US labour watchdog halts Apple cases after group’s lawyer picked for top job

It feels like every pick of this administration is just someone who has a motivation for corruption.

This is how kleptocratic regimes work: in order to steal more effectively, you need to stuff the state full of personnel who ensure theft won't come under scrutiny (or under disapproving scrutiny -- bonus if the the people you hire actually enable it). Even better, hire people who would themselves face prosecution in a normal country, because they'll be beholden to you and too scared to have principles.

Edit: once your regime has achieved a certain level of internal cohesiveness and stability, you can begin the next step, which is to turn lower-level state actors against the population. You can do this partly by ordering them to perpetrate violence and outrage. This has a numerous benefits: first, it makes the state actors themselves afraid of the population, partly because they fear accountability, which makes them more inclined to violence and more protective of the regime; second, it stokes anger against them, which validates all the fears I listed under the first point; third, it distracts from the less shocking crimes of the regime (mere theft as opposed to bodily harm or murder -- but eventually that too!); fourth, as the regime gradually ratchets up the violence, the population becomes increasingly fearful and willing to collaborate and thus decreasingly capable of organizing and resisting.

Edit 2: I've noticed in my two or three decades of intellectual and political awareness that the right frequently seems to benefit from this kind of compounding effect and stacked benefit. No matter what happens, good or bad, it seems to redound to their benefit. I can't think of any cases where I've felt that the left enjoyed similar structural or inherent political advantages.

All indications are that the US is on track to become a Russian style government and political system. Unless the US people halt the decline.