One of President Trump’s most outspoken critics from his first administration has sounded the alarm about a White House “loyalty scorecard” for businesses, calling it a troubling step toward authoritarianism.
Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official who penned an anonymous New York Times op-ed in 2018 exposing internal resistance within the Trump White House, wrote on his Treason Substack that the business blacklist represents “another totally unprecedented (and quasi-authoritarian) development out of the White House.”
Taylor’s remarks followed an Axios report last Friday detailing the administration’s system for tracking private companies’ loyalty.
The report cited a senior White House official describing a scorecard monitoring 553 companies and trade associations’ positions on the Big Beautiful Bill.
Companies publicly endorsing the tax and spending legislation—through social media posts or video testimonials, including DoorDash and Uber, both of which praised the bill’s “no tax on tips” provision—score higher than those that remain silent. These scores may influence which businesses get White House attention.
Taylor framed the move as a striking escalation in Trump’s demands of corporate America.
“Trump is effectively requiring public displays of affection from corporate leaders as the price of working with the U.S. government,” Taylor wrote.
“This isn’t exactly new for him, but institutionalizing it into a formal document, distributed inside the White House, is a genuine leap toward state-sponsored patronage.”
A White House official told the Daily Beast that the list is “a dynamic scorecard that will incorporate the support of present and future administration initiatives.”
Taylor’s 2018 op-ed gained attention for highlighting Trump’s “anti-democratic” tendencies—such as favoring dictators over American allies—and he sees echoes of those impulses in the White House push for corporate loyalty.
“There are systems like this elsewhere,” he said, noting parallels with Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China, where oligarchs survive by flattering the strongman and silence is treated as sabotage.
The criticism was not limited to Taylor. The Lincoln Project, run by former Republican strategists opposing Trump, called the loyalty list “political blackmail, plain and simple.”
Meanwhile, a Wall Street Journal columnist recently warned that Trump’s involvement in private sector affairs risks making “capitalism in America…look like China.” News Corp., the Journal’s parent company, has faced financial threats from Trump during his second term.
Law firms have reportedly been pressured into offering free services to the administration, CEOs have provided gifts and donations, and some companies have agreed to share a portion of their sales with the government.
Taylor stressed that beyond corporate boardrooms, everyday Americans must consider the consequences.
“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.”
