1. Sin Eater

Donald Trump wants his name and face on everything—office buildings, banners, passports, palatial ballrooms, $250 bills, stimulus checks, arts centers. He has held public signings for nearly every executive order and piece of legislation (except for the bill on releasing the Epstein files, which was signed in secret).

And yet, Trump is nowhere to be found on his Big Beautiful Surrender Deal with Iran. That thing? Oh, that belongs to JD Vance. He’s the one defending it. He’s the one who will be signing it.1 The vice president owns it.

Which tells you everything you need to know about the merits of the MoU. If it were good for Trump and/or America, then the president would be everywhere, taking all of the credit for it. The fact that Trump is making JD eat this shit sandwich is proof that Trump (and America) got smoked by the Iranians.

So let’s put the substance of Trump’s surrender aside and focus on the politics: What is Vance’s angle?

Because here’s the proposition JD Vance is trying to sell:

I knew the war was a bad idea. I fully support President Trump. Operation Epic Fury was an amazing success. Our super-cool military crushed Iran. And I’m the one who got us out of that tough situation. Pick me and I’ll make sure we never launch another hugely successful war.

Can he get away with it?

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• China is about to launch an international payments system called mBridge.

• mBridge is a direct challenge to the dollar’s position as the global reserve currency.

• In the aftermath of the Iran war, China is pushing ahead with a system that could help replace the petrodollar. WHICH WOULD BE BAD.

• Oh, and Donald Trump is fucking this up, too.

If you don’t want to read the long version, I understand. But my mission is to make you smarter and help you see around corners. Sometimes that means eating your vegetables. To make it go down easier, I’ll share some pictures of my cat, K-Pop, as we go.

But before you click away, do me a solid and hit the “like” button? Thanks. ❤️

And if, God help you, you get to the end and think, “I want more of this spinach,” then come and join Bulwark+. We do this every day. The only way through is together.

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1. Plumbing

Have you ever wondered how money moves? You run a refinery in the Philippines and you want to buy crude oil from a company in the UAE. How does your money get from Manila to Abu Dhabi?

Once upon a time, the buyer’s bank would send a Telex to the seller’s bank saying,

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1. Always Right

On Friday I explained to my best friend, and later to Catherine Rampell, that I believed we would get a “deal” with Iran this weekend. I said that it was likely to be announced shortly before the White House cage fight, with a signing to take place later this week. In Switzerland.

There’s a reason we sell the shirts stickers.1

I’m going to explain my thought process. And then, we’re going to talk about what this “deal” is, what it isn’t, and what it means for the future.

This is my value proposition. If you want to see around corners, join Bulwark+.

Now let’s get to Trump’s surrender.

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1. On Campaign Donations

I’m going to be blunt with you right from the start: Donating to political campaigns is a fool’s errand.

Most of the contributions are merely a cash transfer from your wallet to the bank that owns the mortgage on a political consultant’s beach house, with a few intermediary steps. Campaigns don’t put out PNL statements that tell you which department is delivering profits (votes). They often throw good money after bad because there’s no sense keeping money in the bank even if the campaign is doomed. And they waste gobs of your cash on pointless endeavors to keep their interest group allies happy (and quiet).

And a lot of the tools that are used to measure the effectiveness of campaign messaging are only slightly more sophisticated than a deck of tarot cards. I’d estimate that nine in ten elections are determined by the national political environment, economic trends, and the demographic makeup of the district—not by anything the campaigns themselves do.

There’s so much waste in political campaigns that at times it hurts my soul.

Think of all the good that could have been done with, for example, the more than half a BILLION that went into the losing presidential campaigns of Meatball Ron DeSanctimonious in 2024 and Tom Steyer in 2020. We could fund a year of the entire federal nutrition program for poor women, infants, and children (WIC) with the amount of money that losing political campaigns light on fire in a given presidential cycle.

In midterm elections, the story is similar. For the most competitive Senate and House campaigns, the law of diminishing marginal returns for advertising kicks in quicker than any consultant would want to admit. And now that the number of House swing seats has dwindled thanks to partisan gerrymandering, the unlucky residents of those districts will be treated all fall to punishing repetitions of the same six advertisements about the many evils of their aspiring representatives.

So when people ask me which candidates they should support with their limited resources, my natural instinct is to tell them to treat themselves to a spa day or send it to the local food bank instead. But that answer is understandably unsatisfying.

The stakes of this year’s midterm elections are high. Pro-democracy Bulwarkers want to do everything in their power to contribute to MAGA’s defeat, even if it’s on the margins and some of that effort is wasted. I get it.

So I began to take the question seriously: Where could people’s time and resources be best used in the coming months?

2. The Criteria

My answer is premised on the notion that I believe this could be a massive wave year for the Democrats, thanks in large part to Trump’s many self-owns over the past six months. In a wave year, surprising things happen. Back in 2018, the Democrats won House seats in places like Oklahoma City and Charleston. In 2006, I was working for Republican Jeff Lamberti’s “competitive race” in Des Moines, and we lost—like every single other Republican challenging a Democratic incumbent that year. Meanwhile, down the road in southeast Iowa, Jim Leach, a thirty-year (!!) incumbent Republican, got upset by Dave Loebsack, a random professor whose campaign was so nonexistent that he had to be nominated by a special convention because he failed to get the required number of signatures to be on the primary ballot. Loebsack stayed in the seat for the next fourteen years before retiring in 2021.

I want to help you find that professor. Someone who doesn’t have all the resources that they need from the national party committees. Or, in a handful of cases, a candidate who will be well funded but will need every penny to help the Democrats succeed in parts of the country where they have been struggling in the Trump era.

As for the Senate, Democrats need to win multiple seats in states Trump won by double digits. The races in North Carolina, Maine, Texas, and Ohio will get all the attention and money. But there are some others on my radar where the Democrats might have a chance to expand the map.

The rule of thumb I set for identifying these races were as follows:

1. They had to be at least R+5 in Cook Political Report’s Partisan Voter Index (PVI)—a calculation of the 2020 and 2024 presidential candidates’ performance in a given state or district compared to the national average—and be places where Democrats have generally struggled to win in the recent past.

2. The Democratic candidate had to be legit and either a) they’re endorsed by someone I trust, or b) they just caught Ansley’s and my attention because we like the cut of their jib.

3. Bonus points if the Republican is particularly disgusting.

That’s it.

What follows is the first batch of candidates we are monitoring.1 This does not include candidates in any states where the primary is still ongoing (with a few exceptions that I explain below). If you have a primary candidate you are really jazzed about, good on ya. But putting money into a Dem-on-Dem fight doesn’t really do anything in service of our liberal democracy—unless one of the options is that Nazi lady in Texas and luckily she was already defeated. Also, this list is not a ranking—though I do love to rank things—but for once I’m going to try to embrace the egalitarian spirit of the left.

3. The List

Chris Jones (AR-02)

• Cook rating: Solid R (R+8)

• 2024 Result: French Hill (R): 58.9%, Marcus Jones (D): 41.1%

• Jones is a minister and literal rocket scientist (!) who has just enough political experience to be a legit candidate without the stink of “regular politician.” (He ran for governor against Sarah Huckabee Sanders in 2022.)

• The Republican nominee is incumbent Rep. French Hill, who has, at times, masqueraded as a Responsible Republican (for example, he voted to certify the 2020 election results and voted to create the January 6th Committee) but without ever meaningfully pushing back on Trump’s agenda.

• Tim’s Rationale: Arkansas’s 2nd Congressional District is the state’s best hope for a blue pickup. This district, which includes Little Rock and Conway, has the best mix of normie, educated suburban whites and Democratic-leaning black voters in the state. It’s still Arkansas, of course, but in a wave year and a terrible environment for Republicans, I like Jones’s chances at least better than the Hogs’ odds of winning an SEC championship.

Jonathan Nez (AZ-02)

• Cook rating: Likely R (R+7)

• 2024 Result: Eli Crane (R): 54.5%, Jonathan Nez (D): 45.5%

• Nez is the former president of the Navajo Nation and led the community through the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Nez faces a rematch with Republican Rep. Eli Crane, who, per the New York Times, “emerged as the chief right-wing voice pushing conspiracy theories about the Trump assassination attempts.” Crane also referred to black Americans as “colored people” on the House floor. And when Crane introduced articles of impeachment against a judge who ruled against DOGE last year, Elon Musk maxed out his contributions to Crane.

• Tim’s Rationale: Eli Crane is a complete loon, and Nez is a candidate tailor-made for his swing-state district, which contains the Navajo Nation.

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Bale Dalton (FL-07)

• Cook rating: Likely R (R+5)

• 2024 Result: Cory Mills (R): 56.5%, Jennifer Adams (D): 43.5%

• Dalton is a former Navy helicopter pilot and public servant who most recently served as the chief of staff at NASA.

• The Republican nominee is scandal-plagued Rep. Cory Mills.

• Tim’s Rationale: Technically the Florida primary isn’t till August, but Dalton is the endorsed candidate of the DCCC and I’ve had the privilege of getting to know him over the years. Dalton is exactly the type of public servant we want in Washington: judicious, pragmatic, and committed to fighting for what is right. His opponent is a clown and fuckstick who has espoused conspiracy theories about the Trump assassination attempts, lied about his military career and finances, allegedly drunkenly “sucker punched” someone before running away while on a congressional delegation trip to Ireland, and allegedly physically abused one girlfriend and threatened another who had broken up with him after learning about the existence of the former. Even Nancy Mace called Mills a “disgrace.” (Pot, kettle, etc.) You can see my convo with Dalton here.

Sam Forstag (MT-01)

• Cook rating: Likely R (R+5)

• 2024 Result: Ryan Zinke (R): 52.3%, Monica Tranel (D): 44.6%

• Forstag is a union leader and smokejumper.

• An eleventh-hour retirement announcement from Rep. Ryan Zinke cleared the field for his former staffer, Aaron Flint, who is now officially the Republican nominee.

• Tim’s Rationale: Forstag is an extremely handsome smokejumper. I don’t know what smokejumping is to be honest, but after seeing some photos I am now interested. [Editor’s note: Smokejumpers are specially trained parachutist firefighters.] He was inspired to run by DOGE cuts that cost 360 Montana Forest Service employees their jobs—85 percent of the people doing this important work were making less than $20 an hour. In the primary, he modeled a path forward that I have been advocating for, uniting the “fighting mods” at the Bench and the populist-left AOC-types by focusing on areas of alignment against the MAGA right rather than obsessing over factional infighting. Montana is slowly purpling and Forstag would be a strong next-generation representative for the state. Also did I mention how handsome he is.

Cyril Jefferson (NC-06)

• Cook rating: Solid R (R+9)

• 2024 Result: Addison McDowell (R): 69.2%, Kevin Hayes (Constitution Party): 30.8% (No Democratic candidate)

• Jefferson is the mayor of High Point, North Carolina who has a strong record of results to run on and a willingness to meet voters where they are on the issues, including by prioritizing border security and public safety.

• The Republican nominee is Rep. Addison McDowell, a former lobbyist and staffer of Sen. Ted Budd.

• Tim’s Rationale: If there’s going to be a wave that sweeps in surprising Democrats, North Carolina seems as good a place as any. Roy Cooper is running maybe the best Senate race of the cycle, and Gov. Josh Stein won this district narrowly in 2024. Also, this district was remapped as part of North Carolina’s brutal gerrymander, so maybe karma can kick in for once.

Jamie Ager (NC-11)

• Cook rating: Likely R (R+5)

• 2024 Results: Chuck Edwards (R): 56.8%, Caleb Rudow (D): 43.2%

• Ager is a farmer and entrepreneur, who seems like the kind of guy you’d want to have a beer—or some very hot wings—with.

• Republican nominee Rep. Chuck Edwards, on the other hand, not so much.

• Tim’s Rationale: I got to meet Ager a few months ago and this dude is the real deal. He is an actual farmer—not a cosplay one—who is running the type of independent-minded, populist campaign that Democrats should be modeling elsewhere. His opponent, Chuck Edwards, is a creeper and Trump apologist who deserves an electoral beatdown.

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Chris Backemeyer (NE-01)

• Cook rating: Solid R (R+6)

• 2024 Result: Mike Flood (R): 60.1%, Carol Blood (D): 39.9%

• Backemeyer is a career public servant who first felt the call to serve after 9/11. He served under both Republican and Democratic presidencies at the State Department, where he focused on counterterrorism and Middle East policy before taking posts on the National Security Council, as an adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, and as a deputy assistant secretary of state during the Biden administration.

• The Republican nominee is Rep. Mike Flood.

• Tim’s Rationale: Backemeyer won a competitive Democratic primary in Nebraska’s 1st district. This district is a bit of a stretch goal, but it includes Nebraska’s biggest college town, Lincoln, and some of the suburbs of Omaha. Backemeyer is currently facing a spoiler candidacy from a left-wing independent who is trying to gain ballot access as a sort of Twitter leftist/Jill Stein type. Backemeyer needs support to hopefully drive that candidate out of the race and give the Democrats a chance at an upset victory.

Teresa Benitez-Thompson (NV-02)

• Cook rating: Solid R (R+7)

• 2024 Result: Mark Amodei (R): 55%, Greg Kidd (no political party): 36.1% (no Democratic candidate)

• Benitez-Thompson served in the state legislature and attorney general’s office and spent her professional career in social work.

• The Trump-endorsed David Flippo won the Republican primary this week, defeating twelve other candidates, including Nevada Republicans’ preferred candidate, James Settelmeyer. Flippo is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who based his campaign on hardline positions on immigration and transgender issues. He’s also a longtime Las Vegas resident who only recently bought property in the district.

• Tim’s Rationale: Benitez-Thompson emerged from a crowded Democratic primary after she received the coveted Teamsters endorsement. Her campaign is focused on affordability, and she reportedly has Democrats feeling optimistic about their chances of winning the seat for the first time ever.

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Zack Mullock (NJ-02)

• Cook rating: Solid R (R+5)

• 2024 Result: Jeff Van Drew (R): 58.1%, Joe Salerno (D): 41.2%

• Mullock is the mayor of Cape May, New Jersey, running on his record of results and independence.

• The Republican nominee is Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who is pretty much the antithesis of the Bulwark ethos.

• Tim’s Rationale: Jeff Van Drew deserves comeuppance for being a Democrat who became a Republican DURING THE TRUMP ERA! Plus, Mikie Sherrill’s win last year showed that some of the trends that led to a too-close-for-comfort result for Harris in New Jersey have shifted. And now that Trump has done to the country what he did to his casinos, it’s time for Atlantic City to go blue.

Brian Poindexter (OH-07)

• Cook rating: Solid R (R+5)

• 2024 Result: Max Miller (R): 51.1%, Matthew Diemer (D): 36.1%, Dennis Kucinich (I): 12.8%

• Poindexter is a city councilman and union ironworker who, like most Americans, didn’t go to a four-year college.

• The Poindexter campaign has an embarrassment of riches in terms of the hits they can drop on Republican nominee Rep. Max Miller. A nepo baby and heir to a prominent Cleveland real estate family, Miller has been credibly accused of physical abuse by two former partners: former Trump White House aide Stephanie Grisham and Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno’s daughter Emily. His rap sheet also includes allegedly violating a restraining order; assault, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest; underage drinking, disorderly conduct, operating a vehicle without reasonable control, and operating a vehicle while impaired. Oh, yeah—and he helped organize Trump’s infamous January 6th rally.

• Tim’s Rationale: Max Miller is an INCREDIBLY bad guy. The accusations against him make Graham Platner look like Andrew Egger. Plus Poindexter seems well positioned to appeal to Ohio’s working-class Obama–Trump voters. And maybe strong candidates at the top of the ticket (Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton) can help pull other Ohio Dems across the finish line.

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Paige Cognetti (PA-08)

• Cook rating: Tossup (R+4)

• 2024 Result: Rob Bresnahan (R): 50.7%, Matt Cartwright (D): 49.1%

• Cognetti, mayor of Scranton, was first elected as an independent candidate running against the corrupt local Democratic establishment with the unofficial slogan “Paige Against the Machine.”

• Her Republican opponent, Rep. Rob Bresnahan, is one of Congress’s most prolific inside traders despite running in 2024 on a promise to ban congressional stock trading, which Cognetti is making a central part of her campaign.

• Tim’s Rationale: Okay, I know this technically violates some of my rules—this race is not as much of a stretch as the rest of this list. But I can’t help but stan Cognetti. Just check out her launch ad and my interview with her from a couple of months ago. A model Democratic candidate.

Bobby Pulido (TX-15)

• Cook rating: Likely R (R+7)

• 2024 Result: Monica De La Cruz (R): 57.1%, Michelle Vallejo (D): 42.9%

• Pulido is a musician and actor who exudes South Texas pride.

• Republican nominee Rep. Monica De La Cruz has mostly flown under the radar in her two terms in office, but one interesting note: She has been rethinking her 2024 support for mass deportations now that she’s seen the consequences—and political backlash.

• Tim’s Rationale: Pulido is an OG Bulwarker, a Tejano music star, and he is made in a lab to show the Democrats how to win back working-class Latino voters.

Johnny Garcia (TX-35)

• Cook rating: Likely R (R+4)

• This district was redrawn in 2025, so the 2024 results are not an accurate reflection of the current district.

• A self-described “old-school Democrat,” Garcia is a former law enforcement officer who’s putting public safety front and center in his campaign.

• The Republican nominee is Carlos De La Cruz, an Air Force veteran and conservative activist who received Trump’s endorsement. (Fun fact: De La Cruz is the brother of Pulido’s opponent, Rep. Monica De La Cruz.)

• Tim’s Rationale: Democrats have to reclaim public safety as an issue, particularly somewhere like Texas, and Garcia has real credibility to do it. He just crushed the Republican PAC-supported neo-Nazi Maureen Galindo in the primary runoff. Plus, this race is a karma opportunity: The district was one of the GOP mid-cycle gerrymanders that has a decent chance of backfiring. Check out my conversation with Garcia during the runoff here.

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Mary Peltola (Alaska Senate)

• Cook rating: Lean R (R+6)

• Alaska has ranked-choice voting, and the top-four vote-getters in the primary advance to the general. The last Alaska Senate race, in 2022 for the other seat, was primarily a showdown between the more moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski and MAGA Republican Kelly Tshibaka, but here are the first-round results with all four candidates from that race: Lisa Murkowski (R): 43.4%, Kelly Tshibaka (R): 42.6%, Patricia Chesbro (D): 10.4%, Buzz Kelley (R): 2.9%.

• Elected in 2022, Peltola was the first Alaska Native elected to Congress and first Democrat to represent Alaska in Congress since 1973. In Congress, Peltola was a member of the Blue Dog Coalition and was often willing to break with her party. She spent her pre-politics career in the fishing industry and has campaigned on a platform of “fish, family, and freedom,” while promising to put “Alaska first.”

• Alaska’s top-four primary system means Peltola will face three opponents, but the general election will be a showdown between her and Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan.

• Tim’s Rationale: This is another one that will get lots of national attention in the next few months, and for good reason. Hard to see the Democrats winning the Senate without Alaska. And Peltola is a fantastic candidate who deserves all of the help she can get.

Josh Turek (Iowa Senate)

• Cook rating: Lean R (R+6)

• The last Senate race in Iowa was in 2022, for the other seat. Here are those results: Chuck Grassley (R): 56%, Michael Franken (D): 43.8%.

• Turek is a paralympic gold medalist and state legislator with a compelling personal story and a real command of the issues that are most important to Iowans—ag policy, water quality, health care.

• The Republican nominee is Rep. Ashley Hinson, who has been an ardent Trump loyalist in Congress. (In public, at least. She was recently caught on a hot mic expressing some doubts about the Iran war despite voting against the recent war powers resolution.)

• Tim’s Rationale: Iowa is the center of the electoral universe this November. If the Democrats have a true wave that gives them a workable Senate majority, an upset win in Iowa will likely need to be part of it. Check out my conversation with Turek following his primary win.

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Dan Osborn (Nebraska Senate)

• Cook rating: Likely R (R+10)

• 2024 Result: Deb Fischer (R): 53.2%, Dan Osborn (Nonpartisan): 46.5%

• Osborn is a mechanic, former union leader, and Navy veteran running for the Senate as an independent for the second time, after losing to Sen. Deb Fischer in 2024.

• This time, Osborn is facing off against Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts.

• Unlike in Osborn’s last run, as of right now, the Democrats have their own nominee, who according to her website, ran with the sole purpose of helping Osborn beat Ricketts. She’s currently trying to have her name removed from the ballot so that Democrats can unite behind Osborn, who is supported by most state and national Democrats.

• Tim’s Rationale: Osborn outperformed Harris by 14 points in 2024, losing to Deb Fischer by just 6.5 points in a much better election cycle for Republicans. His opponent this time is Pete Ricketts, a nepo-billionaire who seems ripe to be defeated by a populist opponent. Watch my convo with Osborn from last year here.

David Jolly (Florida governor)

• Cook rating: Solid R (R+5)

• 2022 Result: Ron DeSantis (R): 59.4%, Charlie Crist (D): 40%

• Jolly, a former Republican congressman who is now a Democrat, was one of the OG Never Trumpers.

• The Republican primary is effectively a two-way race between two awful choices, Trump lackey Rep. Byron Donalds and Groyper weirdo James Fishback.

• Tim’s Rationale: While the Florida primaries haven’t officially wrapped up, I’ve seen enough. Jolly’s most formidable challenger dropped out of the race last week, setting Jolly up to coast to the nomination. And on the Republican side, it doesn’t matter who wins: Both choices are atrocious. Florida is a stretch, for sure, but I am always down to cheer on former Republicans who run for office as Democrats, particularly in red states. And who knows? Maybe Trump has done enough to put Florida back in play for a solid candidate like Jolly. It’s not as crazy as some would have you believe.

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Amy Acton (Ohio governor)

• Cook rating: Lean R (R+5)

• 2022 Result: Mike DeWine (R): 62.4%, Nan Whaley (D): 37.4%

• Acton is a physician who was appointed director of the Ohio Department of Health by Gov. Mike DeWine and worked with him closely to steer the state through the COVID-19 pandemic.

• The Republican nominee is Vivek Ramaswamy, who, for those who don’t remember, is not exactly a Mike DeWine Republican, despite eventually securing his endorsement. Ramaswamy was a biotech entrepreneur, then a failed 2024 “America First” presidential candidate, then a failed DOGE leader.

• Tim’s Rationale: Vivek sucks ass.

Cisco Aguilar (Nevada secretary of state)

• The Cook Political Report doesn’t rate secretary of state races. The PVI for the state is R+1.

• 2022 Result: Cisco Aguilar (D): 48.9%, Jim Marchant (R): 46.7%

• Aguilar is the current Nevada secretary of state.

• As of publication, the Republican primary has not been called by the major national outlets. Three candidates are neck and neck: Jim Marchant, Shirley Folkins-Roberts, and Sharron Angle. The Nevada Independent has called the race for Marchant, a central figure in Nevada’s 2020 election denial schemes whom Aguilar beat in 2022.

• Tim’s Rationale: Aguilar is the only incumbent on this list, but this race is important for democracy and any amount of financial support can make a difference. These secretary of state races often get less attention than gubernatorial races and can end up being decided by whichever candidate is able to spend more on advertising to raise their name ID. And this is the key race to decide whether an insane election denier will be in charge of a crucial swing state’s elections in 2028.

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Warning: Today’s Triad is unlocked and free for everyone. It’s also supersized. And it’s about stuff most people don’t care about.

But it’s important because it’s the other half of our authoritarian moment. Authoritarian politics goes hand-in-hand with wealth consolidation and the perversion of markets.

So today’s newsletter is mostly spinach and not a lot of candy—but I hope you get some value out of it.

1. Das Kapital

The SpaceX IPO is tomorrow. It will be a significant moment in both American history and the history of economics. Perhaps it will be a high-water mark, or a turning point. Or maybe it will be a milepost on the path we’re on toward . . . well, we’ll get to that in a minute.

Let’s start with the trivialities.

After tomorrow, Elon Musk will be humanity’s first trillionaire. He is openly racist and responsible for the deaths of many thousands of poor, brown people.1 He is currently attempting to use a division of SpaceX to incite pogroms in Europe.

I want to be very clear about this fact. Here is Elon Musk two days ago replying to an account called DuxVul:

Who is DuxVul and what does he mean by “Reconquista”? Allow him to explain:

So that’s what Elon Musk is saying “same” to. And here he is offering another retweet, just in case no one got the message:

Say what you will about Mark Zuckerberg, but at least when Facebook sparked a round of ethnic cleansing, it was an accident.

Anyway: That’s the trivial stuff. To get at the systemic problem, you have to go down two levels to talk about how Musk and SpaceX turned a system designed to efficiently allocate capital into a rentier’s buffet.

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2. Private Markets and Index Funds

I linked to this Garrett Baldwin piece on Tuesday and I want to put it in front of you again. It’s important.

Baldwin proposes that the public stock market has been completely transformed. Let me walk you through his thinking.

There are two forms of capital ownership: private and public.

Privately owned capital tends to be closely held. There is a business, Acme Widgets, and it is owned by a person or group of persons. And they can do (more or less) whatever they want with the business.

However, if the owners of Acme choose, they can offer to sell shares of the business to the general public. Why would they do this? Because selling shares to the public is a way to raise a lot of money. The pool of available investment dollars held by the general public is enormous. If you owned Acme and wanted to raise a bunch of money in order to expand, then taking the business public is the fastest way to get access to capital.

The catch is that publicly owned businesses have a lot of restrictions. Outside entities—such as the government and the exchange on which your company will be traded—have a host of requirements you have to fulfill in order to assure investors that they have all the relevant information and are not being defrauded.

Also: When the owners of Acme sold shares of the company to the public, they gave up some power for the governance of the company. Investors gained a say in how Acme operated. Here’s Baldwin summing up the deal:

In exchange for access to the deepest, most liquid investor base on earth, the founders accepted a set of conditions.

They diluted their ownership.

Shareholders received voting rights in relation to their financial stake.

Courts remained accessible for disputes between shareholders and directors.

Activist investors could challenge management and buy shares with voting rights, and press for changes that benefit all shareholders.

Boards answered to the people whose money they were managing.

Price discovery happened because buyers used math to decide whether the company was worth the ask, and sometimes the answer was… “No.”

This was the trade… the bargain… the exchange.

It behaved this way for centuries. There was a transfer of capital in exchange for accountability, transparency, and public governance.

That old trade no longer really exists because three things changed.

First, we saw the emergence of private markets—which are like a ghost version of public markets. For example: You have not been allowed to buy shares of SpaceX before tomorrow’s IPO, but there is a world of private individuals and entities who have already bought shares in the company. They did so through a private market.

The private market is smaller than the public market, but it’s still enormous. And it is encumbered with relatively few rules and regulations. The emergence of this enormous, parallel, lawless market meant that rapidly expanding companies (like SpaceX) could incubate themselves for a long time, growing in size and power, before finally moving to the public market.

This might sound like a good thing. But there are tradeoffs. In the era of the private market, companies can become immensely powerful before going public—which means that when they do go public, they can exert leverage over both exchanges and investors.

The second change, as Baldwin notes, began with Google’s IPO in 2004. These private market, incubated mega-companies began demanding exotic ownership structures in which stock was offered in dual-classes so that the company’s founders retained control of the business while the investors forfeited governance rights.2

In 2004, this was a big deal. Today, it’s de rigueur for IPOs over a certain size. Facebook, Snap, Lyft, Pinterest, Zoom, Palantir.

SpaceX.

You can see the deal Baldwin described unraveling: The owners still get access to enormous pools of capital—but they don’t dilute their ownership. They don’t give up control over governance. They get the best of both worlds: All the control of private ownership; all the capital of being a publicly traded company.

I can’t believe you made it this far into today’s newsletter. And there’s still more to come. If this is the kind of deep dive you get value from, consider signing up for a Bulwark+ membership. We do this every day.

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Which brings us to the third change: the supremacy of index funds.

Once upon a time, normal investors—people like you and me—bought stocks in two ways. We bought shares in individual companies; or we bought funds made up of shares of many different companies.

In the old days, these funds were assembled by managers and you would pick them based on a number of factors. You’d want a fund made of small-cap businesses; one made of mid-cap businesses; one made of large-cap stocks. You’d want a fund that was built on companies from emerging markets and a fund based on stocks from developed countries.

The idea was that you’d try to balance risk and your retirement horizon. And so your fund managers would shift the contents of these baskets looking to get the best returns.

Those days are basically gone.3

Most people now invest in gigantic index funds, the theory of which is: It is impossible to efficiently pick the right stocks for a fund. It’s better to buy the entire market.

So you have the NASDAQ 100 fund, which is made up of the hundred biggest companies on the NASDAQ exchange. Or the S&P 500 fund, which is made up of the top 500 public companies.

The logic of index funds was: Don’t try to outsmart the market. Get exposure to everything. It’ll all work out in the end.

And it did. Until Elon Musk realized that he could treat index funds like a network of zombie ATMs.

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The SpaceX IPO is notable for two things. First, Musk is only offering a small percentage of the company’s stock for sale. (This is known as the float.) Second, when he was shopping the IPO to various exchanges, he had them bidding against one another to give him specific terms. He was most interested in getting the exchange to change its preexisting rules in order to get SpaceX rapidly added to index funds.

Why?

Again, here’s Baldwin:

Three firms… BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street collectively manage roughly $25 trillion in assets and control the voting power associated with an enormous share of American corporate equity.

Passive index funds now account for more than half of all U.S. equity fund assets.

The majority of 401(k) contributions flow into target-date funds that automatically allocate to index products. . . .

Money enters the retirement system through payroll deduction, flows into target-date funds selected by plan administrators, gets allocated to index products managed by a handful of firms, and lands in whatever companies the index committee has decided belong in the basket.

The ordinary investor chose none of this. . . .

This creates a buyer that is 100% different from anything that existed in classical capital markets.

A passive index fund does not ask, “Is this company worth the current price?”

Instead, it asks, “Is this company in the index?”

Elon Musk saw this and realized that the key to the SpaceX IPO wasn’t having the company be worth the price. The key was engineering a situation in which index funds were forced to bid against one another over an artificially limited supply of SpaceX stock.

Kind of like a mirror-image of the GameStop short squeeze. Baldwin:

Old-school, discretionary investors would look at fundamentals, consider valuation, weigh risk, and sometimes walk away.

A passive fund buys when the index says to buy, at whatever price the market is offering, and in whatever quantity the weighting demands.

It is a price-insensitive, mechanically obligated buyer.

And when tens of trillions of dollars operate on that basis, the market begins to reward index eligibility over fundamental quality.

SpaceX will IPO with a thin float—reportedly just 5 percent of the company’s shares will be available for purchase. After the IPO there will be a two-week period before SpaceX is fast-tracked into major index funds.4 At which point the demand will go into overdrive. Because these funds will have to buy SpaceX, no matter what the price is.

Where will funds get the money to make these purchases? They’ll have to “rebalance”—meaning that there will be a sell-off of other equities in order to finance the purchase of SpaceX. Some other index-included stocks will have to go down so that SpaceX can go up.

And those price fluctuations will have fuck-all to do with value, revenue, expected future performance, of anything we traditionally associate with capital allocation.

What SpaceX is doing is the market equivalent of gold farming, with Elon treating normal people’s indexed retirement accounts as NPC loot drops. (Read our Catherine Rampell on this from last week: “Congrats. You’re About to Unwittingly Make Elon Musk a Trillionaire.”)

This is what passes for “capitalism” in 2026.

I don’t know where we go from here, but we’re a long way from Milton Friedman. The stock market used to be a machine. Then it became a casino. Now it’s a farm that oligarchs use to socialize their risks while retaining private control of their capital.

As Baldwin says, markets have always depended on:

Friction… skepticism… and consequences.

When markets don’t have these?

What are they?

The grand irony is that Americans were told that passive investing would remove emotion, speculation, and Wall Street games from the system.

That it would democratize ownership and give ordinary people a fair shot at building wealth without being taken advantage of by those with better information and faster connections.

What happened instead is that the system automated the games.

The speculation didn’t disappear.

It moved into index construction, float engineering, governance design, and inclusion eligibility.

The ordinary people still provide the capital.

They just no longer have any mechanism to influence how it gets allocated, who it benefits, or what happens when the structure breaks.

What could possibly go wrong?

If you’ve made it this far, I’d love your thoughts on how to fix this system. Because on the one hand, it doesn’t seem impossible. This is what regulation is for.

On the other hand, I find it hard to believe that a trillionaire will ever be regulated. His chip stack is too big. He’s too powerful.

Tell me what you see around this corner.

Leave a comment

3. Joy #2

Regular Car Reviews is a YouTube channel for gearheads who are also interested in critical literary studies. This week Brian discussed the 1998 second generation Dodge Viper within the context of object-oriented ontology.

Also, there are jokes. The best line in this essay comes while discussing the Viper’s total lack of driver-assist features. (Forget traction control; this beast doesn’t even have ABS.) Here’s Brian:

When you hear its exhaust screaming through a gated community . . . who complain anytime someone mows a lawn earlier than noon, you’ll know that only one of two things has happened.

Either your neighbor’s son Kyle got an early parole or one of the neighborhood dads has had a new self-care ritual that involves edging the grim reaper.

Glorious. Here’s the full video.

1

On causing deaths, you can read about it here. If you are looking for Musk’s “openly racist” stuff, here are some of his tweets from just the last couple of days.

1. That’s an Oopsie

I’d like to have fun today. Can we have fun? I mean, who’s going to stop us? Let’s do it.

So the war is back.

On Sunday morning, the president of the United States patiently and carefully explained the state of the Iranian military, saying:

Their anti-aircraft is gone.

And:

I’ve demolished the navy, the air force, anti-aircraft. They have no radar. They have no nothing.

On Tuesday afternoon, President Trump reported that the Iranians had shot down an American attack helicopter.

How did the Iranians shoot down an Apache without possessing any radar or anti-aircraft capabilities? There are only two possible explanations:

1. The Iranians have made a breakthrough in applied sorcery. Or,

2. The president of the United States is full of shit.

Either way, by 7 a.m. Wednesday morning, President Trump was suggesting that the war against our totally defeated enemy which has no military assets was back on and that the Iranians were about to be super-duper double sorry.

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1. The Platner Variations

Look: I don’t want to write another piece about Graham Platner any more than you want to read it. But I’m compelled. Because expression is the need of my soul.

So if you want to skip this one, no hard feelings. I understand. But don’t go just yet. First, let me give you the executive summary: The problem with Platner isn’t Platner. It’s what he has brought out in some of his supporters.

And second, before we get to Platner, let’s talk about Greg Bovino, who sent out a tweet yesterday teasing a presidential run:

Pay attention to my highlighting. “106 million illegals.” What an interesting number.

How does Bovino get to “106 million illegals”? People say Graham Platner is a Nazi? Well buckle up for some real Nazi shizz . . .

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1. Covfefe

Maybe you haven’t seen Trump’s appearance yesterday on Meet the Press yet but OMG it’s a trainwreck. People are fixated on the fact that Trump walked out on Kristen Welker, but honestly that’s the least worrisome aspect of the interview.

The United States is at war and the president is non compos mentis.

We’re going to talk about what has to be the most batshit insane presidential interview in the history of our country. And then we’re going to talk about what the effects of this performance will be as other countries—both allies and adversaries—start to understand that the American president is not all there.

But first we should just list some facts:

• Trump turns 80 next week.

• He has severe bruising on both of his hands.

• He frequently falls asleep in public, during official events.

• His legs are swollen.

• There is a rash on his neck.

• In October 2025 he said that he’d undergone an MRI but couldn’t recall what part of his body was imaged. Months later, it was revealed that he had been given a CT Scan and not an MRI, and that his chest and abdomen were imaged.

• He’s been inspected by doctors three times in the last fourteen months. (This is in addition to three dental appointments.)

I want to be very clear about this: The president’s medical team is about as trustworthy as Vladimir Putin’s. No credible explanations have been given for any of his obvious physical problems. There are no explanations for frequent medical appointments. His health records are only selectively released. His physicians tend to be Rasputin-style quacks. No, really. Do you remember this moment from January 2018?

“I told the president if he had eaten a healthier diet over the last 20 years he might live to be 200.” —Trump Presidential Physician Dr. Ronny Jackson

When Trump and the administration say that he has “aced cognitive tests,” you must understand that regular order no longer applies. You cannot trust these reports any more than you would trust Moscow or Pyongyang.

The only cognitive tests you can put stock in are what you see from the president with your own eyes. And from where I sit, Trump just had a health event on television.

Let’s dive in.

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Hey, y’all! JVL and I are bringing you another installment of our Triad Mailbag. As always, thank you for your excellent queries and please leave us your (honest) feedback.

Triad Mailbags will be posted in the Bulwark+ Takes feed for our audiophiles and a transcript can be found below for the readers among us.

In this episode we cover:

• From Sajal S.: How can we manage our retirement funds in the light of the upcoming SpaceX IPO? (starting around 1:44)

• From R. Sullivan: Why are Govs. Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger letting progressives down? (starting around 3:09)

• From S Mack: What will The Bulwark look like after Trump? (starting around 4:47)

• JVL and Jasmine: What were the best and worst jobs that you worked in high school? (starting around 5:28)

• From Sauerz: What do The Bulwark’s different job titles mean? (starting around 11:03)

• From Denise D.: Can James Talarico actually win Texas? (starting around 15:47)

• From Smike: JVL, how do you raise your kids to be good citizens of a liberal democracy when the education system doesn’t teach this? (starting around 17:12)

• From mjdnight: Was America’s retreat from the world stage inevitable? (starting around 28:02)

The transcript, edited for clarity and concision, is below, but you can also read the PDF version here:

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1. Little Marco

This week Marco Rubio testified to the following under oath:

Sen. Booker: You keep telling us how we’re winning this war.

Sec. Rubio: Well, the war is over now.

Never mind that the administration has steadfastly maintained that what is happening in Iran was not a war. Because words have meanings and if America was waging “war” against Iran then the president was violating the law by not getting congressional authorization.1 No, put that to the side.

Instead, focus on what Rubio said on May 5:

[W]e’re going to continue to systematically clear this passageway through the straits to restore freedom of navigation.

This has not happened. Here’s the log of daily traffic through the strait since the it’s-not-a-war started:

Point is that Rubio has been wrong about the Iran war from the jump. And that’s why Trump has begun elevating him above JD Vance in the Favorite Adopted Son sweepstakes.

It’s clear that Trump is displeased with JD Vance. Early on, when Trump thought he was winning in Iran, there were leaks about Vance not being onboard with the war. Daddy Trump sent Vance to negotiate with the Iranians when they clearly had all the cards, setting him up for failure—and at the same time took Rubio with him on vacation to fight night. There was a huge dump of leaks designed to show that Trump doesn’t think Vance has the juice.

What happened? Iran.

In a rational world, you might expect Trump to see Vance’s correct assessment of Iran as a positive and Rubio’s mistaken assessment as a negative. But that’s not how humans work. As Albus Dumbledore says,

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1. Enjoy the Bagels, Dammit.

Last night, Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton fired Scott Pelley. This is good news. I’ll explain why in a minute, but first, I want to tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was an Intellectual Dark Web of thinkers and academics who had to operate below the surface of public discourse because their ideas were so dangerous and shocking. Bari Weiss made her career by fawning over them in the pages of the New York Times.

Among the maxims championed by Weiss and her IDW friends was the idea that “free speech is under siege.”

Weiss partnered with free-speech maximalist Elon Musk to expose the supposedly bad things liberals and the management of Twitter had conspired to do regarding free expression. She didn’t find much, though she did discover in the end that Musk himself was no champion of free speech. Bizarrely, she shrugged off this discovery with a single post and quickly moved on.1

Next, Weiss partnered with some different tech billionaires to establish a fake college called the “University of Austin,” which would teach “forbidden courses” to students brave enough to explore “heterodox” ideas.

This hasn’t worked either, as evinced by the track record of UATX banishing people who disagree with, ahem, certain ideas.2

Finally, Weiss ascended to control of CBS News. As she took over the division she sent a memo to all hands explaining what sort of journalism she wanted.

Then, when Scott Pelley said—civilly, without yelling or cursing—factually true things, fearlessly, plainly during a meeting with Weiss’s new minion, Nick Bilton, she fired Pelley.

Now we get to the part where I explain why this is good.

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Questions for Jasmine + JVL

1. Gone in 60 Minutes

Four days after Bari Weiss decapitated the leadership of 60 Minutes, she sent her new executive producer, Nick Bilton, to meet with the remaining staff. What happened will reverberate in journalism for years.

In full view of the newsroom Scott Pelley took Bilton and Weiss (in absentia) to the woodshed.

The best account is from Oliver Darcy at Status, who had a recording, and the short version is that Pelley:

• Asked Bilton to explain the firings of correspondents and reporters.

  • Bilton absurdly tried to pretend that he didn’t know anything about these firings.

• Observed that Bilton had only the most slender qualifications for the job of EP and that Weiss had no qualifications for running CBS News.

The most important part of the showdown, however, was this:

“Bari loves this institution,” Bilton told staffers at one point during the highly contentious meeting. “She loves 60 Minutes.”

“She’s murdering 60 Minutes,” Pelley countered. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it—and she’s doing exactly that.”

Truth to power.

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People sometimes ask me why I’m so hung up on Bari Weiss and the answer is that it’s because her project is essentially the same as Donald Trump’s project. She is a corrupter.

Weiss has attempted to do to journalism what Trump has done to American government: Transform an ancient, messy, imperfect—but basically functional—web of institutions into a corrupt gangland organization. To do so, both Weiss and Trump have depended on the opposition refusing to notice what they are doing and—when they do notice it—to accept ludicrous rationalizations.

Ergo: Trump turns Elon Musk and DOGE loose on USAID and says it’s about saving money. Trump directs his attorney general to indict his enemies and says it’s about stopping the weaponization of government. Trump has ICE agents assault people and says it’s about deporting hardened criminals.

Or: Weiss dismantles 60 Minutes and pretends it’s about getting more views on digital.1

Every time someone goes along with this make-believe by treating it as a valid point of you—just like, your opinion, man—they contribute to the corruption.

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Here is why Scott Pelley’s stand was so important: He didn’t just refuse to be party to Bari Weiss’s lie—he stood up and exposed it. Even though she has the power and he does not.

Remember Christopher Wray? He was the director of the FBI. Trump wanted to fire him. And Wray, instead of forcing the issue, meekly resigned his office and pretended that he was preserving the integrity of his institution.

Remember John Kelly? He stood next to Donald Trump, saw exactly what kind of man he was serving, and when he finally walked away was only able to muster a couple of print interviews sharing what he knew about the man plotting to destroy American democracy.

Thom Tillis, John Cornyn, Mick Mulvaney, H.R. McMaster, Jeff Sessions, Mitch McConnell, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, Gina Haspel, Rex Tillerson, Jim Mattis, Bill Barr, Elaine Chao.

All of these people saw what was happening. All of them objected to it. None of them dared say so out loud.

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After all, doing so would have been poor form. Better to walk away and not get involved in any ugliness.

Authoritarianism exploits politesse.

The corrupter counts on the existing establishment normalizing her actions, hoping that they can work with her. She depends on people not noticing the plain reality and, if they do notice, politely looking the other way. Or quietly resigning. Not being unpleasant.

Throughout the 60 Minutes meeting yesterday, one of Bari Weiss’s lieutenants begged Pelley to stop asking questions because, he insisted, Pelley was being “rude.” As if civility and obeisance were the same thing.

Pelley would have none of it. He kept going. He said the things that were obviously true. He called things by right names.

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2. Enjoy the Bagels

Here are things that are true about 60 Minutes, CBS News, and Bari Weiss:

• 60 is the most successful property—in terms of both product and revenue—in broadcast journalism.

• Donald Trump has a particular grudge against 60, as evidenced by his lawsuit against the show.

• Larry and David Ellison needed Trump’s approval for the purchase of Paramount and CBS News.

• The Ellisons put Bari Weiss in charge of CBS News for the sole purpose of placating Trump.

• Trump has been publicly effusive about Bari Weiss as head of CBS News.

• Weiss decapitated the show’s staff in order to bring it fully under her control in order to please Trump.

• The Ellisons now need Trump to approve their purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery.

That’s the story. That’s what is happening. Anyone who pretends that this is about Weiss and the Ellisons “rebuilding public trust” or “reaching a broader audience” is participating in the corruption.

Just like anyone who pretends that DOGE was about reducing government spending. Or that Christopher Wray’s resignation would preserve the integrity of the FBI. Or that Elon Musk bought Twitter because he was concerned about free speech.

You see the thread, right? In every case, the corrupter counts on liberalism being too fastidious to believe the reality, or too polite to say it out loud.

We need more Scott Pelleys. More people who will say the true things, out loud. More people who, when confronted with authoritarian power, will say, “Make me.”

Our entire rationale for The Bulwark is to be Scott Pelley every day. To say the true things. No matter the consequences. Hell, that’s how I got here in the first place, after losing my job because my colleagues and I wouldn’t shut up about what Donald Trump was doing.

Come ride with us. Because it’s right. And because we’re going to win.

Join now

3. Africa

My friend Holly Berkley Fletcher has a fantastic piece explaining why government corruption is so toxic for nations:

By some estimates, corruption costs the [African] continent $150 billion annually, which is equal to 25% of GDP. The African Development Bank estimates if you add more general illicit finance enabled by weak rule of law to government-related corruption, that number rises to $580 billion per year.

Then there are the follow-on effects of creating an environment that discourages investment and robs ordinary people of the resources, infrastructure, education, and basic sustenance they need to thrive. There is the massive wealth disparity, with political and ethnic contours that often feed into deep historical animosities, as those with political connections are rewarded at the expense of those who are out. Then there are inflated stakes for political competition. Then there is violence, war, insecurity, extremism.

The US is not Africa. For one thing, its economy is nine times the size the entire African continent’s. By the numbers, the American economy can absorb Trump’s corruption, although the juxtaposition of it with things like the mass firing of federal workers, the shutdown of USAID, cuts to families with disabled children, and the slashing of funding for scientific research makes it seem all the more obscene. We have other structural advantages, like robust federalism, that mitigates the impact of corruption in the federal government.

But we can already see the beginnings of corruption’s corrosive impact on our political economy and envision how it could directly harm ordinary Americans.

Read the whole thing.

Jasmine + JVL Mailbag Questions

1. Fyre Festival

A year ago Donald Trump did a military parade. Instead of being menacing, it was sad. Trump couldn’t pull off a Soviet-style show with legions of tanks and ICBMs and perfect formations of thousands of soldiers.

What we got was the Veep version. Shaggy, disorganized, poorly attended. Trump wanted to bask in the glory of the military. In the end, it was the military that wound up getting tarnished by Trump.

It looks like we’re about to do this again with Freedom 250. Only worse. Instead of Veep, we’re getting the Fyre Festival.

Just like with the Fyre Festival, the talent is bailing. Last week Freedom 250—the sketchy group that Trump launched to run parallel to the congressionally created Semiquincentennial Commission (America250)—announced nine headline music acts for its “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall from late June to mid-July. As of today, most of them have dropped out, claiming that they had been booked under false pretenses.

Just like Fyre.

Also just like Fyre, no one involved with Freedom 250 seems to have thought through the logistics of the venue. By now you’ve seen the giant metal arches being constructed on the White House grounds to illuminate the UFC octagon. These arches are 90 feet tall at their apex, are made of steel, and will accommodate massive lights.

Below these arches will be seating for some 5,000 spectators.

What happens if there’s a thunderstorm?

Mid-June through mid-July see a lot of thunder and lightning in Washington and GIANT STEEL ARCHES are about the most dangerous thing you could possibly be near if there’s lighting. This isn’t a venue. It’s a Dome of Electric Death.

Which is why

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Hey fam -

Thank you all for your thoughtful questions on the last Triad Video Mailbag. We’re planning another one for Friday, June 5.

In the previous edition, we covered:

• Can Trump’s slush fund be stopped?

• Will AI discourse dominate the 2028 campaign?

• If Democrats take the Senate, how might Republicans attempt to block their swearing-ins?

• Should Sarah Longwell run for Senate in Pennsylvania?

• What are the greatest works of Catholic fiction (besides Wake Up, Dead Man, of course)?

• How does JVL handle talking to his kids about politics?

• What is populism, according to liberals and conservatives?

• . . . and more of your burning questions.

You can watch our first three installments of “Ask JVL” here.

Leave us questions for our next edition of “Ask JVL” in the comments on this post. We’ll pin this to the top of the Triad channel on the site and remind you of the link throughout the week.

Ask JVL

Questions can be whatever is on your mind. Was there something JVL needs to explain more from a recent Triad? Something he hasn’t dealt with lately that you’d like to hear more about?

If you posted a question last time that didn’t get picked, feel free to post it here again. There were so many good, worthy questions.

Before you pose a question, please look through the existing questions and upvote (by clicking the 🩶) those you most wish to explore, and thread your replies if you have similar questions or follow-ups. Upvoted comments float to the top, letting us know what’s most important to the community for us to answer.

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1. Corporate

This week a bunch of people you’ve likely never heard of were pushed out of 60 Minutes by Bari Weiss. Simultaneously, Weiss handed control of the program to someone else you’ve probably never heard of.

I know how boring that sounds, but it’s important. What is happening at 60 Minutes is a demonstration of how institutions fail in an age of autocracy. And it is an object lesson in the dangers corporate ownership poses to free media.

This is inside baseball. But you need to understand it. Let’s go.

60 Minutes is the crown jewel of American broadcast journalism. When journalism migrated from the page to the screen, it was mostly a bad thing for society. But 60 Minutes was the best-case scenario—an example of what serious investigative journalism could achieve in the TV format.

Part of the show’s success was economic. 60 Minutes didn’t just produce outstanding journalism—it made money. It proved that good journalism could succeed on TV and didn’t need to be regarded as a charity or a loss-leader. In 2024, just as a for-instance, 60 Minutes made $206 million in advertising.

Because of this industry-leading success, the show has always been allowed to run independently within the organization that is CBS News. 60 Minutes was its own beast, a state within a state. The show’s independence was such a big deal that when CBS corporate interfered with it in the 1990s, the whole world took notice and Michael Mann made a big-budget movie about the incident.

That’s the backdrop.

Last fall, David Ellison, the chairman and CEO of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, purchased Bari Weiss’s pro-Trump website, the Free Press, for $150 million. As part of the deal he put Weiss in charge of CBS News, where she quickly went to work making the division’s products more friendly to Donald Trump. We don’t need to recapitulate the entire history here; it is enough to note that, as a business matter, Weiss’s tenure has been an abject failure. Ratings are down across CBS News properties.

But as a corporate matter, Weiss has been a success. First, as a way of greasing the skids of Ellison’s purchase of Paramount, he publicly signaled that he would give Weiss a prominent role at CBS News long before he bought her. Then, once she was put in charge and started breaking things, she made Ellison’s purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery all the more politically appealing to Trump. Trump publicly praised Weiss, and when Ellison and Netflix got into a bidding war for Warner-Discovery, the president stepped in to thumb the scales and make sure everyone knew that he would approve a sale to Ellison but not to Netflix.

So under Weiss, CBS News has been a failure, both in terms of product and business. The journalism at CBS News is getting worse and the audience is leaving. But the particular manner in which CBS News has failed—by broadcasting its obeisance to Trump—has enabled tremendous success by the division’s corporate parent.

This is what happens in a command economy when the head of the government picks winners and losers. CBS News no longer exists as a unit whose purpose is to create journalism that attracts an audience and drives revenue. Its purpose is to keep the president happy so that Ellison’s other businesses prosper.

It’s not quite right to say that CBS News under Weiss is a charity. It’s more like an ongoing bribe.

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2. 60

Weiss took control of CBS News partway through the show’s season and almost immediately she broke the show’s independence. Despite knowing nothing about either investigative reporting or broadcast journalism, she inserted herself into 60 Minutes, first in trivial ways, and then in big ones: She spiked a story about CECOT and she approached Benjamin Netanyahu, who had been in talks to sit for an interview with Leslie Stahl, and allowed him to choose his own interviewer.

It was clear that Weiss intended to put 60 Minutes completely under her personal control so that the show could no longer upset President Trump. After the current season wrapped last week, Weiss went to work with all of those firings we talked about at the very top.

You might recognize the names of correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. You probably don’t know who Tanya Simon and Draggan Mihailovich are because they were among behind-the-camera producers and editors who run the show. As of this week, Weiss has gotten rid of all of them.

Simon was the executive producer in charge of 60. Weiss replaced her with Nick Bilton, a guy who has written for the New York Times and Vanity Fair and never done a blessed thing in broadcast news—let alone managed a giant organization.1

Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire ran a piece heartily endorsing Bilton’s hire.

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3. Indie Rock

Corporate ownership of media companies is a smaller issue in normal times because the corporate owners don’t have to worry about the government seeking retribution.

In 2004, 60 Minutes ran a story about George W. Bush that relied on forged documents. It was a major scandal—but no one at CBS’s corporate parent worried that Bush’s FCC was going to pull their broadcast license or that Bush’s FTC would block the purchase of another corporate property in retaliation.2

We do not live in normal times. The clearest example of this I can give you is that Trump unilaterally imposed massive tariffs. The Supreme Court ruled that these tariffs were unconstitutional and that the companies who paid them should be refunded their money. Trump then went on TV to proclaim that companies should let him keep the money, promising that he’d look favorably on those that don’t ask for it back—“I’ll remember them”—and implicitly warning he’d keep track of which businesses do ask for it back.

Command economy. Gangster government. Socialism. Whatever you want to call it, this is an authoritarian age. And in an authoritarian age, the corporate ownership of media is dangerous because corporations are financially incentivized to turn their media outlets into fleshlights for the Dear Leader.

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We should be clear: Bari Weiss is murdering 60 Minutes. She is doing so not out of incompetence or foolishness, but with malice aforethought. She is doing it at the behest of her corporate patron, because while she may cause CBS News to lose millions of dollars, her stroking of Trump will gain David Ellison billions of dollars.

That’s what is happening. And anyone who pretends that this is about “free speech,” or adapting to an age of “new media,” or confronting “dangerous ideas,” or reclaiming some “forgotten audience” is selling you something.

The only antidote is building media institutions independent of corporate ties. Which is what we’ve done here at The Bulwark.

There are downsides to being independent. You don’t have enormous corporate resources to tap. We can’t build out giant production teams; we can’t put reporters on the ground in the Middle East. We can’t do incredibly slick infographics. We can only grow as fast as our revenue grows—which means that everything we do has to be sustainable. Which is a fancy word for “slow.”

In truth, there’s only one upside to being independent:

We’re in control and our incentives are aligned with yours.

No one tells us what to say, or whom to fire. We are not a loss leader for some other division. We exist to tell you the truth and create value for you, the people who read and watch us.

I don’t know Nick Bilton. Never met the guy. But I cannot imagine what sort of journalist would look at Bari Weiss and everything that has gone down at CBS News over the last few months and think, Yeah, baby! I want to be part of that!

Maybe he’s attracted to the resources; to the ability to do all those things we can’t do. Or maybe it’s something else. I dunno.

But for me? Eight years ago I decided that as God is my witness, I was never going to be at the mercy of some corporate d-bag. Not ever again. I would live and die with you guys.

The Bulwark isn’t 60 Minutes. We’re never going to be 60 Minutes. And that’s a shame, because 60 Minutes—the real show, not the Frankenstein Bari and Bilton will ship under the legacy brand—ought to exist in the world. It’s good. It has value.

I hope someone out there builds a new 60 Minutes, soon. (Hi Laurene! 👋)

But what we’re doing here has its own value. It deserves to be nurtured and supported by the people who consume it—not just through membership, but through the discussions we have here together and evangelization and honesty and camaraderie.

If you want to give David Ellison, Bari Weiss, and the rest of Trump’s oligarchs and vampires the finger, come and join us. Become a member. Introduce yourself in the comments. Share this piece with someone you know.

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Those mf’ers might be rich and powerful. But what they’re doing is bankrupt. Everyone can see it.

And we’re coming for them.

1. Economics

Earlier this week Ed Luce noted the similarities between Ukraine and Iran: Both were attacked by much larger powers. Both have stopped the much larger powers in their tracks.

How? Because both Ukraine and Iran mastered a revolution in military affairs before their adversaries even understood that one was afoot.

Today we’re going to talk about:

• What the Ukrainians and Iranians figured out.

• What this revolution means for the future of war.

• How Donald Trump failed to prepare the U.S. military, leading to our defeat in Iran and the end of the American-led global order.

In addition to Trump’s other failures, he has been buying up cavalry horses at a time when our adversaries are building tanks. This stupidity failed the American military, diminished American power, and made our interests across the globe less safe.

This is going to be a journey that is nominally about drones, but is really about Trump and the end of the American order.

We start by understanding that the drone is both the present and the future of warfare. This is not new.

America was the first military to widely integrate drones and we did it thirty years ago with the Predator and then the Reaper.1 The key insight was that where air forces historically prized speed and power, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could be valuable precisely because of how slow they could move. The Army could park a Predator over a patch of grass for hours at a time and it was the equivalent of having a geosynchronous satellite feeding them real-time intelligence—and for the tiniest fraction of the price.

We gradually turned surveillance drones into weapons platforms, but the emphasis in America was still on Big. Our drones were cheap by the standards of fighter jets, but they still cost real money.2 Nations which did not have the resources to manufacture even “cheap” Predator-like drones looked to the consumer drone space for inspiration—and that’s when the real revolution happened.

In 2020 Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war for the second time in a generation. The First Nagorno-Karabakh War lasted six years. The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War lasted six weeks. That’s because the Azerbaijanis used a combined-arms strategy centered around the integration of cheap drones used both for surveillance and as smart-munitions. The Armenians, who fielded a conventional force based around armor, artillery, and infantry were routed.

Military planners in Kyiv and Tehran were paying attention. People in Donald Trump’s administration—and Vladimir Putin’s army—were not.

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By this point the supremacy of drones in the Russo–Ukraine war is well-documented. You should understand that drones are also the reason America has lost the Iran war.

In a recent interview with the Atlantic Council’s Danny Citrinowicz, Isaac Chotiner asked:

The fundamental question I keep returning to is: Did the Iranians not realize how much control they had over the global economy before the U.S. and Israel attacked them? Or had they always known this and were they just waiting to wield that power?

The answer to this question is that that while the Iranians had a theory about controlling the Strait of Hormuz for decades, the practical ability to execute this plan did not materialize until the age of the drone.

In pre-drone times, Iran would have needed to rely on mines, fast-boats, and anti-ship missiles. Mines are hit-and-miss and slow to deploy—plus they’re hard to un-deploy, which is inconvenient for Iran because while they can close the strait in the short term, in the long term they need it open. Boats and missiles are relatively expensive and can be neutralized by conventional means. The Iranians needed another option—which is why they poured resources into their drone industry beginning in 2010.

It was the drone that allowed Iran to close the strait and win the war.

Next, we should understand what makes the drone so special. The drone does not represent a technical advance. It is an economic advance.

Guided munitions—smart bombs, rockets, and shells which can seek out targets after being fired—have done what drones do for a long time. What makes the drone different is the cost basis.

A guided munition is expensive. A Tomahawk missile, for example, costs about $2m. These munitions then need dedicated platforms from which to launch—typically a submarine or ship in the case of the Tomahawk. Other guided munitions can be fired from aircraft or land-based batteries or, in the case of some extremely short-range weapons like the Javelin anti-tank missile, by infantry.

In every one of these cases, the munition itself is costly but that price is dwarfed by the long tail of costs needed to put those munitions in the field. To stick with our $2m Tomahawk, it can be launched from an Ohio-class submarine—which cost about $3 billion each and requires about 155 crew members, never mind the dockside logistical costs to keep the boat running, pay veteran’s benefits, etc.

A Shahed 136 drone costs between $20,000 and $50,000. Do the math.

For the cost of a single American submarine carrying 154 Tomahawks, Iran can make up to 150,000 drones.

Here is the key insight that I want you to put on a pillow:

War is politics by other means. It is also economics by other means.

If you heard the term “cost-exchange ratio” you might think it’s about stonks. It’s not. It’s about the economics of destroying things.

Take Ukraine as an example. When Russia started firing cheap, Iranian-designed Shahed drones at Ukraine, the only thing the Ukrainians had on hand to shoot them down were expensive missile systems designed to take down airplanes, helicopters, and conventional missiles. As a financial and economic matter, you can’t shoot down $20,000 drones with multi-million-dollar missiles over the long term. Even if you could manufacture interceptors fast enough, you’d bankrupt yourself.

That’s why the Ukrainians developed other, inexpensive ways of downing cheap Russian drones, such as using drones of their own, or electronic warfare that causes the Russian drones to crash, or sitting in the open canopy of a propeller plane and just shooting the Shaheds with a gun.

If Ukraine can get its average cost to destroy a $20,000 Russian drone down to, say, $5,000—then they are winning the war.

And that’s why drones are a revolution. At its most basic, war is a competition to kill people in the most economically efficient way possible, so that your resources outlast the other side’s resources.

Modern low-cost drones undercut the entire superpower economic model of warfare that America relied on for half a century.

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2. COVID Part 2

Remember Donald Trump in the age of COVID? When our idiot president would stand in front of a podium riffing about bleach and hydroxychloroquine, instead of spinning up PPE and test kit production?

Think back to how utterly incompetent the Trump administration’s management of the COVID crisis was.

Because that’s pretty much what Trump has done to the American military, too. He was asleep at the switch while the entire universe of warfighting shifted around him.

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By most accounts, Trump thought the attack on Iran would be a cross between his kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro and Israel’s destruction of Gaza. What anyone could have told him was that there was one key difference between Venezuela and Gaza on the one hand, and Iran on the other.

You know what that difference was?

Iran has a huge, home-grown drone industry.

Not appreciating this fact is one of the biggest strategic miscalculations in American military history.

How could the commander-in-chief be so utterly stupid and incompetent?

Oh, right.

But it’s not just that Trump didn’t understand the importance of drones in a war against Iran. He has spent his presidency pushing the U.S. military in the opposite direction.

He’s spending $20 billion on a sixth-gen fighter platform, the F-47, because it has his name on it. (Sort of. If you squint.)

He’s spending at least that much on a “Trump-class battleship” which will never touch water.

He’s spending $75 billion on a “Golden Dome” to counter ballistic missile threats to the continental United States. (The Congressional Budget Office says the real cost of the “Golden Dome” would be more like $1.2 trillion over 20 years.)

He spent time and resources putting tanks in Washington, D.C. for a “military parade” while his secretary of defense prioritizes physical fitness—physical fitness!—and tries to prevent officers from attending elite universities.

And early in the Iran war, when Ukraine offered to help the U.S. military defend against drone attacks, Trump brushed them aside. He thought it was unnecessary.

Push-ups, battleships, and high-cost stealth fighters in an age where warfare is dominated by disposable, adaptable drone technology. Like I said: This is the equivalent of outfitting horse-mounted calvary with shiny swords and fancy hats in 1935 while the Germans are cranking out Panzer III’s by the thousands.

As Noah Smith and Shawn Wang recently wrote, all non-drone militaries are now obsolete. And yet Trump is intent on pushing gussied up, old-world tech as the backbone of American military power.

No wonder we just got pantsed by the Iranians.

Quick aside: If this is the kind of long-lens thinking you get value from, come and be a part of Bulwark+. We do this every day.

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Which brings us, finally, to the collapse of the American-led world order.

Bob Kagan sat down with Tim this week for an excellent conversation—don’t miss it.

Bob notes that one of the lynchpins of the American-led order was that the U.S. military guaranteed freedom of the seas. Trump has just proved to the world that this guarantee is no longer valid.

Not in some theoretical sense. We have actual, real-world proof. You cannot overestimate the effects of this shift.

Until two months ago the Strait of Hormuz was governed by international laws which we wrote to benefit ourselves. From this point forward, the strait will be governed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. This fact makes Iran a world power which must be accounted for. Every nation in Asia will have to reach an accommodation with the Iranians. And China’s alliance with Iran has now become infinitely more valuable.

More than that: The blueprint has been created for China to dominate shipping in the South China Sea—meaning that every country in Asia will have to make deals with the Chinese, too. These shifts will cut America out of half of the globe. Our interests have become irrelevant outside of our narrow slice of hemisphere.

America goes from being the country that set the rules for the entire world order to being a regional power that must content itself with bullying Venezuela and Cuba.

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For a certain type of MAGA, Trump’s performance as commander-in-chief is judged entirely by how many helicopter rides the Army gives Kid Rock.

But for people who prioritize winning wars, deterring adversaries, and protecting America’s interests, Trump has presided over the single biggest technological failure since Sputnik.

He did this. He did it because he is vain and stupid. And now we will all pay for his idiocy.

Literally.

3. Joy #1

Our family cat, K-Pop, has a friend. His friend is a chipmunk named Potato. Every day Potato comes up to the sliding door on the deck to say hello.

The cat and the chipmunk have a complicated relationship. K-Pop seems to want to alternatingly love and murder Potato. For his part, Potato enjoys sitting directly on the other side of the glass, eating seeds, staring at K-Pop with something like bemused affection.

1. Irredeemable

Let’s start with two propositions:

1. Texas Republicans chose Ken Paxton not in spite of his corruption and personal odiousness but because of it. Paxton’s status as a crook and an adulterer was his comparative advantage.

2. Democrats need to win a nontrivial percentage of Republicans who chose Paxton.

We’re going to unpack these ideas today and then try to understand what they mean for Democrats. How do you win voters who are motivated by a preference for criminality and vice?

I have some ideas on how to do that, actually. But be warned: They’re not very nice.

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1. Leatherman

We’ve been thinking too narrowly about the $1.776 billion pot of taxpayer money that Donald Trump will soon control.

Most people assumed Trump would use it to pay off meathead insurrectionists, sort of a . . . treason stimulus.

“I’m takin’ my old lady to Red Lobster.” Absolute gold.

Others believed that while Dummkopf MAGA might get a couple bucks here and there, the real money would be funneled to Trump family members and organizations.

But the Slush Fund from Hell—or whatever we’re calling it—is much more useful than any of that. It’s a multitool for corruption and maintaining MAGA discipline. Let me explain.

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Triad Mailbags will be posted in the Bulwark+ Takes feed for our audiophiles and a transcript can be found below for the readers among us.

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In this episode we cover:

• From Sue G.: Is there anything that can be done to stop Trump and the DOJ from setting up the $1.8 billion slush fund? (starting around 0:26)

• From Kim Z.: Do you think AI will be one of the main topics of 2028? And do you think it makes sense to have a Bulwark content expert on AI? (starting around 3:31)

• JVL to Jasmine: Are you interested discourse on AI? What your worries are about it? (starting around 6:16)

• From Eric: If Democrats win the Senate, Republicans will likely claim fraud and use every lever they have to block seating Dems to keep control. How can Democrats stop this? (starting around 10:31)

• From Becky G.: My friend’s MAGA husband is more upset about shoplifting at Target than a $1.8 billion slush fund to be handed out to convicted criminals. Is it possible to change the narrative of “blue collar crime, bad” versus “white collar crime, so what?” (starting around 12:15)

• JVL to Jasmine: Let’s pretend that the Trump era ends and American politics goes back to “normal.” That’s not going to happen, but we’re pretending. In a “normal” time, what political issues would you find most interesting and want to engage with most deeply? (starting around 13:53)

• From Don G.: What do you think about Sarah Longwell running for the Democratic Senate nomination in Pennsylvania for 2028? (starting around 19:04)

• From Michelle: How do you handle talking to your kids, especially teenagers, about the “enshittification” of the U.S., the world, and politics in general? (starting around 20:14)

• From Steve: JVL, you mentioned a while back that you thought ‘Wake Up, Dead Man’ was the greatest Catholic movie ever made. What other Catholic movies/fictional works would you recommend as being quality depictions or explorations of the faith, particularly for those of us who are not religious? (starting around 22:14)

• From Kevin D.: JVL, I remember you going hard against the reforms MLB introduced to shorten the games. Seems like the reforms had the intended effect and viewership is way up. Have your views changed? (starting around 23:44)

• JVL to Jasmine: What do you like to do outside of work? (starting around 25:13)

• From APowell: Trump keeps on turning down these Iranian proposals to end the war without giving them any consideration. Do you think he is purposely delaying the end of the war at this point? If so, why? (starting around 26:25)

• From Erin O.: Can you define “populism” on the right/left spectrum? (starting around 27:45)

The transcript, edited for clarity and concision, is below, but you can also read the PDF version here:

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But before I take my leave, I have some light hopium for you. I think Trump is in trouble.

1. Contradictions

On the one hand, Donald Trump’s political power has been reaffirmed with the defeats of Bill Cassidy, Thomas Massie, the Indiana state Republicans, and (soon) John Cornyn.

This is a man whose hold on his party’s voters remains strong.1

On the other hand . . . there is a slew of contrary indicators suggesting—God help me—that the walls might (finally) be closing in on Trump. Let me give you a list.

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