So what would a REAL “America first” agenda look like? Take a look:
Our real America First agenda doesn’t exclude or vilify people. It doesn’t surveil them, take away their healthcare, or give billionaires and corporations unrestricted power over their lives.
America First means taking care of and investing in everyone who resides within our borders. Helping people abroad, not bombing them. Ensuring working people have freedom and control over their own lives.
Don’t let Trump and Republicans claim they put America first. They don’t. This agenda does.
He’s Exhibit A on why billionaire wealth should be taxed, why we have to get big money out of politics, why billionaires shouldn’t be allowed to buy up major media, and why our government shouldn’t give them huge military contracts.
I’m talking about Elon Musk, of course.
Yesterday, former Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov thanked Musk for restoring his Starlink satellite’s vital high-speed connectivity: “Thank you, @elonmusk. We hope for your continued support.” (Connectivity had slowed after Musk posted Saturday that “Zelensky has gone too far.”)
But who gave Musk authority to slow his satellite service in the first place — or, for that matter, to publicly comment on Ukraine President Zelensky? (Musk says Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government, and that “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” But if that’s the case, why did Fedorov thank Musk?)
Every time I list another of Musk’s outrages, someone says, “Yes, but he’s an innovator!”
He’s not. As is made clear in Alex Gibney’s smart new documentary, “Musk,” Elon didn’t invent Tesla. He didn’t invent X. He didn’t invent SpaceX. He didn’t invent Starlink satellites. He didn’t invent squat.
Musk is to innovation what Trump is to governing. Both are conmen. Both are megalomaniacs. Both love authoritarians and detest democracy. Both are racist and misogynistic. Neither believes in (or harbors an ounce of) empathy toward anyone. Both think nothing of corrupting governments for personal gain. Both say they’re self-made men — and both worship their creators.
Both spout bigoted filth all hours of the day and night to hundreds of millions of people.
Okay, let me just say it out loud: Both Musk and Trump are loathsome human beings.
Someday historians will come up with an explanation of how two such awful people could have become the two most powerful people in America if not the world (what was there about America in the early 21st century?).
But for now the goal of sane people must be to defund both of them and get them as far away from politics as possible.
That will be difficult, to be sure. Musk has so far sunk roughly $366 million into the 2026 midterm election cycle, $276 million of it since July — all to help Republicans retain control of Congress. That makes him the largest single known donor in the entire midterm elections. And he’s aiming to collect a lot of quid pro quos.
Hell, he spent a quarter of a billion dollars in 2024 to help Trump win reelection and was rewarded by Trump with access to every bit of data the U.S. government keeps on every one of us, along with billions of dollars’ worth of no-bid contracts with the Pentagon. (His Starlink satellite system is now key to the military strategy of the United States as well as that of Ukraine.) He was also rewarded with a chain saw inaptly named “Department of Government Efficiency,” which he used to destroy U.S.A.I.D. and slash other government agencies he doesn’t like.
In the last few months Musk has given at least $10 million to a Texas super PAC seeking to elect Republican Ken Paxton to the Senate, despite (or is it because of?) Paxton’s long record of ethical lapses, legal controversies, and official misconduct. Musk’s businesses are headquartered in Texas, so he needs to buy friends there.
On Sunday, Musk pushed the false story to his 242 million followers on X that James Talarico, Paxton’s Democratic opponent, was absent from the campaign trail because he had suffered a mental breakdown and was receiving counseling at the Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health center in Ohio.
Musk’s story has been thoroughly debunked. Security camera footage shows Talarico at home, not at an Ohio mental health facility. (Meanwhile, according to The Wall Street Journal, on New Year’s Eve 2024, Paxtonpartied in Dubai with his extramarital girlfriend and two fugitives from charges of over $300 million in healthcare fraud in the U.S. One of the men donated $190,000 to Paxton, $25,000 of it after he was indicted.)
The project of defunding Musk will probably have to wait until after January 20, 2029, when, let’s pray, we have a sane administration in Washington that will end all government contracts with him (his support for right-wing extremists around the world makes him a security risk), bust up his monopolies (a reinvigorated Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission will see to it), and impose a significant wealth tax on him.
But you don’t have to wait until then. Stop buying Teslas. Don’t use X. Don’t sign up for Starlink. And support politicians who promise to defund him.
Oh, and what about deporting him? Hmmm. Didn’t he lack proper work authorization during his student-to-entrepreneur transition time in the mid-1990s?
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