NEWS: WH develops a secret blacklist for companies

You probably missed one of the most important stories of the past week.

Bottom Line Up Front:

The Trump administration is circulating a secret scorecard ranking over 550 companies and trade associations based on how loyal they’ve been to the president’s agenda, marking another totally unprecedented (and quasi-authoritarian) development out of the White House.

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WHAT HAPPENED

Mike Allen at Axios got a big scoop that deserves highlighting, underscoring, and sharing widely.

Axios reports that the West Wing has developed an internal loyalty “scorecard” that rates 553 companies and trade groups on how visibly and vocally they supported President Trump, specifically his massive legislative package dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill (or “OB3” internally).

The goal is apparently to reward public displays of allegiance to the administration and freeze out companies deemed unsupportive of the president’s agenda. Among other things, the ratings are said to take into account: social media posts, press releases and public endorsements, video testimonials and paid ads, attendance at White House events, and presumably any other gestures of loyalty the administration can log.

The document is being shared with senior White House staff, who are instructed to use it as a “reality check” when companies reach out for access, meetings, or policy favors. While it’s apparently based primarily on how supportive companies were of the big bill, there’s no telling where it could go next.

Here’s the question: Are Americans comfortable with their president embracing — or blacklisting — U.S. companies based on displays of loyalty?

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WHAT IT MEANS

Put another way…

The White House has created a secret blacklist for companies. Those that don’t cheer hard enough for President Trump get banished, while those that show loyalty get rewarded with government access. I struggle to think of anytime — ever — that a U.S. president has created a political loyalty audit of companies like this.

This is much worse than Trump demanding that U.S. businesses support his policies. Instead he’s effectively requiring public displays of affection from corporate leaders as the price of working with the U.S. government. This isn’t exactly new for him, but institutionalizing it into a formal document, distributed inside the White House, is a genuinely leap toward state-sponsored patronage.

There are systems like this elsewhere, of course. It’s the kind of system we’ve seen in places like Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China, where oligarchs survive by flattering the strongman, and silence is basically treated as sabotage. In that context, a loyalty scorecard isn’t just undemocratic but a tool of economic coercion.

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WHAT’S NEXT

According to Axios, a White House official confirmed the existence of the loyalty scorecard — or business blacklist, depending on your perspective. In fact, they appear quite proud of it. What’s more concerning is that such strong-arm tactics appear to be working. Companies that have stridently opposed Donald Trump’s policies now show up with him in the Oval Office bearing literal gifts because that is the price of admission.

So, you might ask, if Trump is willing to rank private companies based on loyalty today, what happens tomorrow? There are a lot of ways this could go. In my view, it’s likely you’ll start to see more procurement contracts, tax treatment, agency policies, and regulations openly designed to favor companies that express favor for the president, which injects endless corruption into our democratic system.

Corporate America isn’t known for its courage lately. But company leaders need to decide whether they’re comfortable with business blacklists becoming the norm in Washington, D.C. And while industry titans are wringing their hands, the rest of us need to decide whether we’re okay living in a country where free enterprise depends on loyalty to the president, instead of the Constitution.