Honest observer, citizen. Believer in the Enlightenment, science, freedom, tolerance, the benefits of business for society, and a secular State.
California, USA
Joined June 2016
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Publius retweeted
I have a history PhD from Oxford and try to support all of my historical claims with strong evidence, particularly when regarding the president of the United States.
But based on a comprehensive review of 250 years of American history, it is simply irrefutable that Donald Trump is by far the most corrupt president in U.S. history when it comes to using the office to enrich himself and his family.
Here are the facts, and why there isn’t even a close second.
Trump’s own federal financial disclosure reported more than $1.4 billion in 2025 income from family crypto ventures, including about $635 million from his meme coin and nearly $800 million from World Liberty Financial. Reuters separately estimated that the family added at least $2.3 billion to its fortune from crypto ventures after Trump returned to the White House.
The clearest example of how Trump used the office came in May 2025. The 220 biggest holders of his meme coin were invited to dine with the sitting president at his private golf club. The coin jumped more than 60 percent when the dinner was announced. To get a seat at the table, you had to buy and hold a product that made the president money. Trump turned access to the presidency into a sales pitch.
The foreign dealings raise an even more serious question. Four days before Trump took office, an investment vehicle backed by a UAE national security official agreed to pay $500 million for nearly half of World Liberty Financial. The Wall Street Journal reported that $187 million of the initial payment was directed to Trump family entities.
Trump is clearly not the first United States president to be guilty of corruption, but the size and scale of his malfeasance put him in a league of his own.
Under Ulysses S. Grant, whiskey distillers and federal officials pocketed money by cheating the government out of liquor taxes. Under Warren Harding, Interior Secretary Albert Fall took bribes in exchange for leasing federal oil reserves. Richard Nixon had a personal tax scandal, but his defining abuse of presidential power was the Watergate cover-up, an effort to protect his hold on office. LBJ’s political connections helped turn a small Texas radio station into a family broadcasting empire.
By September 2025, less than eight months into Donald Trump’s second term, he and his family were roughly $5 billion richer than they had been around the 2024 election, according to Forbes. In comparison, a reasonable estimate is that all 44 other U.S. presidents combined added about $250 million to their wealth while in office, adjusted to today’s dollars. That puts the Trump family’s gain at about 20 times the estimated combined total for all other presidents over the course of two and half centuries.
The election results were, at least in part, a clear repudiation of this staggering and historically unprecedented corruption. Congress now has a mandate to investigate, follow the money, pursue the recovery of all ill-gotten gains, and enact enforceable safeguards so that no president can ever again use the White House as a vehicle for personal enrichment.
Publius retweeted
UNFORGIVEABLE: A Minnesota doctor just revealed Renée Good still had a pulse 8 minutes after she was shot by an ICE agent.
A physician on scene offered to administer aid and was denied.
In any courtroom, preventing medical aid after using deadly force isn’t just cruel, it’s an aggravating factor.
Publius retweeted
Confirmed --this really happened. They were not authorized to do it and the purpose is unclear.
Let this sink in: ICE agents reportedly blocked the emergency entrance of a Los Angeles hospital for TWO HOURS, forcing ambulances carrying people who needed emergency care to go elsewhere.
This isn’t law enforcement. This is a reckless abuse of power that put innocent people’s lives at risk.
An ambulance entrance is not a political battleground. A hospital emergency room is not an immigration checkpoint.
And federal agents do not get to hold an entire community’s access to emergency medical care hostage.
Imagine being in an ambulance, fighting for your life, only to be diverted because federal agents decided their operation mattered more than emergency access.
Where is the humanity? Where is the accountability? And where is the line that these agents are no longer allowed to cross?
You cannot claim to be protecting America while putting Americans’ lives in danger.
This isn’t making America great. It’s making America cruel. And anyone defending this should be ashamed.
Publius retweeted
This is a formal request for Susie Wiles and James Blair to stop harassing me with texts and calls.
If there is a factual inaccuracy in what I said, send it to me in writing and I will vigorously correct and apologize for any misstatements. I will note that everything I said is substantiated by other senior officials.
If you want to file a lawsuit and get into discovery of whether it’s provably true that Ballard and Continental had an undue influence on the White House policy process, do it.
I believe we are in an existential moment for the country, and Americans were owed an honest accounting of the past two years so we identify the problems we need to move on from.
Publius retweeted
I’m here for Powell Memo content.
It’s a 35 page document. We’re on about page 34.5.
James Talarico traces 50 years of trickle-down back to one 1971 document, the Powell memo, a corporate blueprint to buy power
“In fact, you can, you can pinpoint this one document called the Powell memo, 1971.”
“But if you read this memo, it's basically a blueprint for how corporate interests can start to dismantle the Great Society and the New Deal”
“They're going to spend massive amounts of money in our politics, buying politicians in both parties, elevate corporate voices in media, appoint sympathetic judges.”
“And that has really been the story of the last 50 years in this country, last five decades.”
w/ @jamestalarico
Publius retweeted
Are you fucking kidding us?
The US Secretary of Defense posts “Patriots in control,” a notorious QAnon slogan. THREE MINUTES later, Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev responds with “WWG1WGA,” another QAnon cult mantra.
What the actual fuck is this? A coordinated trolling operation? A joint US-Russian QAnon convention? Or have the lunatics finally taken over both asylums?
These people are running two nuclear powers, for fuck's sake.
Publius retweeted
When I first saw this clip I thought she was referring to Charlie’s favorite brand of hot sauce. But no, as it turns out they are selling Kirk Hot Sauce for $8.99.
Gov Shapiro - It seems like the State of PA might be able to investigate and potentially prosecute the instances that occurred in PA? @JoshShapiroPA @DaveSunday_
An investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle has uncovered disturbing findings in ICE’s own internal investigations of detainee deaths.
The Chronicle obtained 29 mortality reviews covering deaths between January 2025 and January 2026. ICE investigators found that 23 of the 29 people died after receiving medical care that fell below safe standards.
In at least eight cases, medical staff failed to perform CPR correctly or failed to perform it at all.
In 13 cases, staff failed to communicate warning signs to medical providers or incoming personnel.
The investigation also identified failures at Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, including the deaths of Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir and Chaofeng Ge.
At least 62 people have died in ICE custody since Trump returned to office. The investigation found no documented disciplinary actions or sanctions against the contractors or staff implicated in the deficient care.
If a hospital or nursing facility had documented failures of this magnitude, it could face immediate regulatory intervention, financial penalties, loss of federal funding, or even closure. Those responsible could also face criminal investigation.
ICE’s own investigators documented repeated failures in its detention facilities, including failures that preceded detainees’ deaths.
People held in government custody are dependent on that government for their medical care and their safety. These findings demand accountability.
Publius retweeted
@jaredkushner @SEPeaceMissions Your "new" European security architecture already exists. Moscow signed it in 1975 and 1990, then shredded it. My latest Diplomatic Cable: we need a Ukraine deal first, one European voice, and real diplomats to get it done. newsletter.ivodaalder.com/p/…
Publius retweeted
Russell Vought has found a neat way to make Congress optional: hold approved money until the fiscal year ends, then pretend the calendar did the canceling. In September, OMB sought $810 million in rescissions. The GAO said the administration couldn't use that request to let the funding expire. Somehow the man who lectures everyone about constitutional government keeps misplacing Article I.
The stakes are Head Start, disaster relief, medical research, and the basic promise that laws passed by Congress mean something. Get the records. Put the officials under oath. Close the claimed loopholes. A president doesn't get a line-item veto just because his budget director knows how to wait until midnight.
Russell Vought is the most powerful Trump official most Americans have never heard of. And Democrats are coming for his power.
@crampell explains how Trump’s budget chief helped undermine Congress’s authority and why his reckoning may be coming.
lnk.thebulwark.com/4irI149?u…
Publius retweeted
Hear Trump Chief of Staff @StephenM describe how he hates "not just the millions of immigrants but their descendants too." Understand that they hate Americans, they want our people out of this country, and they're not going to change. It's about to get massively worse.
Publius retweeted
Joe Rogan just hosted his most important episode ever after Republicans lost the midterms as White House insider Calley Means just exposed the real people who are running Trump’s presidency and lists key inner circle names like Susie Wiles, Jame Blair, Richard Walters, and the most powerful lobbying firm known as Ballard Partners:
MEANS: “Susie Wiles is the most powerful chief of staff in modern American history. She has taken a stranglehold on any policy decision. No policy decision gets done without her office giving it the okay. She was one of the top lobbyists in the country. It is impossible to describe to you how demonic this culture is.”
CONTEXT: Means, who resigned from the administration in OCTOBER, says he witnessed an extraordinary concentration of power inside the White House.
He alleges that cabinet secretaries and senior officials spent enormous amounts of time attempting to win favor with Wiles' office because of its influence over which policies could advance.
He then identifies several people he believes were central to that power structure:
SUSIE WILES: White House chief of staff.
JAMES BLAIR: A longtime Trump political strategist and former deputy White House chief of staff.
RICHARD WALTERS: Deputy White House chief of staff and longtime Republican political operative.
WALKER BARRETT: Senior White House adviser with extensive congressional experience.
But the most consequential part of his accusation concerns the CORPORATE LOBBYING INDUSTRY.
Before entering Trump's White House, Wiles had a career representing corporate clients, including working at the influential Washington lobbying firm BALLARD PARTNERS.
And the money involved in that industry is staggering.
According to federal lobbying disclosures, Ballard Partners collected approximately $88 MILLION in lobbying revenue during 2025, more than QUADRUPLING its reported revenue from 2024.
That made Ballard one of the highest-earning lobbying operations in Washington.
And in MAY 2025, the watchdog organization Public Citizen identified SIX FORMER WILES CLIENTS that had reported lobbying White House offices during the administration's first three months.
Those clients included companies involved in tobacco, automobiles, fertilizer, and other major industries.
The White House disputed suggestions of improper influence and said Wiles generally did not participate in meetings or decisions involving former clients.
Those disclosures establish real corporate lobbying relationships.
They do NOT, by themselves, prove that Wiles improperly favored those companies or directed policies for their benefit.
But Means argues that the broader culture of Washington is precisely what Trump promised to confront.
Now consider the extraordinary political timing.
IMPORTANT NOTES: On NOVEMBER 3, Democrats won control of BOTH CHAMBERS OF CONGRESS in a sweeping midterm defeat for Republicans.
And TODAY, NOVEMBER 6, Trump announced that Susie Wiles will leave the chief-of-staff position, with Stephen Miller taking over on November 9.
Trump PRAISED Wiles for her service and said she would continue working for his political operation.
Publius retweeted
Putin does not have a veto over European security.
Any agreement to end the war must prevent Russia from re-arming and re-attacking.
This is why earlier this year, I put forward a paper with core demands towards Moscow, which was discussed by EU Foreign Ministers. This should be the basis for any negotiations.
Concessions should be on the aggressor, not on the victim.
My press remarks in Warsaw alongside @sikorskiradek and @andrii_sybiha ↓
Publius retweeted
Why should Congressional Democrats investigate corporate America if their mandate is to deliver real economic change? Because investigations are a key catalyst for securing reform and legislation. For much of the last century, Congress used to be the main institutional player working to secure an economy that serves working people. A key tool was oversight. Lawmakers routinely investigated complex markets and major corporations, identifying problems and exposing wrongdoing. A major goal of these investigations was to learn what was driving certain problems and figure out how to fix them.
After Democrats took back the House during the first Trump administration in 2019, I joined the House Judiciary Committee as a staffer on the Antitrust Subcommittee. Under the terrific leadership of @RepJerryNadler and then-Rep @davidcicilline, we pursued an 18-month investigation into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, securing key evidence of how their business practices were undermining competition and harming people, setting the basis for both lawsuits and proposed legislation.
A few lessons from that experience:
1. The quality of legislative oversight depends on the staff and the support of top members to confront power. Committee and Subcommittee Chairs that are focused on getting answers and unafraid to take on powerful corporate interests will make the difference between oversight that doesn’t surrender to their evasion tactics and oversight that aims low or flames out.
Even a relatively small number of dogged, talented lawyers ready to dive in can make a big impact. In the 1930s a single congressional lawyer, Ferdinand Pecora, helped reshape our entire banking system by subpoenaing records and interrogating top financiers, including J.P Morgan. The investigation exposed self-dealing, market manipulation, and tax avoidance, and laid the groundwork for foundational New Deal legislation, including the Glass-Steagall Act and the Securities Exchange Act.
2. Eliminating bottlenecks to moving investigations forward is key. For example, the House should make sure that Subcommittee Chairs can issue subpoenas rather than needing the sign-off of the full Committee or its Chair. A credible threat of sending subpoenas is critical for credible oversight.
3. Ensuring that members can develop the muscle to effectively interrogate CEOs requires investing in real preparation. In the lead up to the hearing with Bezos, Pichai, Cook, and Zuckerberg, the Antitrust Subcommittee spent months reviewing millions of documents collected from the firms, interviewing affected parties, briefing members on key evidence, and conducting practice hearings. Members came into the hearing deeply informed and able to rebut and call out CEO dissembling. The result was some of the most effective member questioning of executives we’ve seen in decades. @TheProspect wrote up a great overview: prospect.org/2020/07/30/triu…
4. For decades, institutional capacity in Congress has been extremely weak. Much of this traces back to the Gingrich Revolution, which was effectively the 1995 DOGE-ing of Congress. Republican leadership fired over 600 professional staffers, eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment, and gutted research capacity. None of that capacity was ever meaningfully restored.
As a result, members have way fewer resources to develop serious expertise or go deep on a new topic. Members should start rebuilding that capacity so the institution can fully play its Article I role, where Congress can again do serious policy development and legislating and serve as a real check on the executive and judicial branches.
5. AI markets should be high on the list of investigations. The business decisions of the major AI firms have huge public ramifications, yet the public is at a severe informational disadvantage when it comes to how these markets work and the choices these firms are making. A congressional investigation will help ensure future legislative action is based on a more complete view of what is going on rather than selective and partial corporate disclosures.
Publius retweeted
Criminal. Thank you, @RepStenyHoyer, for calling the Pentagon out on this. This is not Hegseth's money. This is the American people's money appropriated through a democratic process.
It is inconceivable that $400 million in appropriated military assistance still hasn’t been delivered to Ukraine. I urge the Pentagon to secure the delivery of this essential equipment right away in order to save lives, protect civilians, & help bring about the victory that must be this war’s end.
hoyer.house.gov/media/press-…
Dear @dscc @dccc @DNC This is a phrasing that works. This is the way to get the insane money out of politics, and to restore power to the voters 👇👇.
Publius retweeted
So, let me flag a few things, traitor.
1. "European security architecture" is a phrase the Kremlin uses. We already have one: it's called NATO.
2. You conflate (as you always do) the victim of this war with the aggressor. The aggressor is Russia.
3. "Root causes" is Russian for "do it our way" and you know it.
4. Nothing a word about Russian withdrawal, the occupied territories, POWs or deported children. Weird.
5. Lavrov wrote this for you.
6. Fuck Putin, fuck Russia, and fuck you.
President Trump today advanced an important discussion with several European leaders about the need for a broader European security architecture that can help establish the conditions for lasting peace.
Building on his leadership and the substantive work undertaken this week in Brussels with Ukraine, NATO, and our European partners, @SEPeaceMissions and I wanted to share some of the objectives guiding our ongoing discussions.
For more than 30 years, Europe and Russia have struggled to establish a sustainable security framework. Decades of mistrust, competing security concerns, and the devastating consequences of this war make this an extraordinarily difficult challenge, but one that is essential to lasting peace.
Our objective is to develop practical arrangements that address the security concerns of all sides, reduce the risk of future conflict, and create a more stable and predictable security environment.
We are exploring five principal goals: permanent security consultations, reliable crisis communications, greater military transparency, reciprocal measures to reduce escalation risks, and an enduring framework for long-term European security and stability.
Any arrangements must fully respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independent decision-making of every nation. Each country will retain authority over its own security and alliances, and no country would have a veto over another’s sovereign choices. NATO will remain central to European collective defense, and this initiative would build upon existing institutions and commitments.
We will continue consultations through the Shell Bay format with Ukraine, NATO, the EU, and our European partners, expanding engagement to ensure that all relevant perspectives and ideas are considered. We will also engage Russia as part of the peace negotiations.
Next week in Abu Dhabi, the United States will convene the first trilateral peace discussions with Ukraine and Russia since February. All parties remain intensely engaged in preparing for substantive and productive negotiations. We will consult closely with our European partners on the sidelines and, if progress is made, aim to move toward a broader multilateral format with their direct participation.
These ideas continue to evolve, and we welcome thoughtful input. Creating the right structure will be critical to ending this war and transitioning from conflict toward conditions that make possible a durable peace.
This is difficult, detailed work. There are no easy solutions. But the opportunity to help end this devastating war and build a foundation for a more peaceful, secure, and prosperous Europe for generations to come makes it a challenge well worth undertaking.
We will see how these discussions develop and continue working intensively with all parties toward President Trump’s objective of a comprehensive and lasting peace.
I hope this man succeeds in his lawsuit. 👇👇@FoxNews @CNN @AC360 @jaketapper @AliVelshi @JoyceWhiteVance
