Pressure Systems edition
Pentagon Stakes Meet Trump Family Contracts
November 12, 2026
What this edition shows
The Pentagon’s move to buy stakes in private companies, a firm tied to Trump’s sons winning nearly $40 million in federal disease-screening contracts, and the administration’s corruption-rulebook rewrite all point to public contracting as a vehicle for private enrichment and political leverage. At the same time, constrained military launch supply, Democratic pledges to reopen Epstein files, and normalized election denial show how institutions under stress become sites of partisan contest and denial. Jacobin’s legal-regime argument ties these together: property, contracts, and corporate form are not neutral background but machinery through which power is capitalized.
Reporting and analysis behind this edition 7 sources
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Pentagon, Inc.
By buying up stakes in private companies, the Defense Department could become an independent, and vastly wealthy, behemoth. The post Pentagon, Inc. appeared first on The Intercept.
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Firm Linked to Trump’s Sons Got Nearly $40 Million in Federal Contracts to Screen for Ebola and Other Diseases
The post Firm Linked to Trump’s Sons Got Nearly $40 Million in Federal Contracts to Screen for Ebola and Other Diseases appeared first on ProPublica.
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Defanging Laws and Bringing Home Billions: How Trump Has Rewritten the Corruption Rulebook At Home and Abroad
When U.S. voters head to the polls on November 3 for midterm elections, the future of efforts to contain corruption at home and abroad will be at stake.
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The US military seems to be getting nervous about the launch supply crunch
"Launch is extremely constrained and that is exactly the situation we predicted."
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Can Democrats shed some new light on the Epstein files when they take over?
Lawmakers have pledged to use new majorities in House and Senate to pursue the investigation into Epstein's network.
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Election Denial Is Now Normal for the Right Everywhere
The series of recent elections across the globe have been read as a stinging defeat for right-wing authoritarians, which they are. But maybe more notable is another element: that denial of and efforts to simply reverse unfavorable election results now seem to have become de rigueur for the transnati…
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Capitalism Is More Than a Legal Regime
“Capitalism is a legal regime, not just an economic system as conventional wisdom has it.” With this opening sentence, Katharina Pistor takes the argument of her , , a step further. There she showed how lawyers turn assets into capital through property, contract, collateral, trust, corporate, and ba…