Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Is This Billionaire a Financial Genius or a Fraudster? Michael Saylor’s financial alchemy thrust an ordinary software company, Strategy, into the center of the crypto frenzy. It all worked spectacularly, until now. (New York Times)
• Banana Republicanism: A criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will test whether Republican loyalty to the president has any limits. (The Atlantic) see also The Jerome Powell Clusterfuck Is a Clusterfuck of Pam Bondi’s Own Making: More problematic for the adminstration, a number of Republican members of Congress — starting with some of the usual rebels, like Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski (who described in a Tweet that she had spoken with Powell). (emptywheel)
• True Patriots Are Cashing In on the Apocalypse: How two big names in mainstream disaster preparedness helped sell Americans on fear, anxiety, and a new generator. (Wired)
• Grok Is Generating Sexual Content Far More Graphic Than What’s on X: A review of outputs hosted on Grok’s official website shows it’s being used to create violent sexual images and videos, as well as content that includes apparent minors. (Wired) see also These companies advertised on X as Grok produced sexualized images of kids: At least 37 major companies were advertising on the platform this week, a Popular Information investigation reveals. (Popular Information)
• Xi Welcomes Stream of Leaders Shaken by Tariff’s New World Order: President Xi Jinping is welcoming a procession of leaders looking to mend fences with China. The visits come after Donald Trump sealed a tariff truce with China, and leaders are eager to engage with Xi so they aren’t sidelined by US-China maneuvering. Foreign leaders are also visiting Beijing to discuss trade and secure access to critical minerals, such as rare earths, with China being the dominant global supplier. So much stupid… (Bloomberg free)
• ‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid. Internal ICE material and testimony from an official obtained by 404 Media provides the clearest link yet between the technological infrastructure Palantir is building for ICE and the agency’s activities on the ground. (404)
• The Purged: The destruction of the civil service is a tragedy not just for the roughly 300,000 workers who have been discarded, but for an entire nation. (The Atlantic)
• Chinese Universities Surge in Global Rankings as U.S. Schools Slip: Harvard still dominates, though it fell to No. 3 on a list measuring academic output. Other American universities are falling farther behind their global peers. (New York Times)
• *Another* U.S. Attorney Disqualified After Failing The ‘Actually Appointed’ Test You can’t just vibe your way into being a U.S. Attorney… (Dealbreaker) see also ‘Superstar’ Appellate Judges Have Voted 133 to 12 in Trump’s Favor: President Trump promised to fill the appeals courts with “my judges.” They have formed a nearly united phalanx to defend his agenda from legal challenges. Destroying the Rule of Law one incomeptent jurist at a toiem. (New York Times)
• Samoans: Americans by Name, Punished for Believing It: In a small Alaska town, American Samoans face prosecution for voting in the only country they’ve ever known. They live in a limbo, created by colonial expansion, that now confuses even public officials—and has made them a new target for policing voter fraud. (Bolts)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Nobel laureate Richard Thaler and his University of Chicago Booth School colleague Alex Imas on the update and reissue of his classic book The Winner’s Curse.
Congress struggled to pass laws – the second fewest enacted in over a century
Source: Bruce Mehlman’s Age of Disruption
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