The Commander in Thief

Slush Fund, Grade Expectations

What would happen if you gave a criminal defendant and his attorney control of the most powerful government in the world? In America, that was a rhetorical question for about 250 years. Unfortunately, in 2026, we’re rapidly watching the answer come to life. Trump’s meritless, vexatious suit against an IRS that he has always shortchanged but now oversees has been settled by the once-independent Justice Department he has corrupted, which will result in major payouts for fellow criminals who served (and possibly plan to serve further) as willing, often violent, accomplices. “The Justice Department on Monday announced that it was establishing a $1.776 billion ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ after President Donald Trump moved to dismiss a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over his leaked tax returns ... The massive fund would give Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump a mechanism to seek taxpayer payouts for their claims of government overreach. The fund could even issue ‘formal apologies’ to individuals who made claims against the government.”

+ This corruption eruption is bad and sad news for the rule of law, but it could also end up being bad news for Republicans in the upcoming midterms.”Republicans broadly approved of Mr. Trump’s job performance and the war. But most other voters showed serious skepticism of his leadership on other top issues, including the economy and the cost of living. Sixty-four percent of all voters disapproved of his handling of the economy, long a strength for him, and majorities expressed negative views of how he was managing the cost of living.” Serious skepticism might be an understatement. Trump’s approval numbers are plummeting. The key for the opposition will be consistently and constantly tying the administration’s corruption to individual pocketboots. Every issue — the money spent on the war, healthcare cuts, tax cuts for the wealthy, the wanton Trump family corruption — needs to be connected directly to the daily experiences of the average American. No one is managing this narrative better than Jon Ossoff: “The faithless president depicts himself as Christ while he plunges the nation into wars of choice, while he and his family rake in billions from foreign princes, while he plunders our healthcare to cut taxes for the rich. Meanwhile, rent, power, groceries and healthcare have all hit all-time highs this year. While you pay more for everything, the first family’s wealth is growing by billions of dollars – because they’re crooks, and everybody knows it.” To quote the Mandalorian: This is the way.

2

Short End of the Carrot and Stick

When Elon Musk’s Doge, empowered by the Trump administration, kicked off the president’s second term by cutting USAID, the world’s poorest and most desperate people paid the price. That same group is now bearing the brunt of the closing of the Hormuz Strait. “As the conflict in the Middle East grinds into its third month, catastrophe is unfolding across the world’s poorest, least stable countries. If hostilities continue beyond June, those confronting acute hunger will swell beyond 363 million people worldwide, an increase of 45 million compared with before the war, the World Food Program warned. The danger is mounting absent the usual degree of international mobilization.” NYT (Gift Article): Catastrophe Is Emerging in the World’s Most Vulnerable Places. From Kate Phillips-Barrasso, head of global advocacy at Mercy Corps, “The system has been eviscerated. This is the era of indifference.”

3

Grade Expectations

“Living on campus for the past four years has been an eye-opening journey. Higher education was not equipped for the A.I. revolution. Someday in the future the fully autonomous Clawdbots or Moltbots (or whatever people call them) will laugh to themselves about this silly interregnum when universities seemed paralyzed, trying to bridge the gap between the liberal education of yore and the future in which humans have no monopoly on intelligence. For us, this was college.” Theo Baker, college senior and the author of How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University, in the NYT (Gift Article): What A.I. Did to My College Class.

+ As is my policy, any story with information out of Stanford must be paired with academically superior information from Cal. “The share of A’s in college classes heavy on writing and coding—in other words, work more prone to artificial intelligence use—has grown more significantly than in other classes since ChatGPT’s debut, according to a paper from the University of California, Berkeley.” WSJ (Gift Article): A Grades Are Suddenly Everywhere Since the Arrival of ChatGPT.

+ If you missed it, Princeton’s test-taking honor code, which had survived for well over a century, was no match for AI. Proctor’s Gamble.

+ Even with homework assistance and grade inflation, the youth sure don’t seem too enthused by AI. Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt booed after AI remarks at Arizona commencement.

4

Knocked Up Down Low

“Any complete and responsible explanation of this phenomenon cannot begin in the 21st century and should never pretend that this is some tragedy brought about by exclusively terrible things. Birthrates have been declining in developed countries for a long time, as child mortality has declined; as women’s education has increased; as female labor force participation has soared; as modern contraception has proliferated; and as modern notions of feminism have empowered women to take more control over their bodies and their economic futures. And birthrates have continued to decline around, or even accelerated in their downturn in developed countries, as smartphone usage has surged; as housing prices of increased; as time spent at home on the Internet has grown; and as socialization and coupling have declined.” Whatever is causing the fertility decline, it’s a really big deal. Derek Thompson with an interesting look at the issue. The Global Fertility Crisis Is Worse Than You Probably Think. (The phrase, is probably worse than you think, could append most headlines these days...)

5

Extra, Extra

Waited So Long: “A federal jury on Monday found that tech billionaire Elon Musk waited too long to bring his lawsuit against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others, throwing out the suit that claimed Altman had unlawfully enriched himself from the organization Musk and Altman co-founded.” (This was like a Yankees/Dodgers game. I was hoping both sides would lose.)

+ Minor Inconvenience: “A study of insurance claims for 1.8 million children found that the number of families raising mental health issues at visits to general practitioners rose sharply over a decade, with anxiety by far the fastest-growing complaint.”

+ Broken Families: “The findings point to a scale of family separations that far eclipses that of the first Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy in 2018, when about 5,500 children were removed from their parents immediately after crossing the southern border.” Over 100,000 Family Separations in Deportation Push, Report Estimates.

+ Tennessee No Evil: Removing voting rights is just one part of a much broader attack. For example, “Knox County Schools in Tennessee is removing Alex Haley’s 1976 novel ‘Roots’ from its libraries.”

+ Lane Change: “Everlane built its following in the early 2010s around what it called ‘radical transparency’ on pricing and supply chain practices, positioning itself as a sustainability-minded, affordable basics brand.” So much for those goals. The brand just got acquired by Shein.

+ The Rai Stuff: “You won’t find one person on property who’s not happy for him.” ... “There’s very few people that are nicer and kinder human beings than Aaron.” ... “He’s such a good dude.” Those were just some of the comments made in celebration of an unlikely winner of golf’s PGA Championship. We’re gonna have to rethink where nice guys finish. Why all of golf was glad to see Aaron Rai win the US PGA Championship.

6

Bottom of the News

“More than seven years later, here is what is known for certain about the details of Lagerfeld’s will and estate: nothing. (Under French law, such matters are not made public.) But plenty has been rumored. Various figures close to Lagerfeld have been suggested as beneficiaries, including several male models and fashion executives, his bodyguard, his housekeeper, and the princess of Monaco. Even so, from the start, one improbable name has stood out: Choupette, Lagerfeld’s blue-cream Birman cat.” The Richest Cat in the World.