A former White House official sounded the alarm on a "secret blacklist" compiled by President Donald Trump's team that tracks the loyalty of more than 550 companies and trade associations.

Miles Taylor, who wrote the anonymous "resistance" New York Times op-ed while serving in Trump's first administration, called out the loyalty scorecard first reported by Axios as "another totally unprecedented (and quasi-authoritarian) development out of the White House" on his "Treason" Substack page.

"The goal is apparently to reward public displays of allegiance to the administration and freeze out companies deemed unsupportive of the president’s agenda," Taylor wrote. "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 West Wing scores 553 companies and trade groups on their public support for the massive One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and senior staffers are instructed to refer to the document when companies ask for access or policy favors, but Taylor sees it as something more sinister.

"The White House has created a secret blacklist for companies," Taylor wrote. "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," he added. "Instead he’s effectively requiring public displays of affection from corporate leaders as the price of working with the U.S. government."

The document is a step toward "state-sponsored patronage", Taylor argued, like those institutionalized in authoritarian regimes.

"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," he wrote. "In that context, a loyalty scorecard isn’t just undemocratic but a tool of economic coercion."

The White House not only confirmed the document exists, Taylor wrote, but even appear to be proud of it, and business leaders who once publicly spoke out against Trump policies now appear alongside him in the Oval Office bearing literal gifts.

"Corporate America isn’t known for its courage lately," Taylor wrote. "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."