The Dictatorship

This New Year’s Eve, take a moment to appreciate your regrets

Published

2 years ago

December 31, 2024

This New Year’s Eve, take a moment to appreciate your regrets

New Year’s Eve may as well be the day of regrets. We have been conditioned to look back on our actions and wonder what we should have done differently — people we mistreated, opportunities we missed, bad habits we adopted. Many people will also likely do things tonight that they will regret as early as tomorrow morning.

Regret can be toxic. You can end up spending so much time thinking about the past that you fail to live in the present. Ruminating over that lost love can keep you from recognizing the potential one in front of you. Fear of making the same mistake in your career can keep you from taking a new opportunity. Beware the paralyzing fear of future regret.

But as we spend this day reliving our past mistakes, it’s important to remember that regret also has a purpose. It is an unavoidable aspect of the human condition. Regret is the tinge of pain that teaches you not to touch a hot stove; it hurts, but it may stop you from getting hurt worse.

Not everyone seems to understand this. Celebrities who make stupefying decisions regularly come out afterward and say they have “no regrets.” Neither do CEOs whose bad decisions cost their companies millions and lead to layoffs. And politicians seem to be basically regret-proof these days.

Mark Robinson, whose gubernatorial run in North Carolina led to embarrassing revelations about his online comments on porn, seems unbothered by his car crash of a campaign. “We have no regrets,” he said. Ditto former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, whose defamation of two Georgia election workers led to a staggering $150 million award. “I have no regrets at all,” he told CNN in July.

Donald Trump is the undisputed master of this. One of his former executives has written that he “sees being sorry as a weakness.” Trump once said that he does not typically seek God’s forgiveness — despite that being a central practice of the Christian faith — because he does not need to. “Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness if I am not making mistakes?” he said. It’s hard to have regret if you don’t think you did anything wrong.

It’s not limited to the right, either. Top staffers of the Kamala Harris campaign were roundly criticized for failing to take responsibility on a recent episode of “Pod Save America,” talking instead about economic headwinds, the media and other factors beyond their control. If they have personal regrets, they didn’t mention them.

Regrets have become such anathema that some people are hoping to avoid them entirely. You can find advice in magazines and self-help books about how to live a long, full life with zero regrets. This is backward. If you live to a ripe, old age and have no regrets, then you didn’t really live. No regrets means you took no chances; you risked nothing. A life with no regrets is safe, boring and unexamined.

We have even seen some people try to use the fear of regret as a political argument.

In a 2007 Supreme Court decisionthen-Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that while there was “no reliable data,” it was likely that “some women come to regret their choice” to have an abortion and that, therefore, the government has the right to restrict certain procedures that they might one day regret even more. In a recent hearing, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that the state of Tennessee could have an interest in barring minors from receiving gender-affirming health care because of the “physical and psychological effects on those who later change their mind.”

In both situationsthe data suggests that the percentage of people living with such regrets is small. But we have been so trained to avoid regret that even the potential for it has become an argument for restricting the rights of others.

Importantly, regret isn’t just a personal issue; it’s a political one. Regret is part of the price of freedom. The Constitution guarantees us the right to pursue happiness, but it does not guarantee us happiness. There’s always a risk that the path you choose will not work out. On the flip side, you cannot regret something that you had no choice in. Regret is only possible when you have the freedom to make your own choices.

Ryan Teague Beckwith

Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for BLN. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine, Bloomberg News and CQ Roll Call. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies.

The Dictatorship

Trump Media to sell Wall Street access to market-moving Truth Social posts

Published

21 hours ago

July 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump Media to sell Wall Street access to market-moving Truth Social posts

Christmas. 17, 2026, 12:57 PM EDT

Trump Media & Technology Groupa company owned by President Donald Trump, is offering Wall Street firms access to a new speciality service that rapidly delivers and curates market-moving posts from the president’s preferred social media platform.

Truth Social, which launched in 2022, has become the platform where the president offers high-impact statements and announces major decisions. Among those statements, Trump has frequently unveiled changes to U.S. tariff policy; discussed meetings with world leaders, like Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin; and, in recent months, provided updates on the ongoing war with Iran.

The service, announced Thursday, has been dubbed “Truth API.” An API, or application programming interface, allows software applications to communicate with each other.

“Markets already move on Truth Social posts,” said Kevin McGurn, interim chief executive offer of TMTGin a statement. “As adoption grows, we expect Truth API to become a meaningful, ongoing source of revenue for the company, creating lasting value for shareholders.”

Trump is the majority stakeholder of Trump Media, which positions him to profit from the company’s new revenue stream. The White House has said that while he is in office, Trump’s assets are held in a trust that is managed by his children.

While the company says the new service will include posts from high-ranking accounts, Truth Social is mostly an echo chamber for the president, his allies and his supporters. Aside from Trump’s own profile, other accounts rarely produce impactful news or information. That raises questions about whether the president will weigh how the service could benefit him financially when he posts on the platform.

The White House and TMTG did not respond to MS NOW’s requests for comment.

Wall Street investors already rely on other applications to provide real-time data and market-moving information to react quickly and integrate data from Truth Social and other social media platforms.

It’s unclear how Truth API will differ from existing services or how much the company plans to charge for the service. TMTG said it would rely on “industry-standard delivery methods” to deliver Truth Social posts to customers “in milliseconds.”

According to the company, clients have already signed up ahead of the service’s launch, which is slated for as soon as August. 1.

The stock market often reacts to Trump’s posts, even when the content later proves to be inaccurate, misleading or states something that ultimately does not come to fruition.

For example, Trump posted in April that Iran had agreed to “fully” reopen the Strait of Hormuz shortly before U.S. markets opened. Minutes later, he said a U.S. naval blockade would remain in place.

The president also vowed on the platform to increase tariffs on countries to 15% after a Supreme Court decision struck down his use of widespread tariffs. However, the tariff rate has remained at 10%, and it’s unclear if or when it might be raised.

Akayla Gardner is a White House correspondent for MS NOW.

The Dictatorship

Mullin threatens to penalize states that do not cooperate with DHS on election security

Published

21 hours ago

July 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Mullin threatens to penalize states that do not cooperate with DHS on election security

Christmas. 17, 2026, 12:50 PM EDT

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday that his department will penalize states that do not cooperate with the federal government to “secure our elections” ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Announcing in a news conference what he called a new Department of Homeland Security program to safeguard U.S. elections, Mullin said states that refuse to participate may be deprived of federal funds and resources to run their elections. State election officials may also be personally held accountable by fines, penalties and potential prison time, he warned.

“Working with [Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick]we are going to make our security enhancements mandatory, meaning that if these states want a grant and they want to be reimbursed to work or to run federal elections, they’re going to have to implement security issues,” he said.

Mullin said that states will have to “look at who voted in their states” and that if their election officials do not adhere to federal directions on security measures, “then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time.”

If states do not hand over voter roles to federal officials, Mullin said, the government will scour public records of voters.

“You must be a U.S. citizen, and you must be eligible to vote before and after the election,” he said. “We will scrub all election records,” looking for noncitizen voters and others ineligible to vote, including votes linked to deceased people.

“We will go through those records one by one, and we will pursue everybody,” he said.

He threatened to prosecute noncitizens for voting, which is illegal and a highly rare occurrence. An analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center of Elections between 1999 and 2023 found only 77 instances of noncitizen votingeach of which was investigated by the authorities.

“If you’re illegal and attempted to vote, or you tried to vote illegally for someone else, we will find you, and we will charge you,” Mullin warned.

According to Mullin, DHS found hundreds of thousands of noncitizens who are registered to vote in California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania, without presenting a breakdown of the data or explaining the department’s investigative process.

Mullin’s remarks follow President Donald Trump’s primetime speech on Thursday night, during which he again promoted conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss and pushed for more voting restrictions.

DHS’ involvement in the campaign is a preview of what is shaping up to be a whole-of-government approach that could instill uncertainty in America’s election security ahead of the November midterms and impose stricter laws that civil rights advocates say will burden voters.

In his Thursday night speech, Trump repeated falsehoods about the 2020 election, saying it had been “rigged and stolen.” He accused China of buying and stealing tens of millions of voter data files and said Venezuela was capable of manipulating elections.

Declassified intelligence released by the White House that intended to prove his claims instead undermined it. Afterward, several Trump officials — including current and former intelligence and administration officials — told MS NOW that no U.S. intelligence exists showing that any foreign country influenced the outcome of the 2020 election

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Julia Jester and Brian Bennett contributed reporting.

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.

The Dictatorship

The average American is paying the price for Trump’s corruption

Published

21 hours ago

July 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A federal judge this week rightly rebuked President Donald Trump’soutrageous $10 billion lawsuit against his own countrywhich originally ended in a bogus settlement that would have created a $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund for his allies and would have granted him and his family sweeping immunity from IRS audits. In ruling that Trump manipulated the judicial process for his own benefit, the judge reinforced what many Americans had concluded long ago: Trump has transformed the presidency into one giant grift.

Trump’s shameless attempts to cash in on the U.S. presidency are why I have introduced legislation to establish basic safeguards that should apply to every president, regardless of party. My proposals would require presidents to place their assets in blind trusts and prohibit sitting presidents from owning or trading individual stocks. I have fought to prevent presidents from receiving blanket immunity from federal tax law, and I have introduced a constitutional amendment that would let Congress review the most egregious abuses of the presidential pardon power.

Trump has transformed the presidency into one giant grift.

Most of these proposals have been flatly rejected by the Republican-controlled Rules Committee along party lines. My constitutional amendment has gained the support of one lone Republican, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who’s retiring.

But these aren’t partisan ideas. Nor are they radical. They’re commonsense protections rooted in a simple principle: Public office exists to serve the public — not enrich the officeholder.

Because corruption isn’t just unethical. It’s also expensive.

Americans know what it feels like paying more for groceries, gas, housing, healthcare and energy. Families are stretching every paycheck and making impossible decisions about what they can afford. At the same time, Trump and his family are becoming wealthier — obscenely so.

According to newly released financial disclosuresTrump’s personal fortune grew by roughly $2 billion last year. From cryptocurrency ventures and foreign business deals to stock trades involving companies affected by government policy, the Trump family is amassing wealth because he’s president.

Take cryptocurrency.

Trump’s own financial disclosures showhe and members of his family made $1.2 billion through a network of cryptocurrency ventures last year. At the same time, his administration aggressively rolled back regulations and championed a crypto-friendly agenda that directly benefits those investments.

Those ventures have also attracted foreign investors seeking influence with the administration — including Binance founder Changpeng Zhaowhom Trump later pardoned for a federal money-laundering conviction.

In fact, an entire pardon-shopping industry has sprouted up around the president, with lobbyists reportedly charging as much as $1 million to seek clemency from the White House.

Those pardons have erased more than $1 billion in fines and restitution owed by duly convicted defendants. That money was intended to compensate victims and repay taxpayers. Instead, it disappeared with the stroke of Trump’s pen.

Those pardons have erased more than $1 billion in fines and restitution owed by duly convicted defendants.

Then there is the president’s personal stock trading.

Trump’s financial disclosures show him making an average of 80 stock trades a dayoften involving companies with business before the federal government.

He purchased substantial holdings in Palantir, a major federal software contractor, and then publicly promoted the company on social media. He bought shares of Nvidia a week before his administration approved the sale of advanced microchips to China, a market the company’s CEO has said could ultimately generate $50 billion annually.

Trump made more than 300 previously undisclosed stock purchases just one day before unexpectedly announcing that he would pause many of his import tariffs.

When the president can trade stocks and simultaneously move markets through official government actions, Americans have every reason to question whether public policy is serving the country or his personal investment portfolio.

When Trump isn’t enriching himself, he appears to be ensuring that family members and political allies benefit too.

One of his Mar-a-Lago neighbors — and a major political donor — received a no-bid contract to remediate algae in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Donald Trump Jr. holds a multimillion-dollar stake in a drone manufacturer that recently secured a major Pentagon contract.

Different schemes. Same basic story.

Every taxpayer dollar diverted through favoritism, every contract awarded based on political connections and every market distorted by self-dealing carries a cost to the taxpayers.

It means fewer resources to lower housing costs, strengthen public schools, improve infrastructure, expand healthcare and help working families make ends meet.

Different schemes. Same basic story.

The government should work for the American people, not for whichever politician occupies the Oval Office.

That’s why the reforms I have introduced matter.

Reforms that are not about one individual, but instead about restoring public trust in our democracy and ensuring that no future president — Republican or Democrat — can use public office as a personal profit center.

Corruption isn’t just immoral. It isn’t just illegal.

It’s expensive.

And American families are paying the price.

Rep. Johnny “Johnny O” Olszewski Jr. represents Maryland’s 2nd congressional district, which includes major portions of Baltimore County, Carroll County and parts of Baltimore City.