MAGA wealth & power politics: Take from the non-rich and give to the rich

The NYT reports (not paywalled) that Trump is, quietly as possible, handing out tax cuts worth hundreds of billions of dollars to some of the most profitable companies and wealthiest investors. When he was in office, the Dems passed a tax law that Biden signed in 2022. That law provided for a minimum tax of 15% on profits that large, highly profitable corporations make. This gift to the rich and powerful comes on top of the trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the rich and powerful that were included in the Trump-GOP budget law that passed this last summer. MAGA!!

The idea behind the law was to ensure that some of the country’s most profitable corporations pay at least some federal income tax. The law was a corporate alternative minimum tax that plugged some existing tax loopholes. The law was projected to raise $222 billion over a decade from companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Johnson & Johnson. That is a paltry $22 billion/year from corporations that make hundreds of billions/year in profits. 

For context, the Fortune 500 companies made $1.87 trillion in profits in 2024 and $1.7 trillion in 2023. Companies don't even want to pay that puny sum. They're greedy and callous. Corporations are there to make profit, not to make the world a better place or to save our democracy from tyranny or our environment from collapse.*

* Or sea level from rising 15 feet

Meanwhile, the official federal debt approaches $40 trillion and existing unfunded obligations (debt) as measured today** approaches Dog only knows what. Maybe $80 trillion in 25 years? Social Security and Medicare alone face approximately $73 trillion in unfunded obligations over the next 75 years.

** Or stated as unfunded obligations as assessed in year 2050

This governance by MAGA is irresponsible, cynical and profoundly corrupt. But, that is what voters voted for. That is what they are getting. And they are getting it good and hard.  

Q: Is the Reverse Robin Hood Party a reasonable alt-name for the Republican Party?

Regarding the Trump family kleptocracy: An American kleptocracy story

Don Jr might not fully control the company, but he doesn't need to. He only needs to use his connections with his father to make money via corruption. If memory serves, this is exactly what sent MAGA Republicans into a hair-on-fire frenzy over all the corruption and millions or billions of dollars that Hunter Biden allegedly made by leveraging his family relationship with his father. 

To show their honesty, recent past presidents have:

• Established qualified blind trusts (like Reagan, Carter, Bush, Clinton)—Trump refused​
• Divested from businesses—Trump refused​
• Released tax returns—Trump refused (breaking 40+ years of precedent)​
• Donated foreign profits in full—Trump donated 3% of what he received​
• Maintained ethics oversight—Trump fired the federal government's ethics director​
• Avoided policy decisions benefiting personal interests—Trump's executive orders directly benefit his family's businesses​
• Prevented family members from profiting—Trump Jr.'s net worth increased 10x to $500 million

Evidence that the Trump family is kleptocratic include all of that. None of those anti-corruption measures exist in the Trump administration. 

The Trump administration exhibits every definitional element of a kleptocracy. Trump uses his powers to shape procurement policy that benefit family investments​. The Trump family has accumulated at least ~$1.8 billion through their proximity to power​. Trump removed federal accountability mechanisms that kept corruption in check.​ Foreign governments openly pay Trump businesses businesses for access to Trump power.​ Trump policy on cryptocurrency (and this) and drone procurement feeds family profits.

So, we are still waiting to see those tax returns that Trump promised in 2016-2107 he would release as soon as the IRS finished its audits. 

Golly, it sure takes the IRS a long time to do an audit. /s

Q: Since the GOP supports Trump and refuses to look into Trump's corruption and his corrupt family, does that also make the Republican Party kleptocratic?[1]

Footnote:

1. Solid evidence points to GOP complicity in Trump and Trump family corruption. The GOP operates at multiple levels to enable and protect the corruption. The GOP engages in behavior that protects and supports institutional capture, and normalizes and legalizes corruption. Congressional Republicans have systematically blocked investigations into Trump family corruption. Senate Republicans have repeatedly blocked Democratic attempts to enforce constitutional emoluments provisions. The Republican-controlled Congress transformed oversight from a check on executive power into protection of the president.

The Republican Party has fundamentally changed under Trump. Political scientists document that the GOP has abandoned core conservative principles—free trade, limited government, fiscal restraint, American global leadership—in favor of Trump's personal agenda. A CNN-SSRS poll in January 2025 found that 53% of Republicans viewed loyalty to Trump as central to their political identity and "very important to what being a Republican is," exceeding support for traditionally core Republican values like "a less powerful federal government" (46%).

Republicans don't just fail to investigate Trump; they actively obstruct investigations. They fired ethics officials and defunded oversight mechanisms. All of that enriches Trump and his family at public expense. That is the core definition of kleptocracy.

Under trump, the GOP has changed from a political organization with policy preferences into what experts call a "loyalty cult". The Republican Party protects Trump's corruption not despite recognizing it but because protecting corruption is now central to maintaining power in the new party structure. Members who refuse, like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney, are expelled.

MAGA dictatorship updates: Rigging the 2026 elections; CN's cruel bigotry

Political science is the study of politics, more precisely power. Marcus Stadelmann, Political Science for Dummies, page 1, 2020

Since 2017, MAGA leader Trump has asserted his desire to be a dictator for life on multiple occasions. In a Nov. 5, 2025 meeting with Trump Party (GOP) Senators in congress, he clearly stated his wish to be a dictator. "If we do what I'm saying, they [Democrats] will most likely never attain power". 

For MAGA elites and Trump, it is all about power and wealth. Trump's lust for dictatorship power cannot get much clearer than that. In view of the circumstances, it is reasonable to argue that the 2026 midterm elections will probably be a crucial last line of defense for what's left of our democracy and rule of law. 

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The corrupt CN (Christian nationalist) theocrat wing of the MAGA wealth and power movement is intensely hostile to the LGBQT community. Apparently God told CN elites that the LGBQT community is evil and needs to be discriminated against, suppressed and dehumanized. CN bigotry here is arrogant, self-righteous and cruel. Although not a Christian himself, happily Trump goes along with CN's cruel bigotry. First, he needs those votes. Second, he takes real joy in seeing people suffer. Treating the LGBQT community like garbage is a win-win for CN theocrats and the deranged monster Trump.

The authoritarian MAGA judges in our sanctimonious USSC are fully on board with this kind of CN bigotry and cruelty. On Nov. 6, 2025, all six USSC CN  MAGA judges used the shadow docket to allow Trump to enforce a policy restricting passport gender markers to biological sex assigned at birth. That reversed a lower court injunction. The policy comes from Trump's January 20 executive order declaring the government would only recognize two sexes and require government-issued identification to "accurately reflect the holder's sex". That overturned the Biden administration's policy that allowed individuals to select male, female, or "X" as gender markers without requiring medical documentation.

The shadow docket allows the six MAGA coward judges to shaft targeted people and groups without any explanation. The shadow docket is a means MAGA judges on the USSC use to hide their authoritarianism, corruption, cruel bigotry and unprincipled use of law to kill democracy and the rule of law. The tactic is called autocratic legalism.

The dissent by one of the three pro-democracy, pro-rule of law Dems left on the USSC bench explained the cruelty and legal irrationality of this cruel, silent decision. Reporting on this comments, quoting the dissent: "once again [the 6 MAGA judges] paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification," calling it a "pointless but painful perversion of our equitable discretion". Jackson further argued the Court "misunderstands the assignment" and is misusing its emergency docket to "cavalierly pick the winners and losers in cases that are still pending in the lower courts".

Here, the MAGA cowards hiding behind the shadow docket allowed Trump to discriminate against the LGBQT community without the usual needed showing of irreparable harm to the government as the justification for supporting this bigot policy. The USSC just sided with the bigot Trump simply it because it could. Legal analysis or consideration of harm to affected people be damned.[1]

By dismissing equal protection claims without meaningful scrutiny, the MAGA majority allows government discrimination against transgender people under the pretense of biological essentialism. That approach that could extend beyond passports to other areas of law and policy, e.g., discrimination on the basis of races, sex or national origin.

 

Footnote:

1. The harms here are real, not merely imagined. Bigotry and simple ignorance is widespread. Real harms have arisen from gender-mismatched documents. For example, transgender males who mark their passport as female are sometimes hassled at border crossings if their passport says they are male, their biological designation the government now demands on passports. When border agents or immigration officials see documents that don't align with a person's sex presentation they sometimes face increased scrutiny, interrogation, and potential detention. Forcing transgender people to carry passports that out them against their will increases the risk that they will face harassment and violence, especially in countries with hostile attitudes toward LGBTQ people. 

Deadnaming: Gender mismatched IDs create heightened risks during police encounters. A ProPublica investigation found that in 74 of 85 transgender murder cases since 2015, victims were identified by law enforcement using names and genders from their IDs, not than their lived identities. That is called "deadnaming". It impedes investigations because witnesses only know victims by their lived or actual names.

Lived name, also "actual name" or "affirmed name", is the name a transgender person actually uses in their daily life. That is the name by which friends, family, coworkers, and community members know them. This is their real identity, the name that reflects who they are. Legal name is the name on government-issued documents like birth certificates, driver's licenses, or passports. That is usually the name assigned at birth. It usually doesn't match gender identity for transgendered people.

Bottom line: The harms to transgendered people are real, while harm to the government or American society is almost completely non-existent. Unaffected straight or hetero people who might claim to be harmed are either bigots who fear or hate LGBTQ people, or religious people with religious objections, e.g., many CN supporters. 

A Sea Change on US-Israel Relations: Reflections on Mamdani’s Victory, Antisemitism Narratives, and Accountability

The New York City mayoral election of November 2025 marked far more than a local democratic contest—it signaled a wave of reevaluation in the relationship between the US and Israel, and brought the deeper questions of antisemitism, war crimes, and the role of advocacy organizations into sharp relief.

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Erdan’s Post as the Bellwether

Israel’s former UN Ambassador, Gilad Erdan, captured the establishment’s alarm in a tweet responding to Zohran Mamdani’s victory. Erdan wrote, 

It’s crucial to internalize this: an Israel-hater who sees us as an apartheid state that commits genocide...was elected tonight to lead the most important city in the world, home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. This is a dark day...what happened in New York could soon happen throughout the U.S.—including in Congress and even in the White House. This is a HUGE warning sign. And Israel must wake up and implement a comprehensive plan to rebrand ourselves....

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Erdan’s focus on “branding” rather than on introspection about Israeli policies illustrates a core crisis: a loss of persuasive power about the justification and consequences of Israel’s conduct, especially in Gaza, among Americans—including 1 in 3 New York Jews who voted for Mamdani. While younger Jews, particularly, are driving this shift, establishment  pro-Israel media such as Times of Israel worked to minimize its significance, claiming “between 10% and 33%” Jewish support despite clear and widely reported  exit polls indicating the latter (33%)—revealing discomfort with shifting generational attitudes and political realities.

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Rethinking Antisemitism and Lawfare

This moment is driven, in part, by reexamination of what counts as antisemitism. The Guardian’s November 5 exposé details how federal investigations into campus antisemitism surged since October 2023,  yet most complaints were legally flimsy, equating criticism of Israeli policy—often pro-Palestinian speech—with actionable hostility against Jewish students. This conflation stems from advocacy by groups like ADL, ISGAP, and others, who promoted broad legal definitions (notably IHRA used via executive orders, not the law ) and advised on the weaponization of Title VI civil rights law. The “Mamdani Monitor,” created by ADL immediately following Mamdani’s election to protect Jewish New Yorkers from Mamdani, typifies the reactive posture of the US Jewish establishment, which refused to congratulate the victor and instead emphasized the purported danger to Jewish safety, despite little credible evidence of increased violence against Jews on campuses.

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​Instead, available evidence overwhelmingly documents violence and harassment directed at pro-Palestinian activists—including Jews—by police and organized pro-Israel counterprotesters. As the meticulously documented UCLA case demonstrates, physical and institutional abuse overwhelmingly targeted pro-Palestinian protesters, while counterprotesters were not prosecuted—a pattern confirmed by faculty and union investigations.The war on dissent has repeatedly misclassified peaceful protest and advocacy as threats to safety, distracting from the documented abuses and chilling free expression and academic freedom.

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The Reckoning on War Crimes and Genocide

Recent  months have seen an eruption of conscience among prominent Israelis and Jewish scholars: former PM Ehud Olmert, ex-ICJ lawyer Eyal Benvenisti, Shael Ben-Ephraim, Omer Bartov, and others have publicly condemned the war in Gaza as criminally immoral, with some even calling it genocidal. The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) went further, with more than 80% of its voting members voting to recognize the Gaza war as genocidal.

​Polling has revealed an extraordinary reversal in American opinion, especially among Democrats: more than 70% now agree that Israel is committing genocide. Meanwhile, AIPAC’s influence among Democrats has waned to the point of toxicity, with candidates and voters rejecting unconditional support for Israel—a tectonic change.

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Fractures and Fading Narratives

Even Republicans are not monolithic: “America First” figures such as Tucker Carlson have challenged traditional Christian Zionist narratives, indicating cracks in the longstanding AIPAC-GOP alliance. The result is a loss of consensus across the spectrum.

​The original NAS (New Antisemitism) narrative, which reframed anti-Zionist speech as the greatest threat to Jewish safety, has backfired. Its weaponization of US civil rights law to suppress campus speech and activism, coupled with attempts to label leading humanitarian and legal organizations as “Hamas supporters,” has led to dramatic disillusionment.

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Toward Accountability and Conscience

The unfolding events unmask the profound risk in elevating the US-Israel “special relationship” above constitutional principles and civil rights. Unconditional support, justified by a now-fading consensus and enforced with “lawfare,” has resulted not in Jewish safety, but in democratic erosion and widespread moral outrage—a lesson written in the images of bombed Gaza, starving children, and the silencing of dissent.

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The Mamdani election and the reaction it prompted, expressed most anxiously by Erdan, should be a wake-up call: the old politics of branding and suppression have failed. The story now is one of conscience—cracks in orthodoxy, a loss of consensus, and a call for accountability. True democratic resilience means restoring a balance between solidarity and truth, questioning policies, and refusing authoritarian creep. The early signs of this reaction may yet rescue both American democracy and Jewish dignity from the wreckage left by the excesses of NAS lawfare and uncritical support for war and occupation.

Sources / References:

The Guardian, “Surge in antisemitism investigations at US universities after October 7 attacks, data shows,” November 5, 2025.

Yahoo News, “Jewish NYC vote breakdown: 63% for Cuomo, 33% for Mamdani in ...” November 5, 2025.

AA News, “New York mayor-elect Mamdani found strong support among Jewish voters: Polls,” November 4, 2025.

Roya News, “How many Jews voted for Zohran Mamdani to become mayor of NYC?” November 4, 2025.

New York Times, “Zohran Mamdani’s Critical Views on Israel Continue to Divide Jewish New Yorkers,” November 5, 2025.

Times of Israel, “Facing an anti-Zionist mayor: Mamdani’s election win puts NY Jews into uncharted waters,” November 5, 2025.

TRT World, “‘Erase Amalek’: Poll reveals mass Israeli support for expulsion ...” May 26, 2025.

POLITICO, “With slim majority, Mamdani takes over a divided city,” November 5, 2025.

NPR, “A question of intent: Is what's happening in Gaza genocide?” September 25, 2025.

Pew Research, “Israeli Public Increasingly Skeptical About Lasting Peace,” June 2, 2025.

Boston Review, “UCLA’s Unholy Alliance,” Robin D.G. Kelley, May 18, 2024.

New York Times, “Democrats Pull Away From AIPAC, Reflecting a Broader Shift,” October 2, 2025.

Fox News, “ADL chief warns NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani poses a ‘clear and present danger’ to Jewish community,” November 5, 2025.

Times of Israel, “Mamdani holds wide edge among Jewish voters in new NYC poll,” July 31, 2025.

NY Post, “Anti-Defamation League launches ‘Mamdani Monitor’ to combat ...,” November 5, 2025.

Jewish Insider, “ADL launches a Mamdani monitor to track mayor-elect's policies,” November 4, 2025.

Times of Israel, Liveblog, “ADL announces 'Mamdani monitor' to track incoming NYC ...” November 5, 2025.

Jewish Times, “ADL to Launch 'Mamdani Monitor,' Jew-Hatred Tipline,” November 4, 2025.

“History and Impact of the IHRA Antisemitism Definition,” Mondoweiss PDF, April 28, 2025.