For ninety years Americans fought to keep the government from building one master file on each of us. This week Trump and Scott Bessent started one for every child in the country... Imagine this Brave New World that Donald Trump and Scott Bessent just laid the foundation for last week: The year is 2041 and your daughter is now in her twenties; she’s had a federal financial account — a “Trump Account“ — since she was a child that was created for her by a billionaire Treasury Secretary she’s never heard of, and it’s tied to her Social Security number. The account also has become a central clearing space for everything else she does, from student aid to healthcare to her tax refund, housing assistance, and the disaster relief she got after her home was hit by a flood. One morning in October she tries to book an airline flight home for Thanksgiving, and her purchase is declined on the orders of the federal government. Her internet has slowed to a crawl, the apartment she was trying to rent just “vanished,” and the job she was interviewing for just stopped returning her calls. What happened? Three weeks earlier, she’d gone to a protest and an undercover ICE operative snapped her picture. As a result, the “responsibility score” she didn’t even know she had that’s been made part of her Trump Account dropped by forty points, and when she calls to ask why, she’s told it’s “confidential government data” and there’s no appeal.

The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion. — Trump’s sending a third aircraft carrier toward Iran, his Pentagon’s drawing up more ways for him to be able to use nuclear weapons, and “Whiskey Pete” Hegseth’s busy thinning out the generals. What could possibly go wrong? — Asked whether he’d rule out declaring a state of emergency before the midterms, Donald Trump said he isn’t ruling anything out. — Republicans have a plan to go after abortion pills nationwide, and they’d very much like you not to hear about it until the day after you vote. — Bernie Sanders, AOC and Jeff Merkley want to pull the plug on the cameras tracking your car, and for once a few Republicans are nodding along. — Trump is paying local cops up to $2 million each to help them arrest immigrants, criminals or not. — Corporations have stopped pricing products and started pricing you. — Geeky Science Alert! Picking up the pace may actually reverse frailty in older people, not just slow it down.

The deeper story isn't the $500. It’s what happens to democracy when politicians steeped in pay-to-play politics start treating ordinary citizens like one more constituency to be won over with money… They’re at it again. The billionaires who own and run the GOP — including the billionaire in the White House and the billionaires in his cabinet — are throwing out another desperate “let’s buy some votes” scheme by sending a million Americans their own money. According to the White House, over the next few days about a million Americans will get a check for $500 in the mail, prominently signed by Donald Trump, along with a letter telling them a naked lie about it being money Joe Biden kept from them.

From Harding’s trickle-down promises to Hoover’s prosperity pitch to Reagan’s tax cut hustle to Trump’s factory announcements, Republicans have a long history of pushing scams before Election Day… It was October 13, 2018, just 24 days before the midterm election, and then-President Trump held a rally in Richmond, Kentucky for Republican candidates. He told the crowd: “Thanks to our strong trade and economic policies, Braidy Industries recently broke ground on a new billion-dollar aluminum mill that will create up to 1,500 jobs right next to Ashland, Kentucky.” Kentucky Republicans thanked him effusively and built the promise of a new Russian-financed Russian-oligarch-owned aluminum plant into their remaining campaign ads, getting a big boost from the announcement. And then, of course, after the election the whole scheme collapsed.