Bob Sheak, Oct 23, 2026
I’ll consider some problematic examples.
Trump illegally uses taxpayer funds for his own right-wing propaganda. The real spending on the military is hidden from the public. Prices rise on a host of goods and services. Trump is making deals with big oil, at the expense of consumers. Trump’s administration is doing what it can to rescue the highly polluting coal industry. He continues to push vanity and other whacky policies
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Taxpayer funds for propaganda
Elie Mystal considers Trump illegal use of taxpayer funds for propaganda purposes in an article for The Nation, Sept 30, 2026 (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/psa-trump-contiues-to-commit-crimes). Elie Mystal is The Nation’s justice correspondent and a columnist. Here’s some of what he writes.
“In the ad, Trump promises to rid the country of communists and Marxists—which made me glare at my TV long enough to mumble, ‘I’m not going anywhere, you piece of shit’—followed by a curious tagline: ‘Paid for by the U.S. government.’”
Mystal points out the problem. “Federal law prohibits taxpayer dollars from being used for campaign ads and other forms of propaganda. Trump’s ad was a clear violation of this restriction. Moreover, the ad violates the Hatch Act, which bars federal officials from making campaign statements in their official capacity. Nothing about these ads… is remotely legal, or OK.”
For its part, the Trump administration has called the ad a “public service announcement.” Rather, Mystal points out, it is “just a straight campaign ad.”
What’s wrong with this? Mystal’s answer: “Trump is using taxpayers dollars for illegal state propaganda, and the penalty for that will be… nothing.
“Nothing will happen, but it’s still important to remember that something should happen.”
Mystal continues. “It’s also important to remember the truth, because if the Democrats ever take back power, the laws Trump has broken are among those that will need to be fixed and strengthened. The Hatch Act has been violated so many times by the Trump administration it no longer functionally exists. We’re going to need a new one, with real teeth, that will actually deter public officials from campaigning on the taxpayers’ dime. We’re going to need new FCC laws, updated for a digital streaming age, to ensure equal time for candidates while also defanging the institution so it can’t menace Jimmy Kimmell and Stephen Colbert.
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The Pentagon’s Secret Budget
David Vine writes on Tom Dispatch on how spending on the military is much higher than the government lets the public know (https://theintercept.com/2026/10/01/trump-military-true-budget-pentagon-trillions). Vine has found that Trump’s proposed budget hides $1 trillion in military spending from the public by spreading it across disparate government agencies.
One of Vine’s main points. “No one can tell you exactly what’s in the bloated Pentagon budget and what it costs. After all, the Defense Department has never passed an audit. Still, we know it’s larded up with terrible, lethal, wasteful expenditures. There are $2.2 million Tomahawk missiles — the type that killed more than 150 Iranian civilians, most of them school children. And the Zumwalt class of naval destroyers that were billed as a $1.5 billion per ship bargain, but now cost taxpayers $10 billion each. And there are the untold sums spent by self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s department to line the pockets of online influencers. Yep, that’s a thing. American taxpayers are on the hook for all of it.”
The actual military expenditures.
“News reports that next year’s U.S. military budget will top out at $1.5 trillion if President Donald Trump gets his way are misleading at best. The true total, if Trump’s proposal passes, could be at least $1 trillion higher.”
“Data shows that the budget was already between $1.5 trillion and $1.8 trillion in the last full fiscal year, 2025, as detailed by a recent Project on Government Oversight, or POGO, report I co-authored. Trump’s requests would add another $781 billion, bringing the potential total to at least $2.581 trillion in 2027.”
“The troubling revelation that the government is misleading the public and effectively hiding hundreds of billions in military spending reflects the out-of-control nature of the Pentagon budget. It’s also the only sector of government spending that seems largely insulated from public scrutiny: Imagine the outrage if news broke that the government was hiding hundreds of billions in spending for public housing, Medicaid, or hunger prevention programs.
Spending Hidden in Other Budgets
Vine continues. “It’s difficult to untangle how much the country actually spends on the military in part because Congress pays for the armed forces and wars from many budgets rather than one. Beyond the agency controlling the military branches that Trump calls the “Department of War” (the official name is still the Department of Defense), hundreds of billions of dollars are effectively hidden in the budgets of at least 17 other government agencies and entities. In total, each of these additional sums is larger than what Congress appropriates for every non-military agency.” The total cost estimates come to $1.7 trillion to $1.8 trillion.
Hidden Nuclear Weapons Costs: $33.8 Billion
The most obvious place where Congress and the executive branch hide military spending is in the Department of Energy’s budget. That’s where taxpayers can find the bill for the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, which cost around $33.5 billion in 2025.”
“Another $300 million in nuclear weapons spending hides in the budgets of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and the Army Corps of Engineers, bringing the total to nearly $34 billion.”
Hidden Military Personnel (Veterans) Costs: $393.3 Billion
“Taxpayers spend huge sums on the military in the Department of Veterans Affairs and related budgets. The existence of a separate veterans’ agency is a sleight of hand that leads the public to believe this is not military spending. It is. The only difference is the appropriation of money to still another agency.”
“To recruit and maintain armed forces, any government needs to pay its troops and offer sufficient long-term benefits (such as pensions, medical care in retirement, and survivor benefits) to encourage people to join and stay in a dangerous job that involves the risk of killing and being killed. These forms of long-term compensation are personnel costs, just as much as basic pay, and they should be counted as military spending. If the military fails to spend money to support vets, it’s unlikely to function for long.
Department of the Interior.
“Funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs adds another $389.8 billion to the USAspending.gov methodology total. Almost $4 billion more in long-term spending on personnel hides in the budgets of the departments of Labor, Justice, and several others. All told, these sums reach a staggering $393.3 billion.
Coast Guard and Other “Homeland Security” Costs: $16.8 billion
“Spending for an entire branch of the military, the Coast Guard, is concealed in the budget of the Department of Homeland Security rather than the Department of War. While DHS controls the Coast Guard during peacetime and the branch plays some non-military functions, the Coast Guard is one of the armed forces and is controlled by the Pentagon in wartime.
Excluding non-military activities (such as improving boat safety and cleaning up oil spills), Coast Guard spending adds nearly $14 billion to the total military budget. Additional DHS expenses for programs to counter weapons of mass destruction, radiological preparedness, cybersecurity, and other military spending add just under $3 billion, bringing this total to $16.8 billion.
The True Cost of just the Department of War: $1.3 Trillion
“The bulk of military expenditures still appear in the Department of War’s budget, which pays for the armed forces and the rest of the Pentagon’s sprawling bureaucracy, including all the weapons, salaries, some benefits, military construction, fuel, maintenance, operational expenses, and much more.
“USAspending.gov receipts show the Department of War alone spent $1.273 trillion in 2025. The Pentagon controlled another $480 million in spending that hid in the budgets of the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Department of Transportation.
“Combined with the $444.8 billion tallied previously, total military spending hits $1.718 trillion. That’s more than double the military budget usually reported for 2025: the $850 billion Congress appropriated to the Department of War.
Still Other Costs
“The $1.7 trillion estimate for last year is conservative and still may be too low. While the War Department budget contains classified funding for the CIA, National Security Agency, and other intelligence agencies, the government may hide more intelligence spending elsewhere. NASA space research involves considerable military work, which could add another $10.5 billion, according to USAspending.gov data. Some would also count $1.9 billion in FBI salaries and expenses found in the Department of Justice budget.
Other experts consider much larger expenditures in the DHS budget to be military spending, given that department’s role in protecting the “homeland” and the increasingly militarized nature of Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Border Patrol. This would add at least $216.9 billion after excluding DHS’s Federal Emergency Management Agency spending. Alternate methodologies also include $211.9 billion in interest payments on the more than $40 trillion in national debt stemming from past military spending and wars.
“In total, these excluded sums could add another $441.2 billion to the USAspending.gov method’s prior total of $1.718 trillion for 2025.”
Growing Opposition to Unchecked Pentagon Spending
“It helps me [Vine] to remember that every single dollar spent on the Pentagon is a dollar not spent on our children, on healthcare, on affordable housing, on efforts to slow catastrophic climate change, and much more.”
“Thankfully, there’s growing resistance to Trump’s proposals. Nearly 6 in 10 people nationwide believe even the official $1.5 trillion request is ‘too high,’ according to a recent poll conducted by ReThink Media and the Costs of War Project at Brown University, a nonpartisan research group (where I’m a contributor). And Democrats appear to be listening: They’ve voted against Trump’s budget in unprecedented numbers as it winds through Congress. Some Republicans have also expressed concerns about supporting Trump’s proposal given fears about the rising national debt.
Vine refers to calls to cut the military budget
“There are growing calls to cut the Pentagon budget by hundreds of billions of dollars without touching salaries and benefits for troops and veterans. This would still leave the country with the world’s largest military budget by far and allow Congress to reallocate the savings to programs that improve the lives of everyday Americans.”
“The public needs a full, accurate accounting of the military. Congress could provide an annual True Total Military Budget that tallies all the Pentagon’s spending in one place and stop hiding funding in other agencies’ budgets. Until this happens, journalists and analysts can help by explaining the full scale of spending and no longer repeating incomplete totals.
“As Trump asks for the highest military budget in the history of the world and people continue to suffer the effects of his war with Iran — which has killed and injured thousands, increased the price of gas and groceries, and risks even greater catastrophic harm globally — it’s time to have an informed debate about how much the country really needs to spend on its military.”
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Trump Is Making Corrupt Deals with Big Oil Corporations and Others
Mark Hertsgaard considers this issue in the Oct 15, 2026, issue of The Nation,
(https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/trump-is-making-deals-with-big-oil). This is an issue that doesn’t help Trump’s popularity. Mark Hertsgaard is the author of eight books that have been translated into a total of 16 languages,
“With the US midterm elections less than three weeks away, is it any surprise that corruption has emerged as voters’ top concern? ‘Corrupt’ was the adjective most often chosen when registered voters were asked for a single word to describe President Donald Trump, according to a survey conducted in September by The Economist and the market research firm YouGov, with 53 percent of respondents calling Trump corrupt and only 23 percent saying he is ‘honest.’ A Pew Research Center poll in early October found that nearly seven in 10, or 69 percent, of Americans are ‘not confident’ that Trump keeps his business interests separate from his presidential decisions.
“Americans can thank diligent investigative reporting for alerting them to much of Trump, his family, and aides’ self-dealings. For example, The Washington Post has reported that Trump’s sons, Don Jr. and Eric, were investors in 15 companies that ‘collectively generated at least $3.2 billion in direct government business since the sons invested and an additional $3.1 billion in future contract options.’ And on Tuesday, in a rare retreat, the White House asked Kimberly Guilfoyle to resign as US ambassador to Greece after a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that Guilfoyle promised political favors to a Trump donor if he would quietly pay off her $100,000 American Express credit card bill.
“Throughout the history of modern polling, voters have usually ranked the economy (or its proxies, such as “the cost of living”) as their top issue. Now, linking corruption with the cost of living, “Democrats Are Making Corruption Messaging a Pocketbook Issue,” a recent Politico headline declared. The Democrats’ claim, The New York Times reported, “that rampant corruption in Congress and the administration is directly costing average citizens who are paying more for necessities like groceries, gas, and medicine.”
Hertsgaard continues. “Both Democrats and the press however are so far overlooking one of the most overt and consequential examples of Trump’s pay-to-play behavior. On May 24, 2024, Josh Hawley and Maxine Joselow of The Washington Post published a blockbuster exposé, reporting that Trump privately told a group of oil company CEOs they should donate $1 billion to his 2024 presidential campaign: It would be a good ‘deal’ for the industry, Trump reportedly said, because of the tax and regulation benefits they would receive if he returned to the Oval Office.
“Specifically, Trump reportedly said he would reverse the Biden administration’s pause on new liquified natural gas export permits, approve more drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, and roll back environmental regulations that the industry didn’t like, including electric vehicle purchasing mandates and vehicle emissions limits. Hawley and Joselow then published a follow-up, reporting that Trump also promised to soften Federal Trade Commission scrutiny of industry mergers and acquisitions.
“Two and a half years later, his administration has delivered on each of these promises and then some. The Brennan Center has published a well-documented summary of Trump’s assault on climate policy—including his administration’s repeal of the “endangerment finding” that has granted the federal government the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions—that connects the dots between Trump’s actions and the many billions of dollars the oil industry has reaped as a result, including the millions of dollars that benefit oil executives individually.
What makes all this relevant to the midterm elections—beyond the fact that the leader of the Republican Party is directly implicated—is that many of Trump’s accomplishments were only possible because of rubber-stamp support from Republicans in Congress. Now, those same Republicans must face the voters. How will they explain themselves?”
“Corruption is understandably a hot issue these days. Meanwhile, new scientific analysis from the nonprofit Climate Central shows that every congressional district in the country is hotter than it was in 1970, thanks to climate change. No surprise, then, that polling also shows that the vast majority of people want their government to take stronger climate action. Journalism that connects those dots—accurately and fairly, and without pulling any punches—is a true public service.”
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The Coal Industry Asked for a Rescue. Trump Obliged.
Brad Plumer and Claire Brown report on this story, (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/28/climate/coal-industry-power-plants-trump.html).
“Early last year, a top coal lobbyist sent a letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright with a dire warning.
“Roughly one-third of the nation’s coal-burning power plants were scheduled to close within five years, according to the letter, dated Mar. 11, 2025, from a coal trade group. Many of the closures would occur during President Trump’s second term.
“But what if the plants didn’t have to shut down? The trade group, America’s Power, proposed an unusual remedy: The Energy Department could deploy rarely used emergency powers to force them to stay open longer.
“Two months later, the Trump administration began doing exactly that.
“Since May 2025, the Energy Department has repeatedly issued emergency orders to keep nine coal-burning units at six plants operating long past their scheduled retirement dates, saying the facilities are needed to prevent looming blackouts. The orders have sometimes come over the protests of the plant’s owners and are expected to cost ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars. A federal appeals court has already struck down one order, ruling that it overstepped the law.
“Mr. Trump has long expressed his affection for the coal industry, often calling it ‘clean, beautiful coal’ to needle environmentalists, who point out that the highly polluting fuel is a major driver of global warming.
“Coal power has been declining for two decades, as utilities have retired hundreds of older plants in favor of cheaper and cleaner natural gas, wind and solar power.
“Even Mr. Trump couldn’t stop the slide in his first term. More than 150 coal-burning units shut down between 2017 and 2020.
“In the letter last year, Michelle Bloodworth, the chief executive of America’s Power, laid out several ideas to reverse the trend. The Environmental Protection Agency could repeal costly pollution rules, she wrote. The federal government could purchase power directly from coal plants. The administration could invoke a Korean War-era law called the Defense Production Act to inject fresh funding into coal supply chains.
“Most immediately, the Energy Department could keep coal plants open under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, a provision that historically has been used only sparingly during temporary emergencies such as hurricanes. The emergency in this case, the letter said, was an expected shortage of reliable power over the next decade, citing forecasts from a leading grid monitor.
“The Trump administration has since taken each of those steps. In July, Lee Zeldin, administrator of the E.P.A., told coal executives at a public meeting, “Many of the items that were on your wish list are now done.”
“The letter shows the really broad extent to which the coal industry is not only influencing but even directing the Trump administration’s actions,” said Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for U.S. clean energy at the Environmental Defense Fund. “The industry swung for the fences and got everything they asked for.”
“In some cases, the orders have surprised utilities, arriving at the last minute and upending months of preparation for closure. Some companies have scrambled to replenish their coal piles, bring back workers and quickly make repairs, spending tens of millions of dollars in the process. Each order lasts only for 90 days, but the Energy Department has repeatedly renewed them.
“Mr. Wright, the energy secretary, has called the orders a necessary corrective after Democratic administrations and states hurt the coal industry by imposing strict environmental rules on power plants, often in the name of tackling climate change.
“‘Coal is massively more important for the U.S. electricity grid than wind and solar combined today,’ Mr. Wright said.
“The coal industry continues to struggle even as electricity demand grows, particularly from A.I. data centers. During the 2000s, coal provided nearly half of the nation’s electricity. But that share was just 17 percent last year and is expected to decline sharply again this year, according to federal data.
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Trump‘s record of poorly planned policies
Nick Turse writes on how poorly planned many of Trump’s projects are
(https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/10/15/reflecting-on-the-trump-era). Here’s some of what he writes.
“It was dark and cold when I first spotted him, sitting serenely, bathed in soft light. The statue of Abraham Lincoln at his memorial in Washington, D.C., sits 19 feet tall and weighs 120 tons — a white marble monument dedicated to one of the nation’s most intelligent, eloquent, and moral presidents.
“I hadn’t come to gaze upon Lincoln but at the reflecting pool that bears his name. It’s been transformed into a different kind of landmark by the inane, inarticulate, and completely immoral man who now holds that same office Lincoln did.
Turse continues. “President Donald Trump wants to remake the landscape of Washington D.C., tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build a monstrosity of a ballroom; adding his name to the Kennedy Center or demolishing it if he can’t; and installing a 250-foot-tall ‘Triumphal Arch’ that will ‘house … large numbers of drones, plus snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas.’
This past weekend, the administration even defied a judge’s order and ripped up 430 mature trees at East Potomac Golf Links, a municipal course in southeastern Washington that Trump wants to refashion into a championship-level course, like those of his personal properties.
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
“Back in April,” Turse writes, “Trump said adding a bargain-priced ‘industrial-grade swimming pool topping’ in ‘American flag blue’ to the reflecting pool would leave it looking ‘gorgeous, beautiful’ and would ‘last for 40 or 50 years.’ Instead, the renovation — awarded via a no-bid contract and announced as America 250 festivities on the National Mall approached — started to fail within days. This was followed by a bright green algae bloom and finally a catastrophic lining failure that saw Trump’s chosen coating blister, peel, and then separate from the concrete.”
When Turse visited, the only water in the iconic national “was a stagnant puddle that stretched out toward a mass of rotting leaves, a motley collection of plastic beverage bottles, a silver-and-blue aluminum can of RAIN spring water, and a pair of heavy-duty spray bottles often used for commercial cleaning chemicals.”
More Failures
“What I [Turse] witnessed was emblematic of a White House far out of its depth and completely overwhelmed by disasters — large and small — of its own making.
“From Washington, D.C., to the Middle East, the Trump administration has been humiliated. It’s a disaster wrapped in fiascos inside a swirling catastrophe, to riff off Winston Churchill’s famed line. These failures are legion. The attack on the elementary school in Minab — which killed more than 150 people, most of them children — within the larger failure of the Iran war. The extrajudicial executions of defenseless, shipwrecked survivors within the murderous boat strike campaign. The killings of unarmed people by federal immigration agents and deaths in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody during the larger administration project of anti-immigrant cruelty.
“The brutal deportation operations have spawned endless wrongdoing: military occupations of American cities; the arrest and detention of American citizens, the heartless expulsions to third countries; the shootings and beatings of protesters and immigrants, the targeting of Kilmar Abrego Garcia; the swirl of corruption allegations around then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem; and on and on.
“Then there is the debasing of democracy and the undercutting of the rule of law through politicization and weaponization of the Justice Department; turning federal law enforcement into a presidential goon squad; gutting of civil rights protections; targeting of political opponents; relentless attacks on the independent judiciary; executive overreach; and the pardoning or commuting of the prison sentences of insurrectionists.
“Other scandals and revelations of wrongdoing have been legion: the failure to release the full Epstein files; the settling of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS; the floating of the “anti-weaponization” fund; the cover-up of the U.S. death toll of the Iran war; Signal-gate; the $400 million Qatari jumbo jet that turned into a security liability; crypto-grifting; quid pro quo tariff reductions; brazen self-dealing; and reckless actions of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which could result in more than 14 million preventable deaths globally by 2030 — including approximately 4.5 million deaths of children under 5 — all to save Americans about 17 cents per day.
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Trump’s popularity sinks and he is blamed for high prices
Associated Press finds that most Americans blame Trump for the high prices as his economic approval hits new low, according to an AP-NORC Poll
Americans are deeply frustrated with President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy and rising prices, with most panning his performance and blaming his policies as higher costs threaten his party’s chances in November.
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only 17% of U.S. adults approve of the Republican president’s handling of the cost of living. Just 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall, marking a new low.
A majority, 65%, of U.S. adults now blame Trump’s policies for persistently high costs more than factors outside of his control, signaling growing weariness over his aggressive use of tariffs and continued unhappiness with the war with Iran.
The dismal numbers come just weeks before midterm elections that will determine whether Republicans maintain control of Congress and while Trump is hitting the campaign trail with an aggressive schedule of rallies. But Trump — who has asked voters to pretend that he is on the ballot as he tries to bolster turnout — remains deeply unpopular, with even many Republicans faulting him for failing to deliver on promised relief.
Costs drag on Trump as the economic pain for Americans keeps coming
“Over the last few months, Americans have grown more worried about being able to afford basics like groceries and gas. About half of U.S. adults now say they are ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ concerned about being able to fill their tanks, up from 39% in July. About half are also highly concerned about being able to afford food.
“Trump’s current approval on the economy is a 14 percentage point drop from March 2025, just after he took office for the second time. His struggles on the issue mark a significant departure from his first term, when the economy was often a point of strength.
“About 7 in 10 Americans say Trump’s handling of the cost of living has been ‘worse than expected.’ That includes roughly half of Republicans, who are also broadly concerned about being able to afford groceries and gas.”
“About 6 in 10 Republicans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the cost of living, according to the new poll, up from about half in April.”
“Overall, however, most Americans, 69%, continue to say the war has not been worth fighting, up slightly from 64% in July. Only 28% approve of how Trump is handling Iran.”
“Americans are also unhappy with Trump’s trade wars. Only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults approve of how he is handling trade negotiations with other countries, down from about 4 in 10 in March. And 64% say he has “gone too far” on imposing new tariffs on other countries, up from 58% in January.
“Overall, the picture is not better. Only about 3 in 10 Americans approve of how Trump is handling his job as president. And about 6 in 10 say the country as a whole is “much” or “somewhat” worse off than when he began his second term.”
Concluding thoughts
Trump’s presidency is steeped in bad news. He deserves the increasingly low ratings he gets. If the past is any lesson and if Trump continues his term in the presidency, there is no doubt that he will continue to use the power of his office to promote himself and his rich and powerful allies. More people will suffer from high prices, the absence of affordable health care, and the misplaced priorities favoring military spending. Global warming will continue toward catastrophic outcomes. There is a reasonable fear that he will sabotage democratic institutions as he sees his and Republican electoral outcomes going badly. Oh, we wish that he would simply leave office for more time at the golf course. But, I suppose, that’s not in the cards. He wants to build additional memorials for his legacy and to crush his critics. His narcissism is too strong.
