Update: Trump & global warming

Trump likes to pardon polluters who 

break environmental laws

Trump has repeatedly rejected climate change, calling it a hoax, con job, or a scam. While in office, his administrations have aggressively moved to weaken the EPA and neuter environmental laws and regulations. In essence, environmental laws and regulations are mostly no longer in effect. There is no major enforcement in practical terms. Law and regulation enforcement still exists on paper in a small number of cases. The number of civil lawsuits, inspections, penalties, and prosecutions has fallen sharply to a point that many experts describe enforcement efforts as effectively collapsed, not a functioning enforcement regime.

Targeting endangered species

Trump and MAGA elites also do not care about species going extinct. At present, the greatest threat to animals in the US and globally is habitat destruction. Grasslands are being converted to farms, forests are cut, and wetlands are being drained to build suburbs. That’s the main reason why hundreds of species have been listed under the Endangered Species Act. That law gives federal protection to species that are currently at risk of extinction or are about to be. Well, at least that is what federal law used to do.

A new Trump administration rule says that destroying habitat of federally threatened and endangered species is no longer explicitly illegal. That is the case even if it causes species extinctions. That reverses decades of regulatory precedent and practice. Experts note that Trump’s new rule directly contradicts the intent of the Endangered Species Act. Congress passed that law in 1973 with near-unanimous bipartisan support. Richard Nixon signed the bill into law.

The legality of Trump’s new rule is being challenged in court, but this is another example of the intense hostility that Trump and MAGA elites have for environmental protections and laws. 

Ignoring public opinion

MAGA’s constant hostility toward environmental law and protection is contrary to majority US public opinion. About 66% are worried some or a lot about climate change. But, authoritarians usually don’t care about public opinion. And kleptocrats don’t care about much of anything if it gets in the way of amassing wealth. Public opinion on this issue has little to no impact on Trump and pro-pollution MAGA politics and policy. To limit public disapproval, Trump is hiding as much information related to global warming as possible. 

Info sources: 

Trump wages battle against regulations, not climate change -- Trump's recent decision to pull out of the Paris climate deal was just his latest rapid-fire move to weaken or dismantle federal initiatives to reduce carbon emissions, which scientists say are heating the planet to levels that could have disastrous consequences.

Trump's EPA issues record low legal actions against polluters, watchdog group finds -- Last March, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced plans to target more than two dozen rules and policies, calling it the "most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history".

Despite What This EPA Says, Enforcement under Trump Has Dropped -- In a press release, the agency claims the results show “the strongest enforcement and compliance results in years.” But three independent groups’ analyses of this report, including the group we represent, paint a much different picture: of a record plunge in the agency’s enforcement of the nation’s laws protecting human health and the environment. 

Civil Cases Against Major Polluters Plummet Under Trump -- And last week, the E.P.A. said it would rescind the landmark scientific finding that enables the government to regulate the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet.

It’s no longer illegal to destroy the one thing endangered species need most to survive -- Under the new rule, set to take effect in September, “harm” no longer explicitly includes actions that may accidentally or indirectly doom a wildlife population to extinction.

Trump administration rule weakens protections for threatened species --  The Trump administration finalized a major change on Friday to how threatened species ​are considered in agency actions, removing regulatory language aimed at ‌preventing damage to wildlife habitats and drawing a legal challenge.

Climate Change Concern Near Its High Point in U.S. -- In addition to the 44% now worrying a great deal about global warming or climate change, another 22% worry “a fair amount,” while 12% say they worry “only a little” and 23% do not worry at all.

As Trump Administration Purges Climate Data and Web Pages, Research Groups Scramble to Save Information -- The Trump administration has directed federal agency staff to remove climate references and scientific data from many web pages. Researchers are rushing to archive it.

Major climate change reports are removed from U.S. websites -- Legally mandated U.S. national climate assessments seem to have disappeared from the federal websites built to display them, making it harder for state and local governments and the public to learn what to expect in their backyards from a warming world.

Trump Pardons Violators of the Clean Air Act and a Major Donor -- The White House announced on Friday that President Trump had issued pardons to 11 men, most of whom had been convicted of crimes related to the Clean Air Act, a bedrock environmental law.

Understanding Trump’s primary motives: authoritarianism, vengeance, and grift

https://protectdemocracy.org/threat-tracker/

By now it is clear and undeniable that Trump’s destructiveness runs deep and broad. Much more than what is needed for him to merely gain wealth and power. Something else is going on beyond mere blind lust for wealth and power.

The evidence so far indicates there are three main drivers or motives for such vast destruction. One is his innate authoritarianism and need for control. The 2nd is a need for personal vengeance against real and imagined wrongs. Last, and overlapping both and unifying his main motives, is his ruthless drive for self-enrichment via any means, including all kinds of grift. Reporting and analyses of his actions in office and explicit statements in Project 2025 make clear that his governing blueprint is aimed at concentrating power in the presidency and special interests. The tactics are standard for modern authoritarians in liberal democracies. Trump weakens checks and balances, attacks opposition and the free press, and politicizes and corrupts democratic institutions and the rule of law. Reliable sources describe this as an assault on democratic guardrails, not just ordinary partisan hardball.

Authoritarianism, specifically an above-the-law dictatorship for himself, is one part of the mindset. Reporting has documented a vast authoritarian war and vengeance campaign against federal employees, prosecutors, universities, law firms, cities, critics, the public interest, and democratic institutions, laws and norms. Trump himself openly frames many of his authoritarian attacks as “retribution”. The dictator demands revenge with his tyrant-level power. That significantly explains why the damage is often excessive. Enemies, real and imagined, are not just defeated in MAGA’s war on democracy and the rule of law. They are humiliated, intimidated, and sometimes made to pay.

On top of tyranny and vengeance, the third primary motive is grift or greed. Trump has repeatedly corrupted public office and political access into a vehicle for his personal enrichment. Watchdogs and news outlets have tracked family-linked profit streams, monetization of the presidency, and a pattern of self-dealing that is far bigger that recent modern politics had allowed. His criminal cases and convictions are relevant as direct evidence of his mindset where rules are obstacles, to be neutered or avoided, but not constraints.

Taken together, these motives make the destructiveness more much more intelligible. Authoritarianism creates destructive machinery, vengeance decides who gets crushed, and grift explains why so much corruption and institutional damage gets tolerated or even encouraged. Trump’s harm is not random at all of one sees those three core motives as primary drivers of Trump politics and policy. So far, what we see from Trump and MAGA politics and policy is a wealth and power project that rewards Trump personally with authoritarian power, satisfaction of retaliation, and wealth extraction all at once. It’s a win-win-win for Trump and his anointed special interest allies and corrupt enablers, but a lose-lose-lose for democracy, the rule of law, personal wealth and freedom, and the public interest.

Q1: If Trump politics and policy are mostly not driven by his lust for anti-democratic dictatorship, personal vengeance and wealth by grift, what are his primary drivers, e.g., defense of democracy, honest, transparent governance, lowering the price of food, gas and rent, stopping illegal immigration, or waging war against liberalism and Democratic Party communism or socialism?

Q2: What is the evidence, if any, that Trump politics and policy are truly driven primarily by defense of democracy, honest, transparent governance, lowering the price of food, gas and rent, stopping illegal immigration, or waging war against liberalism and Democratic Party communism or socialism?

Info sources:

1. Authoritarian Action Watch — Authoritarians use a consistent playbook of seven tactics. We’re tracking how rapidly the use and effectiveness of those tactics is changing in the U.S.

2. Sliding Toward Authoritarianism? — The Trump administration has embraced a wide range of authoritarian tactics, policies, and actions that undermine human rights protections as well as many key pillars of US democracy.

3. One Year of Project 2025: 53 Percent of Authoritarian Agenda’s Domestic Policy Recommendations Completed or Underway — The administration has used the framework of Project 2025 to consolidate power in those loyal to the president. Federal funding and policy decisions are now designed to punish those who disagree with the administration.

4. Trump’s campaign of retribution: At least 470 targets and counting — In his second term, Donald Trump has turned a campaign pledge to punish political opponents into a guiding principle of governance.

5. Trump promised retribution – how far will he go? — in a series of interviews following his May 2024 felony conviction, [Trump] was more blunt. He told television psychologist Dr Phil that “sometimes revenge can be justified” and “revenge does take time”

6. Tracking retaliatory use of arrests, prosecutions, and investigations by the Trump administration — Since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, the Department of Justice has launched numerous investigations and prosecutions against his political opponents – often, but not always, after direct public threats from the president himself. Most of those cases have failed

7. Trump ran on a promise of revenge. He’s making good on it

8. How the Establishment Is Helping Trump’s Revenge-a-thon

9. How Weak Federal Ethics Laws Enable Presidential Profiteering — Since taking office in January 2025, President Trump has pocketed an estimated $3 billion from his various business enterprises. His family is estimated to have raked in billions more.

10. The Corruption Chronicles — The scale and severity of Trump’s conflicts of interest has already far outstripped those of his first term.

11. Exposing President Trump’s Pay-to-Play Administration — This pay-to-play relationship is a defining feature of how Trump’s second administration is operating, by embracing unprecedented levels of unabashed political corruption. Multimillion dollar checks get political donors appointed to the presidential Cabinet; seven-figure corporate donations are rewarded with support for legislative and policy positions; and hefty inaugural fund donations make federal investigations disappear.

Trump Family Grift, Inc.

A Trump corruption roundup

It's time for another update on how Trump’s crime business operations are doing. Enquiring minds want to know. Bottom line, they’re doing extremely well.

That ain’t gonna happen under Trump

He is America’s Swamp Filler-in-Chief

Pilfering from Venezuela

One article, Trump Hit With Demand for Answers Over $13B Secret (and this), reports that about $13 billion collected by the US government from Venezuelan oil sales has "disappeared" somehow. Who controls that money and where it went has not been made public. Given Trump’s rock solid track record of shameless corruption, it is reasonable to believe that Trump or his family or allies have siphoned off a at least few billions of that, with most of it secretly falling under Trump’s control. Trump claims the money is controlled by Venezuela, but we all know he is a chronic liar in addition to being a thief.

That speculation could be mostly or completely wrong. However, in view of his track record of corruption the burden of proof is in Trump himself to prove he hasn’t stolen some or all of that loot. That’s the rational thing to believe in view of all available evidence. 

One can also wonder why the US government, or MAGA thieves, collect money from Venezuelan oil sales. That’s another MAGA corruption mystery.

Corporate pardons for sale

In an unusually creepy and corrupt move, Trump has started issuing pardons for crimes by sleazy corporations. The “reasoning” is that since corporations are people, they can be pardoned too! Makes perfect sense.  /s

 An article, Trump Invents the Corporate Pardon, points out that corporate personhood dates back to a USSC headnote in an 1886 lawsuit. There, the high court, in its infallible wisdom, hinted in Santa Clara County v. Union Pacific Railroad that corporations were covered by the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. That was in a headnote, not the holding of the case. But because kleptocrats, oligarchs, oligarchy, wealth and power all love the idea of civil liberties applying to corporations, the concept has somehow morphed into a legal precedent.  

Remember Mitt Romney’s famous 2011 battle cry, “Corporations are people, my friend”. So there you have it, my friends. Reporting such as, The Most Corrupt Presidency in American History, by the Numbers, reminds us that Trump's pardons of human criminals as of last March included forgiveness of over $2 billion in fines and crime victim restitutions.

Anyway, the reporting notes that Trump has turned the presidential pardon into a tool for corporate clemency, including pardoning a corporation itself. He has granted nine corporate pardons, wiping out about $200 million in fines, with roughly half of that tied to BitMEX, arguably a corrupt bitcoin corporation. Secrecy and opacity are standard operating procedures for Trump and MAGA elites. The crypto industry staunchly supports Trump, and he staunchly supports crypto. This reeks of large-scale grifting and corruption.

Note that as has been the case for Trump’s pardons of criminals, his pardons of corporations wipe out culpability not only for crimes, but also for fines and restitution to victims the courts impose. Trump let BitMEX off the hook for $200 million. One has to wonder how much of that flows directly or indirectly, secretly back to Trump.  

More crypto and crime shenanigans

In other reporting, US to Drop Charges for Alleged $722 Million Crypto Fraudster, Trump shows his support for crypto criminals. DOJ leaders are going to drop charges against Matthew Goettsche, the alleged mastermind of a $722 million crypto Ponzi scheme. That comes in 2026 after a 2019 indictment that had been slowly headed toward trial at the usual leisurely federal court pace. The DOJ dropping the case comes after Trump’s stopping enforcement of crypto crime laws. Not surprisingly, Goettsche’s lawyers had connections to the Trump administration while lobbying Trump’s DOJ for relief from prosecution.

As this reporting indicates, Trump Justifies Money Made as President With Inaccurate Claims. Trump falsely says the $2 billion he grifted during his second term was due to a hot stock market. He also lied when he said that he is the only president to donate his salary -- two others have done so before him. As usual for a shameless liar and crook, he rejects any notion of impropriety. He says he is just an honest guy doing honest work protecting us from criminals, thieves and all sorts of miscreants. 

Note that he is a proven chronic liar, so that can be taken with a block of salt. One report summarizes the situation like this: “here we are in Trump's second term, so overwhelmed by dodgy-sounding deals that any attempt to measure or characterize the scope of corruption can seem preemptively futile. The numbers are too big, the conflicts too brazen, the examples too numerous”.

That sounds about right.

Q1: Does the public record contain enough evidence of corruption, concealment, and incentive structures, e.g., a corrupted rule of law and a corrupted USSC, to justify a presumption of bad faith and corruption by Trump and MAGA elites? 

Q2: Is demanding disclosure, tracing money flows, and assuming that the absence of transparency is the primary means that Trump uses to get his bribes and payoffs, legal or not?**

** Lest we forget, in practice it isn’t illegal for Trump to take bribes and payoffs. The USSC has made damned sure that Trump is protected from liability for his crimes in office. In theory maybe some of it is illegal. But in practice under MAGA’s pro-corruption laws and MAGA’s corrupted DOJ and FBI, the reality is that Trump is not going to be prosecuted for any federal crimes he is involved in. That’s probably the sad case for as long as he lives.

The Symposium of Silicon (Satire)

 

The Symposium of Silicon

A dialogue in the manner of Plato, wherein SOCRATES finds himself, inexplicably, at a dinner party of tech oligarchs

---

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Musk, Thiel, Karp, Altman, Huang

The scene: a rooftop in Palo Alto. Wine is served in glasses shaped like rocket boosters. SOCRATES has arrived believing he was invited to discuss the nature of justice.

---

SOCRATES: Friends, I confess confusion. I came expecting a discussion of the just city, and instead I find you speaking of robots, gods, and something called "abundance." Perhaps we might begin simply — Musk, you spoke first. What is this AGI of which you speak?

MUSK: Socrates, imagine — no, you cannot imagine, that's the point — imagine a civilization where the difference between man and machine is as the difference between a chimpanzee and a man. We will be the chimpanzees, Socrates. Contentedly swinging in our trees. Eating our bananas. It will be wonderful.

SOCRATES: I see. And in this arrangement, who governs the chimpanzee?

MUSK: No one need govern anyone! Money will not exist. You simply have anything you think of.

SOCRATES: Anything?

MUSK: Anything.

SOCRATES: Suppose I think of your rocket company.

MUSK: (pause) Well, obviously there are edge cases.

THIEL: (interrupting, softly, as though revealing a secret) Socrates, may I speak plainly? What Elon describes as utopia I recognize as something far graver. When men promise universal comfort, universal safety, one world without want — this is not the coming of God, Socrates. This is the coming of the Antichrist.

SOCRATES: The Antichrist... offers abundance?

THIEL: Precisely his disguise! Peace and safety, Socrates — that is his slogan. Beware any man who promises you will never want again.

SOCRATES: Then you disagree with Musk.

THIEL: Entirely. Although I find his company's valuation quite sound.

MUSK: Peter, you invested in Palantir. You cannot possibly believe civilization needs saving while also insisting on backyard tomatoes for all.

THIEL: I contain multitudes, Elon.

KARP: (standing abruptly, wine sloshing) Gentlemen, GENTLEMEN. While you debate gardens of paradise, the actual battlefield awaits. Socrates — you ask what governs the chimpanzee. I will tell you: whoever controls the targeting software.

SOCRATES: You speak of war, then, not abundance.

KARP: I speak of avoiding war, Socrates, by developing weapons so terrifying that our adversaries dare not test us. This is peace through unspeakable technological menace. It is, in its way, quite beautiful.

SOCRATES: Menace... as peace.

KARP: You would understand if you had read more Heidegger.

SOCRATES: I confess I have read some Heidegger, and I do not recall him claiming technology as a means to "peace" but rather violence. 

KARP: He was speaking allegorically, he meant both. Menace as peace. (Socrates  begins to interject but Altman rises, and signals everyone, in a drab , understated mon otone voice:

ALTMAN: (gently but gesturing as a teacher might to a pack of arguing children) Hey, simmer down with all the dramatics and high fellutin name checking..We at OpenAI foresee a more prosaic and  gentle singularity. A soft landing. Prosperity, broadly distributed —

SOCRATES: Distributed how?

ALTMAN: Through mechanisms we're still finalizing.

SOCRATES: I see. And did you not once say this same technology carried grave risk of extinguishing mankind entirely?

ALTMAN: I did say that, yes.

SOCRATES: And now?

ALTMAN: Now I say prosperity. The facts remain identical; only my emphasis has evolved.

SOCRATES: Remarkable. In Athens we call a man who reverses his position without new evidence inconsistent. What do you call it here?

ALTMAN: Iteration.

MUSK: Speaking of extinction — I should mention, there remains perhaps a ten to twenty percent chance the robots simply kill everyone.

SOCRATES: Wait — this abundance you promised, it coexists with a one-in-five chance of annihilation?

MUSK: Of course. But consider the alternative — the heat death of the universe! Everything ends eventually, Socrates. So really it's about enjoying the ride.

SOCRATES: You would board a rocket with a twenty percent chance of exploding?

MUSK: Yes, obviously.

SOCRATES: Would you board it twice?

MUSK: (long pause) ...I have people for that.

HUANG: (raising a glass shaped like a graphics card) If I may lighten the mood — the important thing, Socrates, is simply that everyone buy more chips. Whether the future holds utopia or terminators, both futures require enormous quantities of chips. In this sense I am agnostic, and also extremely well-positioned.

SOCRATES: You have no view on which future arrives?

HUANG: I have a view on quarterly guidance.

SOCRATES: (to the group) Friends, let me attempt to summarize, that I might understand you rightly. Musk foresees a garden of infinite plenty, shadowed by a one-in-five chance of robotic apocalypse, which does not trouble him because the universe ends anyway. Thiel foresees the same plenty as the mask of a cosmic evil, unrelated to his own considerable stake in weapons software. Karp foresees permanent war-readiness as a form of peace. Altman foresees prosperity whose mechanism he cannot yet specify, having previously foreseen doom whose mechanism he also could not specify. And Huang foresees whichever future requires him to sell the most chips, which is to say, both.

ALL: Yes, essentially.

SOCRATES: Then it seems to me none of you are describing the future at all.

THIEL: What do you mean?

SOCRATES: I mean you are describing yourselves. Karp sells deterrence, and so he sees a world requiring deterrence. Musk sells rockets and now robots, and so he sees a world made safe by both, and enjoyable regardless. Altman sells a company whose worth depends on prosperity being imaginable, and so it is imaginable, until it is not, and then it is again. You have each mistaken your ledger for a prophecy.

KARP: That is a very reductive reading of extremely sophisticated geopolitical analysis.

SOCRATES: Perhaps. Tell me this, then, since you are all so certain: has any one among you changed your forecast because of new evidence, or only when your company changed its needs?

(A long silence. Someone's phone buzzes with a stock alert. No one answers.)

MUSK: Socrates, I don't think you understand exponential curves.

SOCRATES: I do not, friend. But I understand a merchant praising his own wares as the will of the gods, and I have understood it since long before your grandfather's grandfather learned to write. The costume changes. The performance does not.

(He rises to leave. Thiel begins quoting Girard to no one in particular. Karp is already on his phone with a general. Altman is drafting a blog post titled "Reflections." Musk has started talking about Mars again, then stops, remembering it is currently unfashionable, and pivots smoothly back to abundance. Huang refills everyone's glass.)

SOCRATES: (to himself, departing) And they say philosophy died with hemlock. It seems it merely changed its business model.