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FTR#1376 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Introduction: Continuing discussion of the spectacular first months of the Trump regime, we begin with the exodus of a Yale professor who wrote a 2018 book about fascism. He feels the U.S. may be headed for a fascist dictatorship. A critical piece of analysis concerns the growing ease with which bioterrorism can be perpetrated. Placing the onus on Russia, China, North Korea or “terrorists” the author disregards the fundamentals of the emergent synthetic biology.
The ominous warning from the doctor about the growing threat of bioterrorism should be seen against the background of RFK, jr.‘s stewardship at HHS. He has been cutting staff with the result that the ability of the U.S. to adequately deal with a pandemic is dramatically reduced.
The balance of the broadcast consists of discussion of the Trump/Musk regime as a coup d’etat. Interestingly, none of those who wrote about the fact that a coup is underway have recognized that on 11/22/1963, the U.S. had a fascist coup. What we are seeing now is the result of that deeply tragic neglect.
A Yale professor who studies fascism is leaving the US to work at a Canadian university because of the current US political climate, which he worries is putting the US at risk of becoming a “fascist dictatorship”.
Jason Stanley, who wrote the 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, has accepted a position at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
Stanley added: “You’ve got to just band together and say an attack on one university is an attack on all universities. And maybe you lose that fight, but you’re certainly going to lose this one if you give up before you fight.”
“Columbia was just such a warning,” he said. “I just became very worried because I didn’t see a strong enough reaction in other universities to side with Columbia. I see Yale trying not to be a target. And as I said, that’s a losing strategy.”
Stanley said he wasn’t concerned about his ability to continue his scholarship at Yale, but the broader climate against universities played a role. He praised other faculty at Yale for standing up against the attacks on their profession and said he wished he could stay and fight with them.
“But how could you speak out loudly if you’re not an American citizen?” he questioned. “And if you can’t speak out loudly if you’re not an American citizen, when will they come for the American citizens? It’s inevitable.” . . .
A university professor and two students recreated a virus identical to the one that caused the devastating 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. If they can do it, so can terrorists.
“The Terrorism Warning Lights Are Blinking Red Again,” according to former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell, who delivered that message on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and in an article in the journal Foreign Affairs. He cited “a lack of sense of urgency” in both the Biden administration and Congress toward preventing the growing threat of terrorism in the U.S.
Most people probably associate terrorist attacks with the 9/11 airplane hijackings or the Boston Marathon bombings, but bioterrorism is also a real and growing threat. That was brought home vividly by a fascinating, and terrifying, real-world experiment by an MIT professor and two of his students who re-created a virus identical to the one that caused the devastating 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. During that outbreak, an estimated 500 million people worldwide — one-third of the world’s population at the time — were infected and nearly 50 million died.
Emergency hospital during Spanish Flu epidemic, Camp Funston, KS Credit: National Museum of Health and Medicine
The experiment, which was conducted by two graduate students of MIT Media Lab Professor Kevin Esvelt under the supervision of the FBI, reveals the vulnerability of the current system. The students found that it is “surprisingly easy, even when ordering gene fragments from companies that check customers’ orders to detect hazardous sequences.”
Security risks
Both the genome sequences of pandemic viruses and step-by-step protocols to make infectious samples from synthetic DNA are now freely available online. That makes it essential to ensure that all synthetic DNA orders are screened to determine whether they contain hazardous sequences that should be shipped only to legitimate researchers whose work has been approved by a biosafety authority.
Terrorists are ingenious and respect no boundaries. Although it was not so long ago, few Americans remember the worst bioweapon attack in U.S. history: After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, letters containing anthrax bacteria began to appear in various parts of the U.S., killing 5 and sickening 17. It created a national scare, with concerns of a larger “attack.”
Imagine the havoc if they could create variants of the COVID-19 virus capable of escaping vaccine-induced immunity.
Scientists who synthesize genes (which is accomplished with machines that link together the building blocks to create the genes’ genetic code) and provide them to other researchers are aware of the security risks and the potential for liability: Gene providers who belong to the International Gene Synthesis Consortium (IGSC, “Where Gene Synthesis and Biosecurity Align”) have been voluntarily screening orders since 2009.
But, as MIT’s Professor Esvelt observed, these efforts can be compromised under various scenarios: for example, if most of the dozens of non-members don’t screen their orders; if IGSC firms will ship fragments of hazardous sequences without proof of biosafety approval; or if the screening of sequences can be bypassed.
The MIT experiment
To test the effectiveness of current biosecurity practices, the two grad students, overseen by the FBI, conducted a ”red-teaming” experiment. Red-teaming actively tests vulnerabilities in the security infrastructure — in this case, for screening DNA sequence acquisition and the capabilities of AI tools. It has been used effectively to test cybersecurity, for example, by having ethical hackers emulate malicious attackers’ tactics and techniques against computer security systems.
The students used simple evasive strategies to camouflage orders for gene-length DNA fragments that could be used to recreate the Spanish Flu virus that caused the pandemic of historic proportions. (The flu virus genome consists of RNA, which can easily be made from a DNA template.)
The DNA orders were placed on behalf of an organization that does not perform lab experiments and shipping was requested to an office address that lacks laboratory space, which should have raised suspicion. Alarmingly, 36 out of 38 providers — including 12 of 13 IGSC members — shipped multiple Spanish Flu fragments. Only one company detected a hazard and requested proof of biosafety approval.
But obtaining the potentially hazardous DNA segments was only the beginning of the exercise. The students then demonstrated that standard synthetic biology techniques could be used to assemble the parts to generate infectious virus identical to the one that caused the historic pandemic. (This can be done by using standard biochemical techniques to transcribe the synthetic DNA into viral RNA, which can then be used to reconstitute an intact flu virus when combined with the necessary viral proteins.)
Professor Esvelt takes pains to point out that the fault lies not only with gene synthesis providers, many of whom have been voluntarily screening orders at their own expense. The real problem, he believes, is that governments do not mandate security across the industry and that although it’s a crime to ship at once all the DNA sufficient to generate the entire infectious Spanish Flu virus, it isn’t illegal to ship pieces of it.
Federal intervention
Esvelt cites as a step in the right direction the 2023 Presidential Executive Order 14110, which requires federally funded entities to purchase synthetic DNA only from firms that conduct screening for sequences of concern. The move has strong support from the gene synthesis industry, which has been lobbying Congress for even more stringent regulations.
However, the Executive Order is far from sufficient: Its measures do not reliably detect the types of evasive strategies used by the MIT graduate students. Nor would its strictures prevent front organizations for, say, the Russian, Chinese, or North Korean governments from obtaining DNAs that could be transformed into bioweapons.
According to Professor Esvelt, there are systems that can detect all the evasive strategies used by his students to obtain the complete genome of the Spanish Flu virus, and those systems are now freely available to all DNA synthesis providers and manufacturers of synthesis devices.
It should be noted that there is a Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), an international treaty that bans biological and toxin weapons, but it is toothless. Unlike other arms control agreements, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the BWC lacks either a robust verification regime or a mechanism for enforcement. And since it applies to the actions of nations, it is unlikely to have any impact on non-state-sponsored terrorists.
A bit of good news: There are already very knowledgeable, highly motivated people working on biosecurity issues, some of the most prominent of whom are at the non-profit Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), which is cochaired by former Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn (D‑GA). A fundamental problem, however, is the absence of strong incentives to adopt widespread, effective security measures.
Bioterrorism is a palpable threat whose mitigation is a shared responsibility between governments and the private sector. They need to act before it’s too late.
A core group of so-called disease detectives, who track outbreaks, was apparently spared. But other young researchers are out of jobs.
The notices came all weekend, landing in the inboxes of federal scientists, doctors and public health professionals: Your work is no longer needed.
At the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s premier biomedical research agency, an estimated 1,200 employees — including promising young investigators slated for larger roles — have been dismissed.
At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two prestigious training programs were gutted: one that embeds recent public health graduates in local health departments and another to cultivate the next generation of Ph.D. laboratory scientists. But the agency’s Epidemic Intelligence Service — the “disease detectives” who track outbreaks around the world — has apparently been spared, perhaps because of an uproar among alumni after a majority of its members were told on Friday that they would be let go.
President Trump’s plan to shrink the size of the federal work force dealt blows to thousands of civil servants in the past few days. But the cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services — coming on the heels of the coronavirus pandemic, the worst public health crisis in a century — have been especially jarring. Experts say the firings threaten to leave the country exposed to further shortages of health workers, putting Americans at risk if another crisis erupts.
Public health officials, for instance, have been tracking a lethal strain of bird flu that they say remains a low risk to Americans. In recent weeks, however, it claimed its first victim in the United States — a patient in Louisiana who had been exposed to a backyard flock.
“It’s not canceled,” Elon Musk, the billionaire in charge of the downsizing, wrote on social media in response to the blowback about the purported dismantling of the Epidemic Intelligence Service.
The firings have also excised the next generation of leaders at the C.D.C., the N.I.H., the Food and Drug Administration, and other agencies that the department oversees.
“It seems like a very destructive strategy to fire the new talent at an agency, and the talent that’s being promoted,” said Dr. David Fleming, the chairman of an advisory committee to the C.D.C. director. He added, “A lot of energy and time has been spent in recruiting those folks, and that’s now tossed out the window.”
The Department of Health and Human Services building in Washington. Cuts have excised the next generation of leaders at the C.D.C., the N.I.H., the Food and Drug Administration, and other agencies that the department oversees.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
The form-letter emails told recipients they were “not fit for continued employment” because their “ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency’s needs” and their “performance has not been adequate.”
On Monday, eight officials who led health agencies under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. — including the heads of the C.D.C., the N.I.H. and the F.D.A. — issued a joint statement denouncing the cuts. It listed a string of initiatives, from combating the opioid epidemic to bringing primary care to rural communities, that are “vital to the economic security of our nation” and are carried out by public servants.
“These individuals are not numbers on a spreadsheet,” they wrote, adding, “We owe them a debt of gratitude, not a pink slip.”
The dismissals have also rattled graduate students eyeing careers in public health and the biomedical sciences.
“I just lectured to 42 graduate students this morning whose whole future at this point is not clear,” said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “Will they have jobs? Will there be public health employment in the future?”
A spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department said it was following administration guidance and “taking action to support the president’s broader efforts to restructure and streamline the federal government.”
“This is to ensure that H.H.S. better serves the American people at the highest and most efficient standard,” the spokesman, Andrew Nixon, said in an email on Friday.
As with the rest of the government, the cuts are aimed at probationary employees with less than a year on the job. But the cuts come as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the prominent vaccine skeptic and newly confirmed health secretary, is starting in his job. Officials at the N.I.H. are especially concerned that he might target more senior employees by asking for their resignations.
Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly said he intends to clean house at various federal agencies. He warned that he would cut 600 jobs at the health institutes. In October, after merging his presidential campaign with that of Mr. Trump, he instructed F.D.A. officials to “preserve your records” and “pack your bags.”
About 700 staff members were cut at the F.D.A., including lawyers, doctors and doctorate-level reviewers in the medical device, tobacco, food and drug divisions.
The cuts over the weekend have touched all manner of health workers. They are not only scientists and disease hunters but also administrators who oversee grant proposals, analysts figuring out new ways to cut health care costs and computer specialists who try to improve the government’s antiquated systems for tracking health information.
Arielle Kane was hired in May to work on a new project that aimed to improve maternal health outcomes in Medicaid. She was assured by a manager on Friday that her job at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was safe. On Saturday afternoon, she received an email that she had been fired for poor performance.
“I was just so excited to be working on maternal health and on Medicaid,” Ms. Kane said. “It feels extra enraging to have finally gotten the job I wanted, to have just had a good performance review and then be so unceremoniously fired for poor performance.”
The Laboratory Leadership Service, a prestigious training fellowship at the C.D.C., was hit hard, according to three people familiar with the program. Of its 24 fellows, four were protected because they are in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, a uniformed branch whose members work across government. The other 20 were let go.
The program, begun in 2015 in response to quality and safety concerns in laboratories, is a sister program to the more prominent Epidemic Intelligence Service, or E.I.S. It was developed to strengthen ties between epidemiologists and laboratory scientists. Applicants must hold a Ph.D. in microbiology, organic chemistry or another laboratory-related discipline.
Some of the fellows are assigned to state and local public health laboratories. Others work at C.D.C. in Atlanta. During outbreaks like the coronavirus pandemic, they are sent into the field with E.I.S. officers.
“E.I.S. has such a strong culture and alumni; the response will be, ‘Thank God E.I.S. was spared,’” said Dr. Michael Iademarco, who helped create the Laboratory Leadership Service when he was at the C.D.C. “And my response will be, ‘Yeah, but we just killed the promising half of field investigation, because nobody knows about it.’”
The agency has also lost its presidential management fellows, who were assigned to the C.D.C. under a decades-old government initiative that describes itself as “the premier leadership development program for advanced degree holders across all academic disciplines.”
Veterans of the health agencies said they were troubled by the seemingly random nature of the cuts.
“If there’s a need to reduce the budget, that happens at all levels of government, but there should be a thoughtful approach,” said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, a former deputy commissioner of the F.D.A. He added, “For some of these roles, there is very specialized knowledge.”
Dr. Fleming, a former deputy C.D.C. director, said many health professionals can earn more in the private sector but choose to join the government because they are drawn to public service. The terminations would make it harder to attract new talent, he said.
“We’re cutting off our hand to spite our face,” he said.
4.“A Coup Is In Progress In America” by Mike Brock; Techdirt; Feb. 3rd, 2025.
A coup is underway in the United States, and we must stop pretending otherwise. The signs are unmistakable and accelerating: in just the past 48 hours, Elon Musk’s DOGE commission has seized control of Treasury payment systems and gained unauthorized access to classified USAID materials, while security officials who followed protocols were removed. Career civil servants across agencies are being systematically purged for having followed legal requirements during previous administrations. The president openly declares he won’t enforce laws he dislikes, while Congress watches in complicit silence. This isn’t happening through tanks in the streets or soldiers at government buildings—it’s occurring through the systematic dismantling of constitutional governance and its replacement with a system of personal loyalty to private interests. Those who resist are being removed, while those who enable this transformation are being rewarded with unprecedented control over government functions. The time for euphemisms and careful hedging has passed. We are watching, in real time, the conversion of constitutional democracy into something darker and more dangerous. To pretend otherwise isn’t prudence—it’s complicity.
I understand why many Americans are hesitant to accept what’s happening—acknowledging the reality of a coup in progress is frightening. But we must confront the facts before us with clear eyes: Donald Trump and Elon Musk are systematically seizing control of the federal government’s machinery through plainly illegal means. They are violating civil service protections established by law, shuttering congressionally mandated agencies without authority, and subjecting career public servants to ideological purges.
When security officials are removed for following classification protocols, when private citizens gain unauthorized access to Treasury payment systems, when civil servants are punished for having participated in legally required training—these aren’t isolated incidents or normal policy changes. They represent the coordinated dismantling of constitutional governance and its replacement with a system of personal loyalty.
The machinery of government—the actual systems and institutions through which public authority flows—is being captured by private interests operating outside constitutional constraints. This is precisely what the Civil Service Reform Act was designed to prevent. These aren’t abstract concerns about democratic norms—these are concrete violations of specific laws designed to prevent exactly this kind of authoritarian capture of government functions.
This is an emergency, and it demands emergency response from every American with power or influence. The window for effective resistance narrows with each passing day. History will judge harshly those who had the capacity to resist but chose instead to wait and see how things develop. The time to act is now, before the mechanisms that would allow effective resistance are completely dismantled. . . .
5.“Say what This is: a coup: by Robert Reich; Robert Reich’s Substack; 02/14/2025.
I want to talk today about the media’s coverage of the Trump-Vance-Musk coup.
I’m not referring to coverage by the bonkers right-wing media of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and its imitators.
I’m referring to the U.S. mainstream media — The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, National Public Radio — and the mainstream media abroad, such as the BBC and The Guardian.
By not calling it a coup, the mainstream media is failing to communicate the gravity of what is occurring.
Yesterday’s opinion by The New York Times’ editorial board offers a pathetic example. It concedes that Trump and his top associates “are stress-testing the Constitution, and the nation, to a degree not seen since the Civil War” but then asks: “Are we in a constitutional crisis yet?” and answers that what Trump is doing “should be taken as a flashing warning sign.”
Warning sign?
Elon Musk’s meddling into the machinery of government is a part of the coup. Musk and his muskrats have no legal right to break into the federal payments system or any of the other sensitive data systems they’re invading, for which they continue to gather computer code.
This data is the lifeblood of our government. It is used to pay Social Security and Medicare. It measures inflation and jobs. Americans have entrusted our private information to professional civil servants who are bound by law to use it only for the purposes to which it is intended. In the wrong hands, without legal authority, it could be used to control or mislead Americans.
By failing to use the term “coup,” the media have also underplayed the Trump-Vance-Musk regime’s freeze on practically all federal funding — suggesting this is a normal part of the pull-and-tug of politics. It is not. Congress has the sole authority to appropriate money. The freeze is illegal and unconstitutional.
By not calling it a coup, the media have also permitted Americans to view the regime’s refusal to follow the orders of the federal courts as a political response, albeit an extreme one, to judicial rulings that are at odds with what a president wants.
There is nothing about the regime’s refusal to be bound by the courts that places it within the boundaries of acceptable politics. Our system of government gives the federal judiciary final say about whether actions of the executive are legal and constitutional. Refusal to be bound by federal court rulings shows how rogue this regime truly is.
Earlier this week, a federal judge excoriated the regime for failing to comply with “the plain text” of an edict the judge issued last month to release billions of dollars in federal grants. Vice President JD Vance, presumably in response, declared that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
Vance graduated from the same law school I did. He knows he’s speaking out of his derriere.
In sum, the regime’s disregard for laws and constitutional provisions surrounding access to private data, impoundment of funds appropriated by Congress, and refusal to be bound by judicial orders amount to a takeover of our democracy by a handful of men who have no legal authority to do so.
If this is not a coup d’etat, I don’t know what is.
The mainstream media must call this what it is. In doing so, they would not be “taking sides” in a political dispute. They would be accurately describing the dire emergency America now faces.
Unless Americans see it and understand the whole of it for what it is rather than piecemeal stories that “flood the zone,” Americans cannot possibly respond to the whole of it. The regime is undertaking so many outrageous initiatives that the big picture cannot be seen without it being described clearly and simply.
Unless Americans understand that this is indeed a coup that’s wildly illegal and fundamentally unconstitutional — not just because that happens to be the opinion of constitutional scholars or professors of law, or the views of Trump’s political opponents, but because it is objectively and in reality a coup — Americans cannot rise up as the clear majority we are, and demand that democracy be restored.
Rise up people and fast. Tyrant Trump and his Musk-driven gangsters are launching a fascistic coup d’état. Much of everything you like about federal/civil service for your health, safety, and economic well-being and protections is being targeted.
To feed Trump’s insatiable vengeance over being prosecuted, being defeated in the 2020 election, or now just being challenged, this megalomaniacal, self-described dictator is harming the lives of tens of millions of Americans in need and millions of Americans who are assisting them.
In his demented lawless arrogance, convicted felon Trump is nullifying the freedoms and protections of the American Revolution (King Donald is today’s King George III), and rejecting the Declaration of Independence (which listed the rights and abuses against the British Tyrant that Trump is shredding and entrenching). He is defiantly violating the U.S. Constitution, its controls over dictatorial government, and its powers exclusively given to Congress. The Constitution demands that we live under the rule of law, not the rule of one man.
While Trump enjoys Mar-a-Lago and his golfing, Madman Musk, a South African, is literally living in the Executive Office Building next to the White House, with his heel-clicking Musketeers, seven days a week (they brought in sleeping cots) guarded by a large private security detail.
Consider, people, that the world’s richest man, with billions of dollars of federal contracts, is unleashing his henchmen to wreck the daily work of public servants committed to providing critical services that have long and bi-partisan support. Assistance to children, emergency workers, the sick and elderly, public school students, and people ripped off by business crooks. He is firing the federal cops on the corporate crime beat – whether at the FBI, the EPA, or the key Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which Trump/Musk are gutting.
Some headlines: “Laws? What Laws? Trump’s Brazen Grab for Executive Power” by the great reporter Charlie Savage (New York Times, February 6, 2025). Outlaws taking charge, driven by greed for the government’s honeypots of corporate welfare, and near-zero taxes for the rich and big corporations.
Or “Searching for Motive to Musk Team’s Focus on ‘Checkbook’ of U.S.” by Alan Rappeport, February 6, 2025, New York Times.
Or “White House Billionaires Take on the World’s Poorest Kids” by the super-reporter Nicholas Kristof (February 6, 2025. New York Times) shutting down The Agency for International Development’s distribution of AIDS medicines, and crucially stopping U.S. health agencies from countering rising, deadly pandemics in Africa that could come here quickly without U.S. defensive actions abroad. Already the devastating effects on children missing healthcare and food are erupting.
Kristof concludes that all this (and the dollar amounts are very small compared to their benefits) may seem like a game for Trump/Musk, but “… it’s about children’s lives and our own security, and what’s unfolding is sickening.” It is also criminal!
When the forces of law and order reassert themselves, Elon Musk may become known as felon Musk. He is not a properly appointed federal official. He has no authority to send his wrecking crews into one agency after another, demanding private information about Americans, pushing people out, and shutting down operations.
Musk, whose next target is the federal auto safety agency that has been enforcing the safety laws against Tesla and has not surrendered its regulation of self-driving cars (Musk’s next big project). Musk refuses to disclose his sweetheart contracts with the federal agencies nor has he disclosed his tax returns. Demand them.
What is very clear in the first 20 days of Trump’s lawless madness is that he is moving fast for a police state along with deepening the corporate state with and for Big Business. His prime victims are not the vast military budget at the Department of Defense, nor the big budgets of the Spy Agencies or of Musk’s lucrative fiefdom – NASA, the Space Agency. No, like the bullies they are, Trump/Musk are smashing people’s programs. They hate Medicaid (provided to over 80 million Americans) or the food programs for millions of children. Crazed Trump is pushing to shut down many clean wind power projects and cut credits to homeowners installing solar panels while booming the omnicidal oil, gas, and coal industries. He wants many more giant exporting natural gas facilities near U.S. ports which could accidentally blow up entire cities.
Musk’s poisoned Tusks have even reached Laos, Cambodia, and parts of Vietnam where mine-clearing efforts have been cut off. These are the U.S.’s Vietnam War era unexploded ordinances and bomblets that have killed tens of thousands of innocent residents, mostly children, in the past fifty years.
The Washington Post headline on February 6th, “Musk Team Taking Over Public Operations” understates the carnage. They are brazenly shutting down agencies, taking down thousands of government websites helpful to all Americans, and telling conscientious civil servants to obey or be driven out.
The Republicans in Congress, to their future shame and guilt, are surrendering their constitutional powers in the very branch of government our Founders assigned to check any rising monarchy in the White House.
The Democrats in the minority are just starting to protest, some in front of shuttered federal buildings. But they have not yet initiated unofficial public hearings in Congress to give voice to the surging anger of Americans (now flooding their switchboards) whose narrow majority of Trump voters are sensing betrayal big time. Demand unofficial hearings now! Federal judges are starting to uphold the violated laws.
The media, itself threatened by Trump’s attacks, censorship, and who knows what is next from this venomous liar (see the Washington Post’s Glen Kessler’s January 26, 2025 piece “The White House’s wildly inaccurate claims about USAID spending” or “Trump’s gusher of misleading economic statistics at Davos”) will cover protests and testimony by people all over the country. The rallies and marches have begun and will only get larger as Trump and Musk sink lower with their tyrannical abuses.
The career military does not relish the reckless buffoon that Trump put over them as Secretary of Defense. American business cannot tolerate the chaos, the uncertainty, the tumult. Thirty-nine million small businesses are already feeling the oncoming Trump tsunami.
Break with your routine, Americans. It’s your country they are seizing with this burgeoning coup. Take it back fast, is what our original patriots of 1776 would be saying.
What we are currently living through is nothing less than an erasure of the building blocks of our republic – a distortion of what it means to be American.
Less than seven weeks into Donald Trump’s second term as president, his administration has set off a new wave of handwringing over what has by now become a familiar question: has the US entered a constitutional crisis?
Triggering the latest iteration of that worry, the government hastily deported more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, without hearings or evidence and thus without anything even resembling due process of law, pursuant to the US president’s proclamation “signed in the dark on Friday evening” that they constituted an invasion by a foreign state.
Trump invoked a 1798 statute last used to intern Japanese Americans during the second world war, buttressed by powers he claimed were inherent in the presidency. Chief judge James E Boasberg of the US district court for the District of Columbia rushed to convene a hearing on the legality of the challenged action as two deportation flights departed from Texas, followed quickly by a third. Moments after the judge ordered them to return so he could rule on a motion barring the deportation, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, tweeted: “Oopsie ... Too late”, with a laughing emoji, even as the court considered whether its order had been defied.
The branch of government best able to uncover and safeguard both our noblest traditions and the simple truth in moments such as these – the judiciary – has been hobbled and vilified by Trump and his allies, making wildly irresponsible calls for impeachment that put dangerous targets on the backs of judges who rule in ways they dislike. Even mild-mannered chief justice John Roberts had to cry “foul”. The administration’s cavalier attitude toward courts that fail to do its bidding, exemplified by calls for Boasberg’s removal, seemed to confirm concerns about a looming crisis.
But searching for evidence of a “constitutional crisis” in the rapidly escalating clashes of the executive branch with the judicial branch misses the larger cataclysm taking place across the US. This president, abetted by the supine acquiescence of the Republican Congress and licensed by a US supreme court partly of his own making, is not just temporarily deconstructing the institutions that comprise our democracy. He and his circle are making a bid to reshape the US altogether by systematically erasing and distorting the historical underpinnings of our 235-year-old experiment in self-government under law.
What we are currently living through is nothing less than a reorganized forgetting of the building blocks of our republic and the history of our struggles, distorting what it means to be American. The body politic is being hollowed out by a rapidly metastasizing virus attacking the underpinnings of our entire constitutional system. Make no mistake. This is how dictatorship grows.
Symptomatic of that reshaping is the peculiar emergence, in a duet staged by the president together with the world’s richest man and Trump’s main benefactor, of a co-presidency without precedent in our republic and without even a hint of the irony in such shared power being propagated by ideologues whose mantra has long been the need for a “unitary presidency”.
As staffers of the newly minted so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) raided congressionally created independent federal agencies and foundations without warning and slashed entire programs without thought, the Trump administration stuttered when asked by the courts to explain who was in charge of the “department” that no Congress had created – and how the leader of that enterprise had somehow acquired the power of the purse that the constitution clearly delegated only to Congress.
More than just stonewalling courts and refusing to provide basic information on government activities, the Trump administration has waged war on history itself. Having first debilitated our capacity to act, it is now coming after our capacity to think. The same day Boasberg directed the administration to explain why it had seemingly failed to comply with his order, Doge staffers marched into the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the agency responsible for funding many needy public museums, libraries and historic repositories across the country.
Like Julius Caesar besieging and burning the Library of Alexandria, the Doge officials descended upon the IMLS to begin the process of gutting the public institutions dedicated to preserving and making widely available the shared memory of our past. It was none other than Benjamin Franklin whose conception of public libraries democratized knowledge and made it accessible to ordinary people. What used to be the private province of the few became the public province of the many.
The attack on the IMLS is only the latest episode of the Trump presidency’s attempt to privatize information while replacing authentic history with a version more to its liking. As internet archivists race to back up the nation’s files and records, Trump administration officials have been systematically purging government websites in real time of the tools, concepts and language we need to act as informed citizens. In response to secretary of defense Pete Hegseth’s order to remove “diversity” content from the department’s platforms, the Pentagon took down pages about the Holocaust, September 11, cancer awareness and suicide prevention. So too, the Department of Agriculture deleted entire datasets and resources that farmers relied on to identify ways of coping with heat waves, droughts, floods and wildfires. Websites belonging to the Small Business Administration and Arlington National Cemetery scrubbed their platforms of photographs and references to women, LGBTQ+ individuals and people of color, including facts about American heroes such as Jackie Robinson or Gen Colin Powell.
Taken together, these events of the past few weeks reveal an alarmingly rapid collapse of what gives the United States constitution life and meaning. Its words may remain unchanged, but its role in our lives is crumbling before our eyes. Looking for a decisive explosion or a moment of crisis – what physicists call a singularity – in the chaotic onrush of presidential provocations is a fool’s errand, one calculated to disarm the resistance without which we will surely be doomed.
The seeds of our ongoing disintegration long precede Trump’s rise to power. They were planted decades ago by strategic politicians who dressed rightwing ideologies in conservative garments, permitting the darkest angels of our nature to take hold and to reach a climax in fake claims of a stolen election that led to an insurrection in our country’s capital, followed first by the Senate’s abdication of its duty in Trump’s second impeachment trial (on the bogus ground that the trial had begun too late to give the Senate jurisdiction) and next by the US supreme court’s gifting of Trump – and every future president – with a nearly absolute immunity transforming the office from one restrained by law to a source of virtually limitless power.
Rarely noted is how this frightening power to ignore federal criminal law has been conferred not only on the president but on his legions of loyal lieutenants, from public officials to private militias. Because the constitution itself gives presidents an unbridled power to pardon others – a power Trump reveled in employing to free from prison the violent insurrectionists that he had himself helped unleash – we now live under a system in which any president can license his trusted followers to commit crimes to consolidate his power and wealth, making clear that a pardon awaits them should they face federal prosecution. The upshot is that privateers in league with the president can safely ignore federal laws criminalizing corrupt evasion of rules designed to protect public health and safety while they casually usurp powers the constitution gave to Congress, moving so fast and breaking so much that not even genuinely independent federal courts can keep pace with the mayhem.
In his iconic poem The Hollow Men, TS Eliot a century ago famously wrote: “This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / ... /Not with a bang but a whimper.” Rooted in our past, the anti-democracy virus has reached a fever pitch as it ravages the body politic and revises all traces of our history. It’s a virus we must fight with all the energy we can muster if we don’t want our system of self-government under law to die – not in a sudden explosion but with a quiet whimper.
The tragedy is that too many politicians and organizations are caving in without a fight, leading others to follow suit. With each surrender, Trump and his minions not only grow more emboldened but cement their hold on power by cracking down on all who dare oppose them in court, including lawyers who come to the aid of the administration’s enemies.
Without more courageous leaders – including Republican officeholders who fear being primaried by candidates backed by limitless wealth – and without more bravery on the part of corporate CEOs whose fortunes can be threatened by Trump, elite lawyers whose business can shrivel if Trump targets them, and ordinary citizens understandably fearing online threats and worse, this darkness will be our destiny as we are reduced to mere memories and then relegated to the vast wasteland of the forgotten.
Even MORE Fun With Science: Earthquake Weaponry
It’s not a new Great Depression. Yet. But a new Great Depression is looking increasingly possible thanks to economic meltdown that’s already historically bad and only accelerating. The Trump tariff economic onslaught is in full swing, and it hasn’t even been a week.
Yes, things are going worse than expected. Catastrophically worse than expected. Or at least generally expected. The markets in general obviously didn’t expect what just unfolded. Not the levels of the tariffs and certainly not the kindergarten-level rationale behind them. Madness on this level was clearly not ‘priced in’ or they wouldn’t have suddenly collapsed.
It’s so bad that we have billionaire hedge fund investor Bill Ackman — who has become a close ally of the MAGA movement in recent years — coming out on Friday explaining how President Trump was just acting ‘crazy’ as part of a negotiating tactic. Two days later, Ackman is now publicly pleading with Trump to put a ‘pause’ on the tariffs in order to avoid a recession. The situation is devolving so quickly even Trump’s loyalist mouthpieces are starting to back away.
And yet, when someone like Bill Ackman is openly calling for President Trump to put on ‘pause’ on the tariffs in order to avoid a major economic catastrophe, we have to ask: what kind of hedges has Ackman put in place to profit from such a crash and has he profited from the turmoil that’s already ensued? This is Bill Ackman we’re talking about, after all. The same billionaire who made what has been called the most profitable trade in history back in March of 2020 as the COVID pandemic was first overtaking the global economy. A 100-fold $2.6 billion return on $27 million in derivatives designed to protect his portfolio from an explosion of risk and volatility. Bill Ackman is a master of profiting off of systemic instability the market wasn’t expected. So when we see Ackman veering from ‘it’s all a crazy act’ to ‘please stop being so crazy’ in the span of a couple days, it’s important to keep in mind that this is kind of his moment.
But, of course, it’s not just Ackman’s ‘moment’, necessarily. Anyone with insider knowledge about the Trump White House’s actions could have made a killing this week. Just as they’ll be in a position to make a killing should the Trump administration suddenly shift course or ‘pause’ as Ackman is pleading. Or a killing on any specific tariff ‘deals’ made with individual countries or industries. Every single one of these seemingly impromptu decisions made by the Trump White House that has the potential to rattle the markets is a massive opportunity.
Also keep in mind how trading insider information is going to be a lot easier after all the DOGE-led dismantlement of the federal government. No more watchdogs to worry about. But beyond that, once you bring a ‘loyalist’ into the insider information ‘inner-circle’, you’re going to have even more leverage over them forever. They’ve committed a crime, after all. A crime no one is going to prosecute President Trump over following the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling. But recipients who acts on that insider information could be prosecuted. It’s leverage. The kind of leverage over the business community that could be very handy for an aspiring authoritarian government. It’s a form of bribe the Trump administration doesn’t even have to pay for but can still use as leverage.
That’s all part of the sad context of Bill Ackman’s topsy-turvy tariff advice. Advice that started off with advice to the markets that Trump was just ‘acting crazy’ as a negotiating tactic and quickly morphed into advice to Trump to put a pause on the crazy before it causes a historic disaster:
““The risk of not doing so is that the massive increase in uncertainty drives the economy into a recession, potentially a severe one,” hedge fund manager and GOP newbie Bill Ackman wrote in an X post late Saturday night. ”
A massive increase in uncertainty is building and potentially leading to a severe recession. That’s the warning of Bill Ackman, the guy who made what has been called the most profitable trade in history back in March of 2020 as the COVID pandemic was first overtaking the global economy. A 100-fold $2.6 billion return on $27 million in derivatives designed to protect his portfolio from an explosion of risk and volatility. If anyone understands the implications of the historic levels of uncertainty building up in the financial system, it’s Bill Ackman:
Of course, Ackman isn’t just the guy who made the most profitable trade in history off of historic levels of uncertainty and volatility as the global economy was careening. He’s also one of the hedge fund billionaires who has managed to endear himself with President Trump in recent years. So much so that, as we can see in the following article published just two days before Ackman started his public pleas to pause the tariffs, Ackman was described as a “White House advisor’. But the advise he was handing out at that point was to President Trump. It was advice to the rest of the world to just assume Trump is ‘acting crazy’ as part of a negotiating tactic:
““Sometimes the best strategy in a negotiation is convincing the other side that you are crazy,” the hedge fund manager posted to X Thursday.”
Bill Ackman is technically correct when he asserts that sometimes the best strategy in a negotiation is convincing the other side that you are crazy. Sometimes. The big question is what happens when the most powerful person on the planet convinces the rest of the world that they are crazy. That’s less as negotiating tactic and more the sign of a new era of global realignments and conflict. After all, you only really negotiate with a crazy, unhinged individual when you don’t have a choice. The world has choices. The US isn’t actually necessary for the rest of human civilization, especially if it’s operating in ‘crazy mode’ going forward. In other words, acting crazy and making claims like “our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered” by other nations as a negotiating tactic with the rest of the world really is kind of crazy. And stupid. And potentially calamitous for the US and global economy. It’s as if President Trump is trying to negotiate his way into a global depression. And yet, according to billionaire Bill Ackman — who has now achieved some sort of ‘White House advisor’ role — this is all a sober minded negotiating tactic in order to bring the rest of the world to the negotiating table. Or at least that was his take before he started public pleading for a pause:
And, of course, Bill Ackman isn’t just some random billionaire Trump sycophant. If anyone knows how to profit from an unexpected global calamity, it’s Bill Ackman. So when we find Bill Ackman playing a kind of public ‘Trump whisperer’ role over the course of this economic turmoil, it’s important to keep in mind that we have plenty of indications to suggest that Ackman is not only probably more aware of the White House’s inner decision-making but he’s also in a position to shape those decisions. After all, when Ackman pulls stunts like going on the Joe Rogan podcast and publicly suggests CNN had advance warning of the Butler, PA, Trump assassination attempt, that’s exactly the kind of behavior that’s going to put Ackman on Trump’s list of ‘loyal’ followers. And when you’re a billionaire member of the Trump loyalist club, membership presumably has its privileges:
“The pair amplified mega podcaster Joe Rogan’s suggestion that CNN carried Trump’s July 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, live on air because the network knew someone would try and assassinate the president.”
That was undoubtedly a highly bizarre event that remains largely unexplained. CNN’s decision to air the event, however, wasn’t exactly a mystery. Everyone knew Trump’s VP announcement was just around the corner:
But whether or not Ackman’s claims had any substance, they were the kind of claims that undoubtedly put him in President Trump’s ‘good book’. Ackman is a loyalist. Or at least he is for the time being. We’ll see how President Trump reacts to Ackman’s calls for a pause on the ‘crazy’. Who knows, maybe it’s all coordinated theatrics intended to amplify Trump’s ‘crazy’ charisma. But given that we’re talking about a guy who knows who to profit off of unprecedented financial volatility and who also has Trump’s ear, we have to ask: has Bill Ackman benefited from any insider information of late? Because it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t have more insights into the Trump White House’s decision-making than most. In other words, what kind of profits has Ackman been accruing during this particular round of Trump-led global financial turmoil. As the following makes clear, it’s not just a question for Ackman. Based on everything we’ve seen it’s probably safe to say insider trading is rampant among Trump administration insiders. Why wouldn’t it be at this point?:
“Anyone familiar with financial markets knows that massive price movements — whether up or down — can be incredibly profitable for those who see them coming. Entire fortunes have been built on short-selling stocks or currencies right before a crash. Now, imagine if someone single-handedly caused a massive crash and knew exactly when it would happen.”
Yes, imagine if someone single-handedly caused a massive crash, knew exactly when it would happen, and decided to profit massively from it. Just imagine. More specifically, imagine Donald Trump doing that. It’s not an imaginative stretch and more what we should probably expect. Which is why we should probably be asking who else is cashing in on this historic insider trading opportunity. After all, Trump could attempt to secretly profit from this insider trading personally in all sorts of ways, but it’s the ability to let others in on the insider information where he can more easily ‘launder’ the profits of that privileged information:
Spoils systems aren’t just a product of cronyism and corruption. They’re also the kind of organizing system that facilitates rampant insider-trading by the cronies already ‘loyal’ to the network. Letting cronies in on things like insider information is a natural outgrowth of that arrangement. Especially after financial regulatory agencies and laws are gutted. And with each industry, or company, that ends up cutting a special tariff ‘deal’ with Trump, it’s a new opportunity for insider trading on the ‘surprise’ announcement and a new opportunity for that insider knowledge to propagate across this ‘loyalist’ network. A ‘loyalist’ network driven by loyalty that is increasingly based on shared culpability in their collective criminality and looting:
And let’s not forget that tariffs aren’t the only presidential decision with the power to roil markets and generate massive profits for those in the know. Decisions like the slow-motion unwinding of NATO — sparking the launch of historic EU military spending commitments — present massive profit-making opportunities too:
And don’t forget the kind of announcement that Trump is highly likely to make as his ‘mad king’ second term plays out: war. It’s just a matter of time, if we’re honest. What kind of impact will a declaration of war have on the markets? How much could one make if they happened to know roughly when that declaration would happen, say, weeks or even months in advance?
How about martial law and some sort of theocratic formal takeover? Or perhaps the announcement of a new Article V constitutional convention that promises to turn the US into a permanent corporate fiefdom. Maybe he just cancels the 2026 mid-terms. Who knows what kind of madness awaits. But one thing we know for certain is that madness moves markets. The kind of market moving madness that you can bet on and win big on. Just ask Bill Ackman.
What did they know and when did they know it? It’s the question of the day following Wednesday’s historic financial market rebound — the third largest one day spike since WWII — on the heels of President Trump’s surprising announcement of a 90 pause on almost all of the announced tariffs.
Or rather, Trump’s quasi-surprise announcement. It wasn’t entirely out of the blue, which is part of the problem. Because as we’ve seen, the market-roiling actions of the Trump administration haven’t just involved historic levels of destruction to the long-term credibility of the US government and economy. It’s also been a historic insider trading opportunity. As Wall Street investor Bill Ackman demonstrated in March of 2020 as the COVID pandemic was shutting down the global economy, historic market volatility brings the opportunity for historic returns. And boy have we had some historic volatility of late. And not due to some unanticipated pandemic. This was all highly predictable volatility. At least, predictable for those with insider knowledge of what’s coming. If you knew the Trump administration was going to roll out absurdly high tariffs based on seemingly made up economic formulas that would shock the world, you could have made a fortune. And then made that fortune even larger if you also happened to know about the sudden 90 day ‘pause’ after a historic market rout. Historic insider trading opportunities abound.
And that brings us to the highly suspicious sequence of events that led up to Wednesday’s massive market surge. For starters, while it remains unclear where exactly President Trump got that 90 day pause idea from, we do know of one ‘White House advisor’ would was publicly calling for exactly that: Bill Ackman. It was early Wednesday morning when Ackman — who has been critical of Trump’s tariff policies and basically admitted he was shocked Trump would follow through with the campaign promise — tweeted out what was effectively a plea for a 90 day tariff pause. Hours later, at 9:37 am, President Trump issues a Truth Social post simply declaring “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT”. And it was nearly four hours after, just before 1:30 pm, when he made another social media post announcing the 90 day pause on non-China tariffs, triggering the historic melt-up.
It’s the kind of sequence of events that observers note is basically a giant invitation for insider trading. An invitation made all the more conspicuous with Trump’s vague “great time to buy!” tweet that signaled a decision has been made behind closed doors. And even more conspicuous by the fact that this was same 90 day pause Bill Ackman was calling for hours earlier. did Ackman know his idea was going to be adopted by the White House? Anyone else?
And the picture looks even more corrupt when we factor in that Trump’s US Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, was actually testifying before Congress about Trump’s tariff policies at the time of Trump’s 90 day pause social media announcement. And yet, Greer gave no hint of a major policy shift during his opening comments. He left that up to Trump to shock the markets with a tweet. That hearing went on for roughly 4 1/2 hours, and yet, as we can seen in the videos of the hearing, it was roughly 3 hours and 40 minutes into the hearing when Congress found out about the tariff pause, which indicates the hearing started some between 9:30–10 am. Again, Trump’s ‘great time to buy!’ post came at 9:37 am. So it would appear Trump made that ‘great time to buy’ post right around the same time this congressional hearing was getting underway. A hearing where Greer publicly maintained the pretense of NO flip flop even though he apparently knew the flip flop was coming.
When asked directly by Nevada Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford if he knew about this impending flip-flop, Greer seemed to indicate that yes, he knew. When asked why he didn’t inform Congress about this looming major policy shift in his opening comments and why this wasn’t market manipulation, Greer responded, “It’s not market manipulation, sir...We’re trying to reset the global trade system that has offshored all our factories.” Horsford went on to ask, “How have you achieved any of that? ... Who’s benefiting? What billionaire just got richer?”
So, to summarize, close White House ally Bill Ackman publicly pleads with Trump to issue a 90 day pause on the tariff. Hours later, Trump makes his 9:37 am “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT” post, which roughly overlaps with the start of a congressional hearing where Trump’s US Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, made no indication of this looming policy shift. Greer went on to maintain the pretense of no imminent flip-flop for roughly 3 hours and 40 minutes, at which point Trump made the public pause announcement and Congress immediately started questioning Greer over the surprise that he should have informed them about. It’s that incredibly shady state of affairs fueling the growing insider trading suspicions.
But it’s not just the highly suspicious sequence of events. Observers were growing increasingly concerned about the potential for insider trading in the days leading up to this major policy reversal. For example, NY Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin was interviewing Mark Uyeda, the acting chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), on Monday and directly asked Uyeda whether or not the SEC was going to be enforcing insider trading laws when it comes to administration officials. And while Uyeda initially gave a generic response assuring that offenders would be pursued whether in or out of government, it’s his answer to Sorkin’s follow up question that suggests otherwise. “If somebody had access to the list of—the tariff plan the day before the plan and decided to sell out of equities, or to short the market, or to do something else that I haven’t thought about, right? Would that be considered inside information to you?” Sorkin asked. “It potentially could,” Uyeda responded. “There are two basic duties, what we call the classic insider trading theory law, as well as the misappropriation theory of law. There are various elements of that. If those elements are satisfied, they can be subject to insider trading liability.” So if someone inside the Trump administration acted on insider information it ‘potentially’ could lead to an SEC investigation. Or potentially not, implicitly.
And if that seems like an overly cynical interpretation of Uyeda’s answer, keep in mind another SEC-related story that should have us very concerned about a refusal to enforce the law: the top SEC lawyer in a case directed at Elon Musk, Robin Andrews, just resigned. And while Andrews didn’t state why exactly he resigned, his departing statements weren’t hard to interpret. “The SEC must always be focused on protecting investors and holding violators accountable, no matter who they are,” Andrews wrote in the LinkedIn post. “Only then can the public have confidence that the securities markets are not rigged against ‘main street’ investors in favor of the wealthy or the powerful.” According two people familiar with the reasons behind the resignation, Andrews was concerned the case against Musk was going to be either dismissed outright or settled for a small fine. And Andrews isn’t the only SEC attorney involved with the case who recently resigned. SEC attorney Bernard Smyth also stepped down last week.
But it doesn’t look like Andrews’s concerns about Musk getting kid-glove treatment by the SEC was purely rooted in a lack of faith in the Trump-appointed SEC leadership. There’s also the reality that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already taken over the SEC with all of the expected damage.
So what is the nature of this SEC case against Musk? Well, it’s pretty insider-trading-adjacent: Back in 2022, the SEC launched an investigation into Musk buying a minority position in Twitter before his public acquisition of the company, behavior that effectively allowed Musk to acquire the shares for cheaper than they would have been had he properly disclosed on time. As Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine described it, the pending litigation was “not that serious a securities violation … but a very obvious violation,” describing it as an “absolutely open-and-shut violation of the law.” It’s that ‘open-and-shut’ case that appears to be on the verge of being settled for a slap on the wrist or tossed out entirely.
It’s that gross, open corruption on display that is all fueling the growing suspicions that this historic insider trading opportunity created by the Trump administration’s disastrous trade policies wasn’t simply passed by. Someone ‘in the know’ almost surely made a killing. Perhaps many ‘in the know’. And we’ll probably never know who they are, thanks to the corrupted gutting of the SEC and other federal enforcement agencies. Did Bill Ackman know his 90 day pause plan was going to be adopted? We have to ask, but we probably shouldn’t expect an answer. At least not a non-corrupt answer, which is why we should suspect the worst:
“Hedge fund honcho Bill Ackman joined a growing list of President Donald Trump’s billionaire backers calling for the White House to slam the brakes on tariffs just hours before Trump authorized a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for most countries that went into effect Wednesday morning.”
Bill Ackman calls for a 90 day tariff pause in an early morning tweet and just hours later that’s exactly what happens. It’s quite a coincidence.
And note that Ackman’s early morning tweet also came hours before President Trump’s own “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” post on Truth Social. A post that has observers asking whether or not the Trump administration just pulled off one of the biggest ‘poop and scoop’ market manipulations in history. The public was issued a highly vague hours before this major market-moving policy shift. What about the White House insiders? When did they know about this switch? How about ‘White House advisors’ like Bill Ackman?:
“Insider trading is a very illegal practice that involves using special or private information to give yourself an advantage in buying and selling stocks. Someone with knowledge of an economic policy change that would cause the markets to shoot back up would be posting about how great a time it is to buy right before the policy change happened. This particular situation looks like the opposite of a pump and dump: a poop and scoop. This is when an exclusive group of people with private knowledge do whatever they can to drive stock prices down—like announcing debilitating global tariffs—and then buy stocks up strategically before the price goes up again. And with this administration, the corruption is completely out in the open. ”
Did the Trump administration just execute a historic “poop and scoop” market manipulation event? Because it’s hard not to notice how the market was so distressed after last week’s tariff trauma that mere a 90 day tariff pause announcement triggered the third biggest market gains since WWII. What are the odds no one knew about this sudden policy shift in advance? Yes, Trump publicly hinted at this shift with his “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” tweet hours earlier, but what are the odds there weren’t insiders who got a much more detailed warning of what’s coming? And is it a coincidence that the 90 pause just happens to match exactly what Bill Ackman was publicly clamoring for just hours before that tweet? It sure seems like Trump or someone close to him was listening to Ackman. What are the odds Ackman didn’t know this?
And even if there really was zero connection between Ackman’s tweet and Trump’s policy shift, the fact that Trump made his “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT” tweet at all still establishes an awful precedent. Every tweet Trump makes that could possibly be interpreted as a cryptic market-moving tweet will now be treated as such. Trump’s powers to move markets and, in turn, engage in even more insider trading has only grown as a result of these events.
But adding to the suspicious nature of the timing of Trump’s 90 day pause decision is the fact that his trade representative, Jamieson Greer, was testifying before Congress about the Trump administration’s tariff policies as that announcement was being made. A testimony that appears have started shortly before 10 am, not long after Trump’s 9:37 am ‘great time to buy!’ post. And yet Greer made no indication of this significant shift in policy during his opening remarks. In other words, he either entered that congressional hearing without being aware of the imminent policy shift or he was intentionally keeping it hidden from Congress.
That’s all part why Democrats are already calling for insider trading investigations. The kind of investigations we can be confident won’t be happening any time soon under the current administration. The Trump administration doesn’t investigate itself. It’s not that kind of administration:
“Trump’s surprise turn on Wednesday appeared to be news to the administration’s own trade representative, who was in the middle of testifying to a House committee, deflecting allegations that the president purposefully manipulated the markets.”
Well that’s awkward: Jamieson Greer, the Trump administration’s US Trade Representative, was in the middle of a congressional testimony to clarify the administration’s increasingly chaotic trade policies when President Trump decided to tweet out the 90 day pause. A pause Greer made no mention of in his opening remarks. So it would appear congress was kept out of the loop on this major decision. And based on Greer’s answers it’s unclear to what extent even he knew what was coming. Which, again, raises the question: who knew this was coming? Who was kept in the loop?
And this is why California senator Adam Schiff is now asking who in the administration happened to buy or sell stocks right before this historic policy flip-flop. But, again, don’t forget that we shouldn’t just be looking at administration insiders. They have friends outside the administration who would love to get a preview of policy flip-flops too. And it’s those administration outsiders who will be best positioned to get away with it. Which is why it’s important to keep in mind that the administration insiders weren’t just potentially in a position to personally profit from this knowledge. They could sell or give that knowledge away as ‘favors’ too:
But it’s not just the blatant corruption on display that his creating this general feeling of gross corruption. It’s the fact that some sort of stunt like this was predicted when NY Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin interviewed Mark Uyeda, the acting chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, on Monday and directly asked whether or not the growing potential for insider trading by the Trump administration was being policed. As we can see, Uyeda didn’t exactly give the kind of response that should give us comfort. When directly asked by Sorkin, “If somebody had access to the list of—the tariff plan the day before the plan and decided to sell out of equities, or to short the market, or to do something else that I haven’t thought about, right? Would that be considered inside information to you?”, the answer from Uyeda was simply “It potentially could”. Which, of course, leaves the distinct possibility that it potentially might not qualify as insider trading in the eyes of the acting chairman of the SEC:
““Given what the government’s been doing and this administration’s been doing, it would not shock me, and I hate to speculate, if we were to find out that a whole bunch of people who work in Washington as our elected leaders one way or the other, ultimately sold stocks last week, or potentially worse than that, shorted the market,” Sorkin said. “My question to you is: What you think the responsibility of the SEC is in those contexts?””
It’s a very direct question: what is the responsibility of the SEC in the context of possible insider trading by Trump administration insiders. And while Uyeda first indicated that the SEC would prosecute anyone involved with insider trading, whether they are administration officials or not, he’s follow up answer didn’t exactly induce confidence that those investigations were actually going to happen. After all, if the rules against insider trading could “potentially” apply to administration insiders, they “potentially” might not:
And that glaringly tepid response by the acting chairman of the SEC to a question about the willingness of the agency to enforce the laws against administration insiders brings us to the following story about the SEC already capitulating in the face of very credible accusations of wrongdoing by the individual who is arguably the most powerful administration insider: Elon Musk. As we can see, while the charges against may not have involved a very serious SEC violation, it also happened to be a very blatant open-and-shut case. There’s no question that Musk violated the law. A violation involving a kind of market manipulation of Twitter’s stock, with Musk secretly acquiring Twitter stock without proper disclosure, effectively allowing him to buy the stock for a price cheaper than it should have been. It’s not a biggest SEC violation but it was clearly a violation. And yet, as the resignation of Robin Andrews, the top SEC lawyer on the case, makes clear, there’s now major questions about whether or not this case is going to be dismissed entirely or settled for a small penalty. Or as Andrews put it, “The SEC must always be focused on protecting investors and holding violators accountable, no matter who they are...Only then can the public have confidence that the securities markets are not rigged against ‘main street’ investors in favor of the wealthy or the powerful.”:
“In one of its last actions before President Donald Trump took office in January, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Elon Musk for securities violations related to his acquisition of Twitter, now known as X. Now, the top attorney on the case, Robin Andrews, has resigned from the agency, according to a LinkedIn post and a court filing. On LinkedIn, Andrews did not cite a specific reason for his decision, but described his resignation as a “heartbreaking day” that came after weeks of excruciating deliberation.”
Robin Andrews may not have explicitly stated the reason for his resignation. But it’s not exactly a mystery. This very obviously SEC violation involving the undisclosed acquisition of Twitter stock is on track to a non-enforcement ending. Or near-non-enforcement, if it happens to end with a small fine. A paltry fine for the wealthiest man on the planet. The SEC is getting ready to bend the knee to Elon:
But then there’s the other context of Andrews’s resignation: DOGE’s takeover and gutting of the SEC coupled with Elon’s public taunting of the agency over its investigation into those undisclosed Twitter share purchases. It’s the kind of gross conflict of interest and abuse of power that has defined the opening months of the second Trump administration. Of course Musk is going to be let off with a slap on the wrist. He’s basically running the SEC at this point:
And keep in mind that the gutting of the SEC is only getting started. Which is a reminder that insider trading isn’t the only kind of financial crimes Trump administration insiders have at their disposal. Along with Trump administration outsiders and everyone else. A ‘golden age’ of financial crimes is upon us. Although it will be more of a ‘platinum age’ if you happen to be an insider.