As Republicans struggle to pass Donald Trump’s grossly unfair and unpopular budget bill, Halitic’s host Hal Ginsberg and I talk about Zohran Mamdani’s surprise win in New York City and whether his type of winning campaign could be successful anywhere else. We also discussed a NYTimes article about the chances of 3rd parties in our elections, Kamala Harris’s possible run for governor in California, as well as the problem of smartphones for young people and whether society would be better off limiting their use. And with all the chaos in Congress, is anybody paying attention to the rising amount of killing in Gaza and Ukraine? It doesn’t seem like it.
The wealth of just 3,000 people could “eliminate annual poverty 22 times over,” a new paper says, but global goals are increasingly favoring the rich.
It’s not just wealthy people giving less: Analysts say wealthy governments have cut more life-saving development aid in the last decade than they have since records began in 1960.
More than 700 million people worldwide are facing hunger.
The paper reveals just how much global wealth has decreased, while private wealth has exponentially increased – and what this means for the 3.7 billion people living in poverty.
Global development derailed by ‘extreme inequality’
By the numbers:
According to Oxfam, the richest people on Earth increased their wealth by $33.9 trillion since 2015. The wealth of just 3,000 billionaires accounts for 14.6% of the global GDP, and the richest 1% own 43% of global assets.
Analysts say between 1995 and 2023, global private wealth grew by $342 trillion – 8 times more than global public wealth, which grew by just $44 trillion. Global public wealth – as a share of total wealth – decreased between 1995 and 2023.
Guests including Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk attend the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Julia Demaree Nikhinson – Pool/Getty Ima
It’s not just wealthy people giving less: Analysts say wealthy governments have cut more life-saving development aid in the last decade than they have since records began in 1960.
The G7 countries with the world’s largest economies – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the U.S. – account for about 75% three-quarters of all international aid. Those seven countries are cutting aid by 28% in 2026 compared to 2024.
While wealthy countries slash aid funding, Oxfam says poorer countries are in a debt crisis, with 60% of them spending more on creditors than they are on critical services.
World’s richest people
According to Forbes, nine out of the 10 richest people on Earth are from the United States. The 10 richest people are:
Elon Musk
Larry Ellison
Mark Zuckerberg
Jeff Bezos
Warren Buffett
Larry Page
Steve Ballmer
Sergey Brin
Jensen Huang
Bernard Arnault and family (France)
Global goals
The backstory:
Oxfam says in 2015, countries around the world agreed to a set of sustainable development goals and a plan to finance them. Called the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, Oxfam says the goals are failing: Only 16% of the targets are on track for 2030.
What they’re saying:
“There is glaring evidence that global development is desperately failing because – as the last decade shows – the interests of a very wealthy few are put over those of everyone else,” Amitabh Behar, Executive Director of Oxfam International, said in a news release.
“Rich countries have put Wall Street in the driver’s seat of global development. It’s a global private finance takeover which has overrun the evidence-backed ways to tackle poverty through public investments and fair taxation. It is no wonder governments are abysmally off track, be it on fostering decent jobs, gender equality, or ending hunger. This wealth concentration is choking efforts to end poverty”, Behar continued.
Why you should care:
More than 3.7 billion people worldwide live in poverty, “while gender injustice, hunger, and other denials of basic human rights are widespread,” the report says. More than 700 million people across the world are facing hunger. Aid cuts could cause 2.9 million more children and adults to die by 2030, from HIV/AIDS causes alone, Oxfam says.
What you can do:
Oxfam wants to see governments support policies that address extreme inequality and transform the development financing system:
“Trillions of dollars exist to meet the global goals, but they’re locked away in private accounts of the ultra-wealthy. It’s time we rejected the Wall Street consensus and instead put the public in the driving seat. Governments should heed widespread demands to tax the rich – and match it with a vision to build public goods from healthcare to energy. It’s a hopeful sign that some governments are banding together to fight inequality – more should follow their lead,” Behar added.
But we know Trump and his stooges will deny the result was anything less than perfect, and will never back down, despite all the evidence {TBPR editor}
By Cybele Mayes-Osterman, Tom Vanden Brook, Josh Meyer and Zac Anderson, USA Today/ June 25, 2025
WASHINGTON − A preliminary Pentagon intelligence assessment has found the U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities set back Iran’s nuclear program by a few months, according to a U.S. government source familiar with the intelligence findings.
Early evidence has shown the bombing did not reach depths necessary to destroy the facilities, which are buried deeply underground, according to a second U.S. official.
The June 21 airstrikes by U.S. Air Force B-2 stealth bombers used the military’s most powerful conventional weapon, the GBU-57 bunker buster. The 30,000-pound bombs burrow deep into the earth before exploding.
A third U.S. official confirmed the findings in the Defence Intelligence Agency report, which was first reported by CNN.
Some members of Congress have seen the DIA assessment.
Asked about the assessment, the Pentagon shared a statement from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refuting its findings.
“Based on everything we have seen – and I’ve seen it all – our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons,” Hegseth said.
“Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target – and worked perfectly,” Hegseth said. “The impact of those bombs is buried under a mountain of rubble in Iran; so anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the assessment “flat-out wrong” in a statement posted to X.
“Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”In a White House address hours after the bombs were dropped on June 21, President Donald Trump claimed the strikes “obliterated” the three key nuclear facilities – Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
Hegseth told reporters the next morning that “Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been obliterated.”
A single person — Donald J. Trump — has released the dogs of war on one of the most dangerous countries in the world, and done it without the consent of Congress, our allies, or even a clear explanation to the American people.
Anyone who has doubted Trump’s intention to replace American democracy with a dictatorship should now be fully disabused.
I share your despair, sadness, and fear. Just a week ago Saturday millions of us gathered in solidarity against Trump and for democracy, the rule of law, and social justice. Those demonstrations feel as if they occurred years ago.
Last night I spoke with a number of people experienced and knowledgable about American foreign policy and politics. Here, in brief, is what I asked and what I learned.
1. Why is Trump taking us into war with Iran?
It’s possible that he believes the attacks give him more bargaining leverage with Iran. But a more likely explanation is that the attacks fit perfectly with Trump’s desire to divert attention from his multiple failures at home: The on-again-off-again tariffs that have spooked financial markets while eliciting no meaningful concessions from other nations (especially China). An immigration crackdown that’s been stymied by federal judges. The so-called “big beautiful bill” that’s in deep trouble in the Senate. Trump’s embarrassing tiff with Musk. His failures to achieve peace in either Ukraine or Gaza. And last weekend’s record-breaking “No Kings” demonstrations as compared to his scrawny military parade.
Besides, there’s nothing like a war to help a wannabe dictator like Trump justify more “emergency” powers.
2. Is (or was) Iran building a nuclear weapon?
No one knows for sure. In March, Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, testified before Congress that the intelligence community [IC] “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader [Ali] Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
Iran’s growing stockpile of enriched uranium could allow it to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Experts differ in how long Iran would need to make a usable nuclear weapon out of the fissile material.
In the face of such uncertainty, it’s useful to recall George W. Bush’s claims of Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” that proved bogus — at a cost of 4,431 American lives, 31,994 Americans wounded in action, and an estimated 295,000 Iraqi lives.
3. Is Trump getting good information and advice?
Unlikely. He told reporters on Friday that Gabbard was “wrong” to say that Iran is not currently building a nuclear weapon but he didn’t say where he was getting his intelligence from. In May, Trump fired his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and dismissed half the professionals at the National Security Council (the Middle East section went from 10 staffers to five).
Trump is being advised on Iran by a close-knit group of political advisers and ideologues, none of whom has deep knowledge of Iran or the Middle East. All are totally loyal to Trump. (They include JD Vance; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Chief of Staff Susie Wiles; Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller; Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East who was formerly a luxury real estate developer; lieutenant general Dan (Razin’) Caine, now serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs; Erik (“The Gorilla”) Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM); John Ratcliffe, CIA director who served in the first Trump administration and was previously a Texas congressman and a mayor of a small town; and Steve Bannon.)
As a result, he’s probably getting decent advice about what’s good for Trump but not about what’s good for America or the world. It’s an inevitable consequence of purging from the government anyone more loyal to the United States than to him. Besides, Trump only listens to information he wants to hear.
4. Will Iran now cave and agree to destroy its remaining stockpile of enriched uranium and allow inspectors to confirm that the stockpile is gone?
No. Not one of the experts I spoke to thought this likely. Iran doesn’t trust the United States or Israel, and it doesn’t want to give up its potential nuclear capacities.
5. Have the bombings wiped out Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons?
Unlikely. Trump claims that the facilities were “completely and totally obliterated,” but who trusts Trump to tell the truth, or to be told the truth?
Iran has buried its uranium-enrichment facilities deep underground and distributed them to many locations. Iranian officials acknowledge that three sites were attacked but did not describe the extent of damage.
In any event, America does not have good intelligence about how long it will take Iran to get the three targeted sites back to running order.
6. What’s the worst Iran can now do to the United States in retaliation?
It could wholly or partially close the straights of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which about a fifth of global oil must pass. While not completely closed during past conflicts, Iran possesses the capabilities to significantly disrupt or halt traffic with mines, anti-ship missiles, and air defense systems. This would cause oil prices to soar in the United States and Europe (helping Big Oil but not American consumers).
Iran could also engage in a range of terrorist actions directed toward the United States. No one knows the extent of any “sleeper cells” in the U.S. or in Europe. The mere possibility could give Trump more license to restrict civil liberties.
7. Will the American public “rally ‘round the flag” and support Trump in this war?
Some Americans clearly will. But a drawn-out war in Iran will be deeply unpopular. A recent YouGov poll found that only 16 percent of Americans thought the U.S. military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran; 60 percent said it should not.
Trump promised no foreign entanglements and lower consumer prices. But this war could prove to be the largest foreign entanglement in years, and the attacks will almost certainly raise oil and gas prices.
8. Will he send in American ground troops?
On balance, the experts I consulted with thought Trump eventually would send in troops if Iran retaliated and the conflict escalated. Last night he explicitly threatened more action against Iran if it did not return to diplomatic efforts: “If they do not [make peace], future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.”
More than anything else, Trump has an abiding need to save face, he hates to lose, and he likes nothing more than conflict. He was willing to send the active military into California to stop trumped-up protests. He’ll likely be willing to send them into Iran.
The war will not be over quickly. Iran and its extensive networks in the Middle East could keep hostilities going for months or years, at a substantial cost of human life.
9. What’s Congress likely to do now?
I hope Democrats will use the War Powers Act to force a vote on the war, putting Republican lawmakers in the awkward position of voting for a war that’s immensely unpopular and can easily go very badly.
10. Bonus question: Where does the phrase “dogs of war” come from?
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in which Mark Antony (in Act 3, Scene 1) says: “Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war” — signifying that war unleashes chaos and violence.
Now that the bombing has begun, there’s no telling where this will end.
By Robert Reich/ RobertReich.com/substack/ January 9, 2025
Friends,
Now that Trump’s tariffs have been halted, his One Big Beautiful Bill has been stymied, and his multibillionaire tech bro has turned on him, how does he demonstrate his power?
On Friday morning, federal agents from ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Drug Enforcement Administration conducted raids across Los Angeles, including at two Home Depots, a doughnut shop, and a clothing wholesaler, in search of workers they suspected of being undocumented immigrants.
They arrested 121 people.
They were met with protesters who chanted and threw eggs before being dispersed by police wearing riot gear, holding shields, and using batons, guns that shot pepper balls, rubber bullets, tear gas, and flash bang grenades against the protesters.
On Saturday, Trump intentionally escalated the confrontations, ordering at least 2,000 National Guard troops to be deployed in Los Angeles County to help quell the protests.
He said that any demonstration that got in the way of immigration officials would be considered a “form of rebellion.” Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, called the protests an “Insurrection.”
Saturday evening, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened to deploy active-duty Marines, saying, “The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil. A dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK. Under President Trump, violence and destruction against federal agents and federal facilities will NOT be tolerated.”
Friends, we are witnessing the first stages of Trump’s police state.
Last week, raids in San Diego and Massachusetts — in Martha’s Vineyard and the Berkshires — led to standoffs as bystanders angrily confronted federal agents who were taking workers into custody.
Trump’s dragnet also includes federal courthouses. ICE officers are mobilizing outside courtrooms across America and are immediately arresting people — even migrants whose cases have been dismissed by judges.
History shows that once an authoritarian ruler establishes theinfrastructure of a police state, that same infrastructure can be turned on anyone.
Trump is rapidly creating such an infrastructure:
(1) declaring an emergency on the basis of a so-called “rebellion,” “insurrection,” or “invasion,”
(2) using that “emergency” to justify bringing in federal agents with a monopoly of force (ICE, DHS, FBI, DEA, and National Guard) against civilians inside the nation,
(3) allowing those militarized agents to make dragnet abductions and warrantless arrests and detain people without due process,
(4) creating additional prison space and detention camps for those detained, and
(5) eventually, as the situation escalates, declaring martial law.
We are not at martial law yet, thankfully. But once in place, the infrastructure of a police state can build on itself. Those who are given authority over aspects of it — the internal militia, dragnets, detention camps, and martial law — seek other opportunities to invoke their authority.
As civilian control gives way to military control, the nation splits into those who are most vulnerable to it and those who support it. The dictatorship entrenches itself by fomenting fear and anger on both sides.
Right now, our major bulwarks against Trump’s police state are the federal courts and broad-based peaceful protests — such as the one that many of us will engage in this coming Saturday, June 14, on the No Kings Day of Action (information here).
If you are in the National Guard or active-duty military and you believe you are being ordered to violate the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, I urge you to call the GI Rights Hotline for advice and support, at 877-447-4487.
It is imperative that we remain peaceful, that we demonstrate our resolve to combat this tyranny but do so nonviolently, and that we let America know about the emerging infrastructure of Trump’s police state and the importance of resisting it.
These are frightening and depressing times. But remember: Although it takes one authoritarian to establish a police state, it takes just 3.5 percent of a population to topple him and end it.
The alpha-male dick-measuring contest between Trump and Musk isn’t entertainment: it’s the inevitable outcome of America’s complete surrender to oligarchy.
After centuries of democratic progress, we’re watching the World’s Richest Man® and the World’s Most Powerful Man® battle for supremacy on social media like feuding warlords. How did the land of Lincoln and Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Kennedy, become a playground for billionaire sociopaths?
The answer has a name: John Roberts.
Back in the day, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned us:
“We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
In 2010, Chief Justice John Roberts made his choice: He chose the billionaires. He chose oligarchy. He chose to detonate 240 years of American democracy.
The case was supposed to be simple: Could a right-wing group funded by fossil fuel billionaires show their anti-Hillary Clinton propaganda film within a month of an election? The Federal Election Commission said no because it violated McCain-Feingold’s ban on corporate electioneering.
But Roberts wasn’t satisfied with just allowing the movie.
At Justice Kennedy’s urging, Roberts pulled off a judicial coup. He ordered both sides to re-argue the case, but this time on the broader question of corporate and billionaire election spending, something that wasn’t even part of the original lawsuit. This was judicial activism on steroids, the kind of power grab that would make a third-world dictator proud.
The result, as I lay out in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, was an all-Republican-appointee 5-4 decision that legalized political bribery and unleashed an avalanche of billionaire and corporate cash that has, in the years since, largely buried American democracy.
Justice John Paul Stevens (a Republican Jerry Ford appointee) was so furious that he read his 90-page dissent aloud from the bench, forcing his five bought-off Republican-appointed colleagues to listen in awkward discomfort.
Stevens said the ruling “threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution.”
In a prescient moment of outrage, he added:
“A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold,” pointing out that Roberts and Kennedy had “changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.”
The result of this bizarre decision, one embracing a theory no other advanced democracy in the world tolerates, has been an explosion in billionaire and corporate money flooding our election system. It’s made a mockery of Roberts’ and Kennedy’s assertion that transparency requirements would guarantee that “citizens can see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.”
As a result, Musk is now claiming — almost certainly correctly — that:
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. … Such ingratitude.”
In other words, “I’m the rich guy who bought the White House for you, Trump, and you owe me.”
Of course, Musk isn’t the only one saying such things. The entire GOP knows how fossil fuel billionaires — particularly the Koch brothers — have been so instrumental in building and maintaining a national messaging infrastructure that there’s not a single Republican politician at the federal level who’ll acknowledge the importance of stopping global warming even as it regularly kills Americans.
Thus Stevens, it turns out, was absolutely right.
Outside spending exploded from $574 million in 2008 to $4.5 billion in 2024. In 2024, eight of the top 10 largest donors supported Republicans, with Elon Musk dumping over $290 million. Dark money spending surged from less than $5 million in 2006 to more than $1 billion in 2024. Just 21 billionaire families contributed $783 million in 2022, easily outspending millions of small donors combined, and in 2024 a hundred billionaire families poured $2.6 billion into electing mostly Republicans.
Musk isn’t just boasting when he claims he single-handedly delivered the White House to Trump. The world’s richest man dumped over $290 million into electing Trump, including $238 million to his America PAC, $20.5 million to the deceptively named “RBG PAC” that dishonored Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s memory, and arguably illegal $1 million daily “lottery” payments to swing-state voters.
This isn’t political participation: it’s a hostile takeover of the American government by the biggest money in America.
Musk’s America PAC became one of the most prominent get-out-the-vote efforts for Republicans, essentially functioning as Trump’s campaign while pretending to be “independent.”
The FEC’s toothless “coordination” rules have become a joke since Roberts and his four corrupt colleagues ruled that billionaires and corporations can simply buy entire campaign operations.
And the corruption doesn’t stop with Musk. The cryptocurrency industry alone poured $238 million into the 2024 elections, more than oil, gas, and pharmaceuticals combined. Crypto money accounted for 44% of all corporate political spending in 2024.
The payoff was immediate: Trump ordered the SEC to drop lawsuits against crypto firms, signed an executive order establishing a national Bitcoin reserve, pardoned a bitcoin fraudster after he directed millions into Trump’s personal pockets, and appointed crypto insider David Sacks as White House AI and crypto czar.
This is corruption so blatant it would embarrass a banana republic.
Citizens United didn’t just corrupt presidential elections: it’s also systematically destroying Congress. Crypto super PACs alone spent $134 million targeting 67 congressional races, successfully defeating crypto-skeptical Democrats like Katie Porter with $10 million in attack ads.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg called Citizens United “the worst ruling” of her time on the Court. At least 22 states and hundreds of cities have voted to support a constitutional amendment to overturn it.
The American people know their democracy has been stolen.
Billionaires Musk and Trump are now locked in a dirty battle with Trump claiming Musk read and loved the “Big, Beautiful [Billionaire Tax Cut] Bill” while Musk is implying Trump was regularly boffing teenage girls at Jeffrey Epstein’s home just down the street from Trump Tower.
While Trump and Musk trade insults about who’s more corrupt, they’re both symptoms of the same disease.
— Trump sold us out to Middle Eastern potentates and Putin, and is making billions with the bitcoin bros.
— Musk gutted federal investigations into his companies while forcing taxpayers to subsidize his businesses and demanding South Africa and several other poor nations adopt Starlink. And he gleefully destroyed the one US agency most responsible for ending apartheid in South Africa: USAID.
This is what happens when five unelected judges — several of them nakedly on the take from billionaires at the time — decide that the morbidly rich should rule America.
We now have what the Brennan Center for Justice calls “a fusion of private wealth and political power unseen since the late 19th century.” It’s the Gilded Age robber barons’ wildest dreams made real.
The sordid spectacle of Trump vs. Musk isn’t just embarrassing; it’s the death rattle of American democracy. Two oligarchs are publicly fighting over who owns our government, while Republicans on John Roberts’ Supreme Court uneasily pretend this is “free speech.”
We’re not witnessing a democratic election cycle. We’re watching the final consolidation of American oligarchy.
Unless we overturn Citizens United and reclaim our democracy from billionaire sociopaths, the Musk-Trump cage match is just the opening act. Coming soon: President Bezos vs. President Zuckerberg (or their proxies), brought to you by Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court’s pro-oligarchy majority.
The choice Brandeis warned us about in 1919 has been made: John Roberts and Sam Alito chose wealth concentration. Clarence Thomas chose oligarchy. Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy chose to let billionaires buy our democracy.
Now we’re living with the consequences, at least until we all decide to do something about it. And that starts with voting out of office every possible Republican and all of the corporate so-called “moderate” Democrats who have enthusiastically embraced Citizens United and the corruption it’s brought us.
The work, in other words, falls to us. Pass it along.
Hal Ginsberg, the host of the YouTube videocast, Halitics, and I (on my weekly guest appearance) share the frustration of making sense of what is going on in the political world.
The Trump Administration doesn’t seem to have a clue about how to make government work, and the Democrats haven’t figured out a way to regain the trust and respect they’ve squandered away in recent years. Hal blames both major parties and despite the long odds, would like to see an independent or third party progressive candidate run against the GOP. I would like to see AOC or another younger progressive candidate fire up Democratic voters as a more realistic scenario.
In foreign policy, we talk about Nicholas Kristoff of The NY Times documenting the loss of life as the result GOP cutbacks to foreign assistance, while Marco Rubio claims “No children are dying on my watch.” We note the Gaza war crimes against civilians by Israelis, while our country looks the other way.
thebigpicturereport ™ 