"Congress must fully assert itself as the primary branch of the federal government"

 

As scholars of democracy, we are watching America’s warning signs flash red. We expect America’s long-building constitutional crisis to soon escalate. Earlier this year, we hosted a national workshop to assess the threats facing our society in the months leading up to and following the November midterm elections. We also studied the preparations of American social movements, communities and institutions to meet those threats.

Our basic goals were straightforward. Every qualified voter should be able to vote and have that vote counted. We must head off and block political violence. Duly certified winners should be able to take office without obstruction.

One product of that workshop, published this fall and signed by dozens of scholars, is “The American Crisis” report. “The American Crisis” analyzes the likelihood of the administration thwarting electoral due process, escalating military and paramilitary occupations of U.S. cities, and other emerging threats that would worsen any electoral, constitutional or military crisis.

It’s not hard to see the shape of what may come. In the weeks preceding Election Day, we anticipate that election administration responsibilities could be seized from states and cities and attempts made to disrupt, sabotage or otherwise capture their administrative powers.

Alongside this, we see a high risk of dangerous physical escalation in our streets. Federal military forces are being deployed domestically without the consent of American cities and states. These federal deployments are often coupled with a rhetoric that treats communities as territories to be occupied and controlled rather than as constituencies to be protected.

We also expect efforts to obstruct or delay the swearing-in of newly elected officials. These efforts might include the removal of the Clerk in the House of Representatives or the refusal of the vice president and outgoing House speaker to swear in newly elected members to the Senate and House of Representatives, respectively.

In our report, we address in detail these military, electoral and constitutional crisis points — as well as how American communities, movements and institutions are preparing to respond. Congress must fully assert itself as the primary branch of the federal government.

Neighborhoods, communities, and their governments have been thrust forward to protect themselves against federal repression and dysfunction. In the process, they have demonstrated remarkable resilience. If sufficiently connected with one another and backed up by labor unions, state governments and major public, faith, business and community institutions, municipalities offer our best hope for avoiding authoritarian takeover.

However, they are often fragmented. Neighborhood networks, labor organizations, community businesses, faith communities, public institutions and local governments frequently operate without shared language or protocol, trusted coordination or practiced ways of acting together.

The central preparedness challenge is not only to build more capacity, but to connect, test and mobilize what already exists. Intermunicipal communications and coordination systems will serve as critical crisis infrastructure in the months ahead.

The report draws one other major conclusion. Following the November elections, Congress must fully assert itself as the primary branch of the federal government. The generation of 1776 gave Congress supremacy over the rest of the federal government. This is the reason the legislative branch is described first in the U.S. Constitution, as Article I.

Over many years, much of congressional supremacy, representing the sovereignty of the American people and their states, has been abdicated or stolen. At this moment, without Congress, there is no republic, only dictatorship. If the U.S. is to remain a republic in 2027, members of Congress must honor their oaths to uphold the Constitution by ensuring a successful democratic transition of power.

To our fellow Americans: This is not the time to look away. More than ever we need the kind of courage that history books heroize. We implore you to step forward and face the crisis. The full report is available is americancrisis.report.

-Ben Manski, Michael Shank, April Doner / OtherWords

-Truthdig

"Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies..." -Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar

I’ve always pushed back on characterizing the execution of a lawful, court-ordered search warrant as a “raid.” I’ll do my best to stick to that tonight, although the context of the search warrant executed at Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar’s D.C. residence early Monday morning makes it difficult.

We do not yet know what charges the government may be contemplating; we haven’t seen the affidavit accompanying the warrant. There are a lot of unanswered questions. Omar came to this country in 1995—she was 12—and there is a five-year statute of limitations on most federal crimes. 

There’s a possible way around that because some immigration offenses are treated as continuing crimes for statute-of-limitations purposes. But that doesn't necessarily help the government here. Anonymous sources have characterized this investigation as involving her original immigration paperwork, perhaps some type of false statements case.

That raises additional questions. The government would already have all of the paperwork that accompanied her entry into the country. So what are they looking for? And what probable cause do they have to believe it would be found in her temporary D.C. residence, not her family home in Minnesota, which does not seem to have been searched?

We don’t know who the target of the investigation is. Omar’s age at the time would make it hard to establish criminal intent. And while others involved might have some technical liability depending on the facts, her father, who allegedly completed her paperwork, is deceased.

Here’s another question: Why now? DOJ has a longstanding policy against taking overt steps, like executing a search warrant or announcing an indictment, this close to an election. Often referred to as the 60-day rule, it’s meant to prevent prosecutors from using their power to unfairly influence an election's outcome. The concern is that the target has little meaningful opportunity to clear their name of the damaging insinuations before voters cast their ballots.

Without knowing what the government proposes to charge and who it proposes to charge, it’s difficult to assess whether this is another rank political investigation that will never develop into an indictment, a pure political stunt, or whether there’s more to it. 

But given the bad faith with which this administration has abused the criminal justice system to go after people Trump considers enemies, it’s hard to rule it out. Given the timing, you’d expect the government to make it known if there was some risk of evidence being destroyed, one situation that might warrant an action like this. But it hasn’t offered any explanation despite the unusual circumstances.

Omar was quick to respond.

While there is a lot left to learn, we do know for certain that the election is already underway in Minnesota. Early voting is in progress and Omar is on the ballot. Even if this is a legitimate investigation, there was no apparent urgent need to execute a search warrant today. The original “crime” is decades old. It’s hard to imagine that DOJ just learned about the existence of evidence it so urgently needed to recover that it couldn’t wait the few weeks for the election to be over before striking.

It seems more likely that this is about politics than legitimate prosecution. And isn’t that what the Trump administration has turned the Justice Department into? A political tool in the president’s toolkit, no longer a bastion of the rule of law. No longer a place that prides itself on being above the political fray and doing justice regardless of who is in the White House.

The search warrant was signed by a judge. But we don’t know what facts the government shared with the judge to justify issuance of the warrant. It could be a solid case. Or it could be another revenge operation where they’ll never obtain an indictment. And it probably doesn’t matter to the man in the Oval Office who seems to be calling the shots at DOJ. 

Another investigation is open. That’s all it takes. Early voting in Minnesota is underway. The Trump administration has accomplished its mission. But whether it will have the effect the man calling the shots wants is an entirely different question. There’s already outrage over the timing of the search warrant. It could easily backfire...

We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance

How have Ilhan Omar’s Democratic colleagues reacted to the raid? House Democratic leaders, including minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, party whip Katherine Clark and caucus chair Pete Aguilar, issued a joint statement excoriating the president for the search, calling it “deeply disturbing”. The Democratic leaders vowed to “deliver full accountability for the rogue abuse of power” from the US Departments of Justice and Homeland Security.  

-The Guardian

Trump's Attempts to Silence the Press

The New York Times reported that the Trump Justice Department is investigating whether the major television networks that participate in the White House pool—ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox—violated the law by refusing to cover Donald Trump for a brief period after he suspended the White House hard passes for CNN, MSNOW, and Politico. The Time report was based on six sources. The Washington Post has now confirmed that report.

Here’s what we know so far:

The investigation seems to center on whether suspending pool coverage was a violation of federal antitrust law. A DOJ spokesperson, Emily Covington, said, “Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act,” one of the primary antitrust laws.

The Times reports that DOJ sent letters to the networks on Friday and “demanded communications and materials related to the White House TV pool.” They specifically sought “communications among network officials that concerned pool coverage of Mr. Trump, along with any communications about Mr. Trump’s revocation of CNN’s access to the White House grounds, according to two people with direct knowledge of the documents.”

The Times report calls it “a profound escalation of the Trump administration’s ongoing battles with the White House press corps. It also follows a pattern of the Trump administration using the levers of government against its perceived foes in the media.”

Covington said, “The Antitrust Division is simply investigating to determine whether these news organizations have violated the antitrust laws.” But when the DOJ launches a major investigation against the press, there’s nothing “simple” about it. As with so much of Trump’s revenge docket, the investigations into Jim Comey, Letitia James, Lisa Cook, and others, the process is the punishment. Targets have to hire lawyers. It gets expensive, and it’s stressful.

Trump has tried, repeatedly, to intimidate the press. “Quiet, Piggy.” During Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the U.S. last month, Trump lamented the fact that they are not as biddable as the Chinese press. Now, despite his losses in court, Trump is back on the offensive against the people who keep the First Amendment for our democracy.

The Sherman Antitrust Act provides that “Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.” Violating the Sherman Act is a felony, punishable by fines of up to $100,000,000 for corporations and $1,000,000 for individuals, as well as imprisonment for up to 10 years. The government can also bring civil proceedings to prevent or restrain violations.

But it’s doubtful that the networks’ boycott is the type of restraint on trade that antitrust laws are intended to prevent. The networks didn’t agree to fix prices, allocate customers, or exclude commercial rivals, which is the type of behavior the law is meant to prevent and punish. The pool networks were responding to the president’s treatment of journalists, a temporary protest. Not every “refusal to deal” is an antitrust violation, a restraint on trade that the law prohibits, so it’s a real stretch to investigate here, given the First Amendment implications of the White House’s conduct.

But Donald Trump has long been a fan of announcing investigations into his enemies—regardless of whether they ever come to fruition—as a bully tactic. During his first impeachment inquiry, the Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, testified Trump didn’t care about the outcome of an investigation into the Bidens’ Ukrainian business dealings. He only wanted Ukraine’s new President, Volodymyr Zelensky, to “just” publicly announce that his country was opening one. Trump did the same thing after he lost the 2020 election, asking acting DOJ officials to announce an investigation into election fraud. They declined.

It looks like we’re back there again.

I hope posts like today’s are what you come to Civil Discourse for. My goal is to follow the investigations and lawsuits that help us stay informed about the state of our democracy. Your support makes it possible for me to devote time to tracking new developments and getting an early read on the law involved. And most importantly, your paid subscriptions help me keep this work available to everyone.

We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance

 

Trump's & His Cronies' Corruption Scandals

 

1. Ambassadorial Misconduct

Let’s start with Kimberly Guilfoyle. She reportedly pressured Eric Deters to wire $100,000 directly into her American Express account just days before her confirmation hearing in 2025. 

The exchange is just one of a series of damning text messages reportedly revealing how Deters allegedly repeatedly paid Guilfoyle to pressure executive branch officials on his behalf. And Guilfoyle knew this conduct was unacceptable — she even chastised Deters for sending requests in writing: “Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things…just call me on signal.”

This is one of the most blatant scandals I’ve seen involving a U.S. ambassador. She, of course, denies these allegations, but the Signal exchanges the WSJ released stink to high heaven. The federal law that makes it illegal to bribe public officials or witnesses or offer them unlawful rewards also explicitly covers nominees (which Guilfoyle was at the time), and though the Supreme Court has made it very hard to bring federal bribery charges, the DOJ must investigate.

That’s not even the only Guilfoyle scandal this week! Guilfoyle also faces allegations that she has abused her diplomatic position to promote a Greek energy and construction company and permit a registered lobbyist for the firm to take part in official diplomatic meetings, raising serious concerns about conflicts of interest. We were busy this week calling for a congressional investigation if Congress changes hands — as seems increasingly likely.

2. Meme Coin Madness

Guilfoyle’s story is about so much more than her particular interaction with Deters. She, of course, was allegedly attempting to sell access to Donald Trump — but that was minor league ball compared with Trump himself. 

The president publicly sells access to himself all the time — in fact, the firm behind his meme coin continues to auction off spots to “the most exclusive dinner in the world” for those who are the largest holders of the $TRUMP coin.

My Democracy Defenders colleagues and I have been hammering away to expose these conflicts. We recently received Trump’s annual financial disclosures — and they are damning. 

They reveal that his $TRUMP meme coin alone accounted for a staggering $636 million of his crypto-related earnings in 2025. And, as of this summer, nearly one million buyers had collectively lost an estimated $3.81 billion on this worthless meme coin, whose value had plunged roughly 97 percent from its peak.

No wonder nearly 90 percent of Americans think corruption in government is widespread and roughly 80 percent believe government corruption is causing their costs to increase.

3. Taxpayer-Funded Political Ads

Trump reportedly ordered his budget director to divert millions of dollars in taxpayer funds from the Department of Homeland Security to run political ads — including one recycled from his 2024 campaign. This is against the law. Full stop. Congress has made it perfectly clear: You cannot use taxpayer money to fund political ads. 

Trump has now run multiple ads with our money, all of which aired on major networks during prime time. This is expensive airtime, and we are paying for it.

Facing backlash, including from a number of congressional Republicans, Trump said that his super PAC, MAGA Inc., will begin covering the cost of these ads. But his announcement on Truth Social implicated him in another violation of federal law. As a federal official, he cannot direct super PAC spending. And the madness doesn’t stop there. He’s compounded numerous illegalities, including using music in these campaign-style ads without permission. Trying to get out of breaking one law by breaking other laws is quintessential Trump.

The illegality doesn’t stop there. JMSN, our client, saw his song “Love Me” play illegally as the score of one of these television ads. 

We are proud to represent JMSN alongside Ballard Spahr LLP and Hecker Fink LLP to demand that the Trump administration and MAGA Inc. immediately stop using his song in their ad.

Enough is enough. This week, we and our colleagues sued the Trump administration on behalf of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and a candidate for Wisconsin treasurer, Yee Leng Xiong, for its illegal use of millions in taxpayer dollars for these political ads. We will not allow Trump to take funds, some of which were meant to honor fallen officers, and redirect them to his election propaganda.

4. Pickpocketing the Public

Trump’s willingness effectively to steal from taxpayers doesn’t just stop at ads or meme coins. It’s also infecting our federal agencies. 

In May, Trump’s Justice Department settled his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS by creating a $1.776 billion so-called “Anti-Weaponization” fund. The plot — with Trump on both sides of the v — effectively forced taxpayers to funnel money from our schools and roads directly to his political allies, including individuals charged in connection with the January 6 insurrection.

We at Democracy Defenders Action serve as co-counsel with Platkin LLP and Susman Godfrey LLP for a bipartisan group of 35 former judges who urged the court to reject this scheme. Fortunately, Judge Kathleen Williams did exactly that, denying the settlement in its entirety. 

She concluded that the lawsuit had been filed in bad faith and was intended “to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.” Indeed, she found that the suit was brought in such bad faith that the lawyers who litigated the case had violated their professional ethics obligations — and should be sanctioned. She later reinforced her decision, rejecting Trump’s bid to block enforcement of her order and the sanctions it imposed.

Trump’s team filed an emergency request with the 11th Circuit appellate court to stay these sanctions, but we vigorously opposed it. The 11th Circuit agreed with us and rejected it. With your support, we are proud to have played a key role in stopping the slush fund from coming to fruition and ensure that the appropriate sanctions arising from this sham lawsuit and slush fund remain in place. So much winning — thanks to the help made possible by our paid subscribers.

5. The Epstein Files Cover-Up

For more than a year, Democracy Defenders Fund has been fighting on behalf of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein to expose the truth and secure justice. DDF has filed multiple FOIA requests and has helped to build the case that the DOJ is blatantly violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

In April, the DOJ Office of the Inspector General opened an audit in direct response to our complaints, and just last week Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted our motion for summary judgment, directing the DOJ to expedite the production of records referencing Donald Trump or Mar-a-Lago. We have no doubt that this administration will continue to stall and obstruct, but we will not back down, especially with the Contrarian community behind us. We will get the Trump-Epstein files.

6. Last-Minute Attempt to Rewrite the Rules of Mail-In Voting

Desperate to assert his will over our elections, Trump attempted to use the U.S. Postal Service to impose new restrictions on mail-in ballots. 

He issued an executive order purporting to give the USPS authority not just to deliver mail-in and absentee ballots but also to control how they are handled. The EO directed the agency to impose new rules that would be virtually impossible to implement ahead of the election, intentionally trying to sow chaos and undermine voter confidence. This is patently illegal: The Constitution grants the president no such authority. The power to regulate elections rests with Congress and the states.

My colleagues and I at DDF, along with wonderful partners across the pro-democracy ecosystem, immediately jumped in and filed motions in all 13 mail-in voting proceedings to ensure voting remains free and fair. A federal judge blocked the rule nationwide, and the Supreme Court left in place the lower-court order preventing its implementation before the midterms. I’m confident my mail-in ballot will count, and I want each of you to feel that same confidence in your vote, however you choose to cast it.

7. Insider Truth: Selling Trump’s Posts

In August, Truth Social turned presidential communications into a pay-to-play scheme. Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs the social media app, launched a paid service to give Wall Street firms early access to Trump’s posts. 

Firms that opt in could reportedly be charged as much as $100,000 a month for this advance access. The service will allow the big banks to execute trades based on information that other investors don’t have — allowing them to make a nearly risk-free profit off less sophisticated or powerful investors. 

But this wouldn’t harm just everyday investors and retail traders who can’t pay an exorbitant fee; it will drive up the costs of entering the market — a cost that will be passed down to banks’ clients like you. Just when you think Trump and his cronies couldn’t find any more ways to profit from their power, they somehow manage to reach new heights, even by their own standards.

We are proud with Platkin LLP and the Washington Litigation Group to represent San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, who is courageously taking action and using the tools at his disposal to oppose this. Chiu recently filed a lawsuit attempting to stop this program, arguing that it violates California’s Unfair Competition Law as it gives wealthy traders access to government information before others have a chance to benefit. As Chiu put it: “This scheme turns the public trust into private profit. It is corruption, plain and simple.” Indeed it is. 

Trump is the largest shareholder of Truth Social and is positioned to profit the most from this new offering. We must stop it.

8. Trump’s Kennedy Center Renovation Racket

When Trump tried to add his name to the Kennedy Center, we sued and stopped him, convincing a federal judge to rule that the name change was unlawful. And again the administration refused to abide by the ruling and pursued further attempts to inscribe Trump’s name on the center. So we went back to court. This time, Judge Christopher Cooper issued a permanent injunction barring the board from installing memorials to Trump without congressional authorization. He later blocked Trump’s plan to demolish the center without notice, allowing us to litigate the matter, and granted us discovery into Trump’s temper tantrum demolition threat. Now we are digging into the evidence underlying this outrageous behavior. We won’t stop until we have safeguarded the future of the Kennedy Center for good.

9. Reflecting Pool Insanity

After Trump’s attempted renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool failed spectacularly, the administration was in desperate search for a scapegoat. A 67-year-old Olympic canoeist named Davey Hearn became their primary target simply because he wanted to see for himself what had happened to this beloved American monument.

For the crime of caring about our shared history and our monuments and without any evidence of wrongdoing, the administration arrested him and charged him with vandalizing the Reflecting Pool. We filed seven motions, forcing the government to admit that the Reflecting Pool renovation was a botched job and had nothing to do with our client. And we won. The charges were so bogus a judge dismissed them with prejudice, permanently barring the government from bringing them again.

We and our wonderful partners at the Washington Litigation Group and Steptoe LLP are determined to ensure that what happened to Hearn can never happen again. And we don’t have faith in this DOJ. That’s why we filed a complaint to the department’s Inspector’s General calling for a full investigation into Hearn’s wrongful arrest. This is just the beginning: With your help, we will fight for more accountability and further legal remedies for Davey and anyone else the administration wrongfully targets.

10. It’s a Family Affair

From billion-dollar defense contracts to lucrative investment deals, the Trump family’s profiteering from the presidency knows no bounds. To call their activity an unprecedented level of corruption would be far too charitable. Donald Trump Jr.’s 1789 Capital has ballooned from a few hundred million dollars in assets to several billion and is reportedly in talks to raise another $3 billion, while Eric Trump is cashing in through investments in defense startups and critical minerals.

And let’s not forget son-in-law Jared Kushner, who continues to pursue massive Middle East investments through his private equity firm even as he takes on a diplomatic role in the region. And these are just a few examples of their self-serving dealings. Corruption is the family trade; the emperor has no clothes and his family is naked, too. Nakedly corrupt, that is.

-Norman Eisen, The Contrarian

The Pentagon Gave $350 Million in Contracts to a Firm Closely Tied to a Senior Defense Department Official

 

Among a cadre of Wall Street executives brought into the Pentagon during President Donald Trump’s second term, George K. Kollitides II has emerged as a powerbroker with a broad mandate to improve procurement of weapons and critical minerals.

The longtime partner at the private equity firm Alvarez & Marsal Capital has framed his tour of duty in government as a service to the country. But the work he’s leading has also been a boon to his old friends in the private sector, government procurement records show.

In April, months after Kollitides had started work at the Pentagon, he was listed on a securities filing as continuing to work for his old company as a senior adviser. Two months later, the Defense Department finalized a $281 million no-bid consulting contract with an affiliate firm, Alvarez & Marsal Federal, to advise Kollitides’ new Pentagon office, the records show.

That contract, large for consulting work even by Defense Department standards, is the second in a pair of deals that since December have awarded almost $350 million in military spending to the firm — about five times more than Alvarez & Marsal entities had received from all U.S. agencies combined in the two decades before Trump returned to office, according to federal spending data. Both of those contracts have been for work connected to Pentagon offices where Kollitides is the head or has a senior role.

The deals remain shrouded in secrecy, records show, because they were signed under an unusual contracting method the Defense Department uses to fund experimental weapons — work A&M has never claimed to do. 

They have begun to send unprecedented sums of taxpayer money to a company that boasts helping government agencies create a “customer-centric culture” and that is deeply intertwined with the private equity firm where Kollitides was a partner for almost 10 years. The two partner firms tag-team investment deals and share back-office support, company documents and federal filings show.

Kollitides was still working with A&M Capital when the deals were signed. It’s unclear if he will benefit financially from the windfall of military spending on A&M consulting. His employment at the Pentagon is under a special classification that allows him to keep his financial disclosures confidential.

Ethics experts said it’s generally illegal for executive branch officials to play a role in awarding contracts that would have a direct impact on their own finances, unless they were granted a waiver. “It looks way too cozy to be legitimate. I think taxpayers should be appalled,” said Virginia Canter, a former federal government ethics lawyer. “There are a million consulting firms in D.C. and New York. Why would you sole source this contract? They’re not sending replacement parts for a ship that is sinking.”

After ProPublica sent questions to the Pentagon, Kollitides and both A&M entities early this  week, A&M Capital said Kollitides had just stopped working there days earlier.

In a statement, A&M Capital said it is a “separately capitalized and separately managed firm from the Alvarez & Marsal consulting business” and its “management and employees have no involvement in the day-to-day operations of the consulting business, and vice versa.” The firm said that none of Kollitides’ work for it related to the “defense industry, the Department of War or Mr. Kollitides’ government service.”

The Alvarez & Marsal consulting business did not answer any of ProPublica’s questions, including how it became aware of the possibility that it could seek the $281 million no-bid contract and what services it is providing to Kollitides’ Pentagon team. The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported the existence of some of the Alvarez & Marsal contracting.

“We are proud to serve clients across all industries, and all levels of government,” the company said in a statement. “The common denominator is always the same: we help solve difficult problems.”

“It looks way too cozy to be legitimate. I think taxpayers should be appalled.” Virginia Canter, former federal government ethics lawyer.

Kollitides did not respond to questions about whether he played a role in A&M securing contracts to work for his office, but a Pentagon spokesperson replied for the department and on Kollitides’ behalf saying they both followed all applicable rules.

“The Department of War maintains a rigorous, multi-layered ethics framework that includes financial disclosure reviews, divestitures where appropriate, and screening to prevent conflicts of interest,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Jacob Bliss wrote in an email. Kollitides, he added, “is in full compliance with all ethical laws and regulations. Any claims otherwise are false.”

There is widespread bipartisan agreement that the Pentagon’s procurement systems are in need of radical reform and private-sector know-how could help the country better secure supply lines and accelerate the development of new weapons to ensure the military is prepared to fight future wars.

But current and former defense officials say the massive spending for connected consultants is a reflection of a changed Defense Department under Trump. They say a clubby and politicized culture has taken hold in a wing of the Pentagon controlled by Kollitides and other former Wall Street executives recruited by Steve Feinberg, the billionaire private-equity titan who is now the deputy defense secretary. It’s an operation, they say, that favors people and companies that have close ties to the administration.

This year, ProPublica reported that the Office of Strategic Capital, a unit at the Pentagon that Kollitides helps lead, granted a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr. a $620 million loan after a top aide to the president intervened on the company’s behalf. A group of Democratic lawmakers accused the office of “a staggering level of corruption and influence peddling.”

ProPublica also reported that the same Pentagon unit was considering a loan to Unusual Machines, a second company connected to the president’s son. A defense official told ProPublica recently that the unit is now in the late stages of a $220 million loan for the Florida drone parts maker, where Trump Jr. sits on the advisory board and was granted a stake.

The Pentagon did not respond to a question about the advancing loan process for Unusual Machines and if Trump Jr.’s connections were playing a part. After the earlier loan to a Trump-connected company, the Pentagon said “no company receives preferential treatment” and “political connections play absolutely no role in the Department’s funding decisions.” Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson pushed back on criticism, saying the Defense Department is conducting extensive due diligence on potential lending.

That Pentagon lending unit was launched during the Biden administration with an open application process for interested companies. Current and former officials and people who have interacted with the office say Kollitides and other leaders now rely more on their own personal networks to choose companies to fund — as well as the consultants to vet those deals…

-by Aaron Davis and Robert Faturechi ProPublica

Thoughts on the Mass Rape at Cornell University - Read by Eunice Wong

 

I had a brief experience with a fraternity at Cornell University. I was a senior in high school. I stayed in a frat for a weekend with a former high school classmate. His “brothers” dragged me off a couch where I was sleeping and pinned me to the floor. They yanked up my shirt and dumped dog food on my stomach. They called in the fraternity mastiff and goaded the dog to “eat me.”

The former classmate, Don Chartier, decided he would rather remain in the good graces of his “brothers” than intervene. The experience dissuaded me from applying to the university, destroyed a high school friendship — we had run cross country and track together — and left me with deep loathing for fraternities.

Of course, that prank pales in comparison to the reported gang rape of a female student. But it is part of the same culture of sadism and abuse that runs like an electric current through all fraternities.

You are admitted to these male enclaves by allowing yourself to be hazed, humiliated and stripped of your dignity. Hazing rituals weed out those with enough self-esteem and independence to stand up to the hierarchy. They ensure conformity and obedience. It is a filter. Fraternity “brothers” are self-selected. Those who have the strength to oppose public humiliation and that perpetuated on each new cycle of recruits, leave.

Fraternities across the country are plagued by allegations of rape and sexual assault. Men in fraternities are three times more likely to commit rape than those who do not belong to fraternities. These crimes, well known to fraternity members and university administrators, are masked by a culture of silence.

The president of Cornell, Michael I. Kotlikoff, whose university expels students who protest genocide and shields students who commit rape from criminal prosecution, issued the usual hour-of-reckoning statement that comes accompanied with a lot of vague promises of reform. He is no doubt busy doing damage control with his big donors, not a few of whom come out of the fraternity system.

Kotlikoff and all administrators involved should be fired. Those accused of rape should be criminally charged. The disciplinary investigations of fraternities — which universities keep secret — should be made public. Fraternities found to have engaged in sexual assault — which will be most of them — should be closed. Those fraternity members who carried out sexual assaults — no matter how many years ago — should face trial. This is the minimum. But it is a minimum I am certain Cornell will never achieve.

Universities in the United States have turned education upside down. They make war on scholarship, inquiry, self-criticism, moral autonomy and the search for artistic and esoteric forms of expression — in short, the world of ethics, creativity and ideas. They cater to the demands of rich alumni, who censor curriculum and purge professors and programs. They perpetuate the elitism, racism and rigid definition of gender roles in male fraternities. It is a culture of conformity and intolerance.

Education in the U.S. is a mindless quest for collective euphoria. Students are taught that self-worth and self-fulfillment are found in crowds, in mass emotions, in status, rather than individual transcendence. Those who do not pay deference to the celebration of wealth, privilege and power are cast out as freaks.

It is a war on knowledge in the name of knowledge. “Knowledge,” as C. Wright Mills and Alan Wolfe wrote in “The Power Elite,” is “no longer widely felt as an ideal; it is seen as an instrument. In a society of power and wealth, knowledge is valued as an instrument of power and wealth, and also, of course, as an ornament in conversation.”

James O. Freedman — the former president of Dartmouth College — fought the school’s entrenched culture of elitism, white male entitlement, fraternities and football. The Dartmouth Review published a cover article that depicted Freedman — who was Jewish — as Hitler and wrote that he was orchestrating the “Final Solution” to traditional conservatism at Dartmouth.

Freedman told the college in his inaugural address: We must strengthen our attraction for those singular students whose greatest pleasures may come not from the camaraderie of classmates but from the lonely acts of writing poetry or mastering the cello or solving mathematical riddles or translating Catullus. We must make Dartmouth a hospitable environment for students who march “to a different drummer” — for those creative loners and daring dreamers whose commitment to the intellectual and artistic life is so compelling that they appreciate, as Prospero reminded Shakespeare’s audiences, that for certain persons a library is “dukedom large enough.” It was a forlorn and lonely battle. Dartmouth proved impervious to change.

Andrew Lohse, a former Dartmouth fraternity member, was profiled in an article in Rolling Stone magazine. He was ostracized, not only by students, but the university administration, for his public exposure of the hazing and abuse he experienced.

“I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a kiddie pool of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beer poured down fellow pledges’ ass cracks… among other abuses,” he wrote.

He accused Dartmouth’s 17 fraternities, 11 sororities and three co-ed houses — to which roughly half of the student body belonged — of perpetuating a culture of “pervasive hazing, substance abuse and sexual assault,” as well as an “intoxicating nihilism” that dominates campus social life.

“One of the things I’ve learned at Dartmouth — one thing that sets a psychological precedent for many Dartmouth men — is that good people can do awful things to one another for absolutely no reason,” he wrote. “Fraternity life is at the core of the college’s human and cultural dysfunctions.”

Any effort to hold football programs or Greek organizations to account becomes an attack against the collective identity that gives universities their sense of prestige and empowerment. All those who question or criticize these organizations are treated as the enemy.

Bernard Lefkowitz captured the sickness of this culture in his book “Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb.” Lefkowitz wrote about a group of high school athletes in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, who in 1989 lured a 17-year-old developmentally disabled girl to a basement. The boys sexually abused her with a broomstick and a baseball bat. When the assault became public, the town rallied not around the victim, but “our guys.”

The woman who said she was drugged and raped by the Cornell fraternity members has received “multiple threats” to withdraw her civil lawsuit, according to her lawyer Thomas Giuffra.

The corporate world sees football players, fraternity brothers and sorority sisters as prime recruits. Students are conditioned to join the team, to surrender moral autonomy, to accept and carry out acts of personal humiliation, to treat with contempt those who oppose them or who are different, to define their life by an infantile narcissism centered on greed and self-promotion and to remain silent about crimes they witness or take part in.

It is the very ethic of corporations. The ruling elite sees in Greek organizations and college sports programs the training ground for an amoral class of speculators, bankers and corporatists who pillage the country. The goal is to train people to subsume themselves into the herd, to unquestioningly use technical and vocational skills to serve the system.

These forces of conformity are hostile to the humanities, where students are taught to question assumptions and structures. The humanities prod students to seek a life of meaning and an ethical code that challenges the blind, utilitarian obedience to power and profit that corporations and the military instill.

The goal of education is not to tell students what to think, but to teach them how to think. It is to instill the capacity for moral choice and moral action. The latest sexual assault case is a savage indictment of Cornell University and a savage indictment of us.

-Chris Hedges & Eunice Wong

What's That Smell?

 

The President of the United States has been accused of "letting a huge fart rip" on live TV, as it's been claimed a bystander "struggled to breathe" following the alleged blunder.

On October 7, Donald Trump made an announcement, which was streamed by the White House and various news outlets, but people were drawn to something specific when he was speaking, as many think he seemed to have a bit of an accident. When he was talking, viewers were drawn to the woman standing close to him, as they believe her facial expression said a lot about what could have been happening behind the scenes.

It comes after Trump's "awkward walk" is claimed to have sparked a number of diaper rumors and "poo smell theories."

George Conway re-posted a clip of Trump talking; however, he seemed to zoom in on one particular moment, as he was distracted by the woman standing beside Trump. It was later revealed it was Susan Dell, and her facial expression has now sparked widespread discussion.

Alongside a picture of Susan, George wrote: "This poor woman looks like she is struggling to breathe." You then see a screengrab of her near Trump, and people think she seemed to appear quite uncomfortable. Her face is quite serious, and it almost looks as if she's trying not to breathe in the surrounding air. It triggered all sorts of conversation online.

One person said: "Well she is standing directly behind poopy pants!" Another added: "Loaded Diaper Don strikes again."

-The Mirror

Donald Trump accused of 'letting huge fart rip' on TV as bystander 'struggles to breathe' - The Mirror US