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Dear Media, Call It What It Is: Corruption
A potential conflict of interest? Please. This is corruption, plain and simple.
May 05, 2025
Words matter. When the media points out Trump’s “potential conflicts of interest,” as it has in recent days when describing Trump’s growing crypto enterprise, it doesn’t come close to telling the public what’s really going on — unprecedented paybacks and self-dealing by the president of the United States, using his office to make billions.
The correct word is corruption.
Trump holds a private dinner at the White House for major speculators who purchase his new cryptocurrency, earning him and his allies $900,000 in trading fees in just under two days. One senator calls this “the most brazenly corrupt thing a president has ever done.”
He’s doing other things as brazen if not more brazenly corrupt.
He collects a cut of sales from a cryptocurrency marketed with his likeness.
He promotes Teslas on the White House driveway on behalf of a multibillionaire who spent a quarter of a billion backing him during the 2024 election.
He posts news-making announcements on Truth Social, the company in which he and his family own a significant stake. Truth Social thereby becomes the world’s semi-official means of knowing Trump’s thinking and policies.
Trump frequently mentions in his phone calls with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer that he’d like the signature British Open golf tournament returned to Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland (its home before Trump’s January 6, 2021, attempted coup). Trump’s team asked the British PM again during his recent visit to the White House.
To describe these as “potential conflicts of interest” misses the point. A “potential conflict of interest” sounds like an unfortunate situation in which it’s possible that Trump might choose his own personal interest over the nation’s. Stated this way, the problem is the conflict.
But Trump isn’t conflicted. He repeatedly chooses his (and his family’s) interests over the nation’s. He is using the authority and trappings of the presidency of the United States to make money for himself and his family. And in his second term, this corruption is more flagrant than it was in the first.
Some legal scholars say “corruption” occurs only after a court so rules. But this isn’t the common-sense definition, and the critical venue for restraining Trump is the court of public opinion. When Trump collects on a favor or engages in a quid pro quo deal for himself or his family — which he’s doing more and more often — the transactions are corrupt.
Trump’s venture into crypto has increased his family’s wealth by an estimated $2.9 billion in the last six months, according to a new report.
This estimate was made before the Trump family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, announced that its so-called “stablecoin” — with Trump’s likeness all over it — will be used by the United Arab Emirates to make a $2 billion business deal with Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world. The deal will generate hundreds of millions of dollars more for the Trump family.
We’re not talking about a “potential conflict of interest.” The Trump family is making a boatload of money off a venture backed by a foreign government. Hello? The U.S. Constitution's Emoluments Clause, Article II, Section 1, Clause 7, bars a president from receiving any compensation or other emolument from a foreign government.
The deal also formally links the Trump family business to Binance — a company that’s been under U.S. government oversight since 2023, when it admitted to violating federal money-laundering laws.
Meanwhile, Trump is instructing the government to ease up on regulating crypto. The Securities and Exchange Commission is ending its crypto fraud investigations. The Justice Department is terminating its enforcement actions against crypto.
A potential conflict of interest? Please. This is corruption, plain and simple.
Eric Trump, who officially runs the family business, has just announced plans for a Trump-branded hotel and tower in Dubai, part of the U.A.E.
The Trump family is also developing a luxury hotel and golf course complex in the Middle East nation of Oman, on land owned by the government of Oman. Oman also plays an important role in the Middle East, often serving as a middleman between the United States and Iran.
This project and three others are dependent on a Saudi-based real estate company with close ties to the Saudi government. Saudi Arabia has a long list of pressing matters before the United States, including requests to buy F-35 fighter jets and gain access to nuclear power technology.
In two weeks, when Trump travels to Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. to meet with their heads of government and that of Oman, is this a “state visit” or a business trip? Obviously, it’s both — which underscores the self-dealing.
There’s no “potential conflict of interest” here. It’s pure corruption.
Trump is the most corrupt president in American history. His self-dealing makes Warren G. Harding’s look like a child shoplifting candy.
Why isn’t the media calling this what it is? Americans deserve to know.
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'A New Action Plan': Ban Musk Companies From Any and All Federal and State Contracts
"The U.S. is engaging in a suicidal strategy: funding the very person who is trying to destroy the government."
Mar 04, 2025
Democratic leaders have angered progressive organizers and voters alike in recent weeks as they have claimed they have "no leverage" to stop the most damaging actions of the Trump administration.
But a new national campaign to cut off President Donald Trump's ally and adviser, Elon Musk, from the taxpayer money that's helped make him the world's richest person could "breathe life into the Democratic Party at a time when it is flailing" while forcing Musk "to limit his slash-and-burn campaign against the federal government," according to Sunjeev Bery, the executive director of the advocacy group Freedom Forward.
The organization is circulating a petition to gather support for its proposal to block all federal funding and contracts for two of Musk's companies—electric car manufacturer Tesla and aeronautics company SpaceX.
As Bery wrote in a recent column at The Intercept, SpaceX has received nearly $20 billion in government contracts, while Musk has been able to charge more than a fair market price for his Tesla vehicles thanks to government incentives giving consumers thousands of dollars when they bought cars from his company.
"This was essentially free money for his company at a time when he desperately needed the cash to keep Tesla afloat," wrote Bery.
Musk's reliance on government funding hasn't stopped him from pushing to cut Social Security, the anti-poverty program that serves retired Americans, and sweeping through federal agencies including the Department of Education and Department of Labor with plans to slash spending that American families depend on.
"We need to end the dynamic where America is heavily funding a billionaire who is using his wealth to destroy the federal government."
Bery wrote at The Intercept that Democratic senators should first speak out publicly against government funding for the man who is working to dismantle the federal government—and then "begin turning their stated opposition into actual votes."
Although Republicans hold majorities in the U.S. House and Senate, he wrote, Democratic senators have a "powerful tool" help help cut Musk off from federal funding: the filibuster.
"Forty-one U.S. senators could use the filibuster to block most legislation that enables the funding of Musk's companies," wrote Bery. "With 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and two independents in the Senate, such a push is numerically possible, though politically difficult."
Bery acknowledged challenges the Democrats would face, including party leaders' reluctance to "[pick] fights with billionaires" and the fact that filibustering the appropriations bills that help fund SpaceX and Tesla contracts would also delay the distribution of other government funds.
"Despite these difficulties, what makes pushing for a legislative attack on Musk's wealth such a powerful opportunity is that Musk himself is deeply unpopular among Democratic voters," wrote Bery, pointing to a recent Economist/YouGov poll that found 82% of Democrats disapprove of the billionaire and that a growing number of Republicans want Musk to have less influence over the Trump administration.
Bery told the Institute for Public Accuracy on Tuesday that the proposal to end government support for Musk's companies is "a new plan of action."
"This is an opportunity for senators to filibuster and block funding for Musk's companies," said Bery. "It is also an opportunity for state legislators to introduce legislation affirming that their states will not engage in contracts or buy equipment or services from Musk’s companies, including SpaceX, Tesla, and other ventures."
"We need to end the dynamic where America is heavily funding a billionaire who is using his wealth to destroy the federal government," said Bery. "The U.S. is engaging in a suicidal strategy: funding the very person who is trying to destroy the government. We have an opportunity to cut down that valuation dramatically. Musk stands to lose a lot. We can start holding these billionaire oligarchs accountable."
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Why Working People Need a Political Movement of Their Own
What are workers without a political home to do?
Feb 05, 2025
There is no question that the Democratic Party, once the party of the working class, is now the party of the professional managerial class.
Workers have been voting with their feet, while the Democrats have been marching in the other direction:
- Trump won 56 percent to 43 percent voters without college degrees, a proxy for the working class, according to exit polls.
- Trump won 52 percent to 46 percent those with total family income of $30,000 to $100,000, another proxy for the working class.
- Of those who felt that their family’s financial situation was worse today than four years ago, 82 percent voted for Trump. Of those who felt it was better, 83 percent voted for Harris, as the Democratic brand moved up the income ladder.
- Of those who said the economy is not so good or poor, 70 percent voted for Trump. Of those who thought the economy was excellent or good, a proxy for the managerial professional class, 92 percent voted for Harris.
- There is a very strong statistical correlation between the counties with the highest layoff rates and the decline of the Democratic vote. During the last four years approximately 80 million workers suffered through involuntary layoffs. (Please see Wall Street’s War on Workers.)
These trends have been a long time in the making. In 1976 Jimmy Carter received 52.3 percent of the white working-class vote. Biden received only 36.2 percent in 2020, and Harris 33.0 percent in 2024. Racism can’t be the major cause of recent declines, since Barack Obama did better with 40.6 percent in 2012.
Given the political chaos all around us, now is the time to experiment with new ways to rekindle a working-class movement.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are trying to attract workers to a class-befuddled MAGA movement dominated by millionaires and billionaires. Trump’s plutocratic cabinet makes clear that the working class does not have a political home in either party. The question is, how can a new one be constructed?
Turn the Democrats Into Progressive Populists?
It would be suicidal, some argue, for the working class to abandon the Democrats. Better that they exert pressure so that the Democrats become genuine economic populists. For that to happen, realistically, it must be proven that Democrats can win elections on a populist platform in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.
But Sherrod Brown, a very strong economic populist, lost his Senate seat in Ohio in 2024. Did populism drag him down? Brown, who lost by 3.6 percent, certainly ran better than Harris, who lost Ohio by 11.2 percent. Brown believes, however, that he was done in by NAFTA, the free trade bill pushed for and signed by Bill Clinton in 1993. He believes the Democrats are still being blamed for how that trade bill decimated industrial areas:
“But what really mattered is: I still heard in the Mahoning Valley, in the Miami Valley, I still heard during the campaign about NAFTA.
I’ve seen that erosion of American jobs and I’ve seen the middle class shrink. People have to blame someone. And it’s been Democrats. We are more to blame for it because we have historically been the party of [workers].”
The power of NAFTA, not the working-class racism, is also what delivered the South to the Republicans, according to Nelson Lichtenstein in his new book on the Clinton years, A Fabulous Failure. Even after Nixon used his racist Southern Strategy to lure the South away from the Democrats, Lichtenstein notes that congressional representation in the southern states was still evenly split between the two parties. After NAFTA demolished the southern textile industry, however, most of the South abandoned the Democrats.
NAFTA = Job loss = Democrats
That’s the formula Brown could not overcome. But how could NAFTA still have so much punch three decades after it was passed?
For most working people, free trade deals are a proxy for mass layoffs. NAFTA, and then deals allowing China into the World Trade Organization, led to millions of lost jobs, especially in manufacturing areas. The pain lingers because corporations learned that moving jobs, or threatening to move them, can make them more in profits, and so involuntary layoffs continue unabated, upending the lives of approximately 20 million workers per year.
The Democratic Party has refused to stop Wall Street and corporate America from using layoffs to raise cash for the richest of the rich. The Democrats also have failed to redevelop decimated areas by directly creating jobs, as the New Deal did during the Depression. Job stability is not something either political party cares about, because corporate interests come first, but the issue hurts the Democrats more because of its historical claim as the party of working people.
The Democratic Party has refused to stop Wall Street and corporate America from using layoffs to raise cash for the richest of the rich.
Sherrod Brown’s populism didn’t cost him the election. The Democratic Party’s lack of economic populism, including their advocacy for trade deals and their overall failure to protect the livelihoods of working people, eroded Brown’s base.
Run as an Independent?
Dan Osborn, a steamfitter and former local union president, tried another path by running as an independent Senate candidate representing Nebraska. (The Democrats did not field a candidate.) He did even better than Sherrod Brown, losing by 6.7 percent while Harris finished a whopping 20.4 percent behind Trump, but clearly more needs to be done.
Osborn is now setting up the Working-Class Heroes Fund, a political action committee to recruit and support working-class candidates. As he put it:
Whether they’re leaving their party or it’s young people registering to vote, I think there’s certainly an appetite for people who are just frustrated with the parties…. We just see things not getting done. The reason why they’re not getting done is because they’re all bought and sold, and they’re owned by corporations. That is truly the divider in the country. So, I think that’s where the appetite stems from.
To win Osborn needed about 20 percent of Trump voters, which in turn meant he needed to find areas of agreement with Trump while struggling to find a working-class position on immigration. On the one hand, he said that something had to be done to secure the southern border. “Our border’s broken,” he said. “Our immigration system is broken.” He also argued that hard-working immigrants who were in the country, paid their taxes, and didn’t commit crimes should have a pathway to citizenship.
A Movement, Not Just a Candidate
Running candidates independent of the two parties, but without playing the role of a spoiler, is a strategy worth trying. But the history of working-class movements suggests that significant political change requires the mobilization of large numbers of working people into organized political movements of their own making.
- It was the rise of the 19th populists, the Farmers Alliance, that eventually forced the political system to regulate the robber barons.
- It was the rapid rise of the labor movement during the Depression that mobilized mass support for the New Deal.
- It was the upsurge of the Civil Rights movement that led to the historic anti-discriminatory reforms passed during the Johnson administration in the 1960s.
These movements reshaped the political landscape and put working-class issues on the national agenda. They gave working people a home, a collective expression, a sense of belonging, and empowerment. My guess is that for some, MAGA has done the same.
The Democrats became the party of the working-class because the labor movement, after WWII, represented more than 30 percent of the workforce. If you count family members it represented a large majority of working people. Its agenda could not be ignored.
Today, however, with only six percent of private sector workers in labor unions, that voice is greatly diminished.
Can labor unions again grow rapidly? Not without major labor law reforms to level the playing field with corporate power. But those reforms will not pass without a mobilized working class that demands it. Even when Democrats have controlled all three branches of government, they have failed to pass such reforms. If we’re waiting for labor unions to again represent 20 percent of the workforce, we’ve got a long wait.
The political void needs to be filled with concrete activities that bring workers together and give them a sense of collective power.
Working people, union and non-union alike, can still be mobilized through civic engagement to express their hopes and desires. Workers could join something new, like a new Workers Populist Alliance, to develop and put forth a working-class agenda.
But such a formation can only get off the ground if it is sponsored and resourced by a group of progressive labor unions. If unions really backed it, workers just might come. We need them to step up and try a pilot in one state, like Michigan.
What should a Workers Populist Alliance stand for? Here’s a simple platform that surveys suggest would have wide working-class appeal:
- Increase the minimum wage to at least $20 per hour, provide paid family leave, and four weeks paid vacation a year.
- Save jobs by prohibiting large corporations that receive taxpayer money and tax breaks from laying off taxpayers involuntarily.
- Guarantee the right to a job at a living wage. If the private sector can't create those jobs, the public sector must.
- Stop drug company price gouging, and end health insurance rip-offs by replacing them with Medicare for All.
The political void needs to be filled with concrete activities that bring workers together and give them a sense of collective power. One activity would be to shove this agenda in the face of every candidate, from city council to President, asking them to publicly endorse it. The platform could be used to fight against millions of unnecessary layoffs caused by unmitigated corporate greed and provide a progressive alternative to MAGA. This could be done very systematically in town after town, county after county. The ask of politicians is simple: Which side are you on?
Are labor unions willing to build a new political movement outside of the Democratic Party? It would be an uphill battle because their shared roots run deep. But expecting the Democrats to change their stripes has been a recipe for failure the last 40 years. And so is believing that MAGA billionaires will have anything to offer working people other than more tax cuts for the rich, plus mass layoffs.
Given the political chaos all around us, now is the time to experiment with new ways to rekindle a working-class movement. Could this develop into a viable third party of working people? No one knows. But there is no doubt that working people need a new home of their making.
The billionaire class has two political parties. Working people need one of our own.
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