Snapshot · The Bulwark Podcast
The Supreme Court this week eliminated the last meaningful restrictions on unlimited, unaccountable cash flowing to parties and candidates, completing the dismantling of post-Watergate reforms.
Where this was said
At 10:24 · chapter starts 6:55
Tim Miller walks through the layered Qatar conflict of interest: $14 million in personal hotel licensing deals in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, a $400 million plane gifted by Qatar that U.S. taxpayers then spent additional hundreds of millions upgrading, and Qatar's pivotal role as a ceasefire broker with Hamas and an intermediary with Iran [1] — Susan Glasser "Qatar plane cost: $400M gift + U.S. upgrade costs: Qatar gifted Trump a $400 million plane; U.S. taxpayers paid additional hundreds of mill…" 06:50 . Susan Glasser invokes Bob Dole's famous 'where's the outrage?' line and anchors the story in the post-Watergate framework: these are precisely the entanglements that Watergate-era reforms were designed to prevent. She traces a direct line from Spiro Agnew's cash payoffs in the 1970s — which sparked national outrage — to today's billions flowing to a sitting president with no legal consequence. The entire post-Watergate architecture, she argues, was designed to ensure transparency and strict limits; that architecture is now effectively gone.
The entire post-Watergate anti-corruption architecture — contribution limits, disclosure requirements, restrictions on unaccountable cash — has been effectively gutted by the Supreme Court. Susan Glasser traces the arc from Spiro Agnew taking literal cash payoffs to today's billions flowing to Trump with no legal consequence.
A total of 8 states have filed lawsuits against social media platforms, including an ongoing case in Tennessee, using product liability and public nuisance theories to seek accountability.
France built 56 nuclear plants in the 1970s and now has the cheapest energy in Europe, making it independent of Russian or Middle Eastern energy geopolitics.
Estonia has a single tax form, a law preventing the government from asking citizens for the same information twice, and a flat rate of tax — enabling competitive taxation.
Portugal's Lisbon, once a city with a major heroin problem, legalised drugs and redirected enforcement spending into rehabilitation and housing, dramatically reducing crime.
The first Boland Amendment banning CIA and Defense Department funds for the Contras passed the House unanimously — yet the Reagan administration ignored it.
Over just two years, Saudi Arabia alone donated $32 million to the Contra rebels, giving loosely affiliated factions millions they had no way to spend on arms.
The National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty raised $6.3 million for the Contras but only $3.3 million reached them — a shockingly low 52% program expense rate.
Richard Secord and Albert Hakim marked up their arms shipments to the Contras by as much as 300%, making enormous personal profits from the covert operation.
Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, tapped to run the entire covert Contra support operation, had no prior experience in covert operations whatsoever — he was learning as he went.
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