Political News

President Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday that Bill Pulte will serve as acting Director of National Intelligence—taking over the post from the embattled Tulsi Gabbard—makes a weird kind of sense.

Pulte, who currently serves as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has no experience that prepares him to oversee the 18 intelligence agencies that the DNI is supposed to manage. But he has used his traditionally low-profile job overseeing the home mortgage industry to help launch dubious criminal probes relating to supposed mortgage fraud by Trump critics and foes. Working closely with Ed Martin, the former head of the Trump DOJ’s “weaponization” task force, Pulte spurred investigations of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, as well as an ill-fated indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Gabbard, who left the DNI job last month, was largely sidelined from intelligence matter as Trump launched attacks against Venezuela and Iran. But she, too, used the role to pursue Trump’s political grievances, declassifying and misrepresenting documents to make the wild claim that former President Barack Obama led a “treasonous conspiracy” against Trump after the 2016 election and to prompt a questionable criminal investigation of national security officials who served during the Obama administration. She also seized voting machines in Puerto Rico and bizarrely showed up in person in Fulton County, Georgia, to watch FBI agents seize 2020 ballots. Pulte may not know anything about overseeing the CIA, but he seems well equipped to carry on the mission of using the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to target Trump’s critics. That’s clearly the job the president has in mind.

“William has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. The president said Pulte will also continue running FHFA.

Pulte’s experience at the FHFA, and in prior work, has raised serious questions about his own conduct. The Government Accountability Office—an investigative arm of Congress—is probing whether Pulte misused federal resources to launch politicized attacks. And even as he has pursued Trump critics for what in many cases appear to be paperwork mistakes, Pulte has substantial baggage of his own.

Pulte, a third-generation heir to real estate fortune, in 2023 gave $65,000 through a foundation he controlled to a supposed charity to support the poor, called One World Love. We found no indication a nonprofit with that name exits. Instead the funds appear to have gone to a Wyoming LLC tied to the Binnall Law Group—which represented Trump in various matters, including his effort to avoid paying damages after the January 6 attack. Pulte and Binnall have not responded to questions about the transaction.

“These facts raise serious concerns that Team Pulte Inc. may have illegally funneled cash out of a charity to support President Trump,” Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma.) wrote in a letter last month questioning Pulte about the transaction.

In a separate 2021 transaction, Pulte and his wife, Diana, appear to have used an LLC they controlled in Delaware to funnel a $500,000 contribution to a pro-Trump PAC. An FEC investigation into the gift ended last year without faulting Pulte. A spokesman told Mother Jones Pulte “was 100 percent compliant” and “anything else is Fake News, an attempt to smear Director Pulte.”

Pulte has also drawn notice for promoting a memecoin created by a social media influencer who the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission later accused of defrauding investors in the coin of at least $114 million through a pump-and-dump scheme. That case is scheduled to go to trial in Texas next year.

Last year, Mother Jones also reported that Pulte, even as he pushed for criminal investigations based on apparent paperwork errors, had failed to file a required SEC disclosure form. Pulte filed the form the day after our report.

Last year, on June 26, I wrote a story headlined, “Trump’s DOJ is targeting Daily Kos.” At the time, I couldn’t explain what was happening. A gag order prevented it. Now I can. It started on May 5, 2025, when I received an FBI order demanding that Daily Kos preserve records related to a user account on this site, which I will not identify. This is the document…

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It’s primary day in California, and many voters remain undecided on who to back in the hotly contested governor’s race. Some people, primarily Democratic or left-leaning, are waiting for the last possible moment to vote for … whichever Democratic candidate looks more likely to take the nomination. “I will vote for whoever is ahead,” Nancy Goodban, executive director of Fixin’ San…

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The new Wetland Intrinsic Potential tool provides both agricultural and conservation interests a more accurate way to find wetlands that might need preserving. By Chad Small for Inside Climate News As the United States limits what can be considered a wetland, and qualify for federal conservation measures, many Washington state residents are trying to protect more of them for water…

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A cartoon by Drew Sheneman. Related | Fake ICE agents are terrorizing immigrants…

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This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In June, athletes from 16 countries will kick off the World Cup wearing other people’s used clothing.

Well, maybe. They’ll be sporting uniforms made from recycled fabric, potentially including a mix of scraps and old clothes. It’s the latest initiative from Nike, one of the world’s largest apparel companies, to incorporate more recycled material into the attire it makes. This time, the garment giant said it used “advanced chemical recycling” to produce its first elite performance apparel from 100 percent textile waste. 

Rather than easing up on production, Nike and many rivals have pledged to boost the “circularity” of polyester.

Nike executives and some media coverage have implied that the outfits represent a turning point for sustainable fashion—that “circular” clothing, capable of being recycled over and over again, could soon reach everyday consumers.

The real picture, as you might expect, is a bit more complicated.

Nike has indeed signed deals with two chemical recycling companies, but no one is saying much about their technology or how scalable it is. Despite increasing investments from fashion brands, experts said not to expect to find sales racks lined with chemically recycled clothing anytime soon. 

“Yeah, it’s technically possible,” said Veena Singla, an environmental health researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. “But is it going to happen in reality?” She and others who study chemical recycling don’t think so—at least not in any way consumers might expect. The day when they can buy chemically recycled clothes, wear them, then return them for another trip through the cycle isn’t nigh. 

What seems more likely is the fashion industry expands its use of this recycling technique with industrial scrap fabric—and at nothing approaching the level needed to address projected increases in textile production.

Nike is right that the fashion industry has a sustainability problem. Apparel companies produce more than 100 billion articles of clothing every year. In the process they generate up to 10 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and an unfathomable amount of waste; the vast majority of textiles are eventually landfilled, incinerated, or sent to unofficial dump sites in poor countries. And all of this is made possible by fossil fuels, with nearly 70 percent of clothes made from oil-derived fabrics. The most common is polyester, a type of plastic also used in water bottles.

Rather than easing up on production, Nike and many of its competitors have pledged to boost the “circularity” of polyester—mostly through recycling.

The push to do so through chemical means is a response to the shortcomings of other strategies they’ve tried. Traditional mechanical recycling through shredding and grinding causes fibers to break down. The resulting fabric must be blended with 70 to 80 percent virgin material so anything made with it doesn’t pill and tear. 

The much more prevalent strategy involves turning discarded plastic bottles into new polyester. Patagonia pioneered this approach in the early ‘90s, and by the start of this decade virtually all recycled polyester was sourced from old bottles. Today, however, companies have increasingly faced lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny from those who would rather see bottles turned back into bottles.

“If we wanted it to work, we would have to have our clothes…be 100 percent polyester, and we’d need to get rid of so many toxic chemicals.”

Chemical recycling is supposed to be the next best thing. The term refers to using solvents to dissolve fibers into their base chemical units—building blocks that can be spun into new fabrics. On its face, this is a truly “circular” solution, because it doesn’t depend on bottles, and proponents say it can turn your used polyester shirts or running shorts into new ones over and over again, with no loss in fabric quality. 

That’s the vision now being promoted by fast-fashion brands like Gap, H&M, and Levi’s, many of which have signed multi-year agreements with a handful of chemical recycling startups. Last fall, Nike agreed to source “circular” polyester from two of them: the Swedish firm Syre and Loop Industries here in the United States.

Research does bear out some of the hype. Technically, chemical recycling can produce virgin-quality polyester, and at least one method, called methanolysis, is capable of preserving that quality through repeated rounds of recycling. But there are significant constraints.

Diana Ferreira, a textile researcher at the University of Minho in Portugal, said textile-to-textile chemical recycling remains limited by the availability of suitable fabric to work with. “If we are dealing with clean, well-sorted, polyester-rich waste streams, chemical recycling can in principle produce material with properties comparable to virgin polyester,” she said. “However, if we are talking about post-consumer textile waste, the situation is much more complex.”

In other words, chemical recycling works best with industrial scraps, which are more uniform than piles of used clothes. The latter may include blends of cotton, nylon, wool, spandex, and acrylics, not to mention dyes, chemical coatings, thread, labels, and zippers. All of this stuff makes chemical recycling much less feasible—at least, not without meticulous sorting and repeated rounds of pre-treatment to chemically remove all of those contaminants.

One expert said Syre’s goal to produce even 3 million metric tons by 2032 is “too aggressive.”

“If we wanted it to work, we would have to have our clothes…be 100 percent polyester, and we’d need to get rid of so many toxic chemicals,” Singla said. 

Beth Jensen, of the nonprofit Textile Exchange, is more sanguine. She said “all solutions,” including chemical recycling, are needed to reduce the fashion industry’s dependence on fossil fuels. But she agreed that establishing the infrastructure required for companies to accept used clothing and use technologies like methanolysis to make it into new apparel remains a ways away. Plus, it’s not clear who will build it. Companies like Nike? Governments? Recyclers? Some combination of those entities working collaboratively? 

Even if the industry can hit its optimistic targets for chemically recycled polyester by the early 2030s—whether from scrap or from people’s old clothes—production of “circular” fabric would likely pale in comparison to the more than 169 million metric tons of polyester projected to be manufactured annually by then. Dionisios Vlachos, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Delaware, said Syre’s goal to produce even 3 million metric tons by 2032 is “too aggressive.”

Instead, companies need to “reverse the trend of fast fashion,” said Nusa Urbancic, CEO of the nonprofit Changing Markets Foundation. That means making less clothing overall, whether it contains recycled or virgin materials.  Last year, growth in recycled polyester—mostly from bottles—was dwarfed by an even larger increase in the production of fossil fuel-based polyester.

Urbancic sees chemical recycling as “an excuse to keep producing plastic clothes” and advocates for a shift away from polyester altogether; the material sheds microfibers and may expose consumers to hazardous chemicals.

Nike, Syre, and Loop Industries did not respond to interview requests or detailed lists of questions, highlighting a transparency problem flagged by Singla, Vlachos, and others Grist spoke with. Industry confidentiality makes it difficult to know what’s actually going on in these firms—and whether “#TheGreatTextileShift” they promise will be different from failed chemical recycling initiatives in the past.

It’s worth noting that Loop Industries has never turned a profit since its founding in 2010. The company is under investigation by the SEC following a 2020 report accusing it of systematically misrepresenting its technology to regulators and investors, and in 2022, it settled a class-action lawsuit over similar accusations. Syre, for its part, has not said how the “gigascale” factory it plans to build in Vietnam will be able to process consumers’ old clothes, given the country’s ban on used apparel imports.

“It remains to be seen whether [Nike’s announcement] amounts to anything,” Singla said. For the foreseeable future, it seems chemically recycled polyester will be limited to niche products like World Cup uniforms.

And the Lord said unto Satan, “Whence comest thou?”

Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, “From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.”

—The Book of Job

In late April, I wrote about Peter Thiel’s decision to temporarily move to Argentina with his family. It seemed like an odd development, since Thiel’s allies and ideas form a core part of the Trump regime.

At the height of his power and influence, with his companies raking in multibillion-dollar contracts, why would the PayPal and Palantir billionaire “decamp” to South America?

Last week, the New York Times followed up on Thiel’s move:

Mr. Thiel, who has a history of collecting backup countries as he hedges his bets against the United States, is considering making Argentina another Plan B, according to two people familiar with his thinking. Born in Germany and raised in the United States, he received citizenship in New Zealand in 2011, and applied for a passport in Malta in 2022.

 His new roots in Argentina are partly motivated by his concerns about the direction of the United States, the people familiar with his thinking say, particularly California, where an initiative on November’s ballot could lead to a significant tax on billionaires.

Argentina, a nation relatively insulated from potential conflicts in the Northern Hemisphere, also fits as a potential escape hatch from other risks that Mr. Thiel has publicly warned about — nuclear war and runaway artificial intelligence.

The NYT piece spurred a new round of interest in Thiel’s globetrotting from people who had apparently missed the New York Post’s exclusive story on April 24. As with the NYT story, the Post story pointed out that Thiel’s purchase of a $12 million mansion in Buenos Aires is part of a “meticulously constructed global hedge,” noting that “Thiel has spent years assembling a portfolio of residences, passports, and legal presences across multiple continents.”

Neither story mentioned Thiel’s decades-long fascination with The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State. The 1997 book urges wealthy individuals—so-called “Sovereign Individuals”—to seek escape routes from democratic nation-states, obtain multiple passports, and acquire personal security services as the world devolves into chaos.

From The Sovereign Individual:

This will mean intensified shopping among jurisdictions for protection services, passport and consular services, and the provision of justice.

In the long run, of course, Sovereign Individuals will probably be able to travel on nongovernmental documents, issued like letters of credit by private agencies and affinity groups. It is not farfetched to suppose that a group will emerge as a kind of merchant republic of cyberspace, organized like the medieval Hanseatic League, to facilitate negotiation of private treaties and contracts among jurisdictions as well as to provide protection for its members. Imagine a special passport issued by the League of Sovereign Individuals, identifying the holder as a person under the protection of the league.

This “merchant republic of cyberspace” is essentially the goal of the Network State movement, which was founded by Thiel protégé Balaji Srinivasan (to whom Thiel recommended the book). Srinivasan calls The Sovereign Individual “the most prescient thing in the world.” The book’s main thesis—that “cyber currency” (crypto) and advanced automation (AI) will crumble the world order in the 21st century—is catnip to the cult of radical venture capitalists who have sprung up around Thiel. (Well-read people understand that The Sovereign Individual took many of its ideas from science fiction and earlier tech movements.)

Until the nation-state system falls to the supposed tech apocalypse and the Network State emerges as a world power, however, these roaming oligarchs will need temporary hiding places. As I mentioned in my April piece, The Sovereign Individual specifically listed Argentina and New Zealand as choice locations for bunker-mentality billionaires. Thiel obtained New Zealand citizenship in 2011, and the NYT reports that he is exploring the possibility of an Argentine passport as well.

Thiel’s passport-collecting spree reflects his apocalyptic psyche. But it connects directly to Thiel’s political project, which sees technology as an “incredible alternative to politics” (as Thiel put it in a 2010 speech). This means technology—or the vast sums of money amassed by tech barons—will allow them to escape democracy.

How? Either by destroying democratic governments (as we are seeing in the United States), by creating new democracy-free territories (proposed tech utopias in Gaza or Greenland), or by taking over countries where democracy is weak and vulnerable (El Salvador and Honduras). Proponents of the Network State have also proposed building settlements in Cuba and Venezuela, both countries Trump has targeted with military aggression.

Argentina is a friendly locale for Thiel because the country’s current president, Javier Milei, is a chainsaw-waving anarcho-capitalist zealot who largely shares his crypto-inflected politics. But it’s not clear how long Milei will stay in power. Argentina remains a democracy and Milei’s poll numbers have fallen dramatically (crypto anarcho-capitalist fantasy works better in the billionaire imagination than in reality).

Tech billionaires have set their sights on Latin America, where they see weaker governments that are easier to buy. But Latin American countries have also resisted and overthrown many bloody right-wing dictatorships. The people of Latin America know a thing or two about resisting imperial aggression from norteamericano capitalists with colonial aspirations.

So, don’t expect Thiel to find happiness in Argentina, but do expect his global search to continue. More important than any particular location is the paranoid fantasy underlying it—the dream of a collapsing world order in which savvy billionaires may convert distressed countries into techno-fascist fiefdoms. That is the vision Thiel has pursued for decades, and he is not alone in his billionaire escape anxiety.

Business Insider reports that Thiel’s Argentina move “fits a larger pattern” in which “the rich are treating their lives in America like part of an investment portfolio: still worth betting on, but increasingly in need of a hedge.”

“There's a clear trend toward sovereign diversification,” Charlie Garcia, founder of centimillionaire membership club R360, said, including “multiple passports, multiple tax regimes, and at least one 'Plan B' jurisdiction in the Southern Hemisphere.”

Anyone wishing to understand the full scope of this deranged trend should add The Sovereign Individual to their summer reading list.

I recommend the 2020 reissue version—with a foreword by Thiel.

(The first chapter of my forthcoming book is titled “The Sovereign Individual: Peter Thiel and the Politics of Apocalypse.” Click here to pre-order it. Every purchase supports this newsletter AND independent bookstores!)

Tech Apocalypse in Rome

I just returned from Rome, where I participated in a small conference on the subject of “Tech Apocalypse.” I am working my notes into a short essay that I will share with our paid subscribers. They pay the bills and keep this newsletter afloat! Join them today!

If you want to now how Thiel’s Antichrist obsession connects to the Network State, and why tech fascism is indeed fascism, stay tuned.

Spotted in Rome.

“Hi, I am here to do whatever it takes to help you become our governor,” Gris Vogt, a part-time content creator, wrote in a direct message to Xavier Becerra’s Instagram account. She wasn’t expecting a response. He’s a Democratic candidate, onetime California attorney general, and the former secretary of health and human services, while Vogt “didn’t have that many followers.

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A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know. No fatties or poors allowed near Trump at White House cage fight Trump’s ringside qualifications are getting more and more specific. Trump team: ‘Relax,’ gas costs more now Sure, this is what the American people want. Happy Pride Month! These states are just …

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The GOP-controlled Congress returned to Washington on Monday in the same horrible position they were in when they skipped town over a week ago: mired in infighting as they try to figure out how to handle President Donald Trump’s corrupt $1.8 billion slush fund for the traitors who violently tried to help him steal the 2020 election. Senate Republicans fled town on May 21 after they came to an…

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In another bit of progressive excellence, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday signed a very special executive order: He officially repealed children’s bedtime so they can watch the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals. “Okay, my friends,” Mamdani said, surrounded by children. “Executive order is signed. Bedtime is repealed. All of you can watch the finals.

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A coalition of former Emmy Award-winning “60 Minutes” producers, CBS News correspondents and executives, and representatives of journalism academia have written an open letter to executive David Ellison calling for an end to political interference at the iconic network magazine show. Ellison is the chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance, the media conglomerate that owns CBS. His father…

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Tina Peters, the disgraced former Colorado elections clerk, is back on her election-denialist bullshit just two weeks after Democratic Gov. Jared Polis bowed to President Donald Trump’s pressure and commuted her nine-year sentence, claiming the convicted criminal had shown a willingness to take responsibility for her crimes. “I know that the Democrats are going to cheat…

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Last week did not really end on a high note for President Donald Trump. No, we’re not talking about his Freedom 250 concert falling to pieces, though that is indeed hilarious to watch. Instead, it’s that as the rest of the country was gearing up for the weekend, lower court judges spent Friday telling Trump to get bent in not one, not two, not three, but four different cases. In the space of…

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Renewed fighting over the weekend has cast doubt on whether any deal to end President Donald Trump’s war with Iran is imminent. Seemingly unable to get the usual MAGA sycophants to appear for interviews, right-wing outlets on Monday paraded third- and fourth-string Republicans on air to try and cheerlead through the war’s uncertainty. When asked about rising gas prices, Republican Rep.

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It is somehow already June 1, or the first day of Pride Month, when millions of Americans across the country celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, its culture, and its history fighting for acceptance and equality. But homophobic Republicans are refusing to mark the occasion. Instead, they are replacing Pride with Christian Nationalist-laced celebrations of “fidelity” and the “nuclear family”—which…

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A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | Americans don’t want a data center in their backyard…

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President Donald Trump’s failure to negotiate an end to his war with Iran has led the administration to now absurdly claim the resulting rise in gas prices are a good sign for the economy. Kevin Hassett, the Trump-appointed director of the National Economic Council, made the claim during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. “People are spending more on gas, but they’re also spending…

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Apparently worried that enough people won’t show up for President Donald Trump’s big UFC birthday bash on June 14, the Pentagon is moving in the troops. Well, some troops. Only the buff ones. Remember how the big Ultimate Fighting Championship cage fight on the South Lawn of the White House grounds is supposed to be for the military somehow? And Trump pal and UFC head Dana White is such…

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DOJ’s cannabis reclassification offers tax, research benefits but leaves recreational weed adrift. By Amanda Watford for Stateline The U.S. Department of Justice’s recent decision to downgrade the drug classification for medical cannabis will help medical marijuana businesses. Companies will be able to claim some federal tax benefits. New research can start up at state universities.

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