The New Republic

Multiple images mocking President Trump and his cabinet have been projected onto walls and sidewalks in Washington, D.C., as the nation’s capital continues to reject the leadership on Pennsylvania Avenue ahead of the president’s Independence Day celebrations.

One projection near the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool depicts Senator Mitch McConnell as a turtle and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as a crocodile crawling around in a swamp. Another shows White House adviser Stephen Miller as a bat hanging from the ceiling of the Lincoln Memorial. There’s Senator Ted Cruz depicted as a sex worker wearing “Trump” underwear, Vice President JD Vance as some kind of worm, and old footage of Trump and sex predator Jeffrey Epstein together at an event.

At the Kennedy Center, a two-minute video was projected showing a mugshot of Epstein with the words “No one bends the knee like the GOP,” followed by images of Trump administration officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and former Attorney General Pam Bondi labeled “guardians of pedophiles.” Another Kennedy Center projection showed the letters “Donald” being rearranged into the word “pedo.”

Did you guys see this?? There are projected images popping all over D.C. adding to the swamp theme. 🤣 pic.twitter.com/jypEeszT7y

— ᗰᗩƳᖇᗩ (@LePapillonBlu2) June 22, 2026

The guerilla art collective VJayBombs, who posted footage of the projections to its Instagram page, is said to be behind the display. The group gained attention earlier this year during Trump’s State of the Union address, when it projected a looped video satirizing the speech onto the Los Angeles Downtown Medical Center.

This isn’t the first time this term that D.C. has seen anti-Trump political art in its public spaces. The anonymous group Secret Handshake placed at least four statues around the city depicting Trump and Epstein together, and someone tried to cut “8647” into the grass on the National Mall last week.

President Donald Trump furiously accused The New York Times of supposedly “treasonous” reporting about his disastrous peace deal with Iran.

In a series of posts on Truth Social Sunday, Trump ranted about the Times after it published an analysis of the president’s war in Iran: “What Changed After Almost 4 Months of War? Analysts Say Not Much.” The article highlighted that Trump’s deal failed to achieve any of his war’s objectives: eliminating Iran’s nuclear program, destroying its ballistic missile stockpile, annihilating Iran’s navy and security infrastructure, and installing a new regime.

The president disagreed.

“Their Military is DONE, their Navy is GONE, their Air Force is GONE, their Launching Pads, Missiles, Drones and Manufacturing of same, is almost GONE, their top two sets of Leaders are GONE, their Inflation is at 250%, their Economy is BROKEN, their Soldiers aren’t being paid, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN, THE OIL IS GUSHING, and the U.S. Stock Market and Jobs are at record HIGHS,” Trump wrote. “That’s what’s CHANGED, you corrupt and unethical cowards, and MORE!!!”

In reality, Iran shuttered trade through Strait of Hormuz yet again over the weekend, citing Israel’s ceasefire violations in Lebanon.

But Trump didn’t care about any of that. Instead, he shared a post by Senator Lindsey Graham, who echoed the president’s claim that the reporting had revealed the outlet’s “bias.”

“The way the Corrupt and Failing New York Times is covering stories on a very battered and beat up Iran, through FAKE & MADE UP ‘FACTS’ is, in my opinion, ‘TREASONOUS,’” Trump wrote in yet another post.

“I will be adding all of their false and ridiculous reporting to my multi Billion Dollar lawsuit against them. They are Criminals!”

In October, Trump refiled an abridged version of his dismissed $15 billion defamation suit against the Times, alleging that reporters at the paper had sought to undermine his reputation as an entrepreneur and reality television star.

What began as a restoration project for the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has resulted in multiple arrests.

At least five people have been arrested for allegedly vandalizing the pool as of Saturday night, a Trump administration official told CBS News. Five citations were also issued, bringing the grand total of post-renovation citations issued at the site to 14.

In a post on Truth Social the same day, President Donald Trump said that the monument would likely have to be drained another time in order to address the damage, which he said included the use of a “knife or blade” to put a “250 foot long gash into the beautiful facade.” He also claimed that individuals that participated in the destruction poured “corrosive and destructive chemicals” into the pool. He said that all those caught participating deserved “years in jail.”

“Work will begin immediately on fixing the seriously vandalized Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote in a separate post on Sunday. “I just inspected it, and could only say to myself, and those gathered around me, WOW, who would do such a thing? SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE! We will fix it?”

The White House has so far spent nearly $15 million to rid the Reflecting Pool of algae ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary, but the multimillion-dollar project appears to be another dud. Within days of refilling the pool earlier this month, the algae was back.

The Department of the Interior blamed the algae’s resurgence, in part, on residual algae that had accumulated in the pool’s pipes, which were apparently neglected during the cleaning process. CNN also found abnormally high phosphate levels in the pool after sampling its water. An algae researcher at the Smithsonian described the chemical imbalance as a “field day” for algal growth.

Park workers have tried to address the endemic issue with a smattering of different solutions. On Tuesday, park workers in hi-vis vests were spotted dumping gallons of hydrogen peroxide into the Reflecting Pool. A close-up of their equipment revealed that they were using a 12 percent concentrate, a level that can cause problems if inhaled and burns if the chemical touches the skin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hydrogen peroxide is generally considered less environmentally destructive as its compounds readily break down in water, but the high concentration could nonetheless pose a risk to some of the pool’s frequent visitors, such as ducks or other birds. One dead baby duck was caught floating in the pool over the weekend, though the cause of death was unclear.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 22 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

It’s now becoming clear that Donald Trump’s failed war in Iran will have far-reaching consequences for our country, and geopolitically as well. We’re only just beginning to get our heads around how disastrous this war and this presidency could very well prove over time. It’s a deeply consequential moment, and Trump is spending his nights tweeting crazed demands for adulation, insisting that his war was a world-historical triumph, and seething about the prospects for finishing his ballroom.

This gap between what Trump is doing to this country and the world on one side and his megalomaniacal trivial obsessions on the other is really jarring and unnerving to witness. Paul Krugman has been writing really well on his excellent Substack about both sides of this divide, so we’re talking to him about how to make sense of it all. Paul, nice to have you back on.

Paul Krugman: Good to be back on, although I wish the times were better, but anyway, yeah.

Sargent: Exactly. So let’s start with the easy stuff. At 4:32 in the morning, Donald Trump posted this:

“These fools who think I haven’t been tough enough on Iran when the stock market just hit a record high and oil prices are tumbling down are either jealous, bad people, or stupid. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

Paul, Trump is very angry that he’s not getting more worshipful praise for the world-historical triumph that was his ceasefire with Iran, which basically just put a stop to the disaster he created. So we might as well start here. What did you think of the, quote-unquote, deal?

Krugman: Obviously, it’s horrible. Iran won. Iran is in a much stronger position and the U.S. in a much weaker position than before the war started. And of course, the deal is vastly inferior to the Obama JCPOA that Trump ripped up in his first term—all of this at the cost of enormous outlays of money, depletion of weapons stocks, killed a lot of people. Basically, we’ve just shown the whole world that we’re maybe not quite a paper tiger, but a lot less of a power than we were supposed to be. So all of this is an enormous diminution of the United States.

The hawks saying, why is Trump giving in, why isn’t he following up on his victory—but there was no victory. This is actually the best you could do given how the war has gone. In fact, he should have made this deal about a week in when it became clear that the whole premise of his enterprise was not going to work.

Sargent: He could have made a better deal before the war started.

Krugman: Of course. He could have just done nothing—that would have been better. And going back in time, he could have kept that Obama agreement, which was doing a much better job of containing Iran.

But it tells you something about where we are that there are apparently a substantial number of at least until recently pro-Trump people who really believe that we were winning the war or we had won the war. Which just shows you how detached from reality they are.

Sargent: Well, they’re all in the same information bubble. Trump did another missive that was in all caps, saying this:

“OIL IS FLOWING, IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON (THE WORLD WILL BE SAFE!), THE STOCK MARKETS ARE ROARING, JOBS ARE AT RECORDS, AND PRICES ARE DROPPING (AFFORDABILITY!). OUR COUNTRY IS STRONG, SAFE, AND RESPECTED LIKE NEVER BEFORE. ‘YOU’RE WELCOME!’”

OK, Paul. He got nothing significant on Iran’s nukes and our country is weaker, less safe, and less respected. But I think we should step back. He’s making a bigger argument there, isn’t he? It’s that in every way the nation is booming, strong, and leading decisively in the world. What do you make of that bigger argument?

Krugman: OK, so the stock market is up. No question about that. Although the stock market rose a lot under Joe Biden too. Trump would like you to put that down the memory hole. And stocks are up, by the way, around the world. There’s a stock market boom. I haven’t checked the numbers lately, but I believe that they’re up substantially more outside the United States than inside the United States. So this is stuff that is not really reflecting U.S.-specific developments and certainly not Trump-specific developments. Presidents do not control the stock market.

But leaving that aside, the economy—it’s not booming. We basically have had slower job growth than we did in the last two years of Biden, and basically flat unemployment. So that’s not great. It’s not a catastrophe, it’s not great. Real wages are lower than they were when Trump took office because we’ve had a lot of inflation.

By the way, one of the things with this corruption of how we do stuff—click on pretty much any information site. I’ve been only looking at the ones that have to do with economic policy, but federal government information sites, which are traditionally just sort of just the facts, here’s what’s happening, maybe discreetly touting administration policies—you click on any site and you get a pop-up that has a picture of Trump and says, “Welcome to the Golden Age,” which is all part of this incredible dingbat cult of personality.

Sargent: He corrupts everything. It just seeps into every last corner of public life, basically.

Krugman: I think it’s worth pointing out that this incredible personalized cult of personality for Trump, while it’s at an absolutely ludicrous level now, actually started ways back. There was a fair bit of it under Reagan, and let’s not forget George Bush and the flight suit.

So this kind of the-president-is-a-comic-book-hero thing is something that appears to go along with modern Republican governance. But of course, it’s reached a level of absurdity with Trump, both because of the extremeness of the cult of personality and because the reality is that—there has to be a better way to put it, he’s a f-ck up, basically—everything Trump touches turns to crud. And so it’s really insane.

Sargent: Yeah, there are a lot of dimensions to it. If you look at some of those late-night tweets, the tweets we’re talking about here, you kind of get hit by a real dose of somebody in very steep mental decline, I think. It’s sort of two-layered.

On the one hand, it’s the sheer nakedness of the demand for adulation, which is just completely crazy. Somebody who’s sunsetting very plainly in plain sight, who knows he’s on his way out and is desperate to sort of have something that he can call a legacy. That’s what we see there.

But at the same time, you also see him completely detached from the reality of what he’s actually done to us. What he’s done to you and me, to liberal America, to blue America, even to red America, even to MAGA country.

Krugman: And in some ways especially to MAGA country. But yeah.

Sargent: Two dimensions here of someone in steep mental decline, don’t you think?

Krugman: Yeah. I mean, I’m not a psychologist, but it’s my understanding that when you’re sundowning, when you’re in this dissociation that does, among other things, tend to come with age, you in some ways become more like yourself. Those aspects of your personality that were disagreeable and unpleasant and dysfunctional, but which you were able to at least police when you were still more there, now just come out. It’s a little bit like getting drunk.

But anyway, there’s a complete lack of a filter now. Presumably Trump always was a person who lived just for external adulation. It must be awful to be him. There’s no inside at all, I think. But 10 years ago he was canny enough to keep it at least somewhat under wraps. And now he’s just out of control. It all gets blurted out at 4 in the morning.

Sargent: Indeed. You had this video where you went very big picture, kind of assessing where we really are right now. I want to try to summarize your argument briefly. Basically it’s that the United States is no longer seen by our allies and much of the world as an indispensable nation. Our military can’t do what we thought it could—can’t force smaller countries like Iran to do our bidding, or Trump’s bidding. That due to Trump’s tariff fiascos, we have less leverage in trade wars than we thought. That China has unexpected leverage over supply chains and important goods and important resources. That in part due to our abandonment of Ukraine, our onetime allies are looking past us to a post-American world. Etc, etc. Is that the basic argument?

Krugman: Yeah, it’s the basic argument. It is worth saying that even things that I find somewhat encouraging, like the fact that Ukraine is holding despite Trump having cut them off completely—the United States just stopped sending money and basically stopped the flow of arms, we won’t even allow the Europeans to buy arms for Ukraine—and yet Ukraine seems to be gaining the upper hand, which is telling you that they don’t need us. The world doesn’t need us.

And that’s part of what’s happened in Iran as well. It turns out that if there was one thing we thought America really had, it was, well, we had the world’s greatest military and we had the world’s best weapons and nobody else could manage without us. And well, it turns out that we were completely flat-footed in the face of Iranian drones and that Ukraine is holding its own without American weapons.

So who are we? We’re becoming bystanders in world events. America is a rogue power, it does crazy things, it can’t even impose its will on a third-rate military power like Iran, and we don’t seem to actually be necessary for the defense of Europe. So we’re a kind of a shadow of our former selves on the world stage.

Sargent: Is this inexorable decline, do you think? Can it be turned around?

Krugman: Some of it is probably irreversible, and some of it would have happened anyway. The truth is, to a large extent, America as it seemed to be as Trump took office was an outmoded vision. And I think we didn’t fully understand that. But there was still a reflexive tendency on much of the world to think that, well, you have to accommodate, you have to give in, allow yourself to be bullied by an American president no matter what. And the truth is the fundamentals had already shifted against the United States in the global power game.

But then there’s a lot that has obviously been made much worse by Trump screwups. And what the world now has to suspect, even when Trump is gone from the stage, is, well, then who’s the next guy? And how do we know that we won’t have another Trump-like figure? Does an agreement with America mean anything, since we’ve just seen an American president rip up every agreement that we had? Does a threat from America mean anything, because we’ve just seen that same guy cave totally? And after all, this guy was—sorry to say—elected fairly by the American people. So what does that say about America?

And we don’t get that back. It took generations to build the reputation of America. And you don’t get that back unless you give us three generations of good governance from here on in.

Sargent: Well, I want to highlight another aspect of our self-inflicted wounds. You brought up Spain as an example of a country that weathered the energy shock from Iran well because it’s transitioning to renewables quickly. Here’s another area where Trump has set back our country tremendously. He’s on two fronts trying to strangle the transition to clean energy in every way he can. It’s like a whole-of-government approach to strangling the clean energy transition.

And at the same time, he’s delivering a big oil shock with the Iran war. I guess that’ll lessen a bit, but it’ll take time. But we have learned that being dependent on oil is a problem. The lesson here is that making this transition is even more imperative. And at the same time, we’re lagging behind by choice. How bad is this self-inflicted wound? And what can be done about it?

Krugman: Well, yeah. On Wednesday, the Interior Department announced that it was paying another $765 million to an energy company not to build wind farms. We’re actually not only refusing to follow pro–green energy policies, but actually spending taxpayer money to block it. The Pentagon is using spurious national security concerns to block development of wind farms. So this is an aggressively anti–renewable energy administration. I will be talking shortly on Substack about the motivations.

And now at a fundamental level, again, this is one of these things where U.S. influence was kind of fated to decline. The U.S. does have oil and gas in a way that other advanced countries do not. And so that gave us something of a special position. But with the incredible progress in renewable energy, that matters a lot less than it used to.

But then on top of that, the U.S. is—we are basically alone. Everyone else is marching towards an energy transition, and we’re trying to go back to coal. And to the extent that countries might have wanted to rely on us a bit, it’s actually—even more than oil—it’s liquefied natural gas. And there was a possible future we seemed to be heading for in which, at least to a certain extent, the world would be relying on U.S. LNG as at least a transitional source of power on the way to the green revolution.

But instead, if you were dependent on the United States for LNG, wouldn’t you worry that Trump might get mad at you because you won’t hand over Greenland or something like that, and cut it off? And are you sure that America won’t again be led by somebody like that? So the U.S. is—on top of everything else, we’re risky. We’re not trustworthy. So nobody is going to rely on us for energy.

Sargent: Well, Trump’s focused on the important things here. At 2:51 a.m. he went on a rampage about his ballroom. He insisted it’s coming along brilliantly and effectively demanded more adulation for how great it’s going to be—it’s going to be outfitted with all this powerful military security, et cetera. Then he raged about the legal travails he’s still facing over this, even though he tore down the White House East Wing unilaterally and probably illegally.

In another tweet, he celebrated the gilding of some statues. In a third, he posted a picture of himself on the cover of a magazine in India, as if we’re supposed to marvel at that in some way: Look, Trump is the cover guy on a magazine in India.

What’s striking to me here, and you wrote about this, is just this kind of relentless desecration and degradation of everything. He’s desecrating the ways in which our capital is supposed to embody small-r republicanism. He’s turning it into a crass imperial court, basically.

Krugman: Yeah. Washington, D.C. was designed very much with classical models in mind. The Founding Fathers were very much into ancient Roman history, but they were into the history of the Roman Republic, not the Empire. They wanted—and we have all of this grand monumental architecture in D.C., but it’s all celebrating the people, the republic. It’s not personal glory. And certainly you would never exalt a currently living president that way.

So yeah, I actually live in New York, not too far from—there’s, along Riverside Drive along the West Side of Manhattan, a series of monuments. There’s Grant’s Tomb, there’s the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, and so on. And they’re all very impressive. They’re kind of like Washington, D.C. in a way.

But notably, there’s no personal glorification. Even Grant’s Tomb—it’s not a monumental statue of Grant. It’s a celebration of defense of the republic. The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument has the names of generals, but they’re in plain type. And names and battles which include the defeats as well as the victories, because this is the republic: We are stoic, we are modest.

And now we have Trump gilding everything, wanting to erect a gigantic arch of triumph in the capital, and filling the reflecting pool with algae—which is just showing that the gods have a sense of humor.

Sargent: Yeah, that is perfect. The Drain the Swamp guy is filling the reflecting pool with algae. I just want to try to pull this all together. I guess what really bothers me about this moment is that Trump and JD Vance don’t feel a shred of obligation to speak to the country with even minimal candor at all about what just happened. Everything is all about false glorification of Trump, and it’s always just about using the most cynical lies they can to insulate him from any accountability for this calamity.

It’s always all about him, no matter what. There’s no sense of obligation on their part to function as real leaders or statesmen who care about the nation and its future and have a conception of what’s in the interests of the American people.

How do you put all this together in your mind?

Krugman: Well, it’s about them, but I think the real question is what has happened to us—or at least to the Republican Party, but I think maybe it’s even broader than that—that this can happen. I remember there was a time when people used to think of Marco Rubio as a sort of reformist Republican, “reformicon,” whatever. And now here he is walking around in oversized shoes because Trump bought them for him and he’s afraid to take them off, and acting as a lickspittle for all of this crazy ego demonstration. My God.

There will probably be many future books written about the downward spiral that everyone who deals with Trump seems to go into. But we always knew that there were people like Trump. The idea that the world’s basically oldest republic—the nation that invented republican values and democratic norms—puts up with it. That’s what really shocks me.

Sargent: Well, let me just close out this way. It’s my feeling a little bit that Democrats, while they’re functioning more as an opposition than maybe they were at the outset of Trump’s second term—when they were clearly snakebit and just terrified, and on some level Democrats had widely concluded that Trump had put his finger on some sort of real popular sentiment that everybody missed. I think that was never true. He won by a point and a half and it was at a time of inflation and post-COVID shock and so forth. But that’s where Democrats were.

Now they’re functioning more as an opposition. But still, I feel like there’s a smallness to their politics, Paul. And you’ve been writing about the big problems here—the desecration plus the decline, those two sides that I talked about.

Should Democrats be making a bigger argument? What might something like that look like? Some kind of argument which essentially says, let’s be real about what this guy is doing to us? An argument that says, let’s face reality about what this man and his movement have done to our country, and really setting forth a new direction. Is there some way to do that for Democrats?

Krugman: I think that at some level, corruption is the theme. And corruption of various kinds, but I think that all ties together. And if we want to talk about kitchen-table issues, you can make that part of it: The reason that you can’t afford your electricity is because of the corruption. The reason that you can’t afford health insurance is because of the corruption.

And look, one of the happiest things politically that’s happened in the world was the overturn of the Orbán regime in Hungary, which was very much something that MAGA people viewed as a role model: This is how you subvert a democracy. And it turns out that yeah, but with enough people, mad enough, you can flood across all of the barriers they’ve created. And the central theme of the Magyar campaign was corruption. These guys are corrupt.

There were zebras on the Orbán family estate in the countryside, apparently, and the zebras—stuffed zebras—became an image for the opposition, because it was all about corruption. That seems to me like—people may not think in terms of abstract—they certainly won’t think in terms of republican norms. But to make it just, well, I can shave 15 percent off the price of gasoline if you elect me—that is not how to stop this horrifying situation. To say, these people are utterly corrupt, self-centered, and you are paying the price—that sounds like a movement that can work.

Sargent: Yes, and I like the idea of using corruption to sort of open the door to an argument about moral corruption and degradation, which I think people sense is happening. The reflecting pool and the algae, the tearing down of the White House East Wing and the replacement of it with a ballroom, the arch—those are things that really resonate for people. And I think it’s because of what we’re talking about here.

There was a point at which Democrats said something like, the ballroom’s a distraction. But it’s clear that these things have profound resonance for people for these reasons—that there’s a sense that our common life, or something like that, is just being fundamentally degraded at a very profound level. And I think the corruption argument opens the door there.

I’d point out, by the way, just to close out, that the Magyar campaign was also about what this man, Orbán, and his movement, Orbanism, did to us. Look what he did to us. And that seems like—you’ve been writing about what Donald Trump is doing to us. And it seems like some Democrats need to step up and grab that mantle in some way, I guess.

Krugman: Yeah. And I think fire some of the consultants. I’m a numbers guy. I like to live—I view the world through spreadsheets. But it’s not about the numbers. If there’s $300 million of taxpayer funds going to the ballroom, whatever, in the scale of the federal budget, that’s not big. But it’s a symbol of this horrible thing that’s happening. And I think it’s something people can relate to.

Sargent: Paul Krugman, thank you so much for writing your Substack. I learn from it all the time, really. I’m not exaggerating. I learn from it every day. And Paul, thanks for coming on with us.

Krugman: Well, thank you.

For the past 18 months, nearly all of the efforts to demolish America’s anti-corruption architecture have come from one source: the White House. Under President Trump, it was the White House that announced both the elimination of task forces specifically tasked with tackling kleptocracy and a pause on enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Trump administration has also transformed everything from white-collar prosecutions to presidential pardons into an open-air feast of corruption. And all the while, the president and his family have watched their net worth explode, thanks to billions in ill-gotten gains streaming in from around the world.

It goes without saying that Trump now oversees the most corrupt White House the U.S. has ever seen. But it would be a mistake to say that he and his White House are acting alone. Indeed, in the latest assault on America’s anti-corruption edifice—perhaps the most destructive effort yet—the White House is taking a back seat, and is instead looking to Republican allies in Congress to undo the single most important anti-corruption step the U.S. has taken in years.

First, a bit of history. For decades, until the early 2020s, the United States stood at the center of the world of offshore finance. While places like Switzerland, Panama, the Cayman Islands, and other smaller locales got most of the headlines regarding offshore secrecy, in reality it was the U.S. that dominated the world of laundering illicit wealth, attracting billions (and potentially more) from narco-traffickers, arms dealers, kleptocrats, and others looking to wash their wealth clean.

Many industries accelerated America’s transformation into an offshore behemoth, including real estate and private equity, both of which enjoyed decades-long loopholes in basic anti–money laundering provisions. But there was one industry in particular that served as the bedrock for all of these laundering networks: shell companies. Thanks to America’s fractured corporate formation landscape, the federal government had no say in how U.S. shell companies were formed—or what kind of information was needed when setting up a shell company.

As a result, states like Delaware, Wyoming, Nevada, and others provided all of the secrecy and legal protections that cartel heads, dictators, human smugglers, and others needed to hide their financial tracks. In a matter of minutes, anyone around the world could set up a U.S. shell company and immediately access their own bespoke U.S. money-laundering network—all of it perfectly legally. Time and again, investigators both domestic and foreign could track a dirty money trail, only to watch their efforts collapse in the face of a Delaware or Nevada shell company.

It wasn’t simply autocrats and their oligarchic proxies who benefited from these anonymous shells. Wealthy Americans, those looking to secretly influence American politics, those searching for ways to covertly inject finance into U.S. elections—all of them profited from this rank secrecy.

Efforts to bring the barest transparency to U.S. shell companies stretch back to at least 2008. But it wasn’t until the early 2020s that legislators finally passed something called the Corporate Transparency Act. The bill was hardly partisan; remarkably, a slate of legislators from both sides of the aisle passed the bill over President Trump’s veto. Nor was the bill onerous. Instead of a public registry of corporate owners, as seen in places like the United Kingdom, America’s new shell company database would remain private, accessible only to federal authorities and other officials tracking illicit and looted wealth.

It’s difficult to overstate just how momentous this new legislation was. For the first time in decades, the U.S. was no longer the leading font of anonymous shell companies. The best days of U.S. offshoring appeared behind us.

How much can change in just a few short years. Unsurprisingly, the opening salvo against the Corporate Transparency Act came from the politician who’s benefited from anonymous shells perhaps more than anyone else: Trump. Barely a month into his second term, Trump announced that the Corporate Transparency Act was an “absolute disaster,” an “economic menace” that would “soon be no more.” He announced that his administration would no longer be enforcing the law for U.S. shell companies—and that no one would need to worry about prosecution for breaking the law. A few months later, Trump’s Treasury Department announced that it was destroying all of the filings the registry had compiled thus far, torching the database entirely.

Still, the law technically remained, as did the related statutes of limitations—and the potential for a future administration to go after malefactors still setting up anonymous shells. Trump could announce that the law was a dead letter, but that didn’t mean he could repeal it fully.

Enter Congress. In late April, Trump’s allies on the House Financial Services Committee pushed through legislation by a one-vote margin to formally repeal the requirement that U.S. shells divulge their true owners. Claiming that the transparency requirement—which requires that company managers take approximately five minutes to fill out a form disclosing company ownership—was an onerous burden, the new bill, dubbed the Repealing Big Brother Overreach Act and sponsored by Ohio Republican Representative Warren Davidson, will restore America’s status as the leading offshore haven. Last month, Senate colleagues introduced similar legislation, aiming to attach it to the broader defense bill set to be passed later this year.

All of this is a staggering gift to cartels, Chinese money-laundering networks, Iranian proxies, and others who have relied on anonymous U.S. shells—all of whom Republicans supposedly stand against. The repeal effort “ignores clear warnings from American national security and law enforcement officials,” as Transparency International’s Gary Kalman said, all of which “risks turning the United States back into a place where criminals and foreign adversaries can more easily fund their networks and hide dirty money in plain sight.”

It’s not difficult to see where this new momentum for effective repeal is coming from. Trump, saturated as he is in rampaging anonymity and international financing, has gone as far as he can to flip the U.S. from an opponent of corruption to a confederate of kleptocrats around the world. But he needs his allies in Congress to help him achieve all of his pro-kleptocracy aims—and to help all of their wealthy, oligarchic benefactors continue to benefit from anonymous U.S. shell companies, as well.

In the service of aiding those wealthy donors, Republicans pushing for the bill’s effective repeal are willing to aid Russian gun-runners, terrorist financiers, transnational criminal syndicates, and others who need all of the anonymity that states like Delaware, Nevada, Wyoming, and others perfected. “Introducing this bill isn’t about lowering costs for small businesses: it’s about Congress choosing to protect the interests of wealthy donors over the safety of their communities,” Erica Hanichak, deputy director of the FACT Coalition, said.

All of which is to say: Trump may be the leading wrecking ball destroying America’s anti-corruption credentials. But he is hardly alone. Thanks to congressional Republicans, Trump—and corrupt actors around the world, salivating at the chance to turn the U.S. back into their own personal dirty-money laundromat, can finally restore an American kleptocracy in which only oligarchs, grifters, and criminal kingpins benefit, while everyone else pays the price.

Add David Hearn to Donald Trump’s ever-growing list of enemies of the state. The Bethesda man was out for a bike ride in Washington, D.C., last Friday and decided to spin over to the Reflecting Pool see how its new, Trump-ordained “American flag blue” color struck him. He noticed that a piece of the new blue liner was partly detached from the pool’s bottom (it’s only 18 inches deep at the edges), and he reached down to see what it felt like, he told The Washington Post.

According to ESPN, Hearn said that he “briefly touched a chunk that was still attached to the side of the pool, then let go shortly after a park worker told him to.” Unhappily, a conservative journalist named Emily Miller—surely you haven’t forgotten her 2013 classic Emily Gets Her Gun: But Obama Wants to Take Yours—was on the scene, and she took a two-minute video of the 67-year-old Hearn, a former U.S. Olympic team canoe racer. Before he knew it, Park Police officers arrested him and charged him with destruction of government property. “I didn’t vandalize anything,” Hearn said. “I didn’t destroy or break or peel anything. By the time I realized what was going on, I was being put in handcuffs.”

Trump posted on Saturday night about arrests of “multiple individuals for vandalizing our Nations [sic] magnificent Reflecting Pool.” The Post sought comment on this point from the Park Police but got no response.

You’d think a guy who just lost a war would have bigger matters on his mind, but to Trump, matters don’t come any bigger than the Reflecting Pool and the Kennedy Center, because they are about the thing that is most important to him: his monstrously large but porcelain-fragile ego. I don’t condone vandalism of government property, so if anyone did that, fine, arrest them (though it sounds like Hearn, whose hearing is slated for July 9, didn’t). But I submit to you that the real vandalism here is being committed by Trump.

Apparently, the Reflecting Pool had—still has—very serious drainage issues. So fine. Fix those. But the idea that the color of the pool was somehow inadequate never occurred to anyone until Trump came along. I’d imagine that over on Newsmax and One America News Network (Miller’s former employer, for what it’s worth), they’re selling the makeover as another shimmering example of Trump’s courageous patriotism that drives the woke liberals insane. But the design change is really chiefly about his vanity. He just aches to leave monuments to and reminders of himself across the nation’s capital. Or maybe, like Narcissus, he wants to visit the pool and stare endlessly at his own reflection.

In any case, this is roughly the 10,362nd matter that, in any other administration, would be a huge scandal. Trump told us it would cost $1.3 billion. Current records show that contracts the government has signed for work on the pool now total $14.8 million. One contract, for the water purification system, was made to a vendor on a no-bid basis who happened to be a Trump donor. In addition to contributing to Trump, John Cafaro also happens to have a mansion in Palm Beach near Mar-a-Lago. He also seems to have decided that “oily Dick Tracy villain” should be his personal aesthetic.

Another no-bid contract went to a company that did work on a swimming pool at Trump’s Virginia golf club. That company, Atlantic Industrial Holdings, had never before received a contract from the federal government and according to records obtained by The New York Times is charging a 20 percent profit margin, when such margins typically run 6 to 12 percent.

Rigged contracts, donors, ridiculous cost overruns. But that’s not even the worst of it. There are concerns that the workers who did the resurfacing may have been exposed to hazardous chemicals, and that the masks they wore were inadequate to protect them from the tiny particulates in the air. The Guardian reported on this back in May, when an official from the union that represents the workers said, “The chemicals are hazardous. My concern is usually the level of risk when it’s rushed. Are workers taking the rightful steps to protect themselves?”

The next Democratic (God willing) president will have quite a lot on his or her plate, goodness knows, and there will be more “important” matters to attend to than what Trump is trying to do to our nation’s capital. But the Reflecting Pool and the Kennedy Center and the proposed arch at Arlington Cemetery and the White House ballroom—and don’t forget the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, formerly known rather boringly as the United States Institute of Peace, rebranded by the State Department last year—are plenty important. These are corrupt actions (remember that the ballroom went through none of the usual required processes), and they’re grotesque, Third-World dictator moves that are completely inappropriate for a democracy.

So the Democratic presidential contenders will need to be asked at their candidate forums and debates: What are you going to do about the ballroom? The arch, if it’s being built by then? Will you tear these things down? Will you return the Institute of Peace to its old name? Will you pressure Congress to pass a law stipulating that the Kennedy Center will be named for John F. Kennedy, and for him only, for all time?

These might not sound like the biggest priorities, and in fact, they’re not. Last week, I wrote about how the key litmus test for Democratic presidential contenders was ending the stranglehold of billionaires over our politics. That’s a big priority. Still the Democratic candidates’ answers to these questions about Trump’s vandalism of the District is a test in itself. It will tell us a lot about their character, their disposition, and how hard they’re willing to fight on the big stuff. In the meantime, keep the Reflecting Pool green. And free David Hearn.

While some are worse than others, the stories people tell about how data centers invade and disrupt their communities follow the same contours. The tech company and their swarm of contractors are in town before you know it, and they’re already scheming with local leaders. In no uncertain terms, your elected officials have chosen tech billionaires over their own neighbors.

Soon, an army of men with bulldozers are tearing out trees near your home and ripping up fields. Dump trucks careen around town, and the night sky is so polluted with light, you can’t see the stars. A year or so later, the data center is up and running. By then, the high-paying construction jobs have all but disappeared.

After months of digging, you finally have an idea of how much water the data center actually consumes. If you’re lucky, your area isn’t in a drought. You hope things won’t get dire. Meanwhile, the monolith is droning and hissing, wearing you and your neighbors down with constant noise. You hope the water you do have will be drinkable this time next year as you try to adjust to the unnatural heat the data center generates.

The militaristic drive to build the best chatbot and somehow “beat China” knows no bounds, including those of logic. This nightmarish iteration of the extraction economy was made possible by undemocratic processes and a national administration that sold us and our resources out to tech oligarchs. But people in these towns and cities are smarter and tougher than the plutocrats accounted for—and they’re putting up one hell of a fight. Told by people whose communities have been impacted, this is the story of unhinged data center expansion in America.

Jared Spann (Utah): It’s been the equivalent of a sucker punch. People have had no say in any of this.

Devan Jenkins (Mississippi): Nobody here wanted this. They didn’t let us know. We had to find out on our own.

Tracie (Texas): If you look at the board of directors at the very beginning, Bill Gates’s fingerprints are all over it. He had his own picked people on the board in a town like Abilene, Texas that isn’t really on the map. That set the stage for the sleight of hand.

Dan Caruso (Indiana): They called it “Razor 5” at first. I thought it would be a Motorola-type manufacturing plant. Then they went on and called it “Ramboll.” By the time they broke ground, we figured out it was Amazon and Anthropic all along. It was a lot of everyone wanting to be so secretive about the whole thing, and that’s gone on through the entire process. They call it “Project Rainier” now, but I have other names for it.

Our elected officials who were meeting with Amazon all signed NDAs for how much water it would use to cool their servers. They have open-loop systems here. My question to them was and still is: How are we supposed to know if they’re getting close to the limitations of our freshwater aquifer if we don’t know how much water they’re using? They just say, “Oh, we’ll know. Don’t worry.” Yeah, right. That’s what I’m worried about. I’m always asking them, what’s so “Colonel Sanders’s 11 secret herbs and spices” about how much water they use to cool their servers? We have a right to know.

Amazon has tried to win us over by doing “nice things” for us. Over the holidays, we have a town potluck banquet where everyone brings a dish, but this year Amazon brought all the food. On Facebook, people were saying, “Isn’t this wonderful? Amazon is bringing food to the banquet for everybody!” I guess all they had to do was feed people for them to forget everything they’re doing to us. That one really got me.

Racel Wurfel (Indiana): Meta has been allowed to go through so many tax loopholes that, even on the most basic economic level, this makes no sense for the state of Indiana. I’ve done so much research trying to figure out how much Meta paid for the land. We have no transparency.

When the project got rolling, our community was told it was a “technology campus.” We thought it would be a Meta office with software jobs. We had no idea what the intention was.

If you go to the Jeffersonville Data Center Facebook page, they try to make it look like a place you can go and enjoy with cutesy community rooms with paintings on the walls. But if you drive over there, it’s like a military compound from a sci-fi movie. Everything is covered. You can’t see what’s actually going on.

Christine LeJeune (Wisconsin): Our town heard about the data center during a presentation from Cloverleaf. The mayor was careful to point out that discussion about it was in the very early stages—that this was the first step in a thousand. He said he was hearing about it along with us, but open records revealed that he was already in communication with them. Cloverleaf handed off the project to the operator, Vantage Data Centers, a multinational corporation with data centers on five different continents. Vantage maintains ownership, but they’ll rent out the data center to Oracle and OpenAI.

The project was approved at a town hall. That was also when the transmission line company outlined how people’s properties will be impacted by the huge transmission lines needed to power the data center. Part of their playbook is to give the public piecemeal information. When we were focused on the data center itself, suddenly there’s the other issue of how it will be powered by gigantic transmission lines that will affect people across five different counties, running through protected areas and conservation easements.

It caught us all off guard. Since then, the mayor has kept repeating this phrase, almost like a mantra: “It’s a done deal. It’s a done deal.” I’m so sick of hearing that. They’re trying to infiltrate your psyche with this belief that there’s nothing you can do. And a lot of people accept that. People here are not used to having to stand up for themselves to corporations like this. It’s very new, complicated, and challenging for people.

LaTricea Adams (Tennessee): The only folks who knew were part of the deal: the mayor of Memphis; the president of Memphis Light, Gas, and Water; and the Chamber of Commerce. It really shows how this goes beyond a permitting issue and gets into a democracy issue.

Our local utility didn’t have the capacity to provide the power the Colossus 1 data center needs, so xAI brought in “temporary” gas turbines on semi trucks and parked them. The turbines weren’t fixed to the ground. They were on trailers.

In the same zip code as the Colossus 1 data center, there are over 17 other high-polluting facilities. Both of my parents are from that area. To make the environmental racism fully blatant, the Valero refinery is right next to MLK Park. So with the addition of the xAI data center, there’s a nexus of pollution—from transportation, the oil refinery, all the other heavy industry, and now the data center.

The community rightfully raised hell about the polluting, unpermitted turbines when they were in Memphis. The city decommissioned the turbines, but then xAI went right across the state line into Mississippi and set them up again.

Devan Jenkins (Mississippi): Musk came along and bought all the land around here that he could—and it’s a lot of land. He’s rushing it. I don’t know what contractors they have, or who exactly is doing what, but they have these huge dump trucks here on Windsor Road. It’s a residential street where my grandparents have lived for decades. The truck drivers violate this residential area that isn’t supposed to have industrial trucks driving through. I got the city to put up “No Trucks Through” signs, but they still drive down the road all day. They take up the whole road and drive crazy. They won’t be done building out the power plant until early 2027.

I’m having my wedding in my grandparents’ backyard in June. My husband and I will move into a little cottage on the property. I don’t want the peace of my wedding to get disturbed, or have the safety of my guests get compromised.

Dan Caruso (Indiana): There were problems with the Amazon people zooming past a school bus with its “Stop” arm out. They’d swing out into the other lane and fly past the school bus while the kids were about to get on or off. The bus driver took it on her own initiative to tell people not to send their kids to the bus stop at that intersection. She started driving to everyone’s door to pick up their kids instead.

Amanda Mueller (Wisconsin): When they first started 24/7 construction, it was land of the midnight sun. My streetlight went out, and I didn’t even notice because it was so bright. The light pollution from construction has since improved, but data centers are maximum security installations. The perimeter is lit up at all times. They want to keep it secure and surveil it constantly.

Christine LeJeune (Wisconsin): There has been a big dust issue because of the scale of the first construction phase, during which they tore up the majority of the 673 acres. It’s windy here because it’s near Lake Michigan. There’s a vortex of swirling air surrounding the lake. The dust, concrete stabilizer, lime—all that gets trapped in the air. Then the wind gets very strong very often, blowing it all in different directions.

People who drive past are shocked by the huge swales of dust. The way they build these things, they push up the soil into volcano-looking mounds throughout the site. It collects on people’s homes and cars, not to mention inside our lungs. There’s a lot of dump trucks driving around and carting the top soil away. They’re just carting away this wonderful, fertile soil that’s been cultivated by farmers for generations.

Amanda Mueller (Wisconsin): Our subdivision empties out into the middle of construction. We call it the battlefield. Wherever you turn, it’s bulldozers, cement trucks, men. There are 5,000 workers coming in, and the total population of our town is 1,432.

Tracie (Texas): The housing shortage is intense. Many people who own their homes are moving and setting their houses up as rental properties. My widowed daughter-in-law is completely out of a house. She couldn’t afford the rent hike. And it’s her own family who’s saying, “We want to make hay while we can.” All the apartments are full, and we have R.V. parks springing up all over the place.

Jane (Oregon): I’ve worked on multiple data centers here in Oregon. There’s something like nine or 10 Meta buildings, and then about four for Apple, just in this area where I live. They’re all over Oregon. It brings in a lot of people while they build them, but they don’t employ many people long term. One is a million square feet.

I’m a sheet metal worker. I run duct work for the big units to keep everything cool. Most of the data centers in Oregon are built by union workers. We’re the only ones who can man them. It’s trades-workers like sheet rockers, electricians, painters, and metal framers that frame the walls. It takes somewhere near a year to get one of them up and running, depending on the size.

They get their own Apple or Meta people running diagnostics and doing the high-tech jobs when it’s all online. One outfit I worked for keeps four or five people on at one of the Meta buildings, doing stuff like changing out filters, because there’s thousands and thousands of them in the walls. Outside air gets sucked in, cleaned, and then run down a long tunnel to keep the servers cool.

The jobs lately have all been for all this AI stuff, which is not my jam. But when we bid for the job and that’s what it calls for, we’re not necessarily thinking about how bad data centers are for the environment. This is just what I do for a living. Data centers are not all we build. We do schools, hospitals, libraries, all kinds of things. The data centers are good money for people in my trade, but they’re obviously not good for the world. If that work was replaced by something else, I would be all for it, 100 percent.

Dan Caruso (Indiana): The agreement between Amazon and St. Joseph County was that, upon completion of the 16 to 18 data center shells, they would have 400 full-time workers and then 600 on-call contractors for basic maintenance. The 400 permanent workers are spread among the 16 shells, working five shifts. So five workers per shift, per building. Each of those buildings is 216,000 square feet. These guys are going to need a cell phone just to communicate with each other across these huge buildings.

Rachel Wurfel (Indiana): There was a lot of blasting required during construction, and that’s done untold foundation damage to people’s homes. Every lawyer in this area who people contacted are under NDAs. They’ve been on retainer to Meta. People don’t know where to turn for help.

Within a year of Meta starting construction, we had multiple homes that needed major foundation repairs. My next door neighbor had to have it done. Part of the house has to get jacked up so the concrete can get repoured. It takes at least a few weeks. Some of the data center contractors have come out and said that heavy blasting can cause shifts in land—and they were doing massive amounts of blasting.

I’ve also noticed problems with our water. We’ve always needed water softener, because we’re on a rural water tank. But now you get this pink cast left behind if the water sits. It’s this sludgy residue. You have to constantly scrub your bath and shower, or else it looks disgusting. We strictly use bottled water to cook with now. There’s also a smell in the air. On hot days especially, you can feel a different heaviness.

Jason Haley (Mississippi): My neighborhood was nice and peaceful until the turbines and xAI power plant came in. I’ve been here 20 years. I’ve never had any major complaints with noise. Just typical neighborhood sounds. A dog barking, stuff like that. You’d sit outside at night on your back deck and not have many problems.

Now it’s constant noise. I started hearing it when I was in my backyard or around my house—not super loud at first, but always present. My first thought was, “Hell, somebody’s got a leafblower going.” But it never stopped. Then I found out it’s the xAI powerplant causing the noise.

The noise kept getting louder. It became this terribly loud, high-pitched noise—and that’s along with the lower tone rumbling. I started reaching out to city officials. They’d say, “Yeah, we know it’s a problem. But it will be better next week.” That’s a phrase they kept repeating: “It will be better next week.” It’s never gotten any damn better.

It took a lot of speaking in public, going to meetings, and posting about it for city officials to even take it seriously. The mayor at one point said it was a priority, but there was never any pause with the noise. Today it’s not as bad as it was yesterday, but that could change any minute. From my understanding, the high-pitched sound has to do with the steam and releasing the pressure from the turbines, which they run wide open.

I hear it from inside my house. It’s torture, man. Some people say, “Well, just shut your door. Stay inside. Insulate your house better.” Blah, blah, blah. It was so damn loud in my house the other night that I could feel it. It felt like my house was vibrating. And I’ve had that happen several times—where I can feel it in addition to hearing it. There are a few days here and there when it seems bearable, and I start thinking maybe they’ve finally gotten something fixed. But within 24 hours or less, it’s back to, “Fuck my life.”

Elena Schlossberg (Virginia): “Data Center Alley” is in Loudoun County, about 30 minutes from my house. When that area of Loudoun County first became Data Center Alley, they were small data centers. But it’s metastasized.

When you go into the belly of the beast, you can see what unconstrained data center growth looks like—and how the digital world is crowding out our own. You come over this ramp and look in front of you. As far as the eye can see are sprawling buildings. Cranes everywhere. Substations, transmission lines. It’s a mechanical overgrowth. No matter what road you go down, there’s more and more.

Pratika Katiyar (Virginia): Actual communities could’ve been built there, but instead it’s one data center after another. It’s dystopian, especially compared to my memories of what it was like to grow up here, when there were so many parks and kids had so much space to play and ride their bikes. They can’t ride their bikes there anymore. Some of the data centers are surrounded by barbed wire fences. Some are right out in the open. So it’s these huge, alienating rectangles that clash with the area’s culture and history, as well as the land itself.

Jane (Oregon): Data centers are great for the CEOs and uppers like that, but it’s not good for us or our land. They eat a lot of water. It’s something like 1,300 gallons of water per minute for cooling. Oregon’s in a severe drought. Usually we get buried in snow. We got one inch one day this year. That’s it.

Dan Caruso (Indiana): In 2024, our board of commissioners committed to a 24 million gallon per day withdrawal cap from our aquifer to protect it. That’s for everyday users, like people taking showers, as well as the water needs of farmers and other businesses. But now we have contractors for the data center pulling 35 million gallons of water per day–and that’s in addition to our 24 million. And let’s be generous–the town could go down to 23 million if we had to. You’d still have 58 million gallons of water per day getting pulled. That’s exceeding the capabilities of our aquifer by at least 10 million gallons of water every day. They say it will only be for a period of two years. But it can’t be for one day. They’ll drain the aquifer.

Austin Dalgo (Tennessee): Memphis sits atop one of the purest aquifers in the country. It’s the size of Lake Michigan, just underneath Memphis. We have the best-tasting water I’ve ever had in any city, and that’s because of the Sand Aquifer.

xAI initially told us they were going to use gray water. About a month ago, the company turned around and said, “Oh, by the way, we’re using freshwater at the data center.” They’re feeding off this amazing natural resource we have, using something insane like five million gallons of water a day.

There’s no reason why they can’t use gray water. Musk said that using gray water was always supposed to be phase two of the plan—but that he “doesn’t have the money right now to do it,” which is absurd coming from someone who just became the first trillionaire in history.

Jared Spann (Utah): Water has been a sensitive subject for a while here. This year we had one of the worst snowpack years in Utah history. Almost all of Utah’s water comes from snow runoff. And now Kevin O’Leary wants to use two billion gallons of our water per year for his psychotic data center.

Not having the moisture we need, the temperatures are getting insanely hot. We’re getting well into the hundreds during the summer, and it’s lasting for longer and longer. Everything dries out, so then we’re also dealing with wildfires. As if that weren’t enough, the Great Salt Lake is evaporating and receding every year, which puts toxic chemicals into the air. Salt Lake City and the Wasatch Front traps all those pollutants. Now they’re saying O’Leary’s data center will raise temperatures across the entire Wasatch Front. According to Governor Cox, somehow it will all be fine.

Paul Oblock (Utah): I never would’ve considered myself a climate activist in any way whatsoever. But there are some early estimates from ecologists that O’Leary’s data center could raise daytime temperatures in our region by five degrees, and then nighttime temperatures by almost thirty. So when they’re only 10 miles away from such an awesome ecological site as the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge—it doesn’t take an ecology professor to know that a thirty degree rise in temperature will not be good for any of the wildlife in that area or that marshland habitat. There’s going to be a lot of evaporation of that existing water at an accelerated pace.

If temperatures rise that much, it doesn’t seem sustainable for any amount of time. Imagine where we’ll be in 200 years if it goes on like that. My family and I love it here, but now I’m left wondering what my sons’ future will look like. If we don’t have water that’s easily accessible and we’re bleeding it all dry–I worry about the future for all of us, period.

Amanda Mueller (Wisconsin): I thought these were going to be my golden years. I thought it was going to be me and the raccoons. Now I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t think I can sell my house at this point, but I don’t think I can live with this monster data center either.

I’ve never protested. I’m a 67-year-old lady. The only time I’ve been a menace to someone was when I took sailing lessons. I wanted to mind my own business, but suddenly I’m taking on towns and cities, and even the whole state. I’ve come to realize we’re all in this together, and we can do this together. Even though people are so trodden on and so defeated, there’s still this little voice that won’t go away. And that’s America truly being America.

For anyone who’s looking to get involved, remember that facts speak truth. A lot of people in suits are going to tell you that you don’t matter. They’ll say you’re small and you should crawl back under your rock. So you need thick skin.

But if this keeps you up at night, you should do something. Even if that just means going to a town meeting and telling people it’s wrong. And when you speak to government people, don’t be afraid to tell them like it is. I told our state senator to her face that she’s wishy-washy, and she got really upset. But the people who lead us need to be tougher than that.

Jason Haley (Mississippi): After some back and forth, an xAI representative offered me enough where I could get a nice house somewhere else. It was clear what they wanted, which was for me to shut the fuck up and go away. But it doesn’t feel right. That’s not who I am. What about everyone who can’t just pack up and move? I’m trying to have some integrity here and do the right thing.

Elena Schlossberg (Wisconsin): I was one of those residents who was hesitant to become involved. I was very aware of the situation, but I never thought it would come to this. Having access to more information than I did a year ago—my advice is for people to realize that, if you don’t do it, no one else will.

LaTricea Adams (Tennessee): This is a pivotal moment where the majority of the country has something in common that’s ticking us all off, and that’s data centers. So how can we harness that energy and take back our democracy? It’s possible. The elected officials who are just creating pathways for the tech bros—we need to remind them they work for us, not corporations.

The United States and Iran have signed a Memorandum of Understanding, or (MOU), to end an Iran War that—when it began—Congressional Democrats widely denounced as a reprehensible and illegal “war of choice.” One might logically expect those same Democrats to welcome a diplomatic end to that war. Instead, many have taken aim at the MOU; some have even joined critics in the GOP who’ve suggested that it be subjected to Congressional review. The obvious alternative to allowing negotiations to proceed according to the terms established by the MOU is to continue the Iran War—and all of its attendant geopolitical and economic disruptions.

In a social media post on Thursday evening, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer suggested that the White House would need to seek Congressional approval to move forward with a prospective deal. “If Trump wants to send hundreds of billions of dollars to Iran,” he wrote, “he’ll need to do it with Republican votes. Democrats will not be helping Trump send $300 billion to Iran,” referencing a provision of the MOU to establish a multilateral fund for Iran’s post-war reconstruction and economic development. Hours later, after midnight, Schumer clarified his position: “As I’ve said from day one, this reckless, illegal war was a mistake and it’s no surprise it led to a shameful deal. This war must end.”

Criticisms of the MOU over the last week have highlighted lingering tensions in a party reckoning with its leadership’s long-held support for hawkish and increasingly unpopular foreign policy—especially with regard to Iran. That baggage includes top Democrats’ historically staunch support for an Israeli government that once again seems poised to undermine any lasting peace deal between the US and Iran. “I do still think there’s kind of a vestigial reflex among a lot of Democrats to oppose anything that’s good for Iran, to oppose anything Israel doesn’t like, and to oppose anything that suggests the US is not all-powerful,” says Matt Duss, a former foreign policy staffer for Senator Bernie Sanders and current executive vice president of the Center for International Policy. “Despite the multiple foreign policy failures of the last several decades, especially after 9/11, there is still this belief that American military power can do magical things—even for critics of this war,” he added.

It’s worth noting that Democrats’ criticisms of the MOU have in some cases been rooted in deep misunderstandings of what it actually says. Several senators, for instance, focused on an alleged “$300 Billion Dollar payment to Iran by the U.S.,” as Schumer wrote on social media. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy called it a “reparations payment to Iran.” Senator Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota, wrote that those funds could be used to “end homelessness, fund cancer research for 40 years, and give every child free pre-K for over 7 years. Instead, Trump is sending it to Iran.”

The agreement states only that the U.S., “with regional partners,” will “develop a definitive mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 Billion.” Essentially, this amounts to a commitment to make a plan to create a fund. The MOU further clarifies that those funds will be dollars—not that the U.S. government will itself be providing $300 billion (or any amount) directly.

Esfandyar Batmanghelidj—chief executive of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, a research organization based in London—noted that the text of the MOU largely reflects points that negotiators had been discussing even before the Twelve-Day War between Iran and Israel last June. It’s mainly a framework for future negotiations, he explained, and provides for fairly modest economic relief as a show of good-faith that Iran might finally see an end to years of crushing U.S. sanctions. Rather than a $300 billion “payment,” the MOU outlines the immediate provision of two forms of interim economic relief: a sanctions waiver allowing Iran to export oil and petrochemical products, and the return of a small portion of Iranian assets that have been frozen in foreign accounts. The deal, Batmanghelidj added, “makes very clear the promise to Iran that if diplomacy is pursued to the max extent possible, and a deal is reached, then Iran can achieve an end-state where it’s no longer a global pariah.”

It’s arguably somewhat historic that the U.S. and Iran have—after decades of tensions—have agreed to respect one another’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs,” per the MOU.

Batmanghelidj was wary of the prospect of partisan points-scoring helping to undermine an agreement whose foundations remain fragile. The next round of negotiations between the US and Iran were expected to begin in Switzerland on Friday, then abruptly postponed. Israel continued bombing Lebanon on Friday after reports that the two countries had renewed a ceasefire. “Critics need to be really mindful that they are giving a lot of fodder to hardliners in Iran who are not convinced about this deal,” Batmanghelidj said, “but also hardliners in Israel and the Gulf states, who’ve so far been overruled by more pragmatic figures in their systems.”

If negotiations do proceed, the team that’s been leading those talks for the US—namely Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—aren’t exactly ideal personnel to hash out the more technical details that will be required for any lasting peace agreement. “Iran and the other countries in the region are going to have to work very hard to make sure Trump doesn’t convince himself that it’s ‘mission accomplished,’” Batmanghelidj said.

Duss cautioned Democrats against doing anything that would co-sign continued fighting. Thankfully, as of Friday, several Democratic critics of the MOU had at least clarified their support for ending the war “on any terms,” as Murphy told CNN. “I hope that most elected Democrats are smart enough to know that right now Donald Trump owns this war,” Duss said. “He owns this whole catastrophe. If Democrats are seen as doing anything to tank this ceasefire agreement—that leads to a resumption of the war—they will be co-owners of this war with Trump.”

Donald Trump’s war with Iran is making it clear this presidency could have much worse long-term consequences than we expected. Yet Trump is spending his nights indulging his crazed obsessions. In one early-morning tirade, he raged about “fools” who criticize his Iran fiasco, calling them “bad people” and “stupid.” In another, he fulminated at length about his ballroom. He’s posting updates on the gilding of statues and images of himself on international magazine covers. The gap between the gravity of the moment on one side and his trivial megalomania on the other is jarring. We talked to economist Paul Krugman, who has been writing really well on his Substack about both sides of this divide. He goes big-picture, detailing the signs that we’re a country in decline, why other countries are looking toward a post-American world, and why it’s shocking that we put up with his worsening megalomania and nonstop desecration of our republic. Listen to this episode here.

In the wake of Operation Epic Fury, both supporters and critics of the president have described the joint U.S.- Israeli bombing campaigns as “exquisite.” Iran’s supreme leader, in addition to vast swaths of the security cabinet and IRGC command were wiped out at the same time that Iranian missile production capabilities were severely degraded. The intelligence was, in some senses, so captivating, so advanced, and so hyper targeted, that military experts on both sides of the political spectrum set aside the liabilities of escalating a hot war to celebrate the god-like perfection of its initiation. But if this new intelligence apparatus, powered by AI and irresistible to America’s top commanders is hastily integrated into the nuclear arsenal, the fallout will be anything but “exquisite.” 

An examination of government documents, private sector contracting records, and the little noticed statements of military commanders suggests that the same artificial intelligence that allowed frictionless decapitation in Iran is now coming to the nuclear arsenal—with potentially world-altering consequences. While much noise has been made about safeguarding the nuclear command from AI, with constant reassurances of “human-in-the-loop” safeguards, a different escalatory threat has fallen by the wayside: left of launch operations. 

With worst-case scenarios of nuclear engagement, most people think of Strangelove-esque military planners fomenting support for a doomsday machine. During the Cold War, near-misses occurred with terrifying frequency, such as the occasion when a flock of geese was mistaken for a soviet nuclear bombing campaign. Most of these almost catastrophic mistakes revolved around mistaking things for missiles that had already been launched. 

With the integration of AI into the nuclear command and control infrastructure, escalation may soon begin on the ground, before the launch codes have been entered and the bunkers sealed. This new doctrine is known as “left of launch” and AI is increasingly being integrated into the systems used to predict when a nuclear weapon is being launched, as well as the assets that could be degraded to prevent a first strike. 

As we have seen time and time again, the frictionless intelligence that led to  a perfect exfiltration in Venezuela, or the targeted killings in Iran, may soon grease the wheels of preemptive strikes on nuclear capabilities, an escalation into untested terrain for both artificial intelligence, and humanity.

What Is “left of launch?” The first public use of the term appears to be a 2014 memo between Army and Navy chiefs discussing the need for new technologies for U.S. missile defense. That memo states that “Now is the opportunity to develop a long-term approach that addresses homeland missile defense and regional missile defense priorities—a holistic approach that is more sustainable and cost effective, incorporating ‘left-of-launch’ and other non-kinetic means of defense. The proposed strategy would serve as the capstone for the Department to balance priorities, inform resourcing decisions, and restore our strategic flexibility.”

This memo marked a strategic shift, putting an increasing focus on the idea of stopping adversaries’ nuclear missiles before they’re launched, a tactic that proved effective during the Obama era for degrading North Korea’s ballistic missile tests. Since the 2014 memo, cyber attacks and sabotage have been added to preemptive air or missile strikes on foreign missile launchers and facilities under the umbrella of “left of launch.” 

Five years after the term “left of launch” began cropping up inside the Department of Defense, the Trump administration commissioned and released a review of American “policies, strategies, and capabilities…to counter the expanding missile threats posed by rogue states and revisionist powers.” The report called for an escalatory build-out of new capabilities. Among those was a new framework for advancing the notion that preemptive action is actually just another form of defense. 

As Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote at the time, the report increased the escalation cycle with America’s enemies by “bringing attack operations into the overall missile defense posture as a triad along with active defenses, such as interceptors, and passive defenses, such as hardening and dispersal of potential missile targets.” This, according to Grego, created what amounts to “a kinetic version of left of launch” that no longer reflects traditional deterrence but instead is a first-strike capability. 

Grego also pointed out that the report’s interpretation by other nuclear powers, namely Russia and China, will not abide by America’s framing that new satellites and hypersonic ballistic missiles are for defensive capabilities, something Russia quickly made explicit. 

During the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy was pushed from all sides, including by the joint chiefs of staff, to launch a preemptive bombing campaign against the Soviets to obliterate their nuclear capacity on the island. Instead, JFK opted for a passive blockade and diplomatic back channeling that resolved the issue without kinetic force or the potential for catastrophic escalation. But new AI technology being sold to the U.S. government may forestall a similarly de-scalatory approach in the coming decades. 

In June of 2010, General Stanley McChrystal, then America’s top commander in Afghanistan, was forced to resign after a long string of incidents suggested contempt for civilian control of the American military. First, he publicly called for tens of thousands of troops to surge in Afghanistan before a confidential document codifying his opinion leaked to the press, two breaches in protocol that resulted in accusations of subversion of the chain of command.  Soon after he and various other commanders and staff were revealed to have disparaged the president andvice presidentv in an article for Rolling Stone. He prepared his resignation the same day it was published. 

Now, McChrystal is advising an AI technology firm that bills itself as being better at predicting the future of nuclear warfare than both civilian and military commanders. In a lengthy opinion piece penned in Foreign Policy, McChrystal wrote that the firm Rhombus, where he serves as an advisor, predicted the invasion of Ukraine by Russia better than the American national security apparatus. “The quantity of data we analyze helps predict the next card in an opponent’s deck with previously unimaginable confidence.”

Rhombus CEO Anshu Roy cites Sun Tzu to summarize his firm’s premise: “Battles are won before they start.” Roy’s firm has won a $200 million dollar contract from the U.S. Air Force for “an artificial intelligence platform for strategic decision making in defense and national security enterprises,” and has been sanctioned by the CCP for his firm’s work on behalf of the Taiwanese military. In 2024, Carrier management wrote that Rhombus Power also tracks North Korean missile launches for an unnamed government client, suggesting its potential for left of launch applications has been in motion now for some time. 

As The New Republic reported last year, Rhombus’s Ambient product, described as a “digital nervous system, made approximately 32,000 predictions in 2023. Of those tens of thousands, 25,000 were accurate. That’s a .780 batting average, which while great for baseball, might not be high enough for initiating nuclear conflict. 

In his article, McChrystal acknowledges that “while AI can make the picture clearer, it only makes decision-makers’ choices more complex”—an apparent nod to civilian control of the military. Nonetheless, there is a subtle un-truth to the idea that AI integration into systems used to detect adversaries’ nuclear command and control infrastructure will be a merely passive tool to provide commanders options in the situation room. 

As we’ve seen in the Trump administration’s use of incredibly powerful weaponry and detection technology, intelligence fueled by AI greases the wheels of the national security apparatus, whether the outcomes of kinetic action will have long term beneficial impacts or not. In an interview with Politico, Rhombus officials countered this point by pointing to de-escalating a flare up of hostilities between India and Pakistan by “identifying activity at Pakistani bases that could have been mistaken for nuclear arms escalation…but was not.”

But while the generals advising Rhombus about the promise of AI’s use on the battlefield are charging full steam ahead, not every retired general is in alignment. Prior to his retirement, Lt. Gen. John N.T. Shanahan served as director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, a Department of Defense component studying the integration of AI onto the battlefield. 

In an article for the Arms Control Association Shanahan wrote: “One especially destabilizing scenario involves the widespread application of AI to detect and continuously monitor the ground, sea, and airborne nuclear forces of other states. Adversary integration of AI-enhanced systems … could erode confidence in a state’s assured retaliation posture. This loss of confidence could in turn increase incentives for preemptive strikes, weakening the logic of deterrence and undermining strategic stability. The problem becomes even more acute if such surveillance and tracking technologies are paired with AI-enhanced automation of decision-making or launch processes, heightening first-strike incentives during a crisis.”

His conclusion ultimately found that even small scale errors at the input level of AI systems could “produce disproportionate upstream consequences once multiple AI models are embedded across interconnected platforms and decision-support systems.”

As AI integration into “left of launch” ramps up, job listings obtained by The New Republic show the extent to which AI is already being injected into United Strategic Command, which is responsible for maintaining and operating the nuclear arsenal. The command’s official remit includes overseeing Strategic Deterrence, NC3 (Nuclear Command, Control, and Communication) Enterprise Operations, Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations, and Global Strike and Missile Threat Assessment.

These job offers include a General Dynamics listing for an AI engineer to work at Stratcom to reduce the complexity of command and control through AI and machine learning, and an AI advisor to oversee AI integration into the Tomahawk weapon systems threat mission planning center. 

Elsewhere, a contractor called DEFCON AI is hiring a subject matter expert to support the development of a modeling and simulation environment who has “deep expertise in U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) programs to help model strategic capabilities, planning constructs, and operational decision frameworks” to “support analysis across the nuclear deterrence mission set.”

Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin posted a listing for a staff AI research engineer based out of STRATcom’s headquarters in Nebraska to work on integrating AI into the nuclear deterrence mission. Taken together, these postings show that AI is being increasingly integrated into both the nuclear command and control infrastructure and into the conventional weapons systems that could be used in a “left of launch” first strike scenario. 

AI integration across the Department of Defense has ramped up with executive orders and a new AI-styled space race with great power competitors like China and Russia. But one development over the past two years has integrated AI into the “left of launch” framework with the result of escalating tensions with nuclear powers who claim a new “defensive capability” is an outright escalation on the nuclear battlefield. 

In his second term, Donald Trump unveiled his plans for the Golden Dome, a network of space detection satellites, high energy weapons, and ground and sea based interceptor missiles to shield America from missile threats. The program is expected to cost $185 billion, with an initial capability delivered by 2028 and the full system in place in 2035. (Some analysts have put the figure closer to $3.5 trillion.) 

The U.S. Space Force has already handed out billions in contracts for prototype interceptor missiles, but the escalatory potential for the system is not found in explosive hardware, but the detection capabilities proposed for the system. Firefly Aerospace and its recently acquired SciTec have touted their products for the Golden Dome, including missile warning systems, surveillance and reconnaissance, autonomous command and control, all in addition to “AI-enabled systems designed for low latency operations to support advanced threat tracking and response across multiple domains.”

Also involved in AI, data processing, and command control systems for the Golden Dome are Palantir, Anduril, and Booz Allen Hamilton. The Space Force General in charge of the Golden Dome, Michael Guetlein, let slip in an interview to the Washington Examiner that “left of launch counterattacks” will also be a core component of the Golden Dome. 

Russia and China have taken note, releasing a joint statement criticizing the integration of “left of launch” into Donald Trump’s new project, describing it as a “complete and ultimate rejection to recognize the existence of the inseparable interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms, which is one of the central and fundamental principles of maintaining global strategic stability. The project also provides additional impetus to the further development of kinetic and non-kinetic means providing for the left-of-launch defeat of missile weapons and the infrastructure that supports their employment.” In other words, a new arms race is on. 

Over the past year, members of congress have introduced tepid legislation to curb the integration of AI into weapons systems and the nuclear arsenal. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand introduced the Secure and Accountable Military AI Act. The bill would essentially mandate something that already exists: a human in the loop for AI targeting and control systems. This will accomplish little more than introduce a new button-pusher into vast and allegedly omniscient AI systems. 

Sen. Elissa Slotkin introduced her own bill months before that sought not only to ban AI for the use in a first strike nuclear launch but also to restrict the application of AI to domestic surveillance. But even if these bills were to pass, the full-scale AI arms race with China suggests there may be little hope of stopping the ever-present drift towards a frictionless Department of Defense that moves towards strikes with a will of its own. 

As “left of launch” capabilities are streamlined with AI, potential response times for action may decrease. The grace period for escalatory phone calls and meetings also becomes condensed. Both America and its enemies will have access to vast flows of satellite data, social media intelligence, internal communications from hostile actors, and even psychological profiling, all wrapped together into a blaring warning strobe. Maybe this technology really will make us safer, enabling first strike or cyber attacks to prevent and degrade a future launch. But maybe it won’t.

In the Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove—the most famous on-screen critique of the nuclear arms race—the president asks the mad Dr. Strangelove about the contours of the doomsday machine, an ultimate deterrence mechanism that would bring about the total annihilation of the world. “How is it possible for this thing to be triggered automatically and at the same time impossible to untrigger?” He asks. “Mr. President,” Dr Strangelove replies, “it is not only possible, it is essential.” As AI creeps into “left of launch” operations, in addition to every other nook and cranny of the Department of Defense, the logic underpinning this drive to replace human judgment with a tangle of AI algorithms sounds very Strangelovian indeed. 

The publisher of The New York Times recently made an extraordinary speech about AI, journalism, and the public square that’s received surprisingly little public reaction. What makes A.G. Sulzberger’s speech extraordinary is that it was unabashedly crusading, and crusading is a stance New York Times publishers have rarely if ever adopted over the newspaper’s 175-year history. What makes the scant reaction surprising is that the speech’s audience—fellow leaders of some of the world’s most powerful news organizations—have a commercial self-interest in the crusade Sulzberger is advocating for. What’s more, the accusations Sulzberger made, the plainspoken language he used, the alleged villains he called out by name—Google, Meta, OpenAI—are the stuff of high drama.

Sulzberger’s core argument when addressing the annual WAN-IFRA World News Media Conference on June 1 was that Big Tech is stealing the news media’s property and undermining democracy, and that the only solution is for news organizations to work together to resist it. 

Big Tech’s “hijacking of the public square is made possible by the original sin that animates their AI products—a brazen theft of intellectual property that has occurred at an unprecedented scale,” Sulzberger argued. “Tech giants strip-mine news websites without permission or compensation. They repackage these stolen goods as their own, siphoning off the audiences and revenue that otherwise would go to the news organizations that created this work.” 

If such stealing is allowed to continue, he continued, we risk a “future where a crucial wellspring of a healthy society and a stable democracy—the truth, understanding and accountability provided by original journalism—continues to dry up.… The news industry’s only path to counteracting [Big Tech’s machinations] … is by working together” to protect the industry’s property rights, including through lawsuits. (The Times, he noted, has spent $20 million on such lawsuits.)

In sum, the publisher of one of the world’s most influential newspapers has accused some of the richest, most powerful companies on earth of being criminals; of building their vast fortunes on a foundation of lies and theft at grand scale. And he urged the rest of the media to join the Times in fighting back, for the sake of not only their own commercial survival but the survival of a free press and the democracy it nourishes.

Bravo to Le Monde, Variety, and Press Gazette for writing about the speech, and to The Seattle Times for publishing excerpts on its opinion page. But given the big names, enormous sums, and profound stakes involved, why has there been so little other coverage? Why are those outlets the exceptions?

Here’s a hint: The Times itself didn’t report on the speech. Instead, the business side of the paper issued a press release containing the text. But there was no mention of the speech in the news, business, opinion, or other sections of the paper. That absence reflects a view long held by newsroom traditionalists: We (almost) never report on ourselves. The corollary—nor do we report on our competitors—likely explains why the rest of the media has been silent.

Perhaps such coverage is still to come; certainly Sulzberger’s call to arms warrants the attention of any specialist outlet focused on the news media. And maybe there are executive conversations taking place right now that will result in other newsrooms joining Sulzberger’s movement. After all, his speech did invite journalists and news executives to get in touch, offer their own ideas, and explore possible collaborations.

Covering Climate Now welcomes this opportunity, and we urge fellow journalists around the world to consider pursuing it, as well. We find Sulzberger’s analysis of the dangers facing our industry and our society persuasive, and highly pertinent to our core concern of how journalism reports on the climate emergency and its solutions.  

AI, in case it isn’t obvious, is bad for the climate because its data centers demand gargantuan amounts of scarce water and costly electricity, but it is also bad because building AI chatbots, among other things, sucks away revenue that rightfully belongs to news outlets. That theft is one reason why, as Sulzberger noted, the U.S. has “lost 75% of its journalists and more than 3,000 newspapers” over the last two decades. That’s 3,000 newspapers that will never tell the climate story. 

Even for news outlets that remain in business, shrunken revenues make it challenging to cover even routine subjects, much less a story like climate change. AI is no friend to a free press or a livable climate, and it’s time journalists grapple with how we respond.

This article is published as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.