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authoritarianism
Measuring Corporate Power by the Number of Marines in Los Angeles
Trump's authoritarianism didn't come from nowhere. It came from decades of corporate power building a system of exploitation, then using their media and political influence to blame the exploited for everyone's problems.
Jun 11, 2025
So, Matthew Yglesias posted this challenge on Twitter earlier this week: "This is my challenge for people who want to make reducing corporate power the lodestar of their politics — how do you measure this?"
Well, there's a couple of ways. But first, let me tell you what's happening right now: There are 700 Marines in Los Angeles. Marines. In an American city. Four thousand National Guard troops deployed. A union president arrested and facing six years in prison for observing ICE raids. Families torn apart at Home Depot, at restaurants, in the garment district.
This is America, June 2025. Trump's back, and he's moving fast. Marines—actual Marines—carrying out immigration raids in an American city. It's unprecedented, it's shocking, but here's the thing: it's tragically predictable.
This isn't just Trump being Trump. This is the inevitable result of decades of corporate power combining with an authoritarian president. It's been a journey, and we need to understand how we got here.
The system that corporations captured needed a desperate, vulnerable workforce so they could extract more profits.
For 50 years, corporations and the financial elite have been running the greatest theft in human history. The RAND Corporation—the RAND Corporation!—showed that the bottom 90% got paid $79 trillion less than they should have based on economic growth from 1975 to today. By their calculations, median income should be $102,000.
But here's the genius part: they needed someone to blame for this theft. So they pointed fingers at everyone except themselves. Black women on welfare. People getting food stamps. And especially immigrants—documented and undocumented alike.
The system that corporations captured needed a desperate, vulnerable workforce so they could extract more profits. So they made it possible—hell, they made it easy—to hire people who were undocumented. They created an entire infrastructure for exploitation.
Last night, my wife was asking how it is that undocumented people are able to work all these jobs? How is it possible? Well, they have what's called an ITIN—Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. That's something set up by the government to allow people who are undocumented to still pay taxes. They pay payroll taxes, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Now, does it give them the ability to obtain any benefits from those things? No, it does not. They'll never get Social Security. Even if they get a path to citizenship, even if they become citizens after being here undocumented for 20 years, paying taxes for 20 years, they still don't get access to that money. They only get the past two years.
You see, you've got this system that's set up that has been utilizing the labor, utilizing the hope, utilizing the desire for a better life. Our system of banking was set up for their money. Our system of car sales, home sales, taxes—everything was set up to make sure they could participate in capitalism.
Rules and regulations were changed to welcome and accommodate them economically. Not politically, not socially. No, no, no. That's when the same corporations would fund politicians and media to vilify these workers.
You've got an entire media ecosystem one in the hands of an ever-shrinking number of corporate owners that for decades has been blaming immigrants for our problems. Fox News talking about invasions and hordes. And it's not like we have an alternative media that is actually naming the real people that are taking all our shit, that are putting us in poverty, that are putting their boots on our throats—which of course is the wealthy, the top 1%, their corporations and their lobbyists and their lawyers.
You don't see that $79 trillion theft on TV every day with the faces of the villains and B-roll of corporate boardrooms showing where the money was sucked up, do you? No, you don't. Because the corporations own the media.
It's been a very Machiavellian corporate play. You bring in this thing that helps your bottom line—more desperate labor, more hopeful, more excited people ready to participate in your system. And then you use them as political pawns to maintain your power and prevent people from organizing together. You stoke hatred and class division through racial identity and racism while you keep taking and taking... and taking. Money. Power. Our democracy. They take it all.
This isn't just Trump being Trump. This is the inevitable result of decades of corporate power combining with an authoritarian president.
Here's what enrages me. Democrats thought they could play this game, too. People like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden would say, "Oh, we've got a problem at the border. We've got to do this, we've got to do that." They deported millions, but more quietly. They increased ICE funding. They stoked the flames of fear and jealousy.
Democrats thought they could use this hateful rhetoric for political gain, but keep it contained. They thought they could control people’s frustration with immigrants, whom they blamed for our collapsing lifestyles and shrinking safety nets. They'd validate the "crisis" narrative instead of naming the real villains—the corporations and extractors in our economy. They did that because they didn't want to have the fights.
The Democratic establishment would say, "We have to say, whoa, it's time to move to the center, guys. We'll protect you better than these people will. We won't call out the National Guard. We'll just use the LAPD. We won't go nuts with ICE. We'll just do a kinder, gentler deportation scheme."
And what it ends up being is a party that doesn't really seem to stand for much. You're going to be labeled as a party of open borders anyway. But instead of trying to embrace it and make the case for it, you push back against it.
They say, "Oh, we've got to be the alpha dogs. We've got to show alpha energy." But they really don't understand alpha energy, because by and large, they're bitches. They're little scared bitches that don't know how to stand up and fight for something they believe in. Or they just don't fundamentally believe in much of anything.
Meanwhile, the corporate capture of government continued. You can see how many people from corporations like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Citigroup end up running our economy. Tim Geithner went from the New York Fed straight to Treasury Secretary after helping bail out his Wall Street buddies. Jerome Powell? Private equity guy. Steve Mnuchin? Goldman Sachs partner turned Trump's Treasury Secretary.
Look at Scott Gottlieb, who served as FDA Commissioner, then joined Pfizer's board just 85 days after leaving the agency. Look at Ajit Pai, who worked as a Verizon lawyer before becoming FCC Chairman, where he repealed net neutrality rules that constrained his former employer.
Billy Tauzin chaired the House committee that passed Medicare Part D—which explicitly prohibited Medicare from negotiating drug prices. Upon leaving Congress, he immediately became president of PhRMA at $2 million annually, eventually earning $11.6 million in his final year.
You can look at the number of bills written by ALEC that show up in state legislatures. You can look at all the laws that block unionization. Mandatory arbitration. Right-to-work laws. Guess who pushed for those? Corporations.
How else can you tell corporate power is near absolute? We're seeing cities, towns, and states sell off their assets, sell off their services, privatize all the things that government used to do for people. Everything from trash collection to water to sewer to power.
Chicago sold its parking meters to Morgan Stanley for $1.15 billion in a 75-year lease. Parking rates immediately quadrupled. The private operators recouped their entire investment plus $500 million in profit by 2019, with 60 years remaining on the lease.
Water privatization? Private water systems charge customers $144 more annually on average. In Illinois, companies have acquired 59 water systems since 2013, with over $402 million in acquisition costs passed directly to ratepayers.
That's how we know corporations are in control.
So when an authoritarian comes to power, what does he find? A system perfectly designed for exploitation. A workforce made vulnerable by design. A media ecosystem that's been blaming immigrants for decades. Democrats who validated the "crisis" narrative. And a population primed to accept military force against the scapegoats.
Noah Smith says "unfortunately, he's right" about mass deportations. Young people are swinging hard for candidates like Zohran in New York because they're getting the squeeze economically and they know this is broken. But it's not really all that surprising that people are calling for mass deportations when you've had decades of both parties blaming immigrants for problems caused by corporate theft.
When an authoritarian comes to power, what does he find? A system perfectly designed for exploitation. A workforce made vulnerable by design. A media ecosystem that's been blaming immigrants for decades. Democrats who validated the "crisis" narrative. And a population primed to accept military force against the scapegoats.
Donald Trump deploys not only the National Guard but also the Marines. To round up undocumented house builders, restaurant workers, nannies, gardeners, baristas, retail workers, and factory workers. People that want to be Americans.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass says the city is being used as a "test case" and "an experiment." California Gov. Gavin Newsom calls it "an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism."
But this authoritarianism didn't come from nowhere. It came from decades of corporate power building a system of exploitation, then using their media and political influence to blame the exploited for everyone's problems. It came from Democrats who thought they could moderate their way through fascism.
So when Matthew Yglesias asks how to measure corporate power?
Count the Marines. Count the families torn apart. Count the $79 trillion stolen. Count the privatized water systems and parking meters. Count the pharma executives at the FDA and the Wall Street guys at Treasury. Count the ALEC bills in state legislatures. Count the Democrats who won't fight.
The theft is coming from inside the house. The theft is coming from the people upstairs in the top 10%, top 1%, and they want to blame the people in the economic basement. They have effectively utilized the cheap labor pool that they imported for decades as punching bags for that theft.
And now, when people finally rebel against this system, when they take to the streets to protect their neighbors and coworkers and families - that's when the corporate state shows its true face. Military protection for profits. Combat boots for capital.
You want to know how to measure corporate power? Look to Los Angeles, where decades of corporate exploitation and political cowardice have delivered us to this moment: Marines in American streets, rounding up the workers that corporations brought here to exploit.
That's how you measure it. The question is: what are we going to do about it?
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'None of Us Knows Who Will Be Next,' Pro-Democracy Coalition Says After McIver Indictment
"Our justice system should not be a tool in Trump's authoritarian power grabs," said the Not Above the Law Coalition.
Jun 11, 2025
The leaders of a pro-democracy coalition warned Tuesday that the grand jury indictment of Democratic U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver marks a "chilling escalation" of President Donald Trump's lawless and dangerous efforts to crush his political opponents using the power of the federal government, including the Justice Department and U.S. military.
"Trump has shown time and again that he’ll use the levers of federal power to punish his critics," said the Not Above the Law coalition, an alliance that includes more than 150 advocacy groups, grassroots organizers, legal scholars, and others.
"Whether it's deploying the military against protesters in California, arresting a sitting judge in Wisconsin, or prosecuting members of Congress in New Jersey, his actions are designed to silence anyone who stands in his way and undermine checks and balances," said coalition co-chairs Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen, Praveen Fernandes of the Constitutional Accountability Center, Kelsey Herbert of MoveOn, and Brett Edkins of Stand Up America.
McIver (D-N.J.) was indicted Tuesday on three counts of "forcibly impeding and interfering with federal officers," charges stemming from her involvement in a May oversight visit at a privately run migrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey and subsequent confrontation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents outside of the facility.
If found guilty, McIver could face up to 17 years in prison.
"This indictment is no more justified than the original charges, and is an effort by Trump's administration to dodge accountability for the chaos ICE caused."
In a statement following the indictment, McIver said she will be "entering a plea of not guilty" and expressed confidence that "the facts of this case will prove I was simply doing my job and will expose these proceedings for what they are: a brazen attempt at political intimidation."
"This indictment is no more justified than the original charges, and is an effort by Trump's administration to dodge accountability for the chaos ICE caused and scare me out of doing the work I was elected to do," said McIver. "But it won't work—I will not be intimidated."
The Not Above the Law coalition said Tuesday that the McIver indictment is an ominous signal of what's to come as Trump wields the military and federal government to quell opposition to his mass deportation agenda and other abuses of power.
"In just the past few days, we have seen Trump target a labor leader representing hardworking Californians and a member of Congress representing her New Jersey constituents," the alliance said, referring to McIver as well as SEIU California president David Huerta.
Huerta was arrested last Friday at the site of an ICE raid in Los Angeles. The labor leader, who was released from federal custody Monday on a $50,000 bond, was charged with conspiracy to impede an officer, a felony that carries up to six years in prison.
"None of us knows who will be next," the coalition said Tuesday. "The DOJ should immediately drop these politically motivated, unwarranted charges—our justice system should not be a tool in Trump's authoritarian power grabs. Congresswoman McIver deserves justice—and so does our democracy."
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Trump in Los Angeles Is Exactly What We Have Been Warning About
This is a critical moment in U.S. history, and it demands that we stand strong in our opposition to the administration’s reckless and unlawful use of military force.
Jun 11, 2025
For years, we have warned against the danger of an unchecked president turning the military against American civilians.
In an extraordinary show of force, President Trump has federalized 4,000 members of the California National Guard and deployed 300 of them, in addition to deploying 700 Marines, to quell protests in the Los Angeles area. All over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Why this abrupt, camera-ready escalation? White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller posted a video of a peaceful protest parade. “If we don’t fix this, we don’t have a country,” he shuddered. “Pass the BBB” — the budget bill now facing turbulence in Congress.
Trump’s administration is spoiling for a fight. It pops out emergency declarations like a Pez dispenser. It is also relying on flimsy legal justifications, as my colleagues have pointed out.
Presidents have deployed troops to control civil unrest only 30 times before in U.S. history. The Posse Comitatus Act generally prohibits federal troops from engaging in civilian law enforcement. Soldiers are trained to defeat an enemy, not to de-escalate protests.
The situation in Los Angeles is bad. What might come next could be worse.
The last time that a president sent in the Guard without a clear request from a state’s governor was 1965, when troops were used to protect the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. (And even in that case, George Wallace waffled.)
To be clear, violent protests are not acceptable or productive. The federal government should be unobstructed in carrying out its lawful duties. Of course, the specter of masked ICE agents lurking in the lobbies of immigration courts, as has happened here in New York City, is itself willfully provocative.
In fact, in Los Angeles, protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful. The LAPD — hardly a department of pushovers — has been adamant that it has the situation under control. Not surprisingly, the troops have only fanned the protests. Newsom formally requested that the administration rescind the deployment, saying that it is “inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed.”
The situation in Los Angeles is bad. What might come next could be worse.
Trump’s executive order authorizes deployment of the Guard “at locations where protests against [ICE] functions are occurring or are likely to occur.” Where might that be? “We’re gonna have troops everywhere,” Trump declared.
As my colleague Elizabeth Goitein notes, “No president has ever federalized the National Guard for purposes of responding to potential future civil unrest anywhere in the country. Preemptive deployment is literally the opposite of deployment as a last resort. It would be a shocking abuse of power and the law.”
The most powerful repressive tool would be the Insurrection Act — a law that lets presidents deploy troops to suppress a rebellion or insurrection or curb domestic violence in extreme scenarios. Trump threatened to invoke it against Democratic-run cities during his 2024 campaign.
The Insurrection Act is, unfortunately, a mess of a law. Key words such as “rebellion” and “insurrection” are left undefined. Courts have given presidents a wide berth. Trump winked at this law by calling the protesters “insurrectionists.”
He has so far chosen to rely on a different law — one that has never been used to quell civil unrest without an accompanying Insurrection Act invocation. The administration claims that it is invoking this law only to protect federal personnel and property. But Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has requested that soldiers be authorized to detain and search protesters, functions normally prohibited by the Posse Comitatus Act.
It’s clear that Trump wants to use this showdown to expand enforcement powers.
The week before he stages a strongman-style military parade along the National Mall — complete with tanks, missiles, and military aircraft — Trump has claimed the right to preemptively authorize deployment of the military all across America.
That should be chilling to most Americans, who have enjoyed a firm line between police and the military as an essential component of our democracy. The deployment of the military against civilians should only be used in the most extreme cases as a last resort. Otherwise, as Elizabeth Goitein notes, “an army turned inward can quickly become an instrument of tyranny.”
Experts have already identified worst-case scenarios. George W. Bush administration official David Frum has sounded the alarm on the possibility of Trump using the military to influence the 2026 election.
If you want to learn more about all of this, here are reports we’ve published in the last few years on emergency powers, the Insurrection Act, the Posse Comitatus Act, the Alien Enemies Act, and martial law.
Once again, in the face of a lawless executive, the courts must now step up. The Supreme Court may want to avoid a conflict, but here, it may have no choice. It is imperative that it uphold checks against the use of military force against civilians.
And now that we know that the existing laws can be used, however tendentiously, to justify provocative military action, we must fix those laws so they cannot be abused again.
The Brennan Center has proposed reforms to the Insurrection Act, including defining the law’s critical terms and enforcing more checks on its use. We have also proposed reforms to strengthen the Posse Comitatus Act. Americans must be adamant, too, that even under existing statutes, presidents lack the power to declare martial law.
This is a critical moment in U.S. history, and it demands that we stand strong in our opposition to the administration’s reckless and unlawful use of military force, in Los Angeles and across the country.
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