from the everything-is-very-broken dept

I don’t imply to harp on this, however a central promise of the Trump administration over the past election season was {that a} second Trump time period would “take goal at large tech,” shield the little man, rein in company energy, and even “proceed the legacy of antitrust enforcers like Lina Khan.” The press was full of limitless tales credibly parroting these sorts of claims, all day, everyday.

Six months later and it’s nothing however corruption and cronyism so far as the attention can see. The Trump administration and its courts have effectively destroyed regulatory independence, federal shopper safety, and public security oversight. Huge, horrible mergers are rubber stamped with reckless abandon, offered firms present authoritarian management they’re racist and feckless sufficient.

A recent report by nonprofit consumer advocacy firm Public Citizen calculated that the Trump administration has frozen regulatory motion for a minimum of 165 companies beneath investigation for all kinds of abuses, crimes, and fraud. Lots of them the place the precise form of “large tech” firms that the Trump administration repeatedly claimed they’d be robust on:

“In six months, the Trump administration has already withdrawn or halted enforcement actions towards 165 companies of every kind – and one in 4 of the companies benefiting from halted or dropped enforcement is from the expertise sector, which has spent $1.2 billion on political affect throughout and because the 2024 elections.”

The press hasn’t actually defined this to the general public very nicely, however successfully all U.S. public security, labor, shopper, and different protections are lifeless within the water, one thing that can inevitably lead to mass sickness, incapacity, and demise. The vast majority of efforts to carry companies accountable now routinely run into Trump-stocked courts that can insist companies have overstepped their ever-dwindling regulatory authority. It’s radical extremism, but it surely’s by no means framed as extremism within the press.

Regardless of the “feud” between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, this has confirmed notably helpful to guys like Musk, who’ve seen greater than 40 totally different regulatory inquiries into his firms just magically evaporate in a little over six months. Dodgy monetary fraudsters within the crypto area have additionally been large beneficiaries of the outright assault on company oversight.

It’s the golden age of corruption, a lot of the harm can be everlasting, and the affect will reverberate for a technology or longer. That is, curiously, not of curiosity to the press. Regardless of the actual fact the horrors over the horizon will provide endlessly alternative for hyperbolic headlines.

I appear to recall a number of years of claims from pundits and media shops that Trump was going to be “robust on large tech” and can be “serious about antitrust.” In actuality, as I tried to warn repeatedly in the run up to the election, Trump was merely searching for leverage that he may use to bully tech firms into being friendlier to authoritarians and authoritarian propaganda (fairly efficiently, because it turned out).

Unsurprisingly, authoritarians don’t care about wholesome markets, sturdy competitors, or the general public curiosity, they care about their very own private wealth and energy. Every part else is bullshit. But, curiously, the consolidated, company U.S. press doesn’t appear almost as concerned about overlaying our daily corruption and cronyism as they have been in propping up Trump’s faux populism throughout the the final election season.

So as a substitute, we get coverage like this over at Axios, that normalizes the truth that U.S. authoritarians are actually sustaining a operating record of firms that are appropriately deferential to our mad, idiot king.

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