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'We Will Not Stand Silent': An Open Letter Against Retaliatory Investigations

I'm devoting today's column to words that other people have written. They are very important words—words of the moment and words for the ages.

I don't generally sign onto letters, even those I agree with. My chief concern is avoiding any compromise to my credibility as a journalist. It's not as if it would surprise anyone to know I have views, and even to guess what they might be. (I do think people sometimes guess wrong; I identify as a rule-of-law Democrat, which sometimes leads me to take positions at odds with friends on the left.) But I don't want to give the impression that I have a personal stake in any issue, at least one that I haven't disclosed. I want readers to have complete confidence that I'm giving them my best objective read.

But I did sign a letter that was published over the weekend, and I am proud of it. The letter, which was published in The New York Times, expresses grave concern about Trump’s presidential memoranda disparaging two of his many enemies, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor—revoking their security clearances and ordering investigations of them by the Department of Justice. All of this was for the essential sin—the newly minted egregious felony—of contradicting the maximum leader.

We have watched as norm after norm, law after law, has been bulldozed by a power-mad would-be tyrant. Many of these actions have harmed millions of Americans. But singling out Krebs and Taylor for investigation and punishment represents a breathtaking descent into the very worst of authoritarian rule. As the letter expresses, “these actions, if carried out, will leave a permanent stain on our institutions and erode our democracy.”

I am honored to be in the company of the signatories, who include legal luminaries and good friends of all political stripes. We say this a lot, but it is both true and urgent, that the existential challenges Trump is posing to the democratic experiment transcend party and policy.

An Open Letter Opposing White House Retaliatory Investigations

We write with grave concern about the two presidential memoranda dated April 9, 2025, targeting Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, respectively — two former national security officials who served the people of the United States. These executive actions represent a dangerous escalation in the abuse of presidential power: weaponizing federal agencies to carry out personalized retribution against named individuals.

Presidents of both parties have long respected the independence of federal law enforcement and refrained from using the power at their disposal to punish perceived enemies. Indeed, presidents have gone out of their way to avoid even the appearance of impropriety or influence. President Trump’s statements are a profoundly unconstitutional break with this tradition. He is explicitly targeting two Americans because they exercised their First Amendment rights and criticized him. That is a miscarriage of justice which these individuals, and other people and institutions vindictively singled out by him, will be unfairly forced to endure. The president of the United States must not direct federal authorities to investigate people with whom he disagrees.

This is not democratic governance. It is baseless retaliation — and it has no place in the United States of America. Across our history, there have been dark chapters where state power has been weaponized and dissent suppressed, including the crackdown during and after World War I, the Red Scare of the 1950s, and President Richard Nixon’s “enemies list.” These episodes are now seen as shameful deviations from the fundamental American principles of free expression and impartial justice. The April 9 presidential memoranda are an appalling rejection of those bedrock democratic values.

Indeed, the President’s actions not only evoke some of the worst moments in our history; they go even further. For a president to personally and publicly direct the levers of the federal government against publicly named citizens for political reasons sets a new and perilous precedent in our republic. It brings to mind the abuses of power that characterize authoritarian nations, not the United States. No matter one’s party or politics, every American should reject the notion that the awesome power of the presidency can be used to pursue individual vendettas. Behavior of this kind is more to be expected from a royal despot than the elected leader of a constitutional republic. This is the path of autocracy, not democracy.

For these reasons, we urge that the President immediately rescind these memoranda and that agency heads repudiate any order that undermines their oaths, politicizes their missions, or betrays the constitutional principles they are sworn to uphold.

These actions, if carried out, will leave a permanent stain on our institutions and erode our democracy. History will not forget who stood silent. We will not stand silent.

Reprinted with permission from Substack.

Why We Should All Fear A Trumpified Federal Reserve

Sometimes the Federal Reserve has extraordinary power over the economy.

Consider what happened from 1982 to 1984. For most of 1982 the U.S. economy was in grim shape. Employment had plunged, especially in manufacturing. The unemployment rate hit 10.8 percent in December (it was 4.2 percent last month.) And economic pain helped Democrats make major gains in the 1982 midterms.

But everything was about to change, thanks to the Fed. In the summer of 1982 the Fed decided to ease monetary policy. Interest rates plunged, and about 6 months later the economy began a stunning rebound, growing 4.6 percent in 1983 and 7.2 percent in 1984. Ronald Reagan claimed credit for “Morning in America,” but actually it was the Fed that did it.

This episode illustrates the Fed’s power — power that must be insulated from abuse by politicians, especially politicians like Donald Trump.

Over the past several days Trump has been demanding that the Fed cut interest rates and calling for the Fed chairman’s “termination.” It’s worth looking at what he posted on Truth Social to get a sense of how, to use the technical term, batshit crazy he is on this subject:

And we really, really don’t want someone that crazy dictating monetary policy.

The reason we don’t want politicians in direct control of monetary policy is that it’s so easy to use. After all, what does it mean to “ease” monetary policy? It’s an incredibly frictionless process. Normally the Federal Open Market Committee tells the New York Fed to buy U.S. government debt from private banks, which it does with money conjured out of thin air. There’s no need to pass legislation, place bids with contractors, deal with any of the hassles usually associated with changes in government policy. Basically the Fed can create an economic boom with a phone call.

It's obvious that this kind of power could be abused by an irresponsible leader who wants to preside over an economic boom and doesn’t want to hear about the risks. This isn’t a hypothetical scenario. Consider what happened in Turkey, whose Trump-like president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, recently arrested the leader of the opposition. When the global post-Covid inflation shock hit, Erdogan embraced crank economic theories. He forced Turkey’s central bank, its equivalent of the Fed, to cut interest rates in the belief, contrary to standard economics, that doing so would reduce, not increase inflation. You can see the results in the chart at the top of this post.

How can we guard against that kind of policy irresponsibility? After the stagflation of the 1970s many countries delegated monetary policy to technocrats at independent central banks. Can the technocrats get it wrong? Of course they can and often have. But they’re less likely to engage in wishful thinking and motivated reasoning than typical politicians, let alone politicians like Trump.

What makes Trump’s attempt to bully the Fed especially ominous is the fact that the Fed will soon have to cope with the stagflationary crisis Trump has created. Trump’s massive tariff increase will lead to a major inflationary shock:

Moreover, Trump has also created huge uncertainty by radically changing his policies every few days, which will depress spending and may well cause a recession:

Not incidentally, Trump has been able to pursue these destructive policies because U.S. law gives the president enormous discretionary power over tariffs. And now he wants the same kind of discretionary power over the Fed.

As a consequence of Trump’s destructive tariff regime, the Fed will soon face a dilemma. Should it raise interest rates to fight inflation, or should it cut rates to fight recession? It’s a really hard call, and it’s quite possible that Jay Powell will get it wrong. Trump has made Powell’s dilemma even worse with his attempted bullying, because a rate cut would be seen by many as a sign that Powell is giving in to avoid being fired.

But one thing we know for sure is that we don’t want Trump making that call. Like Erdogan, he has embraced crank economic doctrines to justify his policies, in Trump’s case the ludicrous claim that tariffs won’t raise consumer prices. Does anyone doubt that when inflation rises, he’ll dismiss it as “fake news”?

So will Trump’s attempt to bully the Fed succeed? According to the Wall Street Journal, he has spent months talking privately about firing Powell. He doesn’t have the legal authority to do that, but Trump doesn’t worry about pesky things like legal limits to his authority. Yesterday he told reporters that he can easily get rid of Powell: “If I want him out, he’ll be out of there real fast, believe me.”

And given how quickly Trump has been able to subvert or destroy many other government institutions, it’s hard to feel confident that he can’t do the same to the Fed. Fear of market reaction — America is already facing a serious credibility problem, with the dollar falling even as interest rates rise — will probably restrain him, but he may not believe people telling him that taking over the Fed would cause the dollar to plunge while long-term interest rates soar as investors expect higher inflation.

Between Trump’s tariffs, the economic spillover from deportations and terrorization of immigrants and the attempt to politicize the Fed, the upside risk to inflation now looks very high. The bitter irony is that many Americans voted for Trump because they thought he would bring prices down.

Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and former professor at MIT and Princeton who now teaches at the City University of New York's Graduate Center. From 2000 to 2024, he wrote a column for The New York Times. Please consider subscribing to his Substack, where he now posts almost every day.

Reprinted with permission from Paul Krugman.

First Family? The Trumps Are Much More Like A Mafia Family

Donald Trump's defenders have taken great offense to suspicions by Democrats and others that the Trump family and its close circle are doing insider trading to profit from market convulsions. There's no "proof," they say.

It's true that there's been no proof so far, but there's surely enough smoke to warrant an investigation. Problem is, the Trump administration has fired the investigators or replaced them with people who won't investigate. To quote a Wall Street Journal headline, "Trump Administration Retreats from White-Collar Criminal Enforcement."

Whence comes the smoke? For starters, it comes from the total lack of consistency in Trump's pronouncements on tariffs. The administration on Friday announced that iPhones, laptops and other tech products would be exempt from the "so-called reciprocal tariffs" against China that run as high as 145%, the Journal noted. "But on Sunday morning Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said tariffs on electronic goods would go up again in the future."

See the game? When Trump announces new tariffs, stock prices crater. When he announces a retreat, the indices soar. To keep the game going, there always must be the threat of a reversal that would send the markets in another direction. And how nice it would be to become one of the insiders who get a heads-up right before announcements are made.

But one investment that stopped jumping at every hint of trade sanity: U.S. Treasury securities. Once considered the world's safest place to keep money at times of economic stress, the world's investors are moving out of U.S. government bonds. They now see America as an increasingly unstable country no longer governed by the old rules of capitalism but by crony and family interests. And extortion.

If you don't deliver a bag of gold for my inauguration, I might hurt your business. Or, you could also pay Melania an outlandish $40 million for her documentary, Jeff Bezos, and I'll be nice to Amazon. You could also buy my crypto.

Wall Street Journal, thank you again for yet another headline: "Trump's $1 Billion Law Firm Deals Are the Work of His Personal Lawyer." That would be Boris Epshteyn, indicted in Arizona for trying to overturn Trump's 2020 election loss in that state. And he has pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in a bar.

Epshteyn doesn't work for the government. He doesn't even have a government email address. But he's been shaking down law firms deemed opposed to the Trump agenda for pro bono, that is, free, work. On Friday alone, five law firms submitted and agreed to hand over about $600 million in legal services, gratis. Several law firms have hired Trump-friendly lobbyists.

Others, however, have resisted the intimidation. Law firms have every right to represent clients opposed to actions by the Trump or any other administration.

"But what about Hunter's laptop?" some will ask. Don't even try that.

Observe Trump's mafia-style locutions, like, "You can do it the easy way, or you can do it the hard way." Or, "These countries are kissing my ass." It's important in the mob mentality that extortion be blatant.

Astounding how the MAGA right accuses anyone they disagree with of being a "socialist" and then throws into the dumpster the guardrails and respect for impersonal decisions that help capitalism function.

Four years ago, Trump called crypto "a scam." He told Fox News that he objected to crypto because it competes with the U.S. dollar. But Trump has a long history of regarding a scam as an opportunity. Trump is now deregulating crypto as his family goes into everything from bitcoin mining to stablecoins.

The people's business has been given over to a family's business. Small wonder that the free world is bailing out of America.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Political Styles Of The Rich And Clueless

As we wait to see what fresh hell awaits us this week, one obvious question is, who put these malevolent clowns in power?

The short answer is ignorant people. But political ignorance takes two different forms.

On one side there are “less-engaged” voters who don’t follow politics closely. And to be fair, ordinary Americans have good excuses for not paying close attention to the news: They have jobs to do, children to raise, lives to live. Unfortunately, many of these voters believed Trump’s fabulist promises. They are only now beginning to understand what they voted for.

There’s now a huge debate among Democrats about how to reach less-engaged voters. But that’s a topic for future posts.

But less-engaged voters weren’t the only people who missed the warning signs and supported Donald Trump. Trump also had a number of ultra-wealthy backers, both on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, who are now shocked, shocked to discover that he is who he always was.

Over the weekend Bill Ackman, a hedge-fund billionaire who has been one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, suddenly turned on his champion, declaring on X that

by placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital.

But Ackman refused to take any responsibility for enabling the destruction:

I don't think this was foreseeable. I assumed economic rationality would be paramount. My bad.

Indeed. Who could have foreseen that the self-proclaimed Tariff Man, who posts crazy stuff on Truth Social every day, would impose destructive tariffs? Who could have imagined that the many economists, myself included, who warned that a Trump victory would be very bad for the economy would turn out to have been right? Or if we were wrong, it was only because we underestimated the damage.

OK, Ackman is a fool, but he wasn’t alone in getting Trump all wrong. Many wealthy people imagined that Trump II would be like Trump I, mostly a standard right-winger with a bit of a protectionist hobby. They thought he would cut their taxes, eliminate financial and environmental regulations and promote crypto, making them even wealthier. They expected him to back off his tariff obsession if the stock market started to fall. If he ripped up the social safety net, well, they don’t depend on food stamps or Medicaid.

And if Trump II really had been like Trump I, America’s oligarchs would be very happy right now.

It's also true that successful businessmen often believe that their financial success makes them experts on economic policy even though they haven’t made any effort to understand the issues.

Even relatively sensible business leaders like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase tend to stumble when they try to play economist. Does anyone remember Dimon proclaiming in 2014 that we couldn’t restore full employment because American workers didn’t have the right skills? Five years later the unemployment rate was below 4 percent.

I was struck over the weekend when Elon Musk (I know, I know), seemingly breaking with Trump, called for zero tariffs between the United States and Europe. I think it’s safe to assume that Musk has no idea that trans-Atlantic tariffs were, in fact, close to zero in 2024: The average European Union tariff on U.S. goods was 1.7%, the average U.S. tariff on EU goods was 1.4%.

Finally, great wealth often enables great pettiness. Some readers may remember Wall Street’s “Obama rage”: Financial titans were furious at the president who bailed them out after the global financial crisis because he dared to hint that they had played some role in causing that crisis. Why, he even called them “fat cats!”

The pettiness has been even worse this time around. A few days before the inauguration the Financial Times ran an article titled “Is corporate America going MAGA?” that quoted one “top banker”:

I feel liberated. We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled . . . it’s a new dawn.

I wonder how liberated he’s feeling now.

To be honest, I’m actually glad that Trump II is proving to be such a disaster for the economy. If he had exercised some restraint, if he had simply claimed credit for the very good economy Joe Biden left him, many wealthy people would have cheered him on while he destroyed democracy. Now they may turn on him.

But I hope the rest of us have learned a lesson from the oligarchy’s support for Trump, even if it’s now cracking: Extreme wealth inequality has given great power to people who exert a malign influence on our politics.

Reprinted with permission from Paul Krugman.

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

'We Will Not Stand Silent': An Open Letter Against Retaliatory Investigations

Why We Should All Fear A Trumpified Federal Reserve

First Family? The Trumps Are Much More Like A Mafia Family

Political Styles Of The Rich And Clueless

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